Hermana Kelsey 11:1 -email-

We were able to talk to Hermana Kelsey yesterday for Christmas. It was so fun to hear her voice. She learned Spanish since she left on her mission. I finally got to hear her speak in Spanish for the first time. She was amazing. If case you don’t know how this works, when you are a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints you leave your home and family for two years (for men), or 18 months (for women). You work super hard everyday trying to help your brothers and sisters in the world learn about our Savior, Jesus Christ. We only email or send letters the entire time, except Mother’s Day and Christmas, then we get to talk to each other on the phone or Skype. So I haven’t talked to Hermana Kelsey since last Mother’s Day. Knowing that we will get to talk is the most exciting thing. She is having a great experience being a servant of our Lord. 

Hey family!

Long time no talk, eh? Our 40 minutes yesterday went by WAY TOO fast!! How long did Alex get to talk to y’all?

Elder R. (one of our elders in our district) is going home on the 3rd of January, and he is so sad. He said before now he wanted to go home, but now that he has to, he doesn’t want to. I wonder if Alex will be that way. I know that I will. I’ll be really excited to come home, but at the same time it will be sad, because you know you won’t be able to have the same experiences you have a missionary anymore. 🙁

Ha ha ha. My spanish is not that great. Especially for how long I have been out. That has been one of the things I have struggled with the most on the mission. But I am also really bad about having language study, which is something I can definitely work on. But hopefully I will be completely fluent by the time I come back home. I’ll just have Janet teach me some slang, and then I’ll be great. 🙂

I really miss playing board games sometimes. Yesterday, the C.’s (the family we live with), were playing Scattergories with some of their friends and I really really wanted to play. But I didn’t. I’ll just enjoy them when I get home. 🙂

Yeah, I already figured out when I will be coming home. The transfer ends on September _.

So a lot of stuff happened this week…but I forgot my planner at home so I don’t really remember a lot of things.

Tuesday, we had a present exchange with the elders in our district. I had Elder R. (the one who is going home), and I got him a gift card thing for Farmville, because I wanted to get him something for when he goes home (like very trunky), and also because he loves Farmville. He has been talking about it like all the time. So he opened it, and just started laughing. Then his companion Elder J. tells us that all that morning he was talking about how he couldn’t “wait to get back to his cows”. It was really really funny. I wish I could send you the video of it, but it is too big to send in my email. But it was funny.

We didn’t have a white Christmas (no snow, and no baptisms :(), but we will be having hopefully two this coming Friday. We still need to talk to them about everything, but I think they will do it. They are ready. 🙂

We spent Christmas Eve caroling to a lot of our investigators, and recent converts, and less active members. We spent all day driving around and visiting people and singing Christmas carols for them. It was really great. In the evening, we ate with our ward mission leader and his wife. They fed us really well. 🙂

Dad: Hey, sorry I didn’t get to talk to you very much yesterday. 🙁 They didn’t give us very much time to talk to everyone. But I’m glad you enjoyed your Christmas. I wish I could have heard your talks yesterday. I bet they were great. 🙂 Feliz Navidad!

Emmysaurus Rex: It’s okay that you were crying a lot. Ha ha. You made me cry too. But that’s okay too. I am glad you are still doing good, even if you are wearing my clothes. 🙂 🙂 Jk, jk. But that’s cool. Anyway, you should write me a real letter. 🙂 🙂 Te amo!

That’s basically it for right now. I’ll try to have more to talk about next time. Hopefully, y’all had a great Christmas! I love you all! Les quiero muchisimo!!!

Love, Kelsey XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOX

Hermana Kelsey 10:4 -email-

Dear family…

Sorry my email was short last week, Mommy. It will also be short this week. We email at the church, and there are only 3 computers, and the elders always take forever, so we never have any time. But I will be talking to you on Sunday!!! 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 So I hope that makes up for it.

Anyway, I’m glad that you had fun with your parties. Mom, I am going to remember that you said that, and remind you next year when it comes times again. 🙂 Thank you for doing that at the party (asking people to write letters), because that is basically the only thing I want for Christmas. I miss knowing what people are doing in their lives. I wish Caitlin would have written to me. She used to write me letters when I was little. 🙁 Oh well. That was a funny story about Baylor and Brady. Brady still really makes me laugh a lot. He is a really funny guy.

So this week a lot of stuff happened, but since I don’t have very much time, I’ll just tell you about a really cool experience we had yesterday. So Sister A. and I decided to fast with two of our investigators who have baptismal dates, so that G. would have the courage to make a really big decision so that she can get baptized. So we were fasting all day, and we went to church. We had tried really really hard that morning to try to get all of our investigators to church, and we went in expecting a miracle. So we sat in sacrament meeting with our two eternal investigators and none of the people that we really wanted/needed to come to church came. So we were all sad and disappointed. Then we had to leave a little after the sacrament to take care of our recent convert, L., who was having a break down, because she was nervous to speak in church. So we were taking care of her, and then we go back into the chapel…and guess who was there!? All of the investigators we wanted at church! It was amazing! The Lord definitely blesses us when we put our trust and faith in him. So in total, we had 8 investigators at church. It was a good Sunday.

Well, I’m out of time, but Emily I wrote you a letter that will be coming soon, and also for the rest of you I sent a Christmas card. I love you all, and miss you, and will be talking to you on Sunday!!!

Love, Kelsey

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOX