Wow, i pretty much get a stream of the same questions.
Hermana Stepp is from Washington State and she has almost 11 months in the mission. BUT, her spanish is a tiny bit better than mine. she´s fo sho senior in transfers but....i´m kind of in charge so its been a little bit of a transitions process for me. thankfully, hermana hansen wasn´t leaving for a caruña until 2 days later, so we were about to talk it out a little bit. i´m good ahora :) we speak in english in the piso and a little bit of spanish outside. hahaa not smart i know. i never realized how good my spanish is!! i can hold some dang good conversations and i´ve learned to argue. my favorite is que no!! que sí!!! que no!! que sí!!! hahaa its a little childish but i love it. we´re talking with Old Man José as we call him. his real name is just José, but the old man part fits perfectly. he´s probably around 75 and he is UGH a little irritating. i argue the most with him. he calls me niña mala now. thats my point now, back to my companion...
we´re good, she´s very sweet. loves to serve others. but of COURSE i miss my little norweigy!!! but its good that we´re separated. wow this sounds like a break up. but the scary thing is the train wreck. so. i´ll start with that story...
hermana hansen was going to leave after picking her new one up from the stake center. first off, that was a little strange because usually they send you to your new area (hers being A Caruña) and the new one comes up later. but she was opening up A Caruña so thats probably why. ANYWHO she and her new comp. and Elder Ward (who was also going to a caruña) leave at weird oclock in the morning for their train. the office elders accidently gave him a ticket that had left the day before and so they had to buy another one for later that day. Hermana hansen and her new one left for their train ride and elder ward waited. well, you know what happened. he was writing in his journal, driver liked to go a little faster than sane, remembered thinking it was weird how fast they shouldn´t be going then blacked out. he´s fine and recovering at the mtc ahora. i talked to him yesterday and he´s looking sharp in his neck brace. but he is fine. i was asking this other elder if he was related to Holsts in caldwell (he´s not) and then elder ward asks me if i´m like related to 3 of the church´s presidents. hahaa he´s a funny kid. but i was talking with a few missionaries and they said that if anyone would be a great ambassador for the missionaries, it would be him. he´s so positive and a great speaker. elder Uchtdorf called him too. he´s pretty jelly cuz he´s not in the field yet so i´m thinking of asking president if he can help with some of our lessons.
well thats the story!
we´re teaching this man named gregorio and he is a mormon in disguise. i kid you not. our district leader called to ask if he had a weakness or not and i couldn´t give him any. his baptism is for the 17th of august :) he´s a great man. he and inussa get along great. but who couldn´t get along with inussa!!
the majority of our help from the ward are 3 jovenes. we have noche de hogar once in awhile but the majority of the older people that help us are missionaries living in the hostel for the temple. we were at a couples apartment in the mtc yesterday and Hermana Shillenburg had the most AMAZING quilt!!!!! it literally had the plan all on it. i´ll take a picture and send it to y´all.
i have loved the mission more and more this week. we go out in the heat and ring some door bells and i am literally having the time of my life. poor hermana stepp, who is about 7 inches shorter than i, has to run to keep up with me. i´m so not used to slowing down at all. she´s the complete opposite of hermana hansen. hansens the type to GO GO GO GO GO GET ÉR DONE! and stepp is the la lala la la la oh a flower!! i kid you not, she gets more distracted than i do!! but the beginning of the week was super hard and i was way to stressed. but i received a letter from bishop tidwell on monday and that letter was just what i needed. i read that thing like 7 times in 3 days. it really strengthened me and gave me the courage and strength to move on.
well i love you guys so much!! you da best. i´ll send pictures soon!! whitney, HOOORAAAHH!!! i´m making my list of possible areas!!
loves
hermana smith
Monday, July 29, 2013
Monday, July 15, 2013
July 15, 2013
Hey family!
Yeah, you can say the mop and I get around. Thankfully no one knew about our incident. well....you guys know and whoever reads the blog, but SPAIN doesn´t know :) Its interesting to read your reaction dad and i try and picture it. did it hurt when you fell off? its similar to your experience taking the trampoline apart i guess.
wow that was a terrible joke. please erase that from your memories! actually the 2nd part i laughed at but still :)
ah man i love our caldwell boys!! they´re such lil stud muffins. they´ve been taught well. reminds me of a quote from Nefi, ``I, Nefi, being born of goodly parents...´´ and its soo true!! i miss the caldwell 11 ward peeps. send them my love and muchos besos at the pulpit daddy!! and say those words too. i´ll be kissin all y´all on the cheeks when i come home.
Scary news, but TRANSFERS ARE NEXT WEEK!!! I´m kinda apprehensive. i´m trying to have the ´´whatever´´ attitude, but its un poco dificíl.
As much as I DON´T like it, this week has flown by. too fast.
Hermana Hansen and I have a goal to completely organize the area books in our apartment and we are almost done!! Well, i call peeps while she organizes everything. But its hard work when you only know a few phrases to say!! With the help of Hermanas Munden and Stepp, we have almost completely contacted everyone from them. It´s a big job! mama would be proud of us. We´ve had a few lessons with some of them and it´s so amazing to see our results come through. We contacted this man name Digno and when we met with him, he said he brought a friend along. During the lesson, Digno showed zero interest. But his friend, Nieves, had so many questions. She was a searching and ready soul! We´ve had a second lesson with her and she just wants out of her bad life. She also says she has no will to quit smoking and to change herself and her life. But we told her that the fact that she is there listening to us tells us she has a will! And a strong one at that!! She was so grateful for the message of hope and love. We see her progressing very well.
We contacted this man, Ginel (pronounced Gee-nel. I keep saying Janelle, but that is SO totally not right.) from Romania, on the street and we had our first lesson with him! We went to his house and his wife came and participated as well. Their 12 year old son had died from some sort of accident and they were SO receptive to our message. I loved them within the first few minutes of visiting with them! I sincerely hope that they feel that our message is true. We see great progression with them!
Another great experience we had was with a man named Gregorio. Gregorio showed up at english class one Saturday and then the next day, he´s at church!! This happened 2 times before we finally set up an appointment with him and we had our first lesson last night. He was so receptive! He believed a little in God, but he wants to know more and he really wants to be baptized when he knows a little more of the church and the scriptures. I´m so excited for him!
Last week, we talked about el Ayuno and we asked Adelson, our Colombian investigator (you were right mom), if he´d fast with us for an answer about the Book of Mormon. He said he would and we parted ways. For 2 days, we tried to get in contact with him and we weren´t getting ahold of him. We were so scared that he got spooked off! Finally, Sunday morning, he shows up!!! He´s hungry, but he´s happy! We were so grateful. Hermana Hansen and I wanted to cry.
Inussa and Gheorghe are doing SO amazingly well. They are both so ready to receive the Priesthood. Inussa wants to do things right, so we have to explain everything in little details, but he´s ready to take on that responsiblity! Gheorghe was born ready. He´s ready for ´´the force of God to come upon him´´. He´ll be leaving for Canada next month and will be greatly missed. Espero que buscará una capilla allí!
welp thats all folks!! I´m having the time of my LIFE and its sooooooooooo CRAZY that i come home in a year. one. year. no me gusta ese. but know that i love you all so much and the Heavenly Father is SOOOO proud of what you are all doing right now! It brings me so much hope knowing that we have such a supportive being in our lives.
love you all!! Besos!
Hermana Smith
Yeah, you can say the mop and I get around. Thankfully no one knew about our incident. well....you guys know and whoever reads the blog, but SPAIN doesn´t know :) Its interesting to read your reaction dad and i try and picture it. did it hurt when you fell off? its similar to your experience taking the trampoline apart i guess.
wow that was a terrible joke. please erase that from your memories! actually the 2nd part i laughed at but still :)
ah man i love our caldwell boys!! they´re such lil stud muffins. they´ve been taught well. reminds me of a quote from Nefi, ``I, Nefi, being born of goodly parents...´´ and its soo true!! i miss the caldwell 11 ward peeps. send them my love and muchos besos at the pulpit daddy!! and say those words too. i´ll be kissin all y´all on the cheeks when i come home.
Scary news, but TRANSFERS ARE NEXT WEEK!!! I´m kinda apprehensive. i´m trying to have the ´´whatever´´ attitude, but its un poco dificíl.
As much as I DON´T like it, this week has flown by. too fast.
Hermana Hansen and I have a goal to completely organize the area books in our apartment and we are almost done!! Well, i call peeps while she organizes everything. But its hard work when you only know a few phrases to say!! With the help of Hermanas Munden and Stepp, we have almost completely contacted everyone from them. It´s a big job! mama would be proud of us. We´ve had a few lessons with some of them and it´s so amazing to see our results come through. We contacted this man name Digno and when we met with him, he said he brought a friend along. During the lesson, Digno showed zero interest. But his friend, Nieves, had so many questions. She was a searching and ready soul! We´ve had a second lesson with her and she just wants out of her bad life. She also says she has no will to quit smoking and to change herself and her life. But we told her that the fact that she is there listening to us tells us she has a will! And a strong one at that!! She was so grateful for the message of hope and love. We see her progressing very well.
We contacted this man, Ginel (pronounced Gee-nel. I keep saying Janelle, but that is SO totally not right.) from Romania, on the street and we had our first lesson with him! We went to his house and his wife came and participated as well. Their 12 year old son had died from some sort of accident and they were SO receptive to our message. I loved them within the first few minutes of visiting with them! I sincerely hope that they feel that our message is true. We see great progression with them!
Another great experience we had was with a man named Gregorio. Gregorio showed up at english class one Saturday and then the next day, he´s at church!! This happened 2 times before we finally set up an appointment with him and we had our first lesson last night. He was so receptive! He believed a little in God, but he wants to know more and he really wants to be baptized when he knows a little more of the church and the scriptures. I´m so excited for him!
Last week, we talked about el Ayuno and we asked Adelson, our Colombian investigator (you were right mom), if he´d fast with us for an answer about the Book of Mormon. He said he would and we parted ways. For 2 days, we tried to get in contact with him and we weren´t getting ahold of him. We were so scared that he got spooked off! Finally, Sunday morning, he shows up!!! He´s hungry, but he´s happy! We were so grateful. Hermana Hansen and I wanted to cry.
Inussa and Gheorghe are doing SO amazingly well. They are both so ready to receive the Priesthood. Inussa wants to do things right, so we have to explain everything in little details, but he´s ready to take on that responsiblity! Gheorghe was born ready. He´s ready for ´´the force of God to come upon him´´. He´ll be leaving for Canada next month and will be greatly missed. Espero que buscará una capilla allí!
welp thats all folks!! I´m having the time of my LIFE and its sooooooooooo CRAZY that i come home in a year. one. year. no me gusta ese. but know that i love you all so much and the Heavenly Father is SOOOO proud of what you are all doing right now! It brings me so much hope knowing that we have such a supportive being in our lives.
love you all!! Besos!
Hermana Smith
Monday, July 8, 2013
July 8, 2013
Wow, it sounds like EVERYONE is having a blast!! I was just talking about Idaho wind storms to my norweigy this week. i´m sorry i missed it and that the computer doesn´t work. what are you guys to do!! haha sorry...
well, we have another baptism!! Gheorghe, pronounced Jorge, from Romania was baptized saturday at 10am! (birthday gift to Whitney Whebster!) So, knowing the elders AND our ward mission leader wouldn´t be there, we get there are 8:15am and start the font. We go back to the apartment, like 2 secs away, and are gone for maybe 20 min. then we run back and may or may not have flooded the boys bathroom as well as the girls bathroom and mothers room and a wheel chair bathroom. I pulled a whitney on her birthday!! it took us probably 30 min to mop it all up. hahaa oh the memories i´m collecting....the sad part is, it was my fault! hermana hansen was all ready to head down but nooooooooo i had to try and finish my hair! whew. yes. lesson learned. haha oh yeah plus the bishop yelled at us for not having programs. haha well bishop, we did give YOU the program thursday night to take care of it. then he got all huffy and puffy and threatened us because apparently, A) Hermana Hansen and I talked back at him and, B) There were no programs. again. I just want you to know that if we did talk back at bishop, A) I don´t know how in spanish and, B) Hermana Hansen is too nice to talk back. She just say´s things the way they are, which is the truth.
i about DIED hearing about Elder Miller!! hahahahahaaa!!! it´s soooo like him. man, i´d laugh too. his trainer needs to chillax.
Inussa is doing GREAT! We are teaching him about the priesthood and he KNOWS that it´s serious business. I´m so grateful that he knows its not all fun and games! I´m not worried at all about Inussa. He´s going to be a rock for the ward, I can already tell. His attitude is, if its not right, you don´t do it. He´s very much a black and white type of guy, no grey areas. It´s perfect, because the Church is exactly that! oh and inussa is from New Genea. Ginnea, Gennia, Geanaua....
Our other investigator, Adelson, is SUCH A GEM. He´s the next Inussa. He´s from Columbia. He´s a tough one though, because he loves the Bible and he is truly searching through the Book of Mormon to know if its true. He say´s the he doesn´t feel for it yet, but we challenged him to start from the beginning and to pray each time he reads. We know he will, because I honestly think he wants to believe. He comes to church and to all the activities because he wants to come! He loves it!! But I´m so glad that he wants to do things right, just like Inussa.
Ben, cuantos bebés tenía? Tuvo? Hermana Munden say´s hi btdubs.
Well, i love ya guys!! The weathers so stinkin discustingly hot here. hermana hansen and i look like spaniards with our cute fans. its in the 40´s!! too hot. too. stinkin. hot.
Love
Hermana Smith
oh sorry no pictures! next week. it no work ahora :(
well, we have another baptism!! Gheorghe, pronounced Jorge, from Romania was baptized saturday at 10am! (birthday gift to Whitney Whebster!) So, knowing the elders AND our ward mission leader wouldn´t be there, we get there are 8:15am and start the font. We go back to the apartment, like 2 secs away, and are gone for maybe 20 min. then we run back and may or may not have flooded the boys bathroom as well as the girls bathroom and mothers room and a wheel chair bathroom. I pulled a whitney on her birthday!! it took us probably 30 min to mop it all up. hahaa oh the memories i´m collecting....the sad part is, it was my fault! hermana hansen was all ready to head down but nooooooooo i had to try and finish my hair! whew. yes. lesson learned. haha oh yeah plus the bishop yelled at us for not having programs. haha well bishop, we did give YOU the program thursday night to take care of it. then he got all huffy and puffy and threatened us because apparently, A) Hermana Hansen and I talked back at him and, B) There were no programs. again. I just want you to know that if we did talk back at bishop, A) I don´t know how in spanish and, B) Hermana Hansen is too nice to talk back. She just say´s things the way they are, which is the truth.
i about DIED hearing about Elder Miller!! hahahahahaaa!!! it´s soooo like him. man, i´d laugh too. his trainer needs to chillax.
Inussa is doing GREAT! We are teaching him about the priesthood and he KNOWS that it´s serious business. I´m so grateful that he knows its not all fun and games! I´m not worried at all about Inussa. He´s going to be a rock for the ward, I can already tell. His attitude is, if its not right, you don´t do it. He´s very much a black and white type of guy, no grey areas. It´s perfect, because the Church is exactly that! oh and inussa is from New Genea. Ginnea, Gennia, Geanaua....
Our other investigator, Adelson, is SUCH A GEM. He´s the next Inussa. He´s from Columbia. He´s a tough one though, because he loves the Bible and he is truly searching through the Book of Mormon to know if its true. He say´s the he doesn´t feel for it yet, but we challenged him to start from the beginning and to pray each time he reads. We know he will, because I honestly think he wants to believe. He comes to church and to all the activities because he wants to come! He loves it!! But I´m so glad that he wants to do things right, just like Inussa.
Ben, cuantos bebés tenía? Tuvo? Hermana Munden say´s hi btdubs.
Well, i love ya guys!! The weathers so stinkin discustingly hot here. hermana hansen and i look like spaniards with our cute fans. its in the 40´s!! too hot. too. stinkin. hot.
Love
Hermana Smith
oh sorry no pictures! next week. it no work ahora :(
Monday, July 1, 2013
July 1, 2013
Hey you guys!! This was a GREAT week!!! don´t worry, Inussa was baptized. he is such a lil stud muffin. Inussa was confirmed and it was so special! Elder Pizarro, our district leader, confirmed him and we couldn't hear much, but we did hear him say A LEADER IN THE CHURCH. oh my goodness its so true. its amazing to see the progress of inussa, and each of our investigators, because they are so much closer to Jesucristo y nuestro Padre Celestial. Inussa pretty much gave us a talk how he doesn't like sunday school because everyone say's, well, i think this or that....hahaa he said, ''no! not what you think! that doesn't matter!! *slaps the bible and book of mormon* its what matters in here!''
oh inussa. my heart gets all warm like when i think of him. oh and because the ward mission leader decided not to show up at inussa´s baptism, we started the font and we may have flooded the womens bathroom and the mothers room.
Its amazing the affects of the Spirit, especially at baptisms. we had 2 investigators show up and, they knowing inussa, it was so much sweeter for them seeing an example of a friend. one of those investigators, Gheorghe from Romania, is getting baptized this saturday at 10 am :) we are very excited for him. he´s a bit of an odd ball. his answers to everything is, ´´Con el poder de Dios...Con FE...necesita el espíritu, sabes?!´´ and he usually screams it all. he´s quite loud. and he always, ALWAYS ends his prayers as ´´en el nombre de padre, hijo y espíritu santo...´´ hahaa he´s orthodox. he cracks me up.
oh so i made chocolate chip cake!! it turned out quite good except i forgot salt and to sprinkle sugar on top.
We had a ward talent show on saturday! It was supposed to start at 5 so naturally it started at 630. the B6 hermanas (4) sang a song and then we later danced the macarena with Inussa, juan luis (the next mission leader), and another investigator, Adelson. IT. WAS. SWEET. i think some people video taped it. we didn´t have the music so we screamed it, ´´duh duh duh duh-duh-duh duh-duh-duh duh duh duh-duh-duh (etc) EEEEEEEEEEEEHHHHHHH MACARENA!!!!´´ and Hermana Stepp played the harmonica.
its great reading the letters from yáll!! i wish i had time to write everyone, i barely have time to write my own brothers y sister in law! (sorry ben and sasha!) but i´m so glad everyone is doing great. I am so happy to be serving a mission, SO HAPPY. i don´t want to change anything. i miss you guys! love you mucho. take care!
loves y hugs.
Hermana Smith
Monday, June 24, 2013
June 24, 2013
[A paragraph from Dad to Kinsey. It's included to followup into Kinsey's letter]
Kinsey,
"..... don't be too hard on your self. I like Elder Holland's talk last conference. "So be kind regarding human frailty, your own as well as that of those with whom you serve. . . . imperfect people are all God has ever had to work with. That must be terribly frustrating to Him, but He deals with it. So should we.."
Remember that we are here to learn. Just don't make the same mistakes twice or more times. That's not learning or progressing. You'll do great. The language will come if you work on it and have faith."
-Dad
Thanks for the advice dad! thats great, i remember listening to that and thinking OUCH!! There´s another sting from Holland!
hola familia!!! Wow its great to hear from you guys. I´m sorry i´m not writing specific letters to a bunch of people, its difficult for me to concentrate on certain letters for a long time and hermana hansen is SO much faster than me at writing so i gotta get off when she gets off!! but i´m glad your week was fun, even though it was stressful. did you bring griz to the campout? a ride down the slide? i gotta know! but we didn´t get to watch the training meeting and no i wasn´t in the audience. it was midnight here so we´re watching it the 30th. but apparently there are new rules and new changes!! hahaa we read the white hand book everyday and its soooo old now. they need a new one.
my camera cord would be nice. but i can buy one here i think. its just actually buying it is the problem. no tengo tiempo!
It´s really funny that you mention my room and expecting it to be cluttered! many times, whenever i drop food on the floor, i open my mouth to call for griz and remember that he´s not there!! hahaa old habits die hard i guess.
but honestly, this week has FLOWN by! no joke. and this week is already super busy so this transfers going to fly! i´m super scared. but apart from that, it was filled with so many miracles. I loved it so much!
My spanish is improving. I´m really good now at making people think I can speak spanish. I just smile and nod, always keeping hermana hansen in my pereferals (huh? don´t know how to spell that) and copy whatever she´s doing. plus i have a pretty good accent. not gonna lie. my norweigy (as hermana munden and i call her) is still working on me speaking more in lessons because honestly half the time I don´t even know what they´re talking about!! But it´s all good and it´s usually only an hour of torture.
hhahahaa so yesterday, i had some weird impressions. Remember, dad, when you said you had bishop impressions? well i had stinking TRAINER intuitions. scared. me. to. death. I wrote president about it and advized him not to do that. it´d be less stressful for the new baby and for him.
While contacting in Vicalvaro, Hermana Hansen y I contacted this man from Nigeria. He said he was baptized in 2000 and hasnt gone to church in a long time. We invited him to church and met with him the saturday before. He is the sweetest man ever and wanted answers to some questions he had from reading in the bible and in the book of mormon. He showed up on Sunday for church and he said he´ll be coming back to church! It was such a miracle meeting him.
As a personal goal, I wanted to contact everyone that I can that´s in the old carpeta de área that the elders left behind. Its been so much fun contacting these people! We haven´t had any success at setting up any appointments but I feel better that we´re contacting them. hahaaa i hand the phone over to hermana hansen whenever they go off in spanish and thank heavens we sound alike. i think they get really confused because i start by saying, hola! soy la hermana smith de la iglesia de jesucristo....and she ends with, oh soy hermana hansen...hahaa its pretty funny. but so many registro´s will say to contact him in this time or contact him in that time and they never do! its really irritating but i love it because its spring cleaning, as mom puts it.
I´ve run into a little hiccup, for me at least. We have an investigator, named Jorge, that has a testimony of the Book of Mormon and of José Smith and of everything, but he´s grown up very Orthodostic-ly (if that makes any sense) and he´s telling people that he´ll be baptized but he´ll still be an orthodox. Maybe because I grew up in the Church and I want them to be converted before they´re baptized its blinded me from his real desire, I don´t know!! My real thought is that we can´t stop them from being baptized when they believe everything but the mindset is not where it should be. I hope I make sense...thats just been a thought of my for the past couple of days.
OH this friday i have my first baptism!! its Inussa and he is such a gem! he is seriously the most chill guy. ever. I´m always doing something and jumping or whistling and I´ll ask him, esta animado??!!!! and he´ll say, in the most UN-animado voice, Sí, siempre animado. siempre felic. he´s the man. it´s awesome because he is ´´siempre animado´´ to do what the Lord´s asks us to do. oooh look for him on facebook!! his name is Inusboy, hhahahahaaa!!!
welp, thats all!! keep the letters coming !! i love hearing from people. you guys are awesome and i hope you have a fantastic week!! love you mucho!! beso´s from me!!
Hermana Kinsey Smith
Kinsey,
"..... don't be too hard on your self. I like Elder Holland's talk last conference. "So be kind regarding human frailty, your own as well as that of those with whom you serve. . . . imperfect people are all God has ever had to work with. That must be terribly frustrating to Him, but He deals with it. So should we.."
Remember that we are here to learn. Just don't make the same mistakes twice or more times. That's not learning or progressing. You'll do great. The language will come if you work on it and have faith."
-Dad
Thanks for the advice dad! thats great, i remember listening to that and thinking OUCH!! There´s another sting from Holland!
hola familia!!! Wow its great to hear from you guys. I´m sorry i´m not writing specific letters to a bunch of people, its difficult for me to concentrate on certain letters for a long time and hermana hansen is SO much faster than me at writing so i gotta get off when she gets off!! but i´m glad your week was fun, even though it was stressful. did you bring griz to the campout? a ride down the slide? i gotta know! but we didn´t get to watch the training meeting and no i wasn´t in the audience. it was midnight here so we´re watching it the 30th. but apparently there are new rules and new changes!! hahaa we read the white hand book everyday and its soooo old now. they need a new one.
my camera cord would be nice. but i can buy one here i think. its just actually buying it is the problem. no tengo tiempo!
It´s really funny that you mention my room and expecting it to be cluttered! many times, whenever i drop food on the floor, i open my mouth to call for griz and remember that he´s not there!! hahaa old habits die hard i guess.
but honestly, this week has FLOWN by! no joke. and this week is already super busy so this transfers going to fly! i´m super scared. but apart from that, it was filled with so many miracles. I loved it so much!
My spanish is improving. I´m really good now at making people think I can speak spanish. I just smile and nod, always keeping hermana hansen in my pereferals (huh? don´t know how to spell that) and copy whatever she´s doing. plus i have a pretty good accent. not gonna lie. my norweigy (as hermana munden and i call her) is still working on me speaking more in lessons because honestly half the time I don´t even know what they´re talking about!! But it´s all good and it´s usually only an hour of torture.
hhahahaa so yesterday, i had some weird impressions. Remember, dad, when you said you had bishop impressions? well i had stinking TRAINER intuitions. scared. me. to. death. I wrote president about it and advized him not to do that. it´d be less stressful for the new baby and for him.
While contacting in Vicalvaro, Hermana Hansen y I contacted this man from Nigeria. He said he was baptized in 2000 and hasnt gone to church in a long time. We invited him to church and met with him the saturday before. He is the sweetest man ever and wanted answers to some questions he had from reading in the bible and in the book of mormon. He showed up on Sunday for church and he said he´ll be coming back to church! It was such a miracle meeting him.
As a personal goal, I wanted to contact everyone that I can that´s in the old carpeta de área that the elders left behind. Its been so much fun contacting these people! We haven´t had any success at setting up any appointments but I feel better that we´re contacting them. hahaaa i hand the phone over to hermana hansen whenever they go off in spanish and thank heavens we sound alike. i think they get really confused because i start by saying, hola! soy la hermana smith de la iglesia de jesucristo....and she ends with, oh soy hermana hansen...hahaa its pretty funny. but so many registro´s will say to contact him in this time or contact him in that time and they never do! its really irritating but i love it because its spring cleaning, as mom puts it.
I´ve run into a little hiccup, for me at least. We have an investigator, named Jorge, that has a testimony of the Book of Mormon and of José Smith and of everything, but he´s grown up very Orthodostic-ly (if that makes any sense) and he´s telling people that he´ll be baptized but he´ll still be an orthodox. Maybe because I grew up in the Church and I want them to be converted before they´re baptized its blinded me from his real desire, I don´t know!! My real thought is that we can´t stop them from being baptized when they believe everything but the mindset is not where it should be. I hope I make sense...thats just been a thought of my for the past couple of days.
OH this friday i have my first baptism!! its Inussa and he is such a gem! he is seriously the most chill guy. ever. I´m always doing something and jumping or whistling and I´ll ask him, esta animado??!!!! and he´ll say, in the most UN-animado voice, Sí, siempre animado. siempre felic. he´s the man. it´s awesome because he is ´´siempre animado´´ to do what the Lord´s asks us to do. oooh look for him on facebook!! his name is Inusboy, hhahahahaaa!!!
welp, thats all!! keep the letters coming !! i love hearing from people. you guys are awesome and i hope you have a fantastic week!! love you mucho!! beso´s from me!!
Hermana Kinsey Smith
Monday, June 17, 2013
June 17, 2013
Hola familia!!! oh and HAPPY FATHERS DAY!! We meant to celebrate it awesomely, but we were too busy knocking on doors and me kicking investigators. haha just kidding. actually not, just Inussa, cuz he says since i´m american, i´m gonna get so fat i won´t even be able to pick up my feet to walk. ESTE HOMBRE. plus i´m always eating pan de leche (this absolutely wonderful bread thing) whenever we see him. He even laughed at the thought of me running!!
AARRGGGGHHHH!!! I tried telling him he´s giving me grey hairs. it doesn´t translate well in spanish.
ahem. sorry. going on....
oh my this week was HOT. like REALLY HOT. like WAY WAY TOO HOT.
and it´s june.
madre mia.... (all the spaniards love using this phrase. its funny. reminds me of ABBA) i use it quite a bit and also ´´´no pasa nada´´. oh and ´´no sé´´ or ´´no entiendo´´.
Ha, welp, not gonna lie, this week was a tough one. I was a little bit of a moody pants cuz of the heat and cuz we weren´t very busy. and my kind of busy is when we are booked with appointments and lessons. I have learned a lesson this week though: suck it up and go to work. oh and learning to have fun with everything. I felt that if we weren´t booked with lessons, then that means we aren´t successful as missionaries and i did NOT like that feeling!! I´ve had a talk with hermana hansen and munden (another missionary in the piso) and they said that contacting is all part of missionary work and why are you surprised that we go contacting, etc. duh, kinsey. its in our MISSIONARY PURPOSE and in our RECUERDE ESTO: INVITE OTHERS TO COME UNTO CHRIST.
that is contacting. heehee. i know now :) But the great thing was terminating the week (terminar= to end. so we say terminate), looking at our weekly numbers and SEEING our numbers totalled. we could see that this week was our MOST successful week! I appreciated it mucho. I should´ve seen it coming. I think before my weeks were a little too unstressful and then BAM!! heavenly father pulls a whammy on me!! I´m grateful for this past week, because every small AND LONG trial will help me grow so much! By the end of my mission, i´m gonna be like 20 ft tall.
I am learning a great Christlike attribute from Hermana Hansen: patience! I don´t have a lot of patience for myself and sometimes for others, but mostly for myself. I never felt irritated about my spanish skills until this past week and Hermana Hansen was so amazing. She helped me and listened to me rant out my frustrations. and i ranted a lot. She even wrote a cute little note of encouragement to me in my planner. I love this girl. we´re gonna be neighbors one day. her boyfriend knut (like kenoot) got off his mission from england and we keep joking that he´s gonna set up his scottish companion with me. hahaa (remember mom, BIG FAT JOKE)
On a nicer note, Inussa has progressed so much. We have taught him all the lessons that we can before baptism from PME and now we are just teaching him more about Jesus Christ. Like I said last week, he doens´t know a lot about Jesus Christ, so I think any information we give him about Jesucristo, he absorbs. Just last night, we watched To This End Was I Born. It´s very dark, but very straight forward and plain. Oh, and we found out from him that his religious background is Muslim. But honestly, I don´t think he´s been a practicing Muslim for years. I thought that was very interesting. he´s a good man. i want all y´all to meet him.
We have another investigator from Romania. His name is Gheorghe (something like that)....but in spanish it´s Jorge :) When we first started teaching him a couple of weeks ago, I thought he´d be one of those old stubborn European´s. But he´s soaked in everything that we´ve said and he said that he wanted to be baptized. He also has accepted each lesson we´ve given him, but many times we´ve been splitting them, because he likes to talk a lot. Oh and the europeans like to argue, so when we have a certain member with us in our lesson with them, its usually them arguing for about 75% of the lesson. at least i think they´re arguing, its just that when people talk here, they yell it and it sounds kind of angry sometimes....
We met a man on the street this past week and spoke to him for about an hour. Let me tell you, HE is a stubborn spaniard, madre mia... BUT! Hermana Hansen and I are a stubborn companionship!! He is a man in his 70´s and is grieving. His wife, who had a lot of belief, had died some time ago and he doesn´t want to believe anything. He won´t let us say prayers and he won´t take a book of mormon, but Hermana Hansen and I have so much faith in him. we think he has a book of mormon in his apartment, but he keeps changing his mind. We won´t be giving up. We can already see him as a very strong member of this church. I have to remember that I am a missionary and a Representative of Jesus Christ a lot whenever i´m around him. he keeps shoving his palm into my forehead HARD whenever i say, ´´ José, SABE QUE YO NO ENTIENDO. ´´ he also kept shoving his newspaper at us, so i took it and wrote a scripture in there for him (since he refused to take it) and shoved it back into his shirt pocket. It´s going to be a trying few weeks with him. but i´m having a ton of fun doing it ;)
I promise to send más fotos next week! I´m excited to hear from all of you with your written letters (AHEM- hint)! I hope you all remember how wonderful it is to be in this church, at this time. We are incredibly lucky to be the LATTER day saints, because it is the latter days. I remember a talk from elder holland and he talked about how a lot of missionaries will ask him when the second coming will happen. hahaaa his response was the best: ´´HELLO. Do you not know what the name of our church is?! it´s the church of Jesus Christ OF LATTER DAY SAINTS! We´re already there!´´ he is so right!! Events for the 2nd coming started when José smith had the first vision and when he translated the book of mormon. I love in Enos where Enos is praying to God with every fiber of his being and praying that the records be kept safe if the nefites were to fall into transgression. Read and study Enos! Everytime I read that book, I am reminded more and more of my purpose as a missionary. so much doctrine is squished into that one chapter.
i love you all so much!! i am SO grateful to be here and so happy. I am siempre tired, but its a happy tired:) i hope you all remember how much i love you and how much our Savior loves you. I have never been more closer to my savior and heavenly father than i have in these last few weeks.
I pray for you all each and hope for the greatest success for this week.
stay awesome!
loves y hugs
hermana smith
aka kinsey jo
AARRGGGGHHHH!!! I tried telling him he´s giving me grey hairs. it doesn´t translate well in spanish.
ahem. sorry. going on....
oh my this week was HOT. like REALLY HOT. like WAY WAY TOO HOT.
and it´s june.
madre mia.... (all the spaniards love using this phrase. its funny. reminds me of ABBA) i use it quite a bit and also ´´´no pasa nada´´. oh and ´´no sé´´ or ´´no entiendo´´.
Ha, welp, not gonna lie, this week was a tough one. I was a little bit of a moody pants cuz of the heat and cuz we weren´t very busy. and my kind of busy is when we are booked with appointments and lessons. I have learned a lesson this week though: suck it up and go to work. oh and learning to have fun with everything. I felt that if we weren´t booked with lessons, then that means we aren´t successful as missionaries and i did NOT like that feeling!! I´ve had a talk with hermana hansen and munden (another missionary in the piso) and they said that contacting is all part of missionary work and why are you surprised that we go contacting, etc. duh, kinsey. its in our MISSIONARY PURPOSE and in our RECUERDE ESTO: INVITE OTHERS TO COME UNTO CHRIST.
that is contacting. heehee. i know now :) But the great thing was terminating the week (terminar= to end. so we say terminate), looking at our weekly numbers and SEEING our numbers totalled. we could see that this week was our MOST successful week! I appreciated it mucho. I should´ve seen it coming. I think before my weeks were a little too unstressful and then BAM!! heavenly father pulls a whammy on me!! I´m grateful for this past week, because every small AND LONG trial will help me grow so much! By the end of my mission, i´m gonna be like 20 ft tall.
I am learning a great Christlike attribute from Hermana Hansen: patience! I don´t have a lot of patience for myself and sometimes for others, but mostly for myself. I never felt irritated about my spanish skills until this past week and Hermana Hansen was so amazing. She helped me and listened to me rant out my frustrations. and i ranted a lot. She even wrote a cute little note of encouragement to me in my planner. I love this girl. we´re gonna be neighbors one day. her boyfriend knut (like kenoot) got off his mission from england and we keep joking that he´s gonna set up his scottish companion with me. hahaa (remember mom, BIG FAT JOKE)
On a nicer note, Inussa has progressed so much. We have taught him all the lessons that we can before baptism from PME and now we are just teaching him more about Jesus Christ. Like I said last week, he doens´t know a lot about Jesus Christ, so I think any information we give him about Jesucristo, he absorbs. Just last night, we watched To This End Was I Born. It´s very dark, but very straight forward and plain. Oh, and we found out from him that his religious background is Muslim. But honestly, I don´t think he´s been a practicing Muslim for years. I thought that was very interesting. he´s a good man. i want all y´all to meet him.
We have another investigator from Romania. His name is Gheorghe (something like that)....but in spanish it´s Jorge :) When we first started teaching him a couple of weeks ago, I thought he´d be one of those old stubborn European´s. But he´s soaked in everything that we´ve said and he said that he wanted to be baptized. He also has accepted each lesson we´ve given him, but many times we´ve been splitting them, because he likes to talk a lot. Oh and the europeans like to argue, so when we have a certain member with us in our lesson with them, its usually them arguing for about 75% of the lesson. at least i think they´re arguing, its just that when people talk here, they yell it and it sounds kind of angry sometimes....
We met a man on the street this past week and spoke to him for about an hour. Let me tell you, HE is a stubborn spaniard, madre mia... BUT! Hermana Hansen and I are a stubborn companionship!! He is a man in his 70´s and is grieving. His wife, who had a lot of belief, had died some time ago and he doesn´t want to believe anything. He won´t let us say prayers and he won´t take a book of mormon, but Hermana Hansen and I have so much faith in him. we think he has a book of mormon in his apartment, but he keeps changing his mind. We won´t be giving up. We can already see him as a very strong member of this church. I have to remember that I am a missionary and a Representative of Jesus Christ a lot whenever i´m around him. he keeps shoving his palm into my forehead HARD whenever i say, ´´ José, SABE QUE YO NO ENTIENDO. ´´ he also kept shoving his newspaper at us, so i took it and wrote a scripture in there for him (since he refused to take it) and shoved it back into his shirt pocket. It´s going to be a trying few weeks with him. but i´m having a ton of fun doing it ;)
I promise to send más fotos next week! I´m excited to hear from all of you with your written letters (AHEM- hint)! I hope you all remember how wonderful it is to be in this church, at this time. We are incredibly lucky to be the LATTER day saints, because it is the latter days. I remember a talk from elder holland and he talked about how a lot of missionaries will ask him when the second coming will happen. hahaaa his response was the best: ´´HELLO. Do you not know what the name of our church is?! it´s the church of Jesus Christ OF LATTER DAY SAINTS! We´re already there!´´ he is so right!! Events for the 2nd coming started when José smith had the first vision and when he translated the book of mormon. I love in Enos where Enos is praying to God with every fiber of his being and praying that the records be kept safe if the nefites were to fall into transgression. Read and study Enos! Everytime I read that book, I am reminded more and more of my purpose as a missionary. so much doctrine is squished into that one chapter.
i love you all so much!! i am SO grateful to be here and so happy. I am siempre tired, but its a happy tired:) i hope you all remember how much i love you and how much our Savior loves you. I have never been more closer to my savior and heavenly father than i have in these last few weeks.
I pray for you all each and hope for the greatest success for this week.
stay awesome!
loves y hugs
hermana smith
aka kinsey jo
Monday, June 10, 2013
June 10, 2013
que pasa...stupid computer...any whoo...just copy and paste the first part...
oh uncle doug! happy late birthday! i meant to send a letter...but i didn´t. forgive me :)
One small miracle this week was meeting a man named Adelson. We met him on the street and there he agreed to meet with us the next day. Teaching him is very interesting, for me, because he doesn´t really show any emotions and he´s very careful when he answers questions. He attended Stake Conference yesterday and was such a trooper. three hours of sitting!! at least he understood things. i sat for that long understanding the beginning...and the end. any whoo...we feel very good about him! He has a strong testimony of God and of Jesus Christ, and I feel that his questions, though unspoken, will be answered while he reads el Libro do Mormón. Which he is reading :)
Last Friday, all of the Barrio 6 missionaries had a dinner for our investigators. The ward was involved and we asked them that if they attended, they needed to bring a nonmember or a menos activo. It was a huge success!! We had food from different parts of the world and they watched to 20 minute José Smith movie. Adelson, though being an investigator, brought his sister and her daughter. Come to find out, his sister and her daughter are very good friends with some ward members! She had visited with missionaries before and was Jehova´s Witness, but I feel very good about this. Adelson doesn´t seem to follow any religion, so hopefully he´ll have a great experience with the Church and set that example for them!!
well, i love you guys!! stay awesome and stay strong. i pray for you and hope to hear from you soon (whitney where are my five page letters. where are dey.)
loves,
Hermana Smith
oh and have you received my letters? ask gma too. i sent her one.
It was filled with so many miracles, big and small. I have truly never been so blessed in my life! I love how the small and simple things are bringing to past amazing results. It was transfers this week and i was a little worried about one of us leaving, but apparently i need to learn more from mi norweigy compy so we´re together still :) we did a little happy dance.
Our investigator, Inussa, is doing so well! We were waiting for an opportunity to take him to a baptism so that he could pick out his baptismal date and after the closing prayer in one lesson, he said that he had picked out a baptismal date!! He wants to be baptized the 28th of June!! He told us the only reason he was unsure of a date was because he wasn´t sure that when we would leave the area, if he would be alone and no one would be there to help him. We loved expaining to him that there are missionaries and members who would continue to teach him and to make sure he´s doing just fine :) Each lesson we teach him, he accepts it and changes a little of his life so that he can live it. For example, he´s willing to live the law of tithing, fast, and fast offerings. I thought that this would be most difficult for him because he doesn´t have a job and for anyone with no job, giving 10% of what little you have would seem a big stretch. But he knows that this is all for the Lord and because of that, he will do it. Wow!! What an example for me and for many others. We´ve been teaching more of the life of Jesus Christ, because he knows that there is a God and that Jesus is our Savior, he just doesn´t know any sort of stories or teachings from the Bible. He has such interesting questions and so in one of our lessons we gave him a Bible and Principios Del Evangelio for his many questions. He also enjoyed the baptism in Cuatro Caminos, so I am very glad that his doubts are set aside. It reminds me of what President Christianson said when i was set apart. he said that i needed to learn the stories from the scriptures and while in the mtc i was confused and didn´t realy know where to start. i realized that yes, the stories from the book of mormon are the ones we need to go to, but for most investigators, they have need of the bible and i realize that i don´t know the bible as well as i thought!! i have lots of reading to do. for example, we are visiting these nigerians who ´´have found Christ´´ and ´´Christ is alive in me and I´m alive in Christ´´ and asks us, ´´when were you born into christ?´´ WHEW. it is really difficult to teach them because we really cant. they´re always up and down from their seats, trying to prove that our interpretations of certain stuff are wrong. i am always confused because, another example, they can´t answer a yes or no question. like, at all. we asked the same thing like 20 times until, well, we left. golly i can go on forever with these dudes. but they´re awesome. they feed us food and they love AFRICAN picante and i am always sweatin´a little whenever we leave. they´re always surprised that a white american can handle hot stuff. HA. sniff yep. i´ve learned from the best.oh uncle doug! happy late birthday! i meant to send a letter...but i didn´t. forgive me :)
One small miracle this week was meeting a man named Adelson. We met him on the street and there he agreed to meet with us the next day. Teaching him is very interesting, for me, because he doesn´t really show any emotions and he´s very careful when he answers questions. He attended Stake Conference yesterday and was such a trooper. three hours of sitting!! at least he understood things. i sat for that long understanding the beginning...and the end. any whoo...we feel very good about him! He has a strong testimony of God and of Jesus Christ, and I feel that his questions, though unspoken, will be answered while he reads el Libro do Mormón. Which he is reading :)
Last Friday, all of the Barrio 6 missionaries had a dinner for our investigators. The ward was involved and we asked them that if they attended, they needed to bring a nonmember or a menos activo. It was a huge success!! We had food from different parts of the world and they watched to 20 minute José Smith movie. Adelson, though being an investigator, brought his sister and her daughter. Come to find out, his sister and her daughter are very good friends with some ward members! She had visited with missionaries before and was Jehova´s Witness, but I feel very good about this. Adelson doesn´t seem to follow any religion, so hopefully he´ll have a great experience with the Church and set that example for them!!
well, i love you guys!! stay awesome and stay strong. i pray for you and hope to hear from you soon (whitney where are my five page letters. where are dey.)
loves,
Hermana Smith
oh and have you received my letters? ask gma too. i sent her one.
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