August 15 : Happily Serving

Preface from Heidi:

This week has been an especially tough one for Kylie. Since she has been on her mission she and her companion opened a new area and then closed it again 14 weeks later. Then in a matter of a few weeks she was transferred twice because of missionaries unexpectedly leaving the mission field. So in a matter of about 5 weeks she personally has had 3 unexpected transfers. It has been extremely discouraging and emotionally hard to engaged in the work lately to say the least. As she met with her mission president this week (she now lives and serves where he livesJ ) he told her she probably was experiencing a little missionary PTSD with all she had been through in her first area and the transfers that came after. He gave her a priesthood blessing and she says she feels strength and peace to move ahead with what the Lord expects of her. I asked her why she was not sharing all these struggles in her big emails – she responded that some were to personal and in most cases she just did not want to say anything negative about those she was associating with. It’s a small world with social media. So for those of you that have often commented to me that Kylie’s mission seems like a great big EFY or party – know that it is not! The struggle is REAL. MISSIONS ARE HARD. But with her faith in her Father in Heaven and our continuous prayers of support, all our missionaries will have the strength to do what is expected and required of them – with a smile. Thanks for supporting Kylie.

EVERY DAY LIFE:

This past week has been awesome! Since last Sunday was Hna Browns birthday we basically had a P-Day party for her! We went shopping and then met up with some other hermanas for lunch and it was so much fun! On Wednesday we had lunch with one of our less actives from Peru and she is just the cutest little thing! She has one daughter but works all day long because she wants to get her daughter to college! We had lunch with them and the hermana asked me if I liked spicy stuff. Heck ya I like spicy stuff!! I was just thinking like a little spice, not much more, but she walked outside into her fresh garden and took off this red pepper and brought it in and served it to me. Okay 1. I haven´t eaten anything really hot in a long time so I´m not to used to it. 2. GOOD HECK THAT THING WAS A PEPPER FROM THE DEVIL. LITERALLY. The name of the pepper was pepper from the devil - not a joke. Ya, I´m not saying I like spicy anymore because apparently I don´t even know what spicy is!

This is one of my sister training leaders Hna Recalde! We had exchanges this week and I love her!

INVESTIGATORS:

Familia Avila: Okay this family is golden!!! We´ve been trying to get them to accept a baptismal date for 3 weeks and this week they actually accepted after we taught about the Atonement. The dad said his main purpose in life is to follow Jesus Christ! Okay - how perfect is that?!!! So we have a baptismal date for them Sept 10. But they didn´t come to church so we´ll see what happens. But they´re awesome!

So we don´t have to many investigators but yesterday we prayed and prayed and prayed because we had no one to visit after church and basically our plan was to knock doors from 4:30-9 - haha kinda crazy but ya. We we´re listening to the spirit a lot more than usual and talking to literally EVERYONE that walked by us! We found these women that are, what we like to call, ¨References from the Lord.¨ The first one was Silvia and she was new in the neighborhood as of 4 months ago, and had lived across the street from an LDS church before she moved and listened to the missionaries! She invited us in and pulled out the pamphlet of the Restoration and said since the moment the missionaries had given it to her she read it every night before she went to bed with the Book of Mormon!! ya I about died! So we´re just a little excited that we found her!

FUNNY

We went running this morning and I tripped and fell on my face cause I didn´t have my glasses on and couldn´t see ..... ya I´m an idiot.

We had our zone conference this week and hna Brown and I are the only sisters in the zone, so our zone leaders asked us to do a little activity lesson thing about unity in your companionship. haha We took on this challenge like champs!! We made it a relay race where you had to work together to get your investigator to the baptismal font and the prize was homemade cinnamon rolls (hna brown is an amazing cook by the way) and they LOVED IT!!! hahah it was so funny to watch these elders go all out! It was some good entertainment :)