April 28, 2014

Family,

I have missed you!!  As for everything that went on this week-- holy crazy!! I know that you had to of just been dying!!! I have realized one thing though... I am not a very clean person... ooopss!! So this week’s goal was actually to try to be more clean. It is a work in progress but Sis Wilde is really clean so I will learn! Oh and I made spaghetti this week!! It was so good!! As for the  questions... my comp, Sister Wilde is great!! We get along really well and no she is not like Elder Clark.  She is really sweet-- we still argue a little but that happens with every companion so to say the least I really like Sister Wilde and we have a lot of fun together!! She is doing really well.  She leaves in three transfers so I think we will end her mission together.  She is great though; I learn so much from her everyday! As for Gladys Knight, she was here all weekend!!! It has really been the most amazing weekend ever! Something that I will cherish forever!!  I am so grateful that I was one of the missionaries who got to serve at all 4 firesides!  Let me tell you it was soooooooo amazing! The first one started off great and they just kept getting better and better!! Her husband came to 2 and they would both bear their testimonies!! They are so powerful!! To give you a visual you know that song that we sang in music camp where we had to make all the weird noises like bamb... bamb... bamb bamb and Jacque had her part in the beginning... yeah well that was what it was like!!! We were all shouting amens and dancing!! It was soo fun and really funny! I will have to tell you more in person but lets just say I have never felt the Spirit that way but it was so strong!! I am so grateful for all the different cultures that we have in this church! It truly is amazing! We also became really close with the choir and so it has been a rough morning because it feels like the end of a dance concert! I am so sad it is over but we are now on to do bigger and better things with all those Baptist folks!! As for the rest of the week, we had an amazing experience! One of our recent converts named Kwee is from a place around Tailand and she speaks Karen not Koran but Karen it is like Burmese but it is a little different and all the Karen people are flooding to America because there is a genocide going on in their country right now. So Kwee introduced us to her friend Lah Say Ku and her family! They are amazing and they don’t understand anything we say!! The church doesn’t have Karen yet-- they are working on it but we are so blessed because Kwee translates everything for us!! We had our first lesson and it was one of the most powerful things that I have been a part of! Even though we had no idea what Kwee was saying, she would tell us and help them to understand what we were teaching.  We had to teach super simple and just focus on the feeling in the room. The Spirit was so strong! Kwee bore her testimony at the end and the family is so excited to learn!! They truly are a miracle! Oh I almost forgot Kwee is only 17 and she just joined a little while ago! She told us that she wants to serve so that she can bring the Gospel to her people and help them to know the truth!! On top of all of this we went to the temple on Friday and as you all know that is my absolute favorite place to be! The Raleigh Temple is little but beautiful! Being there with a bunch of missionaries is a whole new and wonderful experience! I am so grateful for our temples! It has been a crazy week and we really should get some sleep today but we are going to tour around UNC!! Go Tarheels! hahah It should be fun! I miss you all so much and hope you have the greatest week!! Girls--Mom told me a bit about the competition and I can only imagine how great you all are! I am jealous! My companion Sister Wilde dances and she was going to go to college for it! I always talk about how good y’all are!! Keep on keeping on!! Clay, Makelle told me that her mom said y’all have kept up the tradition of the friendship wall!!! It is the best-- right!! I hope all is going well! Oh and I was reading in Alma 26 this week and thought of you! If you get a chance-- read it! It is the best! Honestly the greatest place to find what a mission is truly like!! I feel like I can read it everyday and something else stands out to me where I am like "oh my gosh this is me everyday!" As for everyone else, I hope Chelsey has a great birthday.  I love you all and miss you so much!! I hope you have the best week! 

Love forever 

Cass

April 14, 2014

Well family!!! 

I miss all of you so much and love hearing from you!! You all have such great testimonies and I am so proud to call you my family!! Wow!!  It sounded like you had such an amazing week!!  Carlee I miss One Tree Hill as well! Did you know that it was filmed here! I am pretty sure North Carolina is the most beautiful place I have ever been to! The city is amazing and everything is beginning to bloom! It truly makes it so great to wake up each morning to beautiful colors and birds everywhere!! Oh and here in Chapel Hill everyone is out running and riding bikes!! It makes me a bit jealous but then we get to go out and jump on the buses and walk around and talk to all of them so I really love it!! There are lots of people to teach and to be honest I don’t think I have ever been so busy!! Every morning we wake up and have a day planned and it goes nothing like what we plan but we are always running everywhere and time just seems to fly!! Everyone always says Chapel Hill is just crazy and it is so true!! But I love it!! As for cooking... lately we have been in a lot more member homes! The members really seem to be opening up to us, which has been a blessing, but I have learned to cook!! We have a store called Aldis that has super cheap food and I make spaghetti and eggs and oatmeal and cooked vegetables and all that jazz!! I have gotten a lot better! One of the members gave me a hot pad because Sister Wilde told her how I burnt my fingers on my oatmeal bowl that morning and spilt it all over the apartment so I am getting there!! haha  These next weeks are going to be great but crazy!! We have Easter this week and I am so excited! I have been reading Jesus the Christ and it really explains Christ life so well!! I have learned so much! I would recommend it to all of you if you want to study the last week of the Saviors life!! Also the Ensign has a really great depiction of it as well!! Other than that we have our temple trip the next week and Gladys Knight comes that weekend!! I might be a bit worn out but I am too excited!! This is truly going to be amazing!! They are taking the pews out of our church building so that more people can fit!! They said in California they had 150 people baptized after she came!! It is really going to be a miracle!!! As for Easter what color are y'all wearing I want to match!!! Sister Wilde and I are going to match with our ward mission leaders wife.  She is like our mom out here and I love her so much!! She is from England and has two sons out serving and one is with Christiaan hahah small world!  They are the best and she calls people twits and says the rubbish can and all that stuff!!  Anyways I hope you all have the best week and know how much I love you!! Please don’t give up on your missionary work! I know that it can be discouraging but just remember how important our family is to you and remember that if we don’t share what blessing the Gospel is to us then they may never have it! Oh and something else that helps-- on average people hear about the gospel 7 times so just be happy if you are one of the 7!!! Cami! I look up to how brave you are with Samantha! I wish that I had had the courage with some of my friends back at home!! I love you all and hope you have the best Easter!!

Love Always,

Cass

April 7, 2014

Family!!

Thank you all for writing me! I really do feel that I have the greatest family! I am so lucky to have y’all! As for Conference... how amazing!! Wow I don’t even know what to say was my favorite because they were all so amazing!! I guess I could say that the one that stuck out to me the most was President Uctdorf's talk about gratitude.  I always love President Ucthdorf’s talks and since I have been on my mission I feel that I always need to be more grateful for what I have been given. I have learned so much about enjoying today instead of looking for tomorrow. I feel that this life is too short to forget about what is in front of us and I love trying to see things from Heavenly Father’s view.  The life we live here is so short we can not let any time go to waste.  You know me and quotes-- I just loved "The saddest line of tongue and pen are the words it might have been." I hope that each of you realize how great today is and don’t let a minute pass by! Clay especially you as so much change is about to happen in your life. Don’t forget to have fun in high school- enjoy it!! Enjoy the time you have with the family and remember that you have prepared for 18 years to go on a mission and you will have eternity to look back on it.   So for the two years you are on your mission--just live it up!! I think that so many times I forget this, I forget to see what I have when it is right in front of me! Well anyways-- enough of my ranting!! I just love all of you and I really do miss you! I miss eating Mike and Ikes during conference while acting like I am playing bingo. haha! Well as for everything else... Chapel Hill is great! I really do love it here! It is a HUGE adjustment from Pembroke but I am finding my way. Like I said-- it is kind of like living down Mill Ave.   We have a Mill but it is called Frankolin and Sister Wilde’s favorite restaurant is down that street so we have been there a few times. One thing that a lot of people say about it around here, is it is a little piece of the North in the South and they aren’t lying!! The people are very liberal and they are all getting their PhD degrees or their Masters. Most of the people in our ward are very educated.  We have 3 former Mission Presidents in our ward and many Bishops.  Most of the classes teach deep doctrine and most things fly over my head let alone our investigators but somehow everything always turns out and the Spirit brings it to their hearts! It is a lot different here though because most of the couples are working, studying, and newly married so we don’t see much of our ward too often, which is understandable! They are all really smart! We do cook for ourselves a lot but that is one of my favorite parts because I am learning how to make stuff! Sister Wilde is going into nutrition so she teaches me but lets just say I am really good at scrambling eggs!! haha We do live in an apartment and it is huge!! So much room! We have our own Gym downstairs too... a bit of a change from walking down the street every morning for exercise and calling it good when the neighborhood dog chases you for 5 minutes. Haha! I do miss Pembroke and Sister Angela but it was time for a change and the Lord knows where I need to be! There is a lot of work to be done here but we have lots of restrictions as well because we are in a college town and everyone is our age.  We have to be very careful what we say and do. Sister Wilde and I get along great! I feel like I have known her for so long we just click easily! She makes fun of me for being dramatic all the time but yet in the same sentence she catches herself saying the same things-- it is pretty funny! We have two other sisters super close to us as well that we hang out with on preparation days.   One is from Hong Kong and she is teaching me Cantonese! It is super interesting!! We also take the bus a lot out here-- they are free, so we walk and talk and take the bus to save miles! We meet some pretty great people that way and learn to appreciate the heat and our ability to walk!! I feel like a real missionary!! As for all my friends on missions--they are all doing great!!  Clay I know that it will be just the same for you and all of your friends and I am so excited for you.  I feel like we all grow from one another’s experiences and it really is amazing!! As for what has happened this week-- we have had just an amazing week with conference!  We are meeting with a lady named Vernetta who lives a few doors down from us. She is great!  We met with her and invited her to write down some questions she had about the Church and her hesitations.  We promised her they would be answered in Conference if she had an open heart. She came to the first session on Sunday and we saw some of the questions, let me tell you each talk hit one of the questions she had.  She turned to us at the end and said I will be back for the next session I have to go home and write more questions. It’s like magic!! The greatest part was it wasn’t magic at all it was Heavenly Father! I am so grateful that He has a hand in this work!! I am so grateful to have an opportunity to play a part in the hastening and I know it is what brings me the most happiness! It truly is amazing to see miracles happen!

As for everything else... It is pouring outside right now-- it literally looks like a hurricane!! The thunder has been so loud all day and it is exciting!! As for you all I truly love and miss you so much! Everyday I promise myself I will never take for granted the time that we have together.  I have the best family in the world and sometimes I feel that I should be more humble about how great you all are!  Sister Wilde laughs because she will find herself talking about y’all like you are her family and she says I just feel like I know them! haha  I talk a lot... but I guess that is how you can know that I miss you! Thanks for being my greatest blessing I hope you all have the best week!   Oh by the way the deer are like dogs out here-- they are everywhere!   In the streets, in the yards, you name it they are there!  Well I am off to give Sister Wilde a weave-- So fun!!! I miss doing hair!! Well, I love you!!

Love forever and always

Cass/ Sister Oliver

March 31, 2014

Family!!!! Oh how I have missed you!! Well let me just start by telling you that I am serving in Chapel Hill!!!! GO TAR HEELS!! hahaha I love it here it is completely city!  It is almost like serving down Mill in Tempe and there are millions of college students everywhere and everyone is super smart around here and there are actual stores!!! Like a Target!!! I just about died and I think my companion Sister Wilde is getting a little annoyed of me freaking out at the fact that there are street lights and stores and restaurants everywhere!! It just kills me but I truly love it here! This week I feel like it has just been crazy there are so many things that I have to tell you but I will start with your questions... well one when Clay gets his call I am allowed to talk for ten minutes I think so send me more information when you get it! I am so excited for you Clay!! Ok and Happy belated Chantz!  Oh and I am in Charisse Standage’s stake.  She is one ward over from me so we meet in the same building--small world! But other than that-- yes mom we go to the Temple in a couple weeks and it will be the best!! I am so excited! As for the dog chasing me... yeah, I don’t know if that will happen here and the bee sting was just funny.  I think the stinger is still in my leg because I still have a bump! But anyways-- leaving Pembroke was so hard and I still feel that my heart is torn some days but I have realized that I don’t ever have to take them out of my heart.  I feel that I somehow just have more room for this new ward and area and new companion! She is great!  We both are a little scared that we are going to become too close of friends because we are so alike and everyone asks if we are sisters wherever we go-- even though we look nothing alike!  I feel that it is going to be great! Well this week we have had meeting after meeting but they are great!! We are having Gladys Knight come to Chapel Hill in a couple of weeks and it is suppose to be a huge missionary opportunity!! Our mission President has been waiting for 2 years for her to be able to come to our area so it is pretty exciting!  I am just so lucky and blessed to have been transferred right to Chapel Hill the month that she is coming and to be a Sister Leader here!! Only 12 missionaries get to host it and out of the twelve there are four sisters so they chose the two sets of Sister Leaders in the stake and I just happen to be in the right place at the right time!! So we have been with President all week figuring things out.  He told us the other day that we were chosen first by the Lord but second because we always smile! I guess that part of my blessing is coming to pass as well! But anyways we are so excited!  Then we had MLC which is where all the leaders meet and learn and I had to teach a little bit! That is always stressful but I think I am getting more used to it. It is crazy because I don’t even feel like I am the one teaching, I feel like I am not even in my body but it is a pretty amazing experience! I guess it is just normal missionary life!  Other than that-- we live in a huge apartment and it is amazing! We even have a private gym!! We also are teaching a lot of people from Rwanda! It is kind of crazy but they are all refuges with crazy stories.  The language barrier can be confusing sometimes but somehow the Spirit helps the message to go through! I just feel so blessed being a missionary! It is honestly the best experience! Some days I feel that I am just on vacation here but then I realize that I am even luckier because I get to feel the Spirit here and grow so much! I have felt so much love for the people in Pembroke and I know that when we grow together spiritually that is the best way to build a friendship.  It was hard leaving Elsee and Summer but I know that they are in good hands! They sent their favorite dream catcher to me and I love it!! I will have to send you a picture of it!  It will always remind me of them!! I don’t know how I am going to bring things home though! It is crazy!! Clay I can’t believe you had to talk I bet it was great! And dad I am sure yours was amazing as well!! Mom you know that your music is always spiritually uplifting! I am sad I missed it!  I am always so proud to call y’all my family! It is weird being in a ward with families again and with kids crying. It is the greatest blessing to see how even though I have been in two completely different situations the gospel message is still the same and the Spirit is still here! It is the same all over and I am so grateful to be able to hear from our Prophet next week! Girls wasn't that conference amazing!! I loved all the music! Sister Wilde and I just noticed how often they are starting to use media! It is a huge tool and we all need to hop on!! But anyways I hope y’all have the best week and know how much I love you! You are the greatest blessing to me and I always look forward to hearing from you!! You are the greatest!  This is my new address! 101 Hwy 54 G6 Carrboro NC 27510 

Love forever and always 

Cass/sister Oliver

ps mom I wish they had a pill for patience as well! I have really come to love Mosiah 24:14-16.  It always reminds me to be patient!!

Also I can’t believe Tyler and Jenny have a baby I am jealous!!  Oh and pps I am in the medical triangle!! It is pretty crazy!

Well anyways I love you thanks for always being the best! 

Oh family I forgot to tell you we talked to this man who told us that he was Jesus and that he wrote a language called Babolonix! It is crazy nuts!! I just can’t even believe it! He started talking in it... nuts!! But whatever it’s normal! Happy General Conference weekend!! One of the best weeks of the year!! Enjoy!