Hey everyone!

Well, this week was a little bit slower paced than usual due to transfers week, but, I still of news to tell you so never fear!

So Elder Barker got transferred to northern Milwaukee to the Lake Michigan area, which is actually Blakes first area.  And speaking of Blake, guess where he went?!  Marquette!!  So that’s pretty crazy, I totally loved it up there and I know he will too.  He was pretty excited about it, I talked to him for a little bit on transfer call night.  But my new companion is Elder Roberts, he’s from Alpine, UT, he was last up in Manitowoc, and he’s been on his mission 20 months.  So he’s an older missionary and there’s a possibility I could “kill” him/be his last companion.  So that’d be sweet.  He isn’t trunky and wants to close his mission out strong so that’s sweet.  He’s a cool guy too.  It’s a requirement I think to be cool to serve on campus, so he is cool.  We’ve got quite a bit in common, we like doing things outdoors and mountain biking and such, so we have stuff to talk about.

So Elder Barker and I at the beginning of this week bid farewell to some members and he wanted to go see a few touristy things before he left.  But we made these little trips legit for missionaries because we talked to lots of people and even got some potentials out of it, so that was cool.  We went inside the capitol, it’s way sweet in there, and went to some cool stores around there.  I’m pretty sad he’s gone though, I liked Barker quite a bit, we had fun and got a lot of work done.  Transfer day was crazy though and super unorganized, the transfer bus didn’t get to Madison til 8:30 in the evening and we were with a couple who absolutely loves the missionaries and she is mega pregnant and is in pre-labor right now.  She’s actually on bed rest, but she was sad elder Barker was leaving and wanted to see him off, but she was ticked the bus wasn’t there with elder Roberts at 5:30 when it was supposed to be and so we went out to dinner with them.  Coolio!

So Martin is still doing well, great actually!  On Wednesday there was a stake priesthood meeting and some members took him to that and he thought it was really great.  There was a man from Africa who spoke and he really enjoyed that.  And we also had a dinner with him on Thursday night.  Some members had us and him over and they absolutely loved him.  We watched the Restoration DVD afterwards and he thought that was really awesome.  It’s a great show and really makes everything make sense.  So he thought that was really awesome.  He also asked a question that really surprised us:  how do I pay tithing?  Yup, he is really that awesome.  We hadn’t mentioned anything about tithing to him but he figured that there must be some way that the church gets money and he wanted to know how he could contribute.  We actually weren’t planning on teaching him about tithing till later, but he asked so we won’t deny him that!  We told him what tithing is used for, temples and church buildings, etc.  And he goes “so that’s how that beautiful temple in Ghana was built then?”  He really loves the Accra temple.  He’s way excited to go inside someday.  He still hasn’t been able to contact his kids’ caretaker yet to talk to him about the missionaries, so hopefully he does that, we really want to get missionaries over there.  He is still working on getting days off on Sunday’s from Walmart, still hasn’t happened quite yet, but, keep those prayers coming!!  He’s great though, reads and prays every single day and is still just golden.  He said a really awesome prayer at the end of that lesson we had with him Thursday night too.  The spirit is always so powerful when he prays, he will be a great priesthood holder.  HE ROCKS!!!!!!!

We weren’t able to contact other potentials we had this week.  That Russian guy that sounded like Mrs. Doubtfire wasn’t home and a couple others turned out to be not interested.  That’s ok though, we’ll find the ones who are ready.  Something else I’m really excited about is that there’s a new sister missionary here who has worked on several other campuses in the mission and really knows how to work with them and has some sweet ideas how to get more singles ward investigators, something we really need!  So I’m excited to work with them and get some work in that regard goin.  We do a lot with the singles ward like playing basketball and going to the temple and FHE’s and Institute, so hopefully things start coming of it.  Basketball has actually proven most effective so far!  It’s fun and we meet lots of non members!  Cool!

Oh, so something that was way spiritual and sweet this week just came to my mind that I wanted to talk about.  So, Barker and I, after that priesthood meeting, went with our zone leader to a member families home who needed blessings because lots of them were sick.  We helped the father administer and bless his kids and it was just really really sweet.  We gave blessings to his 9 year old daughter, 6 year old boy, and 18 month year old daughter.  This experience just made me way excited to be a dad and made me proud to hold the priesthood.  Each and every one of those blessings, you could tell the dad was being directed by Heavenly Father.  They were each so powerful and individual to the child being blessed.  It was really sweet giving the 18 month old daughter a blessing.  She was scared to have 4 big men around her, so she sat on the moms lap, and since her head was so small, we just put one hand each on her head.  It was a way good blessing and all in all just a great experience.  I love being able to hold the priesthood and do miraculous things such as this.  Just another event that emphasizes the truthfulness and awesomeness of this church. I love it so much!!!

Well folks, I don’t really have too much more to say.  The weather has been “warm” here this week at a steady 30ish degrees.  I have not been impressed by these ferocious Wisconsin winters yet!!!  I think it’s colder and snowier back home!!  Oh well, I won’t complain about the warm since I have to walk around in the stuff.
Love you guys!!!!
Elder Kissell

pictures!

1.  ohhhhh yeahhhhhh

2.  best sandwich ever

3.  walkin to el capitol

4.  inside the capitol, cool eh?

5.  the dome.  Sweet!

6.  worlds biggest water fountain, well, probably not, but still huge.

January 19, 2010

Howdy!
Well, I had a WAY sweet week this week.  Fun and spiritual, very spiritual.  I grew a lot this week in my testimony.  I love being out on a mission and learning, growing, and feeling so much every single day.
So, MARTIN UPDATE!!!  He still rocks.  We had a couple meetings with him this week.  We taught him the word of wisdom and it was a great lesson.  We figured that since he is as golden as he is, we might as well be bold and fearless.  I guess we should be that way all the time, but more so with him.  Anyway, he drank tea every now and then and he was concerned with the no tea part, brought out his box, we told him it was the bad kind, and he says “ok, don’t need that anymore,” as he threw it behind the couch.  Awesome!!  And he is having no problems with it and we don’t expect him to.  We also met with him Thursday night I think to just show him the chapel and explain church to him.  He loved the building.  The church here is really sweet.  It’s an old building and has some sweet architecture inside.  He thought it was great and was really really excited to come this Sunday.  When we were at the church, we showed him the baptismal font and said that that’s where he will be baptized in a few weeks!  He thought it was  very nice and is so excited.  We then just talked to him about life and got to know him a little better.  He is such a humble and great man.  He has made so many changes in his life and has grown so close to the Savior.  I just got to thinking how I can do that in my life, even though I don’t have problems with the things he did.  But, I still do have my struggles and all I need to do is put my trust in the Savior and have that strong of faith like Martin does.  He thinks he learns a lot from us, but I think maybe we learn more from him than he does from us!  He rocks.  Then on Sunday, he came to church and absolutely LOVED it.  That’s underlined and bold for a reason!  He was there early, a member he had met earlier this week invited him to sit with him and his family (AWESOME!!), and the bishopric gave great talks that must have been pre planned for Martin or something.  He thought the organ was really sweet too.  As do I…the organ is really big.  Anyway, gospel principles was also really awesome too.  We asked the teacher to prepare a lesson on eternal families because that is something we really really want for him.  It was a great lesson, but the better part was that Martin made comments and answered questions like a lifelong member would!!  Me and Elder Barker would just look at each other and go “dang man!”  He has been SO prepared by the lord, it is unbelievable.  Then in priesthood, visitors were asked to introduce themselves.  Martin was the only visitor and we just expected him to say hello I’m Martin or something, but, he told his whole story of how he found the church and met us!  He basically told the priesthood brethren how golden he was.  Some guys even turned around to Barker and I and gave us thumbs up and stuff.  It was great.  And in the lesson, he made yet more comments that were really deep and thoughtful.  It was amazing.  People were introducing themselves to him and talking to him, inviting him over for dinners, offering us their homes to teach him in, and just giving him a very good welcome.  He loved it so much.  He told me as I walked him out to his car that he felt like he was home.  It was very special.  But, as he has every other Sunday morning off, we are praying super hard that he will get EVERY Sunday off, or have another job opportunity arise.  So, if ya’ll would like to, keep him and that in your prayers.  That’d be sweet!

But, the rest of our week was great as well.   We did some more bus contacting, fun stuff I’m tellin ya.  I met this cool black guy and got talking to him about the gospel and had a pretty sweet conversation.  I gave him a Book of Mormon and a Restoration pamphlet and he was pretty stoked.  Sounds like I did good right?  Wrong!!  I forgot to get his information so we could go see him and teach him!!!  I felt so lame!  But, never fear, I redeemed myself the next day.  I met a Russian guy, I’ll be totally honest though, I couldn’t figure out if it was a guy or a girl, he/she sounded like Mrs. Doubtfire.  But we asked a RM who went to Russia if the name was a guys or girls and he said it was a guys.  Anyway, he was a Jew, but interested in learning more about the gospel as our message is for everybody.  I got his info and we will be trying to see him this week!!  Oh yeah, totally redeemed myself.  So yeah, I think I’m finally getting better at the whole bus thing.  The bus is fun!

We went to the temple on Friday night with the singles ward, it was really awesome.  It was a pretty late session that we went to, 7:30, so needless to say we got home late.  But, the temple experience was awesome.  Before we started our session and while waiting in the chapel, I prayed that I would be able to feel Heavenly Fathers and the Saviors love in abundance in the temple that night.  It’s kind of impossible to NOT feel it in the temple, but I really wanted to feel something.  Something more and something that I could totally not deny.  Kind of like praying to know if the Book of Mormon is true, when you get an answer, there is no way you can deny it.  Anyway, the spirit was very strong throughout and once again, the Celestial room was amazing.  Right when I walked in, it was like the love of our Father and Savior was just dumped on me by a bucket.  It was crazy.  But I just prayed for a really long time and was brought to tears by all the things that I have been blessed with in my life.  The 3 that really stuck out to me when I was in there was 1) My family.  2) The gospel.  And 3) Being on a mission.  Of course there were other things, but those 3 just stuck out a ton to me.  And thinking about it longer in there and on the way home, those 3 things are really what matter the most to me right now in my life.  There just seemed to be something resounding in my mind, and that was love.  Not the lovey dovey romantic kind of love, but just the sincere, heartfelt, gratuitous kind of love.  I felt it so strongly in the celestial room that night, probably more so than I have in my life.  I am so grateful for my family.  I would not be anywhere near where I am today without you.  I am so grateful for the gospel.  I know I wouldn’t be anywhere near Madison if I didn’t have that in my life either.  And I am so grateful for my mission.  The family and the gospel all lead up to this.  I am SO grateful to be out here, if I hadn’t, I’d still be being a bump on the log back home getting my truck covered in mud just for the heck of it.  But instead, thanks to my family and this gospel and changes I have made in my life, I am out here.  I am learning and growing and having so many experiences that are changing and molding my life to the way I want it to be, and it’s awesome.  I couldn’t get that anywhere else but here.  I LOVE my life.  I love everybody who is reading this.  This gospel is true and I am so grateful to be sharing it with Wisconsin-ites.

But, sadly, Elder Barker is getting transferred.  I got along with him really well and we had a lot of fun together and got a lot of work done.  I hope my new companion rocks too and that we continue the awesomeness we have going here.  I’ll be staying put!!  Scary!!  I still don’t have this crazy Mad-Town figured out!!  I’ll get it though.

But, love you guys.  You all rock.  Keep on keepin on!

Love
Elder Jesse Kissell

pictures!

1.  This is what happens to a missionaries math skills when he's out...uh oh.

2.  The whole Madison zone!  minus one companionship.

Crazy Madtown

Heeeeeeeyyyyyyyy!!!!!!!

Howdy folks!

 Well, second cold week of January, actually, it wasn’t too bad, but we got some snow dumped on us.  That was fun!  But… this week was pretty sweet, so I’ll get started in tellin ya!

Last pday was sweet because I’m in an area  now where there’s actually elders within driving distance of each other so that means we can hang out and do  cool things on pday!  So we went and walked around on State Street (the main street of Madison) and played basketball for forever and ever.  It was a ton of fun.  And we went to a weird Oriental Market place to get drinks because our district leader is Japanese and wanted us to try this kind of drink.  It had strips of aloe in it and looked nasty, but it was excellent.  But that evening was crazy because we had several appointments all far away from each other.  And since the bus system stinks, that meant a lot of walking.  But, we meant another sweet investigator that evening for the first time and this is HIS story.  So this guy is a media referral and he ordered the Restoration DVD.  We asked him why he ordered it and he said that he just needed some restoration in his life.  I don’t think he really comprehended what the movie was about, but that’s ok.  We taught a really good first lesson and by the end, we felt prompted to extend a baptismal commitment.  We asked him to prepare for his baptism on Feb. 6th.  He was a bit hesitant at first, but after us assuring him and reading him some scriptures promising great blessings from baptism, he accepted!!  But it wasn’t but a few minutes later that he told us something that scratched his date.  He stabbed a guy and is on probation til 2016!!!  So yeah….he doesn’t have a date anymore.  It stunk though because we had his date written down on paper and had already layed out the things he needed to do before baptism and yeah, we were just pretty far into it and he told us that.  We talked to the zone leaders that night and they said that he wouldn’t be able to, so we had to think of a way to tell him he couldn’t be baptized.  A few days later in our next lesson we did.  It was really hard to do, but he took it really well.  The lesson was a fairly in depth lesson on repentance and why it was necessary to be totally and completely clean before baptism.  He took it well and is committed to repenting.  We hope that we can just get him to start living a gospel based life and get him coming to church regularly and maybe he will get off probation soon and be baptized before 2016.

MARTIN update!!  Martin is amazing!  He unfortunately wasn’t able to talk to his boss all this week because she was gone and so he wasn’t able to make it to church yesterday.  But he is still golden as ever.  We call him everyday and see how he’s doing and how his reading is going.  Every reading assignment we give him, he reads it immediately after we get off the phone.  He fully comprehends everything and loves everything about the Book of Mormon.  We had a lesson with him this week about the plan of salvation and we took a member with us and when we walked in the door he gave all of us a big hug, even the member whom he had never met yet.  He’s so sweet!!  And we were talking for a little bit.  He told us that he’d been fasting and praying all day and had just ended his fast.  We didn’t ask what he was fasting for, but kind of assumed it was about the church.  Funny thing is that we hadn’t even asked him to fast about it!!  He’s so cool, but then he says “ok lets get down to business, I’m excited to learn what you have to teach me today, lets start with a prayer and I’ll say it.”  And then he prays immediately!!  It was so cool.  Never before have I seen or heard of an investigator this excited to learn.  It was a great plan of salvation lesson and the spirit was strong there.  He said that he really wants to read right from the beginning of the Book of Mormon and we found no problem with that because we know he will.  Next time we see him we really want to talk with him about how we can get missionaries in Ghana to go and teach his 6 kids, I’m certain he would absolutely love that.  Then they could all get sealed in the temple together!!!! That would be so sweet!!!!  Man…isn’t the gospel awesome?  I love it!!

We also met with our Indian Hindu friend again, Josh.  This was an interesting lesson.  We taught him the restoration because the last time we talked to him we just talked about developing a faith in Christ and about who he was.  It was a great lesson and he thought that it was sweet that there was a prophet here on earth today and would be excited to listen to him and hear the counsel and guidance he gives us.  He committed to do all that we asked him to and again, felt prompted to extend a date!  We read him a sweet scripture in Alma talking about baptism and the blessings that come with it and then bore our testimonies about baptism and how it has blessed our lives with the Holy Ghost and asked him if he would want to enjoy these blessings in his life by being baptized.  He said “no I sure wouldn’t.”  Wait, what?!  Did I hear you correctly?  And we basically asked him how come?  And he said that he was baptized as a baby and that his mom would be upset.  It’s just kind of annoying because Josh is in his late 40’s and probably shouldn’t be too worried about telling his mom about the church and that he would be getting baptized into it.  I dunno, I’m not him.  But we asked him to read Moroni 8 and to pray about being baptized by proper authority.  We’ll see how that rolls around, hopefully great!!

And the last crazy lesson of the week that we taught was to a chinese guy named Wayne.  This guy has to be the smartest, most logical thinker, and in depth person I have ever met in my life.  We had a 2.5 hour lesson on the first principle of the first lesson, God is our loving Heavenly Father.  I have never yet taught an actual sit down lesson to someone who doesn’t believe in God, talked to many people without that belief, but never an actual sit down lesson.  But Wayne is a great guy, but so so in depth.  He believes in science and needs actual physical evidence to prove that something is real.  He says he wants to believe in God, but needs physical evidence that he actually exists.  He says that he wouldn’t take the feeling of the Holy Ghost as evidence because it’s not something physical, just a feeling.  It amazed me.  I’m such a simple minded person and I couldn’t comprehend or understand half the things he was saying because it was all so complex and just crazy what he was talking about.  He doesn’t want to pray because he doesn’t believe anybody is listening so he would feel dumb doing it and yeah, I was just amazed and confused.  We had a member with us and he saved us on multiple occasions by giving his testimony and opinions on things that Wayne was saying.  But that was a super draining lesson and we were both so tired.  It was crazy.  But yeah, we don’t really know how to progress and move forward with him.  He needs to realize that he probably will not see God and if he wants to in the first place, he needs to have faith, something he doesn’t have.  So we need to address that issue again.

This week we also spent some time bus contacting, that was fun.  Basically you just get on a bus and ride and talk to people.  People are crazy, I’ll just say that much.  Bus contacting is difficult and I have some room to improve, it requires a good people person, and I’m not one of those yet.  Getting better, but not awesome.  We also spent a lot of time with a member who is in the hospital this week.  He’s from down by the Quad Cities in Iowa/Illinois and is up here recovering from heart surgery.  We have given him a few blessings and also gave him the sacrament.  His daughter and her husband and daughter were up visiting who were also form the Quad Cities!!!  They’re AWESOME!!!!!  Probably the coolest family I have met out on my mission and they aren’t even in my mission boundaries.  But they’re super cool and they took us out to eat and provided us with some much needed stress relieving time after stressful days.  They’re way cool.  I told them that Natalie and Paul lived down in the Quad Cities and they said that if I gave them their address they’d go and say hi!!  So Natalie, if an awesome couple randomly knocks on your door, take them out to dinner and become their best friends because they’re awesome!!

I gave a talk yesterday in singles ward about drawing nearer to Heavenly Father.  A scripture that stuck out to me about that was D&C 88:63, 67-68.  They’re great verses and I suggest reading them.  But, I know that if we keep our covenants and do the things we know we need to do, but probably aren’t doing, we will be super close to our Heavenly Father and we will be blessed greatly.  It was a great topic to speak on and I learned a lot from it.  I know that we can all improve on it, so that can be my little commitment I leave with you all.  Think of ways you can be closer to our Heavenly Father and start or stop doing things that will enable you to.

This week was sweet and I hope your guys’ was too!!!

I love you!
Elder Kissell

p.s.  for those of you who write me, my address is 425 Paunack Pl. #1B, not #113.  I have still been receiving the 113 mail, but just in case, start doing #1B!

pictures!

1.  my newest suit addition, grey!  I found it in our basement, sweet!

2.  Camp Randall on a snowy day.

3.  Large piles of snow on the side of the road

4.  The Mckune family (part of them) from the Quad Cities, they're AWESOME!!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!!!

Well, this first week has been crazy awesome and crazy cold here in Madison.  I can honestly say that my nose hairs have never frozen and my eyelashes have never frozen together up until a few days ago.  It is FREEZING!!!  We went tracting for about 45 minutes in 4 degree weather the other day with a member and we were dying.  Not fun.  But a nice girl let us in to warm up.  So that was sweet.  But, we probably will not be tracting anytime soon in single digit weather.  Not great.  Oh, and our heater broke in our apartment!  It stinks.  It was usually around 60 degrees in our apartment, coldest it was was about 59 degrees.  It feels warm coming in for about 15 minutes, but then it’s freezing.  They better fix it soon.  But, let me tell you about the sweetest thing EVER.

So, just to let you know, this story will be in the Ensign someday, but I’ll give you a sneak preview of it.  So on Tuesday this week, a guy called us and asked for Elder Abe or Echivarre.  Elder Echivarre is home and Elder Abe is our district leader and he’s about 35 miles away from Madison.  But we gave him Elder Abe’s number and thought really nothing of it.  But on Friday, Elder Abe calls us and says that some random guy called him from our area and really wants to meet with us.  So on Saturday, me, Barker, Elder Abe, and his companion went to go meet this man who none of us even knew.  His name is Martin and he is a very great man from Ghana.  He met Elder Abe and Echivarre over a year ago and they gave him a pass along card with their names and phone number on it.  That number is still ours.  He says he wasn’t interested at the time in learning more but he really liked the picture on the pass along card so he framed it!!  It’s been framed in his house for over a year.  But in the past year, his wife has passed away and he resorted to drinking and trying to drown his sorrows that way.  But one day, he just felt something in his heart that if he kept this up, he was going to die too and his 6 kids back home in Ghana would not have a parent anymore.  So from that point on, he quit drinking and hanging out with his bad influence friends.  This year, he decided to make a New Years resolution to go back to church.  He has been reading the Bible and he just realized that he needed God more so in his life.  Then one day, he remembered about his framed pass along card with the Elders’ names and phone number on the back and called us up and the story goes from there.  He has a baptismal date set for the 24th of January.  He is SO awesome.  He is excited to know that there is a prophet on the Earth and he is willing to do whatever the prophet says and read the Book of Mormon and pray and do whatever it takes to be baptized.  He is GOLDEN.  He gave the sweetest prayer I think I’ve heard from an investigator as well, he prayed that he would be able to learn all that he needed to learn and do all that he needed to do in order to be baptized.  It was so amazing.  He wasn’t able to come to church yesterday though because he works on Sunday at Walmart but he is going to be asking for Sundays off so he can.  I’m so pumped for him.  So please keep him in your prayers, he’s so amazing.  And it all started from a simple invite and a pass along card.  You never know who you’re going to effect or touch.  Elder Abe doesn’t even remember who he is, the Lord works in mysterious ways, but He sure knows what he’s doing.  He’s definitely been being prepared for the gospel in crazy ways.  It rocked!!!

Sadly though, we dropped Kristen.  She wasn’t keeping our appointments or any commitments.  It takes about an hour to get to her place on the bus and when she’s not there, it kinda kills our day.  And if she isn’t making the effort to be there or keep commitments, there really is no point in continuing to teach her.  So I really hope she will be ready here later on and be able to meet some of the other missionaries later on.  She is a great lady.  But right now, our only real investigator that is progressing is Martin, still trying to contact referrals and such that we have received but it is hard with everybody being gone for the holidays.
New Years wasn’t too exciting.  We were allowed to stay up til 12 if we wanted to but I myself think that New Years is lame unless you have fireworks to play with so I just went to bed.  We weren’t encouraged to be out proselyting in the evening either unless we had appointments.  We were at members homes and such though so we didn’t have much to worry about.  But Madison was basically a ghost town on New Years morning.  There was nobody.  Kinda creepy.  Usually there’s a ton of cars and stuff driving around downtown and stuff, it’s a big city so it’s what big cities are like, but we saw about 4 cars in about 2 miles.  That’s always a little weird and uncomftorable feeling when it feels like you’re the only 2 people in a 300,000 person city.  We met with a previous investigator who was super anti and a bit hostile towards us.  Not a whole lot of fun, all she wanted to do was bash, so needless to say we weren’t there too long.
We had interviews this week also with the Barretts, that was good.  I always love meeting with them and taking their council.  They’re amazing people and give us great ideas and ways to progress in the work here.
But, that was our week really, highlighted by Martin the great.  I love that guy.  I hope you all are having an amazing 2010 and that you make this year the best year of your life yet!!!

Love
Elder Kissell

pictures

1.  59 stinking degrees in our apartment!!!!  BRRRRRRR

2.  We put blankets up over our windows because getting a draft that is 4 degrees isn't fun.

3.  UW Madison!