Hola todos!
Espero que todo esta bien con todo y que hay mucho gozo en sus vidas! This week was another week of adventures in good old KCK. We had no car so we were out in the heat for a large amount of the time. Have no fear, I shall attach pictures of a sunburn that I got last Friday(it was my own fault, olvide my sunscreen). Notice in the picture that I am showing my tan line and it is right next to my white shirt. I know that the color of my skin before the tan/sunburn is about the color of my white shirt. Ha ha my good friend from the ward here, Jennifer(oh I LOVE her!) she laughed and said that no one is going to recognize me when I get home because I am no longer going to be a gringa. I speak the language and have the skin to match now, ha ha. I shall not be forgetting my sunscreen again...
We are really in the process of finding new people to teach who will keep the commitments and really have a desire to learn. Honestly this last week did not go nearly as well as I would have liked. We did find a couple people and I pray that they want to learn more, but we also found ourselves in the position of needing to tell people that we are not coming by anymore because our purpose is not just to be friends with them(sometimes this is a bit hard for me because I love them and want to hang out with them and get to know them better) but to bring them closer to Jesus Christ through repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost and enduring to the end. I feel within my soul that there are people all around us that are ready for the gospel and that we just need to find them. We have really been praying and fasting to find these prepared people and I know that the work will continue to progress.
I cannot even tell you how much I love reading the book Jesus the Christ. Every second that we are home that I can read it I do. I have never in my whole life had a relationship with my Savior like I do now. How could I have been a member of this church before and not have known so many things about Him? Well all I know is that now I am so thankful to be able to experience such awesome progression in my relationship. I can say with the utmost surety that working to develop a closer relationship with Jesus Christ and looking to know who He is will help you to understand how to be more like Him. How can we follow the example of someone that we don't even know? When we give the baptismal invite it goes as follows: "Will you follow the example of Jesus Christ by being baptized by someone holding the priesthood authority of God?". So just about everyday I am asking people to follow His example, but am I? Do I even know Him? You know, I am really beginning to. You know what else? He is the most wonderful person that I have ever met and He is my dearest friend. I wish I could express in words the way that I feel when I understand something new that I did not before about His life or Him as the Son of God. I feel like the more I learn about Him, the more I understand who I am. I feel...free. I can make a promise to you. Draw near unto Him and He will draw near unto you, and you will be filled with a light like you have never known in this mortal existence.
The Lord loves His missionaries. Let me explain further. I love Latin food of all kinds, but it is very different than what I was raised on and while we are eating most of the Hispanic members do not eat with us, they just watch us eat. Because of this we really do eat a lot more than we normally would because in a lot of cases it is offensive if we do not. Because we have both English called missionaries and Spanish called missionaries in our ward we rarely eat with english speaking families because the elders do. Well last week on Tuesday my dear friend Sister Chelsea Walker signed up to not only feed the sisters, but to also come and pick us up in the city AND give us a ride home afterwards(this is a big deal when we don't have a car). She actually does not live in our ward boundaries but about 30 minutes outside in a really nice neighborhood. Sometimes people receive callings to attend a different ward than the one that they are in because some wards need strong members to help the members who do live in the ward boundaries and that's why their family goes to our ward. Anyway, this dinner was one of the best of my whole mission. SHE FED US THAI FOOD!!!!!! My favorite foods are Indian food and Thai food. Not only that but we got to see her two bearded dragon lizards, look at her family's artwork, and eat carrot cake and Reese's peanut butter ice-cream(two of my absolute favorite desserts...). It may seem like a small thing to you readers back home, but for me it was such a miracle and a re-charge of my battery. I am thankful for members who are so loving and nice to the missionaries. I think sometimes members expect the missionaries to not be actual people, but evangelical robots or something...nope. We are not. Hey, the next time you see a missionary, tell them how much you appreciate them or do something nice for them, will ya? For me? :D In Utah I bet they are pretty spoiled already though, at least from what I hear from certain people who have served there (;D) ha ha.
I believe that I am going to have to do a scrap book just devoted to the animals I have held on my mission. Have you noticed the trend? I. LOVE. ANIMALS. Especially now that I don't really get to show love to people the same way that I did before I came out here. My companion hates animals. We are quite the pair. She knows the look in my eye when I want a picture with an animal and she just sighs, rolls her eyes and grabs my camera. Man I love her.
A few quick funny stories. #1 Yesterday a Guatemalan Testigo de Jehovah (Jehovah's Witness) tried to dispute over the Trinity with me in rapid fire Spanish, we left quickly #2 A man named Juan called us during the night last night and left a message calling me his "hermosa amor" and at the end of the message(which was all in Spanish) he said "te amo...I love you". Just like that. He said te amo in spanish, then with a thick accent "I love you" in English. We laughed for a good ten minutes straight. We had met him earlier in the day and we thought he wanted to learn about the gospel. Yeah. #3 Yesterday we were eating with our ward mission leader and his daughter who are from Argentina. I am feeling a ton better about my Spanish and I can talk and have a comfortable conversation now. Hermano Morinigo(our ward mission leader) and I were talking about my family and I was talking about my mom and I called her my mama but I should have said "Mamá" with the accent mark. The thing is that Mamá means mom and mama is another work for breast. Yep. I don't think that they would have said anything but right after I said it I realized it and I started laughing really hard, then they started laughing and we all laughed for a very long time over that. I cannot tell you how much I love Spanish and speaking to people in Spanish even though I say inappropriate things sometimes.
Les amo mucho con todo mi corazon
hasta luego,
Hermana Thorne
PS THANK YOU NIKKI FOR THE MINI BLENDER!!!!!! I LOVE YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Espero que todo esta bien con todo y que hay mucho gozo en sus vidas! This week was another week of adventures in good old KCK. We had no car so we were out in the heat for a large amount of the time. Have no fear, I shall attach pictures of a sunburn that I got last Friday(it was my own fault, olvide my sunscreen). Notice in the picture that I am showing my tan line and it is right next to my white shirt. I know that the color of my skin before the tan/sunburn is about the color of my white shirt. Ha ha my good friend from the ward here, Jennifer(oh I LOVE her!) she laughed and said that no one is going to recognize me when I get home because I am no longer going to be a gringa. I speak the language and have the skin to match now, ha ha. I shall not be forgetting my sunscreen again...
We are really in the process of finding new people to teach who will keep the commitments and really have a desire to learn. Honestly this last week did not go nearly as well as I would have liked. We did find a couple people and I pray that they want to learn more, but we also found ourselves in the position of needing to tell people that we are not coming by anymore because our purpose is not just to be friends with them(sometimes this is a bit hard for me because I love them and want to hang out with them and get to know them better) but to bring them closer to Jesus Christ through repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost and enduring to the end. I feel within my soul that there are people all around us that are ready for the gospel and that we just need to find them. We have really been praying and fasting to find these prepared people and I know that the work will continue to progress.
I cannot even tell you how much I love reading the book Jesus the Christ. Every second that we are home that I can read it I do. I have never in my whole life had a relationship with my Savior like I do now. How could I have been a member of this church before and not have known so many things about Him? Well all I know is that now I am so thankful to be able to experience such awesome progression in my relationship. I can say with the utmost surety that working to develop a closer relationship with Jesus Christ and looking to know who He is will help you to understand how to be more like Him. How can we follow the example of someone that we don't even know? When we give the baptismal invite it goes as follows: "Will you follow the example of Jesus Christ by being baptized by someone holding the priesthood authority of God?". So just about everyday I am asking people to follow His example, but am I? Do I even know Him? You know, I am really beginning to. You know what else? He is the most wonderful person that I have ever met and He is my dearest friend. I wish I could express in words the way that I feel when I understand something new that I did not before about His life or Him as the Son of God. I feel like the more I learn about Him, the more I understand who I am. I feel...free. I can make a promise to you. Draw near unto Him and He will draw near unto you, and you will be filled with a light like you have never known in this mortal existence.
The Lord loves His missionaries. Let me explain further. I love Latin food of all kinds, but it is very different than what I was raised on and while we are eating most of the Hispanic members do not eat with us, they just watch us eat. Because of this we really do eat a lot more than we normally would because in a lot of cases it is offensive if we do not. Because we have both English called missionaries and Spanish called missionaries in our ward we rarely eat with english speaking families because the elders do. Well last week on Tuesday my dear friend Sister Chelsea Walker signed up to not only feed the sisters, but to also come and pick us up in the city AND give us a ride home afterwards(this is a big deal when we don't have a car). She actually does not live in our ward boundaries but about 30 minutes outside in a really nice neighborhood. Sometimes people receive callings to attend a different ward than the one that they are in because some wards need strong members to help the members who do live in the ward boundaries and that's why their family goes to our ward. Anyway, this dinner was one of the best of my whole mission. SHE FED US THAI FOOD!!!!!! My favorite foods are Indian food and Thai food. Not only that but we got to see her two bearded dragon lizards, look at her family's artwork, and eat carrot cake and Reese's peanut butter ice-cream(two of my absolute favorite desserts...). It may seem like a small thing to you readers back home, but for me it was such a miracle and a re-charge of my battery. I am thankful for members who are so loving and nice to the missionaries. I think sometimes members expect the missionaries to not be actual people, but evangelical robots or something...nope. We are not. Hey, the next time you see a missionary, tell them how much you appreciate them or do something nice for them, will ya? For me? :D In Utah I bet they are pretty spoiled already though, at least from what I hear from certain people who have served there (;D) ha ha.
I believe that I am going to have to do a scrap book just devoted to the animals I have held on my mission. Have you noticed the trend? I. LOVE. ANIMALS. Especially now that I don't really get to show love to people the same way that I did before I came out here. My companion hates animals. We are quite the pair. She knows the look in my eye when I want a picture with an animal and she just sighs, rolls her eyes and grabs my camera. Man I love her.
A few quick funny stories. #1 Yesterday a Guatemalan Testigo de Jehovah (Jehovah's Witness) tried to dispute over the Trinity with me in rapid fire Spanish, we left quickly #2 A man named Juan called us during the night last night and left a message calling me his "hermosa amor" and at the end of the message(which was all in Spanish) he said "te amo...I love you". Just like that. He said te amo in spanish, then with a thick accent "I love you" in English. We laughed for a good ten minutes straight. We had met him earlier in the day and we thought he wanted to learn about the gospel. Yeah. #3 Yesterday we were eating with our ward mission leader and his daughter who are from Argentina. I am feeling a ton better about my Spanish and I can talk and have a comfortable conversation now. Hermano Morinigo(our ward mission leader) and I were talking about my family and I was talking about my mom and I called her my mama but I should have said "Mamá" with the accent mark. The thing is that Mamá means mom and mama is another work for breast. Yep. I don't think that they would have said anything but right after I said it I realized it and I started laughing really hard, then they started laughing and we all laughed for a very long time over that. I cannot tell you how much I love Spanish and speaking to people in Spanish even though I say inappropriate things sometimes.
Les amo mucho con todo mi corazon
hasta luego,
Hermana Thorne
PS THANK YOU NIKKI FOR THE MINI BLENDER!!!!!! I LOVE YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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