Kindra as a Sister Missionary!

JUNE 16, 2014

I am so grateful for your letters mom. I was laughing and crying along with you and the thought of all the youth, and the guys behind the lighting. I was thinking about all the events we went to and watched that Dad played such an integral part in and that people don't tend to think about. It truly is amazing and we have been so lucky to be able to see so much of the behind the scenes stuff, and I was thinking about how different events are going to be for us to attend now. Kinda crazy. But I'm grateful I was able to have those experiences growing up. 

I am so glad that Grandpa was able to be there for Keiras graduation! I feel bad that she sat through all of ours and none of us could go to hers, but ... now Im over not sitting through another graduation haha. Sorry kid! But it sounds like you got to see the Wights a lot this weekend too! Man I love them and miss them! Casey is at VF now?  Im glad. They are pretty great. Congrats to Casey on Valedictorian! Thats a lot of work and time spent, good job! 

Sounds like Keira is liking the Mango Tango place still? Thats good! Especially since she practically just started... but Im glad that she is able to be getting lots of hours and work in. Thats awesome. And it sounds like she is friends with a few of her co-workers, so thats good. By the way KEIRA HOW THE HECK ARE YOU? I always knew she didnt really love me... just kidding, but I havent heard from you in a while... you know graduation, dance festival, finishing school, work all of that, you have had so much time to email me... so I understand. But no more excuses little missy! whats going on with YOU?

Anyhow. Im glad that the dance festival went well! Sounds like it was a lot of fun to watch! I hope Keira enjoyed the swing dancing! Thats the one I wanted to do, but I am glad now that I was in the African, it was pretty cool, And the Celtic, that one was fun to dance as well. Man that seems so long ago now! 

Im glad that Stuart and Lindy were able to come down and bring Clara and that Grandpa was there too. Sounds like it was a fun time! And how fun that you were all able to facetime with Garret, could grandpa really see him? Thats cool! I guess its a big enough screen for him to see Garret easily, so thats good. How long is Grandpa in OR for? I cant remember. 

And oh my goodness, Im so glad that Grandpa called and alerted the world that he was locked in the Jeep and forgotten! haha. Poor guy... NOT. Well okay 45 minutes is more than a few, but come on you big baby! There are worse places to be stuck grandpa.... oh Love you grandpa! Miss you too! Hope you are enjoying 'cold' Oregon! 

I was walking though target or something last week and saw a display of little cars and I thought of last summer when Grandpa was here and we were teasing Grandpa about buying me a car and how he offered me to take my pick! And showed me the toy car selection at Albertson's, I still get a kick out of that. Not sure if any of you remember it, but I sure do! 

Im glad that Hazeldale ward is still as grand as ever! and that people remember Lindy and her name and love her! It so fun to get to watch the ward grow as people go off and get married and then we get to meet the spouses. I know there are a few who seemed to visit a lot that I alsways seemed to sit by in Relief Society, I think it was Cody Smiths wife, we seemed to sit together a few times while she was here. 

I pretty much just love Hazeldale ward with all my heart! I love everyone and I think often about my experiences growing up as we are discussing the ward and their needs here. I am so grateful that I am a part of the Hazeldale ward! Its a great support and love to know that they are still back home, I got cards from the Achievement day girls at Chsirtmas time, and I think I wrote them all back! I hope I did.... I know I sent post cards to several girls groups, not sure how many there are any more.

And the stake changed lots of boundries for the Bethlehem ward here, and it made me sad to think that Hazeldale will probably be split one day! But I am so glad that it isnt yet! And I know that it is a good thing, a sign that the work is moving forward and that the work is being done, but it is still hard to lose people you love. I am just grateful the splits happened after I was transferred out of Bethlehem. 

Anyhow. 

Oh mom, did I ever tell you that we got to teach early morning seminary twice? Yup. We did. A few weeks ago, they have been done for a while now. But we did get to get up early, teach and them come home and journal for that extra hour we gained, it wasnt worth going to bed to get up so soon after getting home. It made for a few long days, and lunch time quick naps for a while! But nothing terribly big. One thing about missionary work is that it never stops! So we did catch back up, eventually! haha. But it was fun, and challenging to get the kids to talk about ANYTHING that early in the morning! It was kinda funny to watch them all though. And think to myself, man I am spoiled rotten and SO glad that we had release time!!! But I will take my spoiled rotten-ness, I rather enjoy my blessings thank you very much :)

Lets see, what happened this week? Well we started teaching a guy in Russia! He found sister Shaia on Facebook somehow and added her, so we have started teaching him via Skype, which is neat. He has really great english and had studied the religion a little bit, but enough to understand the basic concepts rather well. Which is nice. Its interesting to see the differences in beliefs and culture. The ends of lessons are rather abrupt with him. Which is very different from lessons here, it seems like people here just like to talk so much more! Its ridiculous, you need to plan the last 10 minutes of just good-bye chat to get out the door! But that is fine. Its just interesting to see how abrupt a goodbye could be! Also when we do skype with him its almost 11pm his time, so he is probably going to bed right after, so that might have a little bit to do with it, but from the sounds of it that is how Russians are. Abrupt. So that is a new cool experience! 

We also got to go and double into Nazareth this week which was fun, its something I havent done before. Normally when we do exchanges we swap companions and then one set goes back to Doylestown and one sat stays in the other area. Well when we went into Nazareth we swapped companions but then we both stayed in Nazareth and worked. Which is nice because you can teach a lot more appointments having more missionaries. And funnily enough Nazareth has elders and sisters in their ward, so we doubled in making it 2 sets of sisters and 1 set of elders, but then the Assistants doubled into the Elders area so the ward of Nazareth had 4 sets of missionaries for a day last week, and no one even knows what hit them! It was a funny realization. And a neat experience. It was interesting because the other sisters appointments all held and they talked to a ton of people! Whereas our appointments fell through because our members all cancelled.

As we were meeting up to swap companions a big flash flooding storm came through and it was a turrential down pour outside! Complete with lightening and everything which was fun. Expect for the fact that the members all got scared and the girl that was supposed to come out with us called and said her mom wanted her home now. 

I guess some lightening hit a tree and a telephone pole, so she went home. We were able to stay inside the church for a few minutes and sync the iPads and do some of the paper-worky type stuff. Figure out who needed which phone and car etc. and then we headed out, luckily the storm died off really quickly and we werent stuck in the rain for much of the day at all. But anyways, the whole point was that our appointments fell through so we ended up doing a lot of stop bys and literally only 3 people were home all night. We even walked main street to try and find a few of the homes and no one was out! Even though it was a friday night. It was weird, and the weirdest part was just that the other sisters talked to SO many people, and we werent able to talk to hardly any at all.

BUT we did have a cool experience, like I said we walked main street for a little bit and we had to park (obviously) and we both got out of the car and felt like we needed to knock on the house right there, but it was completely dark, no movement, no cars outside nothing. So we walked to find our home we were looking for, and then realized that we had another one way up at the top of main street, so we could either walk back to the car and drive up, or we could just walk up and back. We were so sick of being in the car and driving around (it feels like such a waste as a missionary! You cant talk to anyone when your driving!) so we decided to walk. It was nice out by now and we figured we would get to talk to someone along the way.

Nope. 

No one. And the person we were trying to find blew us off, so we turned around to walk back to the car. And then we knocked some of the houses we passed where it looked like people were home, and we got a few bad excuses, like my dogs are too rowdy etc. 

If you dont want to talk just say so, but mostly you should just talk to us, we have something you actually do want! I promise you that!

Anyhow, so no one wants to talk to us all night. We get back to the car and the house that we wanted to knock earlier now has lights on and the door open! So we went and knocked and we talked to this woman. My companion at the time said something about how we are missionaries for our church and we share a message about how the Atoning sacrifice of our Savior has given us the opportunity to be a forever family and asked if it was a message she would be interested in hearing. And she said YES! But she didnt want us to come in because we were strangers and she had two little girls, which I understand. So she said we could come back when the kids werent home, she wasnt sure when that would be now that it is summer, so she asked for our card. So we pulled out a card and started writing the phone number and info and we got to talk to her a little bit.

Now any of you who have served missions are now thinking 'come on sister Wilson, she is just blowing you off by not setting up a time and asking for your number...' and I was trying to figure it out as well. But then we were able to show her the picture on the card of the Philly temple that is being built, we talked a little bit about how beautiful it was and she said it was impressive, and then we got to talk about what happens inside the Temple. We shared with her that this is a sacred building, which she can see before it is dedicated, but after it is dedicated it is a place where families go to be sealed together for not just time, as marriages here on Earth bind us, but for eternity. 

She was really excited to learn more, told us that we could stop by and knock on the front or the side door and she would answer and sincerley wanted to hear of our message.

Which was awesome! On my mission I really havent been able to see many positive things come from tracting out doors like that, but it was neat to be able to see someone who sincerly wanted to learn more about how she could strengthen her family, and how strongly the spirit was able to be there just by seeing the picture of a Temple, that isnt even finished being built yet, and knowing that she wanted something from it.

The gospel is true! The Spirit testifies to all of the truth, the light, the way. The spirit is what helps us to learn and grow and develop our faith, because we are all constantly growing our faith.

It is amazing to see how the Lord's work is going forth to all nations through the resources we use everyday! The internet is allowing us to teach more often and to more people. Its truly a blessing to be able to use and see the benefits from it. 

And we are inviting many people to join the efforts of spreading the gospel though the internet and facebook and other social media sources especially. I am going to invite Mom and Stuart to be a part of this group that is on Facebook that is working to spread the Book of Mormon, they have asked us to help the members become a bigger part of the missionary work, then can you two invite other people from home? Im not sure if your missioanries have facebook yet, I know there are only 28 of them in the world thus far, but there are things that each of us can do to help this word be spread far and wide. If you dont want to post the pictures as they have instructed you can just share your experiences and then use the hashtags.

Hash tags description--
This is what the hash tags look like: #xxxxx (dont use any spaces between the words) 

What this does is it links all of the posts that have the same #xxxxx so when someone clicks on the hash tag you made they can then see everyone elses hash tags.

I hope that helps to explain the hash tagging thing to the older generation reading this.... its really not as scary as that may sound to link everything together, people who are not your friends cannot get to your profile if your privacy settings are set to protect you. And it doesnt give out any of your personal information.

But what this does do is flood facebook with uplifting experiences that others are sharing, it helps to get the face of the Book of Mormon out there, and it helps others learn more of what missionaries do! 

This is an invitation that is coming from our mission President, and probably even Salt Lake, as they are working to use social media to spread the gospel. If you can all invite others to be a part of the group and then post either the picture they describe, your experiences, or just the hash tag, it is all helping to hasten the work and to flood the internet with good, uplifting and encouraging stories. I hope you can all find a way to take part in the hastening of the work online. 

It is an amazing tool that we are learning together church wide. We are the internet pioneers! haha. That was cheesy... but really we are.

ANYHOW, thats just an invitation to others to be a part of this work. Here is the link to the facebook page that is doing this:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/774654132574908/

All of the 28 Facebook missions have been invited to participate as we flood facebook with the Book of Mormon. There are instructions on the group for EVENT #2 that is happening soon. So I just wanted to invite the ward and people back home to be a part of this great experience as well.

I love you all! Thank you for your love, support and prayers. I truly do appreciate all of them!

LOVE YOU!

Sister Kindra Wilson

P.S. Thank you for sending that box mom! I do appreciate it! And just fyi while I am here in Doylestown you can send packages here to my apartment, we have parcel lockers and they can leave them on our doorstep as well. Just a touch quicker, but we will have Leadership Council next week so I will get the box soon! THANK YOU! 

LOVES TO ALL!