Wait...You're a real Mormon?!?!

 Hiya!!!

This week was good!! 

Here's the highlight reel:

- for pday this week we went to Saltburn-by-the-sea, and Staithes! They are the cutest little towns and they have a gorgeous beach!! We walked along the pier and on the beach for awhile. Then we got fish n chips and paninis haha. It was SUPER windy but really fun. 25 mph winds are awesome:)

-biggest highlight happened this past Saturday night. The Book of Mormon musical came to Sunderland and all the missionaries up north get to stand outside so when people come out of the theater we can talk to people and hand them the REAL truth. It was such a neat opportunity!! That's also where the title came from haha. People were shocked to find out we were real missionaries. It was cool because although we don't support the musical or anything it's something that we have been able to use for good! Lots of people wanted to learn more and we were able to make a lot of friends from it:) it was also fun because it was from 9:45-10:45 at night which means late night!! Haha we didn't go to bed until midnight that night because of travel time.

- we got to carve pumpkins with the young women this week! I absolutely LOVE the young women in my ward. There's about 11 of them and they love us. They also love our accents and mimick us all the time. It's good fun.

- went over to my favorite Scottish couple the Dunns this week a lot! We painted their shed and they had us over for tea appointments. But I've included a picture so you can see them finally! Alastair is indeed 6' 5" and Lorraine is 4'10".

- English this week! Husain and Burcu are the cute couple from Turkey and they brought us true Turkish delights this week and I did not enjoy them very much but they were sweet to bring them:)

- walked around the parks a lot because its so beautiful here and everyone is enjoying the autumn leaves:)

- walked the 3 miles to the church and back about 6 times this week haha

Ok to be honest, this week was hard. Good, but hard. But the hard times are what truly shapes us and helps us grow so I am thankful for them! I have grown a lot closer to the Savior this past week as I have relied and looked to Him more and more. There's an amazing talk from this past general conference that talks about going through the hard times in life by Sister Craig, here's the link:

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2022/10/32craig?lang=eng

She said, ''Heavenly Father is more interested in my growth as a disciple of Jesus Christ than He is with my comfort.'' 

I can attest to this and am so grateful for the strength that God blesses me with each and everyday to continue to be a missionary:) 

She also talks about the pioneers and how these single women were pushing handcarts, never giving up, continually moving forward. President Joseph F. Smith said, ''Why? Because they knew it. God revealed it to them, and they understood it, and no power on earth could turn them from what they know to be true.'' I feel this same exact way. Even though some days are really hard, I wouldn't give it up or have it any other way because I know that the gospel of Jesus Christ is true and I want to be able to give others the same oppurtunity to learn of Him and come to Him. 

I am so grateful to be a missionary and I love it!! Woot woot!!

Love, 

Sis. Jepp:)

This is saltburn-by-the-sea 

I love Sister Richards!! 

The squad at the end of the pier:)

Cute lil pier 

Cute lil roads in Staithes 

You can tell by my hair its quite windy haha 

Beautiful Staithes!! 

This is our beautiful park, South Park 

Hey Message me if you want a Book of Mormon 

Painting with the Dunns! 

North Zone squad: Elder Page, Oldham, Smith, Lacey, Van Alfen, Alhier, Balloway, Anneca, Sister Richards, Foster, me and Theurnagle 

Carving pumpkins with the young women 

Middleton St. George! Pretty autumn leaves!! (British people say autumn, and they can always tell the Americans because we say Fall) 

Book of Mormon musical! 

Beanies for the win :) 

Alone in the city?!?!?

 Hiya everyone!!! 

Hope everything is going well back there in the states:) England is good!! The temperatures are starting to drop, and warmer sweaters, coats, tights, and boots are becoming a regular occurrence. The heating prices have gone up a ton here so no one puts the heat on in the house yet to save up for the colder months. I'd say those are now but apparently not haha. In other news, the trees are all changing colors and it's still so green here! It's amazing!! 

Here's the highlights of the week:)

-Monday we went to Seaham again for pday! This time it was a lot colder right on the beach but we still played a ton of spikeball and had contests to see who can through rocks the farthest haha. Classic. 

-me and Sister thuernagle got matching Greggs sweatshirts. Greggs is a little bakery shop with famous sausage rolls and chicken bakes. It's not really that good, but there's a Greggs on like every corner and they are pretty popular so we had to get the merch

-we traveled to Middlesbrough this week for Sister Thuernagle to take her theory test to get her permit. Middlesbrough is a university town about 25 mins by train from Darlington. Its super diverse and very cool! Well when we got to the testing center they wouldn't let me in, and there was no sitting area, so I had an hour and a half to just wander the city. ALONE. scary stuff for sure. I was like ok, the safest place I can think to be is on the university campus because everyone is around my age, so I went there and wandered campus and sat on a bench haha. It was so cool and the students were from all over the world. It was super weird to be alone but it was a nice lil break:) if anyone wants the vlog of me enjoying my time alone, message me:) haha

- we went to a baptism on Saturday!!! It was for Ben, who is 18 years old and is so prepared for baptism! When the elders met him, he knew everything and could teach them. He had been studying and learning everything on his own until he turned 18 because his parents didn't give him permission to go to church or meet with the missionaries. So then when he could, he was so ready. It was a very sweet baptism and I was asked to play the piano for it. God really does amplify our talents when we put them to good use because I haven't practiced in a while and it was able to play songs I've never played before. That was a blessing:)

-we went whiteboard finding in Peterlee and asked, "what makes you happy?" People are so nice and it is my favorite way to find people. But it's also scary because we get some drunk and high people that come up and want to write things. But hey I guess they are thinking of things that make them happy which is what we want:) 

-English class was a success as always! It's so fun and we are getting to be good friends with those that come to class:) they always love to stay for the spiritual thought and are so grateful to us. Its a humbling experience for sure because I'm not qualified or experienced in any way to teach English, but I do my best, and the class is so incredibly grateful for our efforts:) they inspire me to be more grateful for the little things in life.

-we had a really cool experience finding in the park the other day! We were walking around and it seemed as if we were a repellant to everyone, no one was talking to us. But then I opened the book of Mormon and found a scripture that I could read so that I was prepared to talk to people. Sister thuernagle said outloud, "God we have bourne with patience our afflictions, please help us find someone." And then we continued to walk and talked to five really kind people!! It was very uplifting. Then before we were about to leave, we met Finn, who was so so curious!! He asked us pretty much every question in the book. It was cool because he kind of was trying to prove us wrong and everytime he would try to argue something you could feel the Spirit leave. But then when we would answer him, the spirit came back and we were able to testify of the truths we know. It was a testimony builder to me because I truly felt God helping me know what to say by the power of the Holy Ghost. We talked to finn for about an hour and a half and he was very grateful and accepted a Book of Mormon and said he would read it:) It also was cool to see that as I prepared with a scripture ready is was like God was saying, I just wanted to wait until you were truly prepared and then I was going to send you everyone. And He did!

-we went to my favorite people, the Dunn's for dinner! They are the ones from Scotland and decided to feed us a traditional scottish dish, you may have heard of. Hagas. Oh yea, you heard it, hagas. As in the ''leftovers'' of the sheep cooked in a sheep's stomach. Yea. Nasty. To be honest, the taste wasn't actually that bad, it was just thinking of what it was while eating it that made it really gross haha. But hey, I made it through!

A favorite scripture I have loved this past week is Psalms 28:7:

''The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in him, and I am helped: therefore my heart greatly rejoiceth; and with my song will I praise him.''

I know that when we put our trust in Him, we are helped and He will bless and guide us. He truly loves each and every one of us and is just waiting for us to reach out to Him and put our trust in Him. I know this to be true and am so grateful that I get to praise Him everyday by teaching others about the love that He has for us. 

Love, Sister Jepp :)

District pic at Seaham 

Our matching greggs sweatshirts!

Selfies with my favs, Sis. Mccomas, and Sister Richards:)

Sister squad: sis. Thuernagle, Sis. Mccomas, sis. Foster, 

sis. Richards, sis. Me, sis. Wight 

Our English class!!

The collectors edition: this is our friends, angels, elephants and war masks collection. I couldn't take pics of all of it:)

 The group of boys ahead of us are called Chaves. Notice how they

 wear the exact same thing? Chaves are everywhere and they vape and 

ride bikes and think they are the coolest ever haha.

Sister Foster is the FUNNIEST ever, she is the best, quite a funny thing to watch her faceplant in a Bush... yes on purpose.

Cutest autumn tea that the Crawfords fed us!!

In South park with sis. Thuernagle!!

Whiteboard finding in Peterlee:)

Snuggling on the couch because there's no heating in the houses...ALSO
shootout Sis Lucas, I got to see her this week and it was the best!!

This isn't the actual penny Lane, obviously but hey, one can imagine

You're a wizard, Harry!!!

 Hiya everyone:)

This past week has been good! It went by pretty fast. The craziest thing that happened was that I got tested for COVID. The thing that made it crazy was that this was my first covid test ever! So I made it two years and seven months since the pandemic started without being tested haha. My companions couldn't believe it haha. Don't worry I am negative. 

Other highlights:

-We got to go to THE famous Alnwick Castle!!! Aka, the Harry Potter castle. It was so cool! We spent the whole day there, touring it, and having fun. We got to do broomstick training which was a blast. Also, got some good ol Butterscotch Beer. It was most definitely the coolest castle I have been to so far.

- We had zone conference this week. That was very cool, it is always fun to be with a ton of missionaries and the Spirit is always super strong. 

-We had English class again this week:) We are slowly getting more people to show up so that's been awesome!!

-We went to the care home again to visit a member that lives there. That's why we had to test for covid. She's the sweetest and is probably one of my favorite people to visit.

- We went to Richmond one of the days to do some finding and visiting and we saw the coolest waterfall!! I love Richmond and honestly would live there in a heartbeat...it's gorgeous! 

-While we were in Richmond we knocked on the door of this 96 year old and he was awesome!! I kept getting the impression to give him a Book of Mormon so I did and he was so happy to take it! He said he would read it all and then he read us the poem that he wrote to the queen:) It was very sweet because in it he talked about how he was born only a couple of weeks apart from the queen.

-We had a lesson with a friend that hasn't come to church in a long time and we just read her the Book of Mormon because she is partially blind. It was very sweet. But let me tell you about her house. This woman is the world's biggest collector there ever was. I have never seen anything like it. She has about 300 elephant figurines, 200 angel figurines, 100 porcelain war masks, religious pictures, and 800 teddybears!! It was crazy. But the good thing was she isn't a gross collector, like her house wasy pretty clean all things considering. And then for Christmas she takes it ALL down, and puts up hundreds of Christmas decorations. It blew my mind.

I just love being a missionary here in England and I am so grateful for God sending me here!! I know He knows me perfectly because I feel like I am in Heaven as we drive through these beautiful green hills and Yorkshire dales and the pretty cobblestone streets. I love nature so much and I feel God's love the most when i am surrounded by the beautiful things around me. England is gorgeous!!! God loves us so much!

Love,

Sister Jepp:)

Alnwick Castle!!! 

We got to dress up as royalty and go around the castle :) 

Broomstick training 

Entrance to Alnwick Castle 

We bought butterscotch beer! 

Me, Sister Thuernagle, Sister Richards, Sister Foster!  

We actually flew...promise.

Taking a break on the curb after walking for forever 

Rootbeer waterfall in Richmond, jk its actually just dirt from the farm fields 

Beautiful green hills of Darlington 

Beautiful Barnard Castle!!