Hi everyone!

Everything here is going fantastically! The time changed here on Saturday so I got an extra hour of sleep, which would've been amazing except the alarm on our phone went off and I thought that the time changed on it, but it hadn't and I started to get ready for the day. When I got out of the shower I saw that Sister Smith was still asleep. Luckily, there was still a half an hour left so I just went back to sleep. :) But that extra half an hour was so so precious. Especially now that we don't have a car. I am SO TIRED EVERY SECOND OF MY LIFE. Not that I'm bitter about the car getting taking away. I'm just tired.

 

We have this investigator that every time we've gone over to see him he's either smashed or he's asleep. So his girlfriend, who is also an investigator, just lets us in and we teach her instead. But this week was weird. We showed up at the time that we ALWAYS show up and she answers and said that he was in the bath so we would have to come back at a different time. But he yelled about how we should come in. So she let us in. And the bathroom is RIGHT THERE in the flat as we walk in and the door is WIDE OPEN! So there is our investigator, in the bath, and the lights are off so it's SUPER dark, and he's soooo drunk. And Sister Smith and his girlfriend go off into the other room and I'm left to shut the front door and he's sitting there and TRYING to engage me conversation and I, for the life of me, could NOT get the front door to close. I started to FREAK OUT SO BAD. So I just shoved it as hard as I could and left it at that. So that was traumatizing. Then when he FINALLY got out of the bath we started to teach him and, well, he was drunk, so he starts spouting off about how he's God and Jesus Christ  and at first Sister Smith was laughing at him, because she thought it was a joke. But then he was dead serious and was slightly angry that she was laughing. Sooooo oops. :/ It was a very strange appointment. But then we saw him around town later in the week and he was still DRUNK and apologized about how he said that he was God and Jesus . . . so I don't know what's up with him.

 

We had our investigator, Martin, pass his baptismal interview on Saturday! SOOO EXCITED! He's getting baptized on the 4th of November. We had scheduled him for the 5th, but we forgot that it was bonfire night and we, as missionaries, aren't allowed to be out that night. So yeah. :)

 

But there are other missionaries waiting for me to get off, and I feel bad that they are wasting their p-day just waiting around. . . so farewell! :D

 

LOVE,

Sister Stout

I LOVE YOU ALLL SOOOOOOOO MUCH AND I MISS YOU!

My Life is Wonderful

Life is pretty grand right now! I'm always learning things. ALWAYS. And I'm getting pretty pro at finding situations! I get yelled at a lot, but it doesn't even bother me anymore! Which is a MIRACLE for me, as you know.

So many great things have been happening! Such as: I realized that England likes my hair. A LOT! I think I've only had two bad hair days since I've been on my mission. I don't know what it is, but even if I don't wash my hair it's always full and voluminous. It's WONDERFUL!

Also, I am no where NEAR as picky of an eater as I was before I left! I talked about Nasr, the old Egyptian man we eat tea at every Saturday, a couple weeks ago. Well, I eat Egyptain food all the time! It is SO GOOD! Also, I don't mind eating peppers anymore, which Cassie and Whitney will be happy about. :) I actually enjoy eating them now, crazy right?! Even spicy food. I have a higher tolerance for spicy food then Sister Smith, which is pretty crazy. To say that my spicy food tolerance is higher then ANYONE is insane for me! Haha!

The Branch President called us on Saturday and asked us if we could give talks in sacrament meeting the next day. To which we both agreed. There were supposed to be two speakers before us, but there must have been some miscomunication because they only bore their testimonies and the two of them combined only took five minutes! So then it was my turn and I was told to plan for only ten minutes, which I did, and you know how I'm not very good at public speaking in the first place, so I couldn't really just jabber up there to kill time. So after my ten minutes were up, Sister Smith got up there and she spoke for 35 minutes! Haha, but she did so good though!

Well, this is the end of this weeks email. I am loving it out here! I love you ALL!

<3,

Sister Stout

(Ali and I chatted through email for about 45 minutes.  Here are a few of the things she wrote to me that I thought some of you might be interested in.  Most of what we talked about was family stuff.  But I asked her a couple questions and it gave me a little better understanding of how she's doing.)

Sister Smith and I get along GREAT! It took a little bit of time to warm up to each other, but I think it's because both of us are naturally kind of shy. But this transfer has been crazy fun!

We have quite a large teaching pool. It's really great! I would say we have about 20-ish investigators. And we have a REALLY GOOD investigator who is scheduled for the 4th of November! His name is Martin and he's in his 40's and he is GREAT!

But anyway. I love talking to you. And it's so crazy how much I am changing here. But not really changing, I'm still me. But you know what I mean. :) I love being brave. BRAVERY! 

Busy Week

OLO!

This week we worked SO HARD. Haha, we are doing so well here in Redcar! 

I honestly don't have too much to say this week, not much has happened. . . just work, work, work. :D

But I am doing extremely well. BUT it is getting SOSOSOSO cold. Insanely so at some moments. I wear tights every single day. . . except today, apparently. Haha, I forgot to put them on . . . oops.

A person we were talking to on the bus told me I have the whitest teeth they had ever seen. It took me so off guard, I don't know why. . . random. :)

I wish I had more to say. I'm thinking sooooo hard . . . OH, Sister Smith got an epic high five from a drunk guy as we were walking back to our flat one night this week. It was hilarious! 

Ugh, this email fails at being an email, so I'm sorry. My brain is just dead like a dead fish. But not in a bad way, just in a 'nothing happened and I'm working my brain too hard and I'm on the verge of making stories up' way.

But not having a car means that I'm gonna get into shape. Even though I've gained half a stone since we started walking. I'm calling it muscle though. . . :)

Well, this is gonna be the end.  

I love you all! With all my heart! :D

Sister Stout

Washing the car in preparation for it to be inspected! Never washed a car in a skirt before... haha!!!

This is ENGLAND! I took this picture at the top of Roseberry Topping.

This is me. . . just taking pictures. Just for the heck of it. I will not tell you how many of them there are. :)

This is Elder Plump and Sister Shorts. Haha, made courtesy by the Elders in our Zone.

This is Sister Smith and I after our traumatic experience of losing the car and having to walk home in the rain and then getting locked out of our flat. It was all very exciting.


(Allen was excited to see the peacock feather in the background... he sent that to her a few weeks ago.)

Car Blues

Another week has come and gone. . . haha. This week was interesting . . . they took our car away. :( So we are now on foot and buses. It's very different. My feet actually ache today. But it's alright. 

We put up a pretty good fight to keep the car though and our zone leader still feels bad that we don't have one. But now we only have one car for our entire zone. . . oh well. 

But anyway, funny story about when they took the car away. It was Wednesday and we knew we were giving it to another set of sisters that evening so we were planning to go out to see our investigators who live forever away, but we had already planned to get the MOT on the car done, before we were told we were giving the car away. So we took it in, thinking it would only take an hour or so. BUT WE FAILED! Ugh, it was horrible, so they had to keep the car the whole day and fix it. We got the car back an hour before they were taking it so we ZOOMED (at a reasonable pace, of course) out there, saw our investigators and ZOOMED back. 

Then we gave the car away. We took out all of our fun EFY cd's and stuff and we left MoTab in and as we were driving to the chapel, it felt like a funeral. So, it was gone after that. We had another appointment, so the zone leaders drove us to it and that was good. But after the appointment we had to walk back. It took us like 45 minutes AND it started to pour and poor Sister Smith only had a cardigan on. But we made it more fun by singing and rocking out. Haha.

Once we finally got back to the flat, we were SOPPING wet and COOOOLLLLLD. But then we couldn't find the keys to the flat. Neither of us had them, so we thought we had left them in the cup holder of the car that was now HOURS away. But luckily they were only at the chapel and the Branch President drove them over to us. But yes, we had a fun night. I had a picture that I was going to put along with this story, but I'm gonna have to put it up next week, because I forgot my camera at the flat. . . oops. Sorry. :)

This is the first day of my second transfer! It is rather remarkable! I almost can't believe it. . . 

But honestly, nothing much more has happened. Just trying to adjust to not having a car. It will come with time though. I am sore from all the walking. :{)

All right, this is the end of this weeks email. . . I LOVE YOU ALL! :D

<3,

Sista Stouta (don't ask, because I don't know. . .)

Ali with her distract.

Baptism of Jon Smith

Hellllllo wonderful people!

I am going to be in Redcar for another six weeks! YAY! With Sister Smith! Haha, after this transfer she will have been in Redcar for half of her mission. Crazy-ness. :)

For P-Day we drove out to Darlington and everyone played American football. Everyone, but me and two other Elders anyway. Haha. I'm not too fantastic at sports. And everyone gets SO competitive. It's slightly overwhelming. Haha. But yeah, so I just sat off to the side and talked to the Elders.

OH! Where we were sitting, there must've been a nest or something, because there were a GAJILLION spiders! They were EVERYWHERE. It was so gross. We were finding them all over our clothes and our bags. And then the worst thing happened. I had a feeling they might be crawling on my back so one of the Elders checked and he said there weren't any, but there WERE like four or five of them in my HAIR.

I FREAKED OUT and took my hair out of my ponytail and shook my head around. UGH just even thinking about it now. . . shuddershuddershudder!!! laskdfjlsdkjfkdfhalsdkjflk

So after about two hours of sitting and talking and getting attacked by itty bitty spiders, we got bored and started to throw an extra American football around. I don't think I've ever thrown one before. But Elder Spratt said I threw it perfectly. He said I threw it like Elder Parham, who got a bunch of scholarships to play for different universities. So appearently I have a hidden talent! Haha, my talent is so good in fact, that I threw it as hard as I could and Spratt tried to catch it and it hurt his finger! Like, really bad. Not broken, but it got all swollen and it turned all green and blue and purple. It was like that for a couple of days. Haha. I felt SO SO bad at first, but then he was just TRYING to make me feel bad about it, so I stopped feeling bad because it was his own fault to catching it WRONG! Haha.

So this week was fantastic! The baptism went so well! I have never had the feeling of a baptism being so . . . sacred before. It was really amazing. I loved it!

But, yeah, everything is going so well! I am having so much fun! The hardness of it all when I first got out here is really going away and time is going by so fast! I can't believe my first transfer is pretty much over. . . so WEIRD! Hahahahah.

My life is SO GOOD right now! I love p-days, haha, they are so much fun! And I LOVE missionary work!

<3,

Sister Stout

ps. MOM! I love you SO much! You are such an amazing mother! If you want you can make your emails a little longer. . . I normally run out of things to say and I LOVE hearing about home! 

pps. Could you send your letter seperate from the box? Maybe? It just takes longer for boxes and I love getting letters, especially from you! :D

ppps. Tell daddy sorry from me! Ahhh, so sad. But thank goodness that Dr. Beck is there to help out!

pppps. Dad, I love you sooo much! During that talk in General Confrence about dads and daughters, I started to cry. . . :) You are the most incredible dad I could've ever hoped for! Thank you for being so amazing and I'm sorry about your hand, but the story that goes along with it makes me laugh and it is SO YOU! Hahah, you are crazy, but in a really good way!

ppppps. Who is the new bishop?!?!?! You never told me . . .

pppppps. I LOVE YOU SOOOOO MUCH :D My family is amazing. . . I don't know what I did to deserve such a good one.

(Ali sometimes gets carried away with ps's... haha!  But we love them.  I don't usually add them and I did leave a few out, but I think they're cute :)  Her personality comes out through her emails so much - it's great!  We love and miss her so much!)