Tornados, COLOR, and BAPTISMS!!!

HEY EVERYBODY!!!

Another week has quickly come and gone here in Northern Virginia! I really AM loving it here! :) As I was thinking about what to share with y'all in my e-mail this week, I realized how many things I had forgotten to share in my e-mail last week!

First things first. Last week there was a sale at Giant (our local grocery store right across the street from our apartment) for OREOS!!! They were two packages for $4!!! You BETTER believe Sister Woodbury and I stalked up on those last week! :D ...well, we only got two packages, but still. We don't have one full package left now... Haha! I didn't really realize how quickly I could go through a package of Oreos until just after a couple of days, I saw that one package of Oreos was halfway gone already. So, naturally, I thanked Sis. Woodbury for helping me eat them and I was glad that she was enjoying them as much as I was... And then she started laughing and said, "Sister, I haven't eaten ANY Oreos since you opened the new package. That was ALL YOU." ...Ya... So... Needless to say, I've been taking a step by step personal program that I came up with myself to cut back on my Oreo eating habbits because I realized that it had gotten a little bit more than slightly out of control... Haha. So I limited myself to only THREE Oreos per day, and I asked Sister Woodbury to hold me to that, and she's been doing a pretty good job at that! No sneaking extra Oreos around her!

So anyways, speaking of Sis. Woodbury, she is SOOOOOOO funny!!! She has this chronic hic-up, which she says is caused by the spaziming of your frenic nerve. Yep. She'll hic-up out of the blue at least a couple of times an hour, and when she does, she sounds almost like someone just scared or surprised her. Haha. It's kinda funny, and I only feel like I can laugh about it because she laughs about it, too, and she says that her hic-ups don't hurt her. So that's good. I would sure hate to have hic-ups all the time! Oh! And also - I don't know when I'll be able to send you some pictures, but Sister Woodbury looks like a cross between Julia Roberts and Julie Andrews. It's kinda interesting. Sometimes she looks more like one than the other, but she always looks like both. Haha.

Also one last thing that I forgot to mention last week was that there's this church CD that Sister Woodbury and I listen to every single day. The CD is called Mercy River - Beautiful Dawn, and there's this song on it that I absolutely LOVE that Sister Woodbury absoulutely HATES called Hello Sunshine! It's SO bright and bubbly and it makes me smile every single time it comes on! :) Y'all should DEFINITELY look it up and picture me singing along to it! :)

Anyways, now that I got you all caught up on the previous week, I'll tell you about this week!

As we were driving around, looking for a former investigator's house, we found the house and knocked on it and... nobody answered... So we thought that we'd just tract a couple of houses on that block, so we did and the first house, nobody answered, then the second house a guy answered AND HE LISTENED TO US!!! He even told us at first that he wasn't really interested and that he attends the Baptist church right across the street (seriously guys, Baptists and Muslums in DC are like Mormons in Utah. It's CRAZY!!!), but Sister Woodbury kept on talking and asking him questions and telling him about our church, and pretty soon she had gone through the whole Restoration pamphlet on his doorstep and he gave us his name and phone number and told us that we could come back sometime next week!!! It was BY FAR one of the coolest experiences I've had since coming out here! :)

Also, another interesting thing from this last week - we were talking to a less active member in our ward who told us about some SUPER wealthy guy who aparently is having some investigation on him right now for giving a real human skeleton to a neighbor. The neighbor thought that it was just a realistic-looking Halloween prop, but then they looked more closely at it and had someone who specializes with those kinds of things look at it, and they confirmed that it was real. Yep. He's in our area. And yes, Sister Woodbury has tracted his house before. ...But I don't think we're going to be going around there anytime soon - at least not until this case is closed and we know what really happened and how he even came across a real human skeleton. Yep. People around here can definitely be pretty interesting... Hahah...

Well anyways, on a bright note, we had stake conference yesterday! Besides having technical difficulties on and off all the way through (cause we watched it broadcast at a different church building), it was SOOOO good! And it was even good when we were having the technical difficulties and couldn't hear or see what was going on! Because during that time, we just sang various hymns and still kept in the spirit! President Riggs (my mission president) and his wife spoke and not just their talks - but everybody's talks were all about MISSIONARY WORK!!! It's amazing how the age change has not only changed the availability of when a missionary can come out, but it has also caused more of a push overall for missionary work! THE CHURCH IS SOOOOOOOOOOO TRUE!!! I am SOOOOOOOOOOO grateful for all of the experiences - good and bad - that have helped me to get out here where I am today on this wonderful mission! I know that I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be and there's no other place I'd rather be! :)

Thank you all SOOOOOOOOOOOO much for your amazing continuous support all the time! You have NO idea how much all of your letters mean to me! Thank you SOOOOOO much, Heath and Ash for your letters last week! They're EXACTLY what I needed! Everyone PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE write me!!! Have a wonderful work and do your own form of missionary work! THE CHURCH IS TRUE!!! :D

LOVE,

Sister Aubrie Orrock

P.S. Read Moroni 7 next time you do your scripture study! It's amazing and has brought me lots of comfort! I LOVE YOU ALL!!! :D

P.S.S. About the tornados thing in the subject - there was a tornado warning last week - or maybe last weekend - while we were tracting. Some nice person, although they weren't interested in what we had to say, was concerned about our safety, and told us about it. We went into a nearby member's home when it started to rain and the storm clouds were coming in. Shortly after we got in the house, it started POURING RAIN! Like BUCKETS were being poured from the sky!!! It was CRAZY!!!

And as for the colors comment - I have never seen so many different ethnicities IN MY LIFE!!! I LOVE IT HERE!!! :D

And then Sister Kuaong is getting baptized this Saturday and Sister Woodbury had a feeling that we need to sing at it, so we will! YAY BAPTISMS!!! :D

MTC Photos

                                         Aubrie and her MTC Companion Sister Lochridge

                                         Aubrie and her MTC Companion Sister Lochridge

                                          Aubrie and her cousin Desi!

Click the link to see Aubrie's current assigned area!

http://binged.it/ZKWsOB

Crystal City is an urban neighborhood in the southeastern corner of Arlington County, Virginia, south of downtown Washington, D.C.. Its residents can live, shop, and work without going outside, due to its extensive integration of office buildings and residential high-rise buildings using underground corridors. Thus, a large part of Crystal City is an underground city. It includes offices of numerous defense contractors, the United States Department of Labor, the United States Marshals Service, the EPA and many satellite offices for The Pentagon.

Trivia Time: What State is Washington, DC located in?

P.S.

4/22/13

P.S. Here's an extra funny thing that I forgot to mention in my last e-mail that you can forward on - I accidentally let a "What the freak??" slip out, and my companion chastised me a bit for that... She said, "SISTER! Watch your language!" ...Sorry! Haha... Oooopsies... Ya... This just proves to me how totally IMPERFECT missionaries REALLY are, even though I put them up on such a pedestal when I was younger! Hahaha! It's ok. We all have room to improve. :)

HEY EVERYBODY!!!

4/22/13

HEY EVERYBODY!!!

I'm SOOOO sorry that I didn't write last week! Since I flew into DC last Tuesday (EARLY MORNING - the flight left SLC at 6:00 AM!), and P-day's on Monday, this is my first P-day that I've gotten since arriving.

Well, I'm VERY happy to report (as I'm sure you all will be very pleased to hear) that I am feeling MUCH less home-sick now and Arlington and Crystal City are feeling more and more like home to me every single day! :) On Tuesday afternoon, shortly after we got off the plane, we were picked up from the airport by the mission President and his wife - President and Sister Riggs - and they couldn't have been more friendly or welcoming! They took us to see the Lincoln Memorial and we were able to walk around and look around there and it was SOOOOOOOO cool - something that I KNOW that Malarie would LOVE! :)

After we were done there, we went to the mission home and after we hung out and got settled in a bit and chatted with each other (...or took a quick thirty minute nap like Sis. Lochride and I did on the couch while everyone pointed and laughed at us and then took pictures of us sleeping... Yep... That happened), we ate a wonderful dinner prepared by the Riggs' and their neighbors/ward members!

After dinner we had a little testimony meeting and then met and talked with the President, which was really good! Everyone probably thought that I was SUUUPER boring and half-deaf or something cause my ears were SUUUPER plugged up from the plane ride there, so I couldn't hear very well - PLUS I just so happened to get lucky enough to develop a terrible cold the night before, which continued to develop throughout the next few days. But do not fret, my friends! All is well now! My cold is almost one hundred percent gone now, thanks to the HUGE amount of daily vitamins that I've been taking, with a little help from good ole Day-Quil. :)

The next day was transfer meeting, where I met my new companion, Sister Woodbury (who is AWESOME, by the way!!!), and had to say goodbye to my sweet Sister Lochridge... :( I was sad about that, but it's ok. I'm sure we'll run into each other eventually. :)

Sister Woodbury kinda intimidated me for a minute at first because she has such a sarcastic sense of humor (which I'm pretty used to, but with her, it was a lil bit difficult to tell if she was being sarcastic sometimes), but once I got a feel for her personality and sense of humor, we get along WONDERFULLY!!! Seriously, she's a wonderful trainer and I am SO blessed to have her as my companion! As I've been out here, I've come to realize just how silly it was of me to have the fears that I had about a mission at first! I mean, I don't wanna jinx myself, but companions were one of my worst fears (or, I should say, having a bad, or crazy companion), but so far I've gotten along with my companions great! :)

So far the work has been going WONDERFULLY!!! Just three days after I got here, and on my third day of tracting (I started tracting on Wednesday - and yes, it was kind of terrifying at first, but once I just started talking to people, which I'm pretty good at, it's not so bad), we got TWO PEOPLE to commit to a baptism date! YEP! That's right! Their names are Wu Biao (pronounced Woo-Bee-Ow), who's a chinese man, and Reacha (pronounced Ree-Sha), who's a black lady. I love them both and I am SOOOOOOOO excited for both of them!!! Although they had already received a few lessons before I got there, I still like to think that I played some sort of role in their decision to be baptized! :D This truly IS a remarkable work and I am SOOOOOOOOO excited to share this wonderful gospel with everyone around me! :)

Saturday wasn't as easy, though, unfortunately. Nobody agreed to a baptism date - but then again, no baptism invitation was extended, either. However, as the day went on, it got much better! There were SO many tender mercies of the Lord showing us that our efforts were being recognized, just simply by people being nice to us - even if they didn't have time, or weren't even interested in hearing what we had to say. The church is true! That's what Sis. Woodbury and I always say to each other everytime something REALLY miraculous-seeming (like two people getting on date for baptism on the same day), or when we'd feel a little discouraged because we just keep on knocking on angry people's doors who look like they want to take their shot-gun out or punch us in the face. But at the end of the day, none of the hard, negative stuff matters. All that matters is that the church is SOOOOOOOO true and we are here for a purpose - to serve the people in DC and to bring them unto Christ. And that's what we're doing, and that's what we're going to continue to do.

Another really cool experience happened yesterday night when we were walking around an apartment building and we knocked on a door to check on a member, but the member that we went to check on no longer lived there. In fact, they hadn't lived there for over a year, and now there is a very sweet, non-member girl who lives there who looks like she's about in her mid-twenties. At first when we found out that the member no longer lived there, we just said, "Oh, ok. Sorry to bother you. Have a nice day." and walked away. With every step as we walked away, a pit continued to grow in my stomach and I KNEW that we should've talked to her and told her about the gospel, but I just kept on ignoring that feeling... Until my companion and I got in our car and we had just started driving away, and I turned to her and said, "Do you feel like we should go back and talk to her?" and she said, "I feel like we should go back and talk to her if YOU feel like we should go back and talk to her." So we did. And when the girl answered the door again, she was on the phone and looked kinda confused to see us back, but we told her that we felt like we should come back and talk to her. Then we told her a little bit about what our church is about and she told us that she doesn't really believe in God and she's not really religious, but she's always kinda felt like something was missing in her life and felt like there was something more out there. Then she couldn't talk right now cause she's on the phone, but she welcomed us to come back and talk to her some other time! HECK YEAH!!! THE CHURCH IS SOOOOOOOOOO TRUE!!!

I LOVE BEING A MISSIONARY!!!

FRIENDS AND FAMILY, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE WRITE ME!!! I would still LOVE to hear from all of you!!! :) I'm pretty sure that y'all can write me for free on dearelder.com! Oh! And also - if you wanna send me a package, please send it through U.S. Mail cause if you send it through anywhere else, it'll take longer.

Thank you SOOOOOOOOOOO much for all of your love and support! I love you all!!!

Sister Aubrie Orrock

4/12/13

HEY EVERYBODY!!!

Have you missed me?? Haha. Just kidding. Well, I have survived my first nearly week and a half in the MTC and time here is already quickly coming to a close! It's sure crazy how time flies! I'll be leavin on a jet plane bright and EARLY on Tuesday morning at 6:00 AM and leaving this beautiful state and goin off to DC! I am SOOOOOOOO EXCITED - and nervous and completely terrified, but that's ok! Cause I know that it's all in the Lord's hands and I'll be fine! :)

This week has sure been crazy and filled with all sorts of fun and crazy adventures, I don't even know where to start! Haha. So - first things first: Was General Conference AMAZING or what?!?! I cannot even begin to tell you how incredibly humbled I was - and still am - by all of the talks that were so eloquently given! I LOVED all of the talks about missionaries and missionary work! It's sure incredible to see just how many of today's young people are really following the teachings and examples of Christ and serving Him by bringing others unto Him through missionary work! I LOVE IT!!! :D Plus, it was a truly incredible and unique experience to be here and watching it in the MTC! The spirit is SOOOOOO strong here as it is - you can seriously even feel the spirit in the cafeteria, it's INSANE, but SOOOOOO cool!!!! It was just AMAZING how much stronger the spirit was during conference here! It was magnified ten fold! :)

Also, on Tuesday night I had the amazing experience of being able to sing in the MTC choir at our weekly devotional! It was SOOOOO cool!!! We sang "Be Still, My Soul", which is EXACTLY what I needed to hear in every single way at that time! Definitely a tender mercy from the Lord! And SOOOOO cool to be able to sing with about five hundred fellow missionaries! SUCH a powerful spirit!!!

So... now that we've gotten the spiritual stuff out of the way, here's for some funny MTC experiences! The other day, I was sitting in the foyer area near my classroom and Elder Payne was... well... kinda being a pain... and he was playing with a rubber-band and I asked if I could shoot it somewhere. He was halfway joking when he told me to try to shoot him in the eye... So I did. I wasn't actually TRYING to hit his eye, but it ended up hitting him perfectly in the eye. He was slightly embarrassed about getting beat by a girl - particularly a Sister missionary, so he just stood up and said, "Well, we're done playing THAT game..." and walked back into the classroom. To this day he STILL flinches at the sight of me holding a rubber-band. It's pretty hilarious, I'm not gonna lie.

Oh! And as far as the food here goes... not so great... Haha. Most of it doesn't sit very well in my estomago (stomach), so I've been eating a LOT of fruit lately. At least I'm being pretty healthy. :)

Oh, and also, like two or three of the toilets in the bathroom on my floor closest to my room got clogged and overflowed (practically exploded) with... stuff... Haha. You can imagine. Brown stuff was all over the floor for a day or so... YUMMY... And when I was about half asleep or so, I may or may not have accidentally stepped in a small part of it (luckily it was mostly toilet water) while I was in the bathroom getting ready for bed... Yep. I DEFINITELY washed my feet that night... It was awesome... Mom - SHOWER SHOES OR FLIP-FLOPS WOULD BE TREMENDOUSLY APPRECIATED!!! :D

Also, as far as my name-tag search goes... It's a no-go. I originally lost it the first time last Saturday, then I found it a couple of days later, then I immediately lost it again... I REALLY don't understand. Cause it was my magnetic name tag and I had stuck it on the metal part of my purse and hung it on my bed before I went to bed one night, and my companion and ALL of the girls in my room saw me put it there, then when I woke up in the morning it was gone. Seriously. NO WHERE TO BE SEEN!!! It's the WEIRDEST THING!!! So, basically now I'm known by my district as the Sister who looses/misplaces everything AND, even more than that, who LAUGHS ALL THE TIME!!! My companion, Sis. Lochridge and I laugh ALL the time - it's kinda ridiculous, but pretty great and hilarious all at the same time! I LOVE MY COMPANION!!! She's the best! :)

Oh! But I just remembered something that I forgot to mention in my e-mail last week! My dear, sweet companion bought me an oreo ice-cream treat cause she knows how much I love oreos, AND they have cookies n cream milk here and you BETTER BELIEVE I get that! SOOOOOO good! :D

Anyways, as for the most recent turn of events - I went to the temple with my district this morning and GUESS WHO I RAN INTO THERE?? THAT'S RIGHT - MY GORGEOUS COUSIN, DESI!!! I had been PRAYING ALL MORNING LONG to run into SOMEONE from home, and there she was - right after I walked in the temple and got my temple clothes! It was definitely a HUGE tender mercy from Heavenly Father! :)

Well, anyways, I don't have much more time left to write, so I gotta run, but know that I love you ALL!!! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE write me!!! :)

Love always,
Sis. Aubrie Orrock
P.S. Don't worry Ashley, Sofi, Heather, Aubs, Kat, Janette, Michelle, and Katie, or any of my other BFF's that I may have failed to mention - as much as I love her and she's become a sister to me, she could NEVER replace any of you! I love you all!!! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE write me! And THANK YOU for those of you who have - Aubs, Sofi, and Katie! Your letters seriously mean THE WORLD to me!!!