The POWER HOUR and Zone Conference..

Week 2, Transfer 9

Hiya all, alright? I'm going to try type this as quick as I can so I can reply to some of you other wonderful people who write to me! 

THE POWER HOUR (you have to say it slowly and in a really intense deep voice for it to mean anything)
It all started at zone training last transfer..we were all discussing another missionaries idea of what's called a 'power hour' which is basically everyone in the zone street contacting or knocking for 1 hour at the same time (but different areas). So at Mission Leadership Council (MLC) which is every month, Sister Zurcher brought up the fantastic possibility of a mission wide power hour. Everyone really liked that idea. So we scheduled it just under a month ago for yesterday. So yesterday (which is actually the start of week 3 of the transfer), THE WHOLE MISSION, 230+ missionaries, the senior couples, even (and especially) President and Sister Pilkington! (Haha..classic.) It was from 6pm-7pm. Sister Zurcher and I went to Hyde Park with Jess (a ysa who is planning on serving a mission next year). It was so so good. We brainstormed a few different approaches and things we could say..one of them was 'guess where I'm from'. People here think I'm from America all the time?!?!!!?!? Or Canada..or South Africa..or New Zealand..but hardly ever Australia. So we played that game with some people and had a few good eventful conversations. It was also raining a bit for the whole hour (and magically stopped when we stopped) so we went up to girls with umbrella's and either asked where they got their umbrella from or just said anything to come under the umbrella with them and had a chat. That is when we found Kate. We were walking from meeting Jess to Hyde Park, and we see this Chinese girl with a cute umbrella walking towards us on the other side of the road about 100m up, so we crossed the road and proceeded to walk towards her to talk to her, then she crossed the road to the side we were just on, so we crossed BACK to the other side..then as we were almost in talking distance there was a road off the main road we were walking on between her and us. I said 'I bet you she'll turn that corner'..nek minut..she turns the corner to go down a different street. Sister Zurcher then started chasing her. I'm not talking like a brisk walk, I'm talking like running after her. She was about 10 or 20 meters away from this Chinese girl and yelled 'hi!', she didn't turn around..so I yell 'Hi!.........Hiya!............Ni hao!!' ('hello' in Chinese) and she turns around with Sister Zurcher standing almost behind her haha she then asks Kate about the good Chinese restaurants around, and we get talking to her for a while..in the rain....her name is Kate (which is Sister Zurcher's first name..so it's already meant to be) and then she says she's lived here for a year and is doing her masters and then on to her PhD in Chemistry. She held her umbrella over all of us. So there is 4 of us, under 1 small-ish umbrella, sharing the gospel message, talking to Kate. Kate is a small, funny, cute, young Chinese girl with a bright bubbly sweet personality. We just love her already :) She said she's wanted to try going to a church ever since she came to England. We exchanged numbers and thanked her for keeping us dry. And off we went...to Hyde Park! We talked to some characters indeed. This one guy with a hat that said Shakespeare on it..we mentioned we liked his hat. He said he did as well, and he bought it with the intention that he liked Shakespeare, but he told us that someone told him it's actually a fishing brand..and that he's never even gone fishing in his life, but he still wears it anyway. Then we met these 2 young people from Indonesia!!!!!!!! I USED MY INDONESIAN ON THEM!!!!! It was the best day of my life. They were well impressed. FINALLY. After years of studying it when I was young in Darwin at school..and I've finally used it on actual Indonesian people. I've come all this way to England to find people from Indo to practice my Indonesian on. We also talked to this lovely girl called Amy. She had such sparkly great shoes..and a great umbrella. Turns out Jess and Amy have a mutual friend. Small world!

So that's the POWER HOUR. So many miracles mission-wide! Super fun..even in the rain :) 

Update on Kaaron: we sort of dropped him - meaning we aren't going to teach him anymore we don't think. We're passing him on to the Zone Leaders. They're great, I have full faith that they can make a difference and have an impact on that family. We also passed on Kaaron's friend Ethan who comes to church as well and lives down the street. The elders probably should have got involved with Kaaron a year ago, I don't know why it's only been sisters teaching him, but I think they'll be good for him. I love that family, but Kaaron needs more male role models to look up to, and the elders are exactly that. We have such good zone leaders! 

We have a massive Waters of Mormon baptism fireside bash THING happening in a few weeks. We have a few people scheduled for baptism on the 14th of June, so Sister Zurcher had the brilliant idea of making it like a huge thing, inviting the whole stake, getting President Pilkington involved, the stake presidency, getting a harp for Sister Zurcher to play and put her masters in harp performance to good use on her mission! We hit a bit of a speed bump with the date as there are other things on that night involving three stakes apparently so we're trying our best to sort that out. With hard work, faith, and diligence, we can pull this off! We're excited :) It's also Month of Invitation in June for a lot of Stakes over here so we're having a lot of activities to invite people to, this one will be SUPER good to invite people too. The spirit is going to be so strong and people will be entering the waters of baptism and it will just be amazing.

Other than that, we're just still doing our thing. Teaching, finding, scheduling, trying to align our will with Heavenly Father, trusting in Him, going with the flow etc. so many miracles happen all the time. I wish I could bottle them up and show them to everyone who doesn't believe in miracles. It's such a privilege to be serving here in this mission as a missionary for the Lord. Such a blessing!

Sister Zurcher and I have decided to study The New Testament together with the institute manual in companion study. Instead of reading it book by book, we're going to read the gospels (or 'testimonies') chronologically so we get an even better understand of Christ and His ministry. I heard from a member (I THINK it was in Skipton and I THINK it was Brother Simcock but I'm not sure) that he studied the gospels chronologically and by the time you get to the end of Christ's mortal ministry and the garden of Gethsemane, His death and resurrection etc, you can't help but get emotional. We can't wait to start studying it. 

The scriptures have come alive on my mission. If anything, if nothing happened on my mission (but loads has happened so everyone's winning really) but if all that happened was I got a love of the scriptures like I have now, then this experience was well worth it. I've loved every minute of studying the scriptures. I don't know why I didn't love them like this before?! I'm just glad I love and appreciate and have a testimony of them now :)   

Love y'all! 
Sister Kuhn

p.s Oh and ZONE CONFERENCE..that's a whole other story. It was AMAZING. So much was covered. If I bring my notebook one of these days I'll write up some of it for you! Oh..man..so good. Love zone conference

Before zone conference, we got there like an hour early (oops) so we walked to the York Minster since all four of us sisters haven't been there before and we took some photos and went inside and had a look. First of all, it's MASSIVE. SO so so huge, and it was beautiful, and inside was intense. It was half spooky and half peaceful..I couldn't quite make up my mind, but it was so worth waking up at 5:30am for accidentally. 

Then at zone conference I got a photo with ONE of (I can't have favourites so I have to say 'one of') my favourite zone leaders Elder Esteves, and I can say this...my favourite district leader Elder Berrio. Both are going home end of the transfer. Bless 'em..oh and also at zone conference they announce the birthdays in the last month and the next 2 months, and we all get a chocolate bar and on it will say what we've won. I got a cereal box of Peanut Butter Cap'n Crunch cereal (they import stuff from America). I'm being healthy and Elder Esteves the cheeky kid came up and asked if he could have it so I gave it to him so I didn't have to get fat(er) eating it :)  tactics! 

Elder Berrio and Sister Jodicke and I..BOOK OF MORMON DISTANCE

So that's a description of the photos and a bit of what happened at zone conference. I'll have to write up my notes I took and post them on here at a later date. xx 

                                                         The temptations we're faced with as missionaries....