Hey family!

I seriously can't believe that's it's Prep day already... weird. Time is such a paradox out here. This past week was a really weird week but we did see quite a few miracles from it! We are currently teaching a Haitian family! They are so awesome! They don't have a lot of religious background and are so open to everything we say. We taught them the Plan of Salvation and Sister Conant said that it was the most powerful lesson of the Plan that she has ever taught. We were able to commit all of them to a baptismal date on July 20th! So hopefully it goes through... haha Pretty exciting! We are getting ready to drop Sonya... she has a lot of problems and her smoking habits are not going any where even though we have been trying so hard to help her see that through God she can find the strength to stop. This past week we decided to just be very straight forward with her on repentance. At the end of the lesson she took all of her cigerettes out, broke them all in half, put them in the garbage and had us throw the garbage away at home. So that was encouraging! But we haven't been able to see her since.... so now we are wondering what is going on. One thing that is really hard out here in the mission is knowing who is prepared and ready. I've heard a lot out here that those that are prepared are so easy to teach. You pretty much just spoon feed them everything and they do the rest. Which is the way it should be!! It's dissappointing when you have to drop people or when they drop you. We had another investigator named Jason drop us because he had looked things up on the internet (which we told him that there is a lot of misconceptions on the internet and gave him the correct websites to go to) and his family discouraged it. ugh. so frustrating! He had a baptismal date as well which is frustrating. 

It was kind of a tough week for studying and teaching this week because we had a lot of meetings. We had a district meeting, temple yard work, zone training meeting and a training follow-up meeting all last week. It takes a huge chunk of time out of your day to do other things. I finally got to meet President Berry and his wife at the training follow up meeting though! They are ADORABLE. I LOVE them!!! The moment I walked into the building, Sister Berry came up to me with a big hug and knew me by my name! Impressive! President and Sister Berry both made me cry and different times. They were just talking about how we are all new, including them, and that they know how we feel being new, etc. I wasn't crying from stress or anything haha! I just felt the spirit very strongly as they were both speaking and I can tell that they are both very loving. I'm going to love having them around =D 

For the 4th of July my companions and I and some other people from my zone got to watch fireworks from the roof of the Orlando temple!! So fun! You could see firewords going off everywhere all over! We could see some from Disney World and Sea World and a ton of other parks. Really cool. There are some people in my ward that get TONS of free bread and desserts from a store called Publix every week. They just get all the food that doesn't sell. So every Sunday they load of their van full of all the food and it's all up for us to grab as a ward! so awesome!! We have been taking things over to new investigators, etc. it's great! We found a big thing of red, white and blue cupcakes so we took those to eat in the parking lot of the temple on the 4th :) fun memories :) Something bad happened though... we got back to our apartment at 10:30 (which we had been given permission to be out an hour later that night) and we went straight to bed. Sister Conant forgot that we had put the phone on silent to go through the temple and we had 19 missed calls from the zone leaders, AP's, district leaders, etc. hahahaha so bad! They couldn't get a hold of us so we woke up to a knock on our door at 11:30 that night to some elders in our area checking up on us to see if we were alive.... kind of embarrassing and my trainer was super embarrassed. I guess the elders were still out and about doing things though so it wasn't too big of a deal. It was a weird night though! 

Yesterday at church, I introduced myself and bore my testimony in church! As a whole ward we decided to fast on misionary efforts and we actually got invited to be apart of the bishopric meeting that morning to talk! Still kinda weird... and not the same as ward council... but it was a huge blessing and answer to our prayesr that they even did that! The ward has also been struggling for a long time with the ward missionaries fulfilling their calling... so that is somehting that we are now working on at a stake level. yay! So hopefully things will shake out and work better soon. Please keep the ward in your prayers. 

I'm SO grateful that you sent that backpack to me! THANK YOU! I had some serious back issues this past week from biking with my satchel.... so I'm really grateful to have that now. THANK YOU SO MUCH! so cute of you. Plus I loved getting all of that from you. It's just so fun to get mail. I love it! and you! Just so you know, my back is doing so much better now. Friday my back was in so much pain that I almost burst into tears during one of the lessons... so we called my district leader to have him give me a blessing. He was soo sweet! He rode over on his bike and gave me a blessing. Everything he said in the blessing was just what I needed to hear.. and guess what! The next day, I didn't feel ANYTHING in my back until like 7 that night. It was a HUGE miracle and I could totally feel the power that comes from the priesthood. Missionaries really do hold power so strongly. It was really cool and I feel so blessed! I feel a ton better ever since. So cool. :) It's just another testimony to me that Heavenly Father knows me personally and will answer my prayers when I act in faith. I love Him! 

Well my time is pretty much up. I swear email time goes by sooo quickly. It's the fastest hour of the week!! :P Know how much I love each one of you!!! I'm printing out your emails this time so that I can handwrite them =D I LOVE YOU!!!!!!!!!

 

Love,

 

Sister Katie Kirkham