I'm 21?

Dear Everyone:

I'm another year older! Not sure about the wiser part. Pretty sure I still feel like I'm 17. But whatever.

This week was great though! Jeremy committed to baptism! His date was October 19th, but for various reasons he won't be able to be baptized then. So we're gonna have to figure out a different date. But still, he wants to be batized!

It's so great! Jeremy is awesome. I guess he had a couple people tell him to be careful, because Mormonism is a cult, we don't believe in Christ, and we're all polygamists (all of which, in case you didn't know, is false. If you have any other questions, feel free to watch this great video! Even if you knew those were false, feel free to watch the video anyway, because it's awesome!). But Jeremy told them what's up! He said "I don't think so. I'm pretty sure it's true. So I'm gonna follow it. Because it's true."

I love it. Being a missionary is great.

We also went on exchanges this weekend. When I got back to the apartment on Saturday night, my amazing companion had decorated it all to surprise me! Isn't she great?

Saturday night was also the General Relief Society Broadcast as well, and it was great as usual! Before the broadcast our Relief Society had an activity, where we all had milk and cookies and a little bit of extra spiritual enlightenment! Sister Frampton and I taught the ladies in the ward a little bit about how to use Preach My Gospel in your own personal, and how it can apply to everyone's life - not just missionaries!

Wondering how you too can use this awesome tool? Here's a brief summary of what we taught Saturday:

There's a lot of great chapters in Preach my Gospel for all different questions, needs, and desires. But we focused on Chapter 6. How do I develop Christlike attributes? The attributes are Faith, Charity, Hope, Love, Virture, Knowledge, Humility, Patience, Diligence, and Obedience - all things that everyone continually needs to work on! There's a really cool activity at the end of the chapter that asks questions in each category. You rate how you're doing with each question on a scale of 1-5. Then, you see how you score. That helps give you an idea of which attribute you could study! Or, you could just pick one that you know you struggle with! But don't spend the next 4 months studying patience. Everyone always needs more patience, but we're supposed to strive to be well-rounded individuals. Add in some variety.

That was pretty much the just of what we went over. We went more in depth, actually studying one of the attributes, but I'll leave that up to you guys to actually do. My e-mail time is limited, after all. There's some suggestions as to how you can study the sections at the end of the chapter as well. So check it out!

So ya. That was the week pretty much. Vermont is great. The leaves are beautiful! I tried to take some pictures, but cameras just don't do it justice. Sorry.

Love you all!

Love,

Sister Lindsey Berg

Autumn

Dear Everyone:

Fall is in the air! It's cold! The leaves are changing colors! It's gorgeous!

But back to missionary work.

Jeremy came to church yesterday! We weren't able to talk to him a whole lot afterwards, but I'm pretty sure he enjoyed it. We have a lesson with him tomorrow, so we'll be able to talk more about what he thought then.

So we have a college in our area - Norwich. It's a private military college. Fun fact, we were told that it's also one of the top 5 most haunted college campuses in the US. Not sure if it's true or not, but it is kind of creepy.

Anyway. We're doing the New Testament/Life of Christ for institute this year. So Sister Frampton and I decided that we're going to start spending a few hours each week inviting people to institute! Because even if they aren't LDS, everyone could learn a little more about Christ! Hopefully we'll see some success from it.

We also were able to go and visit a lot of less-actives this week. It's sometimes really frustrating, the reasons people give for not being active anymore. Sometimes I really just don't know how to help people who refuse to see the hand of God in their lives.

Side note, have you seen this video? I think it's a pretty good one. A little cheesy, but good. Watch it!

Shout out to my mom, Aunt Audrey and Uncle Alan, Aunt Madilyn, and Angie, Abi and Paige for the awesome birthday presents! I have the best family ever.

So that's all for this week! Stay warm, drink some apple cider, and enjoy fall while it lasts!

Love,

Sister Lindsey Berg

Ice cream and La-Z-boys.

Dear Everyone:

This week was a good one! It started out with free ice cream at the Ben and Jerry's factory and ended with ripping apart an armchair.

Missionary work is great.

So Jeremy is doing great! We taught him twice this week. He's really progressing well. He was supposed to come to church yesterday, but was really sick so he couldn't. He's already read almost half of the Book of Mormon though, and we've only taught him three times. He's awesome! It takes us a long time to get through the lessons because he asks so many questions. But it's so much fun, because you can tell how sincerely he wants to know and understand what we're teaching him. And his questions are really interesting too. They really make me think about what we're teaching him, which is good, because no one likes being taught by a robot. He's so golden though, and I really really hope he keeps progressing like this!

Other than that we've been really working to get to know the members here. We're really starting to develop good relationships with some families and people are really willing to come out teaching with us. Now our challenge is to find people to teach so that they can come teaching with us!

That's why we were ripping apart an armchair. We're supposed to be doing 8 hours of service a week and sometimes that includes helping new families paint their house and re-upholster second hand La-Z-boys.

That's all I can really think of to report for this week though. Just doing missionary work all day ery day!

Love,

Sister Lindsey Berg

My streak is broken.

Dear Everyone:

It's a miracle! My streak of never having a companion for longer than a transfer is finally broken! Sister Frampton and I are staying together for another transfer and we're both staying in Montpelier! We're stoked! We both have a feeling that things in this area are really going to start picking up soon, and we can't wait! We've got lots of big plans for this transfer, so now we've just got to put them into action. We're pretty excited!

So, last week I promised I'd tell you more about Jeremy after our lesson with him. He's incredible! Like I said last week, he had asked what he should read before our appointment. We had suggested Moroni 10, because it's one of the best. When we got there for our lesson, this is the first thing he told us:

"I didn't do the reading. I hope that's ok. I didn't want to read just that one chapter, so I decided to start at the beginning of the book. I got through chapters 1-8, but I didn't have time to finish 9 and 10. I'm sorry."

Ladies and gentlemen, that is what a golden investigator sounds like.

Jeremy is a gem.

He's such a great guy though. The lesson was awesome. He already has such a strong relationship with Christ. He grew up in a very strong Christian family and loves the Bible. That's actually one thing that he pointed out - he enjoyed the Book of Mormon because it was so similar to the Bible and it said essentially the same things. He really wants to go to church next week, and we're excited for him to come!

Kellie is out of the hospital, which is good. She came to church yesterday, which is even better! But she's moving to St. Albans today, which is not so good. So we're not going to be teaching her anymore. But we're going to refer her to the Elders out there and hopefully they'll be able to connect and she'll continue to be taught. She really has a desire to get baptized and to receive those blessings that the Gospel can bring her. I'm not completely sure if she's ready to make the changes necessary to receive those blessings right now though. Hopefully she proves me wrong!

The picture is from district meeting this week. Elder Jones is 'dying' and going home tomorrow, so we had a funeral for him. Also, we decided to take a district picture. Enjoy.

So that's the report for this week. Vermont is great. I'm loving it.

Love you all!

Love,

Sister Lindsey Berg

#missionarymemory

Dear Everyone:

Sometimes I'm really not sure what to write each week. Missionary work is really repetitive you guys. We do the same thing everyday - teach people about Christ.

It's also really hard to remember what to write home about each week when I can barely remember what we did yesterday, let alone last week.

Anyway, I'll do my best.

Lately we've really been focusing our work on less-actives and working with the ward members out here. I've already said how important rescue work is here - 600 people on the rolls and only 150 coming is not a very good ratio. The ward is so great though. They're really trying to reach out to as many people as they can and have done a lot already. Right now we're working on trying to coordinate times for us to go visiting teaching with the sisters. A lot of the women in the ward don't have a visiting teaching companion since they're spread so thin. And it can be pretty intimidating to go alone - especially when you don't know the person you're asked to visit. So we're working on figuring out times to do that, so we can not only get to know the less-active members we're visiting, but also so we can get to know the sisters in our ward better.

We found a guy who has a ton of potential though, and I'm stoked to start teaching him. His name is Jeremy. He came up to us as we were sitting outside the library trying to find an address on our map. I guess he had a friend who had given him a Book of Mormon a couple months ago. Jeremy read the introduction and started reading Alma (a suggestion from his friend). We went and saw him this last week and he told us he's halfway though Alma, reads a couple chapters every night, and really like it so far. And we haven't even taught him anything yet! He's great. We have an appointment with him this week. Before we left he asked if there was anything he should read before our visit. I about passed out. Very rarely do people ask what they can read before we come again - usually it's like pulling teeth just getting people to read at all! Hopefully he'll be a good one. I'll keep ya posted.

We went to dinner on Saturday with this sassy old man in our ward named Bill. He's less-active, but he takes us out to eat every week and he's been coming to church pretty regularly lately. It's really fun, because Sister Frampton is a really sassy person and I can be pretty blunt. So it's great to teach him, because he expects us to be sassy and blunt with him. It's usually one of our more entertaining lessons from the week.

That was our week. It's crazy to think that it's week 6 of the transfer already! Transfer calls are this week! I don't really think that President Stoker will transfer either of us - but I've said that every transfer so far and my track record isn't very good. So I'm not even really going to make a prediction this time. It sure would be nice to stay in Montpelier with Sister Frampton for at least one more transfer though. She's so much fun! And I'm loving Vermont. Something about driving for 45 minutes on dirt roads to get home at night reminds me of home. And there's so many more trees here than in my other areas - autumn is going to be gorgeous!

We'll see what happens though!

Love you all!

Love,

Sister Lindsey Berg