Another Amazing Week of Blessings AND A Baptism

Everyone. This week. Was. Amazing.

Well, it started off proper rubbish like. On Monday we learned that John, our STAR of an investigator, is moving to Portugal on the 30th of this month to live with his Mum. His sister also lives there with her 3 kids and he really misses them. He was super sorry and sad to tell us he was moving…five days shy of his baptism which was meant to be on the 5th October because he hasn't been at church yet and you need to come to church at least twice to be baptized. At first, Sister Edgington and I were like 'Let's get him baptized here before he goes!' We called the Zone Leaders to see what they could do seeing as he hadn't been to church twice, we told them what was going on. They said 'Teach him the commandments, see how he goes, and then let us know and we'll talk to President'…but as soon as I got off the phone to them I had an un-easy feeling about it all. So we prayed about it for the next few days. We came to the conclusion that John is meant to be baptized in Portugal. It's for a reason. For his Mum, his sister, someone else, we don't know. All we know is it feels right that he goes and is baptized over there. We're still teaching him and he's coming to church for his last Sunday in Skipton, then he leaves the day after. He is so good though. We now try to teach him commandments to challenge him...Word of Wisdom - he doesn't drink tea, never smoked even though his whole family does,he gets sick at the smell of coffee, and he drunk for about 4 months after his 18th b’day but stopped because he didn't like it…he's 22 and has been living the Word of Wisdom without knowing it for like 4 years! Then we taught him about Law of Chastity thinking "This one will be a tough one!"...turns out he's been living that his whole life anyway as well. He's amazing!!!!! The missionaries in Portugal are going to love us! Haha. Here in Skipton, there's a family who have 2 sons on missions at the moment, one of which are in Portugal! We're going to make sure John is taken care of when he goes there and is baptized ASAP. He knows everything and knows it's all true. He is so so good!

Anyway, back to the rubbish parts of the week...after the news on Monday from John, we had a long day Wednesday with District meeting and correlation with the branch Mission Leader and then dinner at his house (the Simcock's). They remind me of my family :) I LOVE the Simcock's!!!!!! They're the best. Basically though, Monday through Friday was pretty unsuccessful. From the week before which was SO good...the geniuses that Sister Edgington and I are thought 'Hey, let's go crazy, let's find SEVEN new investigators next week' (aka this last week gone). We thought that was a pretty good idea. I've never even set goals to get more than 5 investigators in a week I don't think...and we hardly ever got our goal of that! We got caught up organizing Carole's baptism and we didn't find ANY investigators. It was a silly week…until Saturday came around. Not only was it CAROLE'S BAPTISM!!!!!! WE ARE SO PROUD OF HER!!!!!!! Love Carole. We went finding (knocking on doors, talking to people on the street) as much as we could Saturday and Sunday. We found FOUR investigators on Saturday and TWO the day after on Sunday. SIX in total!  Not only that, we did it in TWO DAYS and we scheduled 5 of them for baptism! It was a miracle. Our list of investigators is now up to about 10...but in my short experience, they might start out solid but some of them drop off at one point, I think we have 5 that are here to stay...and we'll see how the others go! It was an amazing end to the week. We were short 1 investigator, but I think 6 in 2 days is beyond great. I learnt many valuable lessons this week. One of them was to simply TRUST in the Lord. That's all we need to do. Trust in the Lord and be exactly obedient, then He will bless you. Our week wasn't unsuccessful because of anything Sister Edgington and I did - things got in the way, we had meetings and we had to drive into Leeds a few times. A lot of time was wasted at no fault of ours. As the Lord says in the scriptures "I am bound when ye do what I say, but when ye do not what I say ye have no promise". I believe that. I said to Sister Edgington "Ok, it's already Saturday...I bet you Heavenly Father will bless us in the 11th hour" and he truly did. He tested our faith during the week, and blessed us accordingly x8238120321! It was such a testimony builder. And what a great weekend we had!

So we have what's called Zone Standards, I can't remember if I explained it last week. It's new. It used to be Standards of Excellence for each individual team (companionship) but now they do it as a zone. We have Zone goals. I'll attach a photo and you can read what they are…but each zone in the mission has to reach all the goals if they want to achieve Standards of Excellence. Our zone was the only one last week to do it...and this week, we did it again!!! 2nd week in a row! I love my Zone!!!! Leeds A Zone REPRESENT!  It was SUCH a good week in the end. We just had to endure feeling like failures from Monday to Friday due to circumstances beyond our control...and then we were BLESSED with SIX new investigators and a few potential investigators. It was so good! We're doing things that aren't normally achieved and it feels so good! I love my companion…my STAR, my daughter :) I don't even feel like I'm training. We get along like a house on fire too. Always laughing and being special :)

So we have study every morning…and I'm reading Jesus The Christ at the moment. Half way through. It's SO GOOD. I want to read it as many time as I can. It's so good, I'm learning so much about Jesus and the actual person that he was and all about his disciples and just so many things. I'd recommend it to everyone, even if you're not religious. Anyway, learning a lot in study as well as when I'm out teaching and talking to people :) It's the best!

Carole's Baptism

Next item of business: Carole's BAPTISM!!!!!! It was on Saturday. I did the musical item :) I'm getting good at this! 2nd time now doing a musical item in front of more than just the piano :) Brother Simcock (from my fave family and he's also the branch Mission Leader) has mad crazy musical skills. He sings and plays guitar and drums and who knows what else. He's rad! He played guitar while I sang a song from the Children's Hymnbook about baptism. I think it was 'As I Was Baptised'? It went really well :) One of my besties in the branch, 17yr old girl called Kayleigh asked me to sing at her wedding haha. The baptism was beaut. Carole looked like an angel. After she was baptised she said 'I feel really really good! ...I feel like I have a spring in my step!' She's 79 and used a cane to walk :) We absolutely adore her! The investigators we found Saturday and Sunday are Kayleigh (a different one from the baptism) -she's a referral from a less-active who's part of a member family and we had dinner at their house. She's so sweet and was really interested in learning about what we believe. Then there's Kelly and her son Jake, aand Magdalena who's from Poland, and Christine, and Richard. We've met some of them before but didn't count them as investigators until we could count them as actually wanting to know more aka investigating the church. They all have great stories and are great people! We look forward to getting to know them more and watching them progress :)

Leeds A Zone
So, we had a baptism, we found 6 new investigators, we scheduled 5 for baptism, we got Zone Standards 2nd week in a row…there were countless miracles this week! After the week before last I thought 'It can't get better than this'…and then it did! Other than Carole's baptism. Even if we found 0 investigators last week it still would've been the best because of the baptism. But if there were no baptism last week I struggled to see how it could've gotten better. But it did!

OH OK. I just remembered something. STORY TIME. 

One of our beloved Zone Leaders ELDER ESTEVES played the biggest prank on us ever! Worse than my first transfer when he and Elder Brase (old ZL) told us our District Leader wasn't going to be our District Leader for the rest of the week but that he was ok, he just has some STUFF to work out...that was when I was serving in Leeds 1. They played us hardcore! We proper thought something was wrong. And then Elder Esteves did the same to Sister Edgington and I on Saturday night but WORSE. We missed a call from them and when we called back when we were in the car they were like 'You might want to sit down'. They sounded so serious! He then said 'Sister Edgington, I'm sorry to inform you that you're being transferred to a new area with another greenie, and you'll be whitewashing…a sister went home and we need you to pack as much as you can. We'll come and get you at 9pm. Just pack what you can and Sister Kuhn, you'll go back to Leeds 1 and be in a 3 until we find someone to go back to Skipton with you'. Let's all remember now that we JUST found 2 new investigators, Kelly and her son Jake, and we get this phone call. We were speechless. Sister Edgington was almost going to cry. But this has actually happened to me when I was emergency transferred TO Skipton so I was like sort of thinking it was real, except when it happened to me I got a call from the President, not the ZL's, because they have no power :) Anyway, it was all just A BIG JOKE. They thought it was hilarious. That night I had a dream I headbutted my Zone Leader. Even my subconcious wanted to hurt him. It's funny to think now but at the time we were like UMMMMMMM....WHAT?!?!?! Haha...so yeah. That was our week! It's all fun and games when you're a missionary unless you're a Zone Leader and you play pranks on sisters in your zone. Then somebody will get hurt, and it won't be us sisters. Haha. Kidding. I love my leaders, they're good fun.

Well, I gotta go :) The Church is true! Pray about it!

Love you all!

Sister Kuhn