Maybe I will be blessed with the gift of hands!

Hey Family and Friends!

Fun at the Minnesota Fair!

     This past week was crazy!  As you know last Monday I found out I was getting transferred!  But instead of going home and packing up my things Sister Noe and I had made plans to go to the Minnesota State Fair with the Spanish Sisters!  After we were done emailing we went to go meet the sisters at the church and then a member was able to give us a ride.  Holy cow!  That was the best P-day I have ever had.  
     

I have never been to the Fair before and it was so much fun!  I have heard that the Minnesota State Fair is the biggest one in the country.  I have nothing to compare it to but it was huge!  There were so many people, there was so much to do, there where tons of rides, and there was so much FOOD!  And weird food!  I had to put a limit on myself as to how much I tried because I am on a missionary budget with a little extra birthday money. :) I was able to try Alligator and cheese curds!  They both were super good!  I really liked the cheese curds. I think they are a Minnesota thing because they are everywhere.  It is fried cheese.  The alligator was really good too.  It tasted like a super juicy and flavorful hot dog.  What better place to try alligator then Minnesota right?!  

     They had so many funny things though and everything was on a stick and fried!  They even had fried candy bars!  I wasn't brave enough to try that, my pride wouldn't let me.  We ran into some other missionaries while we were there and we spent most of our day with them.  All of the other missionaries were Spanish speaking and Sister Noe knows a little bit of Spanish too.  So I was the only one who "no habla espanol".  

     We went into a Haunted House which was super funny and super random and we were able to go on 2 rides!  It was so much fun!  Our mission president said we could use our judgement on rides.  So.... ya we went to 2 rides.  It was so much fun!  Lots of fun memories!

I thought this was funny. Some of the Elders went to go play the balloon dart game
 and look at what one of the prizes was a Mormon Jesus picture!  Isn't that great!

     Then after the Fair we went back and we started being a normal missionaries again.  We were able to go and have one last lesson with Desirae and her kids.  We had a lesson about the scriptures and the power of scripture study.  The kids are so great.  I really hope that their mom will be able to step it up and help her family progress.  Those kids want to be baptized so bad but they need to be baptized as a family so they can progress together.  I was really sad to say goodbye to all of them.  They are so sweet and they need good examples in their lives.  I am so grateful that even though missionaries come and go the ward is always going to be there for them.  To help them feel loved and give them the support that they need.

Goodbyes to Desirae and her kids

This is the Family Home Evening Chart we made!

I am really going to miss the members of the Lake Nokomis ward!

Blessing likes the selfie camera!

I shared my Birthday starburst with them!

     Then on Tuesday we went and said goodbye to some of the investigators that we were teaching and to some of the members.  I am really going to miss the Lake Nokomis ward.  There are so many great members and they are all so helpful and have such a love for the missionaries and the work that we do.  I think I have said this before but I am so grateful that I will be able to continue to keep in contact with them after the mission and hopefully, one day, I will be able to come back and visit them.

The Wortley Family

I love this girl!  I will miss Eva!

Goodbye to Sister Noe

     Then, Transfer Day!  Those days are always so crazy.  I was able to get everything packed up and ready to go.  It was weird to think that it was my last time being in Edina.  I had been there for 3 transfers and that was the longest I have stayed in one place.  I should have guessed I would get moved again.  
     We then drove to Bloomington.  It is always fun to meet up their because you get to see a lot of missionaries. 

It was fun to see Sister Pao.  I miss her!

Hello Sister Ballif

Sister McCullough

     I was able to meet my new companion, Sister McCullough. (Mc- cole-low)  I really like her!  She is from West Valley, Utah.  She graduated from Hunter High School in 2012 and she was a cheerleader also.  Then she went to Utah State for a year!  We are very similar and so far we have been getting along great!  I have really enjoyed this week that we have had together!  She is a great missionary!  Then we were on our way to our new area, Apple Valley.  We were replacing elders so we were white washing the area.  And one of the main reason that we are there is because the ward has some deaf people in the ward and the person who used to interpret for them moved.  They have been struggling lately on helping those member be able to understand the meetings.  Sister McCullough took 3 years of American Sign Language (ASL) in high school.  She is a little rusty because she hasn't done it in a while but she has been able to pick it up pretty fast. 

Check out this huge chair!
Dad you should get one!

     I personally really enjoy white washing/opening areas.  I like the fact that we get a fresh start.  That there aren't specific things that you have to do but it is completely up to us and we get to decide how we want to do things.  We were able to go to the City Hall and get a map.  We then were able to see were all of the members live and split up the map into different areas so we can be more effective with our time and where we are going.  We also made a goal to stop and meet at least 2 active members everyday.  It has been going really well.  The ward is very excited to have sisters.  I really like it here.  There are a lot of youth in the ward and they are all very missionary minded.  I know this is going to be a great people for us. 

Our first week at church

     We went to church yesterday and it was our first time meeting everyone.  We decided that we were going to go try and meet everyone and put some faces to the names we had been looking over in the ward directory. We started shaking hands with everyone and it was going good.  But then all the sudden someone pulled us aside and asked if Sister McCullough was still planning on signing today.  She didn't know she was supposed to.  She was super scared because she hadn't done it in so long.  I had no idea what any of it meant.  I sat by her and I held the hymn book while she signed the hymns.  I guess you could call me the little ASL assistant.  I know the alphabet so I can spelling things out.  Hopefully I will be able to learn more so I can communicate better with them.  Maybe I will be blessed with the gift of hands! :) Church went really good it was totally different from any other meeting I have ever been in.  It was kind of hard.  Watching all of the signing and trying to listen at the same time made it hard to focus but it was really great at the same time.  The best is to look at the deaf members and how happy they were to be able to participate in the meetings and feel of the spirit.  We followed them around and we even went to Priesthood.  There is a first time for everything!  It was so great.  I really hope that I will be able to learn more so I can help out better instead of just holding the hymn book.  We are going to start doing language study in the mornings to help Sister McCullough remember everything.  This is going to be a fun transfer! 

     We were even able to get an investigator to church on Sunday.  Her name is Joyce and she lives in our apartment.  She is from a country by India and she has an autistic grandson who she watches over.  We were able to talk to her on Saturday night and we invited her to come to church with us.  She did!  She loved it so much.  She was able to listen to the testimonies and she felt that everyone was speaking directly to her. She even went up and bore her own testimony!  It was very good and she spoke about the love that she felt there and how the missionaries were sent to her for a reason.  That she has seen the boy missionaries before walking around but when she saw us, she felt that she should talk to us.  She said she knows that we were an answer to her prayers.  We are really excited to meet with her again and share more with her about the gospel.

     So far things are going really good here!  I love my area, I love my companion, this is going to be a good transfer.  I am so grateful for change.  This is a good change for me.  I am also grateful for the opportunities that I have to change.  Being in a new area with a new companion makes it easier.  I love you all.  Thanks for everything. 

     One quick quote before I go.  Earlier this week I was reading about prayer in my studies.  It said, 

"We don't have prayer so God can change our circumstances, we have prayer so we can understand what God would have us do in the circumstances we are in."  I know that this is true.  I know that things get hard and we don't know why, but if we would take a step back and ask ourselves "What does Heavenly Father want me to learn from this?" our attitude will change.  It is all about our perspective.

Have a great week!

Love, Sister Kendra Curtis