week 7: we are the THANKFUL sisters ;)

A week of gratitude and thanksgiving as we wrapped up November this week!!! Doing Russell M Nelson's #givethanks challenge was a great way to focus on all the many blessings in my life and made me look forward to #lighttheworld in December! Go check out comeuntochrist.org/light-the-world-2020 to download the service calendar and end 2020 serving like Christ would! I am so excited for the Christmas season!!

2 p-days this week with Thanksgiving on Thursday! We got to sleep in an extra hour and did studies until noon. Then we went to a chapel for some lunch and district games(3 hours of nerf war-don't ask why the APs have 8 nerf guns bc I don't even know haha). We came home at 5 and got to call family and chill. My comp and I decorated a gingerbread house, then played Egyptian rat slap with the other sisters in our apt. 

Alex's baptism was Saturday!! It was so sweet! His mom is a convert who was  baptized in 2013, but nobody else in his family joined when she did. When Alex finally decided to attended the YSA ward he loved the spirit he felt and wanted to feel it all the time. He loves to study "the book" as he calls it and is chugging along on his studies of the book of Mormon. Both he and his mom bore their testimonies at the baptism and the spirit was so strong!! 

But 2 funnies on Alex! First was when he had his baptismal interview. Our district leader who does the interviews always uses a lemon analogy to explain tithing and we knew he would try to tell Alex, so last week when we taught him tithing we stole the analogy. When Elder Singler went to explain his analogy, Alex told him he knew the analogy already and we DIED laughing when Singler was all confused about it. Had to be there haha. Second was the actual baptizing. Alex is about 6 feet tall and twig skinny. We only had access to a child font, so when he went to get dunked, his grandpa had to physically shove him DOWN into the water and we were trying not to laugh at the awkwardness of the whole situation. Too funny! 

We have also been speaking in sacrament meetings off the hook every week! We speak in about 3 wards a week and just jump from one ward to the next. Even after 3 Sundays, we have barely made a dent in visiting all of our wards. The last 2 weeks we spoke on gratitude and giving thanks to Heavenly Father for our blessings and in the coming weeks we have talks prepared on the light the world initiative and how we can serve like Christ. It is a great way to get to know our members better and gain trust with them, and has also taught us how to whip up talks on the fly when the bishop changes the topic on us the morning of hehe. ;)

MIRACLE: Saturday night we went to get dinner at Cafe Rio after the baptism and had 2 mini miracles. First, we had this sweet young dad gave us money for our meals and then the cashier also gave us a discount on top of that. Perks of being a UT missionary? But THEN on the way out, my wallet lanyard got caught on the door and I didn't notice it was gone until we were 15 minutes away and I had no idea where it went. We called the restaurant and someone had turned it in all safe and sound! What a blessing!!(not trying to lose my temple recommended and TIWI driving card one month in;) )

love you all and HAPPY DECEMBER!

love sis dougall <3 

Said goodbye to elder Aguilar leaving for germany next week!!!

Holiday decor

Provo temple comp study

Alex's baptism

Gingerbread houses

Thanksgiving nerd war w the district

Introducing pre Thanksgiving pie day tradition to the comps ;)

week 6: we are the COUNTERPART sisters

Watching a missionary devotional:

"The priesthood and their counterparts..." -elder jackson

"Is he referring to the wives?"  -me

We spent this week doing lots of finding. In Utah, bc basically everyone is already LDS, most of our work involves weeding through members to find their non member friends who are open to learning more about the gospel. Luckily, if they are willing to meet with the missionaries, they are pretty solid for baptisms, but finding those people can be hard! We find people by mass texting members in our ward to see if they have any non member friends, calling ward leaders to find non members in their area, going on BYU campus to talk to students(and run into our friends hehe!), knocking doors(we even caroled at one house when I casually asked the lady her fav Christmas song haha), and wandering our area when it's warm to find college aged kids. Most of our teaching pool comes from referrals, so pray we find some people to teach as BYU goes online after Thanksgiving and half our area moves home lol.

Zone conference was this week where we had a mega zoom call with our whole mission to hear from our mission Presidents(yes we have 2!!!) and their wives. It was so good to hear them speak and inspire us missionaries as they spoke on how to use faith to "trigger miracles" in our lives and for those we teach. It's amazing to me that the entire mission's focus is on miracles and I love it!! Our mission president set a goal for our mission in December to have a white Christmas-but not your typical snowy holiday. He set a goal for us to baptize 100 people in December(white jumpsuits get it haha). We would love it if you'd join us in our mission fast the first Sunday in December to help us reach our goal!

Karim got baptized this weekend!!! He has the strongest testimony! He had the greatest support system for his special day and I was so glad to be a part of his conversion process. This is what a mission is all about is helping people come closer to their savior and see that light of Christ shine through them! 2 baptisms in 2 weeks let's goooo haha.

We also had the chance to hear from our Prophet, Russell M Nelson this week as he shared a message of hope and healing with the world. He encouraged us to be more grateful and to focus on all the blessings we have in our life rn. He prayed for the world and left us with a challenge to turn our social media accounts to a gratitude journal and post something we are grateful for everyday for the next 7 days with #givethanks. I would encourage you all to join this challenge! And if you don't have social media, share your gratitude with someone!!

MIRACLE: Our mission president encouraged us to use Facebook to make some videos to share of our recent converts or something to inspire our ward members to help w the work. We kept putting it on our calendar to plan an idea, but we kept postponing bc we couldn't come up with any good ideas. Saturday morning, a girl from one of our wards called us up to say she wanted to film a story of us for her digital story telling class. All we had to do was choose a recent convert and cute place to film and she did the rest! I'll send the vid when she finishes putting it together, but it should be good!!!

Happy Thanksgiving y'all! I am so grateful for each one of you!! 

love sis dougall

wild self timer pics

raking leaves and doing yardwork

Karim's baptism

these masks are too much

cutest Christmas sun room!!

blood drawn haha

week 5: we are the BLOODY sisters!!

I'm not in England yet, so it's not a bad word hehe. But story time!! I've had about 3 bloody noses a day since getting to the field which is kind of a lot, but I'm used to it and usually adjust after a week in the dry climate. But Friday night, I got one at the end of a lesson and it lasted for 30 minutes!!! It would NOT stop and I wasn't too worried, but the other sisters thought I was on my death bed haha. One called the doctor to get me an appt the next day and the other called the Elders to come over and give me a blessing. It was a wild night on so many levels, but it was such a tender mercy to get a blessing from a friend I knew from back home (S/O to Elder Collins!!!) and to feel so much love from my savior and everyone around me. Have only gotten 2 since Friday so things are looking up! And I get to visit 2 more doctors this week so that'll be an adventure!!!

Here is a quick rundown of some of the people we are teaching!! 

Araceli: This is the coolest. story. ever. She lived in Argentina and was taught a few years ago by my comps older brother on his mission. She moved to Provo last year and sister gill started to teach her a few weeks ago when her brother connected the two of them. She was baptized this weekend and gill's brother was able to fly up from Arizona to perform the baptism and confirmation. So awesome! AND did I mention she is from Argentina?! I was able to teach parts of her lessons in Spanish and say the prayer in Spanish at her baptism!!! Honestly an answered prayer for so many cool reasons and my fav person let me tell you!!!! 

Karim: Funniest hype man!! He is dating an RM and their relationship is sooo funny. He and his friend raced Porsches this week and he told us all about it in the lesson. Also debated about fry sauce between states lol. We encouraged him to stop drinking coffee and replace it with a better habit and he goes, "yeah I'll replace coffee every morning with red bull." Baby steps haha. Freaking LOVE him!!! He gets off topic easy, but we are buds already. But he is set to be baptized this upcoming Saturday!

Alex: Sweetheart and such a logical thinker which is really interesting to see him make sense of the gospel. We committed him to baptism on Dec 5!! And then when he tried to say a week later I said, "or how about a week earlier because YOU'RE READY!" and he agreed! So 3 baptisms in 3 weeks haha Provo is the chosen land apparently. 

Deseret book filmed part of a movie in our apartment about missionary life during the pandemic, so watch for the show "Full Circle!" It was a wild day! We were homeless so we bounced between 3 different chapels to do all of our work and then came home to a mess. One sister was NOT happy about it and ended up getting us each new silk pillowcases and a full cleaning crew for our apartment. So funny!

Miracle: TOO MANY TO COUNT! I have seen God's hand in my life this week so so much through small tender mercies and blessings! One that was pretty cool happened Saturday night literally before curfew. My comp had set a goal the week before to find one new person to teach this week and we had no luck all week. But driving home from the baptism we got a call from Parker(new member that was baptized last week) saying his friend Leah was over and we should stop by just to meet her. We weren't planning to talk about the gospel, but she brought up how she's been trying to quit smoking and start praying and we knew that was our in. We talked about how god is our loving heavenly father and she asked us to come back next week. One of those mission goal stories you hear all the time, but it was so cool! 

Longest and craziest week of my life! 

Love you all!! 

<3 sister dougall

bloody nose adventures

Araceli's baptism

Walks around provo temple

Karim's lesson haha 

A member brought us costa for dinner and not sure who doordashed us swig haha(YSA are sooo kind when they feed us bc college kids are broke!!!) 

 More beautiful Provo mountains

Groutfit, but glad to have a new sister that will kinda run w me

 Hike selfie

week 4: we are the PROVO sisters!!

I made it to Provo!!! And when I say Provo, I actually mean Provo! I am serving in the BYU east area and cover 8 stakes and 45 YSA wards near BYU campus. Wild!!! And I love love love the mountains here! So gorgeous and the camera can't capture the amazing view from my apartment! So good to finally be home ;) 

My first two days have been packed! I got up at 3:30am on Monday morning to go the airport for my 6am flight. I met Sister Williams and we flew to SLC together. Once we landed, we met sooo many missionaries in the airport leaving for their assignments. I got to see my girl Hermana Julie Solomon and meet sister mason(famous in those workshops!!) and Sister Simmons(going to England too!). And Sister Wangsgard from my MTC district drove down from Logan and it was so so fun to meet her in person!!! We got in a bus w other missionaries and drove to a church building in Provo to meet our mission president and companions. 

My trainer is Sister Gilliland from Arizona. She is the cutest thing!! She has been out for 15 months and her original call was Provo. She is so sweet and bubbly and a great example to me. Love her!!! Also, we live with 2 other sisters who are Chinese speaking. Sister McDonald was in Manchester, England before COVID and is giving me all the ins and outs there!

After lunch, we all split and went to our areas where sister gill and I jumped right into a lesson for Parker, who was baptized Saturday. He is the funniest guy! He was a miracle story and I am sad I won't get to teach him much since we're handing him over to members to continue teaching him. He is 26 and wants to serve a mission, but we know he is going to make a great member missionary even if he is a little old to go out. His excitement for his new scriptures and calling is awesome!! 

In the evening(before crashing early bc I was EXHAUSTED), we called and texted a billion people. With new COVID restrictions in Utah, we are basically on lockdown which is super frustrating but good thing I have been trained in zoom and am basically a non-expert haha. I am training my trainer in technology lol. We can't meet with people in person or go to member's homes so that will be interesting, but will be an adventure for sure!

For p day today we went to a cute acai bowl place for breakfast and then to DI(don't worry mom I didn't get anything). Sister Gill and I are totally into the same stuff and it's the best!!! (She likes country music too!!!)

Don't want to make this email super long, but yesterday's miracle:

My water bottle spilled in my backpack with my journal, brand new scriptures, letters from friends, and Spanish books. I was devastated when I reached in and felt the wet papers! BUT the only thing really damaged was my Spanish study book which I can so easily replace. Only a small corner or my journal and the envelope of one letter got wet, so the things that mattered were spared. Super minor, but it was a miracle to me and I know that if it matters to us, it matters to our heavenly father who LOVES US!! 

LOVE YOU ALL!! thanks for all the love and support!!! 

<3 sister dougall 

 Acai bowls for breakfast

Mountain view from our apartment

Saying goodbye to my travel buddy, sister Heidi Williams 

My trainer, Sister Gilliland 

MTC bestie, Sister Wangsgard 

Hermana Solomon from USU who is off to Tucson, Arizona!!

week 3: MTC grads

The elders spouting off pickup lines on Tuesday night:
“Are you a Golden Corral? Because you’re a whole buffet!” -Elder Swendsen

Well this is it!!I have officially graduated from the at home MTC!!!  Hopefully those 100+ zoom hours made me somewhat prepared to be thrown into the field next week! We focused so much on Christ’s atonement and how it applies to us as missionaries, but I am so excited to share that message with the people of Provo. I am so grateful for Jesus Christ and the blessings we’ve been given because of Him!!

This week we taught 3 more TRCs and they were so much better than last week! Sister Taylor and I learned from our mistakes and were able to connect with the people we were teaching, share videos and scriptures, teach them to pray, and address their questions and concerns. It made me so much more excited and confident for teaching real people (not return missionaries from BYU that we FB stalked later hehehe)!

Also I love love my district!! I never thought I could say that about a group of strangers I met on zoom, but I love them even more everyday! Every Tuesday night we watch a devotional together and then spend a half hour after discussing our thoughts. This week we stayed on the call for almost 3 hours after the devotional ended and didn’t stop talking the entire time. It was a blast and made me wish I was with them in real life! We pranked one of our teachers this week too! Brother Thomas still butchers my name and calls me Sister DUGall every time, so everyone changed their names to “Google with a D”, “Dooogall,” “Doogle,” “Dougall like Google,” etc. It was so funny and you best believe he didn’t mess my name up after that haha. I will miss my awesome group and saying goodbye was so bittersweet!

this week’s miracle:
I was able to go through the Portland temple on Thursday evening to receive my endowments! A handful of my friends had to wait until this mission field to go through, so the fact that I could go through 4 days before leaving was a miracle!! I was so so grateful to have my parents, grandparents, and friends come with me. I felt so much love and joy inside the Lord’s house and look forward to being able to go again. We are so blessed to have a little peace of heaven on earth to go and feel peace in a world of crazy! I love the temple!
OH and my mom and I packed all my stuff for 18 months in 3 suitcases, so that was a miracle too honestly. ;)

Alma 26:1 says, “how great reason we have to rejoice; for could we have supposed when we started...that God would have granted to us such great blessings?” This year has been “quite the journey,” but among it all we have seen more blessings than we can count from the Lord. With thanksgiving in a few weeks, I would encourage you all to look for blessings in your life and give thanks to the Lord for all that we are given!!

I fly out at 6am on Monday morning from Portland and land in SLC at 8:30!! It will be one longggg day and I AM SO EXCITED! Next email I send will be from Utah!!!!

love you all! <3 sister dougall

Portland temple pics w Sista Williams and our attempts at a cute
jumping pics and flag throwing haha. We fly to Provo together Monday!!

Some election humor

Portland temple and family

BEST. DISTRICT. EVER!!!

Ty’s soccer game