A few pictures

Elder Kelly, Brother Johnson, Elder Limon, Sister Pruett

We got to watch conference with them a couple of weeks ago.

Notes from Book of Mormon study

It has been a Fabulous Week

Monday we had our usual dinner appointment with the Crewe family and we taught about the power of prayer. Brother Crewe has a non member sister who lives with him and is almost always at dinner. She sometimes sits in on the lessons we have afterwards. Well last week we finally had the opportunity to invite her to take the lessons and she accepted! We have our first return appointment tonight and we are excited to teach her the restoration.

Tuesday we had a lesson with Micheal Fremont a less active who is willing to meet with us but informed us in our 2nd lesson that he did not want to come back to church. But he was willing to read the BofM and meet with us so we decided an appointment every two weeks would be perfect. Well our appointment on Tuesday was fantastic. We found out that he is now into 2nd Nephi and has enjoyed reading quite a bit. Mike said that before when he had read the Book of Mormon he always had a very hard time understanding what he read. But he was happy to inform us that as he has been reading he prays that he will be able to understand it and as he asks so he receives. It is really awesome to see him progress in small steps. He even is now considering coming to church and it has only been two visits over the span of a month.

That evening we went over to the Brackett's house. They are an active couple who have a LA daughter that is married to a non member. We sat down with just the parents and made a plan of how we can help Sierra and Charles accept taking the lessons from us. It was exciting to make a plan with them. You could tell we were all kind of excited to see what happens. I think they will accept the invite because they have been to a baptism and church a few times recently. The spirit has been working on them for sure.

Wednesday was DM and we had a training by Elder Brinkerhoff about having a vision of what we want to accomplish. He shared Proverbs 23:7 "For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he." Love that. It is a powerful principle. If you want to develop in any way, obtain spiritual gifts, have any good attribute then you need to first be able to envision yourself being that way or achieving those goals otherwise... it probably won't happen. Went along really well with Elder Ballard's talk of Return and Receive. I loved that talk so much.

Thursday we had exchanges with the Hickory Hills elders. It was a fantastic exchange much needed by both elders. They had been struggling to communicate with each other and both are getting tired with the work in their area. At the end of the exchange we had a really good exchange review and we were able to help the elders make a plan of how they are going to work more closely with the members to get the work moving. I love an exchange where we feel like we really did learn something from each other. Much more enjoyable. We had dinner with Sister Foster that night and boy was it good. Mashed potatoes with baked chicken and stuffing. It was so good. 

Right after closing the exchange on Thursday night we drove out to Independence and exchanged with the assistants. Me and Elder Childress were together on Friday and it was a great throwback. We had a really good talk during the day and I just felt a lot of love the whole time. 

General Conference weekend... ROCKED! I love conference weekend. Friday I was literally so excited I had similar feelings that I used to get on Christmas Eve. It was awesome. There were so many good insights I had. One of my favorite things was shared by President Uchtdorf, he said that as leaders we are not there to simply lead others we are there to be led by God. A good principle to remind yourself of where you stand as a leader. I loved it.

I testify of the reality of a living modern day prophet. If you did not listen to all sessions of General Conference I highly encourage you to make the time available so you can watch and learn from Gods anointed. I know that Thomas S. Monson is today's modern day prophet. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen 

Transfer 11

Tuesday we met with Jim Brown again and we talked about the importance of the Book of Mormon. He committed to baptism on the 15 of April! He also made it to church on Sunday and seemed to enjoy it pretty well. He said he really liked meeting with the high priest group. We are meeting with him tomorrow!

Wednesday Elder Blake packed and we had Ivan's Baptism that night, we had dinner with their family before the baptism and ate a lot... then after the baptism she had cookies and tamales and jello and cake... and we ate a lot more! 

Elder Kelly, Elder Conley, Ivan, Elder Blake

Elder Blake got moved on Thursday. :( We were just starting to get things moving and into a flow with the way we worked with each other. But hey no complacency right. Time to stretch and grow some more. My new companion is Elder Limón. He was actually trained by Elder Blake when I was training Elder Write. E. Limón has been out for about 9 months. We have had a really good time together so far. He is originally from Texas but he came out from Saratoga Springs, Utah. 

Thursday after picking him up we went to the apartment and had a SWEET weekly planning session! I love good weekly planning sessions. I can go work 150% harder throughout the week. That night we took a woman named Brittany on a chapel tour. She was a street contact E. Blake and I had either Monday or Tuesday. We had Tay come as our team up and it was so great! They seemed to click like friends rather quickly and right after there was a Relief Society birthday party that she also stayed for. She committed to come to church! The next day though she texted us and told us that she didn't want to come to our church anymore. Bummer. The Spirit was pretty strong on the chapel tour. That is ok though. She will come around eventually. 

Dinner that night was with Brother Johnson (the one who received his endowments) and he took us to Smokin Joes. He bought two full racks of ribs. There was so much. His first words to us were "alright whatever is left we split in half and take it home". Well we have been eating ribs for every lunch since and still have some left.

left over ribs

 Not much happened on Friday... I don't really remember honestly. 

Saturday we hit it hard! We didn't have a ton of lessons but we got to talk to a lot of people. At the end of the day however we did have a lesson with a former investigator named Maria Torez and her family. We went by and they let us right in. They haven't been taught in a year. We shared the restoration with Maria and her two daughters Samantha and Jessica. There is a 15 year old boy Joseph he was just sick with a migraine so he didn't join us. They committed to come to church but they didn't make it. We haven't had a chance to follow up them yet but we are hoping to make it by tonight or tomorrow. 

A member gave us Girl Scout cookies!

Sunday we visited our High priest group leader. We role played with them how to invite people to watch conference while at the grocery store. I challenge all of you to invite someone to watch conference with you! Dallin H. Oaks quoted in his last general conference talk, “over the past twenty years, we have observed no correlation between the depth of a relationship and the probability that a person will be interested in learning about the gospel.” Please invite at least one person! You do not need to be best friends with them to invite!

Oh I forgot to tell you. About two miles from our apartment there was a huge fire in a new apartment complex hat is being built. You should look it up. It was seriously huge. It got homes on fire behind it and some of them burnt to the ground. A really sad crazy fluke. They think it was started by a welder that didn't clean up all of his stuff.

The house across the way caught fire but didn't 

completely burn down.  Sad

I know Heavenly Father loves all of us! He wants us to show our love for Him through consecration and obedience. What are you willing to put away for celestial glory?

Love you all! 

Elder Kelly

Pday with Elder Limon 

Elder Blake and I used to always flex and joke about our tiny muscles

Tay's Baptism

Elder Kelly, Elder Conley, Tay, Elder Blake

M- This has been a great week! Me and Elder Blake have had a good time working together. Throughout our lunches we have been watching the Youth Face to Face and I learned a lot about prayer. Elder Holland and President Eyring talked about how we should pray and that we need to be approaching the throne of God. My prayers are now completely different. I decided to stay in my church clothes at night for my prayer and I have really enjoyed it i stay more focus and it is easier to remember why I'm there.

I- Tay was baptized!! She shared an experience in gospel principles about how she was getting questioned by all her friends about her decision but then last week in church she had a peaceful feeling come over her and she knew that she had made the right choice in being baptized into the church.

R- Something I struggle with is not being able to study for a large amount of time. I love reading the scriptures but I feel like I don't get to really feast in one hour because I also need to be in PMG, pamphlets, talks, make training, etc. I was praying to know how the Lord would have me study. Well my answer was that 1. I need to stick to what  you suggest (initiatives, training plan, etc.) On top of that I learned that learning also comes through experience while laboring among the Lord's children. No amount of study can replace experiences that come while applying what you read.

A- Well we had a member come up to us and ask "Elders, when is the next activity that I can invite a friend to come to?" That is the best thing to hear out of a members mouth! We have had several people ask if they can participate in the end of this 40 day fast even though the days are well full. The baptism of Tay was very helpful too. I wish we could of had more people at the baptism but non the less the members are seeing that things are actually happening and they want to be a part of it.

C- Elder Blake is doing very well. He gave me a piece of advice that has been very valuable to me over the past couple of days. He told me to stop caring about what people thought. Just do the things I know are right and let the Savior take me to new heights. I have become more bold in my testifying and inviting, more dedicated to talking with every one, more excited to go work! I am grateful for the support he has shown me even though we are so different. I love him. :) In fact during weekly planning we set a goal to use the WofW pamphlet in our street contacting just to shake things up. People are really open to the idea. It is also a really good opportunity to testify of modern day prophets and our bodies being temples. Always nice to get out of the rut.

L- After zone conference I committed to actually repent of not using the pamphlets and I promised Heavenly Father that i would think up 5 inspired questions for each picture in the pamphlets. It takes a lot of effort to think of that many questions for one picture but it has really helped me branch out in my teaching. New ways of working new results. A sharper saw brings more wood.

That is a copy of the email I sent to President Vest. I don't have much time to email this week unfortunately. 

Four other things worth mentioning!

1. Ivan Does now have work off on Sundays and was at church on Sunday. He had his baptismal interview and it went great! He will be baptized this Wednesday at 7 pm! In our ward we have about 5 or 6 native Spanish speakers who speak broken English but the nearest Spanish ward is too far away for them. But since our ward mission leader is a Spanish speaker he will start teaching gospel principles in Spanish and his wife will be teaching the english one like she has been.
2. Sunday we stopped by S. Foster's home (She is the less active lady that feeds us all of the bomb food if you remember the pictures. Not s Diaz but the other lady) anyways she helps take care of one of her old friends. He is a really old guy named Jim Brown (classic white guy name). A sweet old man I wish you guys could hear him talk. Anyways S. Foster was not home so we started talking to him. He allowed us to come in and we shared the restoration. We invited him to baptism and he accepted! We will hopefully be setting a date tomorrow.
3. Tays Baptism! Tay actually had three of her non-member friend there along with her mom Georgette. E. Conley came back and baptized her and I loved getting to see him! The following day I had the opportunity to confirm her in sacrament meeting. I love being able to do that... very humbling. A powerful experience for everyone really.
4. Sunday night we had dinner with the Moncrief family. I can't remember if I've mentioned them before. They make all sorts of homemade bread and the dad just recently got the Melchizedek priesthood when E. Childress was serving here. Anyways they made us homemade pitas. They are health nuts and all of it was from scratch. Holy wow it was good. The reason they are such health nuts is because apparently she used to be "really fat" like "huge fat" her own words... I didn't want to ask a specific weight but apparently she was big. Anyways, she really loves chocolate chip cookies and what she does to not eat them is she figured out it takes two hours of really hard work out to burn all the calories from one cookie. For her personally. Don't know if I'm that committed but it was cool to hear everything about how they manage their health and stuff.

I love you all and would invite all of you to read from the scriptures! Also if you want some good suggestions on improvement go watch the Youth Face to Face. 

I know that Jesus Christ is our mediator with the Father. Remember to involve Him, the redeemer, in your efforts to change otherwise it is not actual repentance!

Love, 

Elder Kelly

A Week Full of the Spirit

Tay is going to be baptized this weekend on the 18th at 5:30 pm! We finished teaching her all the lessons this week! She had her baptismal interview on Sunday. She was interviewed by E. Duerksen. He actually came out at the same time as I did but had been in the Mexico MTC.  Well in the interview he found out more of the back story of her conversion. Apparently she had been trying to decide a church to go to and she was thinking about going to the one she used to attend. Her aunt informed her that she shouldn't go to the old one because it was to big and all about the money. Well later that we week we knocked on her door... On accident when looking for a less active. I love the Spirit.

Monday we treated like a normal day because we got to go to the temple on Wednesday and so that was our actual pday. We did however email that day because the timing of the endowment wasn't going to give us any time to email. That night we went and taught Carole (the recent convert from E. Childress) While we were there a tornado storm blew over. I believe the tornado only dropped down once but it was pretty far away.  Carole is hopefully getting surgery this week on a torn muscle in her shoulder that has been giving her a ton of trouble.

Wednesday was another fabulous day. The reason we were going to the temple is because we were both asked to be escorts for some converts in our ward. Brother Johnson asked me to be his and E. Blake was Bro. Rodgers escort. We went with Brother Johnson at 8:30 to pick up Brother Rogers. He has Parkinson's disease and is wheelchair bound.  Our session started at 11:30. It was an awesome experience. One of the members of the temple presidency sat down with all of us before the endowment explained the importance of what happens in the temple. It was awesome to hear what he said. A good reminder of how amazing the temple is. There were several members of our ward there I have gotten close to and it was so good to see them in the celestial room. I love the friendships I have made out here in Kansas City.

That night we visited with Ivan and he informed us that he will be finding out on Monday (today) if he has work off on Sunday's! He said that his boss had told him that he was 90% sure he could switch from working Sunday's to Saturday. I can't remember if I told you guys this but we invited their family to fast together. Well they chose to fast last week that he would be able to have work off on Sunday so he can be baptized. Miracles happen with fasting! When Ivan does get work off he will be baptized on the 22nd of March!

Thursday was Zone Conference.... Wow.  The Spirit was extremely strong. We learned so much. One of the talks by President Hancock (2nd councilor in mission presidency) was all about what we need to do if we want to have the Spirit in our life. We walked through Daniel chapter 1, 2 ,3, and 6 and gave examples of what Daniel did. He showed examples of Obedience, Prayer, Gratitude, Faith, Boldness, Sacrifice, Fasting.  I think my biggest take away from the conference was that the way we prepare to take the sacrament is check your progress personally each week on where you are with keeping your covenants. Identify areas to improve in, set specific goals, make plans and then DO! By the time you take the sacrament again in the following week you will have began your repentance of those specific things. Then continue to work on those things until it is time to pick another area to improve. I have found that there is a greater Spirit with me as I have started doing this. You guys should try it. Maybe you already do it. How can you be more specific in your planning and goal setting?  One last thing from the conference. We were invited to study D&C 20:37 and make a t-chart. On the left side define what each thing in D&C 20:37 is and then on the right side you write examples from your own life of those things.

Lunch at Freddy's...Mmmm

Friday we met with Moriah again (lost sheep that was baptized as a teenager) Her life is pretty thick and we are hoping to just help her get in the Book of Mormon. She has a lot of confusion and we just need the Spirit to help her clean out her thoughts. She has two daughters and a husband that we are hoping to start teaching this upcoming week.

Friday night we had dinner with S. Mojica. She is a single woman who was baptized a year ago and is close to going to receive her endowments. Well long story short, she asked if she could feed us at church two weeks ago and we forgot to put in our planner. The time of the appointment came and went. We ate at home and we didn't get a call or anything like that. We literally had no idea we had forgotten. Well the following Sunday she came up to us with this smirk and gave us so much grief (as we deserved). Thankfully she was nice and sarcastic.  Well Friday was our new appointment. We brought her flowers to apologize. Definitely a good choice. She made us Pork Chops and with simple Rice and Beans. Sometimes a simple meal is just so good.

That night we taught a guy named Christian who is in his 20's. Well we went in and it smelled kind of weird. Kind of fruity.. My eyes felt kind of weird when I walked in. Then he says, "Sorry if it is kind of smokey in here. I was just smoking Hookah". Elder Blake and I had a good laugh about it after the lesson. We were able to teach him the restoration. Not sure if he is very interested but it was a very good visit. He was so nice and has a good heart. He has just heard a lot about a lot. Kind of confused himself with ideas he has come up with.

Saturday Elder Blake was sick in the morning. I did as much administrative work as I could and thankfully as I was finishing up Elder Blake woke up and was ready to go. That night we met the Johnston Family. They are members of a baptist church. She actually works there. We were able to share the restoration with them and they actually seem a little interested. They shared a little pamphlet with us from their church. Hopefully we can get over there again soon.

Sunday was ward conference! Also very good!

Golden Nugget:

- The question was asked to us. What is the price of Priesthood Power and or Spiritual power. Well when you really think about it... There is no price to be paid because the reward is so great. We are taught this in JST of Matthew 16: 27-29. "Break not my commandments for to save your lives; for whosoever will save his life in this world, shall lose it in the world to come. And whosoever will lose his life in this world, for my sake, shall find it in the world to come. Therefore, forsake the world, and save your souls; for what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" A powerful principles to live by.

There is no sacrifice because we are only gaining. Think about it

I know that this is the Lord's work. And The Church of Jesus Christ is the Lord's kingdom here on the earth. I would just invite you to forsake the world and save your souls! :) Love Elder Kelly

(: :)

We taught Tay twice this week.

Our "quads" are buff ;)

When we went to teach Tay this week we walked in and found a brand new full standard works quad laying on the table! She had ordered one online and had been studying from it answering the extended study questions from one of the pamphlets. It is always so exciting to see your investigators interested in gospel related things. She was able to get work off again and so she came to church on Sunday! We have been blessed to have over 20 different people help us teach her and the ward again just enveloped her. We didn't sit next to her in sacrament meeting, we didn't take her to the classes. I honestly only spoke to her once because the ward was already helping her the whole time. So fantastic to see members taking the initiative. 

Some things learned:

In Mark, Jesus Christ takes a blind man out of the city to heal him of his infirmities. Well He lays hands on the man and when the man opens his eyes he told Jesus that he still couldn't see fully and so then Christ finishes the healing and the man leaves. Well I thought for a moment about why the Savior healed by "degrees" or "stages". I feel that this is often how we are healed spiritually. Spiritual renewal is not an instantaneous thing. It takes consistent trust in the Lord. First he leads him out of the city(we may become impatient). Then he applies saliva to his eyes and lays hands on him only to find that he still cannot fully see (when full healing doesn't take place immediately we can harden our hearts and believe that the gospel of Jesus Christ is a false teaching). Then Christ again touches the mans eyes and he experiences full healing. If we are patient when working with the Lord and trust in his timing then we can rest assured that full healing will be reached. Do we have faith to endure to then end and continue trying always? 

40 Day Fast

Well since the 40 day fast has started in our ward we have seen a lot of excitement about missionary work! On Sunday we passed out a missionary banana bread recipe in RS and invited each person to make a batch to share with a neighbor with a pass along card. We will be visiting one auxiliary a week and giving them a missionary idea to try. Hopefully they will show the faith they have and put the ideas into action.

Elder Blake and I carpooled on Wednesday with Elder Taylor and Elder Conley to MLC. They only live about ten minutes south of us. We went and said hello to Patrick Murphy and then buckled down in the mission home for our 8 hour meeting. I seriously love the MLC meeting. The Spirit is always strong and I see a lot of things I need to repent of. 

Wednesday night we had our usual visit with Ivan and his family. Sister Diaz had work off that day and she made a FEAST. Seriously a feast. There were two pizzas, tamales, taquitos, shrimp tacos fruit salad. It was SO good. All of it made by hand from scratch. American cooking just does not compare. It was all completely fresh.

Feasting with Ivan and his family

Friday was Zone training and Elder Blake and I felt like it turned out pretty good. I trained on D&C 20:37. A very important verse I wish I would have been using throughout my mission to teach investigators and missionaries. You should all read it before you take the sacrament this next Sunday!

Zone Training

Saturday was exchanges with Elder Tuala. I served around him early in my mission and I was excited for exchanges again. While we were out we set a goal to have 10 unplanned contacts and to ask for 10 referrals which is very hard for us usually. By the end of the day we had 17 unplanned contacts and 16 referrals asked for. To say the least we were super pumped the whole day. We actually hit our goal of ten before noon even hit. A mission record for myself. I've been trying to get in a better habit of seeking referrals and that exchange helped immensely. 

I know that Heavenly Father lives. And wants us to be close with Him. If we feel lonely, or sad, or frustrated... just pray! He is listening! I know we all have the ability to rely on Christ so we can accomplish what God has in store; we must simply choose to!

Love you all

• E. Kelly

Emailing

February is Gone!

This week felt really long.

Exchanges

Tuesday we met with a woman named Mariah. She is a referral from a member in our ward. When we met we found out that she is a baptized member! She lives around a lot of members and had never told any of them that she was baptized when she was a teenager. She was very kind to us. Hopefully we can help her come back.

Thursday we had interviews with President Vest and they were really good. I felt like I was able to learn a lot and he told me a lot of cool ideas from his mission in Japan and it just made me grateful to serve with him. On Sunday we had a meeting with him and the stake presidency regarding the missionary work in the stake. Our stake president is brand new and so he wants to decide on what we will talk about in our meetings here on out. At the end of the meeting President invited Elder Blake and I to read Handbook 2 Chapter 5 so we know how the flow of information is supposed to happen. We learned that the way it is happening in the majority of the stakes of the mission is totally wrong. At the end of our interviews president talked to both of us about it and stressed the importance of us knowing how the Lord would have the church be ran. Things would go a lot better, honestly, we should all know Handbook 2. I think all of our lives would be much better :)

Saturday we met with Ivan and taught about the purposes of fasting again. At the end we invited him to fast that he will be able to get Sunday's off work. Hopefully he will try it out. As we taught, the Spirit testified to me that fasting is REAL! "Sacrifice brings forth the blessings of heaven." I know that is true.

We got to go to the VC with Tay and Georgette on Saturday night. We were able to teach about the temples and family history. Tay and Georgette seemed to enjoy it. After we learned about the temple we went downstairs. Tay went through the church history tour and Georgette sat in on the end of the a fireside that my last ward was putting on. I was able to see a lot of people that I missed and it was fun catching up briefly. The Brackett's family took us there and they are the nicest couple ever. They helped us testify of the temple and they are so solid in the church. 

On our conference call with president Vest last week he shared a really awesome talk I wanted to share with each of you. It is a talk from 1981 by Ezra Taft Benson called, "Fourteen Fundamentals in Following a Prophet". Here are the fourteen points and the talk I would invite you to check it out.

1. Prophet is the only man on the earth who speaks for the Lord in everything

2. The words of living prophets are more vital than the words of the prophets from the standard works

3. A living prophet is more important to us than a dead prophet

4. The Lord will never let the prophet lead the church astray

5. The prophet is not required to have any earthly training or credentials to receive revelation

6. Prophet does not have to say “Thus saith the Lord” to give us a scripture

7. Tells us what we need to know, not always what we want to know

8. Prophet is not limited by men’s reasoning. Isaiah 55:8-9

9. Prophet can receive revelation on any matter: temporal or spiritual

10. Prophet may advise on civil matters

11. Two groups who have greatest difficulty following the prophet are the proud who are learned and the proud who are rich

12. The prophet will not necessarily be prophet with the world or the worldly

13. The prophet and his counselors make up the first presidency, the highest quorum in the church

14. Follow the prophets and be blessed, reject them and suffer

Just thought you guys might enjoy these like I did.

I know that Heavenly Father uses prophets today and that the prophet today is Thomas S. Monson. I know that prayer is a divinely appointed way to communicate with our Heavenly Father. Through diligent prayer we can align our wills with God's and be on track to eternal life.

Love you all!! 

Elder Kelly