Merry Christmas, Email From Jenny Mon, Dec 26

First off, being a missionary is the best. If anyone says otherwise, disregard anything they say! This past week was so wonderful! Some people from our ward wanted us to deliver some gifts to people in our ward that were struggling a bit this season, and what a blessing it was to us to reap the rewards of their diligence! We delivered a huge basket and Christmas tree and ornaments and a New Years basket and we had the opportunity to help them set it up too! The most special part was that this woman was close to tears the entire time we were over, and then when she expressed her appreciation she broke down bawling, being overfilled with the gratitude she felt. I then, being a sympathetic crier, started to cry too. It is so beautiful how such a simple act had changed this family's holiday. This is when I felt the true joy of Christmas. This is Christ-like love, and this is what Christmas is about. Such a beautiful moment that warmed my heart to the very core that I will never forget! We are Christ's hands here on earth!

We had a Christmas conference with all the missionaries too, and got to hear from President and Sister Carlson, which is always a privilege. Sister Carlson spoke about Charity and how it is so critical that we, as servants of the Lord, have this quality. We have to love our fellowman just as our Savoir does. Why would we think we would make it to Heaven if we don't love others? 

Christmas Day was wonderful too! It was so wonderful to hear from my beautiful family and to hear all the great things that are happening to them :) the family, whose home I was Facetiming at, thought it was super cute when all of you cheered when we connected :) I sure am blessed and I love you all so dearly!! Thank you for all your love and support!

Serving with a smile :)

Sister Bradley

​​I don't think I'll ever get enough of Indiana sunsets...this picture just doesn't give it justice!​

 

We accidentally twin on the daily :) #compunity​

​​​Our Bethlehem dinner Christmas Eve. We ate on the floor by candle light and ate things that Mary and Joseph might have eaten. Pretty special dinner.​

 

 

​​​​​Snowflakes made of our last names :)​

 ​​Nativity I was given by a member in Frankfort. It is hand cut by him in Aspen wood! 

A baby bunny I was able to hold!! The bunny was named Creme Puff by Kina, a member in the pic

 

Indianapolis Mission Christmas Conference Photo

 

*photo credit Indiana Indianapolis Mission Facebook page. 

Christmas Phone Call

Our family was more then excited to get to FaceTime Sister Bradley on Christmas Day.  We played a legitiment game of sardines on the family end, squeezing the whole family into the office.  We were more then happy with the tight quarters in order to be able to interact with our much missed sister/daughter/aunt of ours! 

  

 

 

Special thanks to Josh and Eric for handling all the technology and trouble shooting!

Sister Bradley's Christmas Card

 

Christmas wishes come true! Email from Jenny (Mon, Dec 19)

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!! I hope you all have a wonderful week with your family :) sooo....some pertty exciting news, Zionsville Branch is now a WARD :) haha the people here have been waiting so long for this to happen! And the crazy part is that they took Sheridan out of our Area, and were still able to make it a ward!! I will miss the people there, but I know they will be taken care of :)

It has been super interesting working two areas! All of a sudden there are a lot more responsibilities! And we have to be very tactful with the way we plan our schedules :) for example, yesterday we went to 2 dinners haha this is great :) 

We went to a lesson with Brian where we talked more about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He is amazing because once he understands something he is golden, no further questions about it. Brian accepted to go on a Church tour this Thursday, so we are planning for that and I think it will be good for him to see the building and hopefully he will feel more comfortable to go to church! He told us that he has been praying more on his own accord. He has some crazy things happen at the ER he works at, so he prays before that happens, and we discussed with him how now he needs to start looking for God's hand in his life :) 

Sister Wilkenson has an investigator in Lebanon named Roger who has a baptismal date set and we got to have a lesson with him! He has all these questions about really absurd hypotheticals that would probably never happen, and wanted to know what would happen if those things were to happen. Sorry, that probably didn't make much sense... but it was really cool to see how the Spirit worked though all of us to be able to answer these questions, and thinking back on it, I know it definitely wasn't me that answered those questions :) but he finally came to church and had a really good experience, which is great progression toward his baptism :)

We met this lady named Mary that we tracted into and said we could come back :) When we went to her house, she had written down a list of questions that she wanted us to answer, and I felt that she was genuinely interested in our answers which was really cool. She said she was really excited for us to come back :)

We had a lesson in Relief Society on Christmas and how to make it more meaningful. The Sister said there are 3 levels of Christmas. The first being all the superficial stuff like Santa and presents and food, important yes, but not the main reason for the holiday. The second is focusing on Christ's birth and the miracle that was with the Shepherd and the wise men and everything that accompanies that. The Third level and the level to strive for to make Christmas the most meaningful, focuses on the birth, ministry and death of Christ and how all these things were needed for Him to be our Savior and that ALL these things were crucial for us to even be able to celebrate His birth in the first place. The Light the World initiative on Mormon.org is a great way to try and be like our Savior this season, so if you haven't been doing that, I invite you to check it out, what better gift is there to give to Christ than to follow in His footsteps this season? :)

I love you all and hope you have a wonderful Christmas!

Serving with a Smile,

Sister Bradley

-The Trio- (me, Wilkenson, Harris)

 

Winter Is Officially Here: Email FromJenny, Monday

Hello everyone! Once again, the week flew by! Some good things are happening here in Zionsville though :) oh, and some crazy news! These next three weeks, we are going to be in a trio with Sister Wilkenson and are going to be covering two areas! Her companion is going home early for school, so we get to be her companions :) It is going to be crazy and probably hectic at times, but it's going to be a blast :)

We had dinner with Brian's family and they are such genuinely good people! They were super curious about us and what we do as missionaries and they were super impressed at all the things we do at such a young age. It was wonderful to see how supportive Brian's wife was of him and how grateful she was to us for teaching him :) and yes, this is super random, but I feel the need to tell you that Brian went Bear hunting and shot a black bear with his friend Tony. It is now mounted on the wall, and then Brian showed us the skull of the bear! Here's your fun fact of the day: to clean the bear's skull, they stick it in a box of beetles and they do all the detail cleaning! Super disgusting but really fascinating all at the same time! Anyway, his wife made us a little Christmas gift and gave it to us to show her appreciation which was darling of her! They are just such a wonderful family :)

We had a super cool experience this week with a lady named Nannette Zawadski. We got her information from sisters in Carmel, IN and we have been trying to get a hold of her for weeks! She finally responded to us and said we could come to her house! She was excommunicated  19 years ago and wants to take the steps to be baptized again. I was a bit apprehensive before meeting her because I didn't know what to expect, but as we talked to her and got to know her I was able to feel the Spirit testify to me of the love that God had for her, and I knew then that she needed to know it too. I testified to her that Heavenly Father loved her and was so incredibly happy about the decisions she was making to improve her life. What is even more amazing to me is that I really didn't say anything profound, but because the Spirit was there, she was able to feel and know that the words I was speaking were true, and her heart was able to be touched and she was able to feel that Spirit once more, something she may not have felt for a long time. 

We also have a new investigator!!! We met her tracting and she told us she would let us in, but her child was sleeping, so she said to come back another day after 4pm. We came back the next week after 4pm and she was about to leave her house so we set up an appointment with her on Tuesday at 4:30 :) please pray for Mary!

It has been wonderful to be a missionary at Christmas time because our primary focus is to invite souls to Christ, and what better way to celebrate Christmas than to be a disciple of Him who is the only reason we have this beautiful season. Keep the real spirit of Christmas with you this season, and I promise it will be the best Christmas you will ever have :)

Stay warm! (We got our first snow this week! It was magical.)

Serving with a Smile,

Sister Bradley

​

The famous Hoosier Goose. People dress them up at holidays! Why? No clue.​

 

​​​Sister Dyches and I after a training by her and her husband. Elder Dyches is the General Authority that visited our mission this transfer :)​

 

First Snow!!!​

 

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The little gift Brian's family gave us :)​

 

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas: Email From Jenny

Sent: Monday Dec, 5 9:09am

I can't believe it is December! Hopefully all of you are staying warm in this crazy cold weather :) I am trying...I still have all my fingers and toes haha anyway, this week I wanted to tell you all about our investigator, the one and only, Brian Sloan.

Brian is amazing! He is such a giving, loving person! He is always trying to learn something new too! For example, he is trying to patent a medical instrument to make a specific procedure cheaper and more affordable for people (he works in downtown Indianapolis where there are more lower class people). Anyway, this makes trying to have a lessons with him kind of difficult sometimes because he is so busy! We had to move a meeting for him this week and it was totally worth it!!! Preparing for this lesson, we really wanted to meet his needs specifically and we really wanted him to feel the Spirit this lesson. That morning we studied super hard and just focused on Brian. I felt prompted to read all the accounts of the Atonement and select ones to help him truly understand what Christ did for him individually and how because He did this we can be forgiven of our sins. Brian knew of Jesus Christ, but didn't fully understand the need for Him as his Savior and Redeemer. Sister Harris and I brought our studies together and prayed that this lesson would help him understand his need for Jesus Christ in his life.

At the lesson, we caught up with Brian and reviewed the reading we gave him which was Genesis 2 and 3 and 2 Nephi 2. I know, quite a bit of reading, but he really has a desire to understand. We also invited him to pray before he read this and....He totally understood the Fall of Adam and Eve after this! You literally would have thought Brian was a member already because of the way he explained it! He didn't have any questions and he was ready to learn more :) okay, by this point I was so happy, but wait it gets better. After this, I told him that we were going to read about Christ's Atonement. We had explained it, but Brian didn't understand the gravity of this event because he didn't completely understand it. We read the accounts in Luke 22 and Mark 14 with him and were able to pause and give background and explain things to him that he found confusing. Brian was in awe of all this! He couldn't believe that someone would go through all those things so that he could be forgiven of his sins. We then talked about prayer with him and come to find out, Brian didn't really know how to pray. We explain it it him and showed him how and talked about how we are communicating with our Father in Heaven and building a relationship with Him. He said he would practice and that he would PRAY NEXT TIME and that he would pray to know if these things are true!! This is huge for him!!! Everything is starting to connect and is making sense for him and it is amazing to see first hand how this is happening.

This made it even better. Tony his friend in Utah called us and told us he had just talked to Brian and that he said he is really enjoying his time with us and that he really wants us to have dinner with his family!! Actually, Brian just barely texted us and asked us if we could come to dinner with his family :) 

Brothers and Sisters, I don't think I have ever felt this much joy in my life. The change that is taking place in this man as he realizes that he is a son of God and that God has a plan for him is amazing and this joy has carried into everything else I have done as a missionary. Share the Gospel, you won't regret it.

Serving with a Smile :)

Sister Bradley

​​So...a member of our Branch bought us a REAL Christmas Tree!!!! :D​

Before...

After :)​

 Taa-Daaah (lol is that how you spell that?)

  Singing carols by the tree​

 Pretty much the best day ever!​

P.S. did you know you have to water real Christmas Trees? haha I didn't...

It's Being To Look

 

 

 

 

 

 

Email from Jenny (Mon, November 28 7:56am) & Bonus Pictures

Thanksgiving Week!!

I hope all of you had an outstanding Thanksgiving with family and friends! :) I am grateful to say that a wonderful family had us over for Thanksgiving, and we were able to enjoy turkey, ham, pie, stuffing, and games :) It was really nice! It is really cool to see how the people in the Zionsville Branch all look out for each other too because they all invited each other over and made sure everyone had a place to go for dinner.

A SUPER cool tradition that I was able to take part in was our Relief Society president's annual Pie Day. Let me tell you that this lady is a Rockstar! She made 25 different home-made pies with multiples of several of them!! So she made like 50 pies!!! Could you imagine that?!? Not to mention that her pie day is the day after Thanksgiving, so add the stress of that! She invites anyone and everyone to this tradition and this year 159 people showed up!!! All the pies were soooooo yummy and it was such an enjoyable event! However, I think the best part might be that she charts how much of each pie was eaten and left over so she knows if it is good enough for her to make the next year :) Sister Dittmer is one of a kind that's for sure! She is also retired, and not to mention she is going to a David Archuleta concert tonight which makes her even cooler :) haha

Back to the spiritual good stuff, this week I have been thinking a lot about my personal goals as a missionary and where I want to be personally by the end of my mission. I took some time to write down my personal goals and I intend to read this often to remind me of what I want to let God make of me on my mission. I think making goals is a great way to show us where our priorities are as people. We are here on earth to learn, grow and improve, and I know it's cliche, but the only person you can measure yourself against is yourself. If you are doing better than you were yesterday, you can count that as a personal success :) I invite all of you to look at your life now, and where you want it to be and to make a plan of how to get there. I know that if you consult God in this plan He will help you achieve these goals because He wants you to improve.

Update on everyone:

-Carla is in the hospital with pneumonia and is have issues with her blood pressure. She wasn't able to make it to the temple this past week due to this so please pray for her health!

-Dawn (last new investigator we found) hasn't been home the past couple times we have gone to see her, so pray that we will be able to meet her again.

-Brian is finally going to meet with us again this Friday! We have prayed and have been prompted to teach him about the importance of prayer and how he can receive answers to his prayers through faith. Please pray that the Spirit will be with us and we will be able to help him feel that Spirit and understand the importance of prayer!

-BJ is a man we met this week who is a band teacher and is looking for God in his life. He is not in our area but we referred him to the missionaries in his area so hopefully they can meet with him soon! Pray for his heart to continue to be open!

Thanksgiving with the Jessop Family (+the Cheeks and Kimberly) and a photo of the Famous Sister Dittmer and her pies :)

Bonus Items:

Elder Grieve Sent the following picture to his mom who then in turn sent it my way, with this message "This was taken by Elder Grieve on Thanksgiving day.  Thought you might like it."

Jenny had also wrote me (sister Sarah) in an email "so on Thanksgivnig we went to IUPUI campus to play football (meaning the elders play and the sisters talk ) haha but I got to see elder Grieve!! :D it was so awesome to see a friendly face on thanksgiving :) We talked for a super long time just getting an update on everything which was a tender mercy that day for sure!!"

And Jenny's sister Laura found this picture on Facebook.  It was posted by her friend Alisha Brandon.  Looks like she was in attendance of the 'Annual Pie Day' that Jenny had spoke of in her email.  

1st week of transfer 2!!! Email From Jenny, Mon. Nov. 21 8:27am

Happy Thanksgiving!!! :D I hope all of you enjoy eating turkey and sleeping in...sleep in a little for me, will you? haha where does the time go? I feel like I just emailed yesterday! We have really been trying to work with the ward members to further the work here in Zionsville, it's tricky because we want to be effective with what we ask, so we don't feel like a burden to the members. We are teaching a young girl who's family is in our ward but not super active. She has 7 siblings, so you can imagine the chaos of trying to teach her... not to mention they were putting up the Christmas tree in the same room we were teaching (I know, people are super ambitious about putting up Christmas decorations, Thanksgiving hasn't even happened! haha it's great though because it's making me even more excited for the holidays) she was pretty smart though, and knew a lot of stories in the scriptures :) her mom even commented that her daughter may even know more than her!! You could see the wheels turning in her head as everything we taught started to fit together like pieces to a puzzle :)

We visited the town of Sheridan, and did service and was able to visit with some sisters :) Sister Blue tells us the most random things. For example, did you know there are 7 meats on a turtle you can eat? or that there is a brown lady bug imported from Asia (I think that is what she said) that bites? haha definitely increasing my knowledge of random facts. That night though it started pouring rain! It was crazy because it was super warm that day and the day before! But, out of nowhere there was a downpour like no other! Buckets of water and tons of lightning! It was awesome!! But now, because of this, it is freezing cold. Maybe even colder than the winters in Las Vegas :) haha 

I wanted to talk a little bit about gratitude in honor of Thanksgiving :) We had some great talks in sacrament about gratitude and I wanted to share some things with you. Remember the classic story of the 10 lepers and how only one thanked Christ? He says that his faith made him whole, but what if it was the act of gratitude that made him whole? To show gratitude is an act of faith after all. Gratitude focuses on the present moment, the here and now and can change your perception of life in a miraculous way. Turning to God to thank Him for our blessings shows Him that we are accepting His divine hand in our lives, and elevates our lives so that we can be closer to Him. Having an attitude of gratitude effects everything in your life, no matter the circumstances or challenges. It is all about how we react to life and not what happens to us that really determines who we become. I invite you all to say a gratitude prayer this week before Thanksgiving and thank God for a solid amount of time. Take time to recognize the little blessings and tender mercies you don't normally pay attention to, and God will bless you more and you will be able to recognize them more and your testimony of God's love for you will grow. Ever have someone not appreciate a gift you've given them? It's awful. Please don't do that to God.

Update: Brian, wasn't able to meet him last week because he was out of town, hopefully this week though! 

Dawn, (the new investigator we found) wasn't home when we went to visit, but we are going to try again this week :)

Thank you for all your prayers!! I love you all!!

Serving with a smile :)

Sister Bradley

-Mural at Lions Park- pretty fierce right?

Email From Jenny: Monday November 14, 8:12 am

Another Week Already?!
Hello Friends and Family! I can't believe how fast the time is going?! That's crazy! Is the time going fast for all of you too? I feel like yesterday it was Halloween and now it is the middle of November!

Well, first off, I just want to start by telling all of you how grateful I am to have the fullness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in my life. Seriously though. With every person I meet I have an increased gratitude for the light and knowledge I have. There are so many people out there that are content without progressing and becoming better and it brings me such sadness! Please, for those of you who are members, reflect on where you would be in your life if you didn't have the Gospel. Not in a good place right? Living the Gospel - meaning increasing faith, repenting and making covenants (taking the sacrament) with Heavenly Father, and enduring, or continually going through this process again and again - is what brings us true and lasting peace in this life. Do you need more peace or maybe you feel you are lacking the peace, love and joy that I am speaking of? Live the Gospel more. It is so simple and so challenging, it has the ability to stretch every single one of us beyond anything we can make of ourselves without God. 

Thank you so much for all of your prayers!! WE FINALLY FOUND AN INVESTIGATOR!!!! On Thursday, we had a rough day (nothing new, we kind of are used to it lol) but we made a special effort to see this man who said 9am was the best time for him and he totally rejected us! So that made me pretty sad. Sister Harris was sad because she got her call about the information for going home, and we pretty much were rejected at every door we knocked on. Tracting was right before dinner, and it was like 7 minutes until dinner down the street at a members house. We had knocked on like 5 doors and I wasn't super enthusiastic about knocking on another thinking maybe we should just go to dinner early....but I remembered the "Fourth Floor, Last Door" talk by Uchtdorf (read it if you haven't) and decided one more rejection wouldn't kill me haha We knock and a lady answered the door. She goes to Trader's Point church which is like a recreation center more than a church! There is seriously an indoor park there and slides!!! No wonder people are content with this! We taught her the  restoration and the Spirit was super strong during the First Vision which I had the privilege of reciting :)  She said we could call Monday night and that we could come back! YAY!!!! This is the first person in weeks to say we could come back!!!

I know God is looking out for us and answers our prayers in His timing which is perfect. I often ask myself, what is the purpose for this work (and life in general actually) being so hard? And then the words of Elder Holland come to mind: "Salvation is not a cheap experience." 

Remember who you are and what you stand for my friends!!

Serving with a Smile,

Sister Bradley​​​​​​​

 ​I found Easy St. everyone! (Annie the musical reference)​

 ​Taco Bell after Zone Service (Sister santiago at top, Sister Greggerson underneath her)​

 ​Servants of the Lord​

​A treat a Less Active gave us in Sheridan...NASTY!! Tasted like smoke! 

Email From Jenny: Monday, November 7, 9:18am

HELLO!!! What a cool place this world is friends and family!! So, this week, I had the opportunity to go on exchanges (you switch companions for a day to learn new ways to be a better missionary and prevent you from getting into a routine with missionary work) to CROSSROADS with Sister Williams! What an interesting place! This area is pretty much the ghetto of Indianapolis...(don't worry, the sisters are in the safer part of the ghetto) it is a stark contrast to Zionsville though! So we started off our day with some good ol' service!! This was so nice because we never get to do labor intensive service in Zionsville! Everyone just pays someone to do stuff :) haha but Sister Williams and I, along with two Elders (Goff and Brown) had the job of hauling cement from this pit that used to be someone's patio to a trailer and then moving the cement chunks from the trailer to the side of the members shed. Some of these pieces were ginormous!! Seriously like 50+ pounds a piece (assembly lines for days!!!)! and then the member asked us if we would help him haul these large slabs of Sycamore tree!!! Some of them literally weighed a ton each!!! It was so awesome though to be able to use our brains and the experience God has given us to work together and move these tree trunks the most effective way! Not going to lie, when I was a young teenager I really did not like service. It's a good thing the leadership of my ward provided donuts or else I don't think I would have ever gone, but I am so grateful I did those things because I learned (very slowly) the ways God rewards you for serving. As I have gotten older and especially on my mission I have grown a love for serving. As children of God, we have the privilege of serving God's children and helping them in ways that He would help them if He were personally here on Earth. "When ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of you God." (Mosiah 2:17)  Isn't is magnificent that he has given us, His children, the responsibility and privilege of serving His children? I invite you to take every opportunity you get this week to serve everyone you come in contact with this week! Brothers and Sisters, I promise it will be super rewarding!!! It can even be as simple as letting someone with only a few groceries in front of you in line at the store, we did that and this man was so grateful to us! Who knows, maybe that made his day?! We met some really interesting people during the day but they were all so humble and kind! And after dinner with the Lane's I've never been more full in my life! But, I finally got to eat spaghetti!!! I've been waiting for this for forever!!! haha I have missed marinara sauce. 

We had the opportunity to teach Brian Sloan (we finally asked him how he spelled Brian :) ) and he is so amazing! He is an ER doctor in Downtown Indianapolis and he has such an amazing heart! He is starting a program to provide clothes for people leaving the hospital who don't have family to take care of them or provide clothes for them to leave the hospital (so they aren't walking down the street in a hospital gown, a lot of the people he helps don't have cars) He is just so compassionate and considerate! As far as the lesson go, Brian wants to take is super slow. He is an intellectual, so he want to know EVERYTHING and understand it in depth. We are going to help him gain a foundation in the Bible to because he feels like a lack of knowledge there is really holding him back from progressing. He is so genuine though in his desire to learn and I love that! It is just a matter of finding a healthy balance of teaching the doctrine in a logical way and feeling the Spirit :) please pray for him!

I love you all and hope you have an amazing week!!!

Serving with a Smile,

Sister Bradley

 ​​​​​​​​Look familiar? lol​

​Look! No Mountains! haha but the trees are beautiful!​

​​​​​​​​​​​The Lane family that fed me in Crossroads! I have never been more full in my life!!

Pictures of the Week!!

 ​Sister Harris is bringing home a cicada as a souvenir...gross!​

​This dog made me really worried to get out of the car....​

​yep....worry warrented....​

 ​look at that!​

 Messy object lesson with the District leader, Elder Huntington looks a bit to smug haha​

 ​We had to get M&Ms out of a bowl full of whipping cream haha​

 ​Me, Harris, Pugmire, Sorensen and elder Johnstone in the back​

 ​Happy Halloween!