Dec 17th 2013

     Transfers this week! Sister Walker and I are going AP (Assistant to president) and Sister McQuivey is going Spanish speaking (which is quite a feat seeing there are no Spanish sisters). At least that's what we told everyone. Otherwise, we pretty much stayed the same. Actually - get this - there are 7 missionaries going to our home ward right now, including us though we can go anywhere because we currently don't have a Cambodian ward yet, and the two sisters here are getting a new sister from the MTC today! So there will be 8 missionaries going to our Mountain View ward! On the flip side, 8 other missionaries are leaving the zone, most of them our close friends, but thankfully they're not going too far. But this being my first transfer, it's a lot harder than I thought.

Good news, we had a less active go to church on Sunday!! YES!

Out of time..... Love you!!

Sister Dunster

December 9th 2013

     Yesterday was awesome in the fact we didn't have the 2 hours of tracting time because of the time it would take to drive to the stake center in time for the Christmas Devotional, but we decided we didn't want to leave without finishing off our weekly goals, so right at6:59pm we handed out our fifth Book of Mormon to a sweet Vietnamese woman and had our fifth lesson. And not only that, but we had our first experience putting someone on date!! We met this guy who's a music producer (he's not Cambodian so we'll have to pass him on, but until we do he's still ours) and he'll be out of town until the end of January, so we couldn't put him on date for December which is what our mission goal is, but we had our first experience actually having someone put on date at the doorstep! He has a religion, but he was pretty interested in what we had to offer which surprised us. It made the Christmas Devotional all the more sweeter to sit there knowing we made pretty much all our weekly goals.

This past weekend the stake center had a Festival of the Nativities where the whole building was decked out in Christmas trees and tables upon tables of Nativities! It was beautiful! And not only that, but we had a less active family which we had just visited show up! Our first family to follow through in going to an activity we invited them to! Needless to say, we were excited. Most of the work here is in reactivating members, even those who forget they're members until they realize some things sound familiar and realize they were baptized in '82.

Well, computer times up so I have to go!

Love you!

Sister Dunster

Sara enjoying her time

     It snowed today! Actually just enough to give a few things a white color to it, but it snowed! It's fun to see and remember that it's now December, but I am glad we don't get inches of it. And even then I can't complain much because we have a car, so I'm pretty happy with the warmer weather dispersed with a little sprinkling of snow.

Thanksgiving was so much fun! We went to two different houses (though I wasn't smart enough to leave room for the second after the first so I really couldn't eat much) and since we're in one of the two zones closest to the President's house, we got to go over to play games and sing. SO much fun! Not only did I get to sing and play at the piano with other missionaries, but somehow we played Catch Phrase with everyone. About 60 people were packed into that living room with missionaries sitting on the floor even, so we made as much of a circular pattern as possible and based teams according to who sat in chairs vs the floor.

I was a little bummed the other day because the other week we were dropped by a family where we'd started teaching the kids; Tommy and Jenny. The kids were taking it all in, but the parents were Buddhist and although they said they were fine with us coming back, they completely looked out the window and turned out the lights when we knocked on their door for the next appointment. Then there's a different family from week one we've been trying to contact but every time we go over there the mom's not home so we end up calling to make another appointment. One day we finally decided just to drop by and who did we see but Tommy from the other family at the window with all the other children! He ran to the door and I thought "Cool, we might actually get to teach them tonight!" until over the commotion of children's voices we hear the click of the door lock and see his shadow leave. We waited a few minutes anyway just to make sure they weren't coming, but apparently the Cambodians here are very connected and we just didn't get to them soon enough.

But the other night we went to go check a contact and although I know I shouldn't get my hopes up, we met the sweetest mother of four children who let us in from the cold to share our message and took a preahkompii moomoon (Book of Mormon in Khmae). She reminded me so much of Hian, the mother of the first family we trying to get a hold of, but I hope we get to her before any other connections do and that it turns out differently from the first. It's hard not to get discouraged when we don't have any set investigators, but I'm learning to enjoy moments like that when people do accept our message, even if just for that one visit. We planted a seed, whether or not they are ready to accept the gospel, and that's part of our calling. :)

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving week!

- Sister Dunster

 Me and Sister Walker with Sister McQuivey's recent converts; Toni and Erin Baker. (I promise I have not gained as much weight as it looks like in this picture.)

                    Thanksgiving Eve with coordinated outfits; me, Sister Walker, & Sister McQuivey

                                                     first snow with me and Sister Walker