January 2023 Happenings

January flew by with all the many things we had to accomplish during the month.  It was a lot of catching up after our big trips as well as cleaning up after Christmas.  But we enjoyed it.

We've loved hearing from Cadence once a week from Mongolia.  She's had many adventures, but is thriving there.  Her language skills improve every day & she absolutely LOVES the people, loves teaching English, & just loves the country.

I managed to get my hair done in January & my friend decided it was time for a change.  I've never had dark hair in my life so it was fun to play with darker colors.  I've really enjoyed this color.

We spent a lot of January painting mini-figures.  Bladen got about 60 for Christmas, & I got an airbrush gun so we've had a lot of fun learning new painting techniques.  I love that Bladen's friend's are really into it too so that we can all paint together.

I taught our youth group how to sew buttons, holes, & how to hem pants/skirts one night in January.  I made these cute cupcakes to give the girls after my lesson.  They turned out really cute.

The boys had a fun day with friends at the adventure park where they played on the ninja warrior course.  I didn't realize how strong Craiger is.  He & Canyon both had a blast.

Trek has been working on updating his mini-cooper.  Mimi & Baba got him some LED lights for behind his wheels.  He has spent hours learning how to remove the old lights (that were boring) & install these new brighter lights.  It's been a good project for him.

And as always, the sunsets in Germany are beautiful.  We are truly going to miss them.

 

Cadence - Ymar xuurhun yum be...gej naasan - February 1, 2023

 бүгдээрээ сайн уу! Sorry this is late! I forgot to hit send on pday 

How are you all this week? My companion taught me an awesome Mongolian phrase this week (hence the fun email title). гэж наасан (gej naasan) is basically the equivalent of saying just kidding, but there's more too it and its really hard to explain unless you hear it a bunch of times from a native speaker. There's another phrase байхгуй уу? that people say ALL THE TIME. It also doesn't have a translation in English but after a very very long conversation with my companion and a lot of google translate help, I think I finally understand what it means haha. The Mongolian language has a lot of really fun language elements that are difficult to understand until you hear them in context many many times. But once you figure them out, people are so surprised because you sound like a native speaker when you use them!

Let's see, this week was very very busy! The work has been going great though! Our other investigators are doing well as well! Most of them are progressing very nicely. Sadly, one told us that she no longer wanted to take lessons with us, so we were sad to see her go. But the gift of agency is a wonderful thing and I am thankful that Heavenly Father has given us all the opportunity to choose to follow Him.

We also held a sports activity for our ward and invited my English class and our deaf friends to it and it ended up being a blast! We played volleyball and basketball with 30-40 people for 3 hours straight! It was so much fun! Afterwards, a few of my English students became good friends with the youth in our ward and then guess what?! One of my students showed up at sacrament the next day! Isn't that crazy! Despite not believing in any God, she felt the light and connection of the Church through the members at our activities and now she wants to be a part of it too. So she started taking lessons with us and we are so excited to have another investigator! Honestly, all of our investigators are doing amazing right now and progressing well. I am so excited to be a part of this work in this progressing area!

Another fun miracle this week: I was teaching English the other day and half way through the lesson, our taxi driver came! We always make an effort to invite everyone we meet to the English classes, but its unusual that one of them actually comes, so that was a pleasant surprise. Hopefully, he will also notice our church through the class and one day want to start taking the lessons. Please pray for him! English classes have been going well and our class got up to 11 people this week! Our numbers are expanding so much and there is such a difference in the atmosphere of our class now. The students are opening up more and wanting to talk to one another now. And they seem to be having more fun now that there is a larger community. Also, tomorrow I start teaching at Polytechnic College here in Darkhan which is a little scary. I'm not really sure what to expect but I am excited to begin teaching there nonetheless. I thankfully only have to teach on Wednesdays, so it won't be too stressful haha.

Other than that, not much else has happened recently. We've just been super busy running around all the time. But the work is awesome and I am finding so much joy in teaching others, learning from others, and strengthening my testimony of my Savior. This week was full of struggles in terms of communication with my companion but I have seen and felt the Lord's hand in my life helping me have patience and helping me understand better. One thing I learned this week that I wanted to emphasize is this lesson: Your best will not the be the same as other people's best and other people's best will not be the same as your best. Everyone is doing their best and it will look different than your best so it is important to not hold others up to your expectations or hold yourself to their expectations if that makes any sense. In the end, this lesson helped me and my companion a lot this week and we became a lot more unified after discussing and learning this together. 

I also started adding conference talks to my daily personal study and it has been life changing! I came across so many golden talks this week but there was one in particular that helped me so much this week when I was feeling a spiritual low. It's called "Daily Restoration" by Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf from the October 2021 Conference. Two quotes stood out to me:

"Do you want to change the shape of your life? Change the shape of your day. Do you want to change your day? Change this hour. Change what you think, feel, and do at this very moment. A small rudder can steer a large ship. Small bricks can become a magnificent mansion. Small seeks can become towering sequoias. Minutes and hours well spent are the building blocks of a life well lived."

"On our journey as pilgrims on the path of glory, we know how easy it is to fall away. But just as minor deviations can draw us out of the Savior's way, so too can small and simple acts of realignment assuredly lead us back. When darkness creeps into our lives, as it often does, our daily restoration opens our hearts to Heavenly Light, which illuminates our souls, chasing away shadows, fears, and doubts,"

I love both of these quotes because they helped me focus on the big picture a little more. Sometimes, we can become overwhelmed because we are not perfect or things aren't going our way and we just want to give up. When life becomes challenging, even doing the simple things like praying and studying the scriptures seem challenging and pointless. But they aren't. They are SO critical in helping us realign and refocus on our spiritual journey. I know that when we focus on realigning ourselves with Heavenly Father every minute, those minutes turn into hours, days, weeks, and then a lifetime. It is simple - don't focus on how hard the destination is to reach because it is about the journey. In the wise words of Brandon Sanderson - "[a person] doesn't change in one giant leap, but across a million little steps." Christ is with us every step of the way. He walked all of our steps already through His Atonement, so He knows and understands what we are going through. He is there to help carry us on our quest called life. I am thankful for my Savior and the hope that He gives me. He is hope and light. Turn to Him and He will brighten your darkest moments: that I can guarantee. I love you all and hope you have a magnificent week!

Love,

Sister Potter

P.S. To all my missionary friends - if you can, check out "Highs and Lows" by Hillsong - its definitely my favorite song right now

P.P.S. Here is the link to the talk 'Daily Restoration'

English link: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2021/10/41uchtdorf?lang=eng#title1 

Mongolian link: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2021/10/41uchtdorf?lang=mon 

Cadence - Getting into the swing of things - January 25, 2023

 Сайн байна уу? 

How are you all this week? This week has been so so so busy but soooo amazing! First off, on top of running mutual, FHE for the YSAs, playing piano for church, and having English classes 5 times a week, we also just started piano lessons on Saturdays! I am helping one of the Senior missionaries teach a kids class and an adult class. It's so awesome! We also started taking Mongolian sign language classes because one of our investigators is deaf and we found out we have a huge deaf community in this area. It's so much fun and learning sign language has helped me learn Mongolian a lot better too since I am a very visual learner haha. Plus, it's fun to flex on the other missionaries in our district calls since only some of us are learning.

This week was also a wakeup call for me in terms of preparedness and organization as a missionary. We had a big group planning session this week with the Elders and I didn't realize how much info I was missing and needed to catch up on. But on the plus side, I was able to understand most of the planning in Mongolian and I can officially keep track of all of our investigators and their personal information a lot better now. We have 7 investigators in total and they're all super awesome. We still have yet to contact two of them since they aren't answering any calls but we'll find a way through connections in the ward.

I had an awesome Gift of Tongues moment this week too! Yesterday, I set up and led a teaching appointment all by myself. Even better was the fact that she was a really difficult person to teach yet I could follow her questions super well. We were leading a discussion about Alma and she asked me "Why did God call Alma to be a prophet if he was such a bad person?" She asked a lot of really profound questions that challenged my Mongolian skills a lot, yet I was able to follow along a lot easier than I was used to. My companion wanted to make sure I led the entire discussion so she didn't participate at all. It was super difficult but overall, it was amazing seeing the progress I've made in my language learning so far. 

Also, Darkhan has by far the best Mongolian food I've ever had in the two months I've been here haha. All the sweet grandmas cook the most amazing food and, even though they feed us too much, I love every second of it. They are all so sweet and they always ask my companion if I understand Mongolian. Thankfully, I can now understand everyone so much better because my hearing has improved a lot. I also love all the children here. They are always so sweet and love to talk my ears off. Along with awesome food and awesome people, Darkhan is SO COLD. Yesterday it got to a low of -45 and with all my thermals and winter gear I felt like I was going to die. Thankfully our eyelashes don't freeze as much out here (I think it might be because it is way too cold haha). Also, as we were walking to an investigators house the other day, I saw a crow the size of a dog picking at a dog shaped skull on the ground. So that was fun...

Overall, I've learned a lot this week about how to put forth your best efforts to learn and help those around you. I know that if you are scared to try something difficult, just depend on the Lord for strength and try it and it will end up being a lot less difficult than you imagined it would. That has happened to me a lot this week and I know that it is sooo true! Sometimes I felt overwhelmed at the start of the day because we had so many things going on, but when I looked back on the day that night, I realized that Heavenly Father was pushing me along the whole day and it would turn out way less stressful than I expected. I know that if you pray for help and strength, He will answer and He will help you. Heavenly Father is so amazing and loving!

Mutual and FHE have been super fun. I've been learning a lot of fun Mongolian games and teaching a lot of Uno haha. We played one game at Mutual called 'Husbands and Wives' and it was super crazy. Basically, all the "wives" sit in a circle in chairs and their "husbands" stand behind them with their eyes closed. One husband doesn't have a wife, so he has to wink at one of the "taken wives". If the wife gets winked at, she has to sneak away from her husband and join the other husband without her husband tagging her. It got pretty intense because the guys were making it a sport to take us out haha. I've gotten really good at listening to game instructions in Mongolian now and I think Mutual and FHE have been good activities for a lot of our investigators to meet and become friends with the ward members. We had a mission wide call earlier this week which emphasized the importance of including members in missionary work. I think the Church is really trying to push the need for member involvement and so they added new Key Indicators to the mission program. We now have to track how many new members come to sacrament and how many members participate in our investigator lessons. This is going to help us improve our member involvement and also help newly baptized members stay involved and active after baptism. So this week, our goal is to try to connect the youth and YSAs more to create a more unified community in our ward. Unity is the key to a successful ward, in my opinion. So, for my fellow Stormlight Archive lovers: "I will unite instead of divide. I will bring people together" :)

Other fun stuff that happened this week: I found out that our apartment has a balcony haha. I've been here for 2 weeks and haven't noticed until today. We also don't have any pans for our oven but I was really craving muffins this week, so I made muffins by putting a muffin mix in a singular glass cup and cooking each muffin one at a time. Took a while but it worked out okay haha. I ate horse meat again and this time, I was only sick for a few hours the next day. I think my body is adjusting well to it. Also, we finally got mattresses! Before, we were just sleeping on planks of wood (basically) and our beds are rock solid. I don't mind it so much though. We still don't have pillows but that's more of a "i'm too lazy to go buy a pillow on pday" issue. For pday today, my comp and I and the other elders went to this awesome Japanese style restaurant and played this fun Mongolian game and I really can't explain what it is or how to play it because I still don't understand myself. But the Japanese food was sooo good. Also, we taught our new deaf investigators how to play Uno using sign language so I think that was a pretty awesome Gift of Tongues moment as well. 

I also wanted to give some details about traditional Mongolian food since some of you were asking about it (skip to the next paragraph if you don't care haha) - So the three main drinks they drink in the winter time are tsai (tea), hirim, and arig. Tsai is just hot water, milk and green tea mixed together. Hirim is milk and boiling water mixed together. Sometimes they add oil and salt to make it taste a little more. I prefer it without salt and oil. Arig is a drink that is essentially boiling hot boiled yogurt. The only way I can describe it is yellow with a cottage cheese mush texture and it kind of tastes like really really old liquid cheese. Not my favorite thing ever but I've heard some American missionaries can't even drink it without gagging so I'd consider myself pretty tolerant to the taste. Then they have buuz which are similar to Chinese dumplings but they can have anything in them (horse meat, beef, intestines, stomach, veggies, fat, garlic...). So you never know what you're gonna get until you bite into it. It's a fun surprise sometimes. Then there's tsuivan which is a noodle stir fry of sorts with really really thick noodles and any kind of meats and vegetables. I tried a tsuivan with artichokes this week which was an interesting but tasty meal. They make a LOT of soups here in the winter time since it's so cold and every Mongolian soup consists of potatoes, carrots, meat of any kind, fat, onions, and water and that's it. They just boil it all together and serve it while it's still boiling hot. You kind of learn to just burn your tastebuds off every time you eat because they want you to start eating as soon as they give you the food. Oh, they also have arig in solid form too. It just looks like soap and it's so hard that you have to soak it in boiling water in order to bite into it. They also have hurshur and it's just a fryed, flat form of buuz (I still have yet to try it). Those are the main foods they make here and honestly, Darkhan members have good recipes! The countryside food is so amazing!

This week, I was finishing up 3 Nephi and came across verse 21 in chapter 27:

21 Verily, verily, I say unto you, this is my gospel; and ye know the things that ye must do in my church; for the works which ye have seen me do that shall ye also do; for that which ye have seen me do even that shall ye do

I love this verse because it sums up our gospel so simply and eloquently: Follow Jesus Christ and you will be blessed. Christ is our perfect example and He is our friend. Everything He did, He did for us. If we simply do the things that He did and follow His teachings, we will be happy. I know that Christ is our Savior and our Redeemer. He is the light and the way that we can find peace and joy in this life. I promise you that if you learn about Him and try to become like Him, you will see a remarkable change in your life. You will see more joy, find more fulfillment, and become a better person. Christ has blessed my life and continues to bless my life every single day. I am so lucky to be here in Mongolian sharing this wonderful message. I want everyone to feel the joy that I feel because of my Savior. I hope you all have a wonderful week and if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask!

Love,

Sister Potter

Context:

Pic 2 is the wives and husband's game and Pic 8 is the photo Nomingerel from Unur sent of her baptism (she added me to the Pic- isn't that cute haha)

Cadence - Shine gazar - Xuuchin Darkhan - Шинэ газар - Хуучин Дархан - January 17, 2023

 Sain baitsgaana uu! Sonin saihan yu bn daa??

This week went by so fast and it was such a blur haha. In my last email, I mentioned that I was being transferred to Darkhan to finish up my training. And I got a new companion! Her name is Sister Otgontsetseg (Отгонцэцэг) and she is awesome! She doesn't speak very much English at all, so we've only been speaking in Mongolian, which has helped me sooooo much with my language learning. I think I have learned more Mongolian this week than I ever have so far on my mission. She is so sweet and so patient with me and she helps me understand when I ask her 100,000 questions every second. And she is so cute too! She's been on her mission for almost a year now so she has lots of experience as well.

So, we took off from the mission home early last Thursday and got to ride a cool train all the way to Darkhan. Darkhan is a very small city in the countryside of Mongolia (about an 8 hour train ride from Ulaanbaatar). The train ride was so fun despite the lack of space and difficulties with getting our luggage on and off the train. Each train cart had 4 beds in it, so we piled our suitcases on two of them and used the other two for the ride. The cart was so small that we basically couldn't walk on the floor of the cart haha. But we finally arrived that night and found out that our apartment was the newest mission apartment in Mongolia! The downside of that was that we had absolutely no utilities, kitchenware, or cleaning supplies in our apartment. So we went shopping with the elders for everything we needed. We also had to figure out how to install a water filter on our sink so we could drink water haha. But we got it figured out and got all moved in then crashed that night.

Now, we are still getting into the swing of things in our area so far, but it's been fun. I am in the Old Darkhan ward which we share with two Mongolian Elders. So I am the only American in our ward. This means I also run all the English classes in our area all by myself (which is lowkey really stressful sometimes). And I teach a lot more English than I thought I would. I teach every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and then run English Connect classes on Saturday. Once school starts back up again, I will teach every wednesday at a college in the city as well. It's a lot but English classes are also helping me learn and understand Mongolian so much better as well. Overall I am learning sooooo much and it's so hard but so good!

We have one really awesome new investigator who's been coming to English class for some time and just started showing interest in the Church! She came to sacrament last Sunday and joined us for our YSA family home evening last night as well. She seems super excited and happy to be involved in church activities and loves to learn in our lessons. 

Speaking of YSA FHE, the missionaries here run FHE and mutual every week. It's been super fun being involved with the younger groups in our area but there is a lot of room for improvement. We are trying to slowly build up our member attendance by coming up with fun activities to do. If any of you have any fun game ideas, please send them my way because we could never have too many activity ideas!

The ward here is great! It is really really small too which is really sad because the records say we are supposed to have about 600 people in the ward. Last Sunday, only 25 people showed up (including the 4 missionaries and children). This area has so much potential for growth so I am so excited to build it up the best that we can! I also gave a short talk and shared my testimony in sacrament. I was so nervous but afterwards, so many people told me they understood me and were impressed with my language. This was a drastic difference from last week when I gave a talk in the Unur ward. This week, I have seen so many instances of the Gift of Tongues and I am so grateful for this opportunity to learn and grow so much! I feel truly blessed.

Overall, this area has so much potential for growth and I am so excited to get to work. I also forgot to mention that my comp and I have been called to be social sisters, so we run the 30th Anniversary for the Mongolia Ulaanbaatar Mission Facebook Page now. We have been doing training on how to make posts and ads for the page and it has added a lot more responsibility to our schedule haha. But it has been a great blessing and learning opportunity so far. Getting thrown into the deep end with all these new responsibilities has been challenging and there have been moments where I wanted to give up and cry, either from lack of understanding or stress. But just looking back on the past week and seeing all the growth that has happened makes me so excited for what's to come in the future here. I have felt Heavenly Father comforting and pushing me forward every second. I have felt the Holy Ghost lift my burdens and help me understand people a little more every day. I have felt so blessed with them on my side cheering me on. I know that Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost are on all of our sides cheering us on every second of every day. I know that they are looking out for you and I know that if you turn to them in faith, they will not hesitate to comfort, lift, and bless you. I know this gospel is true and that this work is great! Have a wonderful week everyone!

Love,

Sister Potter

P.S. I've noticed a lot of my photos are centered around food haha. We get together a lot to eat so it's fun

Cadence - Ойлгосон уу? Ойлгосонгүй - January 10, 2023

 Сайн Байцгаана уу ах, эгч нараа! How are you all doing? How is your new year going?

So many crazy things happened this week so I'll try to summarize the best I can. Firstly, I have grown to love the people of Unur so much! Earlier this week, I prayed intently for help to develop more charity for the people here. I already loved them so much but your love always has room to grow. Over the course of the week, each member or investigator I reached out to touched my heart or served me so deeply that I will never forget the impact they had on my testimony. Now I feel like my love for these wonderful people is almost too much to contain haha. All the experiences were so personal that I can't quite explain them here but know that every single person is full of goodness and each is a beloved child of Heavenly Father. Each has such wonderful potential, and I've loved being here to watch our investigators slowly reach their divine potential and turn into better people as they have kept commitments and come to church. Missionary work has blessed my life so so much and it's so hard to explain the half of it!

Also, we had the opportunity to take our ready to be baptized investigator to another baptism this week! So she got to see what baptism is like and now she feels a little more prepared to be baptized on the 21st! She has such a solid testimony of the church and she is so patient with me when I try to teach her in my broken Mongolian haha. She also bought my comp and I cokes and drove us to and from the baptism. She also had the opportunity to serve by taking a sweet old grandma to the baptism with us too. She was put on the spot to serve and jumped right into action finding, helping, and assisting the old grandma the whole night. Overall, it was a neat experience and I learned about the importance of service. I really makes a difference in people's lives because it blesses everyone involved.

All our other investigators are doing great as well. We have been prepping two kids (9 and 11) for baptism in a few weeks and one more investigator with an amazing testimony is soooo close to being able to be put on date! And we contacted one of our new referals and she seems really interested in the Church which is awesome! I felt so much joy seeing so many of our investigators come to sacrament on Sunday too. As each one walked in, I felt so much more light and peace and joy. They brought the spirit to sacrament and their faith made them shine like stars. It was such a surreal experience!

Sister Burgess and I also had the opportunity to give talks in sacrament- with an hour notice (including travel time). I was pretty nervous since I had never given a talk in another language before, but after starting to plan it, I realized its just the same thing as teaching a lesson. You only have to teach it to 30 people instead of 1 haha. In all honestly though, Heavenly Father was blessing me so much with the Gift of Tongues as I spoke because I felt confident enough to go off script at so many points. I still made lots of mistakes and nobody understood me but I felt the Spirit strongly as I bore my testimony and taught about the importance of the sacrament. Afterwards, one sweet lady came up to me and said "I didn't understand your words, but I understood in my heart." It was so awesome!

I also got super sick this week. I'm counting my blessings that this was the first time my whole mission I 've been sick, but I also hope it never happens again. I think the horse meat I ate at a members house really messed up my system because I woke up 3 times that night ready to throw up everything in my body. The whole next day I was so nauseous, I had the worst headache, and the worst sore throat of my life. But getting to work and not focusing on the sickness helped a lot. We were still able to get everything done in the day and it distracted me from the pain. By the next day, I was feeling so much better. Since then, I've had a pretty bad cough and a sore throat but everything else is all better!

Also, my comp and I and two other Elders were all involved in a car/bus accident on Sunday. It honestly wasn't too bad for us, but the car that tried to cut our bus off was flung into a pole. Thankfully the driver of the car was alive and an ambulance was coming, but we couldn't stay longer to help because the bus driver and car driver were about to get into a fight and we figured it would be safer to slowly walk away.

English classes have been fun! We started up a kids class since a lot of our students have kids that they bring along because they have no one to watch them. So now we have an advanced speaking class, a beginner class, and a primary class. The little kids are so smart and remember words like crazy. We were teaching them about animals like alligators and giraffes and they remembered them so well.

The sad/exciting news of the week is that I just found out today that Sister Burgess is going to train a new sister next tranfer and I am getting a new trainer. She is Mongolian and speaks very little English, so I am going to be using a LOT of Mongolian soon. Hopefully we can both learn quickly and communicate well with one another. I'm also being sent to one of the farthest places in our mission - a smaller city in the countryside called Darkhan. I'm so excited but so sad that I won't be comps with Sister Burgess anymore. She was such an awesome example and leader to me. I'll also miss all four of our investigators baptisms coming up sadly. I'll miss Unur a lot but this next adventure will be so fun! I'll update you all next week on how it goes!

This week has honestly been one of my favorite weeks of the mission so far because I've had a lot of time to reflect on how the people and the mission have changed me. I am so thankful to be here, even in the moments where is super hard and I've lost my patience and I just want to quit. Even when I still struggle to understand people or struggle to communicate I feel so blessed and so changed by these experiences. One scripture that really helped me this week was 3 Nephi 18: 20 which says:

20 And whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, which is right, believing that ye shall receive, behold it shall be given unto you.

Many times this week, my prayers have been answered time and time again. I know that Heavenly Father WILL answer your prayers, so long as you are praying for the right things. Always seek to do good, and good will be given to you. I love you all and hope you have a wonderful week. Don't hesitate to reach out and ask questions you may have. I'd love to answer them! 

Love,

Sister Potter

P.S. Sorry I lacked in the photo department this week - we were soooo busy but here's us on a really sketchy bus with green lights and us right after the bus accident 😊

Cadence - Та Баптисм хүртэх үү? - January 3, 2023

 Hi everyone! Sorry this email will be short because we spent pday touring a Mongolian Art Museum which was so fun! Art here is so beautiful and its been fun becoming more acquainted with the amazing culture. 

Things are going well here! We just put two young investigators on date for baptism! They are both so amazing and have such strong testimonies for being so young. They are eager to be baptized and we are so excited for them! The rest of our investigators are doing well and we just got a new one! She is the cutest and is very shy but she listens intently to our lessons.

We also celebrated New Years at our good friend's house and her family fed us the best pizza, cake, buuz, and chicken ever! It was awesome! We also celebrated my companion's birthday on New Years, so so many people fed us cake! People have big celebrations for the new year here so there were fireworks going off all night and families bonding together all over the city.

English classes have also been going well so far! Some of the students keep asking us to extend our classes to be longer because they are on winter break right now and are super bored at home. So we teach for 1 hour and then have a speaking club/uno club the next hour. One day, we also had a bracket competition for who the best avenger was. Of course, Iron Man won haha.

Its also been really really cold lately. I forgot to wear my thermals one day and it literally felt like my legs were going to fall off. I actually couldn't feel my feet for a while which was concerning. But no frostbite thankfully! 

With the start of a new year, I encourage you all to make some good New Years Resolutions. The new year is a great way to start over and make plans to improve. I can tell that this year is going to be a very good one! 

I was reading in Nephi 15 this week. In it, Christ says:

9 Behold, I am the law, and the light. Look unto me, and endure to the end, and ye shall live; for unto him that endureth to the end will I give eternal life

I know that Christ is our law and our light. He guides us by leading us and by walking by our side. I love my Savior! Watch The Chosen Season 3 if you have the chance! Have a wonderful week everyone!

Love,

Sister Potter

New Year's Eve 2022

For New Years, we met up with some families that live near us & had a little get-together.  We met up at the church first to play some basketball, volleyball, & some board games. . . then when the kids/teens got bored, we moved over to our friends' house where the kids played guitar hero while the adults played more board games & while we all pigged out on yummy snacks until midnight.

At midnight we set off about 150 fireworks of our own, then watched all the other neighbors set off theirs.  I love Sylvester in Germany.  It's always a fantastic light show in the sky with all the fireworks people set off.  The Germans are a little crazy on New Years, but it's fun to watch.  There were 2 guys who were shooting off BIG fireworks while holding them in their bare hands.  I swore they were going to blow their fingers off, but they survived.  It was really really fun.

Here's to a wonderful new year!

2023!

 

New Year's Church Dance

With the New Year coming in, our church put on a big youth New Year's Dance.  This year Bladen turns 14 so he is now allowed to attend church dances.  Wahoo.  I was so excited to help him get all dressed up for his first dance.

(I think I was a lot more excited than he was.)

He said he was really nervous, but I taught him how to ask a girl to dance & how to dance so that he wouldn't be too anxious about it.  We also talked about how to start conversations.  Plus he had his awesome 2 big sisters there to help him out.  (They had some of their friends ask him to dance too.). He danced 5 times & actually really enjoyed himself.  I'm grateful for fun activities like these for my teens to help them navigate friendships in the real world.  These are SO important & they're a BLAST.

 

Christmas 2022

Santa visited & the kids were thrilled with what he brought.

Lorien got a set of luggage since she's moving out
& going to college this summer.

Taya got some figure models & a drawing book to help
with her drawing skills.

Canyon got the Princess Peach set that goes with 
the Mario Lego system.

Bladen got a bunch of D&D minifigures, paint, & brushes.

Craiger got a rock tumbler.

We had a blast opening our gifts.  I always give my kids 3 gifts:

A Want

A Need

& Something Church Related

Then we draw names so each member of the family buys one gift for the person they drew.

Lorien got Canyon a Zelda Sword

Bladen picked out some Hufflepuff slippers for Craiger.

Opa & Oma got Canyon a hat, game, & Donald Duck action figure.

Baba got Craiger a ping pong set & some books.

Baba got Canyon a Mario ship.

Opa & Oma got Bladen a chess set & a donut tie.

Justin & Cari got Taya the 1st illustrated HP book.

Mimi got Trek some new lights for his mini cooper.

Mimi got Canyon some books.

Opa & Oma got Craiger a chess set.

Mimi got Bladen some paints

Baba got Lorien a flat iron.

Baba got me a REAL charcuterie board.  I was so excited.

Justin & Cari got Trek an electric razor.

Talon & Carolyn's family got us some treats & games.

Justin & Cari got Canyon some Lego

Mimi got Craiger a chess board.

Justin & Cari got Bladen some HP Lego.

Justin & Cari got Lorien a phone holder for her car.

Mimi got Trek a bluetooth beanie.

Opa & Oma got Lorien a dress.

Baba got Taya some viola books.

Mimi got Lorien a curling Iron.

My "Daddy Gift" was a big piece of Mickey Mouse luggage.  I love it.

Trek's BIG gift from my parents was a new backpack,
toiletry bag, belt, & wallet.

My dear friend Nancy always sends us a bunch of amazing gifts.  She loves to help the kids with their wardrobes & make sure they have everything they need for the upcoming year.  We call her our fairy godmother.  She is such a beautiful & giving person.  We love her so much.

Nancy got Lorien a professional chef's pan set for culinary school.

Nancy got me a gorgeous emerald & diamond ring this year.

After opening presents, we went to church since Christmas was on a Sunday this year.  Once we got back home, it was time to open up stockings.

Lorien got a big surprise in her stocking this year.  She got plane tickets to London with her friends for her Senior Trip.  I'm taking her over President's Day weekend (her birthday) to London.  It's going to be a blast.

And here are a bunch of pictures of the kids with all their fun new surprises.  It was a wonderful Christmas.  (Notice the hilarious blankets Lorien gave all of us.)

Christmas was wonderful!  We spent the next few days cleaning everything up & playing with all of our fun new things.  Bladen has been having a blast painting his minifigures, & he's letting the rest of us join in on the fun.  It's been fun spending time together.  I just love Christmas.