November Already

I'm staying in Green Bay another transfer with my companion! Woot! Things are going great!

Highlight of my week: So many to choose from.... I guess I'll go with Sunday! Our investigators finally made it to church! :D He participated a lot and both agreed that they liked it. Other investigators also came :) It just boosted my determination to help them gain deeper testimonies of the gospel so they can enjoy the blessings of baptism and being seal for time and all eternity. A great reminder about why I'm out here doing what I do!

Friend of the week: Sister O. She is a sweet lady in our ward, we usually end up helping her clean her house when we stop by :) She told us her amazing life story. She married the son of a diplomat in Guam and moved their right out of high school. Then her husband got a scholarship and went to Brazil, leaving her alone in the very foreign country. There she met the LDS missionaries through a friend and soon a whole group of women would huddle together to listen the missionaries lessons. While she was pregnant with their 2nd child, his parents accused her of something and she went home crying. Moments later the missionaries knocked on her door. To keep things short she eventually divorced her husband and moved to America with her 3 kids where she went to church and found the missionaries there. She was baptized in the YMCA pool. Then one day she came home to find out her x-husband had take her 3 kids back to Guam. She wasn't able to see them for 12 years, when they each decided to move to America and live with her. All of them were eventually brought into the church. She has such a strong testimony of how the gospel was what got her through everything and still does.

Spiritual thought: So Sunday we attended a CES devotional (hoping an investigator would come) and boy was it inspiring! It was about how we can give our will to Heavenly Father. Will: the desire that causes you to act. Our will is the only thing we can truly give Him. Everything else we give is simply giving Him what was already his. He also went into how when we give Him our will we are better able to use our agency. When we give Him our will we change our desires to match His and therefore want what He wants. He shared this story. There was Elder One who had gained 30 lbs on his mission and wanted to lose it all before he returned home, so he asked his company for help. Later they were in line at a buffet and Elder One reached for a brownie, but Elder Two whispered in his ear "you don't want that", which Elder One replied "yes I do", and Elder Two said "no you really don't". Many time we act on our "surface" desires or "momentary" desires like eating that brownie are louder than our real deep desires like losing weight. A good way to change your will to His is to focus on your deeper desires in your choices and have them over-rule those "surface" desires.

Other News: I'm loving my hair! It goes to my shoulders! Oh and they split our district so it'll be MUCH smaller this transfer and I have a new district leader (Elder V) I'm going to miss my district, but it'll be for the better! Fun story: We had Sister B take us to the church at 6:30am on the 31st (she works there) so we could ride our bikes, which we had locked up there, home. We got home only to realize that Sister B had locked the door (we usually leave it unlocked because her daughter is home) and we didn't have a key..and it was raining. It took about 15mins to get her awake to open the door. We never leave our keys home now. We were fed lunch, dinner, and 2 deserts on Halloween! Our members take good care of us :) We were still busing Tuesday and our dinner appointment went way over and we missed the bus. The big problem? We  had to teach a lesson in young women's about missionary work, so thankfully Sister B was able to pick us up (we were in the middle of no where..literally)I am so gratefully for her! She always gets us out of jams. 

With Buckets of Love,

Sister Kern