August 22, 2016 "Dye Me a River"

Oh hey guys. It's always fun chattin with ya'll. This week has been so amazing and there have been so many awesome things that have happened I might just die.   Or should I say, DYE. lol I dyed Sista Pickup's hair a fiery red this week. Look out Katniss Everdeen, we got a new girl on fire! (crowd cheers)

Look at this terrifying scene though.. I ain't even gonna mess with her.

This is Mikey Michael Mike pants! I love this kid. He was recently baptized and now he's living with the Curtis family! I love them so much! They were trying to teach us how to play some card game. I swear they were just making up rules the whole time. Still fun though. 

Terrible quality picture but I just love this woman. This is Sister Hall. She took us out to eat the other night. Please pray I won't get transferred outta here! I love Camano so much.

Are you all ready for our miracle minute? Well then lets get right to it!

So this Saturday was our ward crab feed activity! It was AWESOME!! We had 4 investigators there including Dee and Gareth. haha I love these guys. 

So the miracle on top of all that started earlier this week on Thursday. We were out in Stanwood visiting some people and came across this woman who was taking her laundry out and we started talking to her. All of a sudden a big SUV pulls up and a guy comes out to take her laundry for her. He was a big tall scary lookin guy with tattoos all over. He started being funny and saying "oh yeah, you should totally go visit her! She lives in that apartment right there!" The woman was just rolling her eyes and we just laughed about it and then we both just kinda went our separate ways. Saturday rolls around and we show up to the crab feed. As I'm talking to a sister in the ward I look over and there's that guy with two little kids and his wife! We didn't even mention the crab feed to him! I look over at him and yell "Hey, what the heck? it's you!" He looked over at me and was a little surprised and just started laughing. He told us his name is Rick. A Sister in the ward saw them driving around and they pulled into the parking lot to see what was going on and his little kid jumped out of the car and ran to the sister in our ward and just hugged her leg. Rick was so shocked and said "he's never done that before with anyone!" She invited them to join us and he said "are black people allowed here?" (he's black). They just laughed about it and luckily the only other black person there was our investigator, Eddie. Thanks Eddie for not making us look completely racist. Camano Island is pretty white though.. ANYWAY. Rick and his wife were just chatting it up with a ton of members and were having a really good time. The food was awesome and everyone was so nice and welcoming. Right before they were about to leave, Rick called over to me across the room to come talk to him so I told him no. Jk I totally went over there and he said "Hey, you guys should stop by our house sometime." He then gave me their address and we are going to go see them this week! It was an amazing miracle to see someone's heart change because of the kindness and love of our members. It's fun being a missionary for real. (you can see Rick in the background of that first pic if you look closely)

More from Dee:

Every Saturday night I make a treat to bring to church for Mike (if he memorized the scripture we gave him) or for any kids (or adults) being good. This Saturday I made that one chex mix (everything in your pantry) stuff and we didn't have a bowl big enough to mix it all so I'm a genius and just pulled one of the drawers out of our organizer thing. 

I got WRECKED by the sun on Saturday. We spent a few hours in the blistering heat (its been nusto hot this week okay) washing dogs for a community dog wash to raise money for the animal shelter we volunteer at. I smelt like a wet dog the rest of the day and I got this sweet sunburn that looks hilarious with my skirts. I got a few comments on it at the crab feed like "I thought you were from Arizona!". I'm turning into such a baby over here. 

Well that's it for now! This may be Sister Pickup and I's last week together! Transfers are next Tuesday! I'll let you know on Monday what's happenin! Pray for us! I'm gonna miss this squirrel!

​Love you all! Have a great week!

Love,

Sista K-Mamma

August 15, 2016 "Wowzaz"

What a crazy crazy week! Does the stress ever end? I don't think so. haha I think a mission is just a big chunk of your life where you deal with having stress permanently for 18 months. You just learn to cope with it. One way I cope is by just working hard and getting more organized so I've been color coding and making notes of everything. It makes me feel a little more in control of my life even when it's actually in chaos but it's been fun working in both wards! We had 9 hours of church again and we got to give talks in Stanwood ward. I always like giving talks when I get into a ward. It feels like it breaks a barrier between us all somehow. It's also nice because I don't have to have that same missionary convo with a hundred people separately about where I'm from and what my family is like. It's a one and done thing. I got to speak about The Book of Mormon. I think I'm turning into a crazy Book of Mormon fanatic. I love that thing so much. Please go read it if you haven't or if you haven't read it in a while. You will come to know God and Jesus Christ even more when you do. Okay now that I'm done with my missionary Book of Mormon rant, I got to hold a hairless cat! 

I've only ever seen these things in pictures but I got to hold it and it was so weird because it pretty much just has human skin. It blew my mind.

I got to hang with the Young Single adults in the Armar YSA ward on Thursday for exchanges! My dream is to be in a YSA ward out here. Pray for me. I was able to be with Sister Dalley! She's a legend. She is training for the 5th time in her mission right now (I think.. don't quote me on that). She was my very first Sister Training leader! I love her! She goes home in a couple weeks and I'm way sad about it. There are actually a ton of missionaries headed home lately. It's turning into a big group of baby missionaries I don't know. It's super depressing. That's okay though. We went to go visit a member in the YSA ward and the mother of the guy came in and asked if we wanted some cinnabons and homemade pineapple sherbet ice cream. After that she comes in and asked us if we knew what a yoga...something.. was and we were like no..? never heard of it.. So she runs into the kitchen and comes out with two of these beauties that she just whipped up real quick. She was the cutest woman ever. Love the people here in Washington. They are so nice to make me so fat. It's awesome. 

Another huge perk of exchanges other than getting spoiled by a YSA's mom is that I got to teach SHAYLA FROM ARLINGTON!!!!! AHHH!!!! I just about screamed when I saw her and just full sprinted towards her. I love this girl. She was baptized just a few months after I left. She is amazing. She doesn't have like any support from home about her joining the church but her faith is outta this world. She says she is excited to be "real friends" when I get home. haha She's kinda right though. Missionaries make the worst friends.

I forgot to tell you all about something that was pretty hilarious last week. Our investigator Dee came with us to go watch the Women's broadcast Saturday night. We were pumped because we finally got her to come to the church with us. We were sitting there listening to the talks and I pulled out some tic tacs (you know, for fresh breath and stuff) and asked Dee if she wanted one. She took one little tic tac. After a few minutes she turned to me and asked "was that tic tac sugar free?" I was like "yeah.. probably.." and she goes "oh no, I'm allergic to artificial sweeteners!". She started to get a reaction to it but she at least stayed for the whole thing but I just felt so bad. Our investigator finally comes to church and I poison her with a tic tac. New equation I found: tic tac=satan.

Well that's about it for my week! I'm just island jammin.

Love you all! Have a great week! Return with honor!! lol

Love,

Mozart

​ps. this week it looks like I'll be Elder Sanchez Cruz serving in the Dominican Republic Santiago Mission. Get it together missionary portal!

Note in email to parents this week:

I can see why things happen and why we have hard times. I have definitely been humbled this week. I have been praying pretty much not stop for help and strength and I feel 100% better this week. There are just those really rough times in my mission that help me to get back to where I need to be. Please don't worry about me haha I just feel like my parents want to know how I'm feeling. I got a blessing from Bishop the other day and I feel a lot better now. My bishop here on Camano is seriously the most amazing man ever. I love his family so so much. I will have you meet him when I take you back here to meet everyone. Bro. Medinger wants to meet you both too and I love love love that family as well. Camano definitely has my heart. ahh I love my mission. Its freaking me out to go home help me. ahhh Okay i love you tons!! HAve a good week!

Augut 8, 2016 "STREZZ"

Hey guys!

So I logged into the missionary portal today and it looks like I'm actually Elder Vallejo serving in the Bolivia Cochabamba Mission. Holla! Not sure what happened there but it made me laugh.

This week has actually been super super crazy though! We had some changes in our assignments on Thursday. We got a call from the APs telling us that we are now covering both Camano Island Ward and Stanwood Ward for the rest of the transfer! 

Its just craziness over here now. Both of these areas are some of the largest in the mission so its just a lot of driving and stress and a lot of dinners! Both of the wards had dinner calendars just completely full for the next 3 weeks so we have a bunch of double dinners scheduled for the next few weeks and I might die. We are gonna have to figure something out with that. The Stanwood ward is super on top of it too because we are already giving talks next Sunday and teach gospel principles!! woo! We also get to go to church for 9 hours now! This is going to be so fun! Other than that super stressful but exciting news, we had some really awesome miracles this week!

We have an investigator named Sue who I just love so so much. Her husband has been a long time member of the church and they just recently got married. She has taken the missionary lessons before but never really agreed fully with what the missionaries taught. She has been coming to church with her husband for quite a while now and we have been inviting her to read the Book of Mormon and to pray about it every time we go over there. We have invited her to be baptized but she has said that she doesn't really know yet if this is what she wants to do. This week we had one of the coolest lessons I have had on my mission. The spirit was so so strong there. We were teaching about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We taught about the principals of the gospel: Faith in Jesus Christ, repentance, baptism and receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost and enduring to the end. When we got to Baptism we asked her how she felt about it. She told us that one night she was having a lot of trouble sleeping and she just couldn't get herself to fall asleep. She said that she decided to kneel down and pray. She prayed to know if this was the path that God wanted her on and she said that she was just filled with peace, comfort, and joy. I looked over and her husband had tears in his eyes. He has been praying and pleading for this for quite a long time now and he is so happy that she is feeling the spirit testify of the truthfulness of the gospel. It is so true. This is Christ's church restored through another prophet just like the prophets in the bible! It's amazing! I am so happy to go tell everyone about it! 

Speaking of prophets, a girl in our ward was wearing this shirt on Wednesday night and I thought it was too good. 

This week we had dinner with the Kmetz family and I let the little ones play with my camera for a bit. These pictures were the result of that. It was a real wild night.

My BFF Avery got called to the Scottsdale, AZ mission and leaves in November!! I will get home and track her down the next month when I get home! ahhhhh I love this squirrel she is amazing. Watch out Scottsdale, you got a hot one on the way.

Funny story: We went to go meet the Stanwood ward bishop on Thursday and he wasn't home but his wife answered the door and some of her kids were there so we sat down with them and got to get to know them a little better. I asked the little girl what her name was and she said "my name is Rebecca!". I looked at her and said, "you aren't supposed to know this but that's my name too!". We all thought that was pretty funny and then I asked the little boy what his name was and he said "my name is Nate!". I just started laughing and told him that I have a brother named Nate who is on a mission right now! We all laughed some more and then I asked the names of everyone else in their family to see if there was a Jake, Sarah, Brent, or Laura but sadly, there was none. We still thought it was pretty funny. All of a sudden the dog comes out of nowhere and starts to lick my leg and the mom yells "Charlie! get down!" and I just about lost it. hahaha I told them my dog's name was Charlie and we all busted a gut for a while over that one. Funny stuff. I had to get a picture with my little mini Krummenacher family from Stanwood.

​Well that's about it for this week! Pray that my hair doesn't fall out over all this craziness! I love you all! Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Vallejo

August 1, 2016 "B-Day Fun"

This week could be summed up by this simple sentence: God. Bless. America.. The sun was out all week and it was so nice! Oh I miss it so much you all have no clue. People here say that there is sun here but they don't even know. Its been pretty great this past week though.

Best thing in the world, so we started volunteering at the animal shelter here on the Island and we get to scoop poop and clean cat cages all morning. IT'S THE BEST. Last week there were two big cages just full of baby kittens and we got to just hold them and hang out with them and clean up after them. I die every Tuesday morning. XD

Speaking of animals, we have someone in our ward that we visit a lot and almost every time we go try to see them they aren't home but their dog is always outside and we are BFFs now and he comes running up to me every time and we hug. Love that little pup.

So I told a woman in my ward about the Krumkake thing that my investigator in Mount Vernon told me about and she had us for dinner this week and brought this out for me to see! I thought it was awesome! 

Speaking of people in the ward, I just gotta tell you all about how much I love the people here. There's a family that I love that have a bunch of kids. We have to memorize their names to get dessert every time we have dinner there and these kids are awesome. The mom told me that I am a celebrity in their house because they all quote me from the talk I gave when I first got here haha It made me laugh. 

We have our investigator, Dee who I love so so so much! She is so funny I'm not kidding. We are like best friends. Whenever we go see her she talks about how much she hates the slugs that infest her garden. She has tried everything to kill them. If you have any suggestions, please email me. We showed up one day for a lesson and her whole driveway was just covered in slugs doused in salt. haha. She's awesome. She makes us rhubarb pie and we are having dinner at her house on Thursday. She told me that if I didn't keep in touch with her after my mission then she would show up to my house in Arizona and put a slug on my face. Oh man I seriously love her. She is doing awesome too! She is set for baptism and is reading the Book of Mormon. Dee does have terrible migraines all the time though. She has a migraine 5 days of the week and it is nuts. Mornings are the worst for her too so it makes it hard for her to get to church. Please pray for her!!

Thursday was SISTA PICKUP'S BIRTHDAY!! WOOO!! The night before I banished her to the bedroom and told her she was done coming out for the night. I decorated the apartment and we had a party in the morning with waffles and presents!

21 and havin' fun!

This week we tracted...

and tracted..

and tracted..

And found some cool new investigators! They were MOOved by the spirit for sure. (lol)

And look how stinkin pretty it was the other night! I love Washington so much jeez. I'm never leaving. Okay bye forever.

Well that's about all for this week folks! Please keep reading my emails! I swear I'll write a better one soon. OKAY BYEEE

Love,

Sister Krumkake

July 25, 2016 "Pioneer Chillens"

Hey Peeps!

IT WAS A GOOD WEEK!!!!! We taught so many stinkin lessons this week it was crazy. When we got here we hardly had anything to do and now we have the problem all missionaries love to have of not being able to see all the people that we want to see and not having enough time. We may need to start going on splits with the ward to cover all the stuff we gotta get done. Blessed for sure! We are very happy about it hence the smiles:

Yesterday was Pioneer day! Wooo! hahaha didn't know it was such a big deal in Utah until on Fourth of July we had to come in early because of the craziness and Sister Pickup (who is from Utah) turns to me and asks "do you think we'll have to come in early on the 24th too?" and I was like, "What the heck is happening on the 24th??" and she was like "Pioneer day" and I just laughed so hard because NOBODY celebrates that holiday except for Utah. haha We laughed about that one. We did have fun here on Camano though because the primary kids did a fun Pioneer day activity. they wanted us to come help out and lead the kids in singing pioneer songs while we went on a mini Trek around the church building dressed in pioneer clothes. There were a few kids who wanted to hold my hand the whole way and it made me so happy. I love all the babes! It was super cute and so much fun. I swear we sang "pioneer children sang as they walked and walked and walked and walked and walked and walked and walked..." a thousand times because that's like the only Pioneer song I remember from Primary. haha it was fun though. Did I mention I love this ward??

Not much else happened this week. Our Zone leaders gave us a challenge to place at least 1 solid Book of Mormon every day this month so we have seen a bunch of miracles from that! I LOVE THE BOOK OF MORMON!! Go read it! 

We also had a lesson with Jim this week and took him on a tour of the church building. We showed him the primary room where the kids learn, the family history center, the Baptismal font, and then we went to the chapel and talked about he sacrament. The spirit was almost tangible in the room and we asked him how he felt. He said "I haven't felt this peaceful since my wife and I went to church. My ears are burning!" Jim's wife passed away a few years back and he always talks about her. The spirit speaks to us in a lot of different ways and for Jim he says he just feels his ears burning up! It's hilarious!  He says his ears burn every time he reads the Book of Mormon. Funny how the spirit works sometimes. We really feel like his wife has been with him the whole way in his progression. It's super cool to see and be a part of. He is awesome.
​Sister Pickup snapped this photo of me while we were studying. My caption for this one is:

"I choose YOU, to go share the gospel with your amigos!"

Love you all! Have a great week! 

Love,

Sista Poomenacher

​

July 18, 2016 "We Got Gas"

​I could almost just end my whole email right now because this was the only event that really happened this week to be honest. We got some gas from some old pumps and I thought they were so cool but all you people who are a little older probably don't care. Old news to you. We took some pictures and then when we went to pay for the gas the lady at the counter said "you never seen one of those pumps before?" and we were like "nope" and she just kind of laughed and we felt so young. Young, wild, and free that is. She was cool though.

Notice I am also wearing a jacket in this pic. It is supposed to be Summer but I think Washington forgot a little. Its not cold it's just nice out. that day was a little colder than most but other than that its pretty darn nice over here! Any of you AZ people jealous? You should be. I live on an island. Mahalooo!

Transfer news! Sister Pickup and I are chillen out here on the Island for another transfer together! We are excited! 

Other than that, I didn't take any other pics this week. I took a picture of our dinner calendar so I guess if you wanna see that, here's that.

Pretty exciting stuff! The members like us a lot. Like a lot. They feed us so much it's awesome. Love these people. 

Something cool that happened this week, we were driving home one night and we were driving past a member's house and I felt like we should stop in. I turned to Sister P and said "we should go see them" so we turned the car around and went to the house and they were having a huge party! It was awesome! The family was letting a bunch of people stay at their house because they were all in a band and they had a gig in Seattle so we got to meet the band and they were all from Utah and a lot of them hadn't been to church in a while. We started talking to the drummer and he was way cool. He said he had served a mission and that some stuff happened in his life that brought him away from the church but we shared a message with all of them and then as we were leaving to say goodbye the drummer says "hey, I just want to tell you girls that as soon as you walked in the room, the spirit was so strong. I have felt it the whole time while you've been here." Some other started nodding their heads in agreement and it was a really great tender mercy to me from my Heavenly Father letting me know that I am really doing my best. In Preach My Gospel it says that you can know if you are successful missionary when others can feel the spirit testify to them through you. That was seriously just what I needed this week and I am so so grateful for that. Heavenly Father knows me! 

Well, that's about it for now folks! Thanks for tuning in this week for another episode of Sister K's Big Island Adventure. More next week!

Love you bye!

Love, 

Sista Krummenacher

July 4, 2016 "Flowers and Heavenly Powers"

My goodness! I actually have some stuff to tell you this week! How exciting is that! So sorry my last emails have been comparable to bags of trash. This week will be better I promise. 

Soooo.. 

This week we taught another new investigator of ours named Ken. He is a super nice older man whose wife died about a year ago. He absolutely loves his wife and talks about her all the time. We taught him the first lesson and he said he agrees with everything and that he just wants to follow whatever path God leads him to. We are excited about him! He also has a bunch of Rose bushes in his yard and asked if we wanted any. He said he had to clip them anyway because they were getting too big so we left that lesson with two of the biggest bouquets of roses I have ever seen. It was the cutest thing ever. 

We have been finding a billion people to teach lately! I seriously love tracting. There really isn't even any kind of sarcasm in that. We meet so many cool/ looney people. You never know what's gonna be on the other side of the door and you can only guess by what the house looks like. ANYWAY, on our tracting adventures this week we ran into a super anti lady and her husband who had heard a buncha hubba bubba from some ex mormon friends of theirs and she was pullin the whole "well you girls are so sweet I think you should really learn more about what your church actually teaches and all that they hide from you" or the classic "you are brainwashed and you don't even know it" (not the exact words but pretty much that in a nicer way). That is probably the thing that ticks me off the most. I hate when people think we're just some sad puppies following the Mormon bandwagon. The conversation turned into something like this:

"well did you know about such n such?" 

"yup".. 

"what about such n such?" 

"you bet".. 

"okay but what about such n such" 

"yuuuuuup". 

What is great about these conversations is that the only way to end them is to bear your testimony. Nobody can disagree with that. I have received from God through his Holy Spirit that I know that the things I have taught for a year now are absolutely true and that they will always be absolutely true. I would be a complete loon to say otherwise with the many many experiences that God has blessed me with to prove it for myself. We left that house with even more excitement to share the message of the restoration and just two doors down we found Nona. Nona is a super nice woman that we got to share the restoration with and we are going back to teach her more tomorrow! I seriously love doing this every day. 

Okay miracles on miracles this week! We are teaching a man named Jim that I think I've probably already mentioned but he is amazing! All week and last week we had been praying and pleading that Jim's health would get better because he has quite a hard time breathing and he has pain most of the time in his shoulder. Jim is also going to school online right now and says it takes up a lot of time in his day. We promised Jim that if he put reading his scriptures and praying first, that God would help him in his school work. Well the next lesson we had with him we started to talk to him and he just seemed a billion times happier! He told us about the crazy day and week he had had since the last time we taught him. He said he went to the doctor and his breathing had drastically improved and that when he went to physical therapy for his shoulder, it only took him 20 minutes because it was feeling so much better! I started to tear up a bit and then he told us that he started reading the Book of Mormon and praying before doing his school work. He said that the words for his essay seemed to write themselves and it didn't take as much effort and time as usual. He told us that he thinks that his prayers are being answered and he loves the Book of Mormon. he says that he feels he is a lot closer to God now. I love Jim! We got out of that lesson and just started to scream with joy. I love it when the people we teach see the joys and fruits of living the gospel and following Christ. 

We also had an appointment to help a less active family split wood because I told them how much I liked doing it even though I've only ever done it one other time. They are super cool people but they weren't there when we showed up so we tried to do some for them and we totally failed. I'm blaming it on the dull axe and not the fact that I don't have any muscles.  

Woah, Woah unto the speeder for he shall be thrust down to jail.

I totally forgot to show all of you the quilt that a woman on South Whidbey Island made for me before I left. She let me pick out a buncha fabric that she had and it was all the funniest stuff so I just kinda picked one of each and I love it hahaha She was the coolest. Now my bed has a pillow made by the Arlington Young Women, a blanket at the end made by a woman in the Arlington boonies and a nice quilt made by the sweetest older lady on Whidbey. Soon I'll be getting a tempur pedic mattress from someone here on Camano. I'll just wait.  

Pretty Camano Island. I get to run along the water in the morning still because it's so close to our house. Probably even closer than it was on Whidbey. I LOVE IT!

So this 4th of July we don't have any cool plans just having dinner with the members and then in by 8:00! We will probably watch some fireworks from our balcony. hopefully we will be able to see some. This morning our ward had a 5k and pancake breakfast! I was so excited to do the 5k this morning. I miss running a lot. As soon as I get home you'll see me roamin the streets of AZ again. Say Hi or honk. The breakfast was fun though and I just love this ward. Everyone loves us too its almost hilarious. We are like celebrities here its great!
​Last but not least, we got our new Mission President this week! I only have one thing to say because we only got to meet with him and his wife for a quick meeting but I LOVE THEM!! They are the sweetest people ever and they are just so excited to be here. I'm really excited to work with them! 

Well Family and friends, this was a super long one so I will be very surprised if you've made it this far but I love ya! I pray for ya! and I hope you have a great 4th of July! 

Love,

Sister KrummenAmerica
​