Well, this week was wwwwaaaaaarrrrmmm! We're talking like 55 degrees!! That’s how warm it was here in July!! So it’s pretty strange. All the Yoopers up here are stressing out because last year at this time there was over a foot of snow here in Marquette. Well, I guess things change for sure. But I guess it’s supposed to snow this week on Wednesday and Thanksgiving, so that’ll be sweet. I want to see at least a little snow before I leave.
But, the week went very well. We had a fun and exciting pday last week. The Houghton missionaries came down and spent the day with us. We played monopoly and the guitar and hung out and fun stuff like that. But the cool part was that Wessely and I had planned to go out to a members home for a few days to work in the area out where they live. They live in a little town, not even a town, out in the middle of nowhere about 45 minutes away from Marquette. They have 40 acres of property and a very nice home. So it was a lot of fun that night. We just went there that night and spent the evening chatting with them. Didn’t have any time to do any work that evening unfortunately because we got there so late. But that’s ok, the following days were much better. Tuesday, we had our district meeting and then we came back that afternoon and started working the area. We basically went out there with the intentions of contacting all the less active members who live out there, and there are quite a few, about 15-20 or so families out there that are less active. But this was an exciting guy…the fun thing about seeing less active people is you never know what to expect. It’s almost like tracting! And that’s what makes it fun. But this one guy we came in contact with, his name was William, and he was 80 years old. Guess how long he hasn’t been to church? 57 years!!!! So insane. But he was a fun guy and was a pretty big smart alec, so we had a little bit of fun teasing each other back and forth. And as we were talking he says “hey come on now, help us unload all this booze out of our car.” And looking into the back of the car and seeing tons of boxes and also keeping in mind that this guy was a smart alec, I didn’t think it would be booze at all. So we helped him unload a bit, but then after a while I got curious. He wasn’t lying! Each box held 6 bottles of vodka and he had 20 boxes AT LEAST that we helped him unload. That’s a ton of booze. So I asked him what the heck he needs all this booze for and he told me that if you drink 2 glasses a day you’ll be so much more healthier than what you are and you’ll live longer. I don’t really think he drinks 2 glasses a day though, maybe 2 bottles! Oh well, but wouldn’t that make a great missionary picture? “Mormon missionaries in Marquette help unload boxes of vodka to help reactivate members.” Good thing he lived in the boonies and nobody could take pictures of us…but this guy was a nice guy. After talking to him, he still loves and respects the church, it’s just not his “thing”. He says he even tries to convert Jehovah’s Witnesses when they talk to him! I don’t get it…but oh well, he’s still a good guy. Then we went and saw another less active member not too far away from him. I believe I’ve already talked about this guy in the past before, but his name is Terry and this summer he miraculously overcame kidney and liver failure. He was poisoned by some fumes in his work and they caused his kidneys and liver to shutdown but after receiving a few blessings, they made a complete recovery. Unfortunately, the rest of his body was affected by this stuff too and his body is not totally recovered yet and he still has some not so good health problems. He has also lost all his money due to medical expenses, he can’t work, he lives in a small trailer with no running water, his family lives in downstate Michigan, he’s weaker than weak, he has no transportation, he has nothing. He is struggling pretty bad right now to say the least and is pretty miserable and down. I think I would be too, life has dealt him some heavy blows. But we helped him split wood for a while, that was a lot of fun. And we gave him a blessing and just talked to him and gave him comfort and encouragement. But this experience humbled me so much. I definitely needed it. It helped me to realize all the billions and billions of thing that I have everyday to be thankful for. I have the strength to wake up everyday and get up out of my comftorable and warm bed and go study in a comftorable and warm apartment. I can also go and get food out of my fridge and I can take a nice warm shower and I can then put a clean shirt on my back and sweet tie and get ready to go and serve the Lord. I have so much to be thankful for in just the first few minutes I wake up.
So my challenge for you this week is to think to yourself, maybe even write a list of things that you are grateful for. This is a small list of mine…
1. I am on a mission. I am serving the Lord.
2. I have an amazing family who love and support me.
3. I have amazing friends who love and support me.
4. My best friend is in the same mission as me!
5. I am a member of the only true church on earth.
6. I can read the Book of Mormon everyday and be uplifted by everything I read.
7. I have a comftorable bed and a warm apartment.
8. I serve in an amazing ward who loves and supports us.
9. I was called to serve a mission by a PROPHET who is called by the Lord.
10. I have good health.
11. I can help people be happy.
12. I have warm clothes that will help me be warm when it snows.
13. I am grateful for music that makes me happy and feel the spirit.
14. I am grateful for education that helps me become smarter and excel in the church as well as in life.
15. I am grateful to wake up each and every morning and see a beautiful world.
That is just a small list that took me only a few minutes to make. But there is so much I have to be grateful for.
The next day we were still out in that area. We decided to drive a little ways and go up to another part of our area we’ve never been to that was very close by. It was in a nice little town called Munising. We caught some people home and invited them back out to church. I hope that they felt our love and that the ward misses them. There’s a cool little town up there called Christmas! I thought it was neat. Everything thing there is Christmas oriented with Santa and Mrs. Claus and elves and reindeer and stuff like that. It’s pretty neat. Yoopers are weird. But yeah, our time out there was productive and we saw several less active people.
Thursday we were back in Marquette and saw several potentials that we had and talked to some of them. I think things will pick up here soon. We just need to excite our potentials that we have now. It’ll happen sometime. We talked to another older man who is a potential and he was giving elder Wessely a hard time because he never talked. I thought it was funny because he always gets mad at me for telling him he never talks, so I’m glad an investigator did. So he started talking. Hooray! Now I don’t have to talk nonstop. So that was good for him.
Friday was spent here in Marquette and Harvey too, we saw more potentials and even taught a few people. So that was great. Helped some recent converts move a couch and taught them some things. But nothing really too noteworthy or spectacular happened that day.
Saturday was a great day though, we went out to Ishpeming and saw our people out there. We had an awkward conversation with an investigator out there who told us about how her son is going through puberty…great! So, we quickly changed the subject and talked about the scriptures instead of that. A topic I appreciate much more. But hopefully we have some progression with her. She believes that the Book of Mormon is true, believes in the apostasy, believes in everything, BUT, she doesn’t believe the church has the true priesthood authority. So that presents a problem. She needs to read and to pray with faith and humility and she’ll find out that what we teach is true and that this is the only true church. That evening we also saw Ashley and Ben!! They’re awesome. We were going in there with the intention of just finding out there interest level, but we ended up teaching the plan of salvation. So that was good. They still haven’t kept any commitments or anything, so that is frustrating. And they didn’t come to church yesterday either. So, we really hope the ball gets rolling with them.
That’d be so awesome. They would be a perfect little Mormon family.
Sunday was a good day. Fun fact about elder Wessely is that he plays the flute really well, and today, he played in sacrament meeting. It was very nice. But now the scary thing is that everybody is asking me if I have any hidden talents and elder Wessely mentions every time that I can play the piano and other members have said that I have a very nice voice singing the hymns in sacrament meeting. By the way…I have been regaining some of my piano skill. I’m certain that that makes some of you happy. But the scary thing is that the ward music lady has eluded to the fact of a piano/flute/singing trio for a sacrament meeting around Christmas. But, I will more than likely not be here so I won’t have to worry about it!! But we’ll see, I’m a little nervous though. But church was good because a few of the less actives we saw the other day came to church!! Yay! And one of them was Terry, so that was awesome. But still no investigators. Sad. The talks were also really awesome, strangely, talking about gratitude! And the member we stayed with out there, the Simpsons, she was one of the speakers. She started naming things off in the middle of her talk that she was grateful for and one of the things she was grateful for was “Elder Kissell’s appetite.” And everybody laughed and turned around and looked at me. It was funny. But I just thought it was a weird thing to be grateful for. But thinking about it, I did eat a lot out there. I put down 4 potatoes one night because they didn’t want any leftovers, so I guess that’s where it came from! So now I’m known as the missionary who eats a lot! Sweet. But Sunday evening we had a really good appointment with the husband of a member in our ward. He’s a dry Mormon, and he loves us but just doesn’t feel comftorable being baptized yet. We asked him to pray about it. So hopefully that goes well and he has good news to tell us next time. I want to be baptized! That’d be so sweet. It could happen though.
But this week was great. I am excited for Thanksgiving and I hope all will go well with everybody elses holiday back home! We have been invited to several members homes for Thanksgiving and have been invited to participate in the Turkey Bowl, so all is well is Jesse-ville! And we’ll also be teaching some sweet people too probably.
Love ya’ll!!
Elder Kissell
pictures (kinda lame this week...sorry)
1. Christmas in Michigan!!!
2. Signs of a working missionary :)
No comments:
Post a Comment