Travel Log of Sis. Ellis :)

Aloha My Wonderful Family and Friends!

I hope everyone's week was great. This week was a hilarious load of crazy. Sis. Young and I are doing great.

Well, this week we had the opportunity to teach a new investigator. She is just great! Our wonderful member had her in her home for us to teach her. It was a golden environment. We taught her the Plan of Salvation and as we were going through she asked a bunch of questions. In the middle of asking her many questions, she begins to apologize for asking so many questions! So cute! I told her please don't apologize, we LOVE questions! I mean, hey, at least we know she's actually paying attention. Sometimes I feel bad because it almost feels like we're interrogating our investigators to get them to say anything. But she was just great!

We also had the opportunity to find and teach another new potential investigator. She is just great as well! We taught her and her two little sons! They are so cute. Her sons bought in their two bunnies named Sprinkles and Cupcake to play with us as we taught them. Too cute!

In other news, I got into a fight with the road. I got kind of scuffed up. But man... you should see the road. I mean I'm just glad it got away when it could. Luckily, one of our members lived nearby and so we walked there and they cleaned me up! :) Haha. They also gave a little ziploc with gauze and tape for my cut dressing pleasure! Go over for help and they send me home with care package. Can't get any better then that! :) Haha!

Well, the work is going great here in the adorable little town of Hollister. We got a new bishop on Sunday, he seems like he is going to be really great! We also got new ward boundaries. So this week was actually full of a lot of things. Including me cracking up laughing as I watched all the drivers ride past me who starred at the bandage on my leg as I rode on my bike up the hill. I think their looks of confusion were better than the sight of me and my craziness.

But I hope everyone's week is great! This week is going to be another amazing one! Two of our investigators are really close to being baptized so we're hoping we can get two solid dates for them! I am so excited!

Love,

Sis. Ellis-Lui-Kwan

Think I look bad? You should see the road! Hahaha. Just me & my "care" package.  

Some Call It Creeping, We Call It Tender Mercies :)

Hi Everyone! 

This week was another wonderful week! Sis. Young and I were able to teach a whole ton of people we haven't seen in a while it was great! We kept pulling up to someone's house just as they were pulling up. Perfect timing! Every time. It was totally great! 

Other than that, we had a great week with service as well! All of our service was a lot of fun and one of our recent converts even came to volunteer with us! It was so much fun! This past Saturday, we had a ward Easter Party that a bunch of people who aren't members of the church were invited to as well so we did a lot of prep for that. Sis. Young and I cleaned out a fountain. Haha! The random skills I've been acquiring since coming to Hollister just crack me up. I mean, moving people's stuff, painting houses, building fences, and now...cleaning fountains. Haha! Oh it's great! Anyways, I'm attaching a picture of this fountain on the bottom so you all can see it. And yes, it's the one we're standing in front of. And no, we didn't clean it in our nice clothes...that was taken a few days later at the Easter Party.

This wonderful week all ended on a wonderfully with a great Easter Sunday focused on the Savior. I have come to love Christ and His Atonement so much as I've been able to study in the scriptures and see how the Atonement really affects all of us as I go out and do missionary work. The Atonement is truly an awe-inspiring thing. I am just so grateful to be able to benefit from it. I just want to add my own little testimony to the great ones that have probably already been given, that I know that Jesus Christ lives. I know that He is my Savior and Redeemer. I am so grateful for His sacrifice for me and for everyone, so that I can have the hope of eternal life not just for myself but for everyone I love to enjoy the blessings of eternal life as well. How grateful and humbled I am to be able to share that message with everyone! :)

I love you all! Have a wonderful week! You are all amazing!

Love,

Sis. Ellis-Lui-Kwan

A Week of Tender Mercies :)

Hello Everyone! :)

This week was another amazing one! :) The Lord is truly mindful of us wherever we may be. I know that for sure! This week was great! Sis. Young and I had so many little miracles it was amazing!

On Wednesday night we met with our new investigator and asked him if he had read the Book of Mormon like we'd invited him to do and he had read the entire first book of Nephi! :) He understood it and talked about how it related back to the Bible! It was totally a miracle! So so great! 

Then on Saturday night we ended up all the way across town without jackets or anything like that on our bikes. We decided to stop one last place before we headed all the way back home to get jackets at a potential investigator and she welcomed us in and then offered to give us a ride home! :) Such a blessing. 

Then on Sunday we had yet another. This one, sad to say was probably due to me complaining. I was just telling Sis. Young, "Why can't someone just walk up to us and ask us to teach them?" (We were one lesson away from reaching our mission's standard of excellence.) And then lo, and behold, one of the people we see all the time at the thrift shop we volunteer at turns the corner! We talked with him for a bit and shared a lesson with him right there! Haha! Does the Lord provide or what??

Tender mercies are all around us! I am so grateful to be a missionary and to be able to see so many of them and I'm sure I'm probably missing tons more. Well, I love you all! I hope you each have a wonderful week!

Love,

Sis. Ellis-Lui-Kwan

The Parable of the Cinnamon Roll

Aloha! :)

I hope everyone's General Conference weekend was wonderful! All of the talks were exceptionally great! Anyways, in lieu of a missing ariplane analogy I'd thought I'd bring Conference a little closer to home...well for me at least..as I'm pretty sure in the last five days I've eaten about seven cinnamon rolls. The wonderful saints of Hollister and their glorious baking skills coupled with the amazing baking skills of one of the sister missionaries all added up to me eating a lot of sugar. As I sat pondering how many cinnamon rolls could fit in my stomach, I came to this conclusion...Life is like a cinnamon roll.

There are all kinds of cinnamon rolls. Some store brought, some made from scratch and yet they're all delicious. Sometimes they get left out of the counter feeling like they're forgotten, they get hardned by the bitterness of the kitchen air. Yet, each have a chewy, wonderful center, that really is the best part! Haha. But really though, I think a lot of Conference talked about how no matter our different circumstances and our obstacles, Jesus Christ and His Atonment are real. Sometimes we feel alone and forgotten in the midst of our trials, but like we heard over and over, we truly are never alone. I loved what President Monson said in closing, we aren't fully aware "how close He is willing to come, how far He is willing to go, and how much He loves us." And yet, like a cinnamon roll, what's inside is really what makes it wonderful. I think the Gospel really deals a lot with our personal relationship with the Savior and our individual paths back to our Father in Heaven. And yet, if someone were to unroll our lives, what would they find at the center?

Just some food for thought. Haha. :)

Well, this week was wonderful. Sis. Young and I have a new investigator. It's really exciting, he knows the Bible really well and studies it almost four hours everyday. Pretty intense. But totally awesome. We were also able to go to the Temple! It was amazing! Oh I never wanted to leave. But it's alright because we have a lot of work to do! I love you all! I hope everyone has an amazing week! 

Love,

Sis. Ellis-Lui-Kwan

Sister Young & I outside the Oakland Temple

The Hollister District 

Another Wonderful Week : )

Hello! :)

This was yet another amazing week! We had Ward Conference and I was able to attend one of my previous investigator's baptism all the way in Pleasanton! It was just fanatastic. I am so grateful to be a missionary. She was the girl we taught in the Mandarin Branch and she finally got baptized. Her father came from China to come and everything. The Spirit was just so strong and I know it's all because of her faith and testimony. She is just precious.

Other than that, this week was great. Sis. Young had her first experience biking in the rain and it was a great one! We had a our high beams on...thanks to a wonderful ward member who got us sick bike lights and we were just trail blazing through the wonderful streets of Hollister! 

On Tuesday, I had the opportunity to teach in our District Meeting about Charity and Love. I was kind of stressed out about it but I was really glad for the opportunity because it allowed me to study charity a lot more than I probably would've on my own. I really loved in the Book of Mormon in Moroni chapter 7, verses 45 to 48 where it talks about charity. And I used something that Sis. Fraser had shared with me, she talked about putting your name in where it says "charity". It changed my perspective a lot. Thinking about being patient, kind, not being quick to anger, and all of those Christlike qualities and how much more I need to work on. But it was really comforting to think that we have the Savior to look to and to rely on and that when we are filled with the "pure love of Christ" we have this capacity to endure all things because "charity never faileth". Pretty amazing!

Just thought that was something cool I wanted to share. I love you all! I hope you have a great week! 

Love,

Sis. Ellis-Lui-Kwan

"I Like Math...Unless I Don't Get It"

Alooooooooooha! :)

Hi everyone! I hope your week was wonderful! This week was a load of random in this tiny little town/city of Hollister. But as always, this week was totally great!

Sis. Young and I had a wonderful week meeting with all bunch of different people. On Thursday, the Lord seriously looked out for us! It was one of those days that should have been filmed or written down by some poet or something. We were able to meet a member of our ward that no one really knew about! She is 100 years old! She is just an amazing lady. She is just hilarious and was telling us all about her family. It was great. Then, we thought we were set to have appointment after appointment at the church. When slowly, everyone started letting us know that things weren't looking like they were going to work out to meet with us. So after a turn of events, we ended up at the church without our bikes. Haha! Oh missionary work! But we decided to try to just walk and visit a few people. 

We visited with one less-active member of our ward that we haven't been able to meet with since I've gotten to Hollister. It was amazing and she told us she was actually really glad we came and that she wants to meet with us again. It was amazing! Then, it gets even better. (Okay everyone, this story is going to get slightly confusing so I'm sorry if it doesn't make sense by then end) But to start, a member of our ward told us last week that he ran into a bus driver from his wife's work who was looking to leave his church and so our wonderful member missionary of a ward member told him if he's willing to investigate other churches, he wants him to try out ours at least. Well, as it would work out. Sis. Young and I were walking down the street and no one was out except for one man painting his fence. We told him, hello, and started talking with him and just happen to find out that he's a bus driver and was talking to some lady's husband at his work who was telling him about this church he should try out! If my story telling skills were as terrible as I thought they were...long story short, we met the man that our member had talked to! How crazy! In all of Hollister that man is the one painting his fence! And none of that would've happened if we hadn't had all of our appointments fall through. It was seriously a miracle!

Then to top that Thursday all off we had a wonderful lesson with our little investigator who got a really good grade on her math test. So we asked her if she like math and she thought about it for a while and then said, "I like math....unless I don't get it." Hahaha! That's hilarious.

In other news, we also got locked out of our apartment on Saturday. The other sisters accidentally took both sets of house keys with them. Haha. So, the elders tried to help us out after we all did service but luckily the sisters ended up coming back early. So there's one of us locked out... :)

Well, I hope you all have a great week! This next one is going to be amazing! My old investigator from the Mandarin Branch is getting baptized on Saturday!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :) 

Love,

Sis. Ellis-Lui-Kwan

Locked out : (

It Was a Pi Day Miracle!

Aloha,

I hope you all had a wonderful week and I hope every has a wonderful St. Patrick's Day. Sis. Young's not wearing green. Haha.

Well, this week was just down right amazing! It was like the best hits of Hollister. We saw all of my favorite people this week. It was just great. We met with a bunch of our less-active members and saw both of our adorable little investigators. Each and every one of them are making huge leaps and bounds in the gospel and I am just biking up Sunnyslope wondering why I'm blessed to be a part of it all. It's just great.

This past Sunday especially was so great! One of our less-active members who hasn't been to church in years just showed up! It was great. I thought I was going to cry. She came a little late and missed part of sacrament meeting but stayed for the rest of the three hours! My heart was so full and the wonderful little Hollister 2nd ward just wrapped their arms around her! It could've been a scene right out of The District. Ah. These wonderful saints! :) We had so many of those that we taught this past week come to church. Almost every person we taught. It was a miracle.

Other than that, I am doing great. Sis. Young is just amazing and I am so grateful for her. I've also discovered the missionary verison of Netflix. It's Conference Ensign. Haha. But really though, it's like when you watch an episode on Netflix and then it has that little auto-play thing. I'll read an article and then turn the page and then there's another talk to read and then before you know it I've read the entire Saturday Morning Session. It's a problem. Haha not really.

Well, I hope you all have  a wonderful week! I love you all!

Love,

Sis. Ellis

 

Sister Young & Sister Ellis

Just me...

 

(Aloha Gang! "Our" missionary has been out for nine months! Can you believe she's half-way done? We appreciate all the continued love and support!  Don't forget to keep writing! Missionaries love mail! Emails and letters mean so much to them. So do it today! Write Sis. Ellis and all your other awesome missionaries! Love you all, Anela)