Week 41

Happy first week of Spring!! Hopefully everyone is enjoying their spring break. Unless you go to BYU or you are a missionary, because neither of us get a spring break!

It was a busy week for us here in O'Fallon. We had exchanges on Tuesday with the Union sisters. I went to Union with Sister Gordon and she is just the cutest!! It's always fun to be in a new area for a day and get to work with a new companion so you can learn from each other. At the end of the exchange we do a group comp inventory with the sisters and talk about what we learned from each other and things we can improve on and the different goals we have. Sister Drake was so cute she said, "It's so hard to tell the STLs what to improve on because you both are perfect in our eyes. You are the kind of missionaries that we want to be." It was really sweet. I am FAR from perfect!! But it helped remind me how much the sisters look up to us, because I thought the same thing about my STLs. It was a good reminder to always be an example because you never know who is looking up to you. 

We had exchanges again on Thursday with the Lake Saint Louis sisters. Sister Roundy came to O'Fallon with me! We got to go and visit a recent convert family, the Carrillos. The wife has had some health problems lately so we brought our ward mission leader with us to give her a blessing. The spirit was really strong! Plus best part is that their 11 year old granddaughter Piper was there. Piper has met with missionaries before in the past but got busy with other things. She said that she wanted to start meeting with the missionaries again. She is the sweetest, and she came to church yesterday. WOO!! We are excited to start teaching her.

Finding is always a constant struggle for missionaries. We are ALWAYS finding people to teach. I have a love/hate relationship with finding because sometimes you have success and sometimes you don't. But I love all the people that we get to meet as we try to find. We were knocking some doors Saturday morning and knocked into a guy, Sebastian. He told us that a month ago he probably would have turned us away but that he just recently started to believe in God and Jesus Christ again. We shared the new easter video with him on his doorstep and it was so neat. He thanked us for coming by and said we could stop by again. Hopefully we will be able to start teaching him! It was a testimony to me of God's timing. He knows when each of His children are ready to hear the gospel and he will lead us where we need to be at the right time. 

We have some recent converts, Marcos (11) and Emilia (13) , that we have been trying to have family home evening with every week. We have been working to help Emilia with her personal progress since she is in young woman's now. So for one of the goals she had to prepare her own FHE lesson. It was so cute!! She taught us about fasting and showed us a video probably from like the 1970s hahahah she was like I know this video is cheesy but it was a good message. I love getting to watch young people's testimonies grow! 

 K funny story for you all... So last Monday we had sisters Pday at the mission home. I LOVE THE MISSION HOME. Anyways, we decided to make crepes and it was a good time. So all the sisters were in the kitchen making crepes and listening to EFY music and if you know me very well at all, you know that I love to dance/perform for people. So of course I start dancing in the kitchen and putting on a show and I hear sister fisher say "keep going sister turpin!" so I turn around to look at her and President Morgan is standing right here. OH MY GOODNESS. He just said, "Hello there Sister Turpin, those are some awesome dance moves, why did you stop?" HAHAHAHAHA. I was so embarrassed. good stuff. Hopefully I could brighten somebody's day with that story:) 

I love this Easter season! And I am so grateful for the Easter video the church has come out with that we are able to share with everyone. IF YOU HAVEN'T WATCHED IT YET, GO WATCH IT NOW:) #hallelujah I am so blessed to have a knowledge of Jesus Christ. I know that He lives and because He lives, I can find new life. I love my Savior. I love this gospel. I love being a missionary. 

Happy Easter Everyone:)
XOXO 

Sister Turpin 

With the Union sisters! 
Sister Gordon, Drake, Fisher, me

Making crepes in the kitchen at the mission home. wooo! 

I love all these Sisters, and President Morgan!

Happy St. Patricks Day from Missouri!

FHE with Marcos and Emilia

Week 40

HAPPY DAYLIGHT SAVINGS!! aka.. the worst day of the year because we lose an hour of sleep... Other than losing sleep, we had an awesome week here in O'Fallon!

Since there aren't as many sister missionaries in a zone as there are elders, Sister Fisher and I cover two zones. So we were able to go to a second zone conference this last week. Zone conference round 2 was even better than round 1! We just have really awesome missionaries here in MSLM. We had some Elders tell us that our training was exactly what they needed to hear. It's cool what happens when you teach by the spirit!! The testimony meeting at the end was my favorite, like always. Almost every single missionary said that this was their favorite zone conference they had been to. Plus another cool thing: So we have new senior couple missionaries and they are from Pocatello, ID. I went to talk to them at zone conference and turns out that Sister Axford was my 9th grade english teacher. Small world right? 

So I got a surprise visit on Saturday from who else but... AUDRE!!! No matter where I go she just always seems to pop up;) hahah just playing  Audre, you da best!! She texted Sister Fisher and I and said she was near O'Fallon and wanted to come teach with us for the day. so we met up and had dinner and taught a few lessons, it was so fun! reminds me of the glory days in Potosi:) PLUS.. Sister Hill got to call Saturday when we were with Audre!!! WOOO! it was like a mini-reunion. But Stephen, who I was teaching in Danville got baptized on Saturday so Sister Peel & Hill got permission to call me to tell me about it. Those are always the best phone calls!!!

We set a baptismal date with our investigators Patrick & Priscila. They are really sweet. Patrick loves the BOM and knows it is true, but he struggles with a few addictions. We are working with him to overcome it. We talked about baptism with them and wanted to pick a date to set a goal. Patrick said he wanted to get baptized on his birthday. He is really motivated and wants to make changes in his life. Priscila helps to motivate him too. When we set the date with them Priscila goes, "well I guess we're mormon now" hahahahah. 

Sunday we had a special meeting with 4 of the wards in the stake. They took parts of each ward to create a new ward, the Wentzville ward. It was really awesome!! The stake president told us that we were apart of a historic event. Sister Fisher and I were joking about it a little bit... but when you really think about it, it's an amazing event that just happened. It proves to me that this is truly the work of the Lord because it keeps moving forward and membership in the church keeps growing. Yay for forming new wards!!!

I love you all and hope you enjoy St. Patricks day this week. don't forget to wear green;)

XOXO 

Sister Turpin 

What we look like after a great zone conference!

Companions at the MTC, Sister Bishop

Getting ready for St. Patricks Day!

Audre came to visit, love that girl!

Week 39

Hi Family!!

The weeks always seem to fly by! Last week I hit my 9 month mark. SAY WUT?! It's hard to believe that my mission is already half way over and I'm on the downward slide.  I feel like the longer I've been out the more the days/weeks seem to blend together. I can never remember what happens!!

Let's see.... We had zone conference this last week. WOOO! Every single missionary meeting we have is my favorite. I just love them! I'm used to going to zone conference and getting trainings from the zone leaders and STLs but it was different this time because Sister Fisher and I gave one of the trainings. We talked about repentance and some of the other things from MLC last week. It was pretty good! President and Sister Morgan gave us more trainings too. Sister Morgan showed us the new Easter video that the church is putting out. It's so good!!! It comes out this Sunday so you all should watch it:) It's called #Hallelujah. Watch it and then share it with a friend! My favorite part about any meeting we have is that at the end the missionaries always have the opportunity to bear their testimonies. The spirit was so strong during the testimony meeting! I love every chance I get to be surrounded by such great people who help me build my faith in Christ. Plus it's always fun to see all my friends from around the mission! 

So we haven't had as many people to teach lately. We have been doing a lot of finding and contacting and working with less actives. At zone conference they really pushed talking with everyone we see and remembering that we are FULL-TIME missionaries, not part time! Sister Fisher and I have really been trying to open our mouths and share the gospel with everyone we come in contact with. We have met alot of great people doing this and hopefully we will be able to find more people to teach! 

Last Sunday we had dinner with some members, the Collins family. We challenged them to pray everyday for a week to have a missionary experience, duh because we are missionaries and that's what we do. Anyways we checked up on them throughout the week to make sure they didn't forget and then on Sunday we followed up and Sister Collins told us that she and her husband both had missionary experiences that week. She even bore her testimony about it in sacrament meeting. AWESOME!!! As missionaries we promise people blessings quite often. We promised the Collins family that they would have missionary opportunities as they prayed for them and sought them out. It's so cool to see that those promised blessings are real when people put forth the effort! 

So I challenge you all to pray for a missionary opportunity everyday for a week and then actively be looking for that chance to share the gospel. I can promise you that as you do this Heavenly Father will put people in your path who are waiting and ready to hear the gospel!

I love you all and hope you have an awesome week:)
XOXO 

Sister Turpin

I hit my 9 month mark so I went out for a cupcake! Yea me!

I finally got to meet Elder and Sister Taylor from Blackfoot! They are so sweet!

Enjoying Smoothie King!

Our matching St. Louis shirts! 

Week 38

Hey there family!!

So last Tuesday I left Danville and made the long journey all the way back to St. Louis. I was excited when we got to the stake center because the first people I saw were the Moore's!!!! For those of you who don't remember, Sister Hill and I taught Dennis who is Sister Moore's husband and he got baptized not too long after I left Potosi. Well I haven't seen them since I left but they brought Sister Hill to transfer meeting so we were all reunited again! It was a happy occasion. I love when I get to see people from the mission because they truly do become like family to me.

Anyways, I made it to O'Fallon, Missouri, which is like 30 minutes from St. Louis. It's weird being so close to the mission home and near the city. I've been on the outskirts of the mission for most of my time serving. The ward here is pretty big too. I'm not used to it, but it reminds me of wards back home. Sister Fisher is my new companion, she's from Canada. This is her last transfer so that's kind of depressing. She is really great though and we are excited to work hard this transfer!

I kind of feel like a brand new missionary again being in a new area. I feel like this last week I'm finally learning how to be a missionary. Everyone always says you never "figure it out" until you go home and I am starting to learn that first hand. I've been a missionary for 9 months now, but I feel like now I am finally starting to really "figure it out." I guess it's a good thing I am realizing this now when I still have half of my mission left instead of when a only have a few weeks left!

So missionaries have a lot of different meetings and one of those meetings is MLC, missionary leadership council. Well since I am now an STL (sister training leader), I get the opportunity to go to MLC. It was so great!! All of the leaders in the mission meet with President and Sister Morgan and we get trainings on how to be better missionaries and help the missionaries we are over. The theme of this MLC was repentance. Sister Fisher and I have been studying repentance all week and I feel like I'm learning so much about how we repent. Repentance is so much more than just saying sorry and  asking for forgiveness. It is changing our nature and behaviors to be in line with the Savior. We also can't just stop the things we are doing, we have to replace our bad habits with good things. At MLC we talked about how we need to repent as missionaries and then we need to not only teach our investigators about repentance, but teach them HOW to repent. Repentance is key in conversion because that is how we truly change. That's why repentance comes BEFORE baptism. There has been a huge focus on teaching repentance and baptizing converts and that's because as we teach people to truly repent they will become converted before they are baptized. The spirit was super strong the whole time during the meeting. I love getting the opportunity to work with such great missionaries and leaders!

Another highlight of the week... WE GOT A NEW CAR!!! haha we were so excited. After MLC Elder Curtis, the vehicle coordinator, gave us a brand new 2016 Nissan Rogue. It had 40 miles on it when we started driving in it. WUTTTT. so crazy!! good thing i will never drive a brand new car like that ever again. Thank goodness for my mission right?;)

XOXO

Sister Turpin

Our new car, we area little excited!!

Gabe, aka my BFF, the elder's recent convert, and his wonderful kids, moo moo, tee tee, and butter cookie, yep those are their real names! lol those are their nick names.

The Moores, Happy Family!