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! 

Email From Jenny: Don't Judge a Book by it's Cover

Sent Monday, Oct 31 11:35 am

Hello Family and Friends!! What an interesting week it has been! I hope all is going well for all of you and I have been praying for you :) so, this week we found some really interesting people to talk to. A lady let us into her house to talk with her after knocking on the door which never happens! We were able to talk with her for like an hour about Christ and how that has helped her in her life. We also talked about the Book of Mormon and she seemed really interested and willing to read it so we were super excited! :) yesterday (Sunday) was the most interesting though haha so we are going around knocking on doors and this man answers the door, around 26 years old. We tell him we are missionaries and ask him if he has a faith in Jesus Christ (most people do here in Indiana) and he tells us that he used to be Catholic but he got offended by his Priest and so now he is a Satanist...WHOAH...we definitely were not expecting that!....haha our initial reaction was shock and unease, but we kept talking to him and learned what he believes and come to find out he doesn't even believe in Satan! That was probably more shocking lol he said that he's pretty much just like an atheist but that he believes in doing good to other people and that because he does good to others it will be returned to him. Long story short, we gave him a Book of Mormon and he said he would really like to read it. He is moving soon, but he is moving pretty close to a young single adult ward, so hopefully he reaches out so he can meet some good people and learn more. This was a pretty cool experience for Sister Harris and I because initially we wanted to disregard this man as someone who wouldn't be interested in what we had to say because of the religious background and the way he looked. But, the more we talked to him, the more we were able to see where he was coming from and that the gospel of Jesus Christ may be the very thing he has been missing in his life and searching for. So my big take home from this is to talk to everyone! We are all children of a God who wants us to return to Him! The situation could have ended a lot different if we just said "oh alright, I guess we will go to the next house" upon finding out his religion but faith and listening to the Spirit when talking to him led us to a whole different outcome. I want to invite all of you to open your mouths to share your testimonies. In the scriptures we see examples of people who converted and what did they do after they had this deep faith and conversion? They SHARED it!! Please share your testimony! People out there need this light and truth that we have. They need Jesus Christ in their lives more fully. I invite you all to think about the testimony you have, and who you could possible share it with. I know by sharing the testimony you have, you will strengthen it and develop a greater desire to strengthen it even more.

I love you all!! Happy Halloween!! :)

Serving with a smile, 

Sister Bradley​​​

More Goodies From Indiana

 

Posted on Jenny's sister Christy's Facebook page.  

"So we had the sweet sister missionaries over for dinner and we found out that Sister Bradley is from Henderson - graduated from Basic High School and sisters with some fun friends of Josh and mine from HS - Laura and Christy" -Alisha Brandon

What a blessing it is to get treasures like this, to see pictures of our sweet Jenny and know she is loved by the ward members in Indiana!