Kathleen's Baptism :)

February 25, 2013

My Cute Fam,

This has been a big week for us here in Irvine! Kathleen Durning is now the newest member of the Irvine ward! :) We had her baptism on Saturday and confirmation yesterday. It was SUCH A GOOD WEEKEND. I am so happy and excited for Kathleen. I love her so much and it was the most amazing thing to see her in her white dress and being baptized and then confrimed in church yesterday. Ahh best feeling in the world. This is what it's all about! (Okay- I have to tell you- sometimes Kathleen gets the words 'confirmation' and 'cremation' confused so she was asking things like, 'Sister Knab, when did you say they are going to do my cremation?') Haha. It kills me everytime. It cracks her up too when it dawns on her what she's saying. She got it right eventually. But Kathleen is amazing. Holy prepared woman. Everything we taught her, she took right in and every commandment we taught, she started to live. She quit the things that would keep her from being baptized, she has diligently come out to family home evenings and church every week and is disappointed when there's not a fireside at night or anything. Her prayers are absolutely incredible. She has grown so much and my favorite part was being able to watch her conversion. The baptism was a nice cherry on top. She is a completely different person than when we first met her. She just glows. And I'm not trying to sound cliche or anything. It's real- she is always smiling and laughing and she's not the Kathleen we met back in December- shy, quiet, withdrawn, not smiling, not very happy... The change is incredible. And we have become good friends with her- that's what I love. I absolutely love the trust and friendship that we have with Kathleen. Ah. I am just really happy right now. :)

So leading up to the baptism was a little stressful and hectic trying to put things together and plan the baptism and everything. I learned about the behind-the-scene work of a baptism. Friday night we spent all of our time cleaning the font. Sadly, it's been a really long time since there has been a baptism in Irvine so the font was filled with cob webs, dead bugs, dead slugs that came from the drain, live slugs from the drain. Blah. It was so disgusting. Haha. But - we're grateful for the reason for needing to clean the font :)

Once the baptism started, everything ran smoothly. We were really pleased with how it went. I have pictures and the baptismal program to send to you to get a taste but I'll have to do it next week. So to update you- we got our moves calls and once again- I'm stayin in Irvine! You're suprised, right? Haha. I'm also training...we got a couple of new sisters this transfers finally. It's been quite the drought so we're excited to get new sisters in the mission. (In the next few months we are getting the tidal wave of 13 new sisters so the couple of girls coming right now will probalby have to train right after they are finished being trained with how many are coming! Pretty crazy.)

So this morning Sister Jedlickova and I headed to Edinburgh to send her home. She's offski. :( I'm really going to miss her. I feel sick to my stomach that she's leaving. These past 3 months with her have been amazing- so much fun. She's definietly a friend for life. You will probably see me in future years on skype with her since she lives in Czech Republic. We're not getting ride of each other. I hate goodbyes so much. Ugh. When they told me it was time to go, we turned and looked at each other and both just started crying. It was a little embarrassing with everyone around haha. We tried to avoid saying goodbye but it didn't work...we eventually had to. I love Sister Jedlickova. I'm really sad to see her go.

So here's what's happening. Sister Ryan serving in Bridge of Don, is also training this moves and so they are putting us togther this week until our trainees come. President Brown will be at a conference all week and so they are holding our trainees in the MTC until Saturday, so I'm currently in Bridge of Don with Sister Ryan. (Which is why I can't email you the pictures and baptismal program this week- they are back in Irvine. Dangit.) But do you want to know how we got here? Welp, we were given a car at the mission home to drive to Bridge of Don from Edinburgh!!!! Haha. Have either of us ever driven in Scotland? Nope. Sure haven't. For some reason, they needed to get this car to Bridge of Don for the elders that are serving here so President Brown trusted us to drive their car here! Haha oh it was such a blast. Quite the little road trip actually. Two hours of driving on the left side of road, with the steering wheel on the right side, and navigating through Scotland with our little SatNav GPS that was acting up. But I'm proud to tell you that we did it and we did it safely! Haha we only got lost once, only hit one curb, and only caught ourselves driving on the wrong side of the road once. Success. We made it safely. We were pretty much giddy the whole ride up here we were so excited to be driving. (There's only one car sister's area in the whole mission so it's a treat for us.)

So that's me. I'll be in Bridge of Don until Saturday, and then we will hike Pratt's hill like I did when I came out and then we will be back to Irvine late Saturday night.

On a more serious note, I received the news about Grandpa Knab's passing. I actually saw the email last Friday when I had logged onto my email to print the baptismal program that was sent to us. It shocked me. I was really sad to hear that. Dad had mentioned his bad health in his email last week and had suggested I write him a letter so I had a letter written to send to him. I'm really sad it would've been too late to get to him. I'm really going to miss Grandpa. I've been thinking about him and the family all week. It doesn't seem real that he won't be there when I come home. I'm grateful that he's in a better place though, and with Grandma finally. I liked how Dad put it - 'Grandma is the rudder on the ship.' That is so true. Grandpa will be so much happier with Grandma again. We will still really miss him though. I'm disappointed I can't be at the funeral. Please fill me in on everything. Thanks for the things you have sent me already. It's hard receving this kind of news when you're so far away. But I'm glad we have the knowledge that this life isn't the end. We'll be seeing Grandpa again.

Love you all.

Sister Knab

February 18, 2013

Pictures attached: Visting a monument in Ayr on P-day a few weeks ago!

Hi My Family,

We've had a good week here in our little Irvine town! We're really seeing some good success coming from our family home evenings we hold every Tuesday. It has really grown! Back in September when we started, we had just invited a couple of people to teach over at Brother Wilde's home. Now, we have so many less actives and investigators willing to come out, that we had to move it to the church! So every week we focus on inviting the people we teach to come out to Tuesday night family home evenings where the elders and us take turns each week teaching a lesson and Brother Wilde provides his projector and laptop to share mormon messages that go along with the topic and we organize a different game every time and Sister Wilde provides trays full of food! It's becoming a big hit! We had to talk to Bishop about borrowing the church's 16-person mini bus for Brother Wilde to pick people up for the night because we don't have enough cars to do it. But it's really turning into an amazing missionary tool. Like with our investigator, Siobhan who is 20 years old, she has started to come out the past couple of weeks to our family home evening and last week and brought her boyfriend unexpectedly and we were able to teach them both again last night and they are both coming out again tomorrow night! And a few other things like that have happened as a result of this family home evening. It's such a good finding tool because the people who come, enjoy themselves, and so they invite their friends to come along. It's amazing. I am so happy with how things are going with it!

This is Kathleen's big week! Her baptism is this Saturday and her interview with our district leader is tomorrow before family home evening. So if everything goes well, then Kathleen is set to be baptized this week!! We are so excited for her. I don't even know if I ever told you how we found Kathleen. We met her just before Christmas time. We were walking in between two appointments we had and she was walking towards us and we had just stopped her along the way. That simple. It wasn't a grand inspirational experience either of us had where we had envisioned somewhere where we needed to go. The Lord had just placed her in our path, we opened our mouths, and here we are- preparing for her baptism this Saturday! It's amazing how the Lord works.

Moves calls are happening next Sunday. I'm pretty sure I'll be staying in Irvine still since SIster Jedlickova is leaving. Haha. They usually don't take both sisters out of the area. So I'm planning on sticking around for a little while longer. (Sister Jedlickova stayed in her first area for 10 1/2 months and that's not uncommon) But I'm okay with it! I really love Irvine and the ward and the people. It's become home for me so I'm happy to stay. But I'll be excited when I can see something else too. Haha.
Love you guys. Have a good week!

 

 

February 11, 2013

February 11, 2013.

Hi my Family,

Sister Jedlickova and I had a pretty good week. It was a little slow with finding new people to teach. But maybe after a drought, there comes a flood right? Haha we're planning on this week being better in that aspect. But our current investigators are doing well! Especially Kathleen. She is doing amazing. She is completely off of smoking and drinking tea! We are so excited. That was kind of our hold up for a little bit but she was praying hard to have the strength to quit, we were praying for her, you told me you've been praying for her as well and she did it!!! And she's loving being a non-smoker too! So thank you so much for thinking about praying for her. That really meant a lot and helped too! Now we're in the mode of figuring out all of the little details for her baptism. Yesterday we showed her the baptismal font and demonstrated how it will work. She's still trying to decide who she wants to have baptize her but I think she's leaning towards having our ward mission leader, Jim Ferguson, do it. Her baptismal interview is set for next week with our district leader and the baptism will be on Saturday, February 23rd. So everything is on target for Kathleen! Exciting stuff. What I love about Kathleen is her absolute commitment to everything. Once she came out to church, she hasn't missed a single Sunday and she stays the whole time and comes every week to our family home evening we hold and makes it a priority and cancels other things if needed. She's fully committed to it all and doesn't miss a beat! One of my favorite things is hearing her prayers. I absolutely love hearing our investigators pray for the first time and each time afterwards. I think it's one of my favorite parts about being a missionary is hearing someone talking to Heavenly Father and opening up their hearts to Him for the first time in their life. It's amazing. I absolutely love it.

This week we also had exchanges with the Pollock sisters. Last week we had one with the Eastkilbride sisters- we've been busy with travelling! It's always fun to do exchanges and learn new things from each other and to be in a different area in some cases. Always an adventure.

Okay, I really don't have that much to say this week, but I'm happy and doing well and hope you all have a good week and Happy Valentine's Day on Thursday!

Love you,
Sister Knab

February 4, 2013

Explanation of attached pictures:
5008: Throwing out Kathleen's tea (Her request)
4996: Members loaning us blow dryers when we visit to warm up/dry off haha
4992: GORGEOUS sunset in Irvine this last week! (That's my winter coat you sent me. Keeps me so warm!)
4978: Me and Sister Jedlickova waiting on a bus stop

My Family!

It sounds like everyone had a good week! I love love love reading each of your emails. It's the best thing ever. Hope you know that.

Okay, so a few things to tell you about from our week-

First of all, Anne had her meeting with the Islamic leader as I told you last week. It went alright. The miracle is, the man didn't get super upset with Anne for wanting to withdraw. He didn't forbid her from leaving the religion, which I thought he would. But he talked to her mainly about how in their marriage. And so the good part is, it sounded like he's just leaving it up to Anne; but the not so good part is that he scared Anne to death about what it could do to her family. So Anne has decided to drop her baptism date of Feb 17th for now so her and her husband Shahid can work things out and decide how they want to handle the situation. (Fair enough is how I see it) Anne still wants to continue being taught so all we can do is continue to teach her and help her progress in the gospel and then it will be between her and her husband to decide when/if she will be baptized. So, the meeting went better than I thought it would to be honest. I was getting worried that the man would forbid her completely so at least she feels she has the option to convert. I don't know, this is just such a tough situation!!! Because Anne doesn't want to create conflict in their family and Shahid's family or in their marriage but she knows what we have taught her is true. So anyways, that's where we are at right now with her. I strongly believe Anne will be baptized at some point, and in their own time though. She is so prepared!

Second of all, Kathleen!!! Kathleen is doing so well. Yesterday was her fifth week at church! She's been attending for over a month now. This week was a monumental week for her because we had set specific goals with her to quit her addictions. Wednesday she gave up drinking her tea right on the spot and then we set goals for her to quit smoking completely on Saturday (The Saturday that has just passed). Well, we came to her house on Saturday for our appointment and asked her if she was ready to quit smoking as she was like 'Already have!' We were so excited! She had just thrown out her cigarettes on her own and ahead of the goal that we had set with her! She's doing so well! Her baptism is scheduled for Feb. 24th :) Please keep her in your prayers as she prepares for her baptism!

Third of all, we have a new ward mission leader who has called 4 couples in the ward to be ward missionaries and there is a lot of excitement with our plans and ideas we are putting in place! I'm so excited for what we will be implementing!!! I'll keep you updated on how things go.

Okay we need to run, but I love you guys. Thanks for all of the support!

Love,
Sister Knab

I apologize that I haven't updated Tiff's blog the last few weeks. The final weeks of my pregnancy and having a new baby made me forget to do it. Thanks for your interest in how Tiffany is doing. I saved these pictures and uploaded them in facing the right direction, but they keep going sideways. I will try to fix it soon. Thanks!

January 28, 2013

Hi my Family,

Okay, first of all, give my love to the newest little addition- Carver James West! I figured it had to be this week that he would decide to come out! I'm so excited! I'm glad everything went well for Heather and Jon. I'm looking forward to seeing some pictures of the little guy.

Well, today's the big day for Anne! She is meeting with the Islamic leader in her home as we speak. (We decided and Anne decided that it would be best for just her husband and her to meet with the man. So we aren't there for it.) Anne has amazing faith, and is just planning on telling him straight out how she feels about being baptized and her experiences she's been having with us. I'm not sure exactly how it works, but we do know that there's not very much free agency in the matter. Because Anne accepted Islam, this Islamic leader will decide if she can withdraw from the religion so she can be baptized. We realize it's going to take a miracle but we have been praying and fasting this week for this miracle to happen- for this Islamic man's heart to be softened and be okay with her leaving the religion. Shahid her husband, is a really loving and kind man and respects all religions. He was the one who set up this appointment for Anne to withdraw when Anne expressed to him her feelings. And Anne knows that her family comes first and not letting this split them apart. But anyways, they are in the meeting right now and we are absolutely dying to find out how it goes. I know it's in the Lord's hands now and we've really put forth our stubborn faith that this will work out, but it also has to be the Lord's will so she'll be calling us this afternoon with the news and we'll let you know. If all goes as planned, Anne's baptism is scheduled for February 17th. Ahh I'm so anxious to get her phone call!! She is the most prepared woman and knows this is the path for her!! I hope this all works out.

Kathleen is doing well. We are having so much fun teaching her- she's really starting to open up and be comfortable with us. I love her haha she is so funny and is taking the discussions well. Yesterday was her 4th time at church in a row- she is just solid! Her only hold up still is she's really struggling to quit smoking. Her baptism is scheduled for February 10th but we might need to extend that because of the smoking. But she's praying and coming to church each week and family home evening each week and we have ordered her a large print of the Book of Mormon because she has some problems with her eye sight. We ordered it about 2 weeks ago so it should be here this week! She's really eager to have her own Book of Mormon and be able to read it herself. She asks us every appointment if it has arrived yet. It's really great. She's anxious for it.

Our pool of investigators is the largest it has been for either of us on our missions. It makes for a very busy, and exciting time! Irvine is booming right now. We are really seeing people coming out of the wood works and we're praying for miracles to happen with them. Next moves is Feb. 26th - where Sister Jedlickova will be heading home. I really really want her to be able to see a baptism - I want her to be able to see Anne and/or Kathleen when they are baptized before she goes home. Time is flying out here! It's blowing my mind and freaking me out a little bit. I love being out here and being a missionary, I think that's why the time is just cruising right now. I'm so grateful to be out here. Don't worry about me- I'm happy and enjoying it even though it's tough. I don't know how to explain it- but I love being ale to teach people all day long. It's the best.

Take Care!

Love,
Sister Knab

January 21, 2013

My Cute Family!

What a week we had. We're dealing with some pretty exciting/interesting things right now! A lot of our attention has been on one of our investigators, Anne this week. She was the one I was talking about last week about her husband not being too pleased that she accepted to be baptized when he was away on business. So here's the situation we have with her- Anne's husband is a strong Muslim from Pakistan. (Anne, is Caucasian and from Scotland.) There's no chances of them moving and living in Pakistan so we are okay to be teaching Anne about Jesus Christ - it won't be putting their family in any danger. Anne is actually a really strong Christian; she just doesn't attend any particular church. She's an amazing woman, 38 years old, and they have 3 adorable little girls. All of her beliefs are right in line with what we believe and she always gathers her little family to pray each night and she makes sure she is teaching her girls about the teachings of Christ. She lives the standards of our church already. And her and her husband have always just agreed to disagree about religion. They avoid arguing about it, and just recognize that they have different views.

Well, Anne was telling us in a visit early on last week that she still feels that being baptized is absolutely the right thing for her. She told her mom and her husband that she feels strongly that something is telling her that this is the right path for her and she believes that the feeling she is getting is from God. (She is seriously so prepared! I wish you could hear the things she says in our lessons!!) She's able to recognize the spirit and she always refers back to our first visit with her when we taught her the Restoration and that's when she received this witness from the spirit that this is true and the right path that she needs to take.

Okay, but here's the hiccup we're having. In order for Anne and Sahid to get married, Anne had to formally accept the Islam Faith. She's not a practicing Muslim; they call her a learning Muslim - basically just someone who accepted their faith. Well Anne learned from her husband that if she wants to be baptized into our church, she has to formally resign from the Islam faith and it can be kind of complicated. So Anne phoned the closest Mosque, which is in Glasgow, Scotland, to talk to the head Islamic leader to try and set up an appointment to withdraw from the religion. So when they get back to her on it, their head Islamic leader will be coming to Anne in her home to talk to her about why she's withdrawing from the Islam faith. (It sounds like basically he will be coming to talk her out of it) Anne's really nervous about this appointment and has asked us to be there when he comes to back her up and answer any questions that she may not be able to. So either this week or next week, we will be having this withdrawal meeting with the Islamic leader from the Glasgow mosque. (Soooo- this will be interesting. Haha. Can't say I've ever done something like this before!) Anyways, We've talked about it and we really don't want this to turn into a contention hour or anything.

So our plan is to be there to provide moral support for Anne and to help her answer the questions that this man will be asking her, if she isn't able to. So this meeting will either make or break her chances of being baptized. But I like what Anne's mom said to her. Anne's mom was telling her that as long as she just expresses her sincere feelings she's been having - then he doesn't have the right to argue much with it. In my mind, her mom's exactly right. I feel like it's taking away her agency by not letting her change religion. But anyways, we're waiting to hear back from the mosque on the time and day of this withdrawal meeting. So, will you keep Anne in your prayers that everything will go okay with her resigning from the Islam Faith and that her husband's heart will soften on the idea of her being baptized? We could really use some prayers for her and her situation right now!

But things are good. Kathleen has come to church three times in a row now- but we'll have to extend her baptism date because she's still struggling to quit smoking and some other things. But we see her 3 times each week, she's come to church each week, and to our family home evenings! It will just take some time with her.

I love you guys. Thanks for the support. I love being out here. Ya, there are hard moments, but I love being a missionary- there's really nothing like it. I'm glad I'm here. :)

January 14th

Hi my Family,

I have 15 mins to type something up so I'll need to be quick. I'm sorry I won't be able to reply individually to your emails but I'm printing them out so I can read them and then I'll get back to you next week!

This week has been fairly rough on Sister Jedlickova and I. Our week started off really high and exciting and unfortunatley ended on a low. At the beginning of the week, we taught Ann and we had the most AMAZING lesson with her. She was beaming and was so excited about what we were teaching her. She said she gets tingely feelings when we meet with her and she takes that as a sign that what we're teaching her is true. (Spot on, huh? She just gets it! It's amazing.) We invited her to be baptised and she said yes and we set a date for Febuary 3rd! She was seriously glowing when we invited her to be baptised. It sent shivers through my body and Sister Jed got emotional. I can't describe it; it was the most amazing feeling. But then yesterday she didn't come to church and we got a text from her saying that her husband had come back from his business trip and was really not happy that she had accepted to be baptised and she said she will have to re-think it and she canceled our next appointment. And that's the point we're at. I am so sad!!! She's incredible and we know that she understands that it's true and she feels the spirit and she wants to be baptised but she's not willing to do it without her husband's approval. So that's the point we're at with her. She's coming across some strong opposition and obstacles right now and I hope hope hope that we can help overcome this! But as now, things are looking too good.

Also this week, Etta was planning on coming to church for her first time but she had her family over on Saturday and we don't know what happened exactly, but she said she talked to her family about how she's meeting with us and they weren't too pleased and so she gave us a call and said she wouldn't be coming to church like she planned.

A couple of other similar things happened this week but I won't continue on with it. Basically, it's been a hard week. Our investiagors are experiencing heavy opposition and obstacles right and it's so disheartnening to experience. I really care about these people so much and it makes me so so happy to see them making good choices and progressing in the gospel and each of them has taken a big hit this week. So we're praying hard and hoping that they can push through these obstacles they are facing!

Got to go. We're keeping the faith though! Love you!