Amber Ltr: 2013-12-30

Subject:  What the? Goodbye 2013!

December 30, 2013

Hi family!!

Thank you so much for sending the letter at 2:30 in the morning Mom! You are the best! Thanks for always watching out and thinking of us :) We are so blessed to have you as our mom! And I am so blessed to be a part of our family. You are all so incredible and it was so fun to get to talk to everyone on Christmas! It is totally fine on the whole time thing. Sorry I didn't see the email you sent Dad until today. I think there was a part of me that was expecting President Monson to pop up in a little window on the screen telling me it was time to get off, haha. So I'm sorry if it seemed like I was rushing! I can't tell you how much it meant to me to get to see and talk to all of you. Thanks for getting it all set up Dad! Y'all are the best!

I can't believe that Ash is coming home this week! It hardly seems possible! She has done such an incredible job and I hope that my letters can reflect hers a little bit when it comes my turn in 15 months. I am so grateful for her example. If you could send a few prayers my way that day though, it would be greatly appreciated because it is going to be hard.

It sounds like you are having a great time with G'ma! How did her present turn out? I love you G'ma! Sorry I haven't gotten a letter off to you for a bit! I'm working on one!

Also thank you so much for all my Christmas presents!!! I love them so much and thank you for all the work that went into getting them to me :) Thanks so much!

And before I forget, who is the new Oakcrest directorship??? I am dying to know!! Could you go on the website for me and check? it is just oakcrestcamp.org under staff postings.

I am definitely still riding the mission roller coaster. Tracting is really starting to be discouraging. It is so hard to try and reach these people when they won't listen to you and are "good" with where they are at or don't have the time to meet with you. There have definitely been some good moments but sadly most of them have been coming to dead ends. Which gets frustrating. But we are hoping that with the holidays coming to an end, life will return to normal a little bit. We are doing a lot of following up with people this week and hopefully find some people to teach.

But we were able to get a hold a few less active families this week which was good :) The ones we have gotten in touch with have been super friendly which is nice. Hopefully they will let us keep coming back and we can help them come back to church!

But a bright spot that started shining yesterday was that Sister H has been awesome yesterday and today! Everything really got to me yesterday and I was really discouraged and sad and she was just so positive and ready to go. It was awesome! I have really missed that side of her because it has been a while since I have seen it. Moments like that I really love her and am so grateful to have her as a companion. Now that she is happy, it will probably be time to get transferred next week. Haha what do you do? :) But if not then we are definitely going to be going strong this next transfer. Transfers are a lot scarier this time because anything could happen! Ah!! We shall see I guess...

Well I think that about wraps up my week. Give Ash a HUGE hug for me!!!! I am so excited for all of you!!! And don't let her get married for the next 15 months please!! That is absolutely not allowed. I love love love you all!!!!

xoxo

Sister Bedke, the younger :)

Amber Ltr: 2013-12-23

Subject:  Merry Christmas!!!

December 23, 2013

Hey Family!!!

Oh my gosh I am so excited to talk to you in 2 days!!!! And I can't believe that G'ma is going to be there!! That will be so great and I am so excited that she will be there when Ash gets home!! I have been thinking a lot about all of you this week as y'all are getting ready for Christmas. I got both packages, the one from the mission home and the one from Court. Thank you so much! They totally made my day!! Confession, the blanket was partially unwrapped so I definitely opened it all the way and have been using it. I decided to wait on the other ones though. But I love that blanket!! It is so soft and orange!! Thank you so much!

This is going to be pretty short cause I don't have a lot of time. But some things I love about g'ma: is her ability to make you feel so loved and important, her kindness to everyone, her example to me, being her friend and granddaughter, her willingness to reach out to people, and laughing with her, I love that she plays games with us and will stay up with us and eat cookie dough with us and she is so hot! grandma is a fox! haha i love that she has a relationship with each of her grandkids individually and that she truly loves us. Give her a huge hug from me when she gets there and I hope y'all travel safely and don't have any crazy snow storms!

I gotta go but I will talk to you at noon (our time) on christmas!! xoxoxo

Amb

Amber Ltr: 2013-12-16

Subject:  Only 9 days now!!!

December 16, 2013

Hey family!!!

Sorry that this is so late! It has been a crazy day and we are just getting around to doing emails. But it sounds like y'all had a great week! It is so fun to hear what you are doing! Thank you for the talk Dad, I printed it off and am looking forward to reading it. Good luck with your crazy schedule! Know that you are in my prayers daily and that I love you! Thanks for all you do to keep everyone going! Also I am sorry about my letter last week that was super short, I figured that since you got pics it might make up for it a little bit :) To answer your questions: it is about 5 minutes from our apartment and I think that there is one member who lives in that neighborhood. Most of them are pretty uppity (sp?) rich people who aren't very nice. We try not to tract there too often. Our are is our ward boundaries and we have just decided to make it free for all between the 3 sets of missionaries which is crazy sometimes but good. Communication between us has gotten a lot better since last transfer which is super nice. Members feed us probably 5 or 6 days a week which is super nice. Our ward is awesome!

Is there anyway you could send me a journal in my Christmas package? I am just about done with this one. I still haven't missed a day!

We had a really good week! Saturday night was one of the highlights of my mission so far. We had a lesson with an Indian family, Souji and Venkat. This was our second visit but our first official lesson. They believe in Jesus Christ but also worship other gods as well so that is where we started. We had a couple of the young women in our ward come on team ups with us and it was awesome! It was the first lesson where I really felt like I didn't stumble over my words and felt like I said what I needed to. I know the Spirit definitely helped me out. It went pretty good for the first half and then about half way through the husband had to leave, but at that point Souji spoke up and asked if we felt we had a close relationship with God. We told her that we did and that He is our father and we are His children and He loves us. She started to tear up and said how she wanted to have that relationship too. It was so powerful!! She said she wants us to come back this Saturday night as well but then we got a call from her today to reschedule it to next week. Please keep her in your prayers. We will try and stop by before then but 2 weeks is a long time for the adversary to start working on her.

I had exchanges with Sis. Blackett again this week. This time she came to Webb Bridge and we had a really good time together. Transfers always come at a good time and it always reminds me of Ash. She has given me a whole new appreciation for STL's and it makes me feel close to her. :) But we talked a lot about how we can become better missionaries and what we are willing to do for the Lord. We were a lot more bold and open with our message these past couple of days and we have seen a lot of good things come from it. People are a lot more willing to talk to you and we even had a few say we could come back! Still all of the people we are teaching come from tracting so it is important to make that as effective as we can. But I feel a lot more confident with it now and it is fun to talk to people when they will actually talk to you.

Things are even getting better with Sis. H. We have talked a lot about looking for the good and being positive and I am starting to see her more as a friend. We are starting to work well together better now. There are still some rough moments but it is so much better now than it used to be.

For Christmas calls, (AHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SO EXCITED!!!!!!!!!!!) We are going to be at the Kings at noon (our time) for lunch and we will be there with the other sisters too so we might have to be a little flexible with time. I will ask them if I can go first maybe so we can shoot for noon? I am all for 3 way calling on google plus! You can do that right? Sis King said that she has a web cam built into her computer so all I need is a google plus account to sign in by :) Just let me know what I need to do in next weeks email! Did I mention I'm excited?!!!

Well I better run but know that y'all are in my prayers daily and that I love you!!!! THank you for the prayers, love and support!!!

xoxoxoxo

Sister Bedke, the younger

Amber Ltr: 2013-12-09

Subject:  :)

December 9, 2013

Hey family!

Sorry that this is going to be super short this week but I don't have a lot of time. It has been a crazy day! Never enough time to email.

You are all incredible! I am so grateful to have you as my family and for all that you do for me. I love hearing about all the incredible things you are doing!

The miracle of the week: I got my package!!!! It only took a month and a half to get here but it came! I actually got 3 packages in one day!!! Best day ever!!!! Yes my sweater one got here and so did G'ma and G'pa K's. Thank you thank you thank you for sending those to me!!! And for the cd's and the peanut butter m & m's!!! You made my day!

There are a ton of Hindu people here! It is crazy. We are working with a few of them and I really hope things can happen there because they are seriously the friendliest people that we talk to. Yes we are still in a car thank heavens :) Things are still getting there with Sister H. Being her companion is like being on the biggest emotional roller coaster ever. Seriously she will bounce from being so happy and excited and then 2 seconds later she is super depressed. I don't know what to do with her because a lot of the time she is just really grumpy and tired and there is nothing you can do or say to make her feel any better. It really drives me crazy. But it has really forced me to look for the good in her and to give her pep talks and let her know that she CAN do it and that there is good things going on and that it is hard but that it is going to get better. I feel like I'm babysitting her sometimes though. Keep praying for me :)

It was kind of a discouraging week work wise. All of our investigators were super busy and it was really hard to get a hold of them. And we talked to a ton of people but most were not interested in learning more. Which gets discouraging. But like I keep telling Sister H, there is good things that are going on and there are small successes to be found and little tender mercies that the Lord gives us. Things will come together and start happening.

I am sleeping much better than I used to. I usually only wake up once in the night as opposed to 3 or 4 times, which is really nice. Thank you for your prayers there. I know that is what has made the difference. My coats are warm enough too. I love my boots and they keep me dry. Instead of snow we have rain and when it rains it pours! When we go tracting in the rain people look at us like we are crazy. Maybe we are... :) I agree with Ash in that the humidity makes it much seem much colder than it is. But I think we are quite a bit warmer than yall are.

Thank you so much for all your love prayers and support!!! I developed some pics today and I'll send them home so you can see :) I love you all so much!!!

oxoxox

Sister Bedke, the younger

Amber Ltr: 2013-12-02

Subject:  Two months in the mission field!

December 2, 2013

Hi family!

It sounds like you guys had a great week and a great thanksgiving! Thanks for sending the letter off so late Mom! 2:40 AM! You are incredible! I laughed at seeing the bolded underlined section of your letter :) The only way to ensure your question gets answered! Yes that is my address and yes I got the ensign. Thank you so much for sending it and for the note. It made my day! I am really happy about you being able to send packages and letters directly to me now. Poor Sister Residori is such a sweet lady but I think she is very overwhelmed with her assignment. I can't imagine handling that much mail. Did Court tell you that she met her at Lee's just before they came out? They told me all about meeting you Court and said you were such a cute girl. How bad would it be if you always sent mail to me at my apartment rather than having it go through the mission office? Every other mission does it that way. It takes so much longer to get letters to us that way and sometimes things get put in the wrong piles. I haven't gotten that package yet unfortunately. I hope it is sitting at the PO, because it definitely isn't at the mission office and they don't keep a log of when packages arrive and when she sends them out. I am so sorry for the huge mess with it!

Do you think you could send me Ash's mission journals from the beginning of her mission? Maybe like the first 2 or so? It is crazy how similar our experiences are, especially with companions, and I think that might help me out. Maybe you could send them with my long sleeve shirts if that is ok.

It was a pretty good week overall. We weren't able to get in with Joe, dang it. Satan made his son sick so we couldn't go over. Satan is the worst. So we are just praying we can find a time to work with his crazy busy schedule. On the other hand though, it is kind of exciting to think about the potential he has because Satan really doesn't want us to meet with him! We are going to give him a call either today or tomorrow and try and find a time that we can meet with him this week because we really need to get things going with him!

But we were able to get back in with some other potential investigators that we haven't been able to get a hold of for a while. The first one's name is Souji. She is a Hindu woman that we met tracting our first or second week here and she told us that we could come back but we just haven't been able to get over there til now. But we just stopped by and she remembered us! She invited us in and we met her husband and had a really nice conversation with them. We asked them a lot of questions about their culture and they kept laughing at us because we were so fascinated by it. I really like Hindu people because they are always so friendly. Sometimes I get really sick of white people. But anyways, Souji and her husband, Venkat believe in Jesus Christ! We started talking to them about the Book of Mormon and what we do as missionaries and they want us to come back next week! We left a copy of the BoM with them and they said they would read it! Sa-weet!

We are also working with another Hindu man named Ravi. I think I told you about him. But we haven't been able to get a hold of him. He wouldn't answer our texts or calls and we tried to stop by and he wasn't home. But we tried again when we were in the neighborhood again and he was home and let us in! He apologized for not getting back to us and told us that he definitely still wants to meet with us and learn more about the Book of Mormon but he just needs to get through finals first which end the week after next.

When we went tracting on Wednesday (in the FREEZING cold wind!) we met a lady named Micky, who was busy at the time but told us that we could come back on Saturday. So we did and she was actually home! She is such a sweet lady! We did how to begin teaching with her and talked to her about the Book of Mormon and she accepted a copy and said that she would read it! We are seeing her this week. She seems pretty golden as Ash would call it :) I am really excited about her!

It was mostly a better week with Sis. H. I know that there is a lesson that I am supposed to be learning from her, but it is really hard to work with her sometimes. She is just a super negative person a lot of the time and lets these little things get to her that just don't matter and then she just gets mad at me and the rest of the world. And then sometimes she is super great and we get along really well. So it is a work in progress with her. But I think for the most part it is getting better. I have started just calling her out whenever she gets mad and having her let it out. It seems to help her get it off of her chest and has helped me to develop some pretty thick skin and learn to love her in spite of it all. She did write me a very nice note a couple days ago though thanking me for what I do for her, which is a first in 7 weeks, so that was really nice. :)

I am so excited about what Andy said!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That is so cool!!!!!!!!!!!! I can't believe it!!!!! I worked so hard for him and he wants me to come back!! Yes!!!! Thanks for telling me and I definitely want to do that when I get home :) It will be nice to be paid for all that work!

For thanksgiving, we spent it with our bishop's in-laws house, the Tanners. They have this huge beautiful house and are the nicest people! Their food was delicious and they made us feel right at home. It was them, our bishop and his wife and their 3 kids, our first counselor and his wife and their 5 kids, a lady and her 2 sons that Sis. Tanner visit teaches, and a recent convert in our ward named Todd. It was a full house but we had a great time.

Well I think that about wraps up my week! I love you guys and I am so grateful for all of your love, support and prayers. I am so grateful for you!

xoxo

Sister Bedke, the younger :)