We got more bounce in California.

Yep, I found the way to San Jose!!!

Here's the best address to contact me now:

5725 Calmore Ave #1

San Jose, CA, 95123

I LOVE MAIL!

 

I'm so excited to be serving in Cali but life is verrrrry different from the square.  I feel like a just went from attending an all girls prep school to a public school.  I haven't experienced enough of the real life mission things yet to be able to judge fairly.  I woke up after my plane ride nap on Wednesday and met my new mission president, President Watkins.  He's very Wall Street so I got intimidated pretty fast but turns out he's not so scary after all.  Life on Temple Square is very very strict compared to life outside the square.  I'm learning that there is both both good and bad to that. 

 

I'm in a trio for the time being with two awesome sisters from Boutiful Utah and Alpine Utah, go figure.  We are over the YSA in the stake which is a dream come true for me.  I love everything about YSA especially the awkward tension between everyone.  This mission is used as kind of a pilot mission in the Church for other missions.  We don't ever go tracting door to door which is a bit of a let down for me but also a huge relief.  I guess no one wants unexpected mormons dropping in at their doors anymore.  Instead of tracting, we go street contacting.  So far we've gone street contacting twice and I feel like it's a big huge waste of time and I think my companions secretly agree.  We basically just walk down the busiest street we can find and give pass along cards to people.  I'm so used to contacting people on the square and having really good gospel conversations with them.  I guess I can't ask people what they think of the huge statue of Jesus standing in front of them anymore since it's not there.  And I understand that people are always in a hurry but I feel like I need to combine the two worlds so that the street contacting is brief but effective.  So far I've had one good conversation with a man who rejected my message but I felt like it was more worthwhile than asking people if I can quickly give them a card that they're going to throw away in two seconds.  We also do at least 5 acts of service each week in 10 hours.  Service is like a party for me because we rarely got to do service on Temple Square.  It should be fun. 

 

We had three back to back Thanksgiving meals on Thursday.  I paced myself pretty well.  The other missionaries kept telling me that I can't say no because I'm a missionary but I think it's dumb to have 3 groups of people thinking that they're my only Thanksgiving meal.  Either way, I Kyled up and enjoyed the ride.  

 

We had an amazing baptism on Saturday.  The sweetest 19 year olf girl has been wating months to get baptized.  She invited to many of her friends to come and she even spoke at her own baptism.  It's cool to be teaching people face to face in their own natural habitats.  The success of the missionaries definately comes from the members.  There are a lot of amazing YSA missionaries here who give us work to do. 

 

I keep internally freaking out when I see palm tress and citrus fruit on trees!  Citrus fruit on trees!  So far this place is beautiful.  I can't wait to visit the coast pretty soon at Santa Cruz or Monterray. 

 

I pray in every house I go to and in every meeting at Church because you can always count on the missionaries to pray and everyone wants to capitalize on the new one.  I love being back at a regular ward now.  I'm used to going to just sacarament meeting but now I get Sunday School and Relief Society again plus a thousand other meetings.  It's a bit strange though to feel like I'm living a normal life again yet I'm still a missionary. 

 

Temple Square is a very fast paced mission even on the slow days so now that I'm out, I feel like everyday is pday.  It's kind of nice to have breaks but it makes my heart hurt a little to know that I can be doing more.  I fall asleep easilly at night not because I worked so hard but because I'm full of turkey.  I'm excited to really get my hands dirty in missionary work here once I've got a good grasp on how the mission life works in San Jose. 

 

I LOVE YOU ALL!!!

-Sister Katie Kyle

I continue to sleep with a stuffed dog.

YAYYYYYY for another perfect child added to the fam!  I'm so excited to meet the new kitty.

This week Sister Savelio and I had a good chatting session one day with about 20 people who were trying to waste our time.  We got rid of them so fast.  One of them named Marty told us that he needs help because he thinks he's in love with his mom.  We can watch what the guests type before they enter it and he started typing about how there's a big man named Biff... but then he erased it.  I asked him if he had watched Back to the Future lately and he responded with some unknown words because they were *******ed.  So anyway, we briefly chatted with one man who seemed kind of obsessed with Mitt Romney and wanted to go to Church because of him.  We didn't get to know too much about this man but we told him where the closest Church was and what time they met.  We told him that we'd call him after Church on Sunday to see how it went.  So we called Rafiki (that's basically his name) and it turns out that he is the most prideful man in America.  He hated Church.  He didn't understand why there were kids running around and he didn't understand who was in charge.  He said there was no rhyme or reason to anything, there was a 14 year old talking at the pulpit, one woman cried during her whole speech so he couldn't understand anything, and no one connected with the audience.  He honestly went on for 30 minutes about how much he hated Church.  I have never known anyone to hate Church.  Right, sometimes people think it's boring but this man was ripping the worship service to threads.  I couldn't handle talking to him.  I tried but he cut me off so many times that I had to put the phone down for a little while to find my sanity.  If it was up to me, the conversation would have ended in 10 minutes.  I would have said, "Your loss" and ended it but my companion cared about him much more than I did.  She tried to teach him about Church but clearly he wasn't in any state to be taught.  He told us that he knew all about how this religion started out with one boy who thought up a religion and got a lot of followers.  Okay...  So, we scheduled an appointment with Rafiki to teach him the next day about how this Church really got started.  We did our best to get to know Rakifi on the phone the next day.  He told us that he doesn't associate with his family, he believes that life is a path that we just have to endure and in the end, we will choose what we want, and he believes that Moses wasn't a very good person with a bad temper.  We asked him what a "prophet" was and he said that a prophet is a poser.  Okay... He thinks that the people who voted for Obama voted for the destruction of America.  I think my favorite Rafaki line though is, "I think the average person is an idiot."  He told us about how he doesn't have a very good income but he spent 400 dollars on clothes to wear to the Church service that he hated.  He criticized everything we did and said and he always told us that we weren't giving him enough credit because he's such an intelligent 37 year old man.  After our lesson with him, I was a hundred years old.  However, he did commit to reading the intro to the BoM and 1st Nephi chapter 1 and praying about if what we shared with him is true.  We called him the next day and he told us that 1 Nephi chapter 1 was very boring.  He went off again about connecting with the audience.  Awesome.  So we read the intro to the BoM with him because he hadn't read it yet.  With the first sentence he said, "They spelled fullness wrong." I wanted to drop him right there but he kept telling us that he wanted to know the truth about our Church.  Then we had a- poke your eyeballs out conversation about faith with him.  He told us that you'd be an idiot if you didn't believe in Jesus Christ because there are so many evidences to prove that he was the most important man who ever walked the earth.  His definition of faith was that it is something that you believe in but you can't prove.  So we said alright so without all that proof, why do you believe in Jesus Christ?  There were moments throughout our conversation that his cocky mouth got shut because of something we taught.  Even though he was still being a big fat jerk, we recognized that he had become a softer big fat jerk with us.  We called him this morning and he essentially told us that he has decided to trust man instead of God.  We pleaded with him over the phone to find out the truth for himself instead of through inaccurate sources.  Even though he became a softer big fat jerk, he remains a big fat jerk.  I hate how much I love that man.  I did not want to teach him but I was able to poor my heart into teaching him.  I had a much easier time dropping him than my companion did but we did all we could with him and gave him back to the Lord for some severe preparing.  

Even though talking to Rafiki took years off my life, we were able to teach some amazing people.  We have an investigator named Endurance who i perfect.  Obvi he's African but he is studying in the Netherlands.  He asked the perfect questions at the perfect times and he even told us that we should start with a prayer when we first taught him.  We're also teaching a 13 year old girl from Utah.  She sounds like a really smart 7 year old on the phone.  Her best friend takes her to Church all the time so she has a really solid foundation already.  The square is slowing down and getting ready for Christmas but we have been able to take a lot of investigator lessons with Utah missionaries.  We love teaching those who progress and we love inviting people to go to the temple.  

We just started an amazing program on Temple Square with the producers of, "Savior of the World."  Savior of the World is basically a musical featuring the birth and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  The show starts today and lasts until just after Christmas.  We, Temple Square sisters, get vouchers for free tickets to give to Temple Square guests.  We don't give free tickets to greedy members but we find people, teach them and then invite them to learn something by watching the musical.  I am excited to start giving out vouchers and then we'll call the people to follow up on what they learned through the musical.  We got to watch the dress rehearsal last night to better understand what our guests will feel.  

Transfers are on Monday so I will likely part from my Samoan and I'll probably have a new pday too.  

I wish everyone well in holding the babies that I cannot hold while I continue to sleep with a stuffed dog.  

Love, SISTER KYOOOLE

I got permission to play full court basketball in the mornings for exercise!

Hi People,

What the- no baby Yam yet?

Well first things first- the most important thing that happened this week...
I got permission to play full court basketball in the mornings for exercise!  I know my life is ca razy!  The missionary handbook says that we can only play half court bball but then I thought to myself, hey, I'm not an elder and I don't play with competitive elders so we took it up to big man Gillette.  We told him that the sisters are getting chunky because it's too cold to exercise outside.  He agreed.  I'm kicking myself for not asking him sooner but life just got so much better.

In other news, the missionary work is fantastic.  On Saturday I got to go on exchanges with a fresh sister from the MTC who's headed to Independence, Missouri on her mission.  This was fun and made me reflect on how I was ten months ago.  Yeah, ten months ago; what the heck, time flies.  My Utah born and raised companion for the day was a mega stressball.  I probably enjoyed her pain too much.  Right away, I could tell that she was freaking out to be in the real mission field.  She told me about the goals that she had for our day together and what things she was struggling with in the mtc.  We got along well right away and she was almost mind-blown as we quickly planned for our day.  She continued to stress about particular things in missionary work and I basically told her less yak more action.  So we got on the square.  She was asking me if she was allowed to say hi to everyone and how we're going to know who to talk to.  I just told her to be a human.  We made friends with some nice old people and then we got a call for a tour with one man.  We met Nico, a nice young man who asked all the right questions.  He had grown up Christian but converted to Judaism a few years ago (I didn't know people converted to Judaism).  We had a grand ole time with Nico.  I could tell my companion was nervous at parts but she was brilliant at many parts throughout the tour too.  We evaluated our long tour after and she was thrilled to see how the different parts of missionary work fall together at a visitor center.  She also didn't realize that we could be our human-like selves as missionaries.  So that was great.  It's an important lesson to learn that as missionaries we don't know everything and we don't always know what to do or say but hey, we do our thing, follow the Spirit and enjoy the ride.  

Sunday was a crazy day for us.  In the morning we had a tour with 2 middle aged women and one man.  We quickly figured out that the women were mother and daughter, only 15 years apart.  We learned a little bit more about their Degrassi story and found out that the mom gave her baby up for adoption and they met for the first time this year.  The couple were members of the Church and the biological mom wasn't but had met with missionaries in her home a few times.  We took them to the model of the temple right away and I just kept thinking, "Okay, what scripture can I share for an estranged mom and her long lost daughter with her daughter's newlywed second husband?"  The tour went on even though these people kept boggling my simple brain.  We talked about how the Atonement of Christ can heal our pain as we pray and ask for help.  The husband in the group talked about how he was recently divorced and homeless just 5 years ago.  Eventually he trusted that the Lord would help him but he didn't understand why his life wasn't made better right away.  A year after that he met his current wife.  FYI the two have a blended family of ten kids.  Something that was confirmed to me in this tour is that we are not to just focus on the non-members on our tours.  We are here to teach everyone.  I know that everyone in that tour/lesson was taught something according to their needs and along the way we committed the ex-teen mom to baptism.  Coo.

Right after that tour, Sister Savelio and felt like we were on fire with the Spirit.  Our fire was quickly exterminated in our next tour.  We an older couple from Utah with their non-member friend who was visiting from the East Coast.  We got to know them all a little bit and told them what we'd do on our tour.  We got into teaching the restoration pretty quickly.  We hit the worst road block when I asked the member woman something about how she came to know that Joseph Smith was a prophet and not just a crazy.  This 70 year old woman didn't know how to answer the question and just mentioned how she started going to Church at a really young age therefore she doesn't know the answer to my question.  Then this frustrating daughter of God turned to her Jewish friend and asked, "Is this the kind of tour you want? Or do you just want to know about the architecture? I feel like we're being pushy."  Her friend's response, "Well I have questions too like him (referring to Joseph Smith) and I'd like to learn a bit."  Then our favorite member woman told us that she thought we were just going to give them a regular tour.  My face dropped.  WHAT?  I didn't leave my life for a year and a half to be your temple square tour guide without pay.  Pushy?!  I'll show you pushy... I told her that in a nicer way but she completely through off our tour groove.  Members of the Church are either our best tools for missionary work or our worst tools.  We basically had the gospel on a plate for her friend to take and this woman took it away completely.  What the heck?  I should be used to bad member missionaries by now but I was still so shocked.  

We had a really interesting conversation on Sunday night with Dean from Alaska.  Dean was just passing through SLC but wanted to stop at temple square because he "knows a lot about our religion" and works with many members of the Church.  We showed him inside the cry room of the tabernacle.  We couldn't go into the main part because a flood of YSA were rushing in for the CES fireside.  Dean was a hilarious comedian who kept us entertained but he had it so wrong about the Church.  His argument was that there are few people who are deeply rooted in the teachings of the Church; most people just go along with it because life is easier that way.  We had a long, non-argumentative discussion about Mormon life.  He kept saying that he didn't want to tell us what we believe though he did keep telling us why we believe.  I corrected him so many times throughout the conversation.  He asked us the question, "Why should I become a Mormon?"  I told him that I had never gotten that question before and he couldn't believe it.  He thought our answer would be, "So that you can go to heaven."  Pshhh that didn't even cross my mind.  I thought a lot about why we do things.  We could follow the commandments (including baptism) to be obedient or because we want blessings but I think the real reason why I follow the commandments if because I love God.  I want what he wants for me.  Blessings are cool and eternal happiness sounds nice but that's not why I do this.  Dean then wanted us to teach him the plan of salvation and I said no.  I told him that it couldn't all be learned that night but we could call him to teach him.  He thought it would be weird to have two college age girls call him without his wife so he said no but we committed him to learn through his co-workers.  

Wow, that seems to be enough words for today.  I can't get enough of this work but I miss the fam.  

LOVE, SISTER KATIE KYLE

Seriously, it was child's play.

Happy Movember!

Halloween was so fun!  What costume do you wear when you want to dress up as something but still be a missionary?  Dress up as another missionary!  So, Sister Savelio and I dressed up as each other.  It was clever, I swear but I came to a sad realization of how white I am.  What can ya do?  We played the parts really well since we had been accidentally studying our characters for 9 weeks now.  We were hoping to see some precious costumes but the square was slow on Halloween.  Knowing this, our zone leaders developed a scavenger hunt for the 2 hours afternoon square-time.  The only rules were not to be dumb like you can't reject a tour if someone requests it just because you're looking for the next clue.  Sister Savelio and I hurried to our first clue but got stopped so quickly by a super friendly man with a lot of questions.  We spent time with him, taught him, invited him, then we ran to get back into the scavenger hunt game.  We caught up really quickly.  While we were searching for a clue, we talked to a nice member of the Church.  As we were talking about good things, my eyes caught sight of a tiny blue paper hiding behind a family history poster.  Genius.  We said bye to him and proceeded to destroy the other companionships in our scavenger hunt.  Seriously, it was child's play.  The other sisters were still hunting for clues after an hour that we had already finished.  So, that was nice of our zone leaders to make our lives fun.  The square closed at 5 on Halloween then all the sisters got together for some food and way too much candy.  I was so happy because we got to watch my favourite, Harry Potter the original one.  150 Sister missionaries is the easiest audience have ever seen watch a movie.  It was so much better than it usually is because we are so deprived of entertainment.  And of course, everyone related everything in the story to missionary work.  Even the troll in the movie represented one of our frequent visitors. 

I got to announce for French tours after MoTab's concert on Sunday.  The sisters in charge of announcing have changed things up so that it's not such a rote presentation.  They let us say whatever we want to invite our guests for a tour in whatever language we speak.  I was so close to singing a French Halloween song in the mic...  I shouldn't be trusted with a microphone.  They're lucky I just kept it to calling everyone "mes amis."

Sister Savelio and I open the Joseph Smith movie twice a week in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building.  We talk to one man every week after the movie named freaking Brett.  He is a member of the Church and last week we tried to help him do some missionary work.  When we were talking to him this week, it was the first time in my mission that I pictured myself punching someone in the face while he spoke.  Alright that was harsh but oh so true.  He made me so frustrated.  When I had the urge to punch I thought, "What would Jesus do."  Of course Jesus would never punch someone in the face but he also wouldn't listen to this man complain about so many things in his life that he has control over.  It all comes down to his own faith.  He kept telling us that he has faith because he hit rock bottom many years ago and his faith is what got him out.  Awesome.  Except that was many years ago.  What are you doing for your faith now?  Did you go to Church on Sunday? He did not.  Did you bare some kind of testimony to your friend like you said you would last week? He did not.  Are you reading your scriptures? Why the heck not, they have life's answers inside them.  I almost couldn't believe how lost Brett was yet he has the gospel.  I don't know what I'm going to do when I see him next week.  I will pray hard that I can be a Christlike missionary when I see him' I just hope he follows through with his commitments.  Brett makes me appreciate teaching people over chat because at least there you can click the disconnect button.

Even though Brett angered my soul, we actually did find a lot of success this week.  We have a bunch of new investigators from member referrals and from chat.  I also got to talk to Virginia, an 80 year old convert to the Church as of 6 years.  We had a nice long conversation and by the end, she still called sacrament "communion."  I wanted to send her a General Conference talk but she doesn't have internet so I'm afraid I made a new pen pal.

I've got to run.  I love my life.
Thanks for the letters and the support!
Love, SISTER KYLE JR.

October 26

Happy Halloween week!

Hook me up with some tiny kiddling costume pictures please as well as Jon and Kate part 2?  I'm doing my best to come up with some missionary undercover Halloween costumes. 

We went to the Haunted Village 'round these neck of the woods for our zone activity last weekend.  Sister Galuvao, our zone leader had to warn all the sisters (mostly the international ones who had never been to a haunted house before) that we're extra sensitive to creepy scary things because we're so close to the Spirit and out of the world everyday so she reminded us that the people we'd see are actors so we shouldn't condemn them to hell.  It was pretty good advice.  I'll never look at some of the sisters the same after their freaking out to scary things.  I think we're going to watch some kind of mission allowed Halloween movie on Wednesday, we'll see.

We got to go to an 8 year old's baptism on Sunday at the Swahili Branch.  "Divine" was baptized and everything was perfect.  I need to go to Africa.  I love those people.  I especially loved the Lion King-ish hymn that Divine's mom and friends sang.  The best part was trying to make friends by giving out tictacs to the little people after the baptism.  Seriously, the Africans know how to throw a party baptism.  One of the men who spoke asked Divine if she wanted the President of the United States, the most important man in the world, to baptize her.  She said, "No!"  Why? "Because he doesn't have the priesthood like my dad!"  That was fun.

Our miracle this week came in the form of Jip from Thailand.  Sister Savelio and I were doing service for a couple hours at the Haunted Village on Monday and we hurried back to the square to find someone to teach.  It seemed like Temple Square was a ghostown but we hurried like we had an appointment.  We were lead up to the Christus statue where it seemed like Jason and his wife Jip, and Jason's mom and dad were all waiting for us.  We could see that Jason's mom was trying to explain the statue of Christ to her daughter-in-law.  She just looked at us and acting defeated, asked for our help to teach Jip about who Jesus Christ is.   It's interesting to teach someone who has a Buddhist background and knows nothing about Christianity.  So we started from square one.  We taught, shared some Bible and Book of Mormon verses, and had everyone in the group describe why Christ is so important. Jip's husband, Jason was a part of the conversation but clearly didn't have his own testimony about Jesus Christ.  We taught the two of them about eternal families.  Jip is so prepared to receive the message of the restored gospel and wants to learn through missionaries in Florida.  Jason is supportive so I'm sure he'll go back to Church with his wife this time.  The best feeling I think was to have Jason's mom thank us so genuinely because we know she loves her son so much and wants him to find happiness through the gospel again. 

Sister Savelio called a man named David on the phone because he was transferred to us by another sister.  I had her add me into the conversation but by the time I got on, it was too awkward to introduce myself so I just listened on mute.  David read the entire Book of Mormon in a week or so after his visit to Temple Square last year.  He says he believes it to be true.  He talked and talked about how the Mormon Church goes hand in hand with Christianity like the Book of Mormon goes hand in hand with the Bible.  What the heck? He doesn't know why so many people give us such a hard time.  Then Sister Savelio read him the last two paragraphs in the intro to the Book of Mormon about how everyone can read the book, ask God if it's true, and if they receive the answer that yes it's true that means Joseph Smith was a prophet and that this Church is true.  David listened and said yes, I agree with that completely.  That's beautiful.  What the heck?  No he doesn't!  You can't just agree with that and call it good.  I was so uneasy, listening to the whole conversation.  He said that he likes to learn but he still likes his cocktails at night.  He's never even been taught the word of wisdom, of course there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with it if you don't know any better.  I couldn't believe how someone could read the entire Book of Mormon and not have a change of heart.  That's the problem though.  All he did was read it.  He decided it was true and that's it.  I really liked Elder Bednar's talk this conference about testimony and conversion: http://www.lds.org/general-conference/2012/10/converted-unto-the-lord?lang=eng.  We're going to do our best to help David experience a change of heart by learning and experimenting on the words in the Book of Mormon but if he doesn't we will move on because there are more sheep to find. 

After dealing with so many people's problems all day everyday, I'm grateful to lead a simple life and to know what's important.  I'm happy helping people see how good and simple life can be through the good and simple gospel of Jesus Christ. 

My mission life is flying by too quickly.  In 3ish more weeks I'll find out if I'm staying on the square for Christmas or if I'll be booted out to Mississippi or worse, Wisconsin or worse case scenario, the Salt Lake City mission.  Knock on wood. 

LOVE, SISTER KATIE KYLE

Missionary Halloween costumes: They dressed and acted like each other all day.