Dearest Family and Friends!
First off! I can't believe my brother is officially in the mission field! I just read his email and it is crazy to see the difference between the mission work in Minnesota and Jamaica! He is experiencing things that I probably never will. It is really cool to see that even though everything is so different we have been called to do the same thing. Bring others unto Christ! It is such a blessing that we get to experience this together! I am so excited to keep hearing about his awesome experiences. What an amazing missionary! I love Elder Curtis!
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| Hello Summer! |
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| I heart my companion! |
To start off we were able to meet with Eva a couple times this week. She is doing great she is back on track and she is hoping to get baptized on April 19. We were able to have some really good lessons with her and she has been sharing a lot more with us. We were able to find out that one of her biggest concerns is that she won't have that support from her friends. She expressed to us that she knows that her friends aren't doing things that God would be pleased with but she doesn't want to completely shut them out in the process. She wants to be able to be that example to them and be able to stand up for her beliefs. I have said this before but we have such a great ward here. We were able to get a bunch of awesome members to her lessons and that is the best thing for her. She just needs a better group of friends that have the same standards as her and will bring her up instead of keeping her where she is. I have a funny comment that Eva said this week. She is super funny because she is super sassy but only if she is comfortable around you. We have finally reached that point and I absolutely love it. She is cracking me up. So we were asking her something along the lines of returning and living with God again. She then said, "You know I used to say YOLO (you only live once) all the time. It used to be at the end of all my text messages and I would always say that to everyone, but I now know that is not true because I know that there is life after death." HAHA I thought this was the funniest thing. I wish I could just say all of her one liners but there are way to many!
Last week I mentioned how we lost contact with Chloe. Well we still weren't able to get a hold of her. But Tuesday night we were talking to one of our awesome members Brittany and we were telling her about the situation. She then asked us, "Well have you stopped by her house yet?"
Right then Sister Callister and I looked at each other with big smiles on our faces. We have not tired that yet! What a wonderful idea. We even had her address because she wrote it down on her baptismal record. It was perfect. So we grabbed a plate of cookies and we were on our way. Brittany even came with us. We came to the point where we were stalking our investigator but we brought cookies. Cookies always make it less weird! Am I right? :) We went to her house and she wasn't to happy to see us. But she quickly threw on that "Minnesota Nice" and invited us in. We asked her how she was doing and if she was excited for her vacation. She said she was. She then told us that her phone hasn't been working and that she was texting us back but we must have just not got them. I am not sure how accurate this is because it wasn't just us who wasn't getting responses it was everyone, members and all. We are almost wondering if there is a bigger issue that we just aren't aware of yet. But she told us that she is still planning on being baptized on April 12th so hopefully everything is okay.
We have another investigator that we are teaching, her name is Deborah. She is 20 and she is from Kenya. She is studying Biology at the University of Minnesota but she is living at home with her family. She is a Seventh Day Adventist but she has most of the same believes that we do. The main differences are that she goes to church on Saturday and that we have the Book of Mormon. But everything else is very similar. She has an amazing faith in God and desire to follow him. We have only had a 2 lessons with her. She doesn't want to get baptized because she feels like her baptism is enough and that she is already following God, she doesn't need another baptism. We need to help her understand the authority and the power to work in Gods name, but other then that she is amazing and still wants to meet with us.
Another girl that we are meeting with is Sam. Sam is the roommate of a recent convert who was baptized last month. She works at the Como Zoo and she use to be Catholic. We were able to go over to their house last week and talk to them about the plan of salvation. Sam is amazing. She has so many awesome questions and she really just wants to know truth. We have only met with her once but we are excited to see her this week and answer some more of her questions.
This week Sister Callister and I found a lost sheep! We went inside of one of the buildings on campus to ask the front desk a question. We were waiting in line then all the sudden the man in front of us turned around and said, "Hello Sisters." Whoa! We asked if he knew missionaries and he said yes. We then were able to find out that he is from Nigeria and he is actually a member but he doesn't go to church. He told us that he doesn't obey the word of wisdom and there are a couple of other things that he doesn't agree with. But we were able to invite him to church yesterday and he came! It was so great to have him there and he really enjoyed it hopefully he will come next week as well. But he actually is older then 31 so he shouldn't be going to this ward but hey its better then no church at all! :) Isn't it awesome to see how the Lord places us in other peoples paths for a reason!
The Googley Eyed Gopher!
So I have mentioned this before but we have been trying a new contacting technique where we are doing a survey out on campus. It consists of 10 yes or no questions about their personal believes. The purpose of the survey is to see what similarities we both have. This has been working very well for us and we have been able to teach many restoration lessons right afterwards. We are able to use the questions that they just answered to bring their input and their beliefs into the lesson. We have seen much success and it has helped us get better quality of lessons.
Yesterday we had an awesome lesson with a guy from Russia. He was out on a run and we stopped him and asked him if he had time to do a quick survey. He said sure. We explained to him what it was about and then we started asking the questions. Like I said before all the questions are yes and no so they have to choose a side. We started off by asking, do you believe in God? He said yes. Next question, do you believe that Jesus Christ is your Savior? He said yes. Later we then asked him do you think that Christ will come again? He look at us and said, "Well didn't He say He would come?" We nodded our head. "Then of course He will." We checked the box. Next question, do you believe that baptism in essential for salvation? He then said, "Well isn't that what Christ taught? Then yes." I loved listening to his Russian accent and his answers, because it was so logical to him. Of course Christ is real and everything he said and taught was true. This just showed me how great his faith in Christ is. It is really sad because we talk to people on campus all day and so many people don't have time for God and they are forgetting Him completely. It just makes me happy to see that there are still people who are striving to live good lives and to follow the example of Christ. We were able to teach him the first lesson right there and we are planning on meeting with him later this week.
Truly the gospel is very logical. This is something I have been noticing a lot this week. It really does just make sense. We could easily go on campus and bash with others about how logically our church makes sense but that is not what Christ would have us do. The most important thing about the lessons that we teach is inviting the spirit to be there because I am not the teacher, the spirit is. The spirit is going to touch their heart and help them remember the truths that they once knew. We are just imperfect tools in the masters hands. We are blessed because he lets us be apart of it!
I love you all! More then you will ever know! Thanks for everything that you do. Your support means so much to me! Have a great week! Look for the miracles!
Love, Sister Kendra Curtis
P.S. I loved the Women's Meeting!
I can't wait for General Conference!
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| I love being a missionary! |
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| Look! South Jordan |
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| A member took us for manicures on our P-Day! So sweet! |
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