Kim Training and Teaching

Pictures from Kim:

  Training Sister Spackman

Excerpts from Kim:

On Training:
Sister Spackman is amazing. she personifies "work ethic." She works smart and she works hard (she's alot like Megan in that way). I've been trying to be a good leader. She surprised me the other day by saying she admires how great I am with improvisation. She said this because we had no gospel Principles teacher on Sunday so I volunteered on the spot to teach and she thought the lesson went well. And in that moment I realized: SHE is good at planning and I am good at teaching on the fly.

On Investigator:
During a lesson with an investigator, we just couldn't help him resolve his one concern (sarcasm alert), "I want to learn all there is to know about Joseph Smith."
... of course, we could help get him started but this will be a lifelong problem for him. (:

He thirsts to know all we have to share with him. He read the pamphlet we left on his doorstep the night before, he believes it all (which may be a problem, we have to get down to real intent with him and asking God to know the truth for himself). But He is SO receptive! what a pleasure it is to teach him. He has been preparing hard for over 10 years to get to where he is at right now. Truly, the field is WHITE.

Pictures from Barcelona

Yeah, some pictures from Megan!

Hermana Bennett and other missionaries headed into Barcelona:

Here is a street near my Piso, so you can see what I get to walk thru every day. 

It kind of reminds me of main street in California Adventures.

The random architecture and castle/church is to show when we are 

on the train we seen a lot of beautiful old buildings:

There is lots of graffiti art here, I think it is beautiful.

Hermana Barrera and I enjoying this ice cream here, where you buy a coconut, orange, 

or lemon and it is hallowed out and filled with ice cream. Yummm!

There's a bit of a joke behind this picture, that illustrates the life of a missionary:

The apartment buildings have buzzers for the apartments so they can unlock the door and let you in. We were knocking doors at this building which we often do. The buzzer that has a paper taped over it says "no funciona." This is the apartment we had a return appointment with.  Its funny how the 2 times we scheduled a return visit here is when this paper has been there...hmmmm haha.

 We are currently on the hunt for new investigators. We have become contacting machines, we are getting good at getting numbers, but true to form here, people always seem to "chicken out" of letting us come back and see them.We have one investigator right now that has been an eternal investigator, but he is really beginning to progress. He came to a baptism for the first time and we think that was a turning point for him. We are hoping to commit him to a date this week.

In a ward of 300 members only about 98 are considered active. We have been working a lot with less actives and part member families. I believe there is a lot of work to do within our ward before we are going to be blessed with more baptisms. Why would God give us more when we can't even take care of HALF of the ones we have. Its a lot of fun but also a lot of work, the hard part is that working with menos activos is not the work that produces numbers and thats always hard at zone conferences, but we are learning humility and PATIENCE....lots and lots of patience...thankfully not so much with each other as companions, we get along and that is a blessing.

Excerpt from Megan:
"On our way to Zone Conference on the train, my companion and I were just happily chatting and this homeless guy comes into our train car and happily shakes our hands. We thought he recognized us as missionaries and we waited for him so say something but he didn't. He just stared right at me, so I asked him the basic questions, "Have you seen missionaries like us before?" "Where are you from?"... I don't think he even responded. He looked at me and said "Where are you from?" I responded "California" and he quickly and seriously said "Can you take me with you!?" I began trying to decide whether I should laugh or run...or both ha ha. I put my stuff in my purse and just sat there next to my companion. He just stared at me...like I would look away and look back and he would still look at me. SO since the 5 minutes of giving his the cold shoulder didn't work, we got up and went to the back of the next car. I mean It was a full train, so we weren't that worried, but we thought we´d better move anyway. We sat next to this cute social little Chinese lady who knew Spanish well and even a little English. She enjoyed practicing with me which was really cute. She gave me a Chinese candy and I gave her one of the Hi-chew Kameron had sent me. It was way too big for her mouth, so it was funny to watch her eat it. Good stuff..."

Another Transfer???

Excerpt from Kim:
"Transfer calls came on Saturday and I fully expected to stay in my area with sister Hansen. In fact, in an interview with President Woodbury he told me we would be staying together. But, alas- we have 12 new English-speaking sisters coming in, and only 6 companionships of English-speaking sisters. You do the math. This means that sisters who have only been out for 6 weeks now have to train a new missionary. And it gets better. We have another 25 coming in the next few transfers. WHEW!"

"I am being sent to open a new area in Chesterton Indiana.
Opening
White-washing
and training a new missionary.
I've always wanted to open an new area! 
I've always wanted to serve in the sticks!
AND I LOVE TRAINING NEW MISSIONARIES!"

"... did I mention that this is really exciting?"