Happy Belated Easter Fool's Day!

Our Easter bunny is tall, punny, and
almost looks like Brother Pettey
in the YSA ward!

What a weekend! Easter and April Fool's and General Conference, all in one. Don't know how much more my heart can handle! But of course, I hope each of you were able to remember Christ and His amazing sacrifice for us this Easter.

we actually got a nice picture of the zone

Sister Nield and her photophobia
day 1 after the concussion

EGG HUNT WITH CLUES. Having April Fool's Day on Easter usually means that that holiday flies under the radar a bit. There weren't any jokes at General Conference (that we know of) BUT, our trusty Zone and Sister Training Leaders didn't forget! So in honor of Easter, we had an Easter egg scavenger hunt! Of course I was excited, since I'm a missionary and my bar for entertainment has only continued to drop, plus who doesn't like a little hunting?

the Elders doing the cooking as the Sisters enjoy
being served between sessions of
General Conference on Sunday!

Well, we followed the trail of eggs around to a few different places in the building, some with candy and also with a clue at each stop. Finally, we got to the end destination and found a box in one of the rooms with our "prize!"

One thing I haven't mentioned much about is that our mission is getting smart phones and they're finally here, so our "prize" was the smartphones! The boxes were nicely stacked, and each of us got to take one, to replace our brick phones.

Had to get a nostalgic "Rocklin Zone"
pic after the pass of lesson for Lexi

Obviously I was pretty excited about that, albeit a little skeptical because we aren't supposed to get them until next week. But still! Then Sister Nield opened the box and...yeah, some of you probably saw this coming...APRIL FOOL's, they were just the empty boxes with the phone battery packs. It was a pretty elaborate joke, and definitely made Easter that much more entertaining!

But really, we'll get the smartphones sometime between now and our next zone conference in a week or two. So stay tuned!

It's been awhile since I had a new
companion, but that doesn't mean I
forgot about the pose :)

UNEXPECTED SLOWDOWN. Missionary work is crazy busy all the time when you're working your hardest. Even when there's time that needs to be "filled," there's always someone else to talk to, or another direction Heavenly Father needs you to go. Really there's no down time, and sometimes we'll even work past our bedtime since there's so much! But this week was a bit of a change, as Sister Nield got a concussion and we spent a lot of the week resting.

All the missionaries reading this are cringing because when your companion is napping, you can go a little stir crazy! So I had to adjust from doing absolutely everything, to almost nothing. I cleaned the entire apartment, multiple times, read from the old Ensign and New Era magazines missionaries have built up over time, wrote in my journal, studied the Book of Mormon, basically anything I could think of that was productive.

we tried, okay?! :)

Can't believe that was
over a year ago now!

STILL WORKING. However, despite all the down time, we still saw miracles! We did a lot of phone contacting, basically reaching out to people via text. A lot of them were former investigators or people who had some interaction with missionaries in the past, but then stopped after awhile. But, there were actually some people who responded! We even got a lesson set up from it, and a few others said they'd be around next week. And of course there were some nice "wrong number" texts, and even a call. Missionary work never ceases to entertain :)

this house had about 30 cats
(no joke, we asked the owner)
so it's no surprise one ended up
on top of the car!

GENERAL CONFERENCE. The best part of the entire week!! As a missionary, it's one of the best weekends ever! I loved hearing the talks, and especially sustaining our new prophet, President Nelson! It's amazing to know that we have someone on this earth today who can receive revelation that can help all of us come closer to Christ. We have the promise that the priesthood will never be taken off the earth again.

SUCCESS. One of my favorite talks was by Lynn G. Robbins, and it was about success and failure. The most important phrase that stuck out for me was "success isn't the lack of failure, but moving from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm." Time and time again I've failed; it's more than a daily occurrence.

Yet Heavenly Father isn't expecting us to do everything perfectly. He just expects us to get up again after we fall and continue to move forwards, despite adversity. So don't let a failure hold you back! Failure only teaches you how NOT to do something :)

Sophisticated Sisters (Ft. Loomis sisters who
we've just adopted into our zone)

Good luck this upcoming week, and even though Easter won't be for another 364 days, keep remembering what you can do Because of Him!

Sister Whitesell

teresa.whitesell@myldsmail.net
751 Central Park Dr. #321
Roseville, CA 95678