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