Okay change of plans. Forget everything I said about Sister Dieujuste being my companion. I've been with Sister Vach (one of the District leaders) and Sister Whisler for the past week and now Sister Vach has moved to zone leader with me for the rest of the transfer. The Russian and Dominican missionary combo weren't having a ball together this week so that's why things got shifted. But it's all good in the hood because Sister Vach rocks. She's from Maple Valley Washington and so far we're on the same page for everyone we teach and everything we have to do as leaders so we're having a party.
One thing we do in this mission as ZLs is take the new sisters in our zone and their companion on a role-play tour of the square. It's never a set tour; we just play the part of visitors and the newbie/her companion show us a good time for 40ish minutes and teach to our concerns. The greenie in our zone was super eager to pass off with us because when she does, she can take tours in the other languages that she speaks. So, we did the role play with her this week when we were still in a trio companionship. I played the part of myself, Katie from BYU-Idaho who brought my 2 non-member bffs from home for a tour around temple square. The tour ended up being very, very un-good. All three of us were offended within the first 5 minutes; it all happened so fast. They didn't get the names of my friends or know anything about them and one of the first things they told us is that they can't go inside the temple because their baptisms (in other Churches) were invalid. Awesome. They just preached to my two friends for forever without telling them any facts about the historical site that we were on. I got ignored for a while until I made it super obvious that I was getting bored. The sisters never lead us inside any of the buildings, we just kept walking nowhere until we finished. Of course there were some things that they did right. They testified very powerfully at the end and had good balance between the two of them. Really, they are strong teachers but it isn't an easy task to do everything you're suppose to do on a Temple Square tour and have it flow smoothly. We chatted after the fake tour and asked the new sister how she thought it went and she said, "Great!" Oh no... So we had a good long conversation about the things that they did well and about the things that were missing. They realized that their invitations at the end weren't good because they had zero relationship of trust with the guests. And it just wasn't enjoyable for anyone. Temple Square is the best and hardest mission, I'm sure of it but the missionaries that serve here learn to be rockstar teachers. Sister Vach and I are going to do a redo pass-off with the same sisters so that we can all see the improvements. In the meantime, I'm scared for my life because the new sister has lazer eyes. We're off to the dollar store today to try and buy her love. Hopefully it's cheap.
When there were 3 of us in the companionship we decided that it would make more sense to have just 2 people teach over the phone to our investigators. I taught angry/deep-doctrine Jeff with Sister Whisler (I wasn't taking any of his anger so we had to drop him), Sister Whisler and Sister Vach taught many people together since they were the original companionship, and Sister Vach and I taught Ashley. We found Ashley on chat and since I had no investigators because I ran away to California, Sister Vach told me I could keep her and teach with Sister Dieujuste. Ashley is our miracle. I can't even remember what her question was for us on mormon.org chat but we taught her online and she said that we could teach her again over the phone. The first time we taught her we just got to know her and answered a few more questions. She is 18 and got introduced to the Church by an aquaintance who invited her to go to early morning seminary and she went! She's a better woman than me. We invited her to go to Church for the first time and she told us she was too nervous to go. We just talked to her on Wednesday and she told us that she ended up going to Church! We were so surprised and happy. Our lesson on Wednesday was amazing. Sister Vach and I were on the same page with the Spirit to teach her. Both times we've taught it's been very powerful because she has an open heart. She often feels bad because she never knows what to say but we know what she feels. We invited her to meet with local missionaries and she said she wasn't ready. Further into the lesson, we invited her to be baptized and she said yes! We extended to her the baptism date of March 16. She freaked out for a little while and then told us that it's actually the perfect day. Yahoo!!! She told us over and over how happy she feels and how thankful she is that we were the two missionaries that answered the mormon.org chat. Sister Vach and I could not get rid of our smiles for the rest of the day but I was worried about having to teach Ashley with a different companion. While we were on the phone with Ashley President Gillette called and asked the three of us to come meet with him. We didn't know if we were in trouble or we thought maybe Sister Dieujuste was going to stay in Wisonsin for the rest of the transfer. He told us that Sister Vach and I would stay as companions and we were so happy because we both thought of Ashley right away. Our little Sister Whisler was less than excited to part from us. She told us that this week had been her week to heal because her last transfer was hard. But she knows how to love and now that she's healed she's going to heal the Russian. So we all know that Sister Dieujuste being stuck for a week in Wisconsin was suppose to happen so that we could all be with the companions that we now and have and teach the people who need us the most.
Last thing, we had a leadership training on Wednesday morning so all the zone leaders had to teach a small portion of the training. Sister Vach and Sister Whisler were nervous at first to do it with me since they were made zone leaders only for a week. It ended up being so much fun. We learned a ton from the other leaders in the mission and we had fun with our assignment. We related the story of the Brother of Jared to daily planning in the life of a temple square missionary. We created a costume for Sister Vach which included a beard so that was a crowd pleaser.
One of the changes that happened to the mission while I was gone is that we have a releif socitey meeting every week now. We don't have it on Sundays but we have it on Thursday mornings. This week, we got to go to the R.S building and learned from Sister Stephens, a counsellor in the General R.S Presidency. Attached is a pic. Sister Vach is the brown haired woman and SIster Whisler is the blonde.
That's enough words for one pday.
I love Temple Square and I want the snow to melt.
LOVE YOU ALL, SISTER KATIE KYLE
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