Just once, I would like to have a good conversation with someone who has a home.

Happy New Year, my people! 

 

Life is grand.  My outbound experience continues to be a party.  This is both good and bad.  The days are a lot slower but every so often something great happens.  After visiting a less active member's house a thousand times without her ever being home, she finally answered her door yesterday.  Let's call this woman Yolanda though that's very much not her name.  Yolanda was so great because she was so open and honest with us.  We got to know each other very quickly and she told us about how she wants to come back to Church one day, hopefully in the new year.  She got married in the temple to a return missionary and now she drinks and smokes.  Cool.  Everyone was probably doing it.  It so happens that I read about addiction recovery that morning and we are going to get her clean, not because we want her to be clean but because she realizes that life is SO MUCH BETTER following the commandments.  Yaaaayyyy!!!  After teaching her I felt so alive, like I was back at Temple Square.  Then we went to ward council where my fire was killed a little.  It's weird to have people critique what me and my companion put our heart into all week but I know that it's all for the good of our Samoan Unit. 

 

On Saturday we ran away from a unit event to teach the first lesson to a Samoan woman who was referred to us by an awesome member.  We taught the restoration and realized pretty quickly that we had to be overly simple and clear.  I watched her eyes drift with everything that we taught her so we did our very best to apply everything to her so that she would know the significance of our message.  She's very active in her Chirstian church but she told us that she only goes to that church so that the old ladies don't start gossiping about why she's not there.  So basically she's a very Christian person on the outside but has zero knowledge about Jesus in her brain.  However, she did tell us about how she felt the Spirit at her old Church.  We focused on teaching her the first vision of Joseph Smith and then she got up for a few minutes to take care of her grandchild.  She came back and we knew her comprehension level wasn't superb so we invited her to summarize what had been taught.  She had nothing to say so I asked her what she knew about Jospeh Smith.  She said, "Was he a wiseman?"  I died.  I hoped and hoped that she was talking about is intellect and not about the men in the nativity story.  My hope was in vain.  Sooo we gave her the restoration pamphlet so that she could learn something and gave her a Book of Mormon with a chapter to read.  Now we pray that something enters into her brain so that something can change in her heart.  I still have no idea why she wanted to meet with us but hopefully we will find out this week so stay tuned.

 

I'm making friends with a lot of hobos at a Catholic church's organization to feed the needy and the hobos are making friends with me when we go street contacting.  Some get a little too friendly.  Just once, I would like to have a good conversation with someone who has a home. 

 

That's all I got.  Christmas on the mission was weird and rainy but I was so spoiled by some of the Samoan members and the Kyle fam. 

La iglezia es la verdadera!

 

Muchos love,

SISTER KYLE