Sis Mish Dunford

Hi there!!  it's MEEEE!! Again :)

What a great week. I literally feel like I just emailed yesterday. Wowza!

So I am on Facebook now and oh my WEIRD. You all still exist!!!! Haha the first time I logged on I was like what on the earth. I felt like a sinner. (But I'm not) haha it just felt so weird to be on FACEBOOK. I won't lie to you and tell you it wasn't distracting at first. Haha!! I was like "WHAT she is pregnant?" Or "what!!! She is home from her mission?" Or "WHAT she's engaged!?!" Hahaha oh man. Having Facebook as a missionary calls for lots of self control. Very important not to scroll through the newsfeed. 

Let me just tell you. It took two whole days to clean up my profile page. HAHA. I was laughing my head off going through old posts. So funny to see what I posted back in middle school. Being an online proselyting missionary is SO cool. I know that I was specifically called to the NYNY North Mission as an online Proselyting missionary for a reason. I am so excited to do the Lords work using these incredible tools. I feel like there is so much success that will come from using the Internet. The Internet can be kinda crazy so we need more people posting GOOD things and spreading the gospel. The more good we put on the Internet, the less bad. Yeah? 

Something wayyyy awesome that I have been so excited about-

My companion and I are skyping a girl that lives ALL the way in London. What? 

Yes. She lives in London and we are teaching her from New York. Like I don't know what you think about that, but I KNOW that the lord has given us these tools for a reason. Being an online proselyting missionary is such a privilege. The lord knows what's up. He knows exactly how to hasten his work. I feel SO BLESSED. 

So one of my favorite days of the week was when my wonderful Aunt's brother and sister took my companion and I out to lunch. I just can't believe how lucky I am that my mission president allows us to go to lunch with people we know. So we ate at this cute diner in New Canaan and then had the YUMMIEST gelato afterwards. And then Kemery (my aunts sis in law) took us to this store that she works at and spent like 200 ish dollars on my companion and I. I was asking Kemery where she works and then she told me and I was like OH do they sell Moroccan oil?? And she was like yeah! Let's go get you some! I was like oh noo we don't have to! But she insisted :) so we walk in and they also had my favorite skincare. Khiel's. I was in heaven. Kemery was like what do you need!?! (and this whole time I'm thinking that I was going to pay for my products) so I picked out my eye cream and my Moroccan oil and I was ready to pay. And then kemery was like do you want some lipstick and (you know me I LOVE lipstick) ha. So she got me a wonderful lip color and then we're going to pay and she just bought ALL of it. I was like NO no no!!! And she was like are you kidding I am paying for this. I died. THEY WERE SO NICE. I need to somehow thank them. They spoiled Sister Wilkes and I. TENDER MERCIES. I feel so blessed I can't even handle it. I love Heavenly Father. It's crazy how well he knows me. And he knows exactly what I need. Ugh I just feel blessed. 

So I'm still going strong with the two splits a week! Sister Wilkes is a sister training leader just like sister Amorim was. So splits splits splits. I really do love going on splits. I have gotten to know so many sisters on a whole new level. I am also able to take different things I like from each sister and try to implement them in myself. I am learning so much. AH blessed. 

So this week I have been thinking a lot about a talk called the Character of Christ. By David A Bednar. (And you know he's one of my faves.) well anyways. What an amazing talk. I've read it before but ahhh it's just such a good talk. EVERYONE needs to read it. It talks about how Christ even with ALL he went through he was still able to turn outward and help others. Like I don't know about you, but if I had to go through what Christ went through I would just be like ugh poor me poor me. Because I have natural man tendencies. (All of us do) but how lucky are we to have Christ as our role model.  Christ had so much he could have complained about yet he was ALWAYS thinking of others. 

Something I have been doing everyday on my mission- 

In preach my gospel there are a whole bunch of Christlike attributes. And every day I pick ONE. And I focus on that attribute and try my hardest to implement that through out my whole day. So yesterday day was love. Today is faith. And I wish I could better explain how much it has helped me. We hear in church or in our day to day lives that we need to be more like Christ right? I always remember before my mission in church talking about how we need to try to be more like Jesus. But how often did I ACTUALLY try to be like Jesus. I didn't think about it in my everyday activities. But when I focus on ONE attribute a day and keep that thought in the back of my head I am actually acting. Not just living life knowing I need to be like Jesus. I'm really TRYING to be like Jesus. So I'm only telling you this because I want others to feel closer to our savior just like I have. I have come so much closer to my Savior just by focusing on one attribute a day. It is blessing my life!!! I sometimes get tears in my eyes when I think about how blessed I am. Ahhhh this church is true. 

I LOVE you all so so much. I wish I could give you all a hug and a great big kiss on the cheek I love you so much. Thank you for the wonderful Halloween treats and letters and EVERYTHING. You guys have a fabulous week. 

Love abba.

Also sorry I have like no pictures I will try to take more today :)

My TWIN sister KIM and I did not plan to match. Haha so funny. I love her.

Happy Abbey!

Helllllooo!!
How is everyone!?! How is fall in UTAH.

I had an awesome week!!! I love my new companion. She is seriously the nicest person I have ever met. She totally lets me be me and so that makes me SO happy. (You know how with certain people you feel like you can't totally be yourself?) Well Sister Wilkes is awesome and I can be myself around her. I love it. We are teaching lots of people and having a great time.

1st of allllll. Today is P day. And guess who I saw while in the city. (You will never believe me)

ALTA'S DANCE COMPANY!!!!!! Like what!?! Did that really just happen??? IT DID. I loved it sooooo so so much I can't even explain. That was for sure the highlight of my week. My companion and I were just standing in Columbus Circle and all of the sudden I see all these beautiful girls that look super familiar. And then boom. I'm surrounded by my lovely dance sistas. (I kinda felt like a famous person) HAHA. I am SO grateful that I got to be a part of that team in high school. I owe a lot of who I am to that team. Alta's dance company is so awesome. Traci and Diana know what's up. I'm still sitting here like wait am I dreaming? Am I really on a mission in New York? Did I really just see my old dance girls in NYC!?! I'm SO GRATEFUL for where I am in life right now. I feel so so so blessed. #dreaming

 

   

 

  

   
Monday night we carved pumpkins for FHE and that was soooo fun. Me and another sister in my zone are obsessed with pumpkin.
Pumpkin everything. I LOVE pumpkin. I carved a cat in my pumpkin and it is so cute. I also decorated our apartment with the Halloween decorations that momma Kendra sent me :)

yay Halloween!!

OH we FINALLY got our car back!!!! SO HAPPY. Cars are good.
So updates on some people..

Rick and Maria are progressing. Slowly. Which is FINE!! Progress is
progress. They are super serious about this which I LOVE. They are
going to be amazing members. Rick and Maria are great.

Christian!
He is 9 years old! I don't think I have talked about him much.. but he is one of our investigators and he is getting baptized on October
25th. He's so cute. I really enjoy teaching him. His mom is a less
active. And we reallllly want his mom to start coming to church more.

Tia-
She is amazing. She will be baptized soon I can feel it. She feels the spirit so strong. I just don't think she realizes that she is feeling the spirit.

I would share something about everyone we are teaching but I don't
feel like typing it. If only you could just get inside my head for a
second. I have so much to share but I'm not quite sure how to get it
all out :)

Thoughts-

Growing up I never liked service. Straight up honest. I hated doing
it. And I never understood why people would say things like you're the happiest when you serve others. But guess what...
I NOW understand. And I LOVE serving others. It just feels good. No other feeling but pure goodness. I love service. I can't believe the happiness that comes from serving others. I find myself asking everyone what I can do to help serve them and I'm like WOAH who am I. Haha.missions are magic. I cannot imagine what my life would be like without this experience.

Something I've been thinking about THIS week-

WHO are we after everything in this world is gone. Take away your
house. Your clothes. Your car. Your job. Your calling. Your money.
Take away EVERYTHING. And what is left? Who is it. WHO is there. Are you kind? Giving? Faithful? Honest? Humble? Patient? Loving Charitable? Trustworthy? Comfortable? Confident? Etc. This is
something I have been asking myself as I've been studying the
Christlike attributes.  I want to be just like Christ!!! I am SO
grateful to have Christ as my example. Yes there are other people I
want to be like (Selena Gomez, Tay swift, etc etc) haha. But Jesus Christ is WHO I want to be like. I love him and I am so grateful for what he has done for ALL of us. He is the perfect example. This church IS TRUE.

I love you ALL. I promise if you just keep choosing the right and keep following Christ's example, EVERYTHING will be okay in the end. I'm so happy. Okay? Happy happy.

 

Love,

Abba

#LDSconf LOVE

Hi HI!!! Happy October Halloween fall!! The leaves are ALMOST at their prettiest I'm dying for them to change completely :)

So I'm sitting here trying to think of the highlights of the week and the whole week was just FULL of things I could write about. I can't even get out what I want to. Let's see where to begin...

Oh!! So I have a NEW companion!! Her name is Sister Wilkes. You can FB stalk her. She is SO cute. Soooo so nice. She goes home in two cycles!! Crazay!! She's awesome. I have only been with her today but we are already getting along way well and finding that we have lots of things in common :) she is talllll!! Brown hair. Cutest. She just came from The Bronx. She's from Pleasant Grove UT. I think...

Sister Wilkes and I

So yes Sister Amorim is gone. :( She went to The Bronx!!! Sad to see her go but change is gooood!! Im pumped for this new cycle. This cycle is a 7 week cycle which is one week longer than normal so it will be great.

General Conference. How can I even explain my thoughts. I can't. Conference was so good and I can't even get out of my head what I want to. I LOVED it. Love love loved it. Saturday was awesome. It was POURING rain here and my companion and I went and got pumpkin hot chocolate. MMM. Then we arrived at the chapel and lucky me I had TWO packages waiting for me and 4 letters. It was like Christmas. My favorite day of the mission so far. It was so fun knowing that my family and friends were doing the same thing that I was. The only difference was, I was in my church clothes not at home being comfy and lazy. Haha!! Those were the days... Teasin. Church clothes are great. Anyways. So we watched the Saturday sessions at the church with the other elders in our district and that was funny because nobody else came. Ha!! We watched it on the big screen in the chapel. Then on Sunday we watched the first session in the chapel again. For the second session we went to a members home. The Potters. :) We invited our investigators Rick and Maria to come watch and eat dinner with us. It was perfect. I LOVED David A Bednar's talk. I love him. He is amazing!! His talk couldn't have been more perfect for Rick and Maria. Right as he said something like "this talk is for the non members" Rick and Maria perked right up and started listening closely. I was trying so hard not to smile hahah!! It was TOO PERFECT for them. There were so many good talks I can't even handle it. Another one that I loved was the one talking about forgetting which way we face. That was AWESOME. I am working on reading over ALL of them on my iPad. (I love my iPad) Another thing I loved in conference was one of the prayers on Saturday when the man prayed for the missionaries and their parents and their grandparents. That just made me smile. I loved it. 

Something cool- so have you heard of that new movie called "Meet the Mormons"?? Well the WHOLE NYNY North Mission gets to watch that this Friday!! I'm wayyyy excited. A movie!!! YES. It will be awesome. We are all so excited.

Patricia- 
We met this woman tracting, Patricia. She is 52 years old. an amazing person. Just a visual detail, (she is black.) She knows the bible very well and was confused about why we believe that God and Jesus Christ and the Spirit are three SEPARATE beings. She was like "girls you come in here and I'll show you that they are ONE" so we were like okaaaay... Haha she started showing us some scriptures in the bible and then we were like oh dear this is just going to turn in to a bible bash. So we somehow connected talking about God our Father, his son Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost, to the restoration. We talked about the Book of Mormon being ANOTHER testament of Christ. She was like "say whaaaa ANOTHA testament!?!" And then she got super curious about the stories that happened in the Americas and was like "oh wow yeah that would make sense that God would reveal things not only to the people in Jerusalem!!" We were like yeaaaah!!! We knew that teaching these truths would bring the spirit way more than having a bible bash. And when we told her about Joseph Smith and how he asked God which church was true.. She goes what!?! He dared to question God!?! Haha. We were like girl. If you lack wisdom, you can ask God. If you knock, it will be opened to you. Seek and ye shall find etc etc. she goes "I bet Joseph Smith was like "am I trippin...!!?!" Hahaha! we gave her the restoration pamphlet and told her to go over it and pray.   We went back to Patricia's house and she welcomed us in her home and asked us to wait on the couch for like 10 minutes while she and her mom finished eating dinner. We sat there calmly and just rested our bodies hahah! (Little did we know what was coming for us)

Patricia came in the living room and sat down. We started going over the restoration again and started talking more about the Book of Mormon. We gave her a copy and explained that it goes hand in hand with the bible. she was like dude I'm gonna read this!! Well. Then. In comes Patricia's wonderful mother. Her name is Del. (I only wish that this lesson was recorded.) she came in and started getting mad at us for teaching Patricia. She started quoting the bible and yelling at us. She was like "you girls are NOT prophets of God" and your Book of Mormon is wrong! And the bible is the ONLY truth. And Jesus is our savior not Joseph Smith!! And on and on and on. YELLING. She started kneeling on the ground and standing up and kneeling down and standing up and walking around and shouting to God. I felt sad because I knew that because she was being so loud there was no way that the spirit was going to be there. It soon turned into an argument between Patricia and Del. Sister Amorim and I were like ugh. We ended up leaving on a good note and we are going back to meet with Patricia on Friday!! :) so let's pray that her mothers heart might be softened a little bit.  It's really sad when people hearts are SO hard. I want Patricia's mom to just listen to general conference. If only everyone in the world would just listen to General conference!! 

bye bye Sister Amorim :(

Well I have to go. And I wish I could tell more about the people we are teaching!! But with transfers today it's been crazy. So I will end on that. 

Love you ALL thank you for EVERYTHING. CTR. 

Love,

Abba

MAY THE ODDS BE EVER IN YOUR FAVOR...(transfers)

It's OCTOBER. YESSS. I love everything pumpkin and halloweeny and fall ish. :)

Transfers are in ONE week. Hear me? One week. This cycle was one week shorter than normal but I can't believe how fast it came. Let me just tell you my prediction- Sister Amorim and I probably won't be together another cycle. Which is SO sad. But it's OK. We will see what happens...!! I have loved having her as my companion. We sure have fun together.  

General Conference is SO soon and I can't explain how happy that makes me. The General Women's Conference was Saturday night and I enjoyed that SO much. I really loved Uchtdorf's talk. I took lots of good notes. I love this gospel.

This is.....

THE SECRET LIFE OF THE LDS MISSIONARY 

(Haha)

Alright people lets get right to it. Honesty hour. You are not allowed to judge my honest "natural man" thoughts okay!? HAHA I'm only human. I would be straight up lying if I didn't tell you this was a HARD week!!! (But it was SO GOOD for me.) A much needed hard week. #missionaryrollercoaster.  There was one day that was EXTRA hard. My companion and I were street contacting, People were rejecting us right and left!!! It was way hot outside. We both had colds, we had no car to get to our next appointment, and I happened to just find out that my BFF from birth got engaged. (Talk about the struggle right!?) haha don't worry I know how selfish this sounds. 

Anyways I was questioning things like..  why can't I talk to my family whenever I want, why can't I be home to see my best friend get married, why don't we have a car to get around, why is nobody listening to this message that will give them eternal life!!! why can't I listen to my favorite music, Why am I out here with random people that I don't even really know, why am I not at home making money, why am I sacrifcing my body and eating whatever the members put in front of me .. Why why why. It was one of those "natural man" moments. You know, sometimes we as humans have those moments. Yeah...? (Even missionaries) Hahah. Well my companion and I were having a ROUGH day. We came home to the apartment to eat lunch and we both shed a few tears. (If only you could watch us like a movie.) two 19 year old girls thinking it's the end of the world because the mission is HARD. Hahaha. My best friend just got engaged. It was just icing on the cake. We BOTH were like What. Is. This. Mission. Thing. (Talk about companion unity) 

We decided to pray together because #prayalways (2nd Nephi 32:8-9) we prayed that the lord would soften our hearts and help us be more optimistic. 

The day went on. And we talked. And we walked to our next appointment. On our walk it was hilarious because there happened to be a live band playing some lovely jazz music. Haha we laughed and smiled as we walked passed. Then we saw a box of the cutest puppies!! We then saw our new investigator Tia! And she happened to be going through some tough things that day and she was starving. I was able to give her my granola bar and my apple sauce and let her borrow our phone. The day went on I started to see lots of little tender mercies.

My "why" thoughts started to become WHY am I being so selfish.

I started thinking okay abb. WHY are you out here. Why. What am I doing this for. What is my PURPOSE? I was then led to think of the missionary purpose.  My purpose is to invite others to come unto christ by helping them receive the restored gospel through faith in Jesus Christ and his atonement, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost and enduring to the end.

My purpose as a missionary is the Doctrine of Christ. My purpose is the SAME ish as Christ's purpose. I am kinda saving the human soul yeah!? I thought about that a lot. Christ is So important. He came so that WE could live with our Heavenly Father again. So that we could inherit the kingdom of God.  

3 Nephi 11:33 this is Christ speaking to the people in the Americas after his resurrection.

"And whoso believeth in me, and is baptized, the same shall be saved; and they are they who shall inherit the kingdom of God." 

And then he continues to talk about how we need to become as little children and repent and be baptized. 3rd Nephi 11 = Happy Abbey. 

(Side note: Sunday was the Primary Program and I had tears in my eyes I loved it SO much. The children were so special.) 

Later Sunday I did my Book of Mormon reading and I was in Mosiah 3 and in verse 19 it says

"For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father."

I have read that verse multiple times in my life but it was exactly what I needed to read right then. Kinda a tiny slap in the face. Like hello Abb wake up for a second and quit the lame natural man thoughts. It just connected everything that I was thinking about. Natural man, putting off the natural man, becoming better through the atonement, become like the little children. 

Conclusion to my thoughts. 

I am a missionary. And I am sharing with others the grand recipe to eternal life. And tho it's hard, tho I am sacrificing some things, I CAN GIVE 18 months to help further Gods work here and help save some human souls. And thank the heavens for the atonement so that when I DO have those natural man thoughts, I can change and become like the sweet sweet children that sang in the primary program. My mission is my favorite thing In the whole world. I wouldn't come home if somebody paid me a million dollars to come home. This experience is one that I will cherish FOREVER. Serving a mission is like nothin else. Hard and tiring and hard. I love it. I LOVE IT. 

CTR. Love you alllll. 

Love,

Abbs