Possibly the most beautiful area in which I served during my whole mission was Plains/Thompson Falls. Theses are actually two small towns in Northwestern Montana. We lived in Plains (officially known as Wild Horse Plains), but also covered the congregation in Thompson Falls, about 30 minutes northwest.

Have you ever been to Northwestern Montana? It’s basically heaven on earth. I know I might be biased, but I think there are many people who would agree. It probably helps that I was there over the summer, so it was perfect weather. I loved just being in Plains/Thompson Falls. It was gorgeous. When I first arrived, my companion was Sister Workman, and one of our friends in the area quipped that Armstrong and Workman sounded like a formidable companionship. We sounded tough.

Wait, did you see that backdrop? Yep, that’s what we got to look at every day. Those are the mountains we got to drive around in. That was the river we walked by and the cliffs we climbed.

And of course, there were wonderful people in Plains, too. Here are two of my very favorites, Craig and Polly.

Polly even celebrated my one-year mark with us by burning a bra in their backyard.

After six weeks, I got a new companion, Sister Stewart. She is one of my favorites. I even visited her in Canada many years ago.

One of my proudest moments was winning the cleanest truck award at zone conference. Look how shiny.

I always hoped to serve in Whitefish during my mission since my grandparents lived there, I had once lived there, and I grew up vacationing there every summer. For most of my mission, though, no missionaries were assigned to Whitefish, a small touristy town. Plains was the closest I got. We once had a zone conference in Polson, Montana, which was about a two hour drive from Plains. I got special permission to spend the night at my grandpa’s house, which was probably about the same distance away, to be honest. But it was so fun to show Stewart all my old haunts. And of course, spend time with my grandparents.

I did lots of tough stuff in Plains. First of all, we drove a truck. I know it was a mini truck, but still, that automatically made me feel tough. Then, I helped bale hay, and I even helped get fire wood.

During our drives, we often came across interesting signs.

After I took the picture with the trespassers sign, a man shouted from below, “Hey, you! What are you doing?!” I nervously called back, “Uh, hi, uh, I was just, uh, taking a picture with your sign…” And he responded, “Oh yeah, that. It’s pretty funny, huh?”

For the Fourth of July, we went to our very first rodeo and stayed up to watch the fireworks.

Soon after, Stewart and I were both transferred out of Plains and they closed the area to missionaries. We were shocked and sad to leave. It was such a beautiful place to live.

I mentioned in another post that this month marks my 10 year anniversary of returning home from my mission. And that I had come across a few small photo albums with pictures from that period of my life. Since I obviously wasn’t blogging back then (in fact, back in the dark days of the early aughts, I barely even emailed), I thought it would be fun to share a few pictures and memories from each area in which I served as a missionary. Of course, I’m totally limited as to what photos I have on hand, so it won’t be all encompassing.(Yes, you can breathe a sigh of relief. 🙂 ) Mostly, just some of these photos are awesome and I want to share them.

When I first got to Montana straight from the Missionary Training Center, I was terrified that I’d have to go knock on doors the first day. Instead, I got to make an 8-hour road trip (yay!) to a tiny little town in Western Montana, just south of Missoula. (I made Mikey drive through it a few years back on our way up to Whitefish.)

We lived in the Corvallis Mobile Village, and I loved it! We got to know all of our neighbors. Here is a family that I really loved. I wish I could remember all of their names. I know the mom is Leah, and I think the daughter is Ashley and the son is Corey? Maybe?

(Just as a side note: be prepared for lots of jumpers. It was what all the sister missionaries wore back then. They were just so versatile! You could wear a variety of shirts under them and you could even wear sweaters over them.)

The daughter had another friend in the trailer park and they would always come over to visit us. One time, they brought some cookies they had made. Sister Bernhoft (Kimmie) and I bit into them and it was all we could do not to immediately spit it back out. “How much salt did you put in this?” I’m pretty sure they said something like, “1/4 cup.” At least, it tasted like that.

Here’s another family that I loved.

You’ll notice I’m wearing the same fashionable jumper and shirt. That’s because these pictures were taken on my last day in Corvallis, where, in between lots of crying, I made good-bye visits.

Another family I became really close to is the Fosters. They lived in a house that they built, and they had all sorts of Western paraphernalia. Sister Bernhoft and I wanted to take some photos at their house for the Christmas letter we were sending to friends and family back home. Here are some of my favorite photos from our little photo shoot.

For my 22nd birthday, the Fosters and another family threw me a surprise party. The best thing about serving a mission is getting to know and love so many people that you would otherwise never come into contact with.

The second best thing is learning about a different culture. I’ll confess that when I first got my mission call to Montana (missionaries don’t select where they serve, but are assigned by leaders in the Church), I was disappointed. I had always wanted to live in Europe and I had friends going to Belgium and Italy and Austria, along with other friends going to South America and Africa. And I wasn’t even changing time zones. But I was only disappointed for a few minutes because as I thought about it, it x`just felt right to me. I had always loved Montana, and it was on a visit there the year before that I felt strongly impressed that I should serve a mission. I guess the Lord knows what He’s doing. Even if it would have been awesome to live in another country for 18 months. But then, I wouldn’t have seen stuff like this:

And I wouldn’t have fallen in love with the American West, which ultimately led to majoring in American studies. Although I have some issues with American studies in general, I had some awesome experiences through it (i.e. studying abroad in Austria, going to Purdue and making some best friends for life… and I guess that’s probably it.)

Here’s a classic missionary picture.

I’m on a bike! We got bikes at the end of October, and neither Kimmie nor I had ridden a bike very much, so we used to get up extra early to ride our bikes around the trailer court so we could practice before going on the road.

So there’s a little glimpse at life in Corvallis. It just barely touches the surface of all the wonderful people and memories.

I’ve been listening to Big Rock Candy Mountain by Wallace Stegner lately, and it has me yearning for Montana – for the West. But in particular, I keep thinking of a small town I served in during my mission, Chinook. We were actually living in Havre, but there was a branch of the church in Chinook, about 30 minutes away. All the blank space on this map will give you an idea of what it was like there.

As missionaries, this area was problematic because we were two hours away from any other missionaries and our area was so large that I don’t think I ever even saw all of the edges. We covered two Reservations and many, many small towns.

We would go to Chinook every other week for church and to visit families. In particular, there was one family there that I loved so much, the Johnsons. They lived on a farm even further away and would often invite us over. They had 8 kids (I think) who were so much fun to play with. One time they took us out to a huge pile of hay bales – the beautiful round kind that I loved so much. And we played tag while hopping from bale to bale. Here’s a picture of one of the girls. I’m so sad that I don’t remember her name anymore, and it’s strange to think that she would probably be in college now.

Here’s another photo from Chinook, including one of my mission companions, Sister Khisghee.

(Sorry about the poor quality of these photos. I had to take a picture of the photo since my scanner doesn’t work. Sadly, I only have these two photos with me. The rest of my mission photos (and too many other souvenirs) are packed in a huge plastic container and stored in Utah.)

As someone who lived in Western Montana and visited there every summer growing up, I had a huge bias for that part of Montana. It’s the greener, more mountainous part of Montana and I think it’s possibly one of the most beautiful places in the world. I was also a Utah girl, accustomed to mountains all around me. I didn’t think I would like the flat plains of Central Montana, but I did. Khishgee (and I) are standing on one of tallest hills in the area and you can see the vantage point. I think I could see into Canada from there. I had the whole world around me. Cooped up in the city, in the humid air that just hangs here, the openness and crispness of my memories of Montana appeal to me.