Week 4 Pictures

 I made breakfast! :D

 Maxine (:

Mike and Sister Fultz

Week 4 Already?

Hello all!

I'll just jump right into the week

Monday: District fun day! Went downtown. I think I talked about that in my last email.

Tuesday: Exchanges! I went to Hebron, Kentucky, and Sister Nielsen stayed here in Cincy. I was with an STL, Sister Mickelson. She is from Utah. Their apartment has a gym! I wish ours did. I would be all over that. Overall, exchanges weren't that exciting. Probably the most interesting thing was when we went to a recent converts house and played "Corn Hole". It's when you have a board with a hole in it, and you toss a sack full of corn and try to get it into the hole. We played for a good 2 hours! It was weird being in this area, it's a lot wealthier than my area. When the day was over, we met halfway between Cincy and Hebron and switched back to our companions. Yay! Back with Sister Nielsen! Haha. When we got home to do daily planning, I got to lead it. It was really hard because I don't know the area well, but that's why I do it! 

Wednesday: TEMPLE!!! We went to the Louisville Temple. It was so weird to see the temple, it's small and shares a parking lot with one of our meeting houses. But of course, like all temples, it was beautiful! It was so awesome getting the be there with my zone. Missionaries aren't allowed to drive themselves to the temple, so our ward mission leader and his wife (the Taylor's) gave us a ride. They are so awesome, I just love them. They do so much to help us. They gave us and Elder Nielsen and Dahl a ride. After they took us to dairy queen for lunch. OH! After our endowment session, the temple president talked to us in one of the sealing rooms. He told us how Salvation is the first step, and then comes Exaltation. He compared it to a two course meal. We use that analogy a lot now when teaching our recent converts ;) When we were driving home we got stuck in traffic, and sister Taylor was super tired and was getting mad at everyone you could see texting while driving. When we finally got home, we went and contacted a referral from a member. MOM! YOU WOULD LIKE HER. She worked for Mitt Romney's campaign! She's a cool lady, her name is Katherine. She said she's been interested in the church for a long time, but never really has time for the missionaries. We got her number and she said she won't really have time until December. So we'll see how that goes! I'm excited to teach her. After we went to a members house, the Gullino's. I love them! They have a son with Aspergers. His name is Aiden and he actually just barely turned 12! He's so adorable and keeps kissing Sister Nielsen's arm. He was having a bad day, so we played with him and I think it helped a lot. Bishop Blackwelder invited us to his house where they were having mutual. The watched the LDS Face to Face with the Piano Guys. Sister Taylor was there (she's a YW leader) and was like "I can't get away from you guys!" She was kidding of course, we're like her children. She taught us how to do hospital corners when making our beds! Haha. When we got home, we realized I left my scriptures at Bishops house! Woops.

Thursday: Weekly Planning day! We spend like 3 or 4 hours making plans for the next week. It's kinda everyone's least favorite day! But before we started, we went to Bishops house to get my scriptures and to teach the Doctrine of Christ. IT WAS SUCH A GOOD LESSON. The Spirit was strong, and I received so much revelation.  Thursdays always feel unproductive, because you spend almost half the day doing weekly planning. We only taught 4 lessons today and they were all with members. But the Taylors fed us, Elders Dalh, Nielsen, Lemieux and Tayler. Sister Taylor made us Navajo Taco's, then we had brownies with icecream on top (the ice cream was Graeter's ice cream, big deal here), and then we put fudge on it. SOOOO GOOD. 

Friday: We taught Mike today! It was so awesome. He told us he felt the spirit and understood the restoration very well. We invited him to the trunk or treat tomorrow. The rest of the day was alright. We had a hard time finding people to teach. At least we got to teach Mike! 

Saturday: I'm slowly learning how to live without Sister Nielsen :( Today when we e-mailed bishop and updated our spreadsheets, she had me do it so I can learn for when I have to lead our area. Boo hoo :( I don't want her to leave! Today we called 23 members to try to get them to come out and teach with us sometime in the next week... we got 4 to respond! haha. Better than none! We have 4 times during the week members are coming out to teach with us so I'm super excited for that! When a member is present in a lesson, it really helps the investigator, and it ups the chance of them getting baptized! MIKE CAME TO THE TRUNK OR TREAT! Hallelujah! He really enjoyed it and got to meet the Bishop and Brother Taylor. He said he's coming to church tomorrow as well

Sunday: Mike didn't come to church. We went at 10 to take him breakfast (I made pancakes) and have him follow us to church so he wouldn't get "lost" (darn Satan). He wasn't home. DANG IT! So we decided just to take the breakfast to Stef, a recent convert. Good thing too, he forgot it was Sunday! We decided just to back off from Mike for a few days. He hasn't been answering our calls or texts. 

MIRACLE OF THE WEEK: We had an assignment to get the phone number of one of our less actives home teachers before they moved into our ward. The husband of this less active (Bonnie) is an investigator (David), and we haven't been able to get a hold of him. Anyway, the name of the guy whose number we were supposed to get is Joe Woestman. He called us!! He tol dus that he wants us to keep working with David and that he would help. Sweet!!

This week overall was pretty hard, but I learned a lot. This week is gonna be awesome with all the members we have coming out with us as well. This is the start of week 5! Time is going by so fast.

I love you all! Agape

Sister Fultz 

Pictures

 Sister Fultz and Companion being silly

 Sister Fultz and Companion at Echo Park

 The view of the city during District Fun Day

 The view of the City during District Fun Day

 District Fun Day

 Apartment

 Apartment

 Apartment

 Cincinnati

 Cincinatti

Mike

October 12-19

I'll try to have a more detailed letter since I have more time today :)

Monday (12th): Zone fun day was a lot more fun that I thought it would be. I thought I would feel awkward and left out. But I really got the chance to get to know my zone better! Even though it was a lot of fun, you could feel a lot of tension between some people. I'm not really sure why, and I'm just not gonna really worry about it. We played chair soccer. Pretty much you all stand by your chair, and you kick the ball around and try to hit people's chairs. If your chair get's hit, then you're out. When you're out, you're allowed to pick up and ball and throw it. When you're out, and you throw it and get someone else out, you're back in. At first I didn't really get engaged with the game, mostly because I wasn't sure of the rules. Once we played a few games I was up and running around trying to get the ball away from the elders. They were surprised that a sister was actually fighting for the ball! I had to be careful not to touch any of them, of course. We also had a nerf war, that was interesting! I just hid in a room and locked the door. The room I hid in smelled like pickle juice, which was weird. Then I didn't want to get attacked by elders, so I just had a sister get me out. Then I went and chilled in the gym. We tried to play this game called "spud", but no one really understood it so it was hard. When we left for zone fun day (which was about 45 minutes out of our area), we found out Sis Nielsen forgot her purse. So we had to call someone that was still at the church. The Sister Training Leaders were able to get it and meet up with us so we could get it. Woohoo! Later that night we had an appointment with a less active named Bonnie Dirr. When we got there she was asleep, so we talked to her husband. It actually turns out that he almost got baptized awhile ago until Bonnie got super sick. We asked if he still wanted to be baptized and he said yes! Then we taught the restoration and the spirit was so strong. But not he won't text us back.... we think maybe his wife doesn't want him to be baptized. We will see what happens with that this week! 

Tuesday (13th): We went to Maxine's house, and her cleaning lady was there. We got her as an investigator and set an appointment for Friday at Maxine's house! Woohoo. We met a less active today named Niela. We first thought that she wasn't a member, then she told us she was married in the temple but got a temple divorce. Sad. Later we realized that she's in our area book as a DO NOT CONTACT. Guess not. She was super sweet. She told us he birthday was going to be on Saturday. We took her cookies on Saturday and left a note saying happy birthday (she wasn't home). 

Wednesday(14th): OH! We also had district meeting today. Sister Nielsen told everyone that I can play the piano. Ugh. I don't do well playing with people singing with me. Luckily I didn't play--dodged a bullet with that one. But not Elder Nielsen and Elder Dahl keep bring it up that I can play. Haha. Oh well. Today we also fasted as a mission. It was so hard especially since we had just fasted on sunday. It was so hard not to break my fast around 3. But Heavenly Father told me that if I didn't, something great would happen! So I didn't break my fast. Woohoo! Later that night, we got to teach Anthony! We were afraid he would bail on us again. He didn't..... but he was high (I don't just think he was, he called us before he got there saying that he was smoking weed). Luckily he still does remember what we told him. He reeeeeeally wants a Book of Mormon. But President Porter doesn't want us to give them one the first lesson. In our mission we actually have the Book of Mormon lesson as the second lesson. So we didn't/couldn't give him one, and he got kinda mad. Oh well. Exact Obedience! To break our mission fast, we went to a very popular restaurant called La Rosas. Yum!

Thursday (15th): Every Thursday we do weekly planning, so we spend a lot of time in the apartment. We have to plan our whole week, make plans, make visions for our gators, and do comp inventory (when we talk about any probs we may have. we're perfect so we never have any ;) ). 

Friday (16th): ONE MONTH! I entered the MTC one month ago. Woohoo! Today we had breakfast at Ralph Sr's house with Elders: Dahl, Nielsen, Korford, Ben, Hueman, Lemeiux, Hall, and Rudd. It was a full kitchen! Luckily Ralph makes us help make breakfast. So it went by fast. Ralph's wife wanted to hear us sing our mission song, so we did that and then said a prayer. It was funny because they wanted us to hold hands during it. So I awkwardly held Elder Dahls hand. Everyone was teasing us saying they were going to tell Pres Porter on us. It was the most contact I've had with an Elder! Oh no.... I'm turning into an awkward missionary!!! hahaha. After, we went to Maxine's to teach her cleaning lady, Rhonda. It was so awesome! She said that she felt the spirit and that we explained everything really well! Every Friday we go to the nursing home and paint the old ladies nails, haha. It's actually pretty fun! The ladies are so sweet and funny. Nursing homes smell weird, and I decided to never want to be in one. Mom and Dad, I will never put you into a nursing home! So, we have a former gator we call Dirty Mike. We call him that because he gets inappropriate a lot of the time. But today we decided to go see him. Everyone deserves the Gospel!! When we talked to him it was actually really awesome. I bet he'll get baptized! He is like 35 and still lives with his mom, haha. His mom really wants him to join the church, and she is interested herself as well. Woohoo! 

Saturday (17th): We had LDS.org time today, and I watched all of the addiction recovery videos--no, I am not addicted to anything. haha! They are very interesting though. We saw Mike again today, he was a little drunk this time. But we were still able to share a scripture with him! We went to Stef's house today and talked to his ex wife that lives with him. She seemed mad that we didn't "do anything to help her". She's out of a job and has no money. She was asking us questions about what the church does to help people. I didn't really know what to say. She seemed like she was attacking us. I didn't feel good while talking to her. I've been kinda avoiding her ever since... Tonight was so fun! We went to a LA's house, Kasey Merritt. She wasn't home (she never is, she works a lot). So we just talked to her mom Debbie. We also got to play with 2 of Kasey's boys, Jayden and Anthony. It was sooo fun! I think Debbie started to trust us more after that because she invited us in! That's a big deal here in Cincinnati. She even gave us icecream! Woohoo.

Sunday (18th): Today we encountered a drunk man who at first was really nice, but when we tried to leave he got super mad. I thought he was going to try and fight us. After we finally left I felt so sick. It's so hard here sometimes.... people just look at the sisters as objects. There have been many times when I have been "checked out". It's hard!! I wish people would just back off. I AM A MISSIONARY. haha. For real! I'm not here to "play around". It's fine though. We are commanded to talk to everyone! So that's what we do, no matter what (unless the spirit tells you not to, haha). Church was awesome! One of the speakers, I swear, was for me! It was talking about how we shouldn't follow christ from a distance. Then, we went to a Jewish Synagogue to hear one of our members play the piano. After a few days of trying to see Anthony again, we finally did! We gave him the commitment lesson, which is pretty much if you don't keep our commitments and appointments, we aren't going to try anymore. It's hard, but it was needed. I think it really made him understand what we are here for! We had correlation tonight, and Elder Dahl tried to volunteer me for a musical number for our zone conf coming up. NOOOO. Ahhhhhh. Please no! So I volunteered him ;) 

Monday (19th): P DAY! (TODAY!) Today we (Elders Dahl, Nielsen, Rudd, Hall, Koford, TAyler, Ben, and Lemeiuex)went to the top of one of the tallest building downtown. It was so pretty to get to see the whole city! After, Sister Nielsen and I went to Echo park, which also has an awesome view of the city! 

I love you all! So does Jesus Christ! Remember that always ;)

Sista Fultz

Week 2 in Cincinnasty

(Yes, Cincinnasty)

Hello everyone!! 

I'll give a quick rundown of my mish life. Sister Nielsen and I are BFF's! We are always laughing together, and we teach well together. She is an awesome trainer and I love her dearly!

Our District Leader, Elder Dahl, is weird. He has the most monotone voice and expressionless face. It drives me nuts. I can't tell if he hates me or not. He says he loves me, but everyone says that here. He told me the other day that he is the most judgmental missionary ever. It's true. 

My zone freaking sucks. I can't stand it! We aren't unified at all. I don't even know what to do about it. Our STL's (sister training leaders) drive me BONKERS. The reason why: so we send out "zweets" to the zone, when we just tell them when something awesome happens, and we love to use hashtags. Well, Sis N and I would use #luckylipgloss, because whenever Sis N puts it on, something good happens, it's just a little joke we have. Well we get a call from the STL's telling us that when we put that it makes it seem like we're seducing out investigators.... lol what? So pretty much since "they are above us" we can't use it anymore because THEY think it seems like we're doing that. Whatever. Control freaks. They always say that they love us and they're excited to do exchanges.... lying sacks of poo. I like our Zone Leaders, though! They are super cool. I feel bad that they have to deal with our zone. 

Mission life kinda sucks in the way that when you set an appointment with someone, they rarely keep it. SOOOOO MANY of our appointments, we go to do the door and no one answers. It's so frustrating. Stef, a recent convert that I talked about, has 2 friends named Joey and Faith. We gon get them DUNKT. For sure. They have had some hard stuff happen to them this last week, and so they totally need the gospel!! The hard part it that Faith doesn't shut the freak up when you try to talk to her. BUT, we had an awesome lesson with them this week. The spirit was so strong, and they felt it too! Ahhh they are golden! I'm excited to see what happens. Except for the fact that they have some friends who are Muslim that they might move in with, and then would be out of our area. But until that happens I am keeping hope! We also taught someone named Markeith. He has been taking lessons for a long time, but he isn't progressing. He is just a super slow learner. So we taught him the restoration.... again. But it was sooo good! We used a lot of analogies, and he really understood it. He got excited as well when we told him that the gospel can make more good things happen in his life.  He will be a slow one, but he will get baptized! He already said yes, so we just have to get him there. We got a referral from the Spanish elders before I even got here to go see a girl named Nicole. They found her but couldn't teach her because she isn't in their area. So we tried by her house multiple times and no one was home. We went Thursday night again and finally she was home! She told us that she wants to talk to us, but she isn't interested in converting. Which is totally fine, because she will want to be baptized when I'm through with her. We went and saw a potential investigator named Amie, she lives next to one of my favorite members named Angela. So we went into ther house and talked with her a little bit. She told us about how she was having a hard time cleaning her house because he basement flooded. We offered to help her clean and she said sure. We helped her clean up her kids rooms. She told us how almost a year ago she was in a super bad car accident. Her son is still in therapy for it, and she has a lot of issues from it as well. I told her the story of Gabe, hoping to connect with her. She seemed to appreciate that I could somewhat understand where she was coming from. I really want to see her again and teach her. The gospel can help her a lot!

We got quite a few new investigators this week. One was named Anthony. He has a cool story of how we found him. We went to Stef's house to talk to him, but he wasn't home. Sis N said we should just sit on his porch and take a break. I was feeling super antsy and just wanted to get going. The Spirit told me just to sit there a little bit longer, there was someone we needed to talk to that wasn't ready yet. So I was just like... oh okay then. When we finally decided to leave, I was going to turn left to go back to the car, but Sis N said that going right would be faster. When we walked down the street, we met Anthony! He was barely walking to his car when we walked by him. We said hi and started talking, and he said that he had just gotten out of the hospital because of a kidney infection. 

There is a lot more to talk about, but we have a "zone fun day" today, so I'm short on time. But I love you all and I'm loving Cincinnati! Woohoo. 

Sister Fultz

p.s. we email at a members office,  and he came in and was like "let me be your sugar daddy" and then he took us to lunch. haahahha

Oh hi from Ohio!

Hello errybody!!!

I am officially in Ohio. Today is my one week anniversary of entering the mission field. Tomorrow will be my companionship anniversary ;) My comp is Sister Nielsen from Idaho! She has been out for 16 months, so I am her last companion! She "dies" here in the Cincinnati area (that is mission lingo meaning that it's her last area). So I was "born" in Cincinnati :) It's so crazy that I'm in the actual city of Cincinnati, and not in like Indiana or something. I thought I would go to Kentucky and be in some barren area. Nope! I got the city. 

So let's go over my week, shall we?

Monday: Woke up at 3:40 AM to get packed and head to the airport from the MTC. It's so funny, we got on this big tour bus, but they didn't even drive us all the way to the airport. They drove us to the frontrunner station, and pretty much sent us off to fend for ourselves. We had to take the frontrunner, with all the luggage (luggage for 21 people), and then transfer to trax in SLC, which then took us to the airport. It was so stressful. Once we got to the airport, we had to check in. My luggage was under 50 pounds! My prayers were answered. After security, we got to call home. I called my dad first, and talked to Emory and him for a few minutes. Then I called my mom (twice) and she didn't answer. I left her a voicemail of me crying... haha. Then I called my daddy back so I could get my lovely Sweden boy's phone number, and I called him even though he was at school. Lucky for me, he was with Reilly! I got to talk to John, and I guess just have Reilly hear my voice. The flight was almost 3 hours long. I sat next to Sister Feil, who is related to some people I went to Jr High with. I managed to fall asleep for a bit on the plane. When we landed and got off the plane, you could feel the humidity! Ugh. We then had to walk for like 15 minutes to get to baggage claim where I met my mission president and his wife! President and Sister Porter. I was so intimidated by the presidents assistants! They looked so old and wise, hahahahaha. Anyway. Sister Porter loves pictures, so we took like 50 I think. The Elders then helped all the sisters get their luggage, then we walked like another 10 minutes to the cars. Sister Turpin, Sister Breeze and I rode in the truck that pulled the trailer with our stuff. That was fun! We rode with two assistants to the president, Elder Seegmiller (From Kaysville! Also is home now) and Elder Pope (no idea where he is from). Elder Seegmiller drove, and I feared for my life. I'll skip all the dinner and mission home stuff and get to the cool part. Elder Seegmiller and Pope had all the sisters pile into the van later that night. Unfortunately Elder Seeghmiller drove again. They just randomly (at least that's how it felt) drove us around. Then they stopped and read D&C 60:6-- go read it NOW! The Elders told us to think about how we were called here by God to serve. Then we started driving even faster and crazier! They turned on the song that plays in the Because of Him video. LOVE THAT SONG. They turned it ALL the way up. We drove up this hill, and the music was so awesome, the spirit was just screaming in my head that this was going to be the best 18 months of my life.... and then...... BAM!!!!!!!!!!! The Cincinnati skyline!! (bet you thought we crashed... nope! God is looking out for us) It was SO BEAUTIFUL! It brought me to tears. The viewpoint is called like Echo Park of something. Ahhhh it was so awesome! Something I will never forget.

Tuesday: Transfers! I got my trainer, as I said, Sister Nielsen! It was raining super hard as we got my suitcases and took them to a members car. We both fell asleep in the way to the members home! Missionaries aren't allowed to drive themselves to transfer meetings, BTW. When we got to her house, we put my stuff into our mission car and went to our apartment. I got to experience the classic missionary backing out thing. It's annoying (whoever isn't driving has to get out and direct the driver when they back out). So we got to the apartment and ate. Then we were off! Right into the work. I mostly just got to meet members that day.

Well, I honestly can't remember what I did day to day. They all mesh together. So I'll just talk about my favorite people:

Stef Roberts: He got baptized about 2 weeks ago. He called God Yahweh.... and he thinks that he's a prophet or something. He is also a "provert"-- professional pervert. But as time has gone on, he has been a lot better. He just needs to think before he speaks. He is going to pass the sacrament next Sunday, and he also really enjoyed conference!

Roberta: Potential Investigator. I don't know why I like her. I just have a good feeling about her.

Omartion: He's a 13 year old kiddo. He started talking to us when we walked by him waiting at the bus stop. We made an appointment to see him the next day. When we saw him, we had a member, Abby Tensmeyer, with us. We tried to teach the restoration, but that freaking brat won't sit down and shut up!

Joey and Faith: Friends of Stef. Had a lot of crap happen to them. They got robbed the other night, and Joey got beat up a few months ago in Atlanta. They went to conference on Sunday with Stef! They both liked it. Faith is freaking annoying. We tried to teach the restoration, and she kept interrupting to talk about her freaking kids. But on the other hand, Joey seems really interested. I think we'll baptize him before Faith. 

Maxine: Member. Old. Grumpy. Always complains. But she does our laundry and feeds us, so it's good. She is so opinionated. She will tell you what she thinks no matter how mean. She said she wishes she was dead.... awkward. We told the story of Job one night and told her to be grateful for what she has. She didn't seem happy!! Hahaha. She has a little Cocker Spaniel or something, named Charlie. He is so old, just like her. But he's nicer and cuter. We decided that we are going to start reading the BOM with her three times a week. 

Bro and Sis Taylor: Bro Taylor is the Ward Mission Leader. He is so smart! He knows how to actually help us too. I guess the last leader didn't help much. His wife is so sweet too. They ahve the cutest little (big) house. Sis Nielsen wants them to be her in laws. She doesn't even know their son because he's on a mission, but she doesn't care. Sis Nielsen is cray cray.

We have a lot of less actives in our ward. If every less active was active, we would have to split into like 3 wards. It's the bishops vision to have that happen.

My area, Cincinnati, is funny. One area is super ghetto, and then another is super nice. We spend a lot of time in a place called Madisonville (Ghetto....). This is going to sound horrible, but if a white person opens the door, I get super sad. They are so mean here! If you want to talk to anyone about God, it has to be a black person.... sad. Oh well! The rich area of Cincinnati is called Indian Hill. DANG. Those houses are nice! 

SO MANY TREES. NO MOUNTAINS. ONLY HILLS. All the trees gets kinda creepy at night. There are squirrels everywhere! Also the bugs here are bad. 

Well I don't really know what to tell ya'll.... I'm doing well! I feel like I've been here forever, but I haven't even been out for a month yet! I hear after 3 months, it'll go by super fast. We'll see!

I guess I'll share a scripture: We are reading the BOM as a mission, so we read 5 pages a day. Right now we are in Mosiah. Mosiah 7:33 "But if ye will turn to the Lord with full purpose of heart,. and put your trust in him, and serve him with all diligence of mind, if ye do this, he will, according to his own will and pleasure, deliver you out of bondage." BOOM. 

I have developed such a greater appreciation for prayer. IT IS SO REAL. I pray like, no joke, 20 times a day at least. We do personal prayer in the morning, then companionshp, then personal, then personal again, then comp, then comp again. Then you bless your breakfast, then we pray before we leave, we pray every time we get out of the car, during lessons, opening and closing prayer during planning, personal before bed, and comp before bed. OH MAN. That doesn't even count the prayers we say during conference calls with our district and zone. 

I LOVE THE BOOK OF MORMON. Fo' real. If you haven't read it, please do! Also, if you read the Bible, the Bible proves of the Book of Mormon! So if you doubt the BOM, first, read it. Then read it with the Bible. You will believe! Trust me.

I challenge you all to pray to know what may be stopping you from progressing closer to our Savior and Heavenly Father. We should be striving everyday to be true disciples of Christ. 

I love you all! Please e-mail me!! 

Peace.

 $ister Fultzzzzzz (I put all the Z's because I need more sleep) 

Sister Fultz has safely arrived to Ohio!