July 28, 2014

Well it has been a busy busy week! One that leaves me in need of some more sleep. But I tell myself join the club and keep going.

We were on exchanges on Tuesday in Broomall where the mission office is, so we met there. It was fun to be in the office at a time other than transfers and Mission Leadership Council. The building feels quite empty! But its good. It was fun to be in there with the office staff and get to know them better. I got to spend some time with the senior missionaries in the office. We went apartment hunting with Elder and Sister Jones, and he is so fun. I give him a hard time like I do Brother Bleak, only probably more! When you dont see them as often you really have to be quick on your feet! He was so fun to be with because he gives you a hard time right back. Hes almost quicker than I... almost. He asked when I was going home and that was sad.

Also I was in the mission office when they printed up and sent out the departing missionary information... and I was on the list. So if you havent received the letter yet, be looking. Itll come soon! Which is depressing.... but you know what? I still have 3 months to kill it out here and thats just what Ill do!

But while we were in the office the box you sent arrived, which was fun. You NEVER get those packages quickly and you are never in the office when it comes! Unless if you are the Broomall sisters, and for the day I was :) Which was fun. And while I was there I got 3 or 4 letters from people which was really nice. The sad part? The week was so busy I literally did not have 5 minutes to read any of them until Saturday. So I had 4 letters with me for a few days waiting for a spare moment, never came until Saturday night when my poison ivy flared up, we were both therribly exhausted and we decided we would finish our nightly phone calls the next week. So I got ready for bed, washed off the poison ivy and laid on my bed with the air blowing on me and at 10:25pm was able to read the first one part way through. 

BUSY BUSY BUSY

But its better than bored... not that you ever are bored on a mission. There is always somewhere to go, someone to call or someone to find! which is a good thing. I like being busy.

Lets see what else? Oh I mentioned my posion ivy. Yup, got that doing yard work on exchanges in Milford last week I think. But it waited to flare up until this week. And each day it just gets worse. The bad part is that it needs to be uncovered to heal, but if your out and about talking with people you cannot have a large pussing open wound on your arm, so I have been having to cover it up. Well band aid adhesive is not in agreement with the poison ivy (me neither). So it was good to have this morning. We didnt go out running like we have been, instead I uncovered my rashes, put on this stuff the ward told me to use and it seems to be helping. Thank goodness for P-day! 

Lets see? What else happened this week? We did some service, went and looked at a few apts with the missionaries who are finding it for us, it was nice but in a bad area so its a no go. Then we did some service for Sister Collier who hurt her back. We were able to help her clear out a little bit of her studio so hopefully she can start doing lessons and things from her home, or be able to paint a little bit herself even!

Then we had our weekly district meeting and planning sessions. We still have people we are trying to meet and get to know and work with, who knows when it will happen though! Exchanges are crazy, and we have zone training next week, and then we have zone conference the week after that. Oh they told us that we have Elder Anderson coming to tour the mission in September which will be exciting. He is a member of the quorum of the 70. We are all excited for him to come. Elder Bowen came last year and it was neat to be able to see him. And Elder Bednar came, that was awesome! 

Then we had mission leadership council on friday which was good. We were able to nail down some of the rules of using facebook and the elder/sister communication from it. Which was a grey area before but president sent out an official email about it, which will be nice. Now we just have to enforce it instead of having to explain it to the sisters and elders. It works much better that way, then everyone hears the same thing and we can just clarify, plus I think it has more validity coming from President than from the missionaries. 

We had another lesson with Sister Hammons who has been less active for a few years. She is so ready to come to back! We gave her a Book of Mormon last week and she had read it all the way up to 2 Nephi 5. Thats more than I've ever read in a week! Shes awesome. And she had written down questions, and we got to talk about some of the things that stuck out to her. It was awesome. She is a sweet old lady and we are excited that we have been able to find her since the ward had no idea who she was. Which is so sad to me, but I know it happens a lot.

Saturday morning we went and played soccer with the ward. 2 hours, thats the most soccer I think I have ever played in my life at one time. Lets just say that my legs were so sore at church I had to pick up one leg and lift it over the other to cross them. It was hilarious! On top of my poison ivy infestation, OH AND I we were driving home one night and all of a sudden something is stinging my hand, in the middle of me driving. I look down and its dark but I see the outline of a bee on my thumb. WHAT THE HECK!? Where did it come from? I dont know. Well I could say somewhere but it would not be very nice... so I fling my hand to get it off, end up throwing it at my poor companion Sister Sagers who has NO idea what is going on, pull the car over, attempt to locate the creature, was unsucessful in the destroying of it, got back in the car and drove home hoping it would curl up and die and not sting again.

Good news is only 15 hours later the swelling went down and thumb is good as new. The ivy? still pussing ... its gross. Hopefully it will leave soon and not be shared with my companion. We decided that we do not need both of us to get it, we are unified even without that! haha. 

Anyhow. Its been a busy and great week! I feel like I was just here emailing... and man alive time if flying by!

And you know it was hard to not want to be with family this weekend, knowing everyone was home and what not. But I think that was why Heavenly Father blessed me with a busy week! So that I did not have time to think about it! Instead I was able to realize even more how blessed I am to have the gospel, and to have the opportunity to be here serving in such a capacity. I am so grateful that I am able to interact with so many elders and sisters. Its amazing the strength that comes from going on exchanges with all of them. Talking with them, getting to know them, helping them in their missionary work, receiving answers on how to better my missionary work, and being able to see miracles for sacrificing the travel time to be with all of them. Its amazing how much God loves us, and it is something that I am reminded of every day! Its truly a blessing and exactly where I need to be right now, to show my gratitude to God for everything He has given me.

And its amazing how He prepares us for whats up ahead. I have been able to give advise and council to many sisters while on exchanges who are having the same experiences I have had in the past. Its a blessing to have struggled, and to be able to look back and see what I have learned and what helped me to get through it. Man alive, this is awesome!

ALSO: Update on Ashley! She was baptized while I was in Bethlehem, and I asked her if she was planning on going through the Temple, her year mark is coming up and I wanted her to know that I could go with her if she goes through before I go home. We were able to talk about what she needs to do to prepare, who she needs to talk to etc. She talked to the ward and is going to take the Temple prep classes that start in September. That makes everything worth it, to know that Ashley is going to be able to go to the Temple and receive all of the blessings that I have had. She is doing so well! I love her dearly! 

And I love all of you! Im glad that you were able to enjoy your week together, and that Garret was able to come and be at the wedding. Thank you for sending all of the pictures :) I love pictures :) I love you all, thank you for your love and support! I love you guys. The gospel is on the Earth, the priesthood power is real, and that is what allows us to be a family for eternity. How grateful I am for that knowledge and to know that I am here bringing that happiness to others. Its amazing :) 

I Love you all! 

Love, Sister Wilson :)

P.S. just because it takes a few days does not mean I dont still love letters :) They are still VERY needed and appreciated! :) :) :)...and so are treats...

Dont worry about the short email mom, I understand. We have been talking a lot about journaling lately and how yeah I want to remember life, but you have to live it in order to remember it! And you sent enough pictures to make up for lost words :)

THANK YOU for sending those to me. Seriously, pictures are the best thing to get on the mission. As much as I wished I could have been there with all of the cousins too, Im glad that you were able to get down and see so many people! I am glad that we are able to get to see each other more often now. As much as I would have loved to know everyone growing up, now that we are old enough to really form relationships and get to know each other, Im glad that we are able to spend time with each other. 

Man. I am so happy for everyone! 

And how neat that everyone was able to be there for Josh's wedding! That would have been so neat to see everyone in the Temple together!!! That will be us, one day! For someones wedding, even if it is Keiras haha. She will get everyone at her wedding and that will make up for mission graduation and all that jazz that she now has no siblings to force to sit through those ceremonies haha.

Sounds like you had a great week and like you are in for another week of adventure and fun. I am SO EXCITED for Garret to be able to come home and spend some time with everyone there. How long does he get? I home enough time to really enjoy some of the things about home! 

You know what I miss about home? The BEACH. We are going to go to the beach in November when I get home okay? Even if we are in the car feeding birds in sweatshirts, we gotta go! 

Man alive. 

Well a new area mean new adventures! I didnt end up going very far, in fact I have church in the same building and saw some of the Doylestown ward yesterday which is fun. And as it turns out here in Souderton we have a set of english elders too! Which is GOOD. We need two sets of missionaries here still. The elders have a golden and then one elder that came out just before Sister Sagers and I did. 

Yup, my new companion is Sister Sagers, we were in the same MTC district so its way fun to be able to see her in the field. Although its surprising since we only have 3 left and we doubled into Souderton as Sister Training Leaders. So I am guessing we will get two here together and then my last I will get transferred somewhere else and she will die here and train the new sister training leader. 

Anyways, enough trunky talk, back to work.

And man there is a lot of it! And lucky us our Relief Society president and ward mission leader are both out of town :) And we and the elders both doubled in, so all 4 new missionaries, dont know where the library is for wifi, or who to see first, and we had to split our area. We took over two sets of elders, one english and one spanish and their boundries are different than having two english sets of missionaries. So we spent the first day or two figuring out how to split our area between the two of us.

Oh joy! With no direction because neither of us knew the area or anything. But its all worked out. We found that we have the area of the ward that neither of the previous elders worked. So its like opening an area, no investigators (they ALL live in the elders area) which is nice for us because its a clean slate, and nice for them because Elder Yates (the golden) will get lots of practice teaching different people and lessons. I hope that they can handle everything, they can with the Lords help, but I hope they dont get over whelmed. Teaching is a good thing, but they also got all of the spanish elders investigators and guess what? NOT a lick of Spanish! We will be relying heavily on the ward members to teach and translate the people the elders were working with so that they dont just drop off the face of the Earth. Or I should say they will be relying heavily on the ward for translators. 

What else to tell you? OH the elders apartment we took over, GLORIOUS! The previous elders are angels and cleaned everything! It was clean, not like 'clean for elders' but it was clean! Which is such a treat! We didnt even have to spend the first 48 hours cleaning and being scared of what to find next. They cleaned out the fridge even! Every closet, everything spotless. 

It pays to have friends in your district! I will have to thank elder Butler and Elder Paulsen the next time I see them. I was in the same district as them and we knew I was taking over their apartment so I think they made sure to actually clean it knowing the sisters were coming in. ANGELS! Someone should tell their mothers, they would be so proud. 

anyhow. We got all settled in, we found out that we are covering all new sets of sisters! Which is exciting, I only know one set that we previously worked with, and I have met maybe 2 of the other sisters, but its a whole new set of sisters so I am excited to get to work with them and get to know each of them.

OH EXCITING NEWS! We now have 2 sets of Spanish Sisters in the mission! We cover one of them, I love Sister Sturgess, shes fantastic. She is finishing training a spanish sister and we are working with them. And I am not sure where the other set ended up. But its way exciting to know we are going to get spanish sisters too! I dont know how many more we will get, but we shall see! And I am glad that President did not call me to learn spanish for the last 3 transfers of my mission, can you imagine? But we are trying to learn some spanish because there is such a big population of spanish speakers here. Its gonna be awesome. 

I will  habla espanol when I get home. Emphasis on the 'HA'bla!  Such a gringa! 

Dont they know I tried spanish already? It was a bad idea! Luckily sister Sagers knows some basic vocab... okay not very much at all. We have had a few people call us, attempted to communicate and they havent called us back :( We got the spanish elders phone... and their car! Which is nice because I dont have to worry about walking for the few days while it gets fixed :) But sad for the elders in Doylestown because they do have to worry about walking for those few days... sorry elders! 

well. Nothing much else. OH here is my new address for everyone:

199 W. Vine St. Apt 3  

Hatfield, PA 19440

We live close to the road so I would suggest sending boxes to the mission office. I will be down at the mission office on July 25th so if you get it there by next week I should be able to get it from them. We go down the last friday of every month for Leadership Council, which I am already excited for! Its always so uplifting and just what I need that week!

Anyhow. Well, thats my week in an email. And I dont think we get as much time to email here so emails might be a little shorter than they have been lately.

OH but neat experience yesterday:

We were contacting some potential investigators in an apartment complex where we had a few names and people to find. We walked around the corner to find this person, well call her Julie, cause thats her name.

So Julie is not home, but a few of her neighbors are in the courtyard talking loudly about the door to door salesmen that came through the day before or something. We look at each other and ask: "do you think thats for our benefit?" ... and it totally was. Then we ask, do we go and talk to them? and in a moment of bold sauce we decide yes and I start walking over to them before I chicken out. 

I ask them if they know their neighbor and if Julie still lives there, they say yeah but it doesnt look like she is home. So we explain who we are and why we are looking for her, and most of them try to look busy (which doesnt work when you are sitting out on lawn chairs on a Sunday evening shooting the breeze by the way). But one of them was semi interested. So we show them all Philadelphia Temple pass along cards (my FAVORITE ones to use) and talk about how we are sealed for time and all eternity in Temples, and not just married for time like we are in other places. 3 tell us they arent interested, but the 4th one seems semi interested. So we talk to her and tell her about what we do, ask if we can come back and talk to her and she says well you can talk to me for 10 minutes but then Im going inside. 

We then tell her some of the main points of the restoration of the gospel and give her a pamphlet, which lead to questions and discussion and giving her a Book of Mormon and a card that sister Sagers has which guides the reader to find the answers to 23 hard questions that can be found in the Book of Mormon. Then she voluntarily gives us her phone number, address and we set up an tentative appointment to check back with her in two weeks and see what she has been able to read and think about the Book of Mormon.

It was pretty neat! And all because her rude neighbors decided to talk loudly about salesmen and I wanted them to know that we werent sales men! Plus they were sitting close enough that they all heard what we were talking about. It was great!

Then as we walked back to our car we stopped and talked to these two Vietnamese ladies and gave them a Temple card and asked if we could bring them a book in Vietnamese, and they said yes, voluntarily gave us their phone number and address. Oh we also talked to an older Vietnamese man who didnt speak much english at all who said he wanted to come to church next week. I would be surprised if he came, but miracles are happening so who knows! He was watering his flowers and pretended to water me with his watering can, luckily he didnt get me wet but he tried! Stinker! 

Anyhow. Opening an area is awesome, lots of walking, being lost, and talking to everyone. (by the way how did missionaries survive without GPS? I would DIE! But that goes for real life too, I get lost finding things at home, but I think my skills have increased since being here. Anyhow.)

Love you LOTS! Thanks for all of the pictures! we are loving life and working hard. Exchanges will start this week and then we are doing two a week on average, which is hard with opening an area but I hope the sisters are willing to help us talk to everyone! Pray for us to be guided to find those who are ready and those who may be looking already. This is gonna be awesome! 

LOVE YOU!

Love, Sister Kindra Wilson 

​

JULY 7, 2014

Man sounds like so many good things are happening at home! 

I am excited that there are still so many missionaries going out for home, and I am sad to hear of all the struggles, but I am glad that you let me know so I can include them in my prayers.

I have been learning in the last few weeks that missions are WAY HARDER than I expected them to be. My Doylestown experience can be wrapped up as such: growing pains.

Its been a time of much learning, lessons that aren’t learned easily, but that will last for a life time. Mostly learning that we strive to run at full capacity, but the fact that our capacity changes at times has been a hard reality for me. Guess Im just too stubborn! 

But it is difficult to admit to yourself you cant do something, especially when you could do it before. We have talked a lot about it and the talk that keeps coming up from conference is the one about 'lifting burdens' I think its called by Elder Bednar, who talks about how our trials give us traction.

Anyhow, you have been hearing all about this and guess what? The Funk over!! Lesson learned (or at least determined what I am learning from this) and that seems to make a huge difference, so if that sounded super pessimistic it wasn’t supposed to because guess what? I feel better than I did before all these feelings came! Its amazing to see how much one lesson can change your life. And it has.

But I will pray for all of our missionaries, sounds like we could all use some as of late! 

4th of July sounds like fun! I am glad that the Barfuss' joined you both and that Keira got off.

Our 4th of July was magical :) We woke up and were pretty bummed to begin our day because we had no plans. But President allowed us to stay out late too! But we had to be home by 10pm So we were trying to figure out where to go and how to spend our 4th.

We spent the morning helping a member pack who is moving and it was really good.

Then we had dinner at a members house and it was great to be at their home. They had burgers and good American food :)  Then we went to another members house for dessert and as we were talking they were telling us about this beautiful lake we needed to see. So they took us to the lake, but the grounds closed at dusk so the rangers kicked us out before the fireworks started.

So we drove around and found a BEAUTIFUL location, just off the river where a family was doing a private show, and they had spent some money on it, so it was good. Then we looked around and could see several different shows down the river and such. It was beautiful.

But the magical part of it all?

We were surrounded by FIREFLIES!!!!! They might be my most favorite bug in the whole world! It is something that you cannot describe! twinkle lights everywhere. In the fields, in the trees, by the lake. Lots of sparkly little lights. It was fantastic! 

And if I had more time I would tell you more, we got to see more fireflies the next night with the same family when we had dinner at their house.

But time is short this week because we are BOTH being transferred out of Doylestown! I am pretty much packed with my stuff, compa is not and then we have to deep clean the apartment on top of packing up all the sisters apt type things because elders are moving in.

And weirdly enough, I do know where I am going this time. I am going to take over the elder’s area in Souderton which is literally right next door. I have meet a few of the members even because we share a chapel. SO next week will be weird going to church at the same place, but not knowing the people. 

And we have no idea where Sister Shaia will be going. Needless to say this is pretty stressful. We’ve got lots of things like mirrors, soap dishes, decorations, crafty supplies, cup cake pans etc.  That sisters want and use that elders do not.

Oh and I think I may be taking over 2 sets of elders areas. They had spanish and english elders in Souderton and they are both being doubled out as well. So added stress of taking over 2 elders teaching pools, doubling into an area so neither I nor my companion will know anyone or where anything is etc. and I will most likely be getting a new sister who is called to be a Sister Training Leader, so it will be training her to be a STL on top of doubling in, taking over two sets of teaching pools and adjusting the ward to sisters needs instead of Elders. 

Its gonna be AWESOME!

and prayers would be good this week!

Anyhow. I gotta run! Thank you for the pictures of Garrets ceremony, I love them! I am so proud of him , he is such a great guy. He’s awesome. But he is a Wilson so that is expected.

Keira, keep working hard and enjoy having your friends around this summer! They will leave for school sooner than you think and then you will want them all back, so enjoy them while they are around! 

And I am so excited for Stuart and Lindy! I hope they hear about the AF SOON! I want to know when he will be around! And if he will be home when I get home! 

LOVE YOU! More than you know, 

Sister Kinda Wilson

also no more mail to the Doylestown apartment, I will try to send my new address asap. Thanks for everything! LOVE YOU GUYS!!!