WEEK 20- transfers

Transfer voicemail- Sunday night, 9:37pm:

"Those lucky people who are leaving this zone- that would be Elder G, Elder K, Sister Hodgson!!!!!!!!!!!! Elder... etc etc etc................"

"Those who are leaving off this island- on a jet plane will be Elder G, Elder K and Sister Hodgson!"

Woooohooo!! I'm going off island! And I don't even know where I'm going! I'll go to the airport early Wednesday morning and get my ticket. That's when I'll know which island I'm heading to. The other islands that sisters are currently serving on are Hawaii, Kauai and Maui. People have been guessing that I'll go to big island, but we'll just have to see!

We had a few back to back appointments this week. At one, Sister Mck spoke a lot. I didn't say very much, and that was totally okay because the spirit wasn't giving me very much to say. I knew that the lady needed to hear specific things from sis Mck, and that was totally fine with me. It's not about who is speaking, as much as it is about who is hearing. The sweet lady who was hearing the message was most important at that moment, and she needed to hear things in the way that sis Mck can share them: sweet and peaceful. The next appointment that we went to was just the opposite. I spoke more than sis Mck. The spirit was prompting me to share certain stories or say things, and she said afterwords  that she just wasn't feeling like she needed to say that much. The man that we were teaching responded well to the way that I was sharing things: funny and comfortable. It was neat to see how Heavenly Father knows the skills and abilities that we all have and knows how to best use them to bless and help others. I could not have helped the lady in the way that sis Mck did and she feels as though she could not get through to the guy in the 2nd lesson as well. Heavenly Father knows how to take us and make us instruments in His hands. It is also neat to be able to feel who He wants to be speaking, because your mind will just be blank if He doesn't want you to share at that time. But if He wants you to speak He will fill your mind with everything that you need to say.

We are teaching a new lady named Vanessa. She is a really sweet girl. As we spoke in our appointment, we could feel how much Heavenly Father loves her. it was really neat! The whole room was filled with this feeling that we couldn't describe in any other way except "He loves you". It was just love. That is what the gospel is all about.

That is what they spoke all about in general conference. If we love God, we will be obedient to His commandments. If we love God, then we will love all of His children and we will want to share this message of love with them. And that doesn't mean that everybody has to go out and be full time missionaries. That means that the way we live our lives should help others to see and feel of Heavenly Father's love. Whether through service, or kindness, or your example, you are spreading the message of the gospel- the message of Heavenly Father's love.

I can testify that He loves all of us. He loved us so much that He sent His son to die for us. And His son loves us so much that He was willing, not only to die for us, but to rise again and live for us. We can show our love as we live for them.

-Love, Sister Hodgson

Week -19 sick days and wonderful blessings

First the answer to mom’s question of the week;  The first sound I hear when I wake up is the alarm, and I jump out of bed to go turn it off! Then I can hear the sound of our fan...its super noisy! But we're used to it now so I hardly even realize. Then, let's be honest, I usually I hear an ambulance or police siren......it's the ghetto.             

Okay so this was one of the toughest weeks of my life! I'm doing so much better now, but it was just a hard week- Emotionally more than anything, but in addition to that, I got sick this week!

I love missionary work! I love working hard! But this week my comp and I spent a few days home. At first when she suggested we stay home and recover a bit I was totally against it. But after a few appointments I realized that she was right and I needed to take a break. I was exhausted! She gave me my medicine then put me back to bed! I slept so much that day!!!!! Then we slowly eased back into the work as I got better and we are back out on regular schedule now.

This goes to mom’s other question; how have I seen the Lord's hand in this week? In the priesthood blessing I got! It is amazing to see the immediate relief when we get a blessing. I know that the Lord works through normal people to bless all of His children, and It is especially neat to see a young elder bless you with the things that Heavenly Father would tell you if He was here. and If you don't feel like you need a blessing, prayer is a great help too!!!!!

My ward mission leader and his lovely wife are fantastic!  Brother and sister Winward! They tell us that we are always welcome in their home and they mean it!!!!!!! They make everything in life fun and they really support us in the work. They check in on us every day and make sure we are doing well!  hes a military medic.  In this picture  hes breaking in his new boots.

We got to go on an amazing hike this week! We hiked through a muddy forest and got to a part where you have to climb up a bunch of rocks, and then it gets to the waterfall!! It was so tall!!! And the best part was that it started raining while we were hiking!! haha yay more mud:) it was really fun!

We were visiting people in a nice apartment complex that we go to a lot, and I remembered one of the girls that we had met there a long time ago. We had started teaching her a while ago but because she was a minor we would need to get parental permission before continuing on, and we hadn't asked her parents yet. So we finally decided to go and visit her. We asked her to introduce us to her family and she did. We got to pray with her family and find out some of the struggles that they are going through right now. They commented on how they really needed us to come that night. It was so neat that Heavenly Father knew that they needed a visit that night, and He let us know. The dad felt the spirit very strongly during our meeting and he wanted us to teach both of his children (the girl we had taught before and her brother).

The spirit will always guide us to those who need us if we are prepared and if we listen!

Love you all!

-Sister Hodgson

WEEK 18- Jefferey R Holland and why you should stock your missionarie's fridge

This week Elder Jeffrey R. Holland came to Oahu! He spoke to all of the missionaries on the island. Because I was in the choir, I got to sit on the front row, and boy was that a super great experience! He shook every single person's hand and looked us right in the eye. His wife also spoke, and Elder and Sister Soares. Sister Holland was so sweet and smiley, and every time we were singing I would smile super big because I was so excited, and she kept smiling back at me!! Then during the last song, she waved to me and mouthed "I love you". She totally made me cry. I had been having a hard day and I really needed to feel special. Her whole talk too was on feeling good enough- just what I needed to hear. Elder Holland told us to work hard and go to bed exhausted every night! He made me want to work so much harder and be so much better! It was really neat to be there and listen to an Apostle of the Lord.

We had a neat experience this week in a lesson. My companion was talking and then she finished her thought and looked at me. That's kinda how we trade off talking, so that meant that it was my turn to speak. I had nothing to say. My mind was completely blank. Then I just started talking, and a really neat thought just jumped out of my mouth. When I finished, our investigator Ryan said "that's really crazy, because I was totally thinking about that exact thing in sunday school today." That was a strong testimony building moment for me to see how the Lord works through ordinary people to do extraordinary things. It was neat to see the promises from the scriptures fulfilled. Doctrine and Covenants 38:8 says "Open your mouths and they shall be filled". Doctrine and Covenants 100:6 says "for it shall be given you in the very hour, yea, in the very moment, what ye shall say."

This week was zone conference. I love President Warner and his wife. They are so sweet! Also, something they do at zone conference is they have every missionary prepare a talk on the same topic, then during the conference they call on a few to speak. The topic was "the importance of recognizing the Lord's hand in our work" and guess who had to speak? yup, me. I was super nervous, but it went well. Also, the assistants to the president and the zone leaders did a dance number from high school musical "we're all in this together".....that was inspiring;) haha it was really funny.

I almost forgot! one night this week we went to go pick a sister up from the airport! she was coming in from the marshal islands for a doctor's appointment. and guess what time the flight came in? that's right, 2:50 am. So we got up at 2:10 and went to the airport and drove around for a while but didn't see her. One hour passed, then two, then they closed the airport because everyone had landed. I was like "ummmm...excuse me mr. security guard, is anyone else going to come out?" he told me not till tomorrow. Which is super unfortunate because we had no idea where this sweet sister was. so I ran all over the airport and couldn't find her. Then we called the assistants and they said to just go home. So at about 5:30 we got back to bed. but I got up in time to still do personal study! i was just 5 minutes behind schedule. anyway, apparently she ended up not coming but nobody told the Assistants so they couldn't tell us. Fun times:)

On Thursday night, after my companion had just fallen asleep and I was about to climb in my bed I heard someone pounding on our door! I ran to my companion's bed and shook her awake saying "there's someone at the door!" she shot out of bed and we ran out to the front room. They shouted "It's the Honolulu police" and I was thinking "really?!! we can't catch a break" I had no idea why they were here. Then they said again "It's the police!" and I recognized our zone leader's voice. It turns out they were just checking in on us. Our phone died because we lost the charger in the move and we asked them for a new one. But now we're all good and we can charge our phone again! yay!

oh and one more thing from this week that I forgot to include in the big email. After church, one of the sweet young mothers (21 years old, mother of 2, non member husband whos out of town) in our ward mentioned that she was going to have to go shopping because she was all out of food and she felt bad starving her kiddos. We thought about it and told her that as friends and missionaries we know that keeping the Sabbath day holy is so important! SO we told her we would bring her some of our food. I am so grateful that we have such wonderful members in our ward who had given so much food to us, so we had plenty to share with this sister.

Okay, to answer this week's question a normal p-day is like this:

get up, exercise, personal study, more personal study, then we pick up our carpool buddies and go emailing and shopping. We throw some laundry in the wash, then we usually have a zone activity (hiking, basketball, frisbee). then at 6:00 we drive everybody to dinner and go to our dinner appointment.  Then we might have time to visit a few people before dark, but usually we don't so we just go back home and do more paper work.

One of my favorite p-days is any p-day that we hike! I love hiking in Hawaii!

Who know's what we're doing today! ......wait, I do. We're taking our car into the shop to repair the dent from the flat tire incident. but other than that. WHO KNOWS! :)

Have a lovely week everybody! and don't forget to pray!

-Sister Hodgson

17 B- tell us about where you live

This is  the view from our apt. we're the tiny building amongst the tall ones.

my apartment is a one bedroom on the third floor. the windows are the kind that don't close and there's no AC. but we do have one very beloved fan. We don't have hot water in our sink. we have wood floors in the kitchen/ living room. we have a carpet bedroom and a tile bathroom. We have two small plastic tables pushed together for our study desk, one old recliner from a ward member, a weird glass table in the corner that we don't really use and a dresser with three drawers each in our bedroom.

we have plenty of shelving, plenty of cockroaches and a mold- free shower curtain. There is a pet cat that lives in our parking lot named celery. and a gimpy bird that I named gregory.

we live in the ghetto- as previously mentioned- so there is a lot of smoking, police sirens , and sketchy people who sleep in the park next door. But we have nice neighbors and a great stove and fridge too!

WEEK 17- Hiking, losing my companion and FOOD

Last week on pday we went on a hike! There was a part where you could either continue on by climbing up the rocks next to the waterfall, or you could just wait at the bottom. I waited with one of the Samoan ward sisters that did not want to climb, and sister McKinney went up with the other Samoan ward sister. Then about a half hour later, that sister came back down by herself. I was like "hey where's my companion?" and she told me that she had gone up further with some others . So we just waited at the bottom. We started to get a little bit worried. So the Zone leaders went back up to look for them. About 20 minutes later they came back down by themselves. They couldn't find them! I was thinking "awesome......i totally lost my companion in the forest....that's so not ideal!" We got down to the cars and they weren't there so I turned around and started running to go back to the waterfall. After about a minute, I ran into the zone leaders and they were like "where are you going?" I told them "back to the waterfall." they were like "um...we can't let you do that" I’m like "ya, but I lost my companion!" and they're like "but you can't just go running off into the forest by yourself........that would just be one more person that we're responsible for if anything bad happens." They kinda had a point....it's probably never good to run off into the forest by yourself anyway. So the zone leaders and I drove up the road to see if they had hiked far enough to get onto the main road. We didn't find them, but while we were heading back we came across an ambulance and a few police cars dealing with something on the side of the road. I was like "this really isn't good......". we kind of slowed down, but couldn't see any one that we recognized. Then we got a call saying that they were back at the cars. I was so glad to hear that everyone was safe and everything was okay. We found out later that the elders were catching crawdads  and sister  M couldn't just hike back through the forest alone. haha.........18 year old elders seriously need to keep an eye on the time..........

On September 11th, we got to do service at Pearl Harbor. We got to clean out the sick bay. ( she did not mention which boat…hahahah ) It was really neat to be there on such a special day. Then we toured the boiler room afterwards. 

After the service, we went to a lunch appointment. It was Mexican food: Horchatta, burritos and some sort of spinach/bacon/cream cheese chicken. I don't like milk, so sister McKinney drank her horchatta and then slyly switched cups with me and drank mine too..... the only problem is, if you drink it, they pour more. So She had to drink two more cups of horchatta! And she doesn't like bacon or chicken, so I had to eat her chicken thing....well most of it. We got outside and I whispered to her "I have chicken in my skirt". She was like "What!!!??" . this is becoming a common occurrence.

Our Pad got fumigated this day also. We had do bag up almost EVERYTHING!!!!!!! Our car is like a hobo shopping cart it has so much stuff in it!!!! We spent $40.00 washing every item of clothing and bedding that we own.  

We are having a lot of success working with members that are “less active”. It is really neat to see how much everyone just needs love. That solves almost ANY problem.  We are working with one sweet young lady to prepare her to go through the temple now that she is coming to church again. After she was baptized, she moved and she hasn't gone to church in years! She recently started coming back and she is doing so well!!!!! We love meeting with her.

We helped another lady bag up all of her food because her house is going to be sprayed for termites....we know how that feels.... we did a LOT of bagging this week.

Our 1st councilor in the bishopric came to us after a meeting and said that he heard from a missionary who recently got home, that we had found a man hanging in our park.........my ,word spreads so quickly! And I don't know if I already mentioned that a sister serving in Hawaii kai asked me if I was the sister hodgson who found the guy hanging in the park next to my house......um yep that's me...... she said that she heard from her mother. crazy!

Also, we took our car to get it;s  oil changed and while we were waiting, we walked around a little shopping center. A guy sitting out in front of a plate lunch window restaurant said "you look hungry" we were like "o we're fine but thank you!" he insisted that we get a drink at least and then went on to order us hamburgers and fries as well. The Hawaiian people are SO hospitable!!! but we can't eat all of this food!!!!!! he said we look like we're losing weight... BEST. COMPLIMENT. EVER!

until next week-

Sister Hodgson <3