Kindra as a Sister Missionary!

February 24, 2014 Well I am glad that you guys were able to have so much fun! It sounds like it was an awesome trip, and I love the photos you sent. Pretty dresses and birds and it was good to get one of you and Garret together too. And all three of you in front of the Duke? What is the significance behind him, do you know? And that heat sounds very welcome right now! We got a heat wave too, it was in the high forties! YAHOO! Super warm, the snow started melting, but its not all gone yet. And I almost wore my green cotton dress to church because it was feeling so good, but I didnt. It has been nice though to not have to wear 5 layers this week. But the heat is leaving and I think we will be back to winter for a few weeks. We shall see. I hope you enjoyed the cultural center, I have heard so many good things about it, and the beach sounds awesome! Sorry I missed the ocean knocking you down haha. But Im glad that they stopped laughing and did help you up eventually! It sounds very nice to be able to lay on a beach and swim in the ocean for a while. Man I cant wait for spring to get here! And Im glad that you got to enjoy your cloudy Hawaii, sounds perfect since it was already so warm. And dang you took a lot of pictures, but I am glad! I love pictures and I cant wait to look through all of them when I get back, because I know you will not send 1000 pictures to me... at least I hope you wont! But it would be fun to see some of the hi-lights, like Garret fishing in a grass skirt! haha And the Luau sounds so fun! Man pig in the ground, I have no idea what they call it but that was the best meat I have ever had, Sherice's mom made it or well brought some back for us and its probably one of my favorite things, and it wasnt even fresh. So Im guessing you enjoyed dinner :) Im glad you got to walk around the Temple too! How was that? I hope beautiful! Im glad that you got to be together and enjoy that time. Sounds like it was a great trip for all of you :) And maybe one day we will all get there as a family, but if not Im glad that you were able to go and spend some time with Garret and Keira and have those experiences. The vacation of a life time! haha. Well like I said we got a 'heat wave' this week and it has been much appreciated. Im wearing one of the more summer outfits I own, and it might have been a bad decision, but I just couldnt help it, its been so nice! And Im in denial that its going back to winter today or tomorrow :( Winter is my least favorite! But we did start the week off with a presidents day dinner with the Relitz, she is so fun I love her so much! She stopped me in the hall one day and said 'I hope you dont forget about me, I wish you could stay forever and be my special friend!' I love her so much! Shes a hoot. I am going to miss her dearly! We spent a lot of time doing service this week. A family who we have just started meeting with and teaching had a house fire, so they have moved out and we have been helping them to pack up their belongings and things they can keep and help sort and pack and do all of that. Its amazing what the four of us can get done in such a short period of time! I think we are going to help her another time this week to sort though the storage unit and the belongings that just got thrown in as they were clearing out the house in a hurry. That will be long and cold Im sure! But Im glad that we are able to go and help her and to be able to show her that we do love them, we arent just here to get them to church, but we are here to help them in any way we can. Oh and we went to mutual this week and did our missionary march madness introduction. We introduced the competition and what they would have to do, then we took them all and broke them into role plays. Number one: they were sitting in two rows of chairs, one facing the other and they were paired up with the person they were sitting across from. One of them was a missionary and one of them was a friend asking a question. The missionaries had 30 seconds to answer the question, and they had to talk the whole time. The questions were, what do you believe? Why do you go to church every week? And why do you get up early to go to bible study> Number two: we broke up into small groups and had to pick a question out of the bottle and answer it as simply as they could. The questions were things they get asked frequently (we asked the youth to give us these questions ahead of time) they were things like: whats with the mormon bible? what is the funny underwear? Why do you have temples? What do you have against gay people? why do you pay tithing? Why dont you believe in Jesus Christ? Why arent you Christians? This was a really good one because we had them answer and then we were able to talk about what else you could say, or why they would ask the question in the first place. It was good to have them practice speaking and helping them realize that there is no secret script that the missionaries get in the MTC to know how to answer questions. It was good to help them understand that they have to listen to the spirit to know what to say that time. Because each time you answer the question your wording may be different, or your focus may be different, it all depends on the person. Because individuals ask the questions, so you have to answer the question with individual and unique answers. The third role play: was 'explain it to an 8 year old'. We had three volunteers come up, then we would give them a word such as salvation, bishop, ward, priesthood, ordinance etc. and they had to define the word in such a way that an 8 year old could understand it. This is one of my favorite ones, and it can be tricky! Then the audience voted and the winner got a piece of candy. It was a good activity and we had several leaders tell us that they learned something and thought it was really helpful. I am glad that we were able to help them see that they do in deed know enough! That they can answer questions and that it is their responsibility simply to invite, not to baptize people! I think that is one way that people get intimidated and scared. When they feel like they need to convince people to be baptized. THATS NOT YOUR RESPONSIBILITY! Or an invitation you can extend. That is what the missionaries are for. Your responsibility as a member of the church is to invite people to learn, to come to church, to meet the missionaries, to attend an activity or something simple like that. Missionary work is not hard, but it is work! Anyways. It was a great activity and Im glad that we did it with them. I think it will help them to really do the March Madness and enjoy doing it because they can feel better prepared. But we had a great Sunday yesterday, Katherine was confirmed a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and was given the gift of the Holy Ghost. It was truly touching to watch her and how excited she was. She is such a sweet little old lady and I love her dearly! I am going to miss that woman very much, but I am glad that she and Sister Wiehl found each other, they have a special bond, and everyone can tell. Its very heart warming to see. We also had another investigator at church and her son, and they really enjoyed it! She received a Priesthood blessing to help give her comfort, she had a traumatic week and we suggested a blessing and she said she would like one. Then we had a lesson with another investigator after church with a member couple. He has made a LOT of progress since I have been here. Its been amazing to watch the changes in someone and how much you can change in just 6 short months. Then we had a lesson with Katherine about Family History work and the Temple, she is so excited to be able to go and find information about her ancestors and then to go to the Temple and be baptized for them. And I am so excited for her to have that experience as well! Lets just say that it has been a fantastic week! And transfer calls will come in this weekend, so I will know on Monday what is happening for sure, but we are fairly certain that I am going to be transferred this time around. Anything could happen though! We shall see. I love you all! Thank you for your emails and prayers and letters, I appreciate them all! LOVE YOU TONS! Sister Wilson :) February 17, 2014 Well by now you are both in Hawaii with Garret, and I am really excited for all of you! Especially to be visiting him so you will get all of his extra time. Its always nice to have him home but you know he has friends too so the time is shared, its nice to have some selfish time with just the three of you being together. So I am really happy for you! And I cant wait for pictures! I want a good one of the three of you together if you get one! Especially to see how small you are now, I am still amazed when I see you in pictures, you look so good mom! I am so proud of you! KEIRA IS GOING TO BYUI!!! YAHOOO! I am excited for her! It is SO much fun! And I am also torn about her going in the fall because I would love to have her home when I get there, but also if I go back to school in January than we would only get one semester together either spring or winter.... as much as I don’t want to go to school in January think the Lord is rebuking me and telling me I might need to :( We shall see, I still have lots of time... at least that’s what I am telling myself! I am glad that you found a substitute for seminary, and Sister Janeck will be a great teacher, I had her in young womens and I always enjoyed her lessons. I know the material is different, and the thought of teaching seminary is intimidating to me because I dont have the scriptural basis to teach, but Sister Janeck will be great! Rachael is awesome!! The kids in your class will love both of them!! Heather asked if there were any plants to water, I think thats funny! Well you do have a lot of plants and it does take effort! haha. I don’t blame her.... Well we have had an exciting week. On Tuesday we had a Zone Conference where we got our new proselyting devices, mini iPads! So that’s fun, we are trying to figure out all of the programs and how to report all of our numbers etc. But that will take a while, its a process and they basically handed them to us, we set them all up with the locks and restrictions etc. and then they said okay, play around and figure out the programs. So its fun. Then on Thursday a huge snow storm came in and we were told to park the cars again. So we had all day to practice our musical number for Katherine’s baptism on Sunday, to input our area books into the iPads (which took all day to enter in like 7 people because you have to input the teaching history and everything, and we have a big area book.) and then to do our weekly planning, and we still didn’t finish our weekly planning! Because we spent time practicing and figuring out how to do it on the iPads. But that’s okay! We finished it yesterday after: KATHERINE WOLFE WAS BAPTIZED!!!! Its been exciting to teach her and see how she has progressed, she is in her 70s so she has time to read and ponder every day. We meet three times a week and I think that has helped her to progress as fast as she has. But I love her! And her and Sister Wiehl have a very special connection, I feel very blessed to have been here and working with both of them and getting to see their friendship develop over the past month or so. I am so dang lucky! Oh and I am guessing I am going to be transferred this time around, so I will probably spend March 4th as my last day in Bethlehem. Just fyi for mailing purposes, start sending it to the mission home next week or so. I did get the Melaleuca box, THANK YOU! And one of the other boxes was from Aunt Duana! Thank you Aunt Dewy! I really loved the 'my family' book you put together, when they came out I wanted to fill one out but I don’t have the information, now its a great tool that I can show people when we talk to them about family history work and what they can do to get to know their ancestors, so thank you! And I did not realize we are related to the man who invented Moorse code! I’ve been telling everyone that, kind of neat! And the Harvard founder, I did know that one! Anyhow, so Tuesday iPads, Thursday snowed inside - we literally left the apartment at 8:45pm to brush the snow off of the car so the accumulation wouldn’t be terrible to get out in the morning. Then on Sunday we had a baptism, and that was a great day. Sister Wiehl plays the piano, and Sister Singleton plays the Violin, so we played a trio of Come Thou fount of every Blessing for Katherine’s baptism, which wasn’t perfect, but I’m glad that we did it! Funny story of the morning before church: so I was eating quesadilla and salsa and I spilt some on my skirt, so I had to change right. Well I was trying to pick out a back up outfit for the baptism, and I wasn’t loving it, so I asked Sister Wiehl what she thought, and to be honest she was right, but when she looked at my outfit she said: "ew. I’m offended, you look like a school girl... take it off! NOW" So I did. And she was right, but we are still laughing at the terrible presentation of her opinion! We are working on that.... anyhow. She is great and I do love being with Sister Singleton and Sister Wiehl, its been a great transfer. And we might have been getting to bed super late the past couple of days because we just keep talking! Its a problem I haven’t had before, you would think being with someone 24/7 would give you enough time to talk, but I guess it doesn’t! Plus Sister Singleton has the best stories, and insomnia. so she will talk as long as you will. Anyhow, its been a great week! Oh and Kelly called us Sunday morning to ask how soon she could be baptized. IQQLJBFIQHELH Yeah, it was an awesome start to a great day! We are working with Kelly and she has a baptismal date in March, so I am very excited for her! She has a great story and she is a very sweet woman. She is looking to move so we shall see what happens. Basically, life is awesome. I love it here, and I am sad to think that my time in Bethlehem is coming to an end. But we shall see what the next adventure brings! I love you all! Life is splendid, I hope all is as well at home as it is here. Enjoy Hawaii for me! I can’t wait for pictures and stories. LOVE YOU ALL! Love, Sister Wilson :)