Well hey everybody! How is life for all ya’ll? Life here in Marquette is pretty good. This week went much better than the past we’ve been having and was much more successful. So, let me tell you about it!
On Tuesday at district meeting, President and Sister Barrett were there and taught us how to be more successful missonaries and we had our interviews. The training we received was awesome, about how to find families tracting and about how to prevent appointments from falling through. Exactly what we needed! So that was very helpful to me. My interview with president went awesome too. The first thing he told me was “Elder Kissell, you’ve been in Marquette quite a while.” So I’m taking that as a pretty heavy hint that I will probably be leaving after this transfer. But we will see! I’m not ruling anything out though. I love it up here so I’d be fine with staying another 6 weeks. But president Barrett is awesome. He is just very involved with the work and with us and our lives that it is just unbelievable. I don’t know how he does it, but he does. He is truly a worthy man called of God to do this. So I greatly respect him and how much he not only helps me, but how he helps our investigators. He knows ALL of our investigators by name and he asks about them whenever we talk. I just think that’s awesome.
Wednesday was a sweet day. We taught 2 way solid lessons that day to a couple of our investigators. We taught Ashley (one of the sisters with a baptismal date) and her husband Ben!! He was finally home and we taught him quite a bit. We helped get him from thinking, “oh these guys are cool but I don’t want to hear anything about their religion” to “man these guys believe in some sweet stuff!” They both had a ton of awesome questions and we answered all of them. Some questions I know I couldn’t have answered before my mission. It’s just so awesome teaching by the spirit and knowing that they feel it. We emphasized eternal marriage and eternal families a lot. They have a 2 year old boy. They were very interested and accepting and wanting to prepare for that. And Ben, a stubborn trucker, said he would prepare himself for baptism! No date yet, but we plan on setting a solid one with him and rescheduling Ashley’s this week. Ashley’s needs to be rescheduled anyway because she hasn’t come to church yet and needs to be there at least 3 times before baptism and it’s physically impossible for her to now with the date she has. So we’ll ponder and pray over that one. That evening we also taught our investigator Brandy and her less active fiancé Shaun. It was solid and awesome too. They’re such amazing people. We watched the Restoration DVD and discussed the restoration once more with them. They totally felt the spirit and we know that they love this gospel. We plan on setting a date with her this week. The only lame thing is that they’re moving to Tennessee in December! So we need to work fast for sure. But they’re awesome people. We took bishop over to meet them later in the week and he thinks that they’re amazing people as well.
We tracted a super rich street this week too. There are some crazy insane huge houses around this place. I almost died that time too. There was this huge dog that we didn’t see at one of the houses and as we are walking away, he comes out of nowhere, barking super loud and running full speed right towards ME!!! I had the deer in the headlights look, or the missionary about to get eaten by a dog look, and was about to deck the dog if he jumped on me. But he stopped like 2 feet in front of me and was just barking and stuff. That was my first bad experience with dogs on my mission. Not too fun!! Elder Wessely had a good laugh out of it though. And it seems like rich people are just as humble about religion as the not so rich people! So, we’ll try to tract in all sorts of places now that we found that out. Nobody was interested, but we planted some good seeds in some fertile ground.
Thursday we went out to Ishpeming and Negaunee and tried to set up some appointments there. Problem this time is that nobody wanted to make appointments! But, we talked to some less active people out there and shared messages with them and invited them to come back to church. No luck this Sunday though…sad. But we had another solid lesson that night with a less active guy and his girlfriend, not a member. He comes to church fairly often, but he is still a little on the rebel side. But this lesson was sweet, he said we could come over and teach him to “practice” our lessons. Halfway through, his girlfriend came and we turned the focus to her and she really liked what we taught and they committed to read and to pray together. So, hoping that they did! It rocked though!
Friday…this was a great day. You’ll probably get some laughs out of this one. We were at our recent converts Ernest place and we were there for quite a while. He called a less active lady who lives in the same building as he does and she wanted to talk to us, and this lady talks for everrrrrrrrr so we decided that we should probably go use the restroom before she gets here. Wessely goes first and then I go. There was a chain in there that I thought was for flushing the toilet and I thought that was sweet so I pulled it, nothing happened. So I looked a little closer and it said EMERGENCY written on it. It was engraved on a dark brown faceplate and very small lettering, and how I was supposed to know that’s what it was, I don’t know. So I was just hoping I didn’t do anything bad. Then right before I walked out, Wessely knocked on the door and said that I had just called the ambulance. WOOPS!! So the nurse had to call and cancel the ambulance since no emergency happened, just a dumb missionary boy was curious and pulled the chain. And there was a super loud alarm that was going off in the main nurses office, I felt like a dork. But hey, you live and you learn right? We also had a follow up visit with Ben and Ashley that night. We read 3 Nephi 11 with them. They thought it was awesome. They had already forgotten a bit about the apostasy and stuff. So we need to probably reteach the restoration and things before we move on. It’s all good. But it was sweet and they really like us and our lessons so they give us food.
On Saturday, nothing really too exciting happened. It was super warm though so that was awesome. We had our first dropped appointment of the week that day though, so that was a bummer, and it was a long ways away too. It frustrated us a little because we had called twice and she didn’t answer and we go out there and she was sick and didn’t have a reason for not calling us back. So that was a bit frustrating. Oh well, what can ya do.
Sunday, none of our investigators came again…bummer. Zach and his family came though despite the fact they slept in and missed most of sacrament meeting. But Zach learned a lot in Sunday school and in priesthood. He took lots of mental notes and asked us a bunch of stuff later on. He also kicked his girlfriend out too. So, he’s making some progress!! Yay! So, all in all, pretty good Sunday.
I had a great week. Hope yours went well too. I pray for you all!!! Family, loved ones, friends, etc. You guys all rock! Keep praying for the elders!!
Love
Elder Jesse Merrill Kissell
Pictures
1. Walking the break wall last pday!
2. Breakwall
3. Beacon at the end of the breakwall
4. View of Marquette/Lower Harbor from the breakwall
5. False, you cannot buy happiness. But we can GIVE it to you!
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