We got Zone Standards of Excellence AND a hail storm this week :)

Ok everyone…THIS WEEK HAS BEEN AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It was a bit of a rocky start, but once I put all that behind me, Sister Edgington and I had an incredible week full of miracles and happiness and rainbows and unicorns and flowers!...ok so no unicorns, but the rest, YES! John, the investigator we met a week ago on Friday, the one who came to the branch activity the day after we met him…he's SCHEDULED FOR BAPTISM on 5 October!!!!! AND, he knows it's all true, everything we teach him. We taught a killa Plan of Salvation with him with the Branch President as our member present. AND he came to a baptism in Keighly like 2 days ago on Saturday (our District Leader's investigator's baptism) with Carol who is another of our investigators who is getting baptized this Saturday! We all went with Sister Slater (Branch President's wife). She is the best. They both really enjoyed the baptism and are excited for theirs. John has some commitments with his previous church as he is the sound technician but he's going to train someone else to do his job which will be great! Ok, so…John's amazing, Carol's amazing...we found FOUR NEW INVESTIGATORS THIS WEEK! We seriously had such an amazing week. I can't even. The Lord is blessing us SO much. We were finding on the same street we found John on, and we met these two 14 and 15 year old boys. One wasn't really interested, but one was. His name is Cieran. We've taught him the Restoration and Plan of Salvation so far and he believes the Book of Mormon is true. He's great. He's scheduled for 5 October to be baptized!

Ok so a few weeks ago, we went on a finding blitz with the District Leader Elder Berrio and he was on exchange with Elder Esteves (Zone Leader). We found this lady called Helen. She has 2 kids. She was washing her truck out the front of her house and Sister Hedstrom and I were a bit apprehensive because she did not seem interested at all, but we persisted. We told her how our message can improve the quality of her and her family's lives (that was inspired)...she's had a ROUGH year since Feb. A lot of trials and heartache. She was too busy to talk then so we told her we could come back. We went a few times but she was either not feeling up to it or she was out. Then, this week, we scheduled a meeting with her on Wednesday, we got in, she told us EVERYTHING that had happened, and we told her how what we share can help. She was studying English Lit. at Uni and she told us she'd read the Book of Mormon. So we're seeing her again this week and we'll see how she goes :) We pray for her all the time. She's sweet and so willing to listen. So that's Helen :) and then...SUCH a great miracle: so Jim is a recent convert of about a year, he has a friend called Ann who isn't a member. Sister Hedstrom and I have stopped by numerous times to see if she's in and she never was. Sister Edgington and I continued to go by her house...last week, we met her neighbour Gary. He loved Australia and we talked about it for ages...and then we talked about all sorts of things. We'd never met him before then. We talked for like half an hour, and then we met his partner who had just got home. She was brought up Catholic. At first I thought Gary would be receptive, and then Caren looked a bit off-put by us, but as it happens, she agreed with everything we said and as we answered all of Gary's questions, she nodded and agreed. As we were leaving, Ann's old neighbour next door comes out and has a chat to Gary and Caren. So, the next day or 2, we went to see Ann again...but she wasn't in. As we were walking away to go finding on the streets we had decided to knock, I felt the Spirit say 'go back and knock next door' which was the old man who we didn't really even speak to the first time. And I thought 'nah we have to go knocking and find people' and a voice in my head kept saying 'GO BACK AND KNOCK ON HIS DOOR'. So I said to Sister Edgington 'OK we're going to knock on the old guys door'. As we did that, we were standing there knocking, and we looked to our left, and who should so suddenly appear out of literally no-where? Gary! He wasn't there before and we knocked on Ann's door and waited quite a while. We then went and talked to Gary and he said how he was intrigued by us and he was talking to his partner about us and he had all these questions. He was cleaning his truck. He's a builder! He had a lovely Audi TT Quattro and a huge lovely wonderful Mitsubishi truck :) He was cleaning the wheels and we just talked and talked and talked. We ended up giving him a Book of Mormon. I love when people ask 'Well, if there was a God why would there be all these starving poor dying people in the world?' Oh man do I love those sort of questions! LOVE THEM. Anyway, he asked a few of those sorts of questions, and for every question, we had an answer. He really enjoyed talking to us. They say that on average, a person has about 7 encounters with the church before they either listen or are baptized or make any commitments etc. We then went back and knocked directly on their door the day or 2 after and Caren opens the door and was very nice and chatty but said she was about to go to work. I asked about the Book of Mormon we gave Gary and she said she has it and will have a read. That was 3 inspired encounters in one week. Amazing :) We found another investigator on Saturday. Right after leaving the flat, right after praying for people to be put in our path, we walk down the street, we stop a girl called Natalie who's 18, Jewish background, give her a Book of Mormon, she's open to hearing about our message and we're seeing her this Tuesday. It was literally as easy as it sounds. She was walking straight past us, and again, a voice in my head said 'stop'. So I stopped. I don't usually just stop walking in the middle of busy town, but I did, and then I opened my mouth and said Hi, and then she stopped (which doesn't usually happen either. People usually keep walking and said 'Hi, you alright?' in their English Yorkshire accent and brush us off). Natalie is sweet and amazing :) Then at church we had Carol come which was so good :) The members are amazing in Skipton! New member retention 100%!!!!!

We had a member referral...from a less-active! We went and visited the Meadows family on Friday night who are strong in the church here in Skipton. Only one of their 3 children are active members. While we were there, Brother Meadows asks us if we would like to come for tea on Sunday and he mentioned that his daughter Hannah (23 years old who has a 7 year old boy called Matthew) was coming over for dinner as well. We said we'd love to meet her. At dinner we all got on really well. Her boyfriend was also there. Half way into dinner she mentions her friend who she wants us to meet. She explains how her friend is a bit wild and 'wordly' but she asks Hannah a lot of questions about her religious upbringing and Hannah thought meeting the missionaries would be really good for her. So her friend Kalie is coming over for dinner this weekend and we're going to meet her! Loving the members and less-actives and just everyone in general really does bring referrals and builds relationships so much stronger and better.

We then finished our week off by going finding from about 7-9pm last night. We went by a potential, Stuart, athiest. (bless him). He's reading the Book of Mormon and he said we can come back any day after 4pm as he drives a taxi during the day :) We were like YEAHHHHHHHH  BUUDDDDYYYYYYY STUART'S GOING TO PRAY AND BE BAPTIZED! He hasn't prayed yet. He doesn't believe in praying. So I told him last night if he doesn't pray about the Book of Mormon, then he's just reading an interesting book which he even said he didn't think was true anyway. I love athiests…they don't know what they believe :) Stuart hadn't even tried praying to see if God was there, he just read a book about the illusion of God and that's how he decided. So we are going to help him out and become besties and help him know who God is and how much he LOVES him :) We also found a potential investigator called Colette who we're seeing this week. After that, we were walking home, and I kid you not, it was a calm lovely freezing cold night...and then it started BUCKETING down with HAIL! Seriously. Neither of us had umbrellas for like the first time ever. So we were being abused by ice balls from the sky for like 10 minutes. We were soaked. But we didn't care. We had such an amazing week. The hail was nothing to us in the end. We ended up running home in the hail and rain and embraced every second. This week, we have good goals, and we know that if we are 100% exactly obedient and do ALL that we can and rely on the Lord, we can reach those goals. We also have what's called Zone Standards of Excellence. It used to be standards of excellence for companionships, but they changed it to the whole zone. And we all worked really really hard and GOT ZONE STANDARDS THIS WEEK!!!!!!!! We're all so happy. Heavenly Father is really helping us out and our faith is increasing like 382190382139109%!

I have to go now. But I've had a fantastic week. The numbers for Skipton haven't been this good ever/ in a while I don't think (well, that's what my District Leader told me anyway). Big things are happening in Skipton! Errrbodies gon know about the gospel !!!!!!! LOVE being a missionary! I've grown and changed so much even in the last week. I can't wait to think what it'll be like at the end of my mission. The Church is true, I KNOW it. The Book of Mormon is really the word of God, if you read and pray about it, you can know it's true. I love missionary work. I love my Savior Jesus Christ. He's helped me through many a trial, and I know he will ALWAYS be there for me.

Love you all, stay strong, be  believing, exercise your faith, be obedient, and you WILL see miracles!

I have no time to reply to anyone else’s emails right now, but I will next week hopefully! I've read them all and I'm SO grateful for them! So THANK YOU!

Bless xxxxxx

Sister Kuhn