Short and Sweet

Hello!

I am super terribly sorry, but I don't have a whole lot of time today. First of all, today was SUPPOSED to be the day we hiked Mount St. Helens, but they changed their minds because of the season. We don't have ice picks or snow gear so... They called it off. Even though I already paid for my permit and we can't get a refund. That kinda stinks, but hey. Just one more thing to do when I come back and visit the mission! This week was wonderful. One of the best parts? I got to hold a chinchilla! 

Just kidding, that wasn't the BEST part, but it was pretty great. The best part of this week was Zone Conference. President Taylor is just full of so much wisdom!!! I learned more in that 6 hours than I do in like a 6 week period on my mission. When we got home we were so tired... That happens sometimes. When you are so filled with the Spirit, it exhausts you because He talks straight to our spirit. It's the best feeling. Some tidbits that I learned from both President Taylor and the Spirit include some super wise words... "Fence sitting hurts." Wisdom, right?! It's such a simple statement, but it's also pretty deep. The Gospel is like a big huge delicious pie, but sometimes people try and eat the whole pie (learn all the doctrine) at once, and they make themselves sick! We were told not to try and consume it all at once and make ourselves sick, swearing it off for good because it is too much to handle all the first time and all at once. Such good advice! Go one piece of pie at a time. Learn about a new aspect of the Gospel, pray to know if it's true, and then move on to another principle. That's the best way to gain a testimony of this Gospel: one step at a time. 

I'm so sorry, but I seriously have no time. Here are some wonderful gem quotes that I heard at Zone Conference and at various times throughout the week that are some fruit for thought:

"Christ changes people, and changed people change the world."

"If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything."

"A woman's instinct is wiser than reason." -The movie, "The Testaments." Hahahaha

Pretty great, huh? Someone else said something too this week that I adapted into my own statement. It's this: It is incredibly humbling when I look at my responsibilities, but it's encouraging when I see my support. That's totally how I feel lately. Being a missionary is super hard, but I am supported by so many amazing people, I am overwhelmed by the love I feel. I just wanted to take a second out of my incredibly short email to thank you for loving me and supporting me. I only have 99 days left on the mission as of today, and though I am nervous to come home and leave mission life, I am excited to be able to thank you all personally. I love you and will talk to you again next week! Have a wonderful week!

Love Always,

Sister Nicole Guilott

P.S. More pictures!

"My dear Sister Soper.  She is an office missionary, and her time is almost up!  I 'm so sad!  But I sure love her!"

Saturday's Warriors :)

This week was wonderful.  Marvelous.  Phenomenal.  Miraculous!  It was a GOLDEN weekend!  The first part of the week was slow and uneventful, and I got discouraged, but the weekend was something else.  I had been praying all week very hard for a miracle or two, and on Saturday, God answered my prayer!  I'm just going to list the miracles that happened on Saturday so you can get a glimpse of why I am so happy! :)

1. The woman we have been teaching who is now on date for May 30th has had ONE hold up the entire time she has been taught - her husband. He isn't active, and he doesn't really like missionaries, so she has been patiently waiting for him to return to activity before she decides to get baptized. Well, she was our first appointment on Saturday morning, and her husband was there! We talked with him the whole time, and I think he decided he liked us by the end. Maybe it had something to do with our shared love for the Fast and the Furious... I dunno. Could be. Haha! He was receptive to our teaching, and I think it helped his wife feel better about baptism!

2. We were going around trying some potential investigators who were in our Area Book, and we decided to try one named Martha. We had planned to try her on Sunday, but I thought why not try her now? So we did. Well, Martha doesn't live at the address they had listed, but a sweet girl named Valerie does! We told her who we were, and she was super excited! She said she wanted to come to church with us on Sunday (she didn't, but she took a Book of Mormon and said she wants to come back and teach her more)! We are excited to teach her!

3. We went and visited some new members who are currently living in a motel off the freeway... The miracles is that with Russian Mafia, hookers, and drug dealers ALL over the motel, we didn't die. :)

4. We contacted 3 referrals and got return appointments with all of them! Yeah for new people added to our teaching pool!

5. We went to teach some members, and ended up teaching 2 of the 11 nonmembers that live in the house. We are going back tonight to teach them again! So many new people to teach!

6. I have been praying fervently for help with one of my goals for months now. I have been asking and asking and asking and asking, and yet I have come no closer to achieving it... Friday night I said a prayer and made a sort of bargain with Heavenly Father (I was almost giving up... This kind of prayer is not acceptable normally) where I promised Him that I would not waste a single second of the rest of my mission if He would grant me the blessings I "needed" and that I have been asking for for months. This kind of thing doesn't just happen, so I knew I wouldn't really get a solid answer, but Saturday night at dinner, the member we were eating with just happened to mention something that she had attained that previous week that was a duplicate of one she already had, so she didn't need it any more and wondered if we wanted it. What she had was EXACTLY what I needed! God answered my prayer in the absolute best way possible. My companion knows about his goal, and so when the member gave us this gift, we both got emotional because we knew that God was answering me. After we left dinner, we sat in the car and cried because of what a miracle this was. We then said a prayer of gratitude, and told our Heavenly Father that because He had held up His end of the deal, we would do our part too. 

Ever since then, I have been nothing but happy, and we have been working our tails off! On Saturday, we became warriors fighting as hard as we can to counteract the evil that is out there, and we will not hold back! Every little thing seems like the worlds biggest blessing now, and I have never been so focused on the work all my mission. I hate that statement because it means I wasn't working as hard as I could before now, but I am finally able to see what God expects of me, and I know that He wants to bless me and answer my prayers. He wants us to be happy, not miserable! But that only comes when we do our part. We promised Him before we even came to this earth that we would be His disciples and follow Him. The more we strive to keep that promise, the more He blesses us! Have a wonderful week and find someone to serve! I love you!

Love Always,

Sister Nicole Guilott

P.S. Pictures!

"Our new child."

"Doesn't he look like me?"

"Classic Washington."

"And MORE classic Washington."

"Don't ask why my head is that way...I dunno either."

Working for our Goals

I don't know if I've told you, but our mission has a goal of 100 baptisms in a month.  We have decided to aim for May (because there are 5 Saturdays and 5 Sundays haha), and the most we have ever had in a month is 48, so it is quite a jump.  But I know that this is the Lord's will.  It is what He expects of us, so as we show our faith and work our hardest, we will be able to accomplish the goal He has set before us.  I am SOO excited about it!  We have been praying fervently for God to put us in the path of those who are ready to receive the restored gospel, and it's been amazing because He has been answering our prayers!

We had a lesson with one of our investigators, Ivan, who is on date for August 4th. The Spirit was incredibly strong (it always is when we teach him), and as we taught about the Plan of Salvation, I felt prompted to teach him a little bit about the temple and the importance of the covenants we make in the Lord's Holy House. So I did. We eventually got around to telling him that the covenants he makes in the temple will mean the most to him, and since August 4th is a significant date to him, it might be better for him to get baptized as soon as he is ready, and to aim for going through the temple on August 4th of next year. He said he felt good about that, and guess what date he decided he is going to pray about? May 9th! We were thrilled. And kinda shocked. I don't know why there is always the element of surprise, I KNOW that God is in this work and that He knows what He is doing. After all, Nephi says it best in 1 Nephi 3:7 - 

"...I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded, for I know that the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he commandeth them."

God wouldn't tell us to aim for 100 baptisms if He was just gonna sit on the sidelines and let us figure it out ourselves. He will provide a way! Later in the week, we had another miracle. An investigator, Heidi, has been waiting for her husband to be active in the church again before she gets baptized. It's been hard... but she was on date for next March. Yeah, March of 2016. :/ A few days ago when we went over to teach her, we prayed beforehand to know what we can ask her so that we can better understand her concerns, and know how to best teach her. We hardly had to say a word, and she told us everything. Long story short, she told us she would like to bump her baptismal date up, and she is now praying about May 30th. :) It blows my mind how this is all happening. And that was just in one week! I can't wait to see what other miracles happen as we go forth with faith and continue to pray for those miracles. This truly is God's work.

Besides all the miracles, this week was FUN! I love seeing my progression as a missionary, and I know that this week I grew somehow, because I have been genuinely enjoying the work! I mean, I have always loved this work, but sometimes it is hard... And this week, it didn't feel difficult at all because we were doing our best, and we had a good time while we did it. :) We laugh and we sing and we teach and we bring people closer to Christ. There's nothing better. We got to teach a 15 minute "lesson" of sorts about modesty to the activity day girls, and that was super fun! There were only 4 of them, but they were adorable! We also got to do service for one family who has a 16 year old daughter, and then 5 boys under the age of 10. They JUST had their 5th baby, and Dad works, so we spent something like an hour a day doing dishes, laundry, and just tidying up the house. You all know that I LOVE cleaning. That's not sarcasm! Cleaning and organizing is relaxing to me, and sometimes super fun! So that was pretty great too. 

I am so grateful that I get to be here in such a beautiful area serving such beautiful spirits. I know that I'm not perfect, but the Atonement is real, and I will always have the chance to repent! Someone said recently, probably quoting an Apostle, that "of all acts, mans repentance is the most divine. The greatest of all faults is to be conscious of none." I have many a fault, but I am aware of most of them and I am doing my best to change them. God is good, and He loves me. I am so excited to see what other miracles He brings so that we might accomplish the things He has asked us to do. I love you! I'll talk to you later!

Love Always,

Sister Nicole Guilott

P.S. Pictures

"Mystery Machine"

"Ancient runes from the Immortal Instruments series?"

"Me wishing the sun would calm down and bring back some snow or something.  Heat + Missionary Attire = Not my Fave . . ."

"I was singing one of Quasimodo's songs from The Hunchback of Notre Dame"

"We do crazy things with our extra time before bed. HA!"

Floods and Fulfillment

What a week. It started a little bit crazy... On Tuesday night, Sister Eyerly and I were finishing getting her packed and doing what we could to clean the apartment until about 10:30, then we realized what time it was, panicked about accidental disobedience, and got ready for bed as fast as we could. We were finally in bed, and at about 11 o'clock, we heard a terrible noise upstairs. It sounded like someone broke down a door or something and had come into the house... We both froze. Then all of a sudden we heard some noise down in OUR part of the house. The creep could be inside our apartment and Sister Richardson (the sweet lady we live with) wouldn't hear a thing because she had her hearing aids out and she was in bed! So I grabbed a heavy-weight flashlight, ready to BEAT the intruder, and headed out into the apartment. Good new is, it wasn't a human. It was water. There was water dripping from the ceiling vent conveniently into our kitchen sink, so Sister Eyerly and I ran upstairs to see what was going on. In the upstairs kitchen, a pipe under the sink had burst or something and was spewing water EVERYWHERE. The kitchen was quickly flooding - water was under the stove, under the sink, in the cupboard, and creeping toward the living room. I ran and got Sister Richardson, or almost slipped on the water, and we did our best to soak up the water with towels. Eventually, we found an emergency stop lever thing and were able to stop the water, but the mess was ridiculous. Long story short, they cleaned up the water upstairs, and I was in charge of the downstairs. Water was seeping out of the walls downstairs and our entire kitchen was flooded as well. So... That was a fun last night for Sister Eyerly. We were up for a couple more hours trying to get everything wiped up so there wouldn't be too much water damage, but the stuff in the walls and in the ceiling downstairs, we just couldn't do anything about. So far, it hasn't been a problem, so let's hope it stays that way. :P

On Wednesday, transfers happened. Sister Depew was coming from Columbia River in Portland, and that's where Sister Eyerly was going, so our transfers were pretty quick. It was fun though because we got to watch the transfer meeting via skype from the Tongan meetinghouse in Portland. One of the new missionaries was Elder King... The connection was kind of bad, so it skipped around a lot, but I'm pretty sure it was Braden King from High School! That is so exciting. I love having fellow Vikings serving in my same mission. It's so fun to have a High School family and a Mission Family, and it's even better when there are members and friends that belong to both. :) I hope I get to see him soon! My new companion, Sister Depew, is amazing. I absolutely adore her. We are seriously gonna have the best transfer of my whole mission together because the end is so near for the both of us, and we are DETERMINED to not waste a single second of it.

"Me and Sister Eyerly"

"Me and Sister Depew"

Besides the ACTUAL flood, my soul was flooded with the Spirit this weekend! General Conference!!!!!! Oh boy, it was truly amazing, wasn't it? Much like the Conference in October, every single talk that was given this time around was an answer to one of my questions. I had a couple questions that I went into General Conference with, and every single one of them was answered multiple times. I love the way that inspiration works. How funny was it that most of the talks in Conference were about marriage and families? I personally loved it because there is nothing I want more in this life than an eternal family, and nobody gives better advice and council when it comes to those things than the Prophet, Apostles, and General Authorities. I absolutely loved General Conference. It's strange to think that I'll be home for the next one though... 

"Still making sure I keep that tradition!"

Another fun thing that I got to do this week was play some classical music on a grand piano at an old folk home. Playing the piano is always fulfilling to my soul, but especially when I am playing and there are cute little old people cheering for me and applauding me while they eat their dinner at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. Hahaha. One man came and sat next to the piano and would yell out things like, "Wooooo EEE! You tickle those ivories, girl!" He's kind of my favorite. They invited me back, so I think we are going to make this a weekly thing. 

I have one last experience to share. Ever since being in this area, we have attended an Addiction Recovery Meeting. Three weeks ago, one of the ladies in the meeting received a 1-Year Sobriety coin, and we all passed it around and it was a very cool moment for her. Well, this Wednesday when we attended, it was Sister Depew's first time. To make a long story short, she knows the lady that just earned her coin! She taught her once in one of her previous areas! She said that at the beginning of her mission, this lady was living in her car, didn't have custody of her children, and was pretty much crazy because she was ALWAYS hopped up on drugs. She said that seeing her was shocking because she was so cleaned up, she is President of the Oxford house she is currently living in, and she is able to have her kids with her. It's a huge transition! After the meeting, the sweet lady came up to Sister Depew and told her that she had saved her life. One night about 13 months ago when she was homeless and dealing with all of the crazy that comes with a drug-filled life, she thought to pray. She lifted her hands up in the air and said, "Jesus, I need a miracle!" Not 30 seconds later, Sister Depew and her companion called. They had never talked to her before, she was just a potential investigator in the phone whose name they didn't recognize. GOD DOESN'T DO RANDOM!!!! The lady said that after that phone call, she felt like she could really change her life around. So she did. And here we are. Isn't that amazing?!

I just love how the Lord puts people into our lives, and puts us into others lives at the exact moment they need us. It is because He loves us each so individually and so perfectly. I sometimes can't believe that He cares so much about me, but then I open my eyes a little wider and see the many things He is blessing me with, and I KNOW He loves me. It's just such an amazing feeling to be infinitely loved by a Heavenly Father. He has SO much to be dealing with, and yet He takes the time to show ME how much He cares about me. I love Him. 

One last thing: check out this website - 

http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/two-faiths-find-common-ground-at-vancouver-washington-easter-concert

It is an article in the Church News about an event that is put on every year in my last area. It is called, "The Life of Christ," and it is a super huge deal! It's amazing, and I will definitely be coming back to see it again. I love you! Keep serving the Lord with all your might. :) I will talk to you next week!  

Love Always,

Sister Nicole Guilott

P.S. More Pictures!

"I LOVE THIS."

"I saw this picture in a temple somewhere a couple years ago, and I haven't found it since then. But Sister Depew had it on her iPad! Woo Hoo! I LOVE this depiction of Christ and Mary."

"This is Nephi and His wife and son on the ship just after Laman and Lemuel have cut him down from the mast. I loved it. I have never really thought of this moment until now, but it opened up so many more details to think about as I read the scriptures."

Floods and FWhat a week. It started a little bit crazy... On Tuesday night, Sister Eyerly and I were finishing getting her packed and doing what we could to clean the apartment until about 10:30, then we realized what time it was, panicked about accidental disobedience, and got ready for bed as fast as we could. We were finally in bed, and at about 11 o'clock, we heard a terrible noise upstairs. It sounded like someone broke down a door or something and had come into the house... We both froze. Then all of a sudden we heard some noise down in OUR part of the house. The creep could be inside our apartment and Sister Richardson (the sweet lady we live with) wouldn't hear a thing because she had her hearing aids out and she was in bed! So I grabbed a heavy-weight flashlight, ready to BEAT the intruder, and headed out into the apartment. Good new is, it wasn't a human. It was water. There was water dripping from the ceiling vent conveniently into our kitchen sink, so Sister Eyerly and I ran upstairs to see what was going on. In the upstairs kitchen, a pipe under the sink had burst or something and was spewing water EVERYWHERE. The kitchen was quickly flooding - water was under the stove, under the sink, in the cupboard, and creeping toward the living room. I ran and got Sister Richardson, or almost slipped on the water, and we did our best to soak up the water with towels. Eventually, we found an emergency stop lever thing and were able to stop the water, but the mess was ridiculous. Long story short, they cleaned up the water upstairs, and I was in charge of the downstairs. Water was seeping out of the walls downstairs and our entire kitchen was flooded as well. So... Tha