Hello from Virginia!!

August 20, 2018

Hello from Virginia!!

Hello Hello!!

I made it to the BEAUTIFUL State of Virginia!! I love it here!! We arrived last Monday evening in a crazy rain storm! There were 15 missionaries in our travel group all coming to Richmond Virginia! It was so fun to get to know all of them! I also got to talk to my family a little bit at the airport which was awesome!! When we got here the mission President and his wife were there to pick us up and take us to the mission home for a few days! While we were in the mission home we ate lots of good food, did a lot of training and got to know President Smith and his wife! They are fantastic!! I can definitely say I have the BEST mission president! He's so loving and made us all feel so comfortable here! Last Wednesday we got assigned our companions and went straight to work! It's been an exciting week and i've already learned to much!

SISTER CUNNINGHAM!

My companion is Sister Cunningham! I LOVE HER! We get along so well and she's helped me so much in the last week! She's from West Point Utah, she went to Syracuse high school then Weber State, She's a swimmer, She has three brothers, she's been out here for 6 months and she's the most loving and patient person I have ever met! I think i've asked her about a million questions this week but she's still so patient with me and willing to help in any way that she can!

AQUIA, STAFFORD

I am in the Stafford Zone right now serving in a little town called Aquia. I have met so many AMAZING people so far! We are kinda in the middle of nowhere haha! We only have one grocery store in our area and we get to go out to the "boonies" quite often! I honestly love it! Everyone is so humble and kind! Even when we get rejected the people are still nice. A typical response is "I've already been saved but thank you and have a blessed day honey"! There are so many trees here! Every street is lined with huge trees and it's green everywhere! The ward here is so much fun! It's full of all kinds of crazy people, there is never a dull moment in the Aquia ward! They are all having lots of fun teasing me since i'm the new girl! haha I feel right at home😉 We have a lot of converts in our ward and they are all spiritual giants. They are so humble and appreciate everything they have so much! We get fed dinner almost every single night. It's been so fun to get to know all the ward members! They are all amazing cooks so we've been fed really well (maybe a little too well haha)

KLARK AND SAMANTHA

Oh my goodness these two are the COOLEST!! The sisters serving in Aquia before me found them while knocking doors one day. They are very intereresed in the gospel and want to have us teach them every week. We taught them yesterday and it went so well! They have 3 adorable little girls (ages 10, 6 and 3). We taught them about the Plan of Salvation and they were really open to it and asked a lot of good questions. We also gave them a Book of Mormon and Klark said he is going to take it to work every night and read it during his breaks. They want us to continue teaching them and they even invited us eat dinner with them in a couple weeks. They were asking us a little bit about missionary work and what we do as missionaries. Samantha said "You must be touching a lot of lives because you are definitely touching ours"! They are awesome and progressing so fast! I'll keep you updated on them and their cute family!!

SIDNEY

Sidney is one of the coolest guys i've ever met! He's from Africa and moved to Virginia a few years ago for work. We talked to him this week and he's SO interested in the gospel!! He grew up Christain but he's looking for something more in his life. We sat outside his house one night and talked to him for about an hour, we answered questions he had and tried to help him feel more comfortable with the things we were teaching him. He wanted to talk to a convert so we brought a member from our ward to join us in the lesson. This helped him so much! We are meeting with him again this week and hopefully he will come to church next week!

DOGS

Everyone has dogs! lots of dogs! Big dogs! Everyone who knows me know how much I love dogs....(not really)! But I think I will learn to love them while i'm here because they are EVERYWHERE! A few days ago we were out knocking on doors in the "boonies" (Literally in the middle of nowhere haha). We walked up to this house and this scary black dog comes running out! He was barking and growling and running in circles around us as we were walking up to the door. I legit thought I was going to die haha!! When we finally got up to the door a man opened the door and said "Ya'll must be blessed because he usually bites"!! Heavenly Father was definitely protecting us! Later that day we went to a members house for dinner. They let us in and I sat down at the table, then they opened the back door....two HUGE german shepherds came running in! They came on either side of me and started licking me and getting all up in my business. Sister Cunningham was just laughing at me because I was freaking out a little! Thankfully they got used to me and left me alone the rest of the night haha!

BROTHER ROLLER AND PRIESTHOOD BLESSINGS

Brother Roller is our Ward Mission Leader and I LOVE HIM SO MUCH! I don't think i've ever met a more loving man in my whole life. He's a convert to the church but you would never know. He's had a crazy past but now he is so strong and and so knowledgeable! He's like my grandpa of Virginia! He's always checking up on me and asking how i'm doing. He makes the missionaries breakfast every Saturday and calls us almost every day to see how we're doing! I asked him for a priesthood blessing this week and it was incredible. I had a few different things I had been praying really hard about and struggling with a little bit. As he gave me this blessing he mentioned each of these things VERY specifically and said EXACT words that I needed to hear. He had no idea about the things that I was worried about but he knew my Heavenly Father did. This was a huge testimony builder to me that Heavenly Father truly does speak through his children!

SPIRITUAL THOUGHT

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland said: "The first great commandment of all eternity is to love God with all of our HEART, MIGHT, MIND, and STRENGTH- that's the first great commandment. But the first great truth of all eternity is that God loves us with all of His HEART, MIGHT, MIND and STRENGTH. That love is the foundation stone of eternity, and it should be the foundation stone of our daily life" This is SO true! God loves us so much and He shows that love daily, we just have to look for it. As I have started to teach other people about this Love our Heavenly Father has for us i've really been able to see them as God sees them. We all have so much potential and our Heavenly Father wants us to reach that potential but we can't do it without Him. Turn to him, ask him for help and you will see that he's ALWAYS there!!

I'm SO HAPPY to be here!! This is exactly where I need to be right now and there is nowhere else I would rather be. I love you all so much!! I hope you all have the BEST week!!

❤ Sister Stringham ❤