Monday 18 August 2014

Sicknesses, Psycho Border Collies, Swift trips to the Hospital at midnight, South Shields Exchange, Sleeping at the Crawford's...the list could go on...


So, our week started off pretty normal I would say. Monday, looking pretty promising, went to the Crawford's for P-day. It was SO fun :) We basically just had a SHREK MARATHON with the girls, ate loads of food, played some games etc etc. Love that family. The only thing was probably that Sis Z has this cold that just kept coming and going..and it was back.
Tuesday rolls around, we're proselyting near the chapel, having a gay old time. We walk up this moderately busy road, past all the houses of wonderful people, NEK MINUT, this border collie dog comes from left field. My first thought "Oh no it's going to run into the road and get hit by a car!" So I try to rally it back into its yard, next thing we know, she's running past me, goes up behind Sister Zurcher, runs through her legs, and BITES her on her upper inner thigh. OH MY GOODNESS. The very well to do lady comes out trying to settle her mega CRAY CRAY dog down. She ends up putting it in the boot of her car to get her out of the way. We find out the dog’s name is Nancy. Such a deceiving name. The lady felt so bad, bless her. She gave us a tour of her garden and her house and we had right old chat with her for a while. After we left, Sister Zurcher mentions that her leg is actually starting to hurt quite a bit. This is the one day we decide to WALK to the area where church is, so we have to walk all the way home before she can asses the damage. We get home, she checks her leg, there were 3 bite marks, one worse than the others, bit of blood, and you can tell it was going to bruise. Nevertheless, we went about our business as usual. That night, we follow up with our district leader Elder Flake. He freaks out, tells the Zone Leaders, who call us and say that Sister Zurcher needs to call Sister Pilkington. So she calls her, Sis Pilkington tells her to call 111 (it's like 000 but it's not an emergency line, it's like a helpline to assess if you should go into hospital or not). She calls it, They tell her to go to the hospital. By this time, it's like 10.30pm. We call Sis Pilkington, she says we can go, so we go. We wait an hour. A nurse sees to Sister Zurcher, she has a current tetanus shot so she was alright apparently, but she was put on antibiotics anyway, and off we went home. 
Meanwhile, her dog bite was looking more and more gnarly. Right now it looks like a bruised yellow, blue, green and dark purple Yin Yang. Looks pretty cool actually.

On Thursday we went on exchange to South Shields, nothing too crazy happened there thank goodness.

Saturday came flying…Saturday evening, we get locked out of our flat. The ONE time neither of us double-checked who had the keys. Neither of us did. They were sitting safe and sound on our desk inside the flat. We were also in our exercise clothes because we were about to do an Insanity workout at the chapel, which we do every one or 2 weeks with other people. We were also due to teach Primary AND Relief Society lessons on Sunday as well. All of which, were in the flat. So there we were. Sitting ducks. We called someone from the Primary presidency, told them of our predicament, said we couldn't teach the lesson. Then we called Sister C , RS Pres, to tell her what happened and tell her we can't teach the lesson either. Long story short, we end up staying at their house Saturday night and all of Sunday until about 3pm when we got the key back from our landlord. SUCCESS!

So that was our week :) Pretty standard. This week won't be as crazy hopefully. We hope to have more of a mellow, hard working, mid-crazy week :) A bit of crazy is always funner than no crazy init!

Still loving and appreciating all the emails and letters! Keep 'em coming! Understood if you don't have time. I feel like I have no time either so we're all in the same boat! :)

Much love
Sister Kuhn

‪PS I almost forgot to share this! Last night we went (to see) Trish. While we were there, I had a prompting to go and see a less-active sister L who we've seen before recently, and I was prompted to share a scripture I was thinking about at Trish's house. So I tell Sister Zurcher that we should go and drop by, so we do, and she's in. She is just the sweetest lady ever. She's married with 2 older teenage, very well-behaved boys. She joined the church a number of years ago. No-one else in her family is a member. We have a nice little chat and then I share Moroni 10:31-33 with her. I don't even know what I said really, but what she got from it was that she needed to do more to get her husband to soften his heart in letting her at least come to church without making herself feel bad or guilty. He's a really nice guy but only gets weekends off work so it's hard for them all to spend time with each other, and maybe to him church seems in the way of that. Fair enough. So there she is saying 'Yes, yes that is really a great scripture. I needed to hear that. Instead of me just sitting here waiting for something to happen, I need to be doing more to help him..' etc etc. I was like 'Woah.' All I said to explain the scripture was mostly based on verse 31 about strengthening and broadening Zion's stakes and how it will and does take effort and we can't just sit here and wait for it to happen etc. I said nothing about her husband…. but she got what she needed to get from it, so that was our job done. 
There's one thing that went right this week :) 


Monday 11 August 2014

Photo time!


Week 1, Transfer 11

If a snail and a sloth had a baby, that's what our week would be like. 
This last week was slooooowwww..like a snail..but slower. More like a dead snail. Yeah. A dead snail. 

But hey, that's missionary work sometimes init! Lovin it! No progression, slow progression, hard times, rejection, bad weather...it all makes you more resilient dunnit! Makes ya stronger! Well, if this keeps up, I'll be the strongest person on the planet! Haha

I'll flood you with pictures now to make up for the LACK OF in the last few weeks :)

Martin's baptism...us with other missionaries...and probably some other photos that I know you've probably all been DYING to see............

LOVE
Sister Kuhn


 Martin's Baptism
With Trish and Martin
             With the Zone Leaders  (r.i.p Elder Mulgrew - he's going home at the end of this transfer)
 





Little Lu wanted to show us all her toys during a spiritual thought of watching a conference talk at the E's house haha and then she was shy about getting a photo! hahaha love her! 


Little missionaries! Lottie and Harriett C aka Sister Kuhn and Sister Zurcher..we're actually going to their house for p-day today! Such a cute family!!  

 
                                                                         
We went to the beach last p-day! To Whitby!!!!! So so sososo good to be at the seaside!
 








Monday 4 August 2014

Darlo is in good shape!


Week 6, Transfer 10

WHY AYE MAN

That's a northern expression. It basically means YES in the most northern English way possible. Sister Zurcher and I say it with an almost Scrooge/ crippled elderly person accent. It seems to make it all the more legitimate for some reason. 

MARTIN WAS BAPTISED Y'ALL !
MIRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACLE. 

He was so happy. Although he doesn't show his emotions very much, we know him well enough now to know that he was very VERY happy. He texted us Friday night and said 'Hey it's Martin thank you both for everything you do for me'. We almost cried! It was really sweet of him. His girlfriend Trish was there too - we got her and 2 recent converts to bear their testimonies too. It brought the spirit so strongly and it was really powerful. Sister Zurcher and I also threw together a pretty mint musical item if I do say so myself! It was a few hours before the baptism and we were running around like chickens with our heads cut off. We had a coordination meeting with the Zone Leaders and our ward mission leader and at 3:30pm, I had to do the programs for the baptisms, because the library near our house was shut and has really weird hours, so I was doing that. It was then suggested that we start filling the font then instead of waiting, just in case....and lucky we did, because we soon discovered that we didn't even have the key to the font pump to fill it up! We were like WHAT DUHHHHHH?!?!? The same thing happened to us in Leeds. We were almost recruited onto the crew deck of the Black Pearl again as we were thinking about having to fill up the font with buckets like at Kera's baptism…but luckily, I was locked into doing the program and Sister Zurcher was calling people trying to locate the key we needed, while the Elders started filling it with buckets. We have a new Zone Leader by the way. Elder Baker - word on the street is that he's training to be a Navy Seal, so he's pretty nifty at problem solving. So off he and Elder Leavitt went. Our trusty ZLs! Bless them. A while later we located the key, it was dropped at the chapel. By that time, our ward mission leader’s wife and one of his sons rocked up with a hose, (which) they attached to a sink tap and started filling the font that way. Both sets of us missionaries had tea appointments at 5pm so we all rushed off to them. We had tea at bishop's. It was great. Love that family! Such a good spiritual lot. Then we rushed back to the chapel to see that the font was almost overflowing after they turned the pump on…and we got there just in time for our ward mission leader to arrive from doing something else, to turn it off. 

PHEW.
Relief!

Why did we even expect a normal, smooth baptism anyway? It's not our track record…why start now?? 

The baptism was class. Musical item went well, talks went well, testimonies were great, spirit was strong, Martin was a happy lad..and overall, the spirit in the ward has lifted a bit and everyone seems to be a lot more unified.

That's what baptisms do I guess! I really love this ward. The members are great. Still getting to know them all, but from the way it's looking, THE ZURCH and I will be here until we finish our missions. So we have a sweet 4 months to help this ward to transform into a beautiful butterfly! 

The baptism was the highlight. Not much we can do to top that in the way of NEWS.

After church yesterday we went to Catterick Garrison, the big army barracks. We went by Virginia and her family but they weren't in, so we did some knocking. First door we knocked on, this HUGE, tanned, bald guy comes out...friendly as anything! We had a good chat. He ran a regiment I think. He was in charge of the soldiers who basically go into Afghan and other places and were the first to go into big operations/missions etc. Moral of the story: this guy was crazy. Not mentally, but because he was in CHARGE of all the soldiers in a thingy...  I'll do some more finding in Catterick and get up to scratch with my army terminology!  Anyway, we shared the restoration with him. Don't think he was interested in the way of finding 'the truth' but he knew A LOT about a lot of religions. We gave him an Articles of Faith card and he was very happy about that. We're making friends in high places here!

Darlo is in good shape, we're visiting all the outlying areas and things, having a right good old time!

Love you all

PS I was sick TWO days last week, vomited me guts up for 2 days as well. Feeling good now though. Makes you appreciate feeling HEALTHY when you're dying of the plague. Sorry I haven't sent photos in a while too. I completely forgot my SD card thingy to put into the computer .but next week, I'll have it!

Sister Zurcher and I are off to the beach today with a member from Leeds! Sarah Boycott and Hamilton (baby hammy!!!!) are coming up and we're going to Whitby. It's a famous beach…apparently Dracula was born there?? How true that is, I'm not really sure...but I'll bring some garlic just in case.

Love youuuuu!!!! KEEP SHARING THE GOSPEL! IT'S THE BEST THING WE HAVE IN THIS WORLD!!!!!!

Sister Kuhn xoxoxoo