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
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