word of the year, folks

Discipline!

Thanks Ty - for the ties.  Made my little friend happy:)

Happy Birthday Dylan

Happy Birthday Daddy!  I love you!

Family,
How was California?  
Thanks for the invite.

Well in case you are wondering it is NOT spring in Virginia and I'm NOT  in a bikini at the beach like everyone else and their dog these days. It is actually snowing... like a blizzard.. like NO driving privileges today. No bueno. HOWEVER. Our Dearest friend Sister B. is taking us grocery shopping.  She is SUCH A SAINT. We love her.

Good to hear letters are coming (: Yeah transfers are this week so please hold until further notice. I'll probably be staying here.  But who knows! I'll message you after transfers and let y'all know. 

Yee ha Spring and Summer will be interesting.  I'm kinda thinking Sister Schramm will be transferred too.  I'll lead out the area... but we don't know yet. I still prefer my Book of Mormon to my ipad but it's whatever! They are handy and entertaining sometimes. We can watch videos on them and Gospel library is really neat. 

I got a new bag at Target and a light jacket at a Thrift store called Plato's.  So I don't have to wear my massive marshmallow coat everywhere. We are on lock down again today.  It is a bummer. 

My week in review:

Monday:

Preparation day and we finally ran into T. who is putting herself in a clinic.  They are trying to get their daughter back and stuff. S. keeps thanking us for all we do and everything but they still aren't progressing. They are probably moving soon. I  hope good new missionaries take care of them where ever they go. We had an awesome lesson with the T. family.  We talked about "when your testimony wavers.. go back to the basics, to what you KNOW is true."  and work from there. Their daughter K. sat in and at the end we had a really good talk with her.  Which was awesome. Sister Schramm and I also made a sequel video to Johnny Lingo (: it's great. You'll see the video eventually.  I still haven't sent my card home.  Sorry I'll do that soon.

Tuesday:

Was Dylan's birthday right? How was it? Happy Birthday (: big eighteen. woop woop. mission age. yeahhhh???  We had District meeting and met with the Sisters to eat at Cafe Rio. When we were walking to our apartment some guy thought we were going to chase him down or stalk him or something?? He was just like, "I'm going to be late to my appointment. So sorry. Also I'm a member."  We were like..okay..thanks for that ha ha. It was awkward. He just told us all about his life and was like I can't talk. THANKS FOR THE INFO HOMIE. 

Then right after that another guy came up to us and was like, "Hey can I have one of your Mormon bibles? and we were like... WHERE ARE THESE PEOPLE COMING FROM. People don't just walk up to Missionaries. It's like not a normal thing. So we talked to him about our 'Mormon Bible' aka The Book of  Mormon for a little while which was pretty sweet. He is our neighbor as well. We taught a bunch of lessons on Tuesday and visited members.

Wednesday:

We watched the Restoration video with T. and she absolutely loved it.  She said she wanted to come to church which was cool.  We cleaned K. basement and totally got attacked by MICE. Super Crazy. (pictures / videos to come)  I was screaming like a baby and one crawled up Sister Schramms leg so that was an experience. Nasty little things!  K. got a kick out of it. I'm sure. She was just screaming 'chase them away from the house.' You got it K!! We also met her husband and were trying to plan something with them and a family in the ward to get together. 

I dropped off all of Ty's ties at H. house.  He was SOOOO excited!! He was pumped. So thank you a ton. You guys are awesome. He thinks they are way sweet! We also taught a girl who lives with some members who removed her records from the church. She's really cool. We had a good discussion with her about the importance of The Book of Mormon. 

We visited E. again.  He knows the Church is true he's just hesitant on getting baptized. He is so stinking cute though. Same with our friend C.  She doesn't like the thought of "organized religion."  But she showed us her Book of Mormon and it's all marked up like crazy. She's so awesome and she feeds us sooo much food. 

Also, the Elders called us and told us they ran into our friend T. who we had started teaching back in January and lost track of.  They put him ON DATE. He told them he had talked to us and we were helping him quit smoking. So that was pretty sweet. Dang it Elders. Stealing our little miracle humans. JK. But really. It was pretty awesome they found him.

Thursday:

We taught our first skype lesson to our friend J.  He was smoking.  So that was awkward. He told us he doesn't believe Jesus is the Son of God. So that is a setback that we are working on.  We showed the Restoration video to E. but she just compared it to slavery(?)  So that's a setback also. We taught F. about...karma..which he liked. Well -  we taught him about a scripture I found that could potentially relate to karma...ha ha. He really loved Sister B. so that was awesome. We also went and got snow cones in the freezing cold with A, A & S.  They are our buddies that we shoveled out of the snow way back when. So that was fun. Nathans (the ice cream place) is delicious!  Reminded me of home. J.  our miracle of last week fell off the face of the earth...we don't know whats up.

Friday:

We had Sisters Conference. We learned self defense and had a couple talks we listened to. I saw Sister Eddy and Sister Gray.  They both seem to be doing awesome! It was fun seeing them. We also got an oil change on our car so that took FORRREEVVVEERRR. Then we went to Wendy's real quick for lunch and ran into the Elders friend D.  He has teardrop tattoos.  (which in case you didn't know means you've killed somebody)  He has four of them!  and all other kinds of tattoos I won't tell you about because they are vulgar. He is a member now.  He just got baptized. We were talking to him and he just whipped out his Book of Mormon and started telling us about his favorite scriptures. So Sister Schramm bought him a frosty and we left. He was pretty sweet though. (: 

Saturday:

We walked around alot since it was so nice outside.   We found this couple, D. & K. We were having a lesson with them outside and all of the sudden the Ice Cream Man ( I kid you not!!) Stopped his car, got out, and came and asked us what we believed God was. We told him he is our loving Heavenly Father and stuff... He just went on this TANGENT about a different faith.  How we are his slaves and saying he is human like us is degrading and he seriously didn't stop talking for a solid twenty minutes.  There was a line at his truck yelling at him. He was very...passionate... it was awkward.

F. came with us to the Adult Session of Stake Conference.  Which was way sweet. He said he didn't like so many people.  So that was awkward. We also went and visited N.'s mom and J. was there! So we talked to him for a little bit.  He said he is in Chapter 14 of the BOM.  So that is definitely some improvement.

Sunday:

Stake Conference.  It was really awesome. TONS of good insight. It was way sweet though because after Stake Conference the Stake Presidents wife (Sister D.) came up to me and was like 
SISTER STUCKI

yeah. she remembered my name.

...and she went on to tell me that she was so grateful for what I said about missionary work ( I had a discussion with her a few weeks previous about being a new missionary) and how her and her husband had been working with a young Elder who was struggling and the things I told her inspired her and helped him out. sweet huh? She was going on and on about how inspiring and good of an example I was. It was crazy. I was like WHOA. I couldn't believe she even remembered me. Then she told me she hopes I get transferred to G. Where they live ;)  It was funny. The Stake President and his wife are so awesome. Well the whole entire Church, Stake and Ward are awesome here. I won't lie!! They are pretty Sweet people. Especially the conversion stories out here..gives me hope that the work we are doing really is making a difference in the lives of people!

So here is my little #spiritualmessage for you guys today. 

At Sister Conference.  Sister Riggs talked about this thing people are doing where you pick ONE word to describe your whole year and you become that word within the year. Basically. In a nutshell. So the word I decided to pick is Discipline. 

I KNOW I KNOW IT SOUNDS HARSH. 

But hear me out. I decided this year is going to be the big chunk of my mission...and one thing I want to become is Disciplined.

I looked up the definition of Discipline and the four definitions I got were:

1. training of the mind and body to produce obedience and self control

2. control gained as a result of training

3. activity or experience that provides mental or physical training

4. training oneself to do something in a controlled or habitual way

Later when we went to Stake Conference one of the Speakers talked about the same thing. DISCIPLINE. 
I don't know if you guys will get the same thing in your Stake Conference but if you do it is AWESOME so take notes. He talks about five ways to be self disciplined. (so basically it was a confirmation from God that I need to really strive to fulfill this whole 'one word' challenge this year)

The Five Steps are:

1.Acceptance.

Find out where you stand right now and accept it. Don't think your better or worse. Just figure out where you are and work towards it. Don't have a false view of reality, rather identify and asses where you stand right now.

2. Willpower.

Learn what you can and cannot do. Willpower is the ability to set a course and stay engaged. "The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength or knowledge but lack of will"

3. Hard work.

Most people want the easy way out. Tougher challenges will have less competition and more opportunity. "The Big Secret in life is, there is no Secret." Whatever your goal. You can get there if you WORK"

4. Industry.

Working hard. Being industrious means putting in the time where it is difficult and needed. A lot of messes are simply when we refuse to go out in time and do it correctly. Just do it. Squeeze more value out of your time. He said "Give me a lazy programmer and a brand new updated computer and he wont get NEARLY as much work done as a hardworking programmer with a fifty year old computer."

5. Persistence.

Ultimately providing motivation. You'll eventually get results and that will be more motivating. Not even talent or genius or education can take the place of persistence. Press on and it will solve all the problems in the human race.

People think discipline will leave you grouchy and harsh but actually, mastering self control will make you happier in the long run and the moment. 

Self discipline will surely be required if you are to achieve the goal of Eternal Life.

SO.  I'm really satisfied with my 'one word' for this year and I hope I can become a disciplined human being in every aspect of my life! I challenge you all to do the same. Find a word to work on this year and become it! 
Good luck!

I love you all.
Thanks for all you do and have a greaaatttt week! 

love sister stucki