April 21, 2014

He Lives!

Hola!

     Wow I cannot believe how much has happened in this last week and how quickly time flies when your serving the Lord!

      So in Tuesday I had my First Zone Conference and it was great!!! It was pretty much a whole day thing and I was super drained afterwards but it was so worth it. We had training from the Assistants to the President, the Training Sister Leaders, and President Bell. It was so great! I love learning how I can become a better missionary, even though I get a tad stressed afterwards because I want to be the best missionary ever rightnow and unfortunately it just doesn't work that way. Another cool thing was that we got to have a question and answer session with the Stake President. He helped us figure out how we can work out some of the kinks with our wards and how to support the members and get them super excited for missionary work. They also showed us a video called 'Because of Him' and I absolutely LOVE it!!! It was so great and they also told us that on Easter the Church bought the advertising spot on YouTube's home page and they were going to be showing it there. Isn't that so cool! So to make the most of this video they gave us all a huge stack of fliers to pass out about it and that's what we did this week during tracking. Who knows how many people actually watched it but we did our part in spreading the word.
So Thursday we had a really interesting experience while we were out giving away these fliers. We knocked on this one door and a lady let us in without even asking why we were there. And she had a friend and her kids over and they were doing bible study. They agreed to hear about our message and the friend even had family who are LDS so that was cool. 

     The lesson started off great until we got to Joseph Smith. One AP's (assistant to the president) had trained us on the power of the 1st vision and how to always have the powerful spirit that accompanies it with you in your lessons. So having that in mind I recited the 1st vision and let me tell you the spirit was SO STRONG!!! It was awesome I was getting goose bumps and everything and I think the lady and her daughter could feel the spirit but then her friend had to but in and start criticizing Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon so the spirit automatically went cur-plop! :( But me and Hermana Fernandez did a really good job of answering their questions and dealing with the hardness of the friend's heart (No Bible bashing or anything). So in the end we didn't get a return visit which is too bad because there was a lot of potential there. Side-note: I almost burst out laughing during their prayer at the end because they were pretty much praying to God to help us know how wrong and delusional we are. Some people :)

     This weekend me and Hermana Fernandez both caught a cold so it was a little rough having the desire to go out and work all day but pushed forwards and we ended up having a lot of visits with people we don't normally get to see and we had a lot of new investigators! So maybe I need to have a cold all the time! :) Just kidding that would not be fun!
Easter was great! We had two dinner appointments and both of them were so much fun! 

     The first was with the Spanish members and like all of our Spanish investigators were there too, Score!! The food was a lot different then what I am used to for Easter. We had a spicy three meat stir-fry that they cooked out on the porch, pasta (ok that is pretty normal but the next thing was pretty weird), and a cactus salad. That last was was really good before I knew what it was and then one of the kids had to point out that it was kinda of slimy and then it was really hard to enjoy it the same way. :) They also had the Spanish Elders there and they made all of us missionaries do an Easter Egg Hunt with the little kids. I thought that it was pretty fun and they seemed to think that it was funny. For our second appointment we we over to a members house in Hesston (a town that's like 20 mins away). They had another members family over and all of the college kids (members who go to the local college). It was a lot of fun even though I though my stomach was going to explode!! Way to much food!!! The English Elders where there too and we shared a message with them and then watched the 'Because of Him' video again. As we were leaving we had like an hour left before we needed to be back at our apartment and we had absolutely no idea who to visit, we had seen pretty much all of our investigators in the last two days. And as we were heading to back to Newton we saw one of our investigators who is never home out doing yard work! It was awesome! So we got to have a good talk with her which was a huge blessing!

     So that's pretty much it for this week. The thing that I want to share with you is this video that I've been talking about this whole email. Because of Him It is a wonderful video and it really helps me to feel our saviors love for us and to recognize all that we have because of him. I want to challenge all of you to watch it and think about Jesus Christ and his influence on your life. And to share it with as many people as possible!
I know that He lives and that He is our loving savior. That through him we have all been saved from the bonds of death and that by following His teachings and His example we can live forever with our Father in Heaven. The Atonement is infinite and can help us overcome sin and draw nearer unto Jesus Christ and our loving Heavenly Father. He lives!!

Love you all,

                                                Hermana Kammeyer