Craziest Week of the Mission

This is Hella Vigliatoro.  She is 9 years old and joined the 

church last September.

Tuesday night we visited a less active woman named Korinda Byzeck who lives in an assisted living place because she is paralyzed. We had a nice short visit with her and she had bought us some cookies and we enjoyed our visit. She can't really go very many places so she sits outside from 4 pm to 10 or 12 pm each day so she doesn't have to be inside. The only rule is that she can't be outside if it 30 or lower.

Elder Kelly is a goof

Wednesday was crazy. We had MLC and that started at 8:15 am and ended at about 5:00 pm. There were some awesome trainings given by the mission presidency that were super sweet. There was one training about the Holy Ghost that was awesome. He talked a lot about how it is vital to succeeding in missionary work. Another one was about D&C 58 which was revelation for missionaries serving here in Jackson County.

Independence Zone

All set up for the missionary dinner

We left MLC and went straight to the stake center. There is a dinner that President Cato (stake president) puts on for the missionaries every Christmas and there is music and food and it was so good. Part of it as well is left up to the Raytown elders to put something together. In the past it has always been competitions between President Vest and President Cato. They are really close friends and are very competitive. There has been family feud in the past and other things like that. Elder Odland had been racking our brains of what to do and we decided we should make both of them go through "The Life Of A Missionary" and compete doing different events. First off it felt like I was back in student council and it was a ton of fun planning too. Second it turned out so much better than we expected. Some of the events included:

- Making your bed.

- Working out

- Shooting on the classic missionary apartment Nerf hoop

- Reciting scripture

- Proselyting (handing out pass along cards)

- Being asked 100s of questions at dinner (How well do you know your wife?)

- And getting to bed on time.

Ready for the competition

We had the crowd screaming for their side and it was so funny. I'll be sure to include lots of pictures.

Pres Cato and Pres Vest with the trophey

Pres Vest getting the crowd going

We weren't able to leave until around 9:45 that night with all our stuff.

Thursday we weekly planned and then got in the car and drove to Olathe for the baptism of Claudia. Elder Odland was teaching her right before he left and so we were able to get permission to go see! We had to get a member ride so we went with Josh Thieme (The Vegas Missionary) and also met up with Johnathan Castillo who is the missionary I met in the MTC. We had dinner at 5 guys and then went straight to the baptism.  Claudia was a fire ball and she was so excited for her baptism. That is also the area that elder Taylor went to so elder Odland and I really enjoyed getting to see out old companions.

Cute Claudia

Friday was Zone Training and so we had two three hour meetings. Those went great! At the end of the second one it was 6:30 at night and we were at the Visitors Center for the meetings. Thankfully some of the sisters had a ton of left over pizza so we pounded a few pieces and had to split. Unfortunately nothing went through that evening. We also went on an exchange with the Riverview Elders. Elder Shawgo came with me to Raytown. We had lots of service all day Saturday. We helped a man named Barry clean up his apartment and he was a super awesome guy.

Elder Shawgo and I have served around each other for about 3 transfers now but I had never really clicked with him. We didn't like not like each other just very different personalities but the exchange was a ton of fun and we got to know each other a lot better.

We exchanged back around 5 and then headed to our ward Christmas party. There was a talent show and our bishop is an Elvis impersonator and so there was a special appearance.

Bishop is the Best!

Sunday we had a lesson with a woman named Kat Jeffs who we had done service for a few months earlier. It was the first time I taught the Plan of Salvation to someone in a few months. It was really nice.  Afterwards we had dinner with the Sagebins.

To finish off the week we went to a woman named Connie who we had met and help put up some Christmas decorations when I was on exchanges with E. Staheli. We had met last Sunday and showed her the light the world video. Well this week we followed up on the invitation of reading the Bible every day and she let us right in. She committed to read a chapter out of the BofM and the Bible on Faith. Connie is so nice and so funny to teach.

Well this is probably the best email I've written in a long. Love you all!

Elder Kelly