fall leaves and a brunette

hey everyone! transfer week was quite exciting as usual! 

so before sis hollis left, we had a farewell party at the hagedorns with the stricklands. it was soooo much fun! we ate soooo much! i was soooo sad to see sis hollis go. i hate saying goodbye to my companions. they all have turned out to be my best friends. well we went to transfers and i was looking at all the new missionaries trying to guess which one would be my new trainee. i was looking for a blond because they always put me with a blond and there were no blonds! i was completely lost! but i got an amazing sister to work with! her name is sis blaisdell, she is 22 (they always give me the oldest ones. i think think they are trying to tell me im old or something haha), she is from southern california, and she is a brunette with green eyes. when i took her around to meet everyone the whole ward was like oh a brunette? we havent ever had one! hahaha then they all said oh another california girl? then of course they would all turn to me and say we cant get rid of you sis swish! i told bishop that i am just going to buy property in the area and make it official. he said he was ok with that. well i am loving being a missionary still! i love my savage mill ward!!!!! they are like another family to me. every time i think of all of these families i am so close to i feel like i was definitely meant to be here. so this week we had a lot of member missionary work miracles. we have been really focusing on working with the members to help them do missionary work and we got 3 new investigators this week all through the members in our ward! AMAZING!!! we are teaching lisa jimmy of the famous jimmy family. i love her! she is so excited to be a part of the gopsel. she is pregnant and does not want to be baptized until she has the baby next month. we have been reading the book of mormon with her and she just loves it. it is so cool to see her grow closer to the Savior through it. we walked a lot this week because sis blaisdell is super nervous about biking and we were low on miles. Bethanie introduced me to vegemite and she was excited because i am the first American she knows who likes vegemite! woohoo! it is so good! every one must try some when they get the chance. well i play the piano for district meeting every week and today i made the district sing joy to the world. elder martin, one of our zone leaders, was less than thrilled to say the least. he always puts comments on little cards of our performance at district meetings and one of the comments he put on mine was "mediocre song selection at best" hahaha what a nerd. we have an awesome district and there is great missionary work going on. i am loving the leaves here! they are starting to change and it is breath taking! i love seasons! turns out we dont have any in brentwood. haha. well i hope every one is well! love you all! MAKE GOOD CHOICES!!

Love,

Sister Swisher

Staying in Savage Mill!!!!

Hello everyone thanks for tuning in for another week of Sista Swisha as a missionary in ghetto baltimore. just kidding i live in one of the most expensive counties in the country. its really nice here. Happy transfer week! so funny story... i was so sure i was leaving the Savage Mill ward that i packed up all my shoes. well phone calls came today and i am staying in savage mill!!! woo hooo!! but sis hollis is leaving:( she is going off with a different sister. but good news! I am training again!! woo hoo! i would love to train for the rest of my mission if i could! well by the end of next transfer, i will have been in savage mill for 6 months! that is sooo awesome. i feel like a member of the ward. there are so many families that i am so close to :) i absolutely love it! Sister Jimmy called me today to see if I was getting transferred and when i told her i wasnt she cheered! she is so cute. i dont know what i would have done if i had to leave my savage mill ward. ok great news every one! today sister hagedorn took us for pedicures!!!! woo hoo! it felt amazing and i dont feel like as big of a hobo now. :) we also went to breakfast with dan and beth today. what a fun day!! lots of packing going on tho :( i dont want to lose sis hollis but i know that she will be my friend forever! after all she knows me too well haha. we had an amazing last week together tho! we met a ton of less-actives that we have been trying to get a hold of for months! we just saw so many miracles this week. this is going to be a short email because i dont remember too much. i am excited to be an auntie!!!! wooo hoo!!!! i can hardly contain my excitement. we had Bethanie's birthday dinner with her which was fun and she has the same birthday as my sister! we also had the ward picnic on saturday night which was way too much fun. we played ultimate frisbee in  our skirts! haha the elders played basketball in their suits! missionaries are dorks! well i will leave you all with some of the thoughts i have been having this week. i have been thinking a lot about becoming the person who Heavenly Father wants me to become. i was wondering how i can do this. then i was reading in my studies and realized that all we need to do is act with charity or the pure love of Christ. as long as we act as Christ would and love everyone and serve them we will become who God wants us to be. What a great thing to think about! We just need to love with all our hearts and God will do the rest. i love being a missionary and having 24/7 to serve others and help them com closer to Christ. I know that this Gospel makes me soooo HAPPY and there is nothing i love doing more than sharing it with EVERYONE!!!! I cannot wait to pick up my new companion and to see her grow and to see myself grow this transfer. serving a mission is hard but it is worth it. i cannot imagine my life without a mission. i definitely had to serve to keep up with my amazing family. what a blessing serving is to me. man i know i say this a lot but i LOVE being a missionary. :) MAKE GOOD CHOICES!!!

Love,

sis swish

Snakes and pictures!!!!!

HEY!!! 

So it has been another exciting week in the Maryland Baltimore Mission. BEST MISSION IN DA WORLD! wow cocky. haha any ways first off on tuesday morning we got back from our run and i just hear sister hollis call my name. she said "Sister Swisher come here right now but walk slowly and dont freak out." She knows me too well. So i come in and there is this snake slithering around our apartment! I quietly freaked out so i took half of her instruction.  Sis hollis instructed me to get her a container and a lid. she swiped up the snake and we both look at eachother and said PICTURES! so we took a few shots then flung the snake to china. we then studied in our car because we were much to creeped out to study in the apartment with other possible reptiles slithering about. So every morning we go on our runs and i have been trying to kick up the speed. i also am a dork. so we were running up this hill and we were almost to the point where we stop for a break and i wanted to be motivational to my comp to kick up the speed and so i yelled the first thing that came to my mind and screamed "there is a man chasing us" and i sprinted away. when we stopped to walk my comp looked at me and said thank you for making the whole neighborhood think we are being kidnapped. haha whoops probably not the smartest thing to yell. oh well it got the job done. So we also went to the orioles game this week! it was so much fun! all 243 missionaries in our mission sat in the same section and it was crazy fun!!! we rode there with the yarn family and sis strickland.  the whole night was a blast. we got to catch up and chat with a ton of missionaries and watch some baseball! woo hoo GO A'S!!! haha well we were allowed to be out past curfew and we all thought it was going to be so much fun but we didnt know that we are all a bunch of old people are were butt tired at 10pm. haha we got home around 11pm. it was so weird to be out so late. it was so worth being dead tired on saturday. ok so saturday was thelma's baptism! it went so well and the Spirit was so strong. It feels good to be a missionary. When we met her outside the baptismal font i have never seen someone sooo happy in my life. i didnt care if she was soaking wet i gave her the biggest hug ever. When else in my life will i be able to see lives change like this?? What a great week! So yesterday thelma was confirmed and received the gift of the Holy Ghost. what a great blessing it will be to her. So after church the elders gave us a ride home and i was hyper like really hyper. and the elders were playing some of my favorite EFY songs. holy cow. they experienced my singing at the top of the lungs while playing the air guitar act. lucky them. haha it was a blast and a half. well it has been a great week and i cant wait for another one. oh yeah my mom sent me a michael buble christmas CD last week and it has been spectacular. it is all we have been listening to. :) Merry Christmas! Have a good week everyone. MAKE GOOD CHOICES! 

Love,

Sister Swisher 

Backing up! Watch out! 

Orioles game!

Michael Buble Christmas album!

The snake that looks like a worm.

Changing Lives

Ok everyone, what a great week we had!!! Yesterday at church we had 6 less-actives and 2 investigators! we have been seeing miracles with less-actives because we are just ourselves and love them to death! I LOVE the people here! I feel like I am a member of the ward. I just absolutely love meeting people and seeing their lives change. Each person i meet changes my life as well. So we had exchanges this week. and guess what sister i got to go and be companions with for TWO DAYS...... SISTER SCHOFIELD!!! woo hoo! my old comp! it was sooo much fun, she is one of my best friends.... i feel like i say that a lot. haha but it felt good to teach with her again and get the band back together. i got zero sleep because after lights out we would talk til the wee hours of the morning. so worth it! for comp study we sand Called to Serve and marched around her apartment. we think we are pretty funny.... well if the shoe fits. so then we got back from exchanges and i was happy to see my comp sister hollis again and to be back in my area. We painted for one of our investigators all day saturday and it was a blast! then they fed us dinner and we helped them make it. then we got to see sister strickland because she is back in town. we hid in her kitchen til she came down the stairs, we tried to scare the poop outta her but of course i could not control my laughter and blew our cover. we have so much fun out here! We taught Thelma the last lesson and are going to help her make invites to her baptism today. she wants to invite a ton of people and share the Gospel with everyone! she is so amazing and has truly touched my heart. Thelma has truly changed the way I look at life. She always puts others first no matter what! Then on sunday we had all of these people come to church and it felt so good! i was glad they could come and feel the Spirit. our ward is always so welcoming and nice to everyone we bring. everyone is treated like family. i have learned so much about the kind of member i want to be when i get home. i want to be the kind of person that is always on the lookout for new people and greet them and serve them. I am so thankful for my Heavenly Father's plan! I know that i was sent here to meet all of these people. I feel loved everyday by God and everyone around me. I love being a missionary and serving all these people every day. I love the Gospel! I just want to share it with EVERYONE!! Oh so one last story, this morning our phone was being dumb. we got a text and looked at it then realized we had 12 missed calls! our phone didnt ring once! it was our district leader, our zone leaders, and the assistants (who serve in our ward with us) we called them all back wondering what the heck was going on and i guess since we didnt answer so many times they were about ready to drive to our apartment to see if we were alive! Elder Snow was about ready to call search and rescue he said. hahahha it was funny but so comforting to know we have so many missionaries looking out for us. we just told them thanks and to stop being drama queens hahaha! well hopefully you are all enjoying the last of summer :) LOVE YOU ALL!! MAKE GOOD CHOICES!!!

Love,

Sister Swisher 
:)

Sticker Thief

Hey! 

Ok so this week we had a lot going on! So tuesday sis hollis finally was able to start working again! it was so great! we got a lot done this week and caught up on everything from the last week. So Daniel and Bethanie are on vacation in North Carolina. we miss them! But we are glad they are out having fun. Thelma is still ready to be baptized on the 17th of August. She is so awesome! she teaches us i swear. Well we also had a great visit with the jimmys this week. so lawrence jimmy is 5 years old and always sits by me in church. he is quite a handful so i come prepared with paper, pens of every color, and stickers that my mom gave me to give to kids. So last sunday i took out a pile of stickers and lawrence quickly shoved the entire stack in his back pack. i was like cool lawrence just bamboozled me out of my stickers. oh well. haha so we go over there and on the front entry window there were the stickers i gave (more like he stole them slyly haha) were all over the window! those are not going to come off very easily. i was cracking up. glad i could help decorate the jimmys home. So of course lawrence and i had a photo shoot with the stickers and lawrence had 3 dollars he wanted pictures with. weirdo. Then our investigator billy's son riley was going back to his mom's house after being here all summer. i was so sad to see him go! so riley and i also had a photo shoot when we went to say bye to him. we helped a family paint on saturday. it was pretty fun. so we had dinner with one our favorite families the hagedorns and another family is staying with them in the ward because their house has bed bugs! so the next night we made them a ton of cookies and doorbell ditched the cookies on the door step. it was pretty fun. so we also had a great time today. we went and made fruit pizza with sis hagedorn. then after we email sis nuss is taking us to costco so we can get fruit in bulk for cheap. it is so much fun to hang with all the people in the ward! Well i actually have pictures for all of you to see that i am still alive. there are a lot this week... so you're welcome.:) haha oh a few more things we have gotten a kick out of this week. we have heard some interesting birth stories from moms in the ward.... one had her baby in her camry on the way to the hospital and named her daughters middle name camry hahaha then another mom had her baby in her bathroom! so crazy! and great stories for us. Well hope all is good in the world. Love you all! MAKE GOOD CHOICES!

Love, 

The One and Only

Sister Swisher

always a funny story

Hey every body!!

I am especially excited to be out of the house today! Sister Hollis has been really sick all week and we were stuck inside. So this blog post will be kinda lame..... NOT! No such thing as a lame week when you are a missionary! So since Sister Hollis is on some meds that knock her out she sleeps the majority of the day. So I have been left to entertain myself. I still stick to the schedule and wake up by 6:30 and work out and get ready and study. but by that time it is only 9:30. So what have i been doing you are wondering? Well let me tell you. i have cleaned the apartment about 43 times, i have read every ensign that has come out since my birth, i have random solo dance parties to church music, i have been working out like a fool, and best of all i am almost done with the Book of Mormon. haha! so productive i know! So funny story of the week.... Sister Hollis had to give a talk in church. So she didnt take her loopy pills so she didnt get up and make a fool of herself haha. so before church i was just talking to everyone because i have been here in the Savage Mill ward for over 3 months. i feel like they are my ward family. so i was just chatting and a member of the bishopric came up to me and said hey sister swisher... since your companion is giving a talk would you like to say the closing prayer ( this is like the 3rd time i have said the prayer in sacrament meeting, they need to find a new backup haha) so i said sure Brother Maughn..... for a small price of 5 dollars. he must be used to me saying that cause he just laughed and walked off. So it was a missionary homecoming yesterday. so sister hollis gave her talk and a few youth bore testimony and then we were singing the intermediate hymn. at the end of the song i get up from my seat to start walking up to say the prayer. like 4 people stopped me and were like sister swisher sacrament meeting isnt over. great. the whole ward just saw me stand up and be tackled so i didnt go end sacrament meeting before the farewell talk! hahahaha! so i said the real closing prayer at the real time. i knew i was in for it when i said amen. EVERYONE and their mother's uncle came up to me to make fun of me. it was hilarious. the elders in the ward had a field day with it. they were even texting me during sacrament how embarassing i was. hahaha . well i thought the torment was over when church was over but as i went to get in the car the elders left a mormon.org card with a lovely note that read. remember when you almost ended sacrament meeting early? haha elders good one. well the work is still going well even though we have been cooped up all week. our investigator thelma is on date to be baptized on august 17th! woo hoo! well we are going to the doctor tomorrow to get my sick companion taken care of! have a great week everyone! MAKE GOOD CHOICES!!

Love, Sister Swisher

much too fun for pictures

HEY everyone!! ok so i don't have a ton of time to email today because we have so many fun things to do today! we are going to play basketball with our zone and then we are baking and hanging out with Sister Strickland again! they should change the name from preparation day to party day! haha ok i am a nerdy missionary. So any ways... highlights from this week! It was super humid and hot this week! record breaking! we decided like a bunch of dummies to ride our bikes on the hottest day of the week! we died and lost 50 pounds. We went up a ton of hills too, worst idea ever. Then we found two new investigators! Their names are Ruth and Helen! They are 68 and 69 years old, they are sisters, and they are moving in together. They are mine and Sis Hollis' new best friends! They are a crack up! Then on saturday night we met this amazing family in the ward that we had never seen before but they are totally active. They are the Dashner family and they are so chill and fun! They reminded me of my Aunt Emily and Uncle Howie! It made me feel at home! When we left the Dashners' house there was the craziest, most intense lightning storm I have ever seen! It was like there was a giant strobe light outside. It was pretty fun to watch. Then on sunday Daniel received the Priesthood!!! And Bethanie and Daniel both received temple recommends! This week we will be working on family history work with Daniel and Beth and then when they get back from vacation we are going to do a temple trip! Sorry for the lack of pictures lately! I am still alive! Sister Hollis and I are just having so much fun, we forget to take pictures! Sorry this is a short post but I have little time to email! I hope every one is doing well and having a great summer! I love you all! MAKE GOOD CHOICES!

Love, Sister Swisher