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