I declare this a transfer for miracles

Yodelaheehoo

Alright alright, I declare this a transfer for miracles. My new companion is from South Korea and she is a tiny boss. I mean that in the best way possible. She just got back from her outbound mission in Seattle and has one more transfer left in the mission after this one. She rocks. I have now left the comfort of my West Gate home but it's okay because we keep busy with our two new assignments.

1) We are the apartment coordinators along with another companionship. This means that we are the people who everyone cries to when their living quarters aren't up to snuff. This also means that we are in charge of the missionary D.I. room. The sisters drop off their unwanted clothing and other things in the secret closet in the garage for us to arrange. The room only opens for everyone to dig through a couple times at the beginning of the transfer and then it's like the Disney vault, closed until the next transfer. So, we get first dibs of things to take but it's not so exciting when there are a hundred black missionary skirts to choose from... I'm good.

2) I'm really excited for our other assignment on the hospitality bus group. Hospitality bus tours are busloads of relatively wealthy people who travel the country and stop in Salt Lake to eat a ritzy meal. Everything for them revolves around their meals at either the Lion House, The Roof or the garden. One of the senior couples in our mission is in charge of scheduling these groups and tries to get them to come for more than just the food. So most of the time these groups will end up scheduling a tour of the square, the Beehive House, or the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. Sister Kim and I get to be some of the missionaries that give them tours and try to spoil them as much as possible. On Friday night, Sister Kim and I got a small taste of the hospitality bus life. We met a bus just outside the Lion House and then brought them in to eat. We basically played waitress for the next hour, carrying trays and filling up drinks. WHY? We didn't really get what we were doing or why we were doing it. We felt uncomfortable with the thought of hundreds of people visiting the square during that time who needed to be taught while we were playing waitress. I learned to shushup (edited for mom) and serve. I realized that I had to stop being selfish about how many people I taught but focus on the people who were in front of me. The next day we had an official hospitality bus training and really learned what we are suppose to do with the big, rich groups of old people. Our job is to love them. We will likely have a group 2 nights a week who we will spend up to 3 hours with. Though we may feel like actual tour guides some of the time, our purpose has not changed. We still invite others to come unto Christ but this assignment is specifically non-proselyting. That does not mean that we don't teach. On a regular Temple Square tour, we share with guests the history of the area and the buildings and then we bridge everything to the gospel and we try to apply it to their lives. On a HBTour, we share the history with pioneer stories of faith and that's it until they ask us questions. So our goal is to love them and to help them feel the Spirit. We got a script to learn the ins and outs of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building so I have a lot more to learn. When we take them on a tour of the JSMB, we will show them the Chapel and simply teach about its use. The HBT veterans suggest that we whip out a hymnbook and sing a hymn like "Come come ye Saints" and tell the story of William Clayton. That's how we will teach. Most of the people we will take will be retirees so the other sisters told us to treat them like our grandparents... bad idea if I'm treating these people like I did Grandpa Kyle. Buuut I'm excited to love these people. Essentially, we want to change the image of the Church in these people's minds and enable them to be open to missionaries when they see them locally. I secretly wish our audience was younger and had more life to live but every soul is great and old people are an easy crowd.

I've fear that I’ve been called on a French speaking mission this transfer.  We have a ton of time to teach on the square every day and Sister Kim replies "yes" to french tour requests before I can make up an excuse not to take it.  We've taken more French tour this past week than I did all last transfer.  I always feel very fulfilled after getting through a French Tour but they still make me sweat.  I especially like talking to French people who have a ton of questions and next to no knowledge about the Church.  I'm not a very good conversational French speaker but I always feel like I can do well when I teach the gospel.  The Church is true!

Today for pioneer day, we got to watch the parade!  The best float was a likely baptist Church who had a big Jesus driving their float with energetic choir singers and I also loved the polynesian culture center's crazy dancers.  My new favourite pioneer story to tell people is the one about Benjamin Johnson who was taken prisoner of a mob.  Since he would not deny his faith, a man tried to shoot him three times.  On the fourth try, the man ended up shooting himself.  KARMAAAAA. 

Korean motor coahces are my new best friend. 

LOVE, SISTER KAAAAAATIE KYYYYYYYYLE

The Royal Family Visits the Square

Gooooten Morgan. 

 

This may or may not but likely may be my last week in the WG.  I feel a pregnancy coming on but I'll find out at transfer conference on Monday to see if I'm training a newbee.  I looooove being a missionary on TS because we are constantly teaching.  Like it's insane how much we get to teach.  Luckily that's my favourite part about the work.  We had some amazing lessons over the phone this week.  I presume online teaching is like online dating except it's terribly different.  It is amazing though because we can develop a relationship with someone without seeing what they look like.  Our miracles of the week come in the form of Dana and Ivan. 

 

Dana: Super precious 18 year old BOY not girl.  Sister Mitchell has taught him over the phone for the past few months with different companions.  His parents are Jewish and his biggest struggle is to talk openly with them about his faith in Christ.  One time Sister Mitchell asked him what are some things he could do to strenghthen his faith in Christ.  Dana's answer, "I don't know... raise a family in the gospel, maybe?"  Riiiight?  She was lookin for somethin like read your scritures but hey, we'll take raising a family in the gospel.  Now we have officially taught Dana everything he needs to know before baptism, we just need to get his little booty to Church again.  He really wants to serve a mission and get married in the temple one day.  At the end of our latest conversation with him he asked us if we think his parents will ever join the Church.  Guuuuuhhhh... I'm no fortune teller but we promised him that if he got himself on a mission and served with all his heart, amazing things will happen with his family. 

 

Ivan:  We had a do or die lesson with Ivan.  If we got it right, he would keep learning and exercising his faith.  If we got it wrong, no more tellular lessons since he didn't have a whole lot of patience or trust in us.  Our lesson with him ended up being a DO!  So now we teach him frequently.  Ivan has an interesting history with the Church.  He grew up as a very devote catholic boy and then decided to go to BYU for some specific program.  Since he had to take a religion course there, he took a Book of Mormon class.  The beginner BOM class was all full by the time he registered so he got into a class full of return missinaries.  This is not a happy memory for him.  Ivan is pretty outspoken so I'm pretty sure he was pretty vocal in that class.  He told us about how the return missionaries all hounded on him for certain things and were unkind to him.  Dangit.  So he ended up storming out of class one day and left BYU.  After that, he went a little crazy and made a lot of unwise life choices.  Now he's facing a lot of medical scares.  He's healthy right now but he is so worried that there's something wrong with him.  I love teaching Ivan because he is so real.  Because of his BYU background, he knows a lot about the Church.  He gave us the most interesting rendition of the restoration I've ever heard.  Through teaching, we discovered that he has a tiny bit of faith that he fears he will lose once his life is back in order.  We narrowed his concern down to not knowing if Jesus Christ is really the son of God.  He knows that the Bible contains powerful messages of hope but he doesn't yet know if the "tricks that Jesus kept pulling off" really did happen.  Where I'm from we call those miracles.  Through prayer, we can already see that Ivan is learning what is true.  I love hearing about how his struggles in life have brought him back to God.  He told us about so many bad things happened to his closest friends and he has been carrying the burdens of his friends.  He thinks his conscience is telling him how to make his life better but thourghout the conversation he realized that his conscience is directed by Christ.  Yeeeeeah, it is! 

 

Yesterday we took a 45 people motor coach and it went well!  We decided to stray from the youje things we say on a big tour because they get so repetetive and insincere.  They loved us, they really did.  After our MC, we talked to some interesting men who are here for a Porshe convention.  Convention?  Race?  I don't know.  Something car-y.  They both knew a lot about the Church and were really easy to talk to.  We had a nice time answering a lot of their questions and talking about expensive cars.  Before we left we got to read a scripture with them.  They wanted something about strength or speed so we read Alma 26:12.  We described Ammon's incredible strength in the Lord.  In the end, they told us that we should pray for Ammon's sins to be forgiven because he chopped people's arms off.  Not the point!  We told them that we would pray for them to do well in their races and in return, they needed to pray and ask God if the things we shared with them were from Him.  One of the men told us that he's asked before but got no answer.  We could tell that he had met with missionaries years before but his heart was hurt because he felt like he got no answer to know if it was true.  I told him that if he asked that night, he WOULD get a direct answer.  Then we discussed the many ways that he could recognize the Spirit. 

 

I'm suppose to conduct the french meeting this week but the AP's haven't scheduled language meetings yet and I'm not about to remind them.  However, I am taking Sisters Nixon and Steenblik on a fake french tour to see if they're good enough for real life.  And since I'm the boss, EVERYBODY'S PASSING OFF IN FRENCH!!!  If we have 20 french speakers in the mission, I won't have to take as many french tours.  Beautiful. 

 

ADIOS,

SISTER KYLE

Happy Birthday, AmeriCanada!!!

Happy Birthday, AmeriCanada!!!

 

Well folks, this week started out like a dream with an answer to prayer: the Tongan Rugby team visited the square.  I was stuck in the box so I texted Sister Jardine to captalize on the opportunity.  I'm such a good friend.  They didn't stay for very long but while they were waiting to leave, they were passing a rugby ball outside my gate, just dangling the bait right in front of me.  I'm kicking myself now that I didn't join in on the fun. 

 

I got to go to a baptism on Saturday.  We met the baptisee, seventeen year old Natalie earlier that week in an investigator lesson on the square.  She rocks.  Her baptism was joint with her best friend's Samoan cousin therefore it was a Poly party.  It was probably the weirdest baptism I've ever been to for so many reasons.  They flooded the room by accident before we got there and the musical number featuring a ukelele and voices that couldn't quite get high enough.  It was amazing to me because there were so many times that I quietly burst out laughing from the random awkwardness yet the Spirit was still so strong.  Who knew? 

 

For Canada Day we had a good chunk of the sisters support their fellow maple leafs by wearing red and white.  See picture.  Sister Sanchez from Calgary and I lead a spontaneous singing of "Oh Canada" while in the kitchen, to feed our patiotic needs. 

 

Summer is the most wonderful time of the year!!!  There are so many people that come, so we are always busy.  We had a lot of amazing experiences as well as some tough crowds.  Leading the tough crowded way was an angry couple from Holland.  I still don't understand why they requested a tour.  The woman's scary eyeliner frightened me as they rejected the opportunity to hear a short verse from the Book of Mormon.  They told me that it wasn't necessary.  Oh c'mon!  The trick in our tours is to balance 50% history with 50% teachings of the Church.  We mostly gave them history but they were clear to let us know that they did not believe in God and didn't care to try.  Boooo.  After those favourites, we had a solid methomormon family.  It took us a while to figure out what in the heck they believe because the man served a full time misison for this Church but his inlaws were super methodist and him and his wife clearly hadn't been to the lds Church in many years.  Finally toward the end of the tour we figured out that the man had a lot of hard things happen in his life including his divorce years ago.  That got him going to rail on home teaching.  He told us that the LDS Church requires so much from everyone that it is impossible to do it all.  I told him that I disagreed.  Of course we'll all fall short sometimes but everything about the Church is inspired to bless our lives.  His response: "Good luck with that."  He went on about how it's not important to get your home teaching done when you've got a neglected family at home.  Riiiight, hence you should probably not neglect your family.  Sooooo that was a frustrating tour.  He was really open which was good but I feel like we could have helped him better than we did.  Right after that, sister Mitchell and I were talking about the things that we should have done better and we got stopped by a late 20's ish girl.  Her burning question was, "Why is it so easy to fall away from the Church yet so hard to come back?"  As Elder Holland says it, salvation isn't a cheap experience.  We talked to her a little bit about the reality of satan but the power of the atonement.  She told us that she stopped going to Church because of the members.  She felt so hated and dis-owned by the members in her ward because she struggles with same gender attraction.  I felt so honoured to be stopped by her to help her with such a sensitive subject. I can't imagine how hard her sturggles must be but we were able to help her remember that no matter what other people say, God loves her the same and can be right with her through the hard times.  She promised to go to Church on Sunday, just not the YSA ward.  Deal.  It's so terrible that her faith has been shook and the members of the Church are making it even harder.  LAME!

 

Annnnd last but not least, we spent a good long time with precious Mike yesterday.  With tears already in his eyes, Sixteen year old Mike stopped us to play the movie God's Plan for him.  We could tell that he was so filled with the Spirit after the movie and we found out that he had spent all day on Temple square, reading and watching all the movies to find out if he has a testimony of Jospeh Smith or not.  He told us over and over that everything about the Church makes sense to him but so do other Church's teachings.  Everything we tried to teach him, he already knew.  I asked him if he reads the Book of Mormon and he told us that he has read it everyday for the past two years.  Nothing seemed to add up.  We couldn't figure out what precious Mike was literally crying about.  He told us so many stories about how his prayers have been answered and about different times that he has felt the Spirit in his life.  He told us that his family sturggles to go to Church but he loves going and even invites his friends to read the Book of Mormon.  MmmmHmmm so why the tears?  It all boiled down to his fear of being worng.  He knew the Church was true and that Joseph Smith was a prophet yet he still wondered what would happen if he was wrong.  We told him that it's good to have questions.  Questions help develop your faith.  Just don't ever stop living close to the Spirit and never deny what you know to be true. 

 

Can I get an Amen?

 

Welp, they're taking our leashes off and freeing us to watch some fireworks tonight!  GOD BLESS AMERICA!!!

LOVE, SISTER KYYYYYYOLE