PHOTOS:

Pictures from Old Town in Bethlehem, Pa.
Kindra's Bday is Wed Nov 6th. Members brought them dinner and ice cream to celebrate....they had to be in off the streets for Tick or Treating
A shot of her district in Bethlehem

November 3, 2013

THANK YOU! For the birthday card, the box of muffins and the coat and the birthday boxes :) It was a week full of goodies! And my birthday is still 2 days away! I opened the boxes and I have been opening one birthday gift a day, because I couldnt wait a whole week to open all of them! But I still want to open some on my birthday :)

So thank you for the tights and the socks, and the beautiful scarf! Its very pretty and it is heavy so it will be warm for the snow season! (which is almost upon us...) And thank you for the white sweater! it is long sleeved :) And warm, so it will get worn for sure this winter! Thank you!

And thank you for the muffins! They were not stale at all... in fact they were the most moist muffins Ive ever had, so whatever you did worked! and I still have 2 dozen in the freezer! I might take some to district meeting on Thursday and share with everyone, but there are 14 missionaries who meet at the building and thats half of what I have left, so we shall see how charitable I am feeling on Thursday... probably pretty charitable since I dont think I could eat all of them on my own if I tried! I did leave some for the Relitz for her letting you send me a box there. She is hilarious! I love her, and brother Relitz was just released as our warm mission leader, so we know them pretty well.

What else? Well we have been CRAVING good Mexican food for a while... because white people on the east coast dont ever cook Mexican food I have found. And we had to be in and safe on Halloween early, so a member brought us dinner and they brought us some mexican food! It was glorious! and they brought ice cream as an early birthday gift, and cupcakes! So we had an early birthday party, it was great :)

Also the city of Bethlehem is weird, Im not sure if I told you this last week or not, but they trick-or-treat the Friday before Halloween.... so we also had to be in early last week and a member brought us pizza, wings and canolie's for dinner, all delivered by the same pizza man. The east coast is weird, which is why the west coast is the best coast :) haha just kidding... but not really. S. Carrigan says that a lot, shes from San Diego and already dying in the cold here. It will be a lovely winter transfer with her... shes kinda a pansy on top of that so she never takes her coat off.

Well it was kinda a slow week. Sister Carrigan has been sick off and on so random times we will be in all day. Which is kinda the worst as a missionary, because all you can do as a missionary is read your scriptures, Preach my Gospel, Jesus the Christ or write in your journal, or watch a cheesy church movie. And after a while words start to give you a headache whether your reading them or writing them... and The movies we have are like 40 minutes at the longest so its kinda long and boring to be in as a missionary. But I have written a little more in my journal, I try to write about every day, it just doesnt get written on that day.... and I have started reading Jesus the Christ but it makes me think a lot and so I have to stop after a while because I get a head ache, but its really good and I will finish it before I come home! Plus the scriptures are awesome. But Im back in Alma, and Alma is SO LONG! Its quite rude almost. All the other books fly by and then you get to Alma and your there forever! But its good stuff so Im not really complaining about it... but when S. Carrigan complains about being in Jacob back in the Isiah chapters I say suck it up, Im still in Alma. (so yeah that compassion thing, still working on it).

But we had another good Sunday! Ashley was confirmed and given the gift of the Holy Ghost at church! So it was a happy day :) And we had the Ortega girls at church, they are the less active family we have been working with. We go over there every Monday after Pday and she feeds us and we teach them and have family home evening with them. Its going okay, we are trying to get the dad at church, hes not a member, and now that his football team is over we might be able to get him there! He came inside to drop the girls off this week before his game! so that was good.

We also had our investigator Cindy come to church too. I love Cindy. She is the one that we found on our way home, I think I told you that story in my last letter.... but yeah. She is the girlfriend of a less active member and she is reading the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants and they watch the mormon channel on their roku all the time. (I dont know if you guys know what roku is, if it's new since I've come out or if its a east coast thing, but its like DVR but for specialty shows and things. So like mormon channel, or different things like that. Which is probably the worst explanation ever given, but its not important to the story anyways...)

But Cindy was at church! She had a major migraine though so they left after Sunday school, but she was there and it was awesome! We are excited to go back and talk with her again. He is soaking up what we teach and it sounds like they have already discussed most of it already. Now its just connecting all the dots and explaining why it all matters.

So it was an excellent Sunday with lots of people there!

There was also a member who got up and bore his testimony thanking Elder Holland for his talk in conference. Elder Holland talked about depression, anxiety and other mental illnesses. Our member suffers from depression, anxiety, PTSD from serving in Iraq, and on top of that he had some physical ailments that were preventing him from coming to church as often as he would like. He bore his testimony about how that talk touched him and how he is grateful that words like depression and anxiety are not taboo and that we can talk about them, lean on each other and help others work through it.

It was just another testimony to me about how much the church is progressing in so many ways. I think missionary work has been a big push lately, but to see that we are progressing in many ways! That we are able to reach out to more people and to help others in ways that we did not recognize before. I am grateful for the council of our leaders and their love and support for all the members of the church.

Man I love this Gospel! I am so excited and blessed to be a part of this work of Salvation. I cannot wait to see who else I can reach out to and share this gospel with in order to help bring them closer to their Savior. How grateful I am for my testimony and the things that I am learning and how it is changing me, for the better! There are so many things that I want to learn and develop in my life and I am grateful for this time to be able to focus on the spiritual to help me understand why I want to develop more abilities and how those can help me in an eternal sense.

One of my new favorite quotes I found this week is from sister Marjorie Pay Hinckley:

"There is something about spirituality that is central to the life of a woman. Not the kind of spirituality that only takes you to church on Sunday. I am talking about the kind of spirituality that makes you behave like a child of God."

"True spirituality make you loving and grateful, and forgiving, and patient, and gentle, and long suffering. True spirituality breathes reverence into every act and deed. It compels you to get in touch with your Heavenly Father every single day of your life" Alma 37:34, 36

I love this. Especially the first part, because it has helped me to see how spirituality works in your everyday life but doesnt 'suck the fun' out of things. It becomes a part of who you are and not just what you do. It doesnt prevent you from having fun, but enhances your understanding and broadens your views to be able to have fun in more ways than you previously knew.

This is how I hope I am able to change between now and when I come home. It will probably be a life long journey, but its one that I want to start now.

Thank you for all of your loving, kind, and encouraging words. Thank you for the cards, and birthday gifts and well wishes. I love you all and pray for you all daily. Thank you for everything you do for me! I really do appreciate it all.

LOVES! Sister Wilson

• Thats gonna leave a bruise...‏

Sister Kindra

9:36 AM

To: Lynn & Don Wilson

well maybe, not quite sure. But as I was backing my companion into some parallel parking to come into the library she pinned me between her and the other car, RUDE! Mostly it was funny because she knew she hit me and I saw her hands go up and her face said "I didnt just do that!" but she didnt move the car until I motioned her to go forward! hahaha, so funny. And no it didnt hurt! Mostly its just funny, it was a light pin....

Anyways! This week was awesome! But first to respond to your letter. It sounds like the trunk or treat was a hit! We had one here too and there were a few people there but not a ton of them. It was fun because we went to primary last week so a lot of the kids talk to us now, and we've been in more homes and met them and played with them so they are excited to see us and to talk to us so it was fun  to watch them all dressed up and running around. 

Let me know what happens with your nerve whatnot. That sounds painful! Hopefully it will go away and not be a big problem for you :( 

Sounds like Garrets base is tiny compared to what he has had, but Im glad that Janelle is able to go over and that they get some time together. Another Marine ball huh? Those sound like fun! Glad she gets to go meet some of the guys over there that hes been serving with.

Sounds like Stuart is jumping the gun! Planning for after the AF... you got some time buddy :) Just kidding, I know what you mean though, it would be cool if he could go back to NASA. I think he would really enjoy it.

Lindy is singing in a professional choir? Good for her! Im glad that she is able to have those opportunities. And I am glad that they are coming for almost 2 weeks! That will be so fun! 

And Jim Band is coming back?! WHAT! Im excited and I dont even get to go! But I hope they get to have a bunch of the great artists come that they have in the past. I have always enjoyed them and I was sad that they discontinued. So hopefully you get to go to a bunch of them. And the Christmas party sounds like fun! They are already starting to plan there party here in Bethlehem, and it sounds like SO much fun! They are having a shadow puppet play of the nativity and S. Relitz has told us about their plans for their RS activity after that, pretty much they have some fun activities here! Which is fun to hear about but also like, yeah thatll be awesome, for whoever is here... because it probably wont be me. Not a big deal....

And the nutcracker! Man I also enjoy going to that performance every year as well. So Im glad that you guys are getting to go! It will be a lot of fun. And Im glad you got to skype with everyone for a little bit! And I did get an email from Garret this week, YAHOO! I figure email will probably be better than trying to snail mail it with him since he moves around so often and by the time I get the letter written and in the mail I hear that he is moving to somewhere else!

We have elders and sisters? Elders B and Sisters L... thats kinda funny! Well Im glad that the work is moving in Hazeldale. Are they getting to teach many people? Im glad that you got to take pictures and send it to their moms! Its kinda fun to be able to do that randomly :) Mommies love it as you know! haha. How old are they? Do you have 4 young missionaries? And how many ward missionaries do you have in the ward? Who is the ward mission leader? I might be able to find out on lds.org... but yeah, do you know who it is?

anyways, Im glad your week was so good! Sounds like you guys are having a lot of fun back in Oregon :) Me too! Pennsylvania is getting a little bit chillier. S. Carrigan is from San Diego and so she is FREEZING all the time. The ward is even joking with her about it on sundays, because she is cold enough that she never takes her coat off. Which I do in Rexburg in January, but not in october! She is going to die this winter... and its kinda funny. But only because Im not cold quite yet. Tights are warmth enough right now. Give it a few weeks though and we shall see what the weather does and when we get snow.

So Halloween here in Bethlehem is a little weird. One of the members described it as the police not having enough to do and wanting to regulate something else... so trick-or-treating is allowed only on the Friday night BEFORE Halloween. Something about so the police force can be more organized or the kids always have a saturday following halloween, either way its weird. And they never get to actually trick-or-treat on halloween, unless its a friday. So we had to be in last friday for trick-or-treating, and we will have to be in on Halloween because thats mission wide. So itll be interesting... staying in is fine. But its not like you get to watch a movie or write letters, we get to curl up with Preach my Gospel or the District... lovely! I might start into Jesus the Christ on Halloween, we shall see. President might make us plan in the evening instead of during the day since its Thursday, but yeah. anyways, we have already had halloween in Bethlehem, and today they were taking down the harvest decorations! They decorated the light posts with wheat which I though would be for thanksgiving too. But its not. LAME! We'll see if they put up anything else.

OH I forgot to tell you that last week I ate at the Trulock's here in PA, and guess what? Her sister is married to one of the Neilson twins! So tell them that I met their sons in-laws! Kinda fun, and such a small world, at least in Mormondom.

And on to yesterday :) Yesterday our investigator Ashley was baptized! It was so exciting to see her walk into that water and come out smiling. The Elders in Easton that taught her before we did were able to come and be at the Baptism, they were the witnesses. It was fun to be there with all of her friends from the Easton ward and get to meet the people who she began her journey of searching with. They have a singles FHE group in Easton that she still attends so a lot of those friends were able to come and support her which was good to see. And we had us, the Easton elders and 3 other sets of missionaries that are in our zone at the baptism, so she had a lot of support there which was cool.

Then after Ashley's baptism the Spanish branch had a baptism. His name was Pedro, and all  the missionaries went from our service to their service. And then they had all of the missionaries get up and sing in Spanish! So yes, I sang in spanish at a baptism yesterday. It was ... interesting. None of the elders ever sing very loud or confidently, and only 3 of them singing spoke spanish. So there were 3 spanish speakers and 5 of us that didnt singing as well. And it was hard because S. Carrigan speaks french and a lot of the words are spelt the same, so she was singing in a french accent and I am trying to listen to the quiet elders on my other side sing in a spanish accent to try and pronounce the words right. Basically it was another great story :) And you know Ill do anything for a good story, include sing in a different language! :) AND the sad part of the day...
So we are out of miles right? So after church we stayed at the building and took our lunch break and then did our studies there so that we could watch the water. WHICH Ill tell that story first, so Our warm mission leader asked a member of the bishopric to turn the water on, unannounced to us. So we go in and we turn on the water to start filling the font. Well we go back an hour and a half later to check on it and its only about 3 inches full, the water is TRICKLING out and we are a little bit panicking, we have 2 baptisms tonight starting in an hour and a half, and we need more than 6 inches of water. So we turn on more water and hope that it will be warm enough! We were told to only turn on the warm water which is what we thought we did originally. Well the font gets filled up and all is well before we start, because we keep checking on it. 
Then at the baptism we hear the bishopric member talking about how he doesn't know what happened! He went in and the font was being filled with only cold water! (which it was NOT!!!!) so he turned the warm water on and he turned it down because he was going home and didnt want it to overfill. Thats when we came in and turned the water back up so that it would work. We told him that and we have now been dubed the 'font angels' because with out us there would have been 2 baptisms postponed. (which isnt 100% true because there were at least 3 sets of missionaries in the building that day checking on it to make sure that didnt happen, but you can call me the font angels! I can take a compliment :)

So it was a good day! And the hi light of the week for sure!

Well, thats most of what I have to tell you, I hope! 

but I love you! Thank you for your prayers and for faithfully writting every week :) Love you tons! Thanks mom your the best :) 

and you can send the muffins any time :) The sooner the better :D LOVES and stuff 

Sister Kindra Wilson

Oct 21, 2013

Sounds like you had a fun outside week at the apartments this week, and I would say leave the other cutting to Stuart, I bet he misses all of that yard work :) You know since hes working harvest and all... but he would not mind doing it at all, you know Stuart, hes awesome like that.

Im glad that seminary is going well for you! Hopefully it keeps until Christmas break... because I feel like Christmas is around the corner... but its not. Its not even my birthday yet! Thank you for sending me packages! I love them already! And Im glad that the lady in Thriftway was so helpful! I kinda hate going into the post office because I feel like they are always cranky about whatever it is they have to do for me... so Im glad that she was friendly!

Thank you for the addresses and Garrets email. This week my letter is going to be short because Im being kicked off in 4 minutes... LAME! We didnt go to the church to email today, we came to the library because we are going to go explore old downtown Bethlehem! Im excited. Sorry this email is so short!

We had a pretty good week and a few miracles happened. I will copy and paste the story I shared with President, so it wont be geared toward this audience, so if you need to change things than change them before you post it please! Like change the names perhaps?

I am learning a lot about what it means to follow the spirit exactly! We watched a documentary about President Monson and I really connected with some of his stories. They ended saying that he made the promise to never ignore a prompting again! You think duh! but its true you have to make that decision!

LOVE YOU! sorry its not loading and I have 20 seconds to send...

JUST KIDDING! Were back! We were able to get on for another session, so now I can send that story to you.

"One miracle happened yesterday actually, we got into the car to go home and I felt like there was one more person we needed to find that night. But I was wrestling with myself on how we were going to find them. I looked at my planner at the people that we didnt get to see that day and I said 'can we stop by one more person' S. Carrigan said 'sure! who?' and I wasnt quite sure. But I said LaMartin, now there were two of that lived close together, both less active individuals. We went to the first house and I was excited to see what lay in store since the spirit was constraining me so strongly to find the last person of the evening. We knocked on the door and guess what? She had moved. I was confused what we were supposed to do! I thought this was where we needed to be. I told S. Carrigan I don’t know what to do, and it might be because I get nervous 5x5ing after dark.

She then reminded me that there was another LaMartin around the corner. So we went there to try and contact him. His wife answered the door and it was dark so I couldn’t see her face. I asked if Gentry was home and she said 'I know you two! We were in the session together' and then I was really confused, session? Then Gentry walked over to the door and they invited us in. We found out that Gentry has been a member for a while but goes through phases of activity and inactivity. He is now married to Cindy and she is not a member, but they were at church last week in our Sunday school class about tithing. I had no idea she wasnt a member. Were new enough that we are still getting to know the ward and everyone seemed to know who he was so I figured they were an AM couple we hadnt met yet.

We were able to have a discussion with him on how he found the church and then his wife joined us. (she was running around putting things away and getting their 10 year old ready for bed etc. they had just got home from a picnic or something outside and she was trying to get everything ready for work and such the next morning.) but she came in long enough for S. Carrigan to share a scripture and then for us to say a prayer.

We learned that she has just lost someone in her family and she told us that Gentry loved the missionaries and makes a point to tell everyone quite often! They told us that they were reading the B of Mormon together and that they watched the Mormon channel and discussed the gospel a lot. He calls her a closet Mormon because when she learns new doctrine she says it makes sense. She also thanked us for the great lesson on tithing! That was cool!

We were able to set a RA for a night next week when they would both be home and their son would be home as well.

The spirit is always right! I am so grateful that I listened to the spirit and made a point to find the one last person that night!"

5x5 is 'tracting' but when you have a specific house to go to, like when we receive a referral and they aren’t home we try to figure out why we are there then. So we knock 5 doors to the left and 5 doors to the right until we find whoever we are there for. Its intimidating, but you get to meet lots of interesting people!

We also got to eat dinner at a members house this week that was really fun. They have two teenage boys who are only a year or two apart and so they pick at each other and such, it was funny to sit and watch them interact because it was so a Sunday night dinner at our home growing up! You know the asking 5 times and then it turns into yelling 5 times to do anything including come to the table! Its funny because I see how utterly ridiculous we were! Dont worry mom, I finally figured it out! It only took 22 years! well.. almost 23 but thats not the point!

Anyways, thank you mom and dad for putting up with all of us all these years! And dont worry, pay back is coming... sooner than I know it.

Also exciting this week Ashley had her interview for her Baptism that is taking place this coming Sunday! We are really excited for her! As are the Elders in Easton. They actually started teaching her and so they are able to come and be at the Baptism to support Ashley :) So it will be good to have them there as well.

We also had our car die on us. AWESOME. We went out one morning to start the car and it just wouldn’t. No there were no lights left on over night... yes we waited for an hour for a member to come and jump our car, and NO it didn’t work. So then we had to call the vehicle coordinator, wait for his approval to be able to call Pep Boys and then they had us call a towing service. So it was a lot of hurry up and waits that day! Turns out the battery died, so it went into the shop and Teancum came out with a beautiful new battery :) (Yes, we named our corolla Teancum :)

But in the events of this day we were calling one of our ward members, and some of the quotes of the call include but are not limited too: Im making soup (at 10 am), see what I did is I got AAA because I cant do anything with cars, if you need anything holla at me, and he said good bye with: take care my friend. You would never guess that this was a grown man with adult children, but it was. And we love calling and talking to him now! Hes awesome and super funny!

We also got to teach primary this week. We talked about being thankful and recognizing our blessings, because we first have to recognize that they are blessings in order to be able to share that with others! So in order to do missionary work first we have to list all our blessings. We passed out papers and told them to list 10 things they are grateful for and bring them back next week. We also colored Todd the Turkey, who has no tail feathers. He has to earn his tail feathers through the primary before thanksgiving! We challenged them to come up with 1000 things they are thankful for by thanksgiving. Theres about 40 of them so we shall see if they rise to the challenge! Senior primary even did the math and it will take them a few weeks to get all 1000 things. So it should be good. Plus we get to go to primary for a few minutes every week now! So thats fun. Also we handed out Jolly Ranchers and we had a huge bad so after church I was walking through the halls passing out candy and so the kids loved me :) It was great fun. Plus you learn who also has a sweet tooth, I know Im not the only one! Even if I do have a sandwich bag of Jolly Ranchers in my purse right now... :)

OH and we went into the family history center this week, and shout out to Aunt Duana, we were clicking through our family trees to see how far back we could go. Sister Carrigan was really excited because she got all the way back to 400 BC... and then I kept going and going and going. Did you know that Duana researched a direct line all the way back to Adam? Yeah, now you know! "cause its mikes super short show!" (anyone get the reference?)

But how cool is that?! We go all the way back to 'Adam, Father of Man kind' also Adam and Eve have a 30 year age difference according to their records....  but thats so cool! I wish I knew more about family history work.

Mom and Keira, how is that coming? I found out that since dad did all his work on PAF we will have to transfer the records over, but there are church record numbers on every person, so once we get enough of them put into the other line it should pull up everyone since they are linked together and all. So it wont take as much effort as I thought it would to link everything over to familysearch.com So maybe see what Stuart and Keira can do about that come thanksgiving while everyone is there? Cause I know that Stuart was wanting to get into family history work, not sure what line he is working on.

anyhow, I should go read Stuart and Lindys letters. Thanks for everything! Love you all! The gospel is true, and it heals people and families everyday. I’ve seen it and you can too.

LOVES sister Wilson :)