ON MY WAY UP NORTH TO THE ADIRONDACKS!

HELLO,
     So we got transfer calls on Saturday and I was stressed all day wondering where I was going to go. I saw my mission president earlier this week and he asked me where I wanted to go and I said quietly..um.."lake placid" He said that he wanted me to experience a branch and that he was thinking about me going to Bennington Vermont as well. So all week I was trying to guess if I was going to Vermont or Lake Placid. One morning I went to get dressed and my dresser drawer was loose so I pulled it out to fix it and I saw a t-shirt shoved in the back corner. I pulled it out and sure enough on the shirt it said Lake Placid! I screamed "I'm going to Lake Placid its totally a sign!" haha Sure enough we get transfer calls and I found out I'm going to LAKE PLACID! I'm so excited because this is where I wanted to go. I really wanted to experience a branch. I'm so excited to be back in nature. The Adironacks is I think the largest national forest in the United states. Also Lake Placid is where the Olympics were. So I'm way excited! My new companion will be a sister that served in an area that's close to mine so I already know her. Things are good.
  Sunday was really hard saying goodbye to people. I've been here so long I've forgotten how to say goodbye and how to pack. I haven't moved in so long its so weird and I'm sure it won't hit me until my first night in lake placid and I'm no longer in Syracuse. This place has truly become my home and the people have become my family. Its going to be most hard to say goodbye to the Sampsons and the Statons tomorrow night..tears might be shed. I tell everyone see ya later because I know that I will be back. We said goodbye to one of my favorite investigators Ryla and we were praying and she added in at the end of the prayer saying "Please help sister stacey in her next area and when she has a hard day let her remember that her effort was not wasted here with me." It was so cute and made me feel so good about leaving. This is the longest I have lived in one area with out moving since I graduated high school. This will be a really hard move, but I know the Lord is with me. Change is hard, but its always good in the long run. If I never experienced change then I would have never come to Syracuse and met all these amazing people! I have loved my time here and the people will be missed!
    I hope you all had a great week as well. Next time you hear from me I will be up north!

Love from the cuse,
                       Sister Stacey

PICTURES:

First 2:  Saying goodbyes to my favorite people

Second 2: District meeting

Last: Saying goodbyes

"...wherefore all children are alike unto me; wherefore, I love little children with a perfect love; and they are all alike and partakers of salvation." Moroni 8:17

 Hello,

 This week was a great week. The last couple months Edwin hadn't been coming to church and wouldn't let us come see him. We called and told him that I was leaving soon and he let us stop by. He was so happy to see us and it was so good to see him! He said he still reads the Book of Mormon everyday and had been out of town helping his wife at her home. He is going to try coming back to church this week. It was so great to see him before I left and to know that he is still going strong. His testimony is so powerful its amazing to see him grow!

 Erin went to the temple this weekend. She said she got really nervous before she went in and the second she got in and started doing baptisms the nervous feelings went away and she felt the spirit. Its so much fun to see her go to the temple and it makes all the hard days we have worth it. It makes it so worth it to see her go to the temple and help others. I love being a missionary! What could get any better than that!

 So we have been going to the Stanton each week to teach brother Stantons little sister. We have fallen in love with their family and look forward to going to their home each week. They have 2 of the cutest kids in Syracuse and they love when we come over. (maybe because we always bring treats..haha) So the primary was doing this dinner night at the church where each kid from the primary had to invite someone they admired or appreciated in their lives. So when Sister Stanton was explaining to her little 4 year old who he had to bring she started to list off names of people that have been close to him. Then she said out of no where he was like "I want the missionaries to come!" She hadn't even listed us. So Saturday night we went to this dinner with all the primary kids and when we walked in he was so excited for us to be there. He yelled "MISSIONARIES!" It was so much fun and we love him. It's fun to see that he knows who we are and that we have made that big of an impression on him. This is probably my last full week here in Syracuse and its going to be so hard to leave. I'm not sure if I'm going to survive the goodbyes.. so I'm just going to have to say "see ya later" I will be back, I know it. I just love the people here and they have been so good to me. I find out saturday where I will be going.

Have a great week!

 Love from the cuse,

 Sister Stacey

Picture 1 and 2: Primary Dinner with Sye so fun!
Picture 3: Last visit with Edwin

"He is not here, but is Risen"

HAPPY EASTER! Hope you all had a great Easter, I love Easter! I don't know if you have seen the new video on lds.org but its amazing! We showed people that all week preparing for Easter and it's just well done. So you should all go see it! I always think about the time when I was in Jerusalem at the Garden tomb. I love the words that are written on the door "he is not here, but is risen" I love those words because it brings such hope. I love Easter because we can focus on his resurrection and remember how much he has truly done for us. He is alive and we will one day become perfect like him. I'm so grateful for my Savior and all he has done for me. I love being able to share that beautiful message with others!

This week was full of lots of finding, but we did find someone. A recent convert wants us to start teaching his daughter who is about our age. We had a great lesson and she is excited to learn and come to church. so that was way exciting! We are hoping that Samantha will get baptized. She wants to be baptized but everyone wants to make sure she knows that it's a commitment. So were waiting to here about that. We had Easter with the Sampsons which was so much fun! Things are going well and we hope to keep finding people!

 Love from the cuse,
 Sister Stacey

 Most likely I will be leaving Syracuse on the 25th so make sure you send letters to:

PO Box 149
Whitesboro NY
13492-0149

Picture 1: The Sampsons girls and us at Easter dinner!
Picture 2-4: Erin (our Recent Convert) lives on a farm. They have baby bunnies so we spent the morning at her farm with the animals. It was way fun and just in time for Easter!

"Are you a mormon?" "No." "Well you should be!" (L Tom Perry talk)

Hello,

CONFERENCE WAS AMAZING! I just love conference so much and it's so sad that it was my last one as a missionary. I don't know how to explain it, but its just different as a missionary. This week I'm just going to write some of my favorites from conference.

It seemed like there were a lot of talks about raising a family. I don't have a family of my own so I tried to relate the talks as much to me as possible. So whenever they would talk about raising kids I would act as if my investigators were my kids. haha A great example of this was Larry Y Wilson's talk about unrighteous dominion. I can't force my investigators to do the right things. I have to show them the way and let them make their own choices as hard as it can be at times. So I thought that was cool. Donal Hallstorm did a great talk about how its possible to be active in the church, but not in the gospel. I think we can all easily fall into this trap and we should be careful to be active in the gospel.

In Dallin H. Oaks talk he mentioned sacrifice which was amazing. I felt pretty good that I had already made the sacrifice to come on a mission. I laughed so hard at the part when someone ask him how they get the young people to go on a mission and the Prophet said "well we just ask them" That was funny! Sacrifices truly do bring forth blessings and I have seen that on my mission. I sacrificed a lot to come, but the blessings that have come.. I would never change it for the world.

There were a lot of great talks on forgiveness which is great for everyone to hear. I laughed a lot when he said "STOP IT" Wow is it really that easy?! I guess it is! I thought that was funny because we don't realize how easy it is to really just forgive and forget. What a great talk.

The Prophet gave an amazing talk on the plan of salvation and I think this is a great tool to give to our friends who have asked us.. "where were we before we came to earth?, What is the purpose of life." I encourage everyone to give this to someone who has once asked them those questions. Such a great talk! Maybe i should just give that talk to our investigators instead of me teaching the Plan of Salvation. haha

The last thing that I loved was the talk by David F. Evans. He told a great story about two friends and one was preparing to go on a mission. All the work his friends had done for one person and at the end he was asked if it was all worth it. I think in the church when we are trying to work with Less actives to come back to church or inviting friends to church activities we should remember this talk. Its worth it, its worth them living with their family and heavenly father forever. I think this gave me encouragement to never give up with people and its always worth the effort even if we dont' see the immediate result right now. I loved that!

I'm so grateful for modern day prophets and apostles to give us guidance on the earth today. We are so lucky! I hope you all had a great weekend! I know I did!

Love from the cuse,

Sister Stacey

Pic: Lizzie and I at FHE. She is awesome!

"..take upon you the name of christ, all you that have entered into the covenant.." Mosiah 5:8

Hello,

 This weekend was totally awesome because Erin got baptized! It was probably the one of the best baptisms of my whole mission. So many people came including her whole family. Before she got baptized they were nervous about the decision she was making. After the baptism you could tell they were so happy for her. Her dad even came up to her afterwards and said in a joking way he wishes he could have been the one to dunk her. I think they were all going to think when they came that it was going to be a really weird baptism but they were all surprised to see how normal everyone was. haha She even bore her testimony at the end and it was so sweet. It was just a beautiful baptism. Erin is so amazing and I"m so grateful to have been apart of it. Earlier this week we did see Erin and we were trying to decide on what to teach her. We thought of the talk given by Utcdorf at the last Relief Society conference about the forget me not's. We read it and then went to the Relief Society birthday party activity and thats what it was on. I think the spirit had a hand in that. When she came she prepared for the lesson. She is just amazing! After her baptism I just want to find more people as prepared as she was. I think we are going to focus really hard right now with working with the members. Member referrals are the way to go and that is how people stay active and become future Relief Society presidents. Erin will be a relief society president some day. It was just a great weekend! I'm very excited for General Conference! Counting down the days! Hope you all enjoy conference!

 Love you from the cuse,

 Sister Stacey

"counsel with the Lord in all they doings, and he will direct thee for good.." Alma 37:37

 Hello,

This week has been good and I’m very happy that I’m still here in Syracuse. On Monday we got a text from Erin saying that her family freaked out when she told them she was going to be baptized and that we would have to cancel it. We were freaking out..what?! So we met with her the next day, I can’t even tell you how many prayers we said. That morning when I was studying I was trying to focus on what I could possible say. We prayed before we saw her and the lesson went so well. Everything we said was exactly what she needed to hear. She thought if she obviously was this upset about not getting baptized she must really know this is what she needs to do. The Spirit was definitely there and if it wasn’t I’m not sure she would still be getting baptized this week. So were back on schedule and she is going to be baptized this week and we are trying to hurry and get in all the lessons before then. Haha

So one of our other most progressing investigator Sandy has bed bugs so we’re not going there anymore. There is no way that I want to get bed bugs again. So we don’t go there anymore, which is such a bummer. What is with bed bugs and why do they follow me EVERYWHERE?!!! Its very annoying and now we are trying to find. Good thing the weather has been amazing here so lots more people our out and about.

I love staying in an area for a long time because I get to see my recent converts get the priesthood and go to the temple. Andrew will be getting the priesthood next week. Dwight also went to the temple again this Saturday and he was so excited to go again. What could get better then that. I am the luckiest missionary in the world. I feel like things are going so well with my recent converts and with Erin who is getting baptized this week. I’m so grateful for being able to stay another transfer so I could be part of all this.

This week has been so great! Hope you all have a fantastic week!

Staying in the Cuse for Transfer #10!!!!!

Hello,

So this week was painfully long because I was waiting all week to see if I was staying or leaving. We always get the calls the Saturday before the transfer. So all day Saturday I couldn't focus. The elders were telling us what was going to happen he said.."sister stacey you will be getting transferred to......Syracuse!" I was like NOT FUNNY! It freaked me out for a bit. So me and Sister Horne will be together again going on our 3rd transfer together and it will be my 6th transfer here. I love it here so I'm so happy that I'm here! I'm most excited about staying because now I'm going to be able to be here for Erin's baptism. She is absolutely amazing and so prepared for the gospel. Her baptism will be in a couple weeks. She is amazing and she reads soooo much its crazy! Earlier this week when we didn't know if I was leaving or not we told her I might leave and her face was so sad. She was going to cry thinking that I might leave. So all our prayers in our lessons this week were for me to stay. So when I found out she was the first person I text and I said "I'm staying, prayer works!" haah We were all pretty excited! So a bunch of members also thought I was going to leave so they all wanted me to come over for lunch or dinner. This older women we eat lunch with had me over this week and on Sunday she came up to me and was like what happened are you staying our going? I was like "I'm staying!" and she was like "Oh great I squeezed you in this week for nothing!' haha and we both started laughing. I was like well I guess were good for this month then! It was pretty funny, but everyone was excited that I was staying!

Sunday was a great day. I thought I was going to be leaving so I arranged to sing in church. Me and a member I'm really close with sang a duet in church on Sunday and it was so much fun. We sang the Olive Tree and it went really well. The member Sami has such a good voice and the both of us sounded really well together. It was way fun! I'm glad I was able to do it and bring some musical numbers into the ward.

We also started teaching this boy on campus. This member met him in her class. We went on campus and taught him and it went really well. At the end of the lesson I was telling him a little bit about the plan of salvation and I said "Well next time we meet we are going to talk about where we were before we came to earth and what happens to us after we die.." and the boy said "well what happens to us after we die?" and I said "well I guess your just going to have to come next time and find out!" haha It was so funny, but you best believe he is going to come and find out!

Things have been going really well. I"m so happy I'm here again in the cuse! That will have made it 9 months here! crazy!

Lovin Life!

Love from the Cuse,
Sister Stacey

Pictures:

 Pic 1: District Pics

Pic 2: District Pics

Pic 3: District Pics being funny

Pic 4: Syracuse University, it's so beautiful!

Pic 5: The people I volunteer with at the United Methodist church

Pic 6: The Dippolds awesome members!