Some great experiences here in Darlo!

Week 4, Transfer 10

Well well well, we meet again. I don't want this blog to get mundane, even though sometimes it does feel that way. So I'll keep it quick and short this time because I am just EXHAUSTED. 

The weather is nice. Summer time. Lovely. 

What I've learnt this past week: 

English people like to complain no matter what the weather is haha We were talking to someone the other day and they made a comment at how unbearably HOT it was that day, like it was completely out of the ordinary, so we asked if it ever gets that hot in the summer and they were like 'Umm yes it does quite a bit'. So I was thinking 'What are you complaining about then?!' I had a good old laugh. Haha I love these people. They're all just a barrel of jollies and giggles, even when they aren't trying to be haha To be fair, it does get quite hot here sometimes (strange, I know because it's 'England') but then after a scorcher of a day, it can pour down the next day. Never gets old!

So we started INSANITY at church every Thursday for investigators and members. We did it on Wednesday last week but Thursday from now on. Danny and Jeneill (both investigators) came. Danielle has had contact with the church for years. She loves it. She brought her mate Jen to Insanity and a YSA called Leona came too. It was so fun. Hard, but fun :) We talked for about 45 minutes and showed them the chapel and things. They organized to go to church this last Sunday and they came, and they LOVED it! Sunday school was about Eternal Marriage - Jen said to Danny that she wants to be baptized and sealed in the temple. We were like YEAH!!! They both have a bit of a crazy childhood etc but they've been mates since they were toddlers. We're making finding FUN and we're also getting in some extra exercise. I call that 'smart finding' :) 

So yep, they are just wonderful and great and crazy and we love them LOADS. 

We saw our Fijian family last week too. Virginia, the Mum, she is so humble and amazing. She's a Seventh Day Adventist as a lot of Fijians are. She is so honest and faithful. She told us that she listened to the Elders when they first knocked on her door, even though she had a religion, she thought 'these are men of God, maybe they have a message for me that I need to hear...maybe there's something I'm not doing', so she let them in. And that's what happened with us too. She's open to learning and knowing more. We see her once a week or so. 

What else...

Everything just mushes into one big BLOB. 

I've been having some great experiences here in Darlo though. This area has loads of potential. We just need to try harder to unlock it. It'll take time, but time is what we have, so we're going to get stuck in! 

We have a mission tour tomorrow. Elder Dykes of the Area Presidency is coming to speak to us. President calls us last week and asks us to coordinate a musical item with 2 elders/2 sisters. So Sister Zurcher and I and 2 other elders are singing in front of half the mission tomorrow. 

Yay.

It's gon be GREAT!...Because the spirit will be there and hopefully that's all they'll hear AND feel haha nah it'll be alright. It's only in front of half the mission...

What else, oh and then we have MLC (another meeting) and Elder Dykes will be present at that as well. It's a meeting we have once a month with all the STL's, President and Sis Pilkington and the ZL's. It should be goooood. Then next week is transfers. Boom! Transfer 10 - see ya later!

I'm LOVING hearing about all the people in Adelaide going on missions. LOVING IT! I won't mind having 0.01 friends when I get back if they're all on missions haha what a great example they are! 

Peace and love everybody. SHARE THE GOSPEL, invite people to activities and church! JUST DO ITTTTTT.

xoxoxoxxoxo Sister Kuhn

It's a small world!

My first half a week in Darlington aka Darlo (which sounds so much more bogan than its actual name) has been lovely. I've had some crazy tender mercies from the Lord. I'll start with Sunday and go backwards because I can't hold it in any long!

The chapel is a two-story gig, a bit like the chapel in Hull. It's smaller though but the members are full of life and we have some characters in this ward indeed. You may hear about them later or see a piccy of one of them. So we had a tea appointment with the Bundy family yesterday arvo. They are a fairly young married couple. Brother Bundy aka Clyde is a Captain in the army so they live on the army base. Turns out he served his mission in Adelaide ...he knows Dad (he remembers him as the District President)...he reckons he went to our house in Nightcliff and he remembers seeing me (I would have been about 11). He knows and had a lot of lovely things to say about Aunty Jill and Uncle Chris. He knows loads of people in Darwin because he served up there and he served in Adelaide. He knows the Grangers and the Rochows and the Smiths etc etc. He then proceeded to bust out his 2 didgeridoos and boomerang and his mission photos. It was SO good to talk to him about Darwin. It was hilarious. We had a good old chat. I got a picture with him and his wife as well. Such a small world! 

Bundy family

Also, a guy called Jared Lambe just got back from serving in Melbourne about 4 months ago. Turns out he knew everyone I knew who was serving there at the moment...AND he was also companions with Tom Bennallack at the start AND at the end of his mission. My world got so insignificantly small in a matter of minutes talking to him. CRAZY. We're going to his house to visit him and his family this week too. Shoutout to Tom B man!!!

AND THEN, I found out that my current Zone Leader Elder Mulgrew knows my mate James from Ireland because he's Irish. AND THEN, when I told him Madison (aka Sister Heal) and I stayed at James' house with his family in Ireland when we went to convention, he then said 'I literally live 2 minutes away from his house!' So my world is now the size of a grain of sand ladies and gents. See ya later!

Just kidding - so Darlington is a huge area (the town isn't that big but the area we have as missionaries covers a lot of other smaller towns and villages). One of them is Catterick, a big army base/hub. A lot of Fijians are here for the army. There's a family who come every now and then to church from Fiji, who are in the army. We went to visit them yesterday as well, and then we went by a potential investigator,  who was a referral from elders in Scotland, also from Fiji. We're going to convert them all and start a Fijian branch in Darlington!

The ward is great. Supportive. They just had a recent change in Bishop and bishopric. The new bishop just asked us to teach primary from here on until who knows when. The previous bishop is moving to Preston and he has a big family. So we're stepping in to help :)

Ok, so I could go on for days about this place. The main event: THE INSANTIY WORKOUT.

Whoever hasn’t done it, don't ever. Ever. Try. Don't. It KILLS you. Sister Zurcher and I have a very strict exercise/eating regime going. We got the insanity work out from a member who does it in Leeds before we left. So we go to the chapel every 2nd morning and do it.  Every other morning it's either yoga or running.I miss that sore feeling I used to get from the gym every day after I trained...but IT'S BACK. AND IT HURTS. I love it!

Alright...I didn't mean what I said about don't ever try it. I was just thinking about how I wanted to throw up this morning during it. Moment of weakness. We're going to be fitter than the army blokes around here soon! Haha…so that's our morning exercise for you all. The insanity work out. It is, indeed, insane. But SO good…even if you want to throw up afterwards…no worries.

Alright y'all, I'm outies. Thank you for the emails, the letters, the prayers, the EVERYTHING. I just love you!

‪Sister Kuhn‬

I just LOVE THIS EXPERIENCE.

Ello everywun! 

Busy busy busy week. We had zone training meeting Friday, mission leadership council Thursday, le tour de France depart Saturday, roads closed, bus routes cancelled or diverted, appointments, meetings, church. sleepovers with the other sisters because their church meeting was cancelled because of tour de france etc etc etc. HECTIC

Hai Yun is doing fine :) Her husband still isn't keen on her being baptised. He'll come around eventually no doubt.

Sam's Mum is also interested in the church! She is such a sweet and kind lady. She would just absorb the gospel and be such a great, faithful member. Last time we were teaching Sam she left us a note which basically said she would love to arrange a time to meet if we wanted to. We were like HECK YES OF COURSE WE WANT TO! She is wonderful! Sam is going through the challenges of opposition at the moment. He knows he will have to make some hard life-changing decisions regarding his friends and who he associates with, but he will get there. We know he will. He needs the gospel. He prayed for the first time out loud with us on Saturday. It was so sincere and honest. I LOVE hearing people who have never prayed out loud before. They are the most simple yet powerful prayers. It would be nice to always have prayers like that and to always understand the power that comes from it. 

Lee and Alice are still going strong :) Kera says to us all the time that she wants to be a sister like us when she's 19. She has about 10 years to prepare haha I love that girl. Lee just needs to quit smoking and he'll be good for baptism. They want to be sealed in the temple as a family :) that would be the best thing in the world when that happens. I would love to see them go through the temple :) 

The three /four Ethiopian girls we're teaching are doing great. Rhel, Fiori, Selam and Marty. Marty is very busy and is sometimes not there when we teach. Fiori is moving to Headingley, which is where I'm emailing right now actually! It's a student/modern/chill suburb on the outskirts on city center. So she will be SO much closer than Chapeltown where she is currently living. She really wants to come to church as well. Rhel LOVES us haha she is so funny and cheeky, but very invested in her church. She did love the chapel though when we took her inside at the ward bbq. So yep, they all have Amharic Book of Mormon's so they can read away even if they don't want to commit to anything yet. That's still progress! :)

Everything is going swell :) I can see at different points on my mission how far I've come and how much and in what ways I've changed and developed as a person. I can see at the moment the growth I've made since being here. It's HUGE haha not just in my knowledge in the gospel and my testimony, but in who I am as well, my take on life, the way I think, the way I treat people and different situations. I've just grown a lot and I can see that now more than ever..and it's pretty cool :) don't get me wrong, there are still so many things that have stayed the same, or even come out more haha but I know that the changes I've made and will continue to make are positive and I've been so blessed to be able to improve and progress. 

I'm just so grateful for this gospel. I'm grateful for the missionaries and friends who influenced and taught my parents the gospel. What a blessing! I owe those people the biggest thank you in the world. I'm just realizing so many more things that I've grateful for as a result of serving a mission. I was super grateful for a lot of stuff before coming to England, but I'm able to recognize and be grateful for so much more. That, in itself is a blessing!

I just LOVE THIS EXPERIENCE. I don't love the doors being slammed in your face, the abuse, the long days, the freezing days in the rain, the sweltering hot days in the sun, the hours and hours of street contacting or knocking, the cancelled appointments, the let-downs, the transfers etc etc the list could go on for days. But you LEARN so much from those experiences. Hard times and sorrows expand your soul, so when you've gone through them and you feel joy and happiness, it fills you up the brim, and the hard times that you have experienced don't seem to matter other than what you've learnt from them. The happiness feels MORE than the negative or sad feelings you before experienced. It's amazing! I don't know how it works, I don't know, but that's the Atonement for you! I'm telling you, our lives are win-win situations. We sin - we truly repent, we feel better and we feel the unconditional love of our Saviour PLUS we take away a world of experience and knowledge about how great the gospel is (winning). We go through a hard time, no matter what it is - we learn so much about ourselves, about this life, about the love of our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ and we become better and stronger from what we experienced and what we learned (winning). We get rejected - we become more resilient, stronger, and we care less about rejection because we've gained so much strength (winning). Someone close to us dies - we get stronger and our testimony gets stronger of the Plan of Salvation knowing we WILL see them again (winning). It just MAKES SENSE. The gospel makes sense. We win, no matter what. If win, we win, if we lose, we still win..even if it is in the end. The Plan of WINNING I'm going to start calling it. 

Those are my thoughts for you all now :) 

If any of you would like further explanation about how your trials and hardships in life are a win, feel free to email me, write to me, or just talk to me in a few months when I'm home. I'll be happy to chat! 

WINNNNNNINNNNGGGGGGGGG

Love you bye!

Sister Kuhn

Oh and a MASSIVE P.S  - THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU FOR ALL THE BIRTHDAY WISHES AND CARDS AND EMAILS AND PACKAGES AND JUST EVERYTHING. If I didn't hear from you and you consider me a (good) friend of yours, it's OK, because life gets crazy and I know how it is. So don't even worry..because I probably missed 75% of all you people's birthdays anyway haha I'll just get you back when I get home! Just kidding..but really..but just kidding.

Love and peace !

Time is going by SO fast....

Week 1, Transfer 10

What duh?!! Where did the last week go???

You guys…time is going by SO fast. So I went through a bit of a hard patch in the last few weeks…well, months. It's something that Heavenly Father had to help me with I think. It wasn't the missionary work, the work is booming here and Sister Staheli and I have a lot of fun together. I honestly think it was a little bit me and a lot of the adversary. I'm through that though (for now). I can testify to you all, that I know, I KNOW, that God answers prayers. He does. He does he does he does. A thousand times over HE DOES. He has helped me and guided me and taken me by the hand through the past few months when I was feeling overwhelmed or stressed or just simply down and out. The sun is shining (metaphorically - but sometimes it shines here in England literally) and I am over the mountain! I don't know when the next one will come, I don't know when I'll have to climb up and feel like I'm holding on by my fingertips, but when it comes, I know to call upon the Lord. JUST DO IT like Nike. 

Ok, back to this last week. It's almost impossible to have enough time to write down all the miracles and experiences and crazy things that happen in a week.

Sam: We got Jamie, a recent convert from Harrogate, to come to Leeds and help teach Sam with us. Sam's getting help with certain addictions and he's truly wanting to change. He is a truly special soul. I feel Heavenly Father's love for him when we teach him. I wrote this in my letter to President just before that I received a blessing from Elder Olaussen a few weeks before he left and he said that there are people here who I knew in the spirit world waiting for me to teach them the gospel. Every time we teach Sam, I feel the spirit so strongly and I think he might be one of those spirits I knew before. I can just see him embracing the gospel and becoming the man that Heavenly Father wants him to be. It's just a pleasure to be able to teach the gospel to people. It is an absolute pleasure. No amount of sacrifice or money could make this grand opportunity not worth it. It will be a slow process for Sam I think, but he will get there. We're not giving up on him :)

Hai Yan is just the sweetest lady the ever walked the earth. She is SO cute and hilarious. We really just love her so much. Her husband isn't too keen on her being baptized and there is some family opposition there but hopefully we can work through that and Michael (her husband) will soften his heart. We prayed with her that he would. She has great faith and she LOVES church haha LOVES IT. 

We had a ward BBQ on Saturday. It was epic. They had volleyball and a jumping castle and all sorts. We had like 10 or more non members come and a few other people we invited as well. It was a great success. We gave like 3 chapel tours and ran around trying to make sure everyone was comfortable and having a good time. Sister Staheli and I went home to have tea and we just crashed and slept the whole tea hour that we get and then we went back out.

Also, shout out to ERRBODY who sent me emails and cards for my birthday. I SO 1000000% appreciate it every single one of them…yes, that means yours! 

Love you all. Time is going super super fast at the moment. Don't you all change too much!

Sister Kuhn xxxxx