Doc Martens were never meant to be running shoes...until now

 Hello!! This week was jam packed full of things every single day! I love busy days and busy weeks because it makes life crazy and exciting. 

Here's the highlights:

-We went to the Bamburgh Castle and Holy Island on pday this week!! It was absolutely magical and so crazy!! Holy Island is about 8 miles from the Scotland border and is beautiful. it is kind of eery and looks like it would be in a horror film because its so peaceful and quiet but also creepy, if that makes sense haha. And Bamburgh castle was HUGE!! It's one of those things that you have always known is real, but then standing inside it and seeing an actual dungeon and knights armor makes it so real!!

-Tuesday, we got to do a service project with all the other missionaries in our stake for this community garden place. It was good, but the best part was I got to ride my first DOUBLE DECKER BUS!! Woot woot

-also got to play basketball with the young men for youth activity in our dresses haha. It was full contact basketball and yes, my team did win, of course haha

-we have been teaching a returning member named Linda and I love her!! She is the sweetest and loves the gospel. She hasn't come to church in a while because her husband and her sons aren't members and she doesn't want to come alone. But now we are teaching her every week and she wants to! So yay!!

-heres's a crazy experience for you: one of the days we went over to help T. and her husband move their mom's house out. It was a mess as you can imagine, and so many SPIDERS haha. Pretty gross. well anyways, we were cleaning and then M., the husband, lifted a bookshelf and moved it, but it somehow was too much for him and he sat down and started having a seizure. He has epilepsy and they are very common for him and is wife is super calm about it and knows exactly what to do. Well I have never seen a seizure and it was very scary, especially considering that M. is about 6'4'', and weighs probably like 280? I am not good at guessing weight, but point is that M. is a big guy, and he was violently shaking and it was loud. So yea that was scary and very sad for me, M. is alright and we helped them finish moving out:)

-after we helped them move out, we had to catch a bus that would take us to a connecting bus in town for an our bus ride out to the member we were going to see. Well that first bus never came and we had to catch the connecting bus in town to make it in town or else we would be an hour late, so the only option was to run 2 miles into town in our dresses and doc martens as fast as we could to catch the bus that left in 15 minutes. haha I am sure it was quite a sight to see and God blessed us because we got there 7 minutes after it should have left and it was still there. so tender mercy that was haha. 

-the even crazier part about rushing there was that we knocked on the door and it was the WRONG address!!! But the lady there had met with missionaries before and loves us and was wondering why she hadn't seen us for 3 months. So I think that we were exactly where God needed us to be because we talked with her for almost two hours and she wants us to come back:)

-we taught a lesson to our friend B. who is awesome!! Only thing is he smokes a ton of cigarettes a day and so his house reeks of smoke, and after I reek of smoke and it is nasty.

-random: lawn mowers are plugged in here which is very funny looking to me. It looks like they are vacumming their lawns

-everyone here vapes. Like literally everyone walks around with their vape. It's crazy. Even like 12 year olds do. 

-speaking of vape, our friend Stephen who is getting baptized on the 10th is trying to break the habit of vaping so pray for him please:) He is so so excited for his baptism and we are too!!

-oh I had my first fish and chips and I want it to be the last time I have fish n chips aha. It was good for the first two bites, but they drench it in vinegar and salt, and I mean DRENCH, so you feel like you are going to get diabetes after three bites and I was not about to risk that with my third bite. so i didn't haha. They are also massive, I'll include pictures below.

Overall, this week was really good and fun! I would invite you to look for God's hand in your life everyday and then write it down! I promise that as you do so, you will more easily recognize the miracles and blessings He sends you and you will better feel His love for you:)

Have a great week!!

Love, 

Sis. Jepp:)

I love the sea! 

At the North Sea- the other side is Denmark (where my brother Brandon served)

My District on P-day at the North Sea 

Me and Sister Thernagle 

Fish n Chips - Before and After 

Double decker buses and tango

Brambaugh Castle 

Us sweating profusely on the bus we ran to catch

Holy Island

President and Sister Clare my mission presidents 

Pro tip: don't let a random lady put her cigarette ash on your forehead

 WELLLLLL, this week was amazing!! and very interesting, if you couldn't tell by the title haha. So I will jump right in:

- For my first pday here we went to Raby Castle!! It was so cool and has been standing since at least the 11th century! We also went and hiked to a cool waterfall. ALSO, unknowingly, we taught a lesson on pday at the Grange Hotel, and after we went inside to use the toilet and saw beautiful artwork.  

- We had zone conference on Tuesday and it was so amazing!! We talked about sanctifying ourselves and being about the Lord's errand. Asking ourselves, ''what would the Lord have us do now?'' Something I have been asked to do is to ''trust in Him''. As I have, I have seen so many blessings and I know that God is aware of me and my efforts.

-We focus a lot on returning members, meaning members who haven't been to church in AGES! It is really cool and I love it. We go visit them and help them remember why they joined the church in the first place. As we help people remember, we help them keep the commandments, and as they keep the commandments they can have the Spirit with them which then leads to them remembering more. It's a beautiful cycle

- update: we went to go help the lady that nicknamed me cat woman and turns out I am actually super girl and my companion is cat woman. So hey that's an upgrade, I'll take it

-but more on helping that lady, we were cleaning out her house and I have never smelt anything worse. It just was sticky and hot and smelled like the worse B. O. ever. Her husband lost his sense of smell and apparently she did too because it's just bad, but oh well

-HERE COMES THE STORY: So, we just had a tea appointment and it got over at about 7:30. The bus was supposed to come at 7:45, so we walk down to the bus stop in the pouring rain and wait there. Well it doesn't come at 7:45 so we wait a little longer. But as we are waiting, this cute little lady comes out from this shop to smoke a cigarette and sees us. She yells across the road something like ''Are you simon's daughters?'' and Sister Thuernagle doesn't really understand and goes ''yes!'' and we cross the road to her. I think she thought we were homeless haha. She comes over and proceeds to wipe all the water off us both and kisses our heads. She then keeps repeating, ''life is hard, i know, i know''. And cleaning us off. Then, she sees this zit on my forehead haha and looks at her cigarette, then asks for water from my water bottle to put on her hands. When I give some to her, she puts out her cigarette, gets the ash on her hand, AND PUTS IN ON MY FOREHEAD!!! I was trying not to pee my pants laughing so hard, I could not believe what had just happened. She told us not to pick our faces and then told Sister Thuernagle she has to keep warm for the baby and is rubbing her stomach haha. Then she gave Sister Thuernagle her sweater which was very sweet and yea. The whole time, she is talking in the most broken english because she is from Azerbajan and Georgia and doesn't understand much haha. But yea it was HILARIOUS!! I couldn't contain my laughter but I think she thought i was crying and homeless.

-and after all that, the bus never came, so we walked 4.5 miles home in the dark and got back at 9:30pm haha

-I will end with a spiritual experience: On sunday, I was super exhausted and just wanted to take a little nap, but I prayed for the strength to go out and have the energy to do some finding. So we go to this park to talk to people. Well, we saw a couple and was going to intersect their path to talk to them but they walked faster than we did and we ended up following them haha. We didn't want to completely follow them to the next park, so we stopped and talked to this man Steve on the bench. He was cool, but not super interested so we kept walking. When we got to the other park the ONLY people there was this couple we had followed and we walked ten steps in then stopped because it would be so awkward. But then after walking away we said we should pray about it. And i was like, well we know the answer will be yes so lets just go. And so we did, and man alive am I so happy we followed what God wanted us to do! This couple was the nicest and so open!! We talked to them for about 40 minutes and they are so open to learning more and to coming to church! It was the coolest thing. I know that God gave me strength to go out, and because we did, He put people in our path that are prepared to hear His message. 

Love you all!! Hope you have a great week!!

Love, Sis Jepp:)

Found some color to brighten my day 

RAIN! 

Cigarette ash and the cute sweater! 

Pday fun 

Forgot to mention we did WHITEBOARD finding which was so fun!!
People are so nice!! 

Rain does beautiful things 

Banana slug challenge 

Beautiful town 

Beautiful cathedral

KATE! 

Welcome to Babylon :) 

This is Kate and her mom gave us the nicknames,
we are her favorite!

Caught Sister Theurnagle sleeping on the bus :) 

Tea appointment with Jackie Greener in our ward who is the best!! 

First week in ENGLAND!!!

 Hiya! This week has been good fun. At least that's how they say it over here in England:)

I can't believe I am actually here! It has been crazy and I love it so much already. I am pretty far from home for sure, and it's been an adjustment, but I just love it.

Here's some ins and outs of the past week:

-On Monday I left for the airport at 5am. It was really sad to say goodbye to Sister Linton, Barnes, Fisi'ipeau and Smith. I had the best week with them in California and just miss them a lot. So that was a sad goodbye. 

-My flight plan looked like this: 4 and a half hour flight to Atlanta, ran to my next plane to catch it on time, got on a 8 and a half hour flight to Amsterdam, three hour layover, and then a 1 hour flight to Leeds England! I'll explain some more, but by the time I was in my flat (apartment) that night, I had also taken a 1 hour train ride to Darlington, and  waited for our ride for 2 hours at the train station. And in all that, I calculated that I got 5 hours of sleep in the whole 53 hours of being awake because I didn't sleep on any of the planes. So to say I was exhausted Tuesday night is an understatement.

-On the flight from Amsterdam to England I talked to the coolest 23 year old the whole time!! It was awesome, made the plane ride go so fast. She was visiting her mom in England, coming from Maryland, and we just had a really good conversation. I taught her all about our church and the restoration and she really loved it and said she had a ton of respect. She didn't want a Book of Mormon because she said she needed to start with the Bible, but she took this card I had and yea it was awesome. Very fun.

-I am in Darlington!! It is just as precious as it sounds haha. I am in love with it. Pictures do not do it justice, but it has cobblestone roads, cathedrals, clock towers, so many trees, and it's just amazing. I love it

-dinner appointments are called tea appointments, and we have them with the members a lot! And I love the members!! They are all so nice and can talk for forever haha. Sometimes it's hard to understand all the accents, but I'm getting it. 

-On the street, the conversation goes like this, me: "Hiya, you alright?" them: "You alright?" haha or some form of that. It's quite strange

-Everyone totally lied to me because it is HOT here haha. The humidity is like 84 and granted there is a record breaking heat wave here right now, but still. and the best part is, there isn't any AC. Because it is only hot for like one month in the summer, but i came in that month haha

-Also the food is pretty good. Or should I say the chocolate haha. 

-We had a tea appointment with the Dunns from Scotland and they have thick accents but are the best!! They talk for forever and are so amazing. Brother Dunn does word work and he widdled the word "hug" out of wood and gave one it to each of us because he can't give us an actual hug. They are the best

-a crazy member nicknamed me cat woman so that's pretty funny

- we are walking missionaries who take the buses everywhere!! It's actually super fun and my feet hurt by the end of the day but I love it. I have got some good permanent blisters on my feet so that's fun.

-cars are crazy here and it always scares me cause they are on the left side of the road and they go FAST

-I had my first classic chicken parmo this week which is a giant piece of breaded chicken, some weird cream on top, and then melted cheese on top of that, pretty good but super unhealthy

-popsicles are called ice lollies here!! They are delicious and are like a mix between ice cream and a popsicles

- I love the people here!! They are so fun and love to tell you about everything in their lives:) the people on the streets are pretty cold and don't respond, but if you can catch them they will open up and won't stop talking haha

I love it here in England and I have felt immense love from my Heavenly Father this week. I know that God loves His children in every part of the world!! I'm so excited to be here for the next 15 and a half months!!

Love,

Sis. Jepp

We taught a lesson here at Blackwell Grange Hotel today!!  It is insane! 

Blackwell Gange Hotel: It was built in 1693

Clock tower

Cathedral

 Town square

My district:)

Cool memorial

 Horses!!!

 Beautiful street

South park with my companion Sister Thuernagle

 The ice lollies have sticks of black licorice haha, kinda gross not gonna lie

 Eating lunch overlooking the sea

 Telephone box!!

Train station with all my luggage :) 

Chicken Parma

Waiting for our bus eating ice lollies

Ice cream factory