Elder Jesse Kissell: November?!

Hello everyone!!

Well, we thought this week was going to be AWESOME, well it was, but we had about 9 fallen through appointments again. NOT cool. I just don’t see how hard it is to call us and say “hey, I’m going to be shopping at this time so can we reschedule?” But, I guess that is too hard, so we show up, lesson prepared, only to be greeted with an unopening door. So that is a bummer. And we do all that we can to ensure that they’ll be there. We call, we confirm with them the day before, and they even right down our appointment times. So, having no idea what to do now, we fasted yesterday for less falling through appointments and discernment to figure out how to help address peoples needs to make them excited to meet with us. So, hopefully I will have better news to report next week.

Ashley and Emmy, the 2 girls we have baptismal dates with, we haven’t seen for 2 weeks. We think they may even be trying to avoid us, even though we did nothing to offend them or scare them off. So that kinda stinks, we need to see them soon! This is my favorite dropped lesson story though…so we met this guy named Alex and his girlfriend Vanessa tracting last week and they told us to come back Wednesday at 3. So, around a quarter to 3, we went up to that area and since we had a little time, we went and saw a less active who lives right across the street from him. Alex was talking to some of his buddies outside his apartment and when he saw us he said “hey guys!” And we say “hey man, we’ll be there in a second!” We go see the less active for about 4 minutes, go across the street to Alex’s apartment, and he’s not there. So standing there in unbelief for a few minutes we knocked really hard again and his girlfriend answered the door and said that he’d gone to football practice and that she was going to go watch him. Why couldn’t he have said something?! Crazy people I tell ya. But, life goes on. But long story short, we had a potential to have a sweet, lesson filled week, but the lesson filled part didn’t follow through.

We started teaching a “dry Mormon” guy in our ward this week named Curt. He is married to the bishops sister. And the bishops mom and dad are still in the ward and have 11 kids, all active in the church, and Curt is kind of like the black sheep. But they still totally all love him, but just wish he would join. So, we tried our luck. He’s totally not interested in joining, but loves the church. So, don’t know so much what to do with him. And in the past, missionaries haven’t really been such a big influence on him. He says that they’ve stayed at their house all night watching concerts and on Sundays watching football with him…not good. So, we’ll see what we can do to change his views on the elders.

On Tuesday we had a super long companion study in the morning, 3 hours, discussing the atonement. It was sweet. We had a couple articles from Elder Bruce C. Hafen talking about the atonement and we had a sheet with questions we had to answer and we had a big long discussion about the atonement. It was very enlightening and helped me realize how beautiful and amazing the atonement really is. One of the things that is most special to me that I learned about the atonement is that after ALL we can do to fix the consequences of a sin, after ALL we can do to help somebody else out, after ALL we can do to be the best we can be, after ALL we can do, Jesus Christ will take care of the rest for us and wipe away our tears. I think that that is really special. I love the atonement.

Wednesday was one of the days where we had a ton of appointments, but all fell through, so we tracted in a couple places, Marquette and Gwinn. Nobody was interested in Marquette so we went down to Gwinn and nobody was home there! So, that was annoying. But we did have some funny experiences down there. One lady answered the door and said “oh hold on, my phones ringing, I’ll be back.” She was gone for like 5 minutes!! It was way awkward, and right when I kinda felt like we should ring the bell again, and did, she came out and was kinda annoyed with my impatience. Oh well. It just made me laugh that she just left us standing out there awkwardly. Then another lady said that the Book of Mormon was just a book full of garbage and that it is a terrible book and that the Bible is the only word of God. We asked if she had read the Book of Mormon and she said “no, and I don’t need to!” And she stormed off, funny how people are sometimes. But what was sweet about Wednesday night was that it was our wards Halloween party and we got to eat a ton of candy and a ton of chili and wonderful stuff like that. We didn’t dress up because we can’t, but that’s ok! Something cool still happened… At the end, awards were handed out for the best costumes. The scariest, most creative, funniest, cutest, etc. And guess what?! We got the award for the cutest adult costume!!!:) We’re pretty darn cute I guess. It made me laugh.

Thursday, more tracting, more fallen through appointments. And also the day we drove down for mission tour which was on Friday! Mission tour rocked. Bruce C. Hafen and his wife were there, President and Sister Barrett, and a Stake president were all there and spoke to us. In order for us to get Neenah, WI on time, we had to get up at 4:30 in Green Bay to get there. It was not my favorite thing in the world. And when we got there we were told he wouldn’t be there for another hour. But it finally started at 8 and went til 7 in the evening! It was super long. But it was 11 hours of solid awesomeness. And I knew that I had heard Elder Hafen speak somewhere other than general conference, and when he asked me where I was from, he said “oh, I’ve spoken at a stake conference in Wenatchee!” So, that’s where I’ve heard him speak before! That was neat. And it was sad because I was excited to shake his hand, but because of the flu he wouldn’t. So I got to elbow bump with a general authority and his wife! I thought that was kinda funny. But the talks were amazing and very enlightening. He spoke on the atonement predominantly and his wife gave an awesome talk on the plan of salvation with a huge emphasis on the atonement. Both emphasized that without teaching the atonement, there would be no need in even teaching investigators the lessons. Nothing would even matter about our lessons if the atonement wasn’t mentioned. So after 11 hours of hearing about the atonement, I think I am good to go. But I imagine we would probably still be talking about the atonement if we could. The atonement is so in depth and so intricate and so beautiful that days could be spent on it. I just think that it is a beautiful thing. And the fact that we don’t even know half of what took place during the atonement amazes me. The millennium will be an interesting time when we find out all these unknown truths and things. I’m pretty excited to learn more about it. In my studies, I think the best scripture for me that talks about the atonement is Alma 7:11-13. Give that one a looksy.

Saturday was our deep cleaning day! It’s a mission rule that we aren’t to go out on 2 days of the year, Halloween and Good Friday, and on those days we clean our apartment. I thought ours was pretty clean but it was pretty gross. I found about 4 inches of standing water in our dishwasher which we never use, so who knows how long that’s been there! Long enough for algae to start growing, so that was a disgusting discovery. And there was nasty grease stains on the ceiling which still won’t come off after a long time of trying to remove them. Fun times.
And Sunday yesterday, we taught an impromptu lesson in priesthood, which everybody told us afterwards was really amazing, so I’m glad they liked it. We committed them to read the first lesson in Preach My Gospel and to pick one principle in that lesson and share it with one of their friends this week. I extend this commitment to whoever reads this letter. Sound good? After you do both those parts, write me a letter and tell me how it went! And after church yesterday we tracted. Unfortunately we found out that there was a Packer game yesterday, and not only was it just a Packer game, it was the Packer-Vikings game, the most important of the year! So, we were greeted very unhappily at several doors before deciding to just go see members. So that was a bummer. Don’t mess with Pack fans in this part of the country, they’ll rip your head off!!

But, this week went ok. I’m still happy despite the bad luck we’ve been having with appointments. Continue to pray for me and the rest of the missionaries in the world, we need all we can get. I love you all!

Love,
Elder Kissell

Pictures!