Elder Jesse Kissell: Springtime in Madison!

Dearest familia and friends-

Hey everybody! So this week was pretty sweet. Somewhat of a rollercoaster, but rollercoasters are fun! Although everynow and then you get sick on a rollercoaster and unpleasant things happen, but it wasn't that kind of a rollercoaster this time!

So Bo didn't get baptized, in fact, we've lost contact with him which stinks. He dogged several of our appointments and we lost contact with him at the beginning of the week but we miraculously found him again riding the bus! We took a bus that we don't usually take and lo and behold, we find him at the transfer point that we get off at. We set up a time to meet with him and he showed up to that appointment but we haven't seen him since. Not even at church or anything. The lesson we taught him was faith as a principle of action. It was a good lesson, but the intent we had and tried to make known to him was that he has a ton of faith and so he should now use that faith to find a home. He didn't really get it, we tried. So yeah, I don't know what we'll do with him and when we'll see him again. Missionary work, isn't it great?

We had a super great lesson with Martin on Saturday night. His date for this Saturday stands! Providing he gets an online job so that he can go part-time at Wal-Mart and remain active after baptism. So pray super hard for him this week! We had the same lesson with him as we had with Bo, faith being a principle of action. He has this computer that works great, but he just doesn't take the initiative and look for a job himself. He just prays that one will miraculously appear. So that shows his great faith, but unfortunately it won't do anything because things just don't work that way, usually. You have to do something about your faith. After all, it is an action word! And fortunately, he got it. But we already have his baptismal interview setup for Thursday and even if he finds a job Saturday morning before his baptism, he'll get baptized. But if he hasn't found an online job, he probably won't be baptized this Saturday, but the next one. But after our lesson, Elder Roberts and I felt super strongly that he could find a job this week if he but put a little effort into it. It was a great lesson. We read lots of Nephi's stories and how he would always "go and do" not "sit and wait." It was sweet.

Oh man! So guess who made a little trip through Wisconsin on Saturday? .....Elder Oaks!!! Isn't that sweet? And a new 70 came with him, Elder Reall. We've had 3 apostles come to Wisconsin in the past 2 months! How sweet. And no, it's not because we're disobedient and a bad mission. Elder Perry came to talk to the missionaries, the bishops and ward mission leaders about the new ward mission cycle, Elder Christofferson was here for a stake conference and wanted to hold a meeting with us, and Elder Oaks was here for a stake conference as well and wanted to take some time to talk to us too. Super sweet! But Pres. Barrett didn't want missionaries traveling from other areas than Milwaukee so only the Milwaukee elders got to meet him and it was broadcast to all the other areas of the mission. I was kind of jealous because Elder Oaks actually like talked to the elders and got to know them a little bit and he gave some of them hugs and high 5's and stuff. Elder Christofferson shook our hands and said hello. But hey, I'm not complaining, I got to shake an apostle of the Lord's hand! But Elder Oaks gave a really great talk to us. He's a super funny guy too, not something I can say I expected. He's kind of like a toned down version of Elder Holland in conference, direct and to the point, but in our meeting, he was cracking jokes and giving elders high 5's! So cool. But some really great advice he gave us was 2 things to help us be the best missionaries we can be. 1) Have holy and habits and 2) Have righteous routines. He said we can make whatever we want of that, but what he said in conjunction with that was to have daily prayer and scripture study, develop charity and love for the people in the area you serve, and keeping the rules. He also said we should train ourselves to not call missionary work missionary work. We should call it sharing the gospel! When you say missionary work, you make it sound hard. As a missionary you share with people the thing you love most in your life, the gospel! And of course you do service and stuff, but we're called to share the gospel and establish the church in our areas. I thought that was really neat. Elder Oaks is a great man. I really took alot from that meeting.

So we found a new sweet investigator for the singles ward this week. His name is Ryan and he requested a Book of Mormon online and is pretty interested in learning more about it. He's a busy guy with school and all but we taught him a restoration lesson and he committed to reading and praying about the Book of Mormon. We hope to be able to set up a time with him again, he says he really wants to learn but right now he's trying to get into vet school and that's really tough and stressful so he says this week will probably be better for him to meet with us. Hope so! Because he's sweet. He says you have to have a 3.96 GPA to get into vet school here! That's a pretty smart person! But it was kind of funny, that day we met him we were riding bikes and we locked our bikes up to a pole outside his apartment and then we went and taught him and stuff. But when we came back out, somehow the combination on Elder Roberts' lock wasn't working and unfortunately we had locked both our bikes together with his lock onto this pole. So that stunk. But we decided we could worry about it later and went and did some more "sharing the gospel", not missionary work haha. But a few hours later we decided we should try to do something about it. We called a guy in the singles ward who unlocks peoples cars when they lock their keys inside or whatever but this lock was heavy duty and we couldn't even scratch it! He said we could cut the sign down, but that probably would've been a bad idea and our bikes would still be locked together. But just for fun, I moved the combination around a little bit and it unlocked! It was super cool! Missionaries, we're inspired! Haha.

But we have a few more promising media referrals to contact this week, college students too. So that should be fun. We've been thinking about going tracting in downtown Madison where all the college students live so we can get some more investigators, but it looks like we may not have to do that since we are getting so many media referrals from them.

Well folks, I think I'm outta news. Enjoy the springtime weather! Hopefully it's as beautiful wherever you are as it is where I am! I hear Madison is really beautiful in the summer time and it shows, there's lots of trees in bloom and getting their leaves and stuff. And it's sweet, I haven't taken any pitures of it yet, but there are lots of pretty tulips around the capitol that are planted in star shapes. It's super cool looking.

Love ya'll!

Elder Jesse Kissell

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