Totally "Fort Worth" it!

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Hermana Kelsey 2:4 -email-

Madre,
Hola! How are you doing? I hope you are great. I am doing fanstatic! I had a couple days when I was struggling a lot with the language, but it has been getting better. I have to constantly remind myself that I have come so far. Before I got here I didn’t know any spanish, and now I can somewhat speak it. Anyway, I would say the best way to learn spanish is to study a lot, and to speak as much as you know all the time. We have to speak spanglish pretty much everyday, but we learn a lot that way.
Anyway, this week was good. I found out that my male teacher, Hermano Haderlie, is two weeks younger than me, so that was weird. His birthday is in August. It’s crazy.
Anyway, there are all kinds of crazy funny things that happen here, but most of them aren’t even worth writing about. There are just funny things that keep us from going completely crazy. So I’ve decided that I am terrified of the real world. I want to live in the bubble of the MTC forever. 🙁
Anyway, I better go now. Love you lots. I’ll be sending some more pictures soon, so look forward to that. 🙂
Love, Hermana Kelsey  
Padre,
Hey, so do you remember that guy who stood up in stake conference and talked about his mission, but didn’t say where he was called? I saw him here at the MTC a little while back and he is going to South Dakota, Rapid City mission! Isn’t that cool?! I told him about Ron, so he’s going to watch out for him. Anyway, I’m glad you got that tree taken care of. You are such a good example to me of hard work. Anyway, I better go now. Love you lots.
Love, Hermana Kelsey
Ileray! (Riley)
You need to write me a letter. It is necessary for my salvation!! Love you lots, bye! 
Emmaline!
I’m glad you are doing good. You better write me a letter! I need mail!! Just kidding. But seriously. Keep doing great in school. Remember, that your grades now will affect you in the future. I wish I had tried harder to get good grades. I’m not sure what else to tell you. I’ve gotten bad at writing in my journal, and that is usually where I get things to write home about. So I don’t really have very much to say. Sorry. I better go now though. Love you tons. Be good.
Love your sister forever, Hermana Kelsey

Fifty Fifth!

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A very happy thing happened on this day, 55 years ago. My in-laws, Nancy and Pearce were married. We went to celebrate with them tonight. 
(I’m taking the picture, that’s my darlin on the right and all my in-laws)
What a great accomplishment, to be married for 55 years! They are examples of 
true love! 
I love you both! 
Happy Anniversary!
Love, Joy

I am so thankful for Gratitude!

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A lot of us don’t talk much about gratitude when it’s not November, but hopefully we express it everyday to Father in Heaven. I choose to “receive all things with thankfulness“. I am a work in progress though. I found a wonderful post about raising grateful children, that I wanted to share. Ann Voskamp at “a holy experience” posted it and you can read about it here! What a great idea! Teach children while their young to be grateful, and I’ll bet they grow up to be grateful adults. I think the world could use as many grateful adults as possible. I am going to do this with my daughter Emily. She’s the only one home now, but I think if we do it together and invite my darlin, her dad, there will be so much gratitude in our home, that it will be bulging at the seams! (does a house have seams?) Anyway, it will be a great experience! I know it! Let’s all be more grateful!! 


Howzit-Elder Flexy!

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Flexy the day he got his mission call!


Elder Flexy 10:1 -email-

Make,

this week has been a good one we have a new elder in our district Elder Reeder. he was previously an AP (Assistant to the President) so we are even more obedient than ever. we are having fun. so today we played basketball, football(american) and rugby it was very fun. 
1 How did you like your B-day package?
1. It was awesome the oatmeal was a good idea i’ve been a little more low on food lately and the almonds from dad are all i have left but the other elders in the zone appreciated it a lot too.
2 Pictures?
2.sorry we have been so busy i haven’t even thought about it lately.
3 Who is your new companion?
4 Where is he from?
3.4.its still Elder Diseko from Johannesburg
5 How is it going?
5.great he a good guy there are differences between us but all is well.
6 How are your members?
6.great we are going to do a activity to help with unity.
7 How are your investigators doing?
7.well we have three that will be baptized on the twenty fourth of this month.
8 Who are you teaching that is progressing? We would like to pray for them.
8.well pray for  Sipiwo, Kathuktula, and Nokwanza those are our B Dates.
9 Have you done any fun P-day activities?
9.just sports lately.
10 What kind of service have you done lately?
10.well we cleared this big front yard cover with weeds with slashers and pangers(bush knifes). 
11 Is the weather getting colder?
11.ya its nice i like the cold weather. 
12 When is your next Zone Conference?
12.i’m not sure but it will be in probably three months.
13 Favorite scripture or story?
13.well we talked about Samuel the Lamanite so that one is the best.

Special question:

14 How does paying tithing and doing fast offerings bless our lives and others?
14.well the blessings that you receive will out weigh the money you pay a hundred fold that’s why we do it.
ya so i’m sitting in the Email shop and Numb by linkin park came on and all of the sudden i missed my older brother a lot. ish!!!!!! i miss you guys sometimes but its all good I’ll plow through the rest of the time and all will be well right. its just a couple minutes. anyway love you guys an awful awful lot. love you Make

    Elder Flexy      

Baba,
ok so i have a story i guess i’ll tell we were teaching this guy and we wen’t to his house the other day and we knocked on his door and said to us “Guys… Go find some new friends.” BAM!!!! and slammed the door it was the most brutal door aproach i had but now we kinda laugh about it. but we might get to see him again but ya we are teaching lots of good people maybe i’ll send a real letter with some stories on it. but i hope all continues to go good. mission is going great love you daddy.

    Elder Flexy 

EM!! thats cool that all is going well i hope your keeping your grades up don’t have the same senior year that i had it kinda sucked. so i’de like o share a quote with you…”a wise man learns from his mistakes but a wiser man learns from someone else s mistakes.” so be the wiser person of the both of us you can learn a lot from the dumb things people do before you. anyway i love you my little sister.

    Elder Flexy

Sunday Best!

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My young friend Karen gave a talk in church recently and she talked about how excited she was when she got up one morning for school. The reason she was excited, is because she was having a test that day.

 Well, really, the reason she was excited about the 
test, was that 
she knew the answers to the 
test
 she would be taking. She had studied and was prepared and ready. Then she went on to say, “This life is a 
test! We can be excited about this 
test
because we know the answers!” She went on to tell us that even if we don’t have the answers right now,  life is an open book 
test. If we don’t know the answer to a particular question we know were to find them. 
Where do we find the answers? Inspired family and friends. In God’s word, the scriptures. Studying the life of our Savior. What would Jesus do? 
Listen to God’s prophets and apostles! Listen to our living prophet, Thomas S. Monson. I am so excited for my 
test! I know I will do great with all of this help! You will do great too! I know you will! 
Hope your Sunday was the Best! Love, Joy

Family History Friday: I Totally LOVE this!!

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There has been a series of shows on NBC called “Who Do You Think You Are?” I totally love them! They have invited several famous people to research their “Family Tree”.  It is so fun to see other people enjoying their family history as much as I enjoy mine. In fact, I have thoroughly enjoyed the episodes that I have seen. Tonight my darlin and I watched an episode where the guest was Ashley Judd. Both my hubby and I were brought to tears as we heard about her ancestor, who fought in the Civil War. He had to have one of his legs amputated. Listening to the historian talk to Ashley about her ancestor, brought her to tears too. As I’ve always said, when we hear the stories, put the meat on the bones of our ancestors and start to realize what they did in their lives that made living better for me, it is always special and creates an almost sacred bond, between us and those who came before. Go check it out!! You will find the stories and episodes here!

Totally "Fort Worth" it!

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Hermana Kelsey 2:3 -email-

 Madre,

Sorry I didn’t send a letter this week. I’ve been getting more and more busy here, so it seems like I never have time to write outside of emailing. I might even get to the point where I’m as bad at communicating as Alex. 🙂 Just kidding. But yeah. I’ll try to write more real letters. Although, they are now really enforcing the rule of only writing letters on p-day, so I don’t really have very much time to write. Anyway, my week has been okay. I had a really hard couple days, because I realized that I’m leaving for Texas in less than three weeks, and I don’t know near enough Spanish to get by. It was really scary and stressful for me. But I’m doing better now. Spanish is okay. I feel like the new district that got here one week ago knows more Spanish than I do though. No me gusta la comida. Well it’s okay, but not my favorite. I am happy for the most part. I still have hard days and sad days, but my companions and my district and zone are so great. They always are trying to build each other up. It is so fantastico.
I LOVED conference! I got so much more out of it than I ever have before! Probably because I didn’t fall asleep. 🙂 Anyway, some of the speakers at conference have come to speak to us at firesides and devotionals, so it was pretty neat to hear from them. I noticed that since the last conference all of the general authorities and the prophet have aged so much. It’s kind of weird to think that they actually are mortal beings and they will die at some point. It’s sad.
I don’t remember if I told you last time, but I’ve seen Andrew a few times. He seems to be doing great. Much better than I was my first week. He’s going to be a fantastic missionary.
Yesterday, we got to host the new missionaries that came in. It was so fun! It was also strange, because just a few weeks ago I was in that situation. Anyway, the sister I hosted was Hermana Moody. She is from Wisconsin and she is going to Salt Lake South Spanish speaking. She was so adorable. I’m hoping I’ll see her around. Her class is in the same building as Andrew’s so I told them to say hi to each other when they see each other.
Anyway, I feel the spirit so much here on a regular basis. Sometimes we’ll have an amazing meeting, and it’s just so overwhelming, but on any regular day you can just feel the spirit radiating from all the other missionaries. It is so great.
On Saturday between conferences it was so nice outside, so we decided to go for a walk around the perimeter of the MTC. It was weird because we didn’t have any inclination to leave. We could have just walked out of the MTC, but we didn’t even want to.
Anyway, I better go now. I love you lots.
Love, Hermana Kelsey

God Is Everywhere!

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There’s not a tint that paints the rose
Or decks the lily fair,
Or marks the humblest flower that grows,
But God has placed it there…
There’s not a place  on earth’s vast round,
In ocean’s deep or air;
Where love and beauty are not found, 
For God is everywhere.
-Author Unknown
————
I have been thinking about the beauty of this world and how grateful I am that God blessed us with such a beautiful place to learn and grow. What we do with our life is so important, the choices we make, the things we accomplish with the time we have been given, the legacy we leave for our children. Others may not worry so much about what they do, or who it affects, but we can still choose to be amazing. I know our Father in Heaven is everywhere! I thank God for life, for this wonderful world we are so blessed to live in, and for the opportunity to learn and grow and to work on becoming what He wants me to be.
—–
Be strong and of good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.

Joshua 1:9

Be sure to pause the music at the
bottom so you can hear Louis.

Howzit-Elder Flexy!

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Elder Flexy 9:5 -email-
Make,
this week has gone by way fast we worked hard. but ya we got transfer news yesterday and Elder NGanda is moving to newcastle in SA. and Elder Mead is going to Richards Bay in SA. but all the rest of swaziland is staying the same. but ya i got my birthday package last week and it was too nice i loved it. but its already gone almost but hey it was good while it lasted. but ya i ate a chicken head and chicken feet. this last week so all i need to eat is the neck and intestines and i’ve eaten every part of a chicken. but ya life is still going well i’m working hard and getting better at teaching. but anyway all is well. love you 
    Love Elder Flexy