Older and ....wiser?

Another incredible week from this frozen missionary!!!

 

Honestly most weeks I don't even know where to start these emails....There is always so much to say! Well I'm 21 now!! Weird....definitely don't feel that old. Didn't I just enter young womens or start driving or something. So wonderful to look back and see all of the different changes and experiences in my life that have led me to where I am right now. I honestly never thought that I would be serving a mission on my 21st birthday, but here I am! And there is no place that I would rather be!! My birthday was so great though! Thank you to everyone for all of the birthday cards, emails, and packages! I have some AMAZING friends and family!! I feel so loved! It is wonderful to have such incredible support. It really does help so much. We had district meeting, interviews with President Vellinga, and coordination meeting all on my birthday this week, so a lot of my day was spent at the church building. But it was still awesome! It was such an awesome birthday gift to get to meet with President ON my birthday!! He is such an incredible man! We all look up to him and love him so much. Sister Stringham took me to Menchie's (Yogurtland of Ohio) and made me a super delicious dinner!! She is so good to me :) Then after coordination meeting Sister Beaudoin and Sister Perrenoud had brought my favorite cookies as a treat for everyone! Such an awesome surprise! And then Elder Hicken, Elder Curtis, Elder Riffenburg, and Elder Francis gave me a present as well! They bought me a calendar of a whole bunch of different animals. haha I think they get a kick out of my animal obsession. They were so excited to give it to me. My district is so great!! They are all so sweet to make my birthday special for me. :)

 

We were going to go to lunch at Costco on my birthday, but sadly it didn't work out with our schedule, so we postponed that until the weekend. (Keepin up the Olds' tradition of going to Costco all over the country!) Ohhhh delicious and cheap Costco food. Love it. Thankfully SIster Stringham loves Costco just as much as I do. We got dinner there and a few minutes later a family came down and sat near us and they were speaking Russian!!! I got so excited!!! Of course I only understood like 3 words that they said, but I still loved it. It made me miss Ukraine even more!! If that was even possible....

 

So sometimes none of our stop by's are home or none of them want to talk to us. So we have to go with our back up plan of tracting. And then Ohio thinks it is funny to start snowing like crazy!! I have seriously never seen snowflakes that big!! And it picked up in a matter of 10 minutes! It was ridiculous!! The pictures really don't even do it justice. It got 100x worse about 5 minutes after we took the pictures. Sister Stringham and I made the best of it though and just kept singing, "We're traaaaaacting in the snow. Just traaaaacting in the snow!!" haha I love her so much.

 

Oh we got to go into Cleveland this week for my Cystic Fibrosis appointment! It was so fun to take a little "vacation" and see Cleveland! The hospital was ridiculously huge and nice and thankfully we got there 45 minutes early because we got sent on a crazy goose chase to find the right clinic. We were there pretty much all day. It turned into a 5 hour appointment! I felt bad for Sister Stringham, but she is such a champ and actually enjoyed it. Of course we didn't want to waste any of the Lord's time though. We talked with 6 different people about the church and gave out Mormon.org cards! It was so great!! Our district leader thought our text was hilarious to him that day: "Doin missionary work at the hospital!"

 

2 weeks ago one of our investigators tried to drop us. Try being the key word. He was at church yesterday though!! And he seemed to have a really awesome experience! We are both so excited about him!!! Keep him in your prayers! He knows the church is true, but is too afraid to tell his Mom that he is going to church with the Mormons and not to Catholic Mass. Oh did I mention that he is in fact 60 years old....? Yeah. He makes us incredible food though!! He is an amazing chef! We told him to open his own restaurant.

 

Random story of the week: Sister Buchanan has a freaky finger just like me!!!! We were both so excited when we found this out!! Haha I have never met anyone else who has a freaky finger too! See Steph! I'm not the only one.

 

I love this amazing work so much. I love this gospel so much. I love you all so much!!

 

Lots of love from Ohio,

Sister Olds the II

I write way too many letters on Preparation Day....This was last week. 14 letters!

Cleveland!! We had so much fun going in to Cleveland for a day. Having CF definitely has it's perks sometimes! haha

Sister Stringham bought  me Menchie's for my birthday!!!! So delicious.

This doesn't do it justice at all. It got so much worse!!! But it was fun :)

My wonderful birthday present!! It is SO MUCH nicer than my old one!!! I love it!! And Sister Stringham thinks it is hilarious. SHe has already tried it haha.