August 10th, 2015

I've been trying so hard to remember my week, but nothing is coming!  It's kind of frustrating to be honest.  So this email might be a little lame, sorry!

On p-day last week my district and I headed up to Frankenmuth, which is a small German town about 30 min away.  The town was really cute, everyone was wearing German outfits and the buildings were all German and the food was German and everything was just German.  I tried some chocolate and blueberry cheese and it was the best cheese I have ever tasted!  Made me think of all the yummy cheeses you used to buy Deb, you definitely gotta try the chocolate and blueberry.  Unfortunately I'm terrible at remembering to take pictures so on our way out of the town I grabbed my camera and started taking pictures from inside the car... The pictures are just awful and make me laugh.  I'll post some at the end of the email.  After we left town our district realized that it was our last P-Day all  together before transfer calls so our DL (district leader) paid for all of us to ride this super lame roller coaster made for kids, ages 7-12, called the Serpent.  Ironic right?  Satan's the serpent?  That's not as funny writing it out to all of you as it was to our district. Missionary jokes... you gotta laugh at what you can right?  Anyways, the rollercoaster was so stupid hahaha, and the whole time the elders were shouting out things like "if I do I want all you kids to know that Joseph Smith was a prophet!  The book of Mormon is true!  We are missionaries of Christ!" etc., etc.  The kids were looking at us like we were nuts.  Worth it. Their faces were pricless.

   While door knocking this week twice old people have seen me and invited me right into their homes.  Both times I was like "are you sure?" and they would reply "Yes don't be silly."  When they walked closer they then realized that I am not their granddaughter.  Both times I laughed pretty hard, but felt bad at the same time.  How was I supposed to know they thought I was their granddaughter?  I just thought they were super eager to hear about the gospel!  I felt pretty bad when their super happy faces turned into a look of horror like they just invited a killer into their home.  Guess I just have a common face here among the old people.

   The people we are teaching right now all have pretty rough backgrounds. Yesterday the bishop called us into his office to talk about a family we were bringing to church. He said he looked them up on line (he does this to every investigator we bring to church because Bay City is known to have lots of ex criminals) and both of the older sisters had been imprisoned.  One of them for kidnapping an 18 year old girl and the other for stabbing someone!  To say I was shocked is an understatement. Everyone we teach here has some crazy background story, makes me a little nervous, but the gospel is for everyone.

 On Sunday we had a baptism!  The elders baptized two little girls and it was awesome.  That was the first baptism I have been to in a really long time, I forgot about how awesome they are!  We have two investigators on date to be baptized, but both have really bad addictions they need to get over, so pray for them! Transfer calls came on Friday and Sister B and I are staying together and staying in Bay City!  A couple of the elders in our district are moving out though and we have a new DL named Elder Ingle.  Apparently he is shorter than me.  Pray that  I can take him seriously haha!

I'm sorry this email didn't have much, I'll do better next week!  But thanks again for all the emails, I'm still praying for all of you and love you SO. MUCH!

Love  Sister V

German town Frankmuth

Yes, a purple house

Tired after tracking

August 3rd, 2015

Before I start anything I gotta answer some questions for you dad, sorry I always forget and then as I'm headed out of the library I'm like "SHOOT! I forgot to answer my dads questions AGAIN!" My comp always just rolls her eyes and laughs. So here we go, We have a car, but I like to walk so I make sister B park the car in the middle of town so that we can walk to all our meetings and appointments. I'm liking the sound of a classy coat, but trench coat seems a little extreme. is there any type of coat you can buy that is for warmth and water proof for the fall? I only have a heavy duty snow coat here haha! Not smart on my part. It's a Duracell converter for a 512MB memory card? Does that help? Made in China? :) haha jk

This past week was so weird and all messed up. We usually have P Day Monday but sister B wanted to go to the temple because she hasn't been in a year! (holy cow) so we scheduled to go into Detroit with our bishop and his wife on Friday.  But since we were going for our own personal pleasure we had to make Friday our official p day. So Monday we got to email and do laundry, but then get back to work. Thursday we had a half-mission p day which was So. Much. Fun!!  There was food and water games and basketball, football, slack-line, volleyball, you name it, it was there. I went nuts! The entire day was designated towards the missionaries actually having FUN! I got in trouble with my president though because I was becoming too competitive and beating all the elders.. oops? I still don't think I should have been chastised, but of course I respected his wishes and toned it down a bit. There was a high wooden wall in the park like the army bases have for people to climb over and all the elders were telling me and making bets that I wouldn't be able to climb over it, so of course I had to prove them all wrong. It took me a couple of tries but I eventually hoisted myself up on top of that wall and let me tell you it was soooo painful! My arms were covered in splinters and bruises from rubbing all over the wood! Totally worth it though. Now that im thinking about it, maybe that's why president chastised me? They also split us all up into our districts and had a tug of war. The next day my back and abs were SOOO SORE from the stupid tug of war.. I was so embarrassed haha anyways Thursday was fun!!

    Friday we got up early and drove into the scary city of Detroit. As soon as we got into the city we were surrounded by huge buildings and tons of scary people walking the streets. We got stopped at a stop light and then all of a sudden this huge black guy started banging on our windows asking for us to give him some money, and he had a gun! The next thing we knew our entire car was being ambushed by the homeless people asking for money and trying to open the car doors! Bishop was frantically calling the police and sister B was screaming!  Just kidding, none of that really happened :) Detroit is really pretty. The temple is TINY!  But it was awesome to go through!
 It's been incredibly hot but incredibly stormy.  At the beginning of the week I felt so terrible on the doorstep. People would answer the door and Sister B and I would be standing their melting!  It's like "Hi, we have a message about Jesus Christ. Can we come in and sweat all over your nice couches?" Ha!  Pretty sure we grossed some people out. Towards the end of the week it started to turn from blazing hot to blazing hot and raining. We've had some pretty huge thunderstorms here and last night a tornado hit a town a couple miles away and did some pretty good damage.  When I think of tornados I think of Kansas, NOT MICHIGAN. I didn't sign up for this:) haha

The mission work has been good this week! we picked up 3 new investigators through door knocking this week.  My knuckles are actually bruised today from knocking so many doors yesterday. When I first got here President Jacobsen said this, "Most missions in the US are what people call a baptizing mission, here in Michigan is one of the few finding missions. You will not baptize many, but you will find lots to teach."  I'm finally understanding what he meant. Mormons are so scarce here you really have to set out and find people.  All 8 of our investigators have been found through door knocking. So I'm now realizing the importance of it all. I may not baptize anyone here in Michigan, but I know that by knocking on all these doors I am planting little seeds for the next missionaries to come by and nourish.

ANYWAYS, we have had some pretty awesome experiences with teaching people. Most of our investigators are black right now which I love. They are the most down to earth/ humble people and they all just love Jesus. Most of them don't have teeth which makes me laugh, because they smile all the time and their smile kinda freaks me out! The other day while teaching an investigator named Sherry started laughing so hard her denchers (dentchers? Dencheuers? help me out dad?) ((OK, dentures, d-e-n-t-u-r-e-s--I'm so proud....))  fell on my lap. It was pretty gross, but super funny.

I love you all and love hearing about your lives! Thanks for all the emails and prayers and letters!

Love from Bay City!

Sister Viehweg

Big Church

Detroit Temple

Big Haul

Seguin Beach

Sequin Beach

Studying

July 27th, 2015

Okay Okay so I guess I haven't been the best at giving real missionary experiences? I will try and do better.

This week was really hard.  We had a lot of investigators drop us which is a really depressing thing. You think all is going well and then you get a call from one of them telling you that they no longer want to meet with you. That happened 3 times so that was a big bummer and each phone call my heart dropped lower and lower. We also had an investigator, Bill, call and tell us that he had to go do some work up north for a month. So that was 4 we lost and then yesterday we got a call from one of our investigator's brothers telling us that his brother, Michael, had been put in jail for dealing drugs. So that's a total of 5 investigators lost. Sister Brockbank and I did our best to keep our chins up throughout the week. Speaking of Sister Brockbank I don't think I have told you much about her. She's been out 13 months so she is pretty experienced. However, this is her first time training so that gets tough sometimes because I'll ask her some questions and she won't know how to answer them. She's a lot like my college roommate Shaylie. Doesn't like to workout, not very outdoorsy, and not very social. But she's great haha. My bishop pulled me aside on Sunday and told me that Bay City needed a missionary like me to liven up the place, so that made me feel good.

You know you're truly turning into a missionary when you wake up in the morning singing Sunday songs. I picture it kind of like on the Grinch when he wakes up singing a chirstmas song and freaks out. WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME???  Just kidding, its not that bad, but it is a little weird trying to remember other songs from the radio and not being able to. This past week we saw fireflies!  Yes, they are real! For some reason I didn't really think those bugs existed, but they do and they are beautiful! I also was able to see the beautiful Saginaw Bay this week, which honestly isn't very beautiful. Bay City people rave about how amazing it is and when we went to it, it was covered in dead fish!  Hahaha, and the water was disgusting!  I'll send some pictures of it. 

I'm getting more and more acquainted with the ward which makes things fun.  We went over to this member's house and their little 4 year old kept asking me to pick him up (we can't pick up kids) and I looked at him finally and said, "why do you want to be picked up so badly?" and his response was, "because I want to kiss you."  Hahaha I got a kick out of that!  The Mormons really have to stick together around here because every other door hates Jesus Christ, I feel awful saying those 3 words in the same sentence but I have had people say that to me.  Blows my mind, how can anyone feel that way about their Savior?  Catholics overpopulate this city and they all shake their beads at us and don't want to listen.  We had a couple drunk people pull the "nobody's home" card which I'll never understand.

Time is running out, it always goes way too fast. But thank you all for the emails and letters. I logged on to 40 emails today so I was super stressed out trying to read through them all, but don't worry that's a good thing :) Dad I got your package, I thought I mentioned that to you? Im feeling like one of my emails didn't go through a couple of weeks ago?

Deb happy belated birthday! Im sorry I forgot, I forget everything while Im out here. whose birthday is next?  Becca's?  I also forgot Lisa's and I think I wished her a belated birthday too?? Just because I forget doesn't mean I don't care about all of you!

Have a wonderful week and know that I pray for you all!

love

 Sister Viewheg

Shells from Saginaw Bay Beach

Typical Bay City Scene

Pioneer Day- They made her wear that outfit

July 20th, Bay City

It's been another good week in Bay City. To start off the week we had this HUGE storm come through and knock all these trees down, which is kinda scary here because there are soooo many trees. The storm started in the middle of the night and woke me up around 2am, it was so loud I didn't fall asleep for the rest of the night. I'll post a picture of how big the branches were that fell out of the trees. Because of that storm it was so incredibly humid all week! I think I sweat 6 lbs off! We woke up one morning to work out at 6:30amand it was 88 degrees outside. It seriously felt like I had walked into a steam room. On Wednesday the Relief Society president had both the elders and the sisters over for dinner for their traditional food challenge. The challenge is to eat as many cinnamon rolls and bowls of chili as you can. The record is 4 bowls of chili and 7 cinnamon rolls (the rolls are as big as my hand all spread out) An elder by the name of Kinikini set that record and couldn't move the rest of the night. I didn't really feel up to the challenge so I just ate 3 cinnamon rolls, no bowls of chili. So healthy, but we had fasted that entire day and it was 7pm so I didn't really feel bad about it. We door knocked what they call Hell's Half Mile this week. Which was really sketchy. Hell's Half Mile is completely full of bars, but behind all the bars are houses so we were surrounded by a lot of out of control drunks who could hardly speak they were so intoxicated. At one of the houses a 10 year old answered and I asked him if his parents were home and he immediately said "We're not interested." So I said, "Do you know the message we have to share?" and he was like "What is it" and I said " It's all about our Savior Jesus Christ" and with that he said "We're not interested" and slammed the door right in my face. And I mean SLAMMED. It was the worst slammed door I have gotten yet and it was from a 10 YEAR OLD! Its so sad to me to see little kids acting like that when they hear a message about Jesus Christ. We had another Lady call the cops on us because she thought we were breaking and entering into her apartment, when really all we did was open the screen door and knock on her door. She kept claiming that she was handicapped and that we (two young sister missionaries) were trying to take advantage of her. The cops stayed behind and talked to us afterwards and apologized for the whole scene. 

This week really was amazing, Sister Brockbank and I have been praying for new investigators since I arrived and our prayers were definitely answered. We were able to pick up 5 new investigators in one week! That is completely unheard of in Bay City. 3 of the 5 committed to a baptism date during the first lesson. Sister Brockbank has been out 13 months and said that she has never met anyone so prepared as our investigators. The Lord really does answer prayers and sometimes I have to remind myself to be humble and ask specifically for help in the areas I am lacking in.

I love you all and pray for you all daily.

Love,

Sister Viehweg

After the storm

Door knocking on the competition

1st week in Michigan

Okay, I have been completely jipped of my P-Days!  Our first p day was that Thursday I sent my last email, notice I went to the MTC on a Wednesday so I should have gotten one that next day but I didn't. Then I left the MTC on a Tuesday missing my next p day. We were at the airport at 2:30 am and I didn't really have money to call anyone. We arrived in MI and I found out that I had to wait till the following Monday before I could write anyone!  So im sorry I haven't really gotten much out!  It's been crazy and today I am sooooo grateful for a break. Three weeks in the mission field and I've only had 1 day to do laundry.... you can imagine my anger.. haha

Anyways Hello family and friends!  Thank you so much for all the emails!  It seriously made my day and I cried for the first time since leaving when I saw all of them, especially the pictures of sweet little Claire. She is precious Lisa, Can't wait for yours, Danielle!

Let me backtrack a bit... uhhh so last you all heard I was still in the MTC. So the rest of that week was weird. The church had just called a bunch of new mission presidents to be trained at the MTC so every general authority was at the MTC and were walking all around the Campus. It was pretty cool. I got to meet a couple of them and shake their hands.  That Saturday the MTC president called all the sister missionaries in for a meeting and in that meeting they told us that there were bats flying around our rooms in the 1st and 4th floors of our brand new building that we all just moved into. You can imagine the freak out of all the sisters. haha.  So they had us all move out into these weird rooms that seemed like they were going to fall apart at any second. I was on the top bunk and prayed every night that my bed wouldn't collapse in the night on my dear companion sister Dillman, although maybe that would have fixed my singing problem.  JUST KIDDING!   Our companionship got better throughout the 12 days at the MTC.

So Tuesday morning sister Sodja and I woke up at 2am, we were supposed to be on a bus at 2:30 and had both somehow slept right through our 3 alarms we set the previous night.  The panic that broke out was hilarious. Sister Sodja is the slowest person I have ever met and was just bawling her eyes out while we were scrambling around trying to pack everything up and get ready. The day before our branch president had told us that we were to look our best for our mission president. Ya, that didn't happen!  But while sister Sodja was crying I was just laughing at her. I thought it was the funniest thing.  We ran down the stairs and sprinted to the bus and made it just in time. Throughout my MTC stay I never met anyone else going to MI, but when we got on the bus there were like 16 other elders!  No sisters, and again the odds were in my favor!!  haha  We got to the airport around 3:15 and our flight wasn't until 5:45.  I was weirdly so awake and hyper at the MTC and sister Sodja was not and I could tell she wanted to kill me. Sister Sodja has Krone's disease and can't eat much, she is deathly allergic to apples. I forgot about this and while in the airport to try and cheer her up I pulled an apple out of my backpack and offered it to her.  She looked at me and said "are you trying to kill me?" oops...  I Felt bad about that and left her alone and just kinda hung out with all the elders and joked around with them.  Our first flight was to Minneapolis. There is nothing there.  Then we boarded this tiny plane to Michigan. I sat by some interesting ladies who were traveling home. They told me all about MI. Made me pretty excited.

When we landed I had completely forgotten about Breck Steele. (Great friend all through childhood now serving in the same mission as Shannon)  I was walking towards what I guessed was my mission president and she just popped right out in front of me!  She had been hiding behind some guy!  She scared me to death!  We both just hugged each other and cried and laughed.  It was such a good reunion. We were inseparable the next two days.  President Jacobsen thought we were nothing but trouble and scolded me every single time I said "Breck."  haha  Why is it so hard for me to remember SISTER!??

Next thing I new they had herded us all together and were making me do Personal Contacting. Personal Contacting is basically chasing after people and complimenting their clothes in order to get them to stop walking or running away from you. haha!   I just thought this was hilarious. Breck and I were chasing down bikers, joggers, longboarders, and full on yelling at them to stop so we could share a gospel message with them lol.  Then we went to the mission home were I killed all the elders in ping pong. They couldn't beat me and it was making them so mad.  President Jacobsen started to warm up to me a bit after that.  He's a champion ping pong player himself.  I met my trainer and then that was that.

Im currently located in Bay City, MI and it is a weird place. 

Some things I've learned about Michigan

1. It's green

2. It's flat

3. The roads are terrible

4. The humidity is horrible

5. I have allergies here??  What the heck are allergies?

6. Every single person you meet has a different religion. We went door knocking on one street and I kid you not every single door we knocked was a different religion. Makes things hard.

7. There is one ward in Bay City. 350 members, 115 active members

8. Everyone here is named Angel, both men and women. and if the men are named Angel the wife is named America

It's so weird being in a place were no one knows who you are.  Im in a sketchy part of MI. So far I have already had a gun pulled on me, been chased by a dog, and hit on by total druggies. Everyone here smokes drinks and does drugs.  There was this one house we went up to that freaked me out so badly.  The door was just wide open, so we knocked and this guy came out and started talking to us. He wanted us to come inside so badly, but I knew it wasn't a good idea. It smelt so badly of every drug in the book.  We finally got him to let us get off his porch, but he ended up walking down the street with us for a couple of minutes until I just flat out asked him to leave us alone.  I felt so dirty afterwards, all I wanted to do was wash my hands.  I have never felt like such a small town girl in my life. Everyone makes fun of me for being from Idaho.  The work is so hard, but it is good. I get discouraged when people slam the doors in my face, but we've found some investigators and even have a baptism date for one!

Love you all so much and again thanks for the emails!!  Thank you Brittany and Kristin for your package and thank you aunts for all the candy!!!  I wish I could write to you all individually and respond to your separate emails but I just don't have enough time! thanks for keeping me updated with your lives siblings, your emails/letters make me smile every single time.

apartment address

5141 kasemeyer road

Bay City, MI

Mission office

4910 South Hagadorn Road

East Lansing, MI 48823

Last Day in the MTC

Trailer Park Tracting

First Days at the MTC

Hellooooo family and friends!  I feel like I have so much to say and so little time to say it all. Dad I got your letter, it came in 5 letters though!  All the elders and sisters were so jealous of me haha.

I guess I'll start with my first couple of days here at the MTC. After dad dropped me off I was taken through all these hallways and doorways and stairways and  I had no idea where I was.  Luckily I know a lot of people here at the MTC and every corner I turned I was greeted by an elder, sometimes a sister, that I had met at BYU, with of course, a handshake. Seemed like a little reunion for me and all my friends. I think my guide was getting a little annoyed for all the times we stopped though. After about the 20th missionary I said hi to she finally said, "jeez sister, you know more people than I do and I've been here for 6 weeks!" Oops.... didn't really know what to say to that comment.

Anyways I was then taken to this classroom with all these elders and sisters staring at me because I was the last to arrive. One of the sisters ran up to me and totally butchered my name as she threw her arms around my neck and about strangled me. My first thought was 'ohhh no, this must be my companion, and shes a hugger."  (Dad comment--Shanny has NEVER been to fond of hugging and cuddling...)  Sure enough it was, her name is sister Dillman and she's from Spanish Fork Utah.  Sister Dillman and I were put into a trio with sister Sodja.  Let me describe to you my first experience with the both of them.  We all stood up to sing the spirit of God, I was standing in the middle of my two companions and as soon as they started singing I immediately threw my hands up to my ears.  Both, not one, BOTH of my companions are music majors and were singing literally as loudly as they could. And it didn't help that the poor sister in front of me, sister Jarmin, was tone deaf, which made my two companions want to sing even louder.  I was trying so hard not to laugh I think I sang about three words.  My ears were ringing for about 10 min after the song was through.  Unfortunately I am the odd one out in my companionship.  Neither of my companions like being active or working out. In fact none of the sisters in my room like being active or working out. The first time our gym hour rolled around they all said they wanted to skip gym time and go take a nap. I. Was. So. Mad.  To say the least. I took out the missionary manual and read straight from the book "you must work out to keep your body healthy and strong yadda yadda yadda" or something like that.  They all just stared at me and agreed.  Thank GOODNESS. As I work out and run around the track they sit and stretch on the mats watching me. I don't understand how they can sit all day through class (16 hours) and then come to gym time and just want to sit.  Blows my mind.  Sometimes during gym iIll play some competitive four square or sand volleyball.  I found out that while Bryson was here he would sit out during Gym time and study. His district is always coming up to me and telling me how much they loved him and how dedicated he was to studying.  Just from the little information I have gathered I have come to the conclusion that Bryson and I are going to be two completely different missionaries and have very different experiences at the MTC.

The first couple of days here were hard, and I mean hard.  I'll be honest-- my second day I had so many doubtful feelings and wanted to go home, but my companions helped me out a lot, so bless them and their loud singing voices.  The day we arrived there were three times the amount of elders than sisters.   As my dad would say "the odds are definitely in my favor" just kidding! ;)  Our district has way more elders than sisters though. I love the elders, they keep me going throughout the day. All of them just graduated high school about 2-3 weeks ago and you can definitely tell.  They are all so funny and have continuously told me that I am their favorite sister missionary haha.  Just the other day I was scolded by sister Dillman for saying Freak when I dropped my scriptures.  After that the elders would say freak every time the opportunity to say so arose. I couldn't stop laughing, sister Dillman was furious, which I feel a little bad about, but what can you do?  My companions have proclaimed me the "social one" since I say hi to someone every corner we turn.

The teachers here are great and a couple of them are pretty attractive too. Its not fair, why would they give us such good looking teachers!?!?  Maybe it's to help us pay attention better?  Like I said earlier we have 16 hour days every day and I never thought I would hear myself say that 9:30 was late... haha  I get so exhausted every single day and waking up at 6:30 is a struggle, but im doing it.  I have been pushed in sports and school work, but I have never been so pushed spiritually in all my life.  It's incredible how much I am retaining and learning each day here.  We've already taught a couple of investigators.  Most are pretty nice and receptive to our messages, but we have this one girl named Chevin who is just a pill.  She's Pentecostal and so stubborn.  Refuses to pray in front of us and never reads anything we ask her to read.  The other dayIi was so stubborn and blunt with her in the lesson that she just stared at me for about 2 mintues straight and finally said, "Fine. I'll read one page, but thats it. You will never get me to pray in front of you."   I took that as a win, I hope she reads.  Shes been coming to the MTC for about 6 months now and no one has been able to make any progress with her.

Everyone here has been getting letters from dearelder.com so if you want to send me a quick letter during the week use that website. The letters are printed out and delivered the next day, just use my regular email shannon.viehweg@myldsmail.net 

mailing address 

sister shannon Viehweg

JUL01 MI-LAN

2007 N 900 E Unit 84

Provo UT 84602

Can't believe I've already been here a week and leave on the 1st, its all going by so fast!  Tell the Grieves and the Walkers and the Dunns that I see their daughters everywehere I go and they look great and happy!  I love you all and keep all of you in my prayers!

Sister Viehweg