Exchanges, Zapping Cockroaches, and New Delhi

Minha familia bonita,

How are y'all? I love and miss you more than words! I hope y'all are doing really well. First off, I wanna say HAPPY BIRTHDAY SKYLER!!! I love you buddy! I can't believe that you're 16! You're gonna be a priest! You have to tell me all about it! Including your first date ;) I love you!


Sister Wilson and I the night that Elder Anderson spoke to us at the Mariott Center. Walking back to the MTC in the pouring rain! Luckily, Elder Gale lent us his suit coat.

It has been a really good week! I went on my first official exchange. I was in Gray, GA with Sister Wood. We get along really well! So well that it's probably a good thing we aren't companions. But I learned so much from her. And ever since then, Sister MacDuff and I have worked so much better together! Like much more than before. We've been communicating better, our companion studies are better, and we've been teaching by the Spirit better. It's kind of like a marriage (from what I hear anyways) because you need that little break from each other once in awhile. I've even got her to help me with my language study. I read a verse in Portuguese, then she reads it in English. I used to just read it all in Portuguese by myself and wasn't getting a lot out of it. And she even speaks Portuguese words to me sometimes, words that I've taught her and that I say to her. She used to always respond in Spanish, but now she's been responding in Portuguese. It's just been really helpful for my language learning. And we cooked our first actual meal! We made fajitas. It was so fun, and I feel like it brought us closer. We've been working in unity so much better. Things have just been really great since the exchange.


4am - saying goodbye to our sisters at the MTC!

Except for that we got more cockroaches! So nasty. But I just have to tell you how blessed we are to have these really awesome Elders in our ward. We tell them pretty much everything that goes on from our investigators to our cockroaches. So they gave us a bottle of this bug spray for the perimeter of our apartment. We ended up spraying the perimeter of every room for good measure. We just work really well with these Elders. Elder Forbush and Sister MacDuff have actually been in the same district since the MTC! And Elder Clay goes home in February.


My first chigger bites!

The four of us have developed a 5-step plan to get the members more involved in and excited about missionary work. Basically it's just 5 lessons we teach them and some commitments we extend so that they can create their own family mission plan. It kick-started this week with our 5th Sunday lesson about hastening the work of salvation, and it will come to a close when the ward holds it's annual Christmas Social, where members will invite their nonmember or less active friends. Our plan is to close the Social with a chapel tour so their friends can learn more about the church and feel of the Spirit that dwells there. I think it will be really great! I don't know if I'll be able to see the whole thing through, but I'm excited to see what happens to the work in this area.


After tracting in the rain, Sister MacDuff and I had to get a pizza

Yesterday, Sister MacDuff and I went tracting for the first time in a week probably, and we knocked on the door of this nice East Indian family! I'm not sure if the father fully understood what we were saying and what our purpose was in being there, but he took our phone number and said he would call when they were free for us to return. They have three young children who were there at the door with him. They seem really nice, and I'd love to be able to teach them. I'll let you know what happens there! There's actually a member in the ward who I just learned attended church in India! He said the meeting was in New Delhi, and there were about 70 people in attendance! It just made me so excited to hear how the work is progressing.


Saying goodbye to the Smythe's! We helped them pack their house up last Monday for their move to Washington. This family is AWESOME. We miss them a ton.

As for our investigators, we've been struggling to get them to progress more. K**a is scheduled to be baptized next Friday, but she hasn't done much reading, and she wasn't at church this Sunday. She's only 9, so we really feel her family needs to be more involved in getting her progressing. They told us they would hold family prayer and scripture study, but so far they haven't really followed through with that. K**a is supposed to be interviewed this Friday, but she may not be able to be baptized if she isn't keeping her commitments. We have a lesson with her tomorrow, so hopefully we'll be able to express our concerns to her mom and they'll be able to help her progress more.

A*a hasn't been to church the last two Sundays. I love her and her son E***ck so much. It's really hard to see her not progressing. Her son was baptized earlier this year. He'll be graduating high school this year and thinking about serving a mission. His dad passed away last December. Just a lot going on there. He hasn't been to church the last two weeks either. We just really feel like there's not much more we can do for them right now. We stop by to check on them, but they haven't been putting their effort forward. So we're going to visit them once this week, give them a lesson about the Plan of Salvation again, and tell them we can't keep coming back. If they want this, they have to show that they are committed to God and want to follow His will. It breaks my heart that we have to do that, but we need to know if A*a is really willing and wants to commit to be baptized. I'll let you know how that goes.

Other than that, things have been good! I can't tell you how much closer I have felt to the Spirit this week than before. The Lord has been here to comfort me and guide me and protect me in times when I have needed it. I love feeling the Spirit and knowing that my Heavenly Father loves me. I want to do His will, and I am striving to realize how to do that more and more. It's a really great feeling. I also have been feeling physically better! All week, I only took Zyrtec every night, and my throat has been much more clear. Not 100% better, but still better than before!

I love you all so much. I'm proud of you and all that you have been doing. Take care of yourselves and write to me soon!

Love forever,

Sister Ramsden

Chigger bites, sleep talking, and banana spiders!

Familia!!!!!

I love you all so much!!! I hope all is well with you. Write to me soon! I love hearing all about what y'all are doing. This week flew by! It was pretty eventful. A few lessons, my first chigger bites! And some sleep talking.

I'll start with the chigger bites. First off, I hadn't even heard of chiggers before I got to Georgia (It's kind of bizarre to think that I'm in Georgia). They don't hurt, they kinda just look like mosquito bites, but really red and more like a pin point on your skin. And they don't really itch lol.

Sleep talking: I guess Sister MacDuff was kind of awake at 5:30 am and she heard me ask her, "I have a quick question. Are we gonna teach the lesson in English or in Portuguese?" And she really had to think about her response! So after a minute, she said "Hmm, let's give it another hour, and then we'll decide." So at least we talk about the work in our sleep!

Also, we have gotten two cockroaches this week! Someone should've recorded the way Sister MacDuff was banging a broom under her bathroom sink and I was crouched up on her bed with a plastic cup, ready to cover the prey. We have some good times. Like tracting in the rain! We got soaked, and we were hungry, so we went to Little Caesars and ate half a pizza and a whole bag of crazy bread. I forgot my camera today, but I'll send pictures next week!

Hey, will you look up banana spiders for me? Just take a good look at those babies. They are huge! One of the Elders in our ward said they used to be poisonous, but not anymore I guess. We see those hanging from their webs outside people's houses. I guess some people keep them as pets! Kinda gross. They're super creepy. There are a ton of bugs here, but I guess it's just preparing me for Brazil, whenever I end up there!



I wanna thank y'all for the package you sent! It was so cute, getting those early Christmas presents (that was this week, right? You really lose track of time out here!). Also, thank you for the medicine! I do still have some phlegm, so I'm trying different things to get feeling better. The YW president said maybe it's allergies, so I'll try only taking Zyrtec for a week and see what happens.

Well like I said, we had a few appointments. Mostly the same people. A*a has decided she isn't ready for baptism yet. So it's been postponed indefinitely. We're still working with her cuz we love her, but we're letting her kind of make decisions on her own. We won't call her to wake her up for church or call people to give her rides places. If she wants to be there, she needs to make the effort. But we're really stressing the importance of reading the scriptures every day. That will give her so much strength to overcome her struggles! So we check up on her a couple times a week so she knows we still love her and haven't abandoned her. She seems to be doing a little better.

K**a is still progressing! She hasn't done her reading, so we're trying to urge her along and be patient. But she feels good about being baptized October 11th! R**a is a photographer we tracted into, and she is very interested. Her personal beliefs are so close to the true gospel already! We had our first formal lesson with her, and she seems to agree! But she's very busy, so hopefully she's able to keep up those good feelings.

I was wondering if you could send me my gospel library books? (Jesus the Christ, Our Heritage, Our Search for Happiness, etc.). I really feel silly for leaving them! I would love that. I've been thinking about President Brown this week. How is he doing? Send him my love.

I also have a challenge for y'all! I've been reading the Ensign a lot, and it made me wonder why I didn't do it more at home? I think it's because it looked like such a daunting task. But if you just read one article a day, you'd finish in less than a month! So I challenge y'all to really dive into the Ensign. I know that it contains the words of people we sustain as prophets, the words of God. And you will feel so uplifted through your reading! I love y'all soo much. Thank you for all you do for me! Take good care of each other.

Much love,
Sister Ramsden

A Surprise Sunday Treat!

I received these texts today, along with this picture.



It's your junior companion, Elder Eubanks. Does this Sister missionary belong to you? Pretty fortunate to meet her. I relocated to Baltimore but was home the same weekend wife invited the Sis Miss to dinner.

Anyway, she and my daughter are talking at the dinner table when it comes up that she's from Chico. I said, "I had a companion from Chico." She says: "Where did you serve?" Me: "France, Geneva Switzerland mission." Her: "My dad served in France." Then it dawns on me she's about my daughter's age. Me: "What's your dad's name?" Her: "Kevin Ramsden." I'm like, no way, that's the one. I'm grinning and she started to cry.

Sweet girl, I know you're proud. What's the chance of me meeting your daughter being that she's assigned to Brazil and I'm usually out of town?

We definitely needed this special message today