Geordie language alert

BLOG TIME!

Hello everyone! Yes, I'm alive. I know it's been a week or 2 or 3 since me last blog (Geordie language alert) but I've landed back on my feet from the whirlwind I found myself in the past 2 weeks training and being in a new area and I'm ready to get back to writing fantastic tales about South Shields! ​

First item of business, I now speak with a thick Geordie accent. I call boys 'lads' and instead of using 'my' everything is 'me'...instead of YES it's 'aye' or 'why aye man' if it's a HECK YES, 'no worries' has turned into 'no bother', 'goodbye' is 'turrah!', and 'good' is now 'canny'.
Geordie Land <3

Ok I was just kidding......sort of......not really. I don't have the thick accent but the vocabulary here is rubbing off on us! Oh that's another thing, instead of 'me' it's 'us' but you're still only talking about yourself. I forget if some of these words are words we use anyway..I've basically just lost all sense of reality and am so busy here that I forget what life is like not being a missionary in South Shields. Oh well :) Anyway so the vocab is a lot different to...  well, everywhere else. I imagine it's a lot like the Darwin/Northern Territory slang that the rest of Australia doesn't ever use, but here the accent is on a whole different level as well. I love it though it's mad fun trying to understand and then copy their accent.

Secondly, the photos are of the beach that we live close to, we ran there last week in the morning, it was LOVELYYY. We will be spending time at the beach today also relaxing :) and the night time picture is our balcony (Halelujah!). It's prettyyyy gangsta ay. 

 

We also visited these lovely members on Saturday, and they have THE BIGGEST DOG OF MY LIFE. AMERICAN BULLDOG. He's deaf and even though he has blue eyes he's not blind as well luckily. He's 14 stone! Which is about 89kg for all the people who don't know what a stone is. HUGE. A big softie though, I like him :) we're good mates now. I think his name is Bronson, but he's deaf anyway so it doesn't matter to him. He knows sign language and that's how they tell him to sit or lie down etc. It was so cool watching them communicate with him. He's more obedient than dogs who can hear!!

Another photo has 2 parts - the one of Salt Lake temple (front and back). We were walking to an appointment and Sister Ahola saw a Lexus (her Dad likes Lexus cars) and so she got the pass along card out and we wrote that on it and put it on the windshield haha it was crack up. The poor bloke probably thought he had a ticket!

I could write for ages about this area and the people etc. But I'll just skim over bits and pieces. The elders had a baptism on Friday, Sister Ahola and I sang at it, 2 of our investigators came, John and Abbie. Abbie is 13, she's mates with a recent convert called Talyia who is also 13 and she is a BOSS of a missionary. Always referring her friends to the missionaries and all sorts. Basically, everyone in this ward and everyone we teach are super great. We're always laughing with someone about something up here in the Great North!

I don't have long to go now. Time is a tickin!

I've learnt a lot of life lessons through this experience. Not only has it strengthened my testimony immensely, it has taught me so many things about the general wants and desires of people in the world (which is to be happy). It's taught me to pace myself, take a day at a time if I need to, and just press forward like it says in the scriptures...with a perfect brightness of hope and a love of God. I feel a bit like a wise old owl coming to the end of my mission. A wise old owl with so so so much more to learn lol ah well, for me, right now, this is the most important thing I could be doing, so I'm going to do my best at it!

Love you all, thanks for the support. Forever grateful. Seriously!

Peace x

Sister Kuhn

Love the sisters!!!

Ello there!

I don't have much time! South Shields is lovely, we're by the beach, yay! I have 3 minutes so I have to go but if you could put on the blog that I'll reply to everyone's emails next week or something.

It's been hectic here though. Teaching and finding etc. The last sisters left us a legacy which was nice :) Lots of things to do! I'll tell you more about investigators and people later. The members are solid too!

My new comp/daughter is called Sister Ahola, she is from Finland (and very proud of it too!) She's got lovely long hair and speaks the 2nd most difficult language to learn in the world :)

There are some pics below of transfer meeting with some sisters, some going home, some still here. Love em all!  

Transfer, Training and Finding Joy in the Journey..

Week 6, Transfer 11

Ah, we meet again blog readers!

So it was transfer calls on Saturday night. This is going to be hilarious. Ok, so it all started once upon a time when I came to the England Leeds Mission...I was out 9 weeks (1.5 transfers) when I got a call that I was being emergency transfers (ET'd) to a little place called Skipton where I was for 3 weeks and then I was called to train. So, out 3 months, called to train, fast forward 15 months and here we are, I have 3 months LEFT of my mission, and what happens? I get called...to TRAIN!!!!!!! So, for my last 2 transfers I will be training a new missionary. I meet her tomorrow at transfer meeting. I just think it's hilarious, but at least it'll keep me going because boy does your mind play all sorts of horrible tricks on you when it knows you're going home soon! 

On top of that, I'm moving (but still staying in the north) to a place BY THE SEA called South Shields, which I am very excited about indeed. I went on exchange there a few weeks ago thank goodness! Sister Zurcher and I will still be Sister Trainer Leader companions but she will stay in Darlo and get Sister Wynder up here. She goes home after this next transfer so who knows what will happen then, but Sister Zurcher and I will continue going on exchanges and we have some great plans for the sisters of the north! Including a sisters’ retreat where we will be able to have them all together and train them and do some unity activities. Oh it's going to be so good! 

I've sort of got it all smacked down on me all at once, but I wouldn't have it any other way. Heavenly Father knows me so well. I sometimes forget that. 

The last 3 months flew by, so I imagine the next 3 will go even faster, because I'll be so busy! 

I just know that Heavenly Father is so mindful of us, even when we think He's not. Especially in our trials and hard times, He's especially there. He just loves us so much. I'm almost finished the Book of Mormon again too. My insights keep getting deeper and my understanding grows so much the more I read them. I've really enjoyed my time in Darlo but I know that I'm needed in South Shields with my new companion. I know she is needed there also! I'm really excited to embark on this new adventure of my mission, the home stretch. 

Finding joy in the journey is something that I've been hearing and learning a lot about recently either in church, or in the Ensign or on lds.org etc. I just love President Uchtdorf's talk on it. If you haven't read it, go on lds.org, look it up and read it! We need to FIND the joy, search for it, and also remember that sometimes there is simply no joy whatsoever in some things that happen to us, but that's the time to remember that joy will come. It will. Remember that. 

Well, that's the main news for the week everyone, so I'm going to go now :) Gotta pack! 

LOVE

Sister Kuhn

The sisters in Billingham Zone! Sister Suss, Sister Nigido, Sister Zurcher, and me. Only 2 sets, but we were a force to be reckoned with! 

This guy! Elder Ormsby - tryna be a skuxx kid! Was in his district for a transfer. Aussies represent! 

Oh and while we were on exchange last week, Sister Kumire made us AFRICAN FOOD for lunch! We ate it with our hands! It was SO good I ate almost ALL of it!!

The lilies from the flowers my Mother and Father sent us! Loved em!! I put them next to my desk :)

             Hahahahahahaha this is my favourite photo of Sister Zurcher and I. We love each other.

So, Martin is a big fan of the Darlo football club "The Quakers". He showed us their catalogue or news or whatever it is with all the players names. I made a comment about this guy, Leon Scott..next thing I know, Martin thinks I am madly in love with him. Last week he texts us saying 'I got you a present'..it was a signed photo of the player hahahaha I keep telling him Leon Scott works in Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory as an Oompa Loompa. MAH-TIN (that's what we call Martin, in a really posh English accent) if you're reading this with Trish, tell Trish she's NAUGHTY! Haha love you guys! I'm Leon Scott's No#1 fan now apparently! Hahahaha

And there's a progression drawing I've been doing for a while whenever I get a spare moment. It's looking pretty cool! Note the Inca Crosses with the pink middle! Nice touch ;)  

Running Club and Roman Ruins

So, funny story, last week we went to a park in Darlington that we haven't had a chance to go the whole time we've been here. It's called Skerne Park. Now, if you know anything about Darlo, Skerne Park isn't the MOST desirable place to live. So we weren't that bothered going into the actual recreational park itself. Nevertheless, we did. And luck we did because it was beautiful! We frolicked around and chatted to random people and soaked up the sun like lizards. A notice board with a piece of paper on it caught Sister Zurcher's eye. It was an advertisment for a running club every week. She's a runner you see, so this sort of thing sticks out like a sore thumb to her. We decide to try it. You need to think out of the box when it comes to finding ladies and gentlemen! Especially towards the end of your mission, 'same old same old' just doesn't do it for you. So we met up with this running club and went for a run. There were about 8 of us, different ages but we were the youngest by quite a bit :) Everyone was so friendly and kind and welcoming. So off we went, for an hour run (Dad you would be so proud!) If anyone knows me, they'll know I'm not a huge fan of running. I need to be tricked into my cardio! Hence why I've done boxing and Insanity workouts and circuits and Crossfit and skipping etc. keeps it interesting for me! Running, however, has never interested me. Nonetheless, I went on this run (mostly for Sister Zurcher, because she's a runner and has done a half marathon and she's just got runner's blood). It was actually really nice. Who'd a thought?! We met this lovely lady called Geraldine from Ireland, she's Catholic. Haha oh man..she's so funny. Really kind hearted and gentle lady. We had a right old chat. She offered to take us to see this Roman fort not too far away and a castle as well that she'd never even heard about in the 14 years she's lived in Darlo! (That explains the pictures - because she actually took us to see it all! What a babe!). We also had a good chat to the team leader. And because we wore our badges, it was so easy to strike up a conversation about the church…and we never had to bring it up first! Love when that happens :) We also talked to this older, but quite fit, lady! She lost her husband a few months ago so we had a little chat about that. It's amazing the people Heavenly Father puts in your paths. Who knows if we'll have any immediate success with these people, but we're planting seeds, reaching out and extending support to people who need it. 

So that was our funny little miracle for the week! Running clubs for finding…because all you do is talk for an hour while you run anyway! Genius! AND we don't have to be fat either! What a master plan! 

That explains how we met Geraldine. So the photos are of the fort (which was super cool) and the castle - also very nice and luxurious. The Romans were so advanced, did you know back then they had tweezers?? Tweezers?!?!  AND, their bath houses were so legit, they'd spend HOURS in them every day. They had it all figured out.

In other news, Martin (recently baptised) had his interview with the bishop about the priesthood on Sunday - he's receiving the Aaronic Priesthood next Sunday! Which will be great because I'll be here! I have a sneaking suspicion that I'm leaving at the end of this transfer, which ends in about a week and a half. So it'll be really nice to see him get the priesthood in case I do leave :) So exciting!!!!!!! If you're reading this Martin, you better be as excited as I am!!!!! Haha proud of you buddy!

We also had 2 wonderful ladies come to church who haven't been in awhile. It was SO good seeing them there. They are so Christ-like and humble and kind and we need more like them in the world. 

That's all from me. I'm sure other things happened but it's all gone over my head at the moment! Plus, Sister Zurcher and I are off to see Durham Cathedral today (the joys of being Sister Trainer Leaders..being able to go outside of our area/zone to whatever zones we go on exchange to without needing permission..what a blessing!) I've heard Durham Cathedral is the bomb diggity too so I'm dead excited about that. 

Thank you for all your prayers and love and support and letters and emails. You know I love you!

Sister Kuhn x

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 :) 

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!

 

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