WHAT A WEEK!!!!

Hello Family and Friends,

What a week it has been! It has felt much longer than a week since I last emailed. The week has gone by very very slow. Not in a totally bad way but let's just say I am pretty happy it is p-day and that we have a fun evening planned with the Eneh Family ( African family that is super fun and cooks really well) . 
Let's start from the beginning. Monday the highlight was meeting with the Flanagan family who is investigating the church. It is a father, son(21) and daughter(19). We haven't been able to see them since last Monday but hope to get in touch with them real soon. Tuesday we spent seeing people that Sister Peterson wanted to see and one potential that was not home. It was a good day. That night I spent the night at the senior couple's home because my comp. didn't come in til 6 pm Wednesday. I stayed the night with Sister Millward there because she is a trainer and so she stayed with them that night so they could take her to the airport early the next morning to fly out to Edinburgh. We had a blast together! We had to take her to the airport at 4:50 am on Wednesday. I never was that fond of that time of morning. But thankfully I was able to go back and sleep for a bit. The rest of the day was spent getting to know Elder and Sister Hicks. They are a very sweet couple and she is an amazing cook. I am excited for the YSA meals she will make. But that was a pretty slow day but nice little break. We then went into town and picked up Sister Garlock! She is a great missionary. We have only been together for 4 days and I have already learned a lot from her. She goes home in February and most likely we will stay together til then but that is what I thought about Sister Peterson and look how that turned out :) But I like her a lot and I feel she will help me enjoy my mission even more. She is very positive and motivated. I like it and I can tell the ward is taking to her really well. As for getting around town.... we are doing quite well. I am pleased with how much the Lord helps us out here. I know He is helping me remember more then I thought I ever would. We only got lost twice and it was for a maximum of 5 minutes. Of course much of our nightly and companionship study is focused on bus times and routes but yep I feel alot better about it all! :) Thursday we had thanksgiving with the Zortmans (American family). They are a lot of fun and treated us well. They confessed that they never make their own thanksgiving dinner. They usually order out. They decided to try making it this year. hahah it did not turn out as planned and it solidified their decision to order in from now on haha :) but it was good. We told them we would make something and Bro. Zortman said deviled eggs. Well we waited til last minute and we could not go shopping and neither of us knew the recipe. So we called a member to help us out. Come to find out we had no mayo or a couple other ingredients. We still attempted and improvised somethings.... haha it turn out crumbily and ugly. But we still took them and acted proud. They still made fun of us. The wife even told us, "don't worry about it, you don't have to cook to get married" That was comforting. It was a great thanksgiving though :) The rest of the week is a bit of a blur but it has gone well. Last night was the first time that it rained a lot and was super windy. Looks like winter is starting. Not too bad yet! Well I love you all and am sorry if I forgot anything. Hope all is well! Christmas in one month! Love this season. It is the best when we focus on Christ and all those around us. 
Lots of love,
Sister Ashlee Nicoll  

P.s. CONGRATS CALLI ON YOUR ENGAGEMENT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sister Garlock and I last night after walking home in the rain

Dublin or ?????‏

Hi-ya Family and Friends,

            Thanksgiving is this week!!! So I would like to start out by saying how thankful I am for ALL of you!!!! Anyone that reads this email in one way or another has helped me. I know that because you are taking the time to read this. So thank you for supporting me and the work of the Lord. I love you all! I am so thankful for such wonderful parents that have raised me in the gospel but not just doing the things like going to church on Sunday but being an example to me everyday of faithful living. I know I would not have the testimony and faith that I do with out my parents and shining example. Same with all my family and friends. I have a strong testimony that we are here to help each other and learning from each other. I am so thankful for the perfect church and gospel and example Christ has set for us. It is not easy but it is through living the gospel that will bring us the most joy. Not immediate joy but eternal, long lasting joy. 

We met with Patrick and Emrick Flanigan (father and son) this week. This is the man who met with the missionaries in the 70's. He said him and his buddies would give the missionaries a hard time but they would take it and have fun with them. He said that had a big impact on him and it gave a good impression of the church to him. They are both every kind and genuinely interested in the church. They seem pretty solid in learning about the gospel. We will be seeing them tonight and will be inviting them to be baptized. Pray all goes well. We also met a brazilian named Augusto on the street this week and he is also interested in learning. So we have a few we are working with and hope and pray we will know what they need to here so that the spirit can testify to them that the gospel can help them in their lives. None of our investigators are showing up to church so that is our next step is working with that. But nothing else to exciting has happened. Weather is getting colder and so I will soon have to learn how to dress for rainy cold occasions. It should be interesting. I sometimes miss the predictable lovely weather of good ol' AZ. But basically a once in a lifetime opportunity to live in Ireland and Scotland.

Alright it is now time for the update on moves. Drumroll please................. I am staying here in Dublin. And Sister Peterson...................... is moving. Yep exactly the opposite of what I would prefer. But somehow that is how everything goes out here for me. But without fail I see that the Lord knows best. It is the waiting period of finding out how it is best for me that is SO HARD! haha but to say the least I am quite stressed about this next transfers. There are literally 10-12 buses we take to like 100 different homes and places. We may be just doing a whole lot of studying the map and visiting people around our area for the first week or so. I forgot to mention the sisters name that I will be serving with. Her name is Sister Garlock. She has been out for over a year and I have only heard positive things about her. She trained Sister Hopkin who I love! She was in my MTC group. And she talked highly of her. So that is a plus. One other downer is that both the elders that served in the same ward as us are also leaving. So I will be the only missionary the ward knows come Wednesday. Guess I got a lot to learn here. Lots and lots of prayers will be said :) I know I will be fine but sometimes growing experiences are not fun. But this is the Lord's work and He will help us as long as we do are absolute best. I am ready for it. I love you all and hope this coming week is filled with food and fun!

Love, Sister Nicoll 

Hello again from Ireland!‏

Hello Fam and Friends,

     Once again it has been an overall good week. I can't believe how fast this transfer has gone. Next week I will be telling you the low down on moves. CRAZY! I hope I stay here with Sis. Peterson or else move. I don't feel prepared AT ALL to direct my way around Dublin. But I got do what the Lord asks because that is what I have committed to. 

     Yeah? Anyways I would like to start off with what I think is a hilarious story. There is this little old lady named Phyllis in our ward and she is a TALKER! We visit her once a week and we let her just ramble on sometimes just to see what weird things she will say. This week she was telling us that each time we sleep our spirits leave us and go and get taught by angels. She went on for a couple minutes about it and I told her I don't think that is quite true. She was very adamant about it. I told her God has told us that when our spirits leave our bodies we are DEAD. She chuckled and said "oh dear it doesn't fully leave us, I like to think of it as a spiritual umbilical cord." Yep we have spiritual umbilical cords according to Phyllis Morgan. :) She then told us the times when we jolt awake is because our spirits are not yet good at leaving or entering our bodies very well. I laugh a whole lot when we go and visit her. 

     Another highlight of the week was zone conference this past Friday  Thursday night the Limerick Sisters (Sister Millward and Sister Jedlickova) got to sleep over for it. It was so fun seeing them again. It had only been a week but I missed Sister Millward and it was fun hanging out with her. 

     Zone conference was excellent. They asked us to think about what we wanted to give Christ for Christmas. They then said something I have heard before but stuck with me more. The only thing we can give Christ and God is our will. Everything else we have is given to us by God. Using our agency to do the things the Lord has asked us to do, is all that He really wants from us because he knows it will make us happy and He can then bless us. We have such an loving Father and Brother. So yes it was a good uplifting conference.

     The Saturday we did some tracting. We met a super sweet 17 yr old girl that seems interested but we can't do anything unless she calls us because there has to be parents permission tho teach her. Praying she calls or shows up to ysa that we invited her too. Also found a man who met with the missionaries back in the 70's and is going to meet with us again. We shall see what will happen. That about covers my week! It was good. 

     I also would love to give a big shout out to Jennifer Ann (can't spell maiden name) Bergeson! Her birthday was on the 7th of November and I would just love everyone to know how blessed everyone that knows her is. This world is blessed that she was born 34 or 43 years ago. I love you Jennifer and Happy Birthday! :)

Love, Sister Nicoll

Fantastic Week (November 5th 2012)

Hello Fam and Friends,

This week sure flew by quickly! There are definitely some highlights I would like to hit on. I am not sure if I have mentioned this but we are the missionaries over the YSA here in Dublin. It is such a blast and a huge help for the younger investigators that we have had, like Corinna and Sean. On tuesday we had a YSA halloween party that was so much fun and the Phillipeano girls that are in YSA cooked an amazing meal. Before the party we met with Corinna's friend, Chris and she is skeptical about the church but she is open to learn and she loves ysa so we will see how that goes. But she is a very sweet girl and I am excited to continue to met with her. For Halloween night we had to be in an appointment with a member or be in our flat by 6. We spent our evening having a pizza party at Dorrie's, a sweet little old lady in the ward. Then later that night we went and visited a less active, who was very sweet and fun to chat with. Not as exciting as most of your halloween nights but it was good. Which by the way Landon and Lexi were absolutely the cutest things ever!!! Loved all the pictures! Then thursday thru Saturday evening was the exchange here in Dublin! WHAT A BLAST!!! I love Sister Millward! I knew here from the MTC and we got along great! So Sister Peterson and I planned very carefully of who we would visit so that we would not get lost. It is so funny how we do that when clearly God always has His own plans that are always far better. Thursday night plans worked out. Sean picked Sis. Millward and I up from the train station and took us to a nice Irish restaurant and paid. He is a true gent. Then he took us around to see Dublin a bit. Then thursday night we got a call from the Elders saying that the appiontment to paint someones house together friday morning had to be changed to friday night. All the people we had planned for Friday night could not move up to friday morning. So we were at a loss for appiontments. But we decided we would just go contacting on the street. We both don't like it too much but we had to do the work and we felt comfortable about doing that. So friday morning we went into city centre and started handing out cards with mormon.org on it. We had so much fun doing it. She was loving the fact that she was in Dublin :) It is a pretty good feeling. We ended up having 2 lessons with random people. They didn't want to give us their info but they looked pleased in learning. Many people took our cards and many others acted like we didn't exist haha. But then we met 2 brazilians that were ysa age and they both took a book of mormon and gave us their number. Calling them today. But miracle about that story. I was grabbing book of mormons (or books of mormon, whatever you fancy) and I found a portuguese one and had the thought of putting in my bag along with a portuguese pamphlet. God sure knew why I needed to do that. One of the brazilians wanted an english one and the other a portuguese. Yep God really looks out for us and will use us to help others if we will listen. I am so glad I listened because it sure strengthened my testimony of following what we may think our just our own thoughts when really they are promptings. All good thoughts are from God. We need to act on them Okay sorry about the testimony... :) back to the exchange. That night we went and painted. We matched. During the mtc we bought the same shorts so I told her to bring them and we wore them to the service project. We felt really mature and cool. Saturday we had 3 appointments before we had to the train station. One was at the church and while we were on the bus leaving the church I noticed I forgot my bag and we had to do a 15 min walk back. hahah it was funny but that was the only really set back because we missed our second appointment. But i am not too worried about it because we tried to get ahold of the man and he never answered. But i loved the exchange as you can probably tell! Then to add to the greatness many members came up to us inviting us over for dinner and many others we are visiting. I feel truly blessed to be out here. It is not always easy but weeks like this make it worth it and help me through the harder times. That about covers it. I will send pictures next week. The computer I am on is not working real good. I love you all!

Love, Sister Nicoll