Watch Your Head!

We volunteered at an 8K & 16K race on Thanksgiving morning with 4 other sets of missionaries- it was chilly! 

Hello everybody! I hope you had a fantastic Thanksgiving and the pie was good!

Sister Nielson and I had some unique opportunities to work with various members of the congregation here in Athens this week, but there's not much I feel needs reporting on.

Pics: Sister Nielson wanted a picture with
her new arch nemesis a few hours after her incident

We spent a chunk of Wednesday helping our bishop's family prepare a whole lot of food for the ward Thanksgiving linner (lunch/dinner) on Thursday. Then, on Thursday, we helped with the setup and cleanup of said event. The food was delicious and we had a nice group of people there (about 27 people), so everything was peachy until one of the 5 year-olds split his head open on a door handle. He's okay now, but I'm 100% certain his parents weren't planning on spending their Thanksgiving day in the emergency room. The funniest part is that Sister Nielson decided to try following the trend the next day! Yep, she had her first bike incident on Friday. After going to sharply around a corner, she found herself no longer on pavement and headed straight for a speed limit sign and monitor. Luckily, her helmet made sure she didn't split her head open, and, in fact, she only got one scratch and a few bruises to show for it, despite a head-first dive into the intersection. We have come up with several jokes to describe the incident, but mostly we are just glad she didn't get any serious injuries!

 I got to be the first in a series of pictures of people holding signs
 to send a "Happy Thanksgiving"-type message.

What comes after Thanksgiving? Christmas-time! On Friday, we started showing people the #LightTheWorld videos and initiative, and people seem to be loving it! I failed to participate in the event last year, but this year I am SO excited to try to better live the Christmas spirit in 25 ways over 25 days. I hope you all give it a look and a try! In case you don't know where to find it, go to mormon.org. :)

Have a fabulous week everybody! I love you all!

Love,

Sister Houghton

4315 Lexington Rd 

Apt. 12-F

Athens, 30605

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The Email Deleted Itself

From 20 November 2017

It's been an awesome week! I wrote a really detailed, long email about it all, but it disappeared, so I'll let the pictures speak for themselves since we have a zone activity today!

Love y'all and have a happy Thanksgiving!

Love,

Sister Houghton

4315 Lexington Rd

Apt 12-F

Athens, GA 30605

Chilly Times

We find all sorts of interesting insect scenarios while we go out to knock on doors...

Well, it has been getting chilly here in Georgia, although it seems to be pretty peachy today. Despite the cold, Sister Nielson and I have seen miracle after miracle this week!

People seem to be coming out of the woodwork for us to teach and work with. In fact, on Sunday morning, we were anticipating as many as 11 nonmembers at church! Even though none of them came, it kept us excited all week to keep seeing that number grow. Heavenly Father really has been blessing us by putting people in our paths. And it is interesting all the different paths we found people on. Some of them were found in the classic missionary way of tracting (knocking on doors) while others just showed up at church and some even met us in the middle of Walmart!

Another blessing we saw this week was that we had some really effective finding time on Saturday which helped us catch up from our contact deficit for the week. We weren't sure how it would go, but we decided to go knock on doors during the UGA v. Auburn football game on Saturday. More people answered than not, and we were actually able to have some really good conversations! (All of Athens is thoroughly devastated that UGA lost for the first time this season, but they are hoping they will pull through this Saturday).

Yep, that's pretty much it for this week, but it has been a wonderful week of missionary work in Athens! Sister Nielson is helping me become a better missionary each day by reminding me of all the things we need to do and by keeping me accountable to my goals. I am so lucky to have her as my companion right now!

I hope y'all are doing well and that everybody's Thanksgiving plans are set because Thanksgiving is only a week and a half away!

Love,

Sister Houghton

4315 Lexington Rd.

Apt. 12-F

Athens, GA 30605

Meetings, Meetings, Meetings!

The Mission Leadership Council from Friday!

Well, this week has not been your average missionary week, mostly due to lots and lots of meetings. (On Tuesday, we had transfers, which wasn't anything special for Sister Nielson and I, as we both stayed where we are.)

Wednesday was the first day we had full of meetings, with District Meeting in the morning and then a Stake Presidency Meeting in the evening. At least we still had the afternoon to go out and get things done, right? Right.

Then there was Friday, which was even more full of meetings. I spent most of the day in Lilburn, meeting with various leaders to discuss some mission things and some stuff for the Athens Zone. In fact, I left my area at 7:30 that morning and arrived back at 8:00 pm. My brain was only a little bit fuzzy after all that driving and all the trainings we received from the mission leaders. That night, I spent a long time thinking of all the things I needed to do to live up to what I had learned! One of the most exciting things about missionary work is that there are always plenty of things for me to improve on, so I am never bored!

Besides going to lots of meetings, we did do some missionary work this week, in case you were getting worried. In fact, we saw some really neat miracles! I wish I had time to tell you what they were, but really the only thing you need to know is that the coolest ones were based on sign language and deaf culture. (Note: Sister Nielson took one year of ASL in high school, and I knew none until Thursday, when I learned the alphabet). Quite a cliffhanger, right? Let it suffice to say that Sister Nielson made a valiant effort to translate the first half of Sacrament Meeting yesterday and we got 2 potential investigators out of it! Heavenly Father certainly works in mysterious ways!

Ok. That's all for this week, but I hope you all have a fun time this week and that November is treating you all well!

Love,

Sister Houghton

4315 Lexington Rd.

Apt. 12-F

Athens, GA 30605