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