End of Transfer #3

Family and friends!

Howdy!

Well, at the end of 3 transfers, I will be in Marquette for at least one more! But this week was pretty sweet if I do say so myself. It wasn’t a downer as it seems the past have been. It rocked!! The best news that I have for you is that we set 2 baptismal dates!!!! Yay!!!! They are with 2 sisters, Ashley and Emmy, and the dates are for the 28th of November. I am pretty excited. But the bummer of it all is that we had a return appointment to teach them and their friend again on Friday and they were also all supposed to be at church yesterday. Well, lo and behold, crazy as it seems, they dogged us on Friday and didn’t come to church. So yeah, that stunk. But still, we are excited that they want to feel clean from sin and start a new life. And it was just cool because we had decided that we would mention baptism in every principle we taught in the first lesson and they were the ones who came out and said that they wanted to be baptized! I didn’t even know what to do. I was just smiling really big and couldn’t really talk. It was weird, but I studdered something out, don’t remember what. Oh well. But yeah that was sweet. And that was also the day that the zone leaders were up to help us out and figure out ways to help us and our area since things weren’t going as sweet as we had liked. But as we were teaching the lesson to Ashley and Emmy, they went out tracting and found us 2 awesome families to teach! So I’m pretty excited for this week. We actually have several set appointments for this week. Now, they just need to be there. Something that people in the U.P. don’t like doing. But we’ll pray for the best and do our part to make sure that they are there!

Tuesday was also our last district meeting together as a district. Elder Hatch was our district leader this past transfer and was an amazing one. I learned a ton from him, but unfortunately he’s leaving to be a zone leader in Milwaukee. But yeah, we had another sweet meeting and it was encouraging for Wessely and I. We just needed some major help in our area at the time, and still do, and it was just sweet getting ideas and revelation on how to make things better. And then of course since it was our last district meeting together…TIE TRADE!! I got some pretty cool ties if I do say so myself.

This week weather wise stunk. It was raining nonstop Tuesday-Sunday it seemed. But on Friday I believe it was, all our appointments fell through, so that means tracting!! Great. And in the heavy rain. But luckily I had brought my coat so I wasn’t freezing and was dry for the most part. Only problem was that I found out later on that my backpack wasn’t waterproof. So one of my books, my gospel art book, got ruined. But everything else was ok! But we found some sweet people tracting again! Probably the most successful day of tracting I have had yet. We found 3 interested people/families. So I’m pretty excited for that. It almost wasn’t normal being invited in by people who were actually interested! So, maybe all those cruddy weeks we had up here are finally paying off. We hope to see much more success this week.

Something else cool this upcoming week is that it’s our Mission Tour. Elder Bruce C. Hafen of the Seventy is coming and we will be seeing him Friday. So I’m excited about that. And Saturday, Halloween, is a day where we are not allowed to go proselyting and is an unofficial “deep cleaning day.” So we will be in our apartments all day Saturday cleaning. So that’s exciting. Lame thing is that our apartment doesn’t even really need too much cleaning, so we won’t be really doing that much. Oh well.

This past week we also arranged and set up times to teach part member families in our ward. There are a lot of “dry Mormons” up here. “Dry” refers to not baptized yet but these people maybe have one or two hold ups that are keeping them from being baptized. So we’ll see what we can do. Problem is that these guys have been taught by several different sets of missionaries and still have not been spiritually converted yet. So hopefully we’ll be the ones that they see the truth with. We’ll find out.

On Thursday we saw the Pendaz family. That was exciting. Harlan, he’s a chunky kid, lifted up his shirt to show us how strong his chest was and Wessely told him that he needed to lose some weight. It was hilarious. And he also was bragging about how strong he was and he told me he could pick me up and carry me up the stairs. But he realized how much bigger I was than him and couldn’t do it. It made me laugh. He’s a crazy kid. I remember how much he used to bug me but now I’ve grown to love him and like seeing him whenever I can. They’re a cool family.
Hopefully those pictures came through last week? But we taught that lady with the nasty ugly little dog again. That thing is so gross. But she’s practically a dry Mormon too. She just doesn’t believe that the church has the full priesthood authority and that she thinks it is going to be like any other church, everyone is different since every one has a different bishop. It was a tough lesson, but we commited her to pray sincerely about it and to come to church next week, so hopefully she keeps those commitments because those are the only ways she’ll find out.
Sunday, yesterday, was the primary program. It was awesome. There are some funny kids in the ward. It just makes me way excited to have kids of my own someday. They rock. But they did something I thought was pretty sweet. They had a girl, she was like 7 I think, play “I Love to See the Temple” (my favorite primary song by the way) very simply. She played it just one handed, single notes, etc. It was cute. And then they had a 11 year old girl play the same song, but this time with both hands and with chords and stuff, it was very good as well. And then they had an 18 year old girl, the first girls older sister, play an amazing arrangement of the song. It was awesome. I just thought it was cool seeing the same song being played from very simply to very difficult. I liked it a lot. I’m pretty bummed that Ashley and Emmy weren’t there for it. They would’ve loved it because they have primary aged kids. Oh well…

But yeah, this week was sweet. I’m excited for the start of a new transfer and a new week. It should be groovy for sure. But, I love you all! Keep me in your prayers, you’re all in mine! 

Love
Elder Jesse Kissell

Pictures!


1. Ties acquired from the trade, minus a couple.


2. Irontown, USA Negaunee Michigan!


3. 2nd pair of pants that have ripped! How lame is that?! But this time the hole was little so that was an easy repair job for duct tape:)

Pictures!!

New district!

Our massive supply of Chinese food

SNOW!!
Ugly nasty little rat dog
Leaves in Ishpeming
My bad...
Me, my new hat from Tommy Chicago, and new cowboy suit! (found it in the closet!)
Leaves on the way to Au Train

A beach by Au Train


Me dead on the beach

The KissNews!

Hey!

Well, this week went pretty well, not amazingly awesome, but it was good. No complaints. On last Monday, the Houghton elders came down and we went shopping around downtown and looked at some cool stuff. The downtown area here is pretty neat. And it also snowed again that day too. Crazy stuff. But that evening, we had made an appointment with a part member, previous investigator family and went to go teach them. It was a sweet lesson. The less active member, his name is Kim, hasn’t been to church in forever. But it seems almost like he reads the Book of Mormon everyday, he doesn’t, but that’s how strong his testimony is! It’s sweet. But his wife, the previous investigator, said that she would get baptized if she came to church. Well, get to church!! She’s awesome, but they just have a hard time getting to church, and they only live like 10 minutes away, so I don’t know how to help them in that regard. Probably just have a member go over there Sunday morning and kick them in the pants. We’ll see. But it was a sweet lesson and we pretty much just got Kim talking, and he taught Amber the first lesson pretty much. It was pretty sweet. Then after the lesson, he showed us his sweet guitar skills. He’s pretty good, but the catch is that he plays the guitar upside down and backwards. It’s flippin weird. He strums the wrong way and everything and it sounds awesome. I was impressed for sure.

On Tuesday we had our district meeting in Escanaba again. It also snowed like an inch in Marquette that night too. That was cool. But whenever we are down there, there is a member whose name is Tommy Chicago and he always brings us sweet random stuff and buys us lunch usually. This week I got a Craftsman tools belt buckle from him! It’s super cool. Now I just need to get a belt that I can wear it with. But later that day, we went tracting for a while, nobody was really interested but it was still fun to get out and knock again. We set some later appointments with people and yeah, it was sweet.

Wednesday was kind of lameo. We stayed in Marquette for a few hours, tracted some more up in the woodland areas. Oh man that just reminded me of something funny. So one of the houses we tracted into, a lady answered the door with a HUGE moustache. And of course it was my door to talk at and I came so close to saying something and laughing, but I didn’t luckily. I was scared I would. I don’t know how she could NOT know she had that and would want to shave it off. Who knows. But yeah, that was definitely interesting. But the lameo part about the day was we had an appointment in a town called Sawyer, the ghetto of the U.P., and it’s about a half hour away, and of course, she wasn’t there. She was in Wisconsin. It’s times like that that I wonder why people wouldn’t have the courtesy to call us and tell us that. But that’s just me. But since we were down in the area of Gwinn where lots of less actives live, we headed down there and saw a bunch of people. So that was neat. The leaves are still awesome and there are a lot of lakes by Gwinn so it’s pretty sweet to see all the fall leaves and a glassy smooth lake. I would live there for sure. But then we had to head back up the highway several miles for a dinner appointment with a less active lady in our ward, she is actually D’andreas sister, our investigator who died a couple months ago. But her husband is an alcoholic and he decided to come out and visit with us while we were eating. Lets just say he’s not a happy drunk. So I looked at elder Wessely and we both just chowed down as fast as we could and got out of there. It was pretty not fun. We were there for like 15-20 minutes. But yeah, most eventful dinner appointment I’ve had yet.

Thursday was another not so fun day. But the fun part about it was that we got to help a less active guy stack wood!! I was way happy. I miss doing physical labor like that a lot. And we helped him with several other physical-ish things. So that made me happy. But the lame part was we had 3 appointments bail on us that day. All out in Ishpeming and Negaunee, several miles away from Marquette. So that was disappointing. And of course, we had members with us. But, we’ll just have to try again I guess. But the exciting part about the evening was Sis. Smith, an oriental lady who lives out there, called us and told us she made us some food. We were expecting like a casserole or 2 at the most. All the stuff she made us filled up the back seat of our truck!! It’s so much food. It’s crazy. And all Chinese. And all deep fried. Needless to say we’re going to have this stuff for quite a while and I’m already sick of eating Chinese for lunch and dinner everyday. But, some of it is pretty good. But it’s just SO much food. You’ll see.
Friday was exciting. We went up to Big Bay, a redneck town from what we’ve heard, so I was pretty excited for that. We had a referral all the way up there and decided why not. So we went up there and the road that she lived on wasn’t even in Big Bay so I didn’t get to see it. Oh another cool thing about this town is that the highway that you take to get up there comes to a dead end. So there’s only one way out. I thought that was funny. But this lady lived way out in the sticks. And we couldn’t find HER house for the life of us so we decided to knock some doors on the houses we could see and ask them if they knew where they lived. And you have to keep in mind that these people probably moved out here for a reason, to not be bothered. And that’s exactly what we did!! I was way scared that we would have a shotgun pulled on us, but that didn’t happen. Elder Wessely says that he has had that happen before. So that brought me comfort. But these people weren’t happy to see us, but not unhappy enough to pull a shotgun on us. The first guy wasn’t any help at all. The second lady said “well they either live in this house across the street or back there in that house.” Me: “uhh, what house?” Her: “Oh, just keep walkin down the road and keep your eyes open and you’ll see a roof over there, but don’t walk too fast.” Great help huh? So, that’s what we did, and we found the roof…and the house. Our referral wasn’t there, but her husband was, so we just gave him the stuff she ordered and went on our merry way. It was a fun experience. And the highway is like a roller coaster too, so that was another plus.

Saturday and Sunday were both pretty good days though. We got some referrals from a member too!! It was great. But unfortunately, neither was interested. But that doesn’t mean stop giving us referrals!! But we met some cool people, talked to some cool people, and met with ward members about doing missionary work. We also gave a blessing to a lady in the hospital who talks FOREVER about things that aren’t super important. But we helped her out, so that’s good. Sunday, we had 5 investigators at church. Zach finally came for the first time in like a month. So that was good. And his 2 kids who are investigators came as well. And the redneck adopted kids also came. They aren’t really interested, but hey, they came and it was sweet. We also had dinner with the bishop and Zach and his family and another member family who Zach really likes. So it was a sweet evening and I am happy and excited for Zach again. So thank you everybody who prayed for him. It has helped!

But yeah, that was my week. Pretty good, but it could be better. So just keep the prayers, love, and support coming. And another exciting thing about this week, well some of it, was that it was “warm” again! Well, 50 degrees, but it feels awesome. Hopefully it’ll be like that for a while now. But yeah, that’s about all my news! I’ll try sending those pictures again and the ones from this week. Some did get messed up on my card though, some cool ones too. But, I’ll send the ones that I still have. I think the computer messed them up somehow.

Love you guys!!

Elder Jesse Kissell

Baby, it's cold!

Howdy!

Well, guess what everybody? I saw snow the earliest I’ve ever seen it in my life this week! It snowed on Saturday, the 10th! Isn’t that NUTS?! I think it is. And we were playing football in it so that was sweet. Every Saturday morning we either play football or basketball with the youth and I convinced them to man up and go play some football in the snow! It was way fun. And I didn’t break another finger! Yay! But nevertheless, it was snowing, and it was freezing. It didn’t stick either. But still. It snowed. Enough said. And since we were playing football, I didn’t have my camera to prove it. So you just have to believe me I guess!

This week went pretty well. Slowly but surely the work is picking back up here and we get to talk to sweet people. At district meeting last week, our district leader Elder Hatch told us that we really on our missions need to forget who we were back home and forget ourselves and work. I half and half agree with that. Our personality determines the kind of missionary we are so I’m not going to change my personality, but I will be trying to fully devote myself to the Lord for the rest of my mission. Maybe that’s what he was trying to say, I don’t know, but don’t worry, I’ll still be me I promise! No fakeys here. But we spent a lot of our time this week just trying to get return appointments with people and it happened!! I’m so happy. So this next week we’ll have a pretty sweet week so I’m stoked. I’m just kind of sick and tired of having people saying “oh just swing by I guess, if I’m here I’m here, if not try by later!” I hate it!! But when they said that this time I wouldn’t let it fly, I said that we need a specific return time or else they wouldn’t be seeing us. So we got one! Bold and fearless, that’s me. There’s a couple part member families we’ll be teaching this week. One, the Laplaunts, are a family that just randomly shows up to conference last week without anybody seeing them for the past 5 years! And we didn’t even tell them or anything about conference and they just came! So that’s cool. But we are going to be teaching them this week and helping them relearn and learn about the gospel. I’m pretty pumped. Then another couple, the Greens, they’re both wrestlers and are ripped, are really interested in coming back out and learning and we finally got a specific time with them this week and are excited for that. And yeah, it should be good. And the other day we went tracting for the first time in forever. Strange as it seems, I kind of missed it. It’s fun talking to people, even if they don’t like you. It’s funny to see different rejection methods. Either they do it politely and nicely, or they’re blatantly and obviously very upset you knocked on their door and interrupted their video game or something. Tough luck guys. But yeah, we didn’t have any success that day, but it was nice to go out knocking again.

On Thursday, we went out to a place I’d never been to before. It’s a little dinky podunk town called Au Train. It’s a gorgeous drive out there and more than half the time you’re driving right next to Superior. And I think I might’ve even seen a mountain going out there! But it disappeared. It was exciting for a few seconds though. But the leaves are gorgeous out here most definitely. There’s some less active people we stopped by, luckily they were home, and a referral we also stopped by. She wasn’t home though. But the less active family we saw want us to come back out and help them cut and stack wood next week sometime and they’re going to make us a turkey. I’m pretty pumped. And we’ve also been asked by a few other people to help them with their wood too, so I’m excited to wear jeans again! But on the way back, we saw this weird roadside museum thing that we stopped at. It’s pretty much a big park that you drive through and what it is is that these people have made art out of scrap metal and painted it and done sweet stuff with it. It was so random but it was way cool. I only got one picture but we’re going to stop by again when we are out that way again. It was sweet. But we are going to be teaching a former investigator later today who I guess was really close to a baptismal date a few years ago and she was excited to see us, so hopefully we can help her out and get her there this time. Also on Thursday we found out that Pete Judici, one of the less active members we were working with, had passed away. He had throat and tongue cancer. Pretty sad. But I guess he passed away peacefully so that’s good. But his wife, Dusti, is not a member and she’s the one who we taught a couple months ago and was crying at the end of the lesson. So we hope to start working with her more and get her to the temple to get sealed to Pete! They had asked about that and we are more than happy to teach her about it. We’re excited.

On Saturday evening, we were way out in Ishpeming and we figured since we wouldn’t be there for another week or so, we would stop at Da Yoopers Tourist Trap for a few minutes!! It was ridiculous. But pretty funny. Pretty much yoopers are just a Canadian or Upper Peninsula version of a redneck. So it made me laugh. I got some cool things in the store too. A sweet shirt and a tie pin and some surprises for back home people! But yeah it was sweet. Saw the worlds biggest operating chainsaw and shotgun. Bet you’re jealous! After that, we saw our people there in Ishpeming and one of our investigators had the smallest dog I’d ever seen in my life. It was nasty as heck but I still got a picture with it. Gross. But yeah, we saw a bunch of people out there and have return appointments with a lot of people for next week. Should be a sweet one. I’ll hopefully have some sweet news next week.

But yeah, life’s going great. No complaints from me. I have been learning a lot to persevere through the hard times and to look for the good and humor in bad days. It’s helped. If you have a bad attitude about things, nothing will get done in missionary work. So I’ve just been focusing a lot on being happy and working with what I’ve got. And it’s been working! So my suggestion for anybody if they’re going through a hard time, just look for the good in dumb things that happen to you. Like Elder Wirthlin said in one of his talks in one of the lasts conferences, look for the good in things! I get some sweet quotes every now and then from Kiana and Hilary and lots of the times they are quotes saying to be happy. And I’ve been doing what they tell me to do and be happy. So I suggest this to everybody, BE HAPPY!!!!!!

I love you guys and have a SWEET week!

Love,
Elder Kissell

Da Week

Hey everyone!

Well, it’s kinda weird it’s already October ain’t it? I think it is! I’ve been out 4 months now already! I know it’s not much, but hey, it’s gone by way fast. AND, I’m lovin’ it! But let me tell ya bout my week…

So this week was a pretty bittersweet week. The bitter part wasn’t my favorite. But here’s kinda the jist of what happened. On Tuesday, we had our district meeting in Iron Mountain and on the way back from that we stopped by some referrals that we got from the fair a long time ago in Ishpeming. Both people were home and we got a return appointment, which means investigator, with one. Her name was Rene’. She was really excited for us to come back and we gave her a Book of Mormon and the DVD’s that she ordered and sweet stuff like that. Then we went over to the other referral and I about killed her…literally. It was kinda funny though haha. I knocked on her door pretty loud because I could hear the TV and she came to the door and she was breathing super hard and couldn’t talk for about 3 minutes because I had scared her so bad. But, she was less accountable and we were talking to her at her doorstep about anything and everything you could think about. From McDonalds to hurricanes. We were there for forever and finally I just had to say that we would stop by next time we were out in the area and see her. We had been on her doorstep for like 25 minutes and got nothing done, so I wasn’t really being that mean. And then we went down to Negaunee and were trying by some less active people and stuff down there. There was this black guy who was walking down the street with an office chair and I told elder Wessely I was going to ask him what he was doing with an office chair. So I did, turns out he just bought it and was walking it home, but anyway, he asked why we were all dressed up and we started talking about the church. We taught him very briefly and asked if we could come back and teach him and he said “of course brothas!” He was way excited and said he’s been searching for a long time for a perfect church for him. We told him he was probably gonna find it here. He was way pumped and set the time up for when we taught him. Same night we were going to teach Rene’, but later. So yeah that was SWEET! 2 new investigators in one night and our Thursday was getting filled up quick. The next day we went and talked to 2 of our other investigators, Ashley and Emmy, the sisters, and set up an appointment to teach them at the chapel and have a chapel tour lesson. Something I haven’t done yet but is said to be one of the sweetest methods to teach somebody. And they said yes that would be awesome and we got that all set up. So by that time we were way excited for Thursday and couldn’t wait for it. We had planned for a member to be with us for all those appointments too, including a brand new RM sister. But here comes Thursday…it STUNK!!!!!!!!!! EVERYTHING fell through. It was not cool. Ashley and Emmy didn’t show, Rene’ dropped us before we could even get inside, Eric (the black guy) wasn’t home, and a couple college girls we’ve been trying to teach for sometime weren’t home either. So yeah, our dream day fell apart. We were planning on having 4 investigators with a baptismal date and 4 lessons with a member which would’ve been sweet. Oh well…it happens. But yeah, the elders quorum president was with us at the end of the day and he said whenever he had a bad day on his mission he would go out to eat. So he took us out to eat and then we came home and contemplated what we could do better. But yeah, not my favorite day Thursday was.
Friday was a really stormy day and we had a few set appointments with less actives and luckily they were home. But it was really stormy out and we would get soaked instantly, raincoats and all. So no tracting that day. A tree even fell down right behind our apartment that day. That made me feel real safe. But we had some good visits. Nothing too spectacular though.

Saturday was CONFERENCE!!!!!!! How sweet was conference this year?! WAY SWEET! I have never been so excited for conference in my life. And it rocked. My favorite talks on Saturday were elder Bednars, president Uchtdorfs, elder Callister for the 70, and elder Andersens. Those were my faves but all the talks rocked for sure. We had 2 food appointments that day so that was awesome. And then late that day, we had priesthood session. It started at 8 here! So we didn’t get home til 10:15! I thought that was weird. But priesthood was awesome. I learned so much this year in all of conference. People say it’s the “missionary fire”…whatever that means. But maybe it is. I learned a lot.

Sunday was also great for conference. But it was a little discouraging in the morning though because we found out that Zachs girlfriend was living with him…not good. So yeah, he’s kind of struggling. So definitely keep him in your prayers. I don’t really know how to help him though, and besides, he’s technically the wards responsibility now. Harsh sounding, but that’s the truth. And he also told us he was going to conference 20 minutes before it started and he never showed. So that was also concerning. But conference on Sunday rocked. I had several favorites for Sundays sessions too. L. Tom Perrys, president Monson, elder Hollands, and Brent Nielsons. They all rocked though. Those were just the ones that stuck out to me. Elder Hollands was sweet though. His talks are always awesome to me. Straight forward, to the point, no denying, and just powerful. I loved it a lot. That will be a good article to use for our investigators most definitely. But I hope that you all enjoyed conference as much as I did! It was sweet.

But yeah, that was our week pretty much. Keep me, elder Wessely, and Marquette in your prayers. We don’t have any progressing investigators and the investigators we do have are more just talking to us because they’re curious, not interested. We are planning on doing some serious tracting this week, not making me too happy. We also need to get the ward more excited about missionary work. REMEMBER!!!! MEMBERS are full time FINDERS!!! WE are full time TEACHERS!!! That will make the work go so much smoother and help it be so much more successful.

Clark, my congrats to you and the Brazil mission call! That’s sweet man. You sure aren’t leaving for quite a while though. Kinda stinks. But have fun man. I’m way excited for ya. The mission is one spiritual high after another, can’t get that anywhere else in the world besides a mission. An apostle said that so that means it’s legit!

Love you all!! Keep me in your prayers. Look for missionary opportunities!!! Seriously. The lord will bless you greatly and the missionaries will be in love with you!

Love,
Elder Kissell

p.s. Guess what? I can see my breath in Marquette now! Jealous?! Oh, and remember how i said that like 4 weeks ago i might've broke my finger? Well, bishop, who is a doctor said i did. So i'm going to go see what i can do about getting that fixed today. It's going to be fun!!

Pictures!


1. One of the elders had to stop to use the bathroom on the way home from district meeting and there were bathrooms randomly at this sweet roadside park thing. Pretty eh?


2. Elder Crossley and i found a water pump. Haven't seen one in forever!!



3. My service place :)



4. My broken left middle finger. It's looked like that for 4 weeks. Should probably do something about that.