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

WEEK 16- cockroaches , bedbugs and mice

Well, another sister got transferred in to the Samoan ward, so we are out of the tripanionship….. sorta.... We went back to our pad and found a ton of cockroaches!!! They had taken over while we were away. We bought a spray and a bunch of traps and spent all day cleaning everything and killing so many bugs! At first we were totally screaming and freaking out, but by the end of the day, I smushed one with my bare hands! So when we were finally satisfied that the whole house was clean, we went to sleep. In the middle of the night I found a bug crawling on my and killed it then went back to sleep We woke up in the morning and my companion had a ton of bites! I only had a few. She had picked up some sheets from the tabernacle earlier that day and I don't know if they were super clean. We found more bed bugs and had to move back to the Samoan sister’s pad. We didn't take any of our bedding (for obvious reasons) so we slept on the couch with our towels as blankets. It was super pathetic. The senior couples at the mission office said they will send someone in to take care of it today. But until then, we're missionary hobos.

All of this "homelessness" has brought about a lot of conversation for sister Mckinney and I. We were told by ward members of missionaries whose whole pad had to be burnt to the ground because of bedbug infestations. So we started talking about what we would want to take out of our pad. We decided on our scriptures, our journals, and our study notebooks. Everything else could be replaced, or we would be okay without. We read Matthew chapter 6. In the last few verses it says "Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?....for your Heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you." We loved those verses. We just have to focus on what we're supposed to be doing here and everything else will work out.

We have been so blessed these past few weeks to see a lot of  members that have been struggling, coming back to church. We have been teaching them, giving service, and visiting them, and we are seeing the fruits of those efforts. Really, people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. As we show these people that we love them and care about them, they are feeling more welcome and wanted at church.

We met a lot of new people this week that are interested in learning about the church.

Also, I had my therapy session, which was good, and helpful.  The therapist was good. He said to read over the journal entries of my blessings every day. I’m doing much better now. The image has softened with time. In one of the blessings that I was given it said that Heavenly Father would erase the image from my memory.

My companion and I are getting along great! We really love each other and are learning a lot from each other. We just have so much fun working together.

Oh and on Sunday, we found a mouse in the church and trapped it. Some brothers in the ward took care of it from there.

love,

Sister Hodgson

I asked about Transfers in her mission…only read on if you care about that….

Sunday night before transfers our zls leave a voicemail like "the people who need to pack their bags are.......elder such and such, sister what’s her face, elder whomever, etc." Then on Wednesday, the people who will be affected by the transfer drive to the transfer meeting at the tabernacle. Those from outer islands who fly in to Oahu are there and those from Oahu, leaving to other islands are there. Also those from Oahu transferring to somewhere else on Oahu come. If you are staying outer island you just stay because it would cost a FORTUNE for the church to fly all of the missionaries in and then back out.

In the meeting, they call out companionships; you stand, hug then go and sit on your zone's bench till everyone is sorted. Then you go out and get to work!

WEEk 15 - Transfers, Tripanionships and Therapy

Transfer week!!!!   I'm staying here in Honolulu and sister M went to Maui.  Before she left, we went back to the park to put some flowers by the tree.  There were flowers and leis and so many things
there already.  His mom was by the tree too so we got to talk with her
and get to know a little more about her son.  That was nice.
      I found out what all the bug bites were from.......bed
bugs, unfortunately.  We washed everything and we haven't had problems
since:)
     On Wednesday morning, I went to drop Sister M off at the
airport, then all I had to do was drive down one level and pick up
another sister to drive to transfer meeting, but airports are
confusing and somehow I ended up on the freeway and drove down to sand
island! I totally got lost in Hawaii for like 45 minutes without a
companion.  crazy! but I found my way back with a map and a prayer and
we all made it to transfer meeting safely.
     I was looking around at all of the sisters and I thought to
myself  "I hope she's my companion" and now she is!!!! it was super
funny that I "picked" her and then she turned out to actually be my
companion!  She is so great!  Sister McKinney is from provo utah.  she
was called to serve in the visitor's center and has been serving for
10 months.  She is so nice to everyone and reminds me of a Disney
princess. I love her!


     We are also companions with sister Meatonga right now !  All of my
companion's names start with an m!
 Sister Meatonga is so much fun!  ( we do not have a picture of her since sister hodgson could not send photos on her "labor day computer"...but this one is from a member who fed these two before they became a three!)
She is part Samoan.  Her companion is in the hospital on maui.  She
can't fly over here yet because she's still sick. So we're in a
tripanionship until then.  Sister Meatonga is over the Samoan ward. It
has been fun but hard to cover two areas.
     So, our first day together, the three of us were driving and we
saw a really old man leaning on a street sign and his head was
bleeding.  Sister Meatonga pulled over and we ran over to help him.
We were like "Hello sir. are you okay?" he kinda mumbled a bit and we
asked him "do you know that your head is bleeding?". He said he did,
but he was trying to walk to get his hair cut.  We took his arms and
started walking him towards the hair place.  We asked more questions
and found
out that he lived in a care home.  Sister McKinney asked "did you tell
someone that you were leaving?".  He hadn't told any one so we turned
around to walk him back.  By this point, we had notice that he was
missing a large piece of skin from his elbow.  He was pretty bloody on
his elbow and head, and he couldn't remember where he lived so we
decided that we should maybe call for some assistance.  So I pulled
out my phone and called 911 again! ( this is getting to be a habit in Honolulu) 
 Just as I stepped aside to make the phone call, the old man threw up
and it got on sister McKinney's feet!  It was a super crazy first day
out of the visitor's center for her!  Welcome to Hon-West!  The police
and ambulance came and took the old man to the hospital. Then we went
to sister Meatonga's ward mission leader's house and washed up to our
shoulders with soap and hot water.  So that was exciting.
     Now, we're basically living out of two apartments.  We sleep at
Sister meatonga's pad, but we go back to our pad to shower and eat.
Both sisters have been super sweet helping me deal with the issues
from Saturday.  They wait to fall asleep until I'm all settled in bed
and they turn out the lights.   They told me that I could wake them up
any time that I need.  The mission president found out about what happened and called to talk to me.  He wants me to talk to the mission
therapist, so I have an appointment on Wednesday. and He sent the zone
leaders to give me a blessing.  It was a really neat blessing and I'm
already seeing some of the promises from the blessing coming about.
Two nights ago, I even got up by myself in the middle of the night to
use the restroom and I wasn't even too scared!  haha it's a silly
milestone, but it's huge to me.  Heavenly Father is really helping me
to not be afraid.  He was one of my brothers , someone's son, a child of God, we pray for his peace.
     I don't know if I ever told you much about R.  She was the
investigator who called us and we started meeting, but she ended up
being in the zone leaders ward so we had to pass her off to them.
Well, she stopped meeting with them, and we got back in touch with
her.  So she's meeting with us again!  It's super funny how this has
all been turning out.
     We had a lot of service opportunities this week.  We cleaned a
sweet young family's house.  That was fun! We cleaned our bishop's
kitchen, and we helped some kids with their math, english and science
homework.  It's weird that school has started again.
     Because we are covering 2 areas this week, we have been able to
see a whole different side of Honolulu.  Military housing is a bit
different than KPT.  Kpt is a set of 16 story buildings with a TON of
tiny apartments.  A lot of Micronesians, Cheukeese, and Samoan people
live there.  Sister Meatonga took sister McKinney and I around to
visit people.  Within an hour we got asked if we were twins two times!
 (We kind of look alike, but not too much.... but we realized that we
were the only 2 white people in the whole complex.  That might have
had something to do with it.  We stuck out like sore thumbs!)  We got
to play "football" with some really little kids.  They were so cute!
     We also had a Samoan dinner this week.  Kinda.  We went to a
restaurant and the lady was going to buy us a plate lunch.  I looked
over the menu, and all I really wanted was the eggrolls. So I ordered
a side of egg rolls and Sister McKinney ordered a plate lunch so we
could split it.  When the Lady went to pay for the food, she picked up
the order and looked in the box.  She became very puzzled and asked
which one of us didn't order food.  I told her that I had just ordered
the egg rolls.  She still looked confused.  Sister McKinney tried to
help explain that we were going to split the plate lunch.  The lady
looked half confused and half offended.  She couldn't imagine why we
didn't get our own food and why we hadn't fully accepted her offer to
feed us all.  Sister Meatonga chimed in and said "There not very big.
they don't eat very much."  The lady kind of shrugged, and seemed half
satisfied with that answer.  So she gave us the food, we thanked her
and left.  Sister Meatonga has been filling us in on a lot of Samoan
cultural formalities since then.
     We went to the Samoan ward Sacrament meeting.  Their Language is
beautiful!!!  but complex.  I loved singing the hymns in Samoan, but I
had no idea what we were saying!  It was great!

Until next week!
love, Sister Hodgson