Chicago Summers

I have a love hate relationship with the Chicago summers but this week was pretty cool. They have probably the best rain storms I've ever experienced!!  There is so much water at once, it is a flash flood. It's really cool to watch from the comfort of your home.

Tuesday were transfers and in the zone I'm in right now, there are only 4 companionships that have cars and about 20 companionships. Even though we were not getting transferred, we had to help get the Sisters who were to the right places. It's not too much fun dragging 100  plus pounds of luggage on the train and walking for a good long while (speaking from experience that is #Boston). It’s crazy to watch the different phases of the mission. I can count on one hand the missionaries that are left in the mission that I knew from the start of my mission.  But, all is well. As of late, we have been getting some amazing missionaries coming into our mission!! It's excited to see their fire and their enthusiasm for the work. Along with new missionaries this transfer, Elder and Sister Bingham came in.  After 16 months they FINALLY made it out to Chicago and how glad we are!! They are by far the sweetest people I've ever meet. They came to a lesson with us this week and man I wish they had been here the whole time!!  

It's funny to me also when we get someone that comes from a farm town out west. The way they talk just makes me chuckle at their little saying because you don't hear it at all out here!! In fact you hear things like this:  We were out trying to find an apartment the other night and as we were walking and talking to people. We came across this mom and her girls and we told them we were trying to find a women by the name of Irina and then we always segway into we're where headed to her house to share a message about Christ and the restored gospel etc...  but before we could even start to segway one of the little girls that couldn’t have been much older than 6 said "she white?" (Referring to the women named Irina)  Sister Pruitt said, “um we don't know, we have never meet her before” and the little girl was like "ummmmmmmhum she white... with a name like that she white!" We lost it!  haha if you can only imagine this little girl she had the hips and the finger moves from side to side! It was so funny!!  See what I'm saying, no funny hick talk out here!

That same night we were contacting and we got out of our car. There was a whole lot commotion and people. They all had candles so I asked if there was a vigil of some sort taking place. The women I asked said, “yes” and continued to tell us that her sister had been shot on the south side and she was running away from the gunmen. It was so sad she just cried. She had a little 5 yr. old. It broke my heart. I was so grateful that I could share a bit about the Plan of Salvation with her. This was the first time Sister Pruitt had experienced this in Chicago. It's terrible and yet it happens all the time here, especially in the summer months. I'm truly so grateful for the knowledge we have of The Plan, the big picture!! I went home that night with a grateful heart that I was able to be there at that time and that place to share that truth with those who truly needed it. 

We had a lesson with Fummi and John this week.  As we were teaching outside, there was a rainbow that came overhead and for whatever reason, Fummi felt the spirt and she just kept saying that all of this was from God that He had a hand in all of it and the rainbow just topped it off for her. It was exciting to see her enthusiasm. I was so happy!!

This weekend the Valpo stake had Youth Conference and they all came up to the temple, so I got to give them all temple tours and see some of my favorite people.  It was a lot of fun. 

Yesterday when we got to church I told Sister Pruitt, “I think I know that guy” while I was looking at the back of this guy’s head as he was walking into the church and then he turned around to hold the door open and sure enough it was Brother Keeler!! I practically ran to him!  By the time I got to him, he was already sitting in the chapel!  So So fun to see him.  Such a fun mishap! It did get me thinking though, I've have had so many great people in my life that have shaped me.  I will forever be grateful!

Quote for the week, "you just have to be as good as you can be, and God will magnify you and make you more than you alone could ever become" 

Ok keep smilin 

Sister Kendrick 

The greatest decision I've ever made

Hello!!

Well this week was great! We had a lot going and so many fun experiences. 

We spent the 4^th with members and John and Fummi. They came to a barbecue and loved it. It's so much fun to watch investigators connect and make friends with members.  It's like a proud mom moment. They are progressing beautifully! Later on in the week they accepted a soft commitment to baptism!! They have been such a blessing to me and truly a tender mercy! Just because I am in Chicago things get a little crazy here at night and especially on holidays we have to be really really careful with what we do, so for the remainder of the night we had to be with a member or at home. We chose to go to a Fourth of July block party at a member’s home. It was really really fun! And to top it off there were a lot of less active and non-members there that we were able to meet and be with. 

Wednesday we were just in the grind. We have been trying to get in touch with quite a few members. It was our last district meeting of the transfer which was really sad because I've grown to love many of the great missionaries I've served around!! 

Thursday after planning a bit we went on exchanges with the YSA sisters. That's always a hoot!! I got to go to the STL area which is always so much fun. They live right on the lake front and right outside the city so there are so many people to talk to and so much going on all the time. We went to dinner with one of the members that just moved in. She just started her residency she's doing her rounds at some of the coolest hospitals here. I was so jealous haha. It’s so fun to be in the city because there is always someone around you that you can share the gospel and the "good news" with. It’s fun to watch people’s faces as they learn what it is we do as missionaries and what it is that we believe. I would say for the majority of the time individuals agree with the things we teach or they like the idea that is presented…family relationships that penetrate  and last beyond this mortal life, the fact that simple truths taught by Christ have been lost and changed by man and that there is a need for a restoration.  These things start the gears going in their heads and you can see it on their faces. They'll nod their head and even share their thoughts on the matter, but there is no desire that pushes them to continue to learn and their desires for other things greatly outweigh their desire to seek spiritual truths. It's really sad to me. 

Yesterday was a lot of fun I started off the day with a giving a talk on the Atonement. I was asked to give it a t 8 o'clock the night before. I'm getting really good at speaking last minute. It's fun for me because in a way, it shows me how much the Gospel is a part of me and that I know what scripture references I can use for this or that and seeing my individual testimony on one subject or another. The Atonement is always a really fun topic but yet always challenging for me because it's hard for me to put words to my thoughts and feelings for the Savior and the role that he plays in my life, in the church, and in the whole plan. I'm always humbled by the opportunity to speak of him.  To make it even better, Fummi came to church!!  This is exciting because they have a very wishy washy job right now and they are taking any work they can get which for the last week has been two 14 hr shifts on Saturday and Sunday so they have yet been able to come to church.  Fummi was able to get work off this week to come!! We had a great day! After church the members came gathering around Fummi and just loved on her it was a proud moment!! She was laughing and she was so happy!! I'm so glad! 

Shortly after church we went to a Mongolian party. It was their national day and there was a ton of people!! By a ton, I mean 4 thousand people haha... I don't know if I have told you this but we are now over the Mongolian group.  A group is a step down from a branch. It's been such a great opportunity.  I'm learning so much. So just a little background, there are so many great Mongolian Saints that have been leaders, missionaries and great Saints that have had great faith, but as they have left Mongolia to come to America, they don't understand the language and they start to fall away from the Gospel because they can no longer understand.  It makes it very difficult for them. Heavenly Father is aware of all his children and he has allowed us to create a group of which Mongolian Saints can gather together and hear the Gospel be taught in their native tongue. It's been remarkable!! We are reaching out to so many who have fallen away and have given them an opportunity to come back, to love the Gospel again, and build that relationship with the Savior once again!!  Hence going to the Mongolian national holiday with some of our members to meet less active, in-actives and their friends was very important. Fun fact… the first child baptized in Mongolia is the group leader. He was also the second stake president in Mongolia and the first Mongolian missionary to leave his country, crazy right!! That’s what I mean by great saints!!  We meet so many people and we're super excited to continue working with them. 

We had dinner with President and Sister Bingham. I love them!! Then we had a lesson with Jimmy and Chloe. Jimmy has been busy studying for the GRE, I think it is.  It has been very stressful for them.  On top of that, they are in the middle of buying a house and moving.  They have been very busy and we haven't had a lesson with them for a bit. They still come to church but they haven't had a whole lot of time lately, so we welcomed the chance to sit down with them again and have a lesson. They are remarkable in their thoughts and feelings towards the church. They have come so far!! 

Man well this week flew by. Today is the last day of the transfer and I'll be staying in my area with Sister Pruitt.  I'm supper excited!   There is so much happening here!  I'm excited for the coming weeks.  

I thought I'd share with you a quote that I've come to love and a quote that I has got me to the point that I'm at today:

"The greatest decision I ever made in my life was to give up something I dearly love to the God I love even more. He has never forgotten me for it.”

Think about that for a moment, if you would....   profound isn't it! It's so true though. This I've come to know:

HE WILL NEVER FORGET YOU FOR THE SACRIFICES YOU MAKE!! 

He has done far more with my life in this past 16 months than I could have done in a lifetime. Giving up my time, my life, to serve God in this great work could be the greatest thing I've ever done and God has truly blessed me for it!!  What things will you give up for the God you love? 

Love ya 

Keep smilin

Sister Kendrick 

Happy 4th

Hey y'all
I'm sorry that I didn't send an email last week!! It was a busy p day and some things came up that I was not intending on. Nevertheless, it was a good week. A lot took place!

This past week we had a meeting everyday but Wednesday. Tuesday the brethren from Salt Lake came in and did a little meeting with about 12 missionaries.  It was a really cool experience. For the first group they
diagramed every second of every day to find out how we do our missionary work. The part of which I played a role was, they asked me what some of the biggest problems were in missionary work. We came up with a focus problem and then they when through a series of problem solving techniques down to ways of fixing it the problem…money aside, material aside, whatever it took to fix the problem and they wanted me to think outside the box. So we started going through ideas and so did the people working for the church. (Interestingly enough there were more nonmembers then members conducting the study) and then they started drawing them out and creating them.  By the end of the session, they had new apps and new features to add to gospel library and new video ideas. They had ideas like, have lunch with the missionaries.  It would be a free lunch, you just come and listen to the message, but then they got all smartsy with it and the app would only be available on the latest and greatest phones and then marked a geographic location.  They had ideas like missionary uber drivers, that one was really funny.  Apps that members would go on and put their schedules on that would map out interests and time available for investigators. Then they could come to lessons and also expand it for the bishops to see who had similar schedules for home teaching and visiting teaching.  They also came up with another app that had current events in geographical locations that were linked to scriptural references that would help transition in contacting. So many more really cool apps and ways of which to do missionary work that I don't even know how to go about explaining. It was crazy!  The members that were there were some big wigs and it was really fun to work with them!  The man that created Mormon.org and his team, the head guy that is in charge of gospel library and the brother over the missionary department and research.  It was so neat to hear their thoughts and ideas as to how to go about making this work go forth and all the new things happening in the mission field.  Like missionaries in the next 6 months with have smart phones and not brick phones which will be so nice.  After fixing all my missionary problems they had us do an interview one on one to see what we would change on the mission and how to better receive data to help missions and missionaries progress.  It was a very neat experience but mentally exhausting I learned a whole lot!!

Thursday was zone training and as always president blew me away with his vast knowledge of the scriptures.  I'll attach a picture so you can do your own studies off of it but he was talking about all the things that were foretold, things would be taken and lost and destroyed due to disobedience of Jerusalem  in Isaiah 3.   And how really all they were referring to was the apostasy and the lack of Christ in their lives. It was really neat.  I wish I could do it justice. Anyway, he turned it into a lesson for us that we need to focus on the Savior in all that we do. We don't want investigators to take the lessons because we want them to know the church is true ect, but to come closer to Christ and in so doing they'll receive their own testimony of the gospel principles. It was a really neat and I had to take a step back and evaluate myself and how I teach and how I contact. Is the main Ephesians around Christ? I made a few small adjustments and the results have been amazing. I'll tell you about it in a bit with Funmi and John’s lesson. 

Friday was new missionary training.  I've been doing a lot of reflecting these past few weeks as I'm reaching the last few chapters of the mission and just training again and trying to remember myself in her shoes. I pulled out some letter/ journal entries from the month marks of my mission and I died.  I had forgotten so much and the feelings came back of being a new missionary just trying to figure things out and the fire and joy. And the way I talked haha I wrote some funny things, some hick lingo that's not used out here. I read it to Sister Pruitt and she died laughing, it was a good time. Anyway, in new missionary training we talked about the different ingredients of a cake and how none of them taste all that well by themselves in fact most are disgusting.  President made the Elders try the ingredients, even a raw egg.  It was quite the show!  Together the ingredients do make a delicious cake though.   He talked about the good times and bad times with a mission and how there are good days and then how the hard days seem sometimes more frequent, and how it can change from one to the other in literally a moments. But all the experiences make up the delicious cake or in this case a wonderful mission and looking back through those letters I can total attest to that. 

Saturday we helped out with a Jamaican funeral our church had over 350 people and only 4 members in the bunch.  It was a really really busy day and long!  I was so tired!! 

So when we didn't find ourselves in meetings or doing service, we had some really cool lessons with Fummi and John. They live around the corner from us so makes it really easy to go and see them every night. I don't think I told you their background story. Fummi and John are both from Nigeria. Fummi has two daughters 22 and 19.  About 3 or so years ago, the older daughter joined the church, in Africa against Fummi’s will.  She was super upset about it. She thought the church was a devil worshipping and money driven church and she would not let her daughters have anything to do with it. Even with the protesting her daughter continued with the Gospel.  Fummi settled down a bit excepting that her daughter would just be damned, that was until her daughter started bringer her younger sister to church and the protesting began again.  She would tell her "its fine if you go to hell, that’s your choice but don't drag your sisters down with you!" When the younger daughter got baptized,  Fummi was angry and sad.  Her daughters often tried to invite her to join them but she never would.  She started to see a change in her daughters and they bore testimony of the goodness of the gospel and the true happiness found inside. Around this time Fummi left Nigeria and she set it in her heart that she was going to find out what it is about this church that made her daughters so happy and why they believe in it. As soon as she got a stable place she looked us up and we started teaching her as I said last week.  She wouldn't touch the Book of Mormon until the spirit was so strong you could cut it, we testified of the goodness of the reality it had in building upon the faith we already had and helping us come closer to Christ and then a member we brought with us hit it home with her families own conversion and they too came from Africa and the role the Book of Mormon had in their life.  It was golden! Then this week, we had several lessons where we focused on Christ. I loved it!! Fummi just kept saying, “sisters, oh sisters I'm getting a lot from this lesson”!! Man it's been an amazing journey with them!!  And it's only been a short 2 weeks. John is amazing. His faith and knowledge is out of this world and Fummi’s desire to know and to learn is amazing!! She told us the last time we were there, “I can't wait to tell my girls that I've been meeting with the missionaries and I have really enjoyed it and I love it”.  They are going to have a heart attack and say, “oh mommy we knew you would” and then they are going to want me to join haha. They are so sweet so amazing and best of all I can officially say prayers are answered.  I have been praying my whole mission to be able to teach an African family!! Silly I know, but it was my one want and Heavenly Father has allowed me to!   What an amazing journey!!  Ah man a busy week for sure but it was a wonderful one!! I love you all and hope you have a good 4th don't have too much fun without me!!! 

Love ya 

Keep smilin

Sister Kendrick