Happy Easter and Conference

I had a really good week this week. it was super busy!! Tuesday i went on an exchange in Franklin with Hermana Norman. She is a spanish speaking sister so like all our lessons were in spanish.. that was rough for me haha but it was really neat to listen to her teach in spanish. It really made me miss the philippines and speaking a language, but im also grateful to be able to speak english! Friday we also had another exchange with the sisters in Asheville. We drove to asheville and did a power up in their area for a couple hours then me and sister lundberg came back to Waynesville and george took us out to dinner :) On Saturday we had a lesson with some investigators Lily and Waver, and george came to the lesson with us! it was so fun to have him come and help us teach our investigators :) George is doing so good! Our ward mission leader took him out with him to do some home teaching and he loved it! He called us after and was just on cloud 9 he was so happy :) he said that he felt like a missionary for once and that it was really uplifting to visit others and help them want to come back to church! He got his interview this week and he got his temple recommend to do baptisms :) he is going on April 11 with the ward :) We are so happy for him! This week we are going to Marion for exchanges so that should be fun! On Easter morning a family is taking us up on Blue ridge parkway at 4:00am to watch the sunrise! blue ridge parkway is one of the most photographed spots in the United States so im super excited to go there! im so excited for General Conference!! :) The general womens meeting really focused on the importance of family. I have really seen that on my mission. You can tell a big difference between the families that have Jesus Christ at the center and those that don't. i have been able to set alot of goals for how to have a Christ centered home and to have an environment where my family can learn and live the gospel. I Love my family so much. Im so grateful for the Book of Mormon and the spirit that comes when we read from it daily. im so grateful to be here on a mission :) i hope you all have a good week! Love Sister Leifson :)

best news ever !!! NO more driving... now my companion has to :):)

This week has been really good! So best news of the week... Im not the driver anymore!!! :) i have been driving for 6 transfers in a row! thats 36 weeks.. i am so sick of driving. So the mission has a rule that missionaries arent allowed to drive their last transfer so i asked president if Sister beckstead could start driving 2 weeks early and he said yes :) I have gotten alot of practice tho so im a really good driver now :) So the leadership in our ward is really weird right now, like our bishop is going on this sabbatical for a year and he has only been the bishop for 6 months so he is getting released and we are getting a new bishop. Also we got a new ward mission leader!! :) our old one just wasnt really into the whole missionary thing. We would come to church on sunday to meet with him and he would be asleep on the couch.. it was rough, but the one we have now was the bishop 6 months ago and he is the most missionary minded person in the ward :) we are super excited to have him!! So the Golden boys are doing great! just pray that their mom lets them get baptized. Also their grandma Arlene is doing great! she is making so much progress :) We had zone meeting last week and it was really good. We had to role play teaching president on what he just taught us in front of the whole zone haha it was kinds scary but it went good :) We have 2 exchanges set up for this week so we should be really busy! Yesterday me and sister beckstead spoke in church and it went really good. Guess what i spoke on... the Book of Mormon :) im pretty sure that is something i learned from this awesome guy names Brother Dickerson :) haha but ya it went good! George is doing awesome as usual. He is doing home teaching with different men in the ward because he likes it so much.. he said he just wants to help people come back to church! we will see great things from him in the future :) Well thats about all for this week! hope you all have a good week :) Love Sister Leifson :)

The worst food ever..

So this picture has a really funny story behind it haha so a member fed us this really gross chinese food stuff and me or sister beckstead couldnt even get it down, so we said that we had been feeling really sick and asked if we could get our food to go haha so this is our faces with the gross food. and then a cute smiling one :)

I love Being A Missionary

This week i got to go on exchanges with my favorite sister.. Sister Lundberg :) she is from Provo so im super excited to hang out with her when we get home. So we are still teaching the Golden Boys. We had a really good lesson with them this past week. They are so cute and they love coming to church! Hopefully their mom will let them get baptized soon! Also we are teaching their Grandma Arlene. She has been baptist her whole life but she has never really been content with the things she was learning, we taught the restoration and she agreed with all of it and was very interested in the Book of Mormon. She has been reading and studying alot. This past week we taught her the Plan of Salvation, which answers 3 questions.. where did i come from? why and i here? and where will i go after this life? as we told her that she said that she had always wanted to know the answers to those questions, but no one could ever answer her. We started to teach about the pre earth life and she said that no one had ever taught her that we lived with god before we came here, but it was always something that she believed. Then we talked about the spirit world and she said that her preachers always told her that after we die we go to heaven or hell, then we get judged then we go back to heaven or hell. but i explained that that wouldnt make sence to go to heaven or hell before you were even judged and she said well i never really agreed with that, but its what i have always been taught. it was a very neat lesson to teach her the truths of the gospel. i love this gospel that we get to share with others who dont know about it. She is such a great lady, she just had never heard the truth until now. Hopefully she will accept a baptism date this week. Pray for her! Ruth is doing great her baptism was wonderful :) George is great as always! He is trying to get me to extend my mission and stay longer haha or he just wants me to move back to North Carolina which i would LOVE to do :) i love it here so much!! We have also been working on finding the less actives that no one knows. Yesterday we went to this guys house to find him and he literally lived on the side of the mountain and we had to drive up there.. pretty sure you were suppose to have 4 wheel drive but we did it anyways and it was so scary! haha but we found him and he said he has lived there for 10 years and no one from the church has been there. He has a wife and 2 kids that are not members. i was so happy that we decided to go find him. Hopefully they will start coming back to church! This week we have a zone meeting so me and my companion will be training at it so we are pretty excited :) we will be training about member missionary work.. so im going to invite all of you to get in contact with the missionaries in your area and help them with their missionary work! you can go to a lesson with them, give them rides, feed them or let them teach one of your friends :) the lord will bless us as we strive to further His work! Have a good week! Love Sister Leifson :)

Love My New Companion. Love my Mission

This week was so much fun :) On Tuesday we had our mission leadership meeting in Knoxville. its so much fun to be able to go back to knoxville once a month! We had our meeting then we got to go to the mission home and sister griffin made a big dinner and we got to just hang out at the mission home. it was so much fun! Ruth got baptized on Saturday!! the baptism went really well, she is so sweet, we just love her! We had stake conference this week and George came with us and he got to meet President Griffin! George said to him "Please keep Sister Leifson here till she goes home" and President was like okay i wasnt planning on putting her anywhere else! so im really happy about being here till i leave :) Geroge took us out to dinner twice this week and the first time was to this mexican place. Well i love mexican food and there is like no mexican places here so i havent eaten mexican food for like 10 weeks. well he took us to this place and i was like in heaven! It was almost better than Los Hermanos! its was so good!! Then he took us to a japanese stakehouse where they cook your food in front of you and it was the best stake i have ever had in my life! He is so good to us! He has had a really rough time this week tho, his wife family is really not happy with him being a mormom and they have been really rude to him. But he is doing great! he is going to do baptisms at the temple on March 28 :) I told you last week about the Golden boys that we are teaching. Well the oldest boy Phillip went to his grandmas (who isnt a member) and told her everything he was learning so she called our old bishop who takes the boys to church and asked if we would come over and teach her! Her name is Arlene. She is so sweet! The work here is really moving forward! Im so grateful for the blessing of the gospel, especially the Book of Mormon. Thanks for all the love and support :) Love Sister Leifson :)

saying good-by to Sister Nelson

My new Companion Sister Beckstead

Had a great Birthday

This week was crazy busy! So Monday we went to this place called the Biltmore house. it was so much fun! Sister Nelson left and it was so sad!! :( i love her so much! So we had the transfer meeting on Wednesday and i got my new companion. Her name is Sister Beckstead and she is from Idaho. She has actually only been out for 4 months... she came out with sister Johnson who i trained! she is really sweet i love her :) so we got some news this week about a change in our area. Right now we have us in Waynesville and a set of elders in Sylva and president called and told us that he is moving the Sylva elders out of our ward and that we would be talking over the entire ward. Its about 2 hours from one side of the ward to the other so it is a really big area, but that's okay! Im going to be super busy these next few weeks! but things in our area are going great!! So Ruth came to church yesterday and she will be getting baptized on Saturday :) she is so excited!! Also there is a LA family in the ward the Goldens that have 3 little boys who are 9 11 and 12 and they have started coming to church and they agreed to let us teach them the lessons and get them baptized :) we started the lessons yesterday and they are really excited. We are hoping to get them baptized this month :) So George is doing so good! He has taken us out to eat like 4 times this week haha he wanted to take me out to celebrate my birthday on Saturday so he told me to pick where ever i wanted and i picked this little pizza place on main street and he was so mad at me because he wanted to take me somewhere fancy and expensive, but he knows im not the fancy type :) he always teases me because im so plain and picky but he loves me :) Tonight a family in the ward are having me over for cheesecake and ice cream to celebrate my birthday :) It was not very fun having my birthday on fast sunday haha but that's okay! Also the elders in my district made me a cake so i celebrated on Friday as well. It was a good birthday weekend :) thanks to everyone at home for the birthday wishes and cards! it meant a lot! i am so happy to be here in the Waynesville ward! it is such a great place to serve! i love my mission so much and i am so happy to be out here! Thanks for all the love and support! Love Sister Leifson :)