I am loving serving the Lord

[Sister Tyler's mom here: She's sorry for the short blog post! Unfortunately, much of our emailing time was spent on some POST-mission stuff––>her BYU winter semester classes need to be registered for this week!]

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Sis. Tyler at the

Montpelier Ward Trunk or Treat

I can't believe time continues to go so quickly!

We got to stack wood for a ton of people again this week and this time we saw tons of people who hadn't interacted with missionaries before, so it was a great opportunity to soften hearts.

We also had a Ward Trunk or Treat activity (I went as Link from the Legend of Zelda) and we had a few less active families come to it. Including a family we contacted earlier that day!

Hopefully we will continue to see success and I know we will always see little miracles each day. I love this work, I know that God is in it.

Sincerely, Sister Tyler

Visiting the South Royalton District meeting

A nice ward member posted

this on the mission Facebook page. :)

Peeling Apples and Surprise Snow

Sister Tyler and Sister Peterson

Sometimes I wonder how the weeks go by so quickly. This has truly been the fastest transfer of my mission and I cannot believe I have less than a month left before I go home now.

While we were going through our days this past week, we had the opportunity to do some service for the local senior center. They are preparing for a fundraiser where they are selling pie slices during

the holidays, and they needed help peeling a huge amount of apples for the apple pies. So we got to peel a ton of apples (we never kept count sadly, but we should have!) with a sweet older woman who we got to talk about family history with. We told her about how we have helped a couple of people find some relatives for their family tree and she was impressed. She said she hadn't done much but if she ever started getting into it she'd ask us! It was just a little thing, but it helped us build a relationship with her. And while we were peeling apples for a couple of hours we had a ton of people thanking us for helping. It was a great way to get to know some people in the community.

We have really just done a lot of service this week because we also got to stack some wood for a woman who knows a member of our church. Her husband isn't in a position where he could help stack wood anymore, so we helped her out this year. We got two whole chords done and it was fun to get to know her.

Besides the service, we just got a surprise snow storm Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning. Luckily we got to church on time and safely and we learned that when the highway gets covered in black ice, everyone drives with their hazards on to warn the people driving behind them. It was cool to see everyone just moving through the surprise ice/snow storm like it was no big deal haha.

I love New England and I hope to have more opportunities to serve others this week.

Sincerely, Sister Tyler

Vermont Autumn

Vermont Autumn snow

(?!)

Moved to Vermont!

The view she had while emailing!

I'm back in this amazing state of Vermont! I'm so happy to be here, especially in this beautiful time of year! And I'm hoping to get my hands on some real maple syrup before I leave here, too.

It has been such an interesting week. I got to Montpelier on Tuesday and we immediately started making plans for a competition to help motivate all the missionaries in the stake to finish rescuing the 200 people we need in the state of Vermont to help our mission accomplish the goal of 1000 people rescued in the year 2015. It is a big goal, but I know we can do it. Once we broke it all up, we found each unit only had to help save a few more people, so we decided to make it a competition to help motivate everyone to work at a more efficient pace in their wards/branches.

A wonderful member in the

Montpelier Vermont Stake

got this picture of

Sister Tyler and her

new companion Sister Petersen!

So, we (the Zone Leaders and Sister Training Leaders in the stake) prayed to know what we all needed to change to accomplish this goal, and we came up with the “Daily Three.” [see 1st of three pictures below] These include many things, but the one I'm most excited for is the “Ballard Points.” The inspiration for these came from a quote from Elder M. Russell Ballard that is famous in our mission [see 2nd picture below].

A little back story: Earlier in my mission his words also helped create the ITL (Invite To Learn) approach which was used for quite some time to track how many people we talked to and invited to learn about the gospel. I myself had noticed that it's not as effective and there is much less of an impact when missionaries (just for the sake of inviting) would immediately “Invite To Learn” by asking a person if they want to learn about Christ. Also...people tend to think we are Jehovah's Witnesses. :) Since then the mission has chosen to focus on another approach.

So as we were coming up with our plan to train our missionaries how to find people to teach, we didn't want to just start up the ITL approach again. However, as I listened to the video with the quote, I realized that we weren't doing that, so I showed Sister Petersen and explained that what we wanted to call a “Ballard Point” was different than an ITL. A “Ballard Point” encourages missionaries to have a quality conversation with someone in which they somehow share a doctrine or principle in a casual way that encourages that person to make it a part of their life [3rd picture below].

I love this approach because I get to introduce what I feel missionary work is all about. Helping people see that Mormons, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, have an amazing spirit behind the doctrine that we know and love, and that it is possible for everyone to learn about it. And even more, it isn't as scary as it seems to learn about it.

I know that by introducing this system of having quality conversations, we will find those who are sincerely interested in the gospel because they've heard a gospel principle and how it has application. I know the Lord is on our side when all we want to do is share the joy we feel in proclaiming the gospel to all the world.

The church is true, and I'm so excited to introduce this plan we created for our stake to all the leaders in the mission tomorrow at MLC (Mission Leadership Council). We get to do this because President Stoker thought it was a really good plan, so he wanted us to work with the office staff and compile information for each of the stakes in the mission so as to get this plan going in each area in the mission, not just the Montpelier stake. :)

It is all such a great opportunity, and I am so excited for it!

Sincerely, Sister Tyler

The “Daily Three”

The quote from

Elder M. Russell Ballard

that inspired their approach.

 

The “Ballard Point”

An approach to help

find people to teach.

Transferred??!! Trusting the Lord

The Sanford Ward missionaries!

I wasn't expecting it, but I got a transfer call this past weekend. I am being transferred to serve as a Sister Training Leader somewhere for my last transfer and Sister Monjar will stay and receive a follow up trainer. It is crazy, but I guess the Lord needs me somewhere for my last transfer. This past week was also crazy with a last minute service opportunity arising (that I'm sad I can't be a part of since I'm getting transferred) and an amazing weekend of conference!

While doing service at a senior center this week, we talked to the activities director there and she said if we had some interest we should get in contact with someone who works with horses a lot. I jumped on this opportunity after remembering my amazing experience at helping at UpReach Therapeutic Riding (in Bedford, NH). We called and got in contact with the woman who runs Blixx Horses and found out we could meet her and the horses the morning before General Conference on Saturday. I was so excited and it was so fun to be with the horses. I am amazed at how comfortable and confident I feel around these huge animals (verses my absolute terror around dogs). The lady we talked to was impressed with everything I told her I had learned from my last horse experience and how we can be of help to her even though we don't ride horses on our missions. It is just so fun to leave a positive influence in so many different places with all the opportunities we have.

Her last District Meeting

Then, conference was amazing as always. I took a ton of notes and I loved being able to follow the picture quotes that were being posted after every talk on lds.org. My two favorite talks would have the be President Uchtdorf's talk about trying to "simplify" things, because I love simple, basic doctrine (I just can't understand deep doctrine), and President Nelson's talk on the women in the gospel. I am so amazed at how much the Lord, and the men in the church, care about the women both of the church and of the world. This morning I asked to get a priesthood blessing from the elders because I have been feeling sick recently and wanted to get better so I could be ready for this upcoming transfer. I was so grateful the elders in my ward were ready and prepared to bless me with the priesthood they held.

I found this picture recently from

the new missionary training.

Sis. Tyler is sad to not being

able to finish up training Sis. Monjar.

I am so grateful for the worthy priesthood holders in my life and how we are all blessed by them. I know we each have our own individuals roles in God's Plan of Happiness, and I am so grateful I get to understand more each day about what my individual role is.

This gospel is so great!

Sincerely, Sister Tyler

A chalk drawing she drew about the Plan of Salvation**

**Mom note here: I looked closer at this picture and played a little “I Spy”--it was so fun to find sweet little bits of my daughter and her life as a missionary in the background: First, of course, this drawing highlights her creativity...then I noticed: a small hymnbook, a light green pencil (her favorite color), a vitamin bottle, a scripture memorization plan for September, a white rose, and a cheesecake recipe. Love this girl!!