Mission Time!

Hola!  I guess I should try and pound another one of these blog posts out. I feel a great urgency to learn Spanish, and so spend most of my extra time, energy, and reserve brain power on that (not that I have great reserves of any of those things!) (Btw, the sunsets here are fantastic! Picture again courtesy of Valerie Popper Anderson)

Pictures to the rescue! I think I'll just give you an overview of some of the things I've been doing the last few weeks :)

The lady in the center is Bessie. She got married and baptized ON THE SAME DAY the Saturday after I got here. Since I've been here I've been to THREE baptisms. And (now don't let your jaw hit the floor too hard) for one of them the Sister missionaries (the pianist and director) were very late, so they asked if I played. I said, "Well, I'm not that great, but I'm willing to try!" so I got to play the pre-service music, part of it one handed, and none of it perfect, but I guess it was okay. And I was VERY glad to see the sisters walk in the door!

Speaking of Bessie, we also help the younger missionaries (there is a set of elders and a set of sisters in our ward) teach both pre- and post- baptismal lessons. One of my very favorite things to do! And yes, they are in Spanish. I can understand a lot, but sometimes miss key pieces. What I CAN do is bear my testimony of whatever is being taught. This is why I'm studying so hard!

There are a LOT of cool church history sites around the area and I look forward to seeing more. I'll share more of our visit to Liberty Jail later. It is a very special, spiritual place.

Check out my new wheels! At least for a little while. I got to drive one of the brand new mission cars from the dealership to the mission office. They're pretty sweet Toyotas.... and they're giving them to 18 year olds to drive ?!?!?

We have a GREAT bunch of Senior Missionaries here in Independence and we have all kinds of fun together. Every couple of weeks we get together for a potluck "Family Home Evening" with a small presentation, and here we are celebrating the 4th of July (on the 3rd) with a BBQ before the big Independence City fireworks display (put on in the field by the Visitor's Center - a win all the way around!)

There are also all kinds of fun things to go to around here. This was the Heritage Youth Chorus that put on a fantastic program called Voices of Faith. I've also been to a program about freedom of religion given by the Deputy Attorney General of the state of Missouri, Jeremiah Morgan (yes, he's LDS). It was really good.

It hasn't been all fun and games though. I've helped clean out several Elder's (missionaries) apartments that we were closing down, and also helped prepare a couple apartments for missionaries to go into. This was probably the worse - I had to kill several cockroaches in the cupboards, and you would't believe some of the stuff we found there! ("Missionary contraband". Nothing terrible, but still stuff they weren't supposed to have.) There is always a closet or cupboard full of stuff they don't want, but figure somebody might somewhere down the line...


And finally one of my new favorite temples (along with the Medford, Portland, Swiss, Chicago, Madrid, Salt Lake, and Manti temples). The Kansas City Temple is only about 7 years old and beautiful! We try to go at least once a week and this last week was the Spanish Santa Fe Ward temple night, and we practically filled the session! It was really awesome. And thank you Medford temple for helping me learn everything in Spanish. What a blessing! Oh, and if you look closely you can see the silhouette of my companion, Hermana Mayberry, up front. She's an awesome companion, and I am really enjoying her wonderful Spirit and the great gifts she brings. I'm learning a lot from her!

Hermana Kim