Sister Emily Elise Shill

Dear Friends and Family, I am happy to write to you once again! I have good news in regards to missionary work, but also my personal development. I've been reading Jordan Peterson's new book "Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life", and I finished chapter 7: Work as hard as you possible can on at least one thing and see what happens. At the beginning of that chapter, JP talks about the cost of not picking something, and basically describes the horrible life of a undergrad student without a major: something I have both experienced and witnessed my peers experiencing. At the end of this first part of the chapter, he says, "Do you really want to be everything you could be? Is that not too much? Might it not be better to be something specific (and then, perhaps, add to that)? Would that not come as a relief- even though it is also a sacrifice?" I stood up from reading that and said, "I'm going to be a science teacher!" It pretty much just clicked. Be...

Dear Friends and Family, I have had such a wonderful week! I am so excited to tell you about it. You likely remember Anna from my last letter. Well, I am happy to say that she is progressing quite well and I am very hopeful about her future, primarily because she is so willing to act. On our first real lesson, we came to address her questions. When we arrived, she had the Book of Mormon we gave her sitting on the coffee table. As we sat to begin the lesson, Anna pulled out another Book of Mormon. Anna had previously told us how at one time she was helping her friend from the Redlands ward clean house, when she found a stack of 9 or 10 copies of the Book of Mormon and asked if she could have one. Naturally, her friend was more than happy to let her keep it. However, when Anna couldn't find it, we gave her another copy for good measure.  But now we had come, and she had found her copy from her friend. She had also discovered that it was a slightly older print with bigger font, w...

Stuck in the Snow A couple weeks ago, my dear friend Sister Garn went home from her mission. So her companion, Sister Payne, came and joined us for a week until transfers happened. Sister Payne is an absolute party, and we had so much fun together. On the way back from a lesson together, we saw a car that appeared to be stuck in the snow on the side of the road. Sister Campbell was driving, and she never stops for anything. But suddenly she pulled over, and asked us, should we go back? I responded, "Well, we're 3 girls and it's pitch black outside, so usually I would say no..." but Sister Payne was still uncertain. So, finally, I said, "Why don't we just stay a prayer and see how we feel?" We said a prayer and shortly after the prayer a teenage boy came up to our car and asked, "Hey could you give me a push?" He had walked up to us while we were praying.  He was all alone, and clearly non threatening. So we flipped the car around and went back ...