Sister Alyssa Phillips: HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!!!!!!!!!

Picture with Sister Hilton while we were hiking at Lake Chabon

Hi everyone!!!! I hope your Mother's Day was as fantastic as mine!! I got to skype my parents!!!

I can't believe I've only been in Alameda for 2 weeks! It seems like I've been here longer!

Monday 5/8/17: P-Day! We went shopping for groceries and then we had some extra time so we went to Daiso (A Japanese dollar store where everything is basically $1.50) because Sister Mikkelson hadn't gone to one yet :) Then we met the other sister missionaries in our zone and ate at Chipotle. Then we visited a LOT of people today. We saw our investigator Felipe and he hadn't read the Book of Mormon and said he'd study on his own first and then ask us questions. So we'll check back in a few weeks. If anything it was a seed planted :) We also went to see a less active part member family and it was the first time in history that someone buzzed us in without knowing who we were and then opened the door! The non-member wife answered and asked us to come back (she's a cute Korean lady :)) because we could obviously tell her husband was asleep by his snoring. :) Then we went to contact a potential/former investigator named Rafael; but when we got to the house 2 guys answered the door and said he's in El Salvador and they don't know if he'll be coming back. But they said they'd be interested in learning about our message so we gave the Zone Leaders their info :)

Tuesday 5/9/17: We did a service project at Joaquin Miller Park where we cut back the invasive grass, pulled out lots of Hemlock and a plant called "broom" and we saw 2 scorpions and a newt (which I held ;) - the newt not the scorpions). I learned a lot about plants and stuff! We also saw a wild strawberry plant and there were wild blackberries and wild mint leaves and an edible kind of lettuce and bay leaves and learned about poison Oak. There were 2 ladies in charge of our service project and one of them used to be a long time news caster lady! Oh!! We also saw some awesome flowers too! Forget-me-nots, Scarlet Pimpernels, English Daisies and a cool grass or plant called Rattle Snake because it has pods that rattle when they are shaken. The news caster lady also had her cute dog named Lucy with us :) I also learned that Redwood trees are really cool because the super tall ones can have like 3 different climates! We also had some awesome deep doctrinal conversations while at the Oakland Temple Visitors' Center with the other Sisters there. We aslo had some miracles! Sister Heath and Sister Madsen talked to a lady who was having a hard time and came into the Visitors Center. They talked to her in front of the Christus statue for an hour and the lady agreed to learn more and possibly meet with the missionaries! Now here's the BIGGEST MIRACLE!!!! I was on Mormon.org chatting with people and a GOLDEN person comes online! His mom and her family were LDS but she got ex communicated but he's been praying and wanting to come closer to Christ and he got an answer that he should join the Mormon Church. So he wanted to meet with missionaries to learn more!!

Heart Stump at Joaquin Miller Park

Hanging with Sister Rice (my last companion) at Joaquin Miller Park during our service project.

Redwoods at Joaquin Miller Park. It was really cool to learn about the ecosystem here.

Wednesday 5/10/17: I chatted online with a member who had her name/records taken off of the LDS Church Rolls because of some stuff and she wanted to know how to bring the Spirit back into her. We were able to help give her some ideas about family home evening, reading scriptures and praying daily. Eventually, when she's ready, we talked about going back to church. More happened but I'm almost out of time. We went to visit a former investigator and she knew it was us before she opened the door because her son went like this 🙏. Cool huh?

Thursday 5/11/17: Happy birthday mom!! Go read Matthew Chapter 7 and read the footnotes! Mindblowing! Now compare it with 3 Nephi Chapter 14!!

Saturday 5/13/17: We got 6 new investigators today because we had a District Blitz in our area. Basically our whole district came out to our area to help contact potential investigators and tract in our area!!!