Who's excited for Crom? We are! Conference/prom... that's right.

Who's excited for Crom?  We are!  Conference/prom... that's right.  The excitment is in the air and all the sisters are worried about what they're going to wear.  Many sisters are even dieting to fit into their conference costumes.  We already have our dates picked out and everything.  Now we just need to practice our sister missionary smiles to fool the mormon paparazzi into putting our faces in the Ensign.  I think my chances are much higher this time around. 

 

Life is swell in the wonderful world of Salt Lake.  My companion is a pro now; I really love teaching with her.  She experienced her first French tour with me this week and it went really well.  We were both surprised at how much the Spirit worked to communicate with the French.  Yesterday, we started an English tour with one couple and by the time we finished, we had 6 more couples who added on to our group.  One man asked about how the Book of Mormon differs with the Bible and so we took advantage of the chance to bring the group in and testify testify testify.  There was an angry catholic woman on our tour who refused to look impressed until the Spirit, through us, turned her frown upside down.  We could tell that her attitude changed during the tour because she realized that we weren't there to defend our religion, we were simply there to teach.  We ended up at the statue of Christ and learned from one of the guests about how he followed the example of Christ as a teacher at a public school.  He realized that Jesus was the best teacher so he learned from Him even though he wasn't teaching religion to his elementary school kids.  Grumpy woman added in about how she follows Christ as she teachers her kids as well.  I've learned to invite when the Spirit is the strongest so we invited them to meet with local missionaries and you know what?  They all said no!  But hey, we're used to it and we still expect miracles.  It was a great experience for everyone to learn and our re-invitation for them was to tune into General conference on lds.org in 3 weeks so hopefully they will. 

 

Our favourite miracle this week is Adam.  His best friend is on a mission and Adam promised that he would look into the Church while his friend was serving.  After an amazing online conversation with him, he committed to baptism on October 5th!  He asked all the right questions and was so receptive of the answers.  He says his mom is going to freak out in a good way when he tells her that he wants to be baptized.  He's pretty sure he's found the truth and I am so happy to be a part in helping find that truth. 

 

Last night we had an investigator lesson (lesson with a set of Salt Lake missionaries and their investigators) and we loved it.  The group consisted of a less active mom and her 10 and 11 year old daughters who want to get baptized, the mom's awesome friend and the mom's awesome friend's sister and the sister's recent convert but now less-active boyfriend.  Did you catch all that?  We knew we were going into a sensitive situation because the dad of the girls just left them and their mom.  We had a lot of ground to cover.  We needed to teach them about the hope that comes through Christ in hard times, we needed to teach them about the importance of Church attendance and we needed to help the recent convert know that he can gain strength to recover from his smoking addiction through Jesus Church and attending Church.  Piece of cake.  Also, our intitial plans of where we wanted to take the group on Temple Square had to be changed because of the BYU football team hogging the Assembly Hall for a fireside/autograph signing.  I was so surprised at how well the whole lesson went.  We showed the group a short clip from last year's conference from President Uchtdorf called, "You Matter to Him."  And then we went upstairs to the statue of Christ and finished at the God's Plan video about eternal families.  Everything that was taught applied to everyone.  You could say that we winged the whole thing but the Spirit really took a strong influence in teaching the lesson.  All of life's problems can be solved by remembering the love that God has for us and how we just need to trust Christ and follow His teachings to find happiness.  I realize that I'm not in the same situation as Stephanie whose husband just left her with 2 young girls but I know that she has the necessary hope to continue and find help, happiness and peace.  On a side note, I realized while teaching with the elders that my companion is awesome.  She's only been here two weeks but we teach together like we were born for it.  No one would have any idea who the senior companion is.  As for the elders... not so much... but I'm not comparing or judging.  The contrast made me so grateful for my samoan who never complained when I through her into the fire of teaching right when she got here. 

 

That's it.  That's all.  We get to go to Park City now and play at the likely mansion of one of the cousellors in our mission presidency.  This involves some BBQ, a hike and some outlet mall shopping with no money.  I'm the queen of the world!

 

LOVE, SISTER KATIE KYLE