April 29, 2013

Hi my family,

Attached are a couple of pictures:

307- Our Scottish pride coming out a couple of Pdays ago :)

313- Some examples of what Scottish homes look like (these ones are really nice-Probably the nicest in Irvine)

This week has been kind of bi-polar. It had its highs and lows. Friday is a perfect example. Friday morning, Eric, had a meltdown and let us know that he won't be continuing with the church anymore unless he can be guaranteed peace and quiet during Sacrament meeting. He said the noise level of the children is too much for him to handle and that it's been making him very angry. (He has a high anxiety/stress mental illness of some sort). So he has refused to come back to church unless we could guarantee him total peace and quiet in sacrament meeting and get it resolved with the bishop. We told him we wouldn't be able to guarantee that since it's a family church and there will always be little children in attendance. So he kind of blew up and asked us not to teach him anymore then. Ugh. It's so tough because when opposition comes, these people's faith are really tested. We were so disappointed and just felt yuck on Friday morning. It's the saddest thing when someone doesn't recognize the truth and accept the gospel.

But then, a few hours later we met with our new district leader and Jon for Jon's baptismal interview. When they came out, they were both beaming and Elder Smithers said that Jon is worthy and prepared to be baptized!!! Ah! Jon is so excited and seriously just glowing! He said his few doubts were wiped away because he had been praying about his little doubts every night leading up to his interview and he told us his prayers were answered and he received the conviction he was looking for! So he's really excited and confident for his baptism this Sunday! So we went from being totally disheartened on Friday morning to being totally overjoyed!!!! We are so happy for Jon! In our last lesson, he prayed and thanked Heavenly Father in front of us for sending him the conviction he was looking for. I could listen to that all day long. This is the best feeling in the world!! I am just incredibly grateful that Heavenly Father answered my prayers as well that we would be able to get in contact with him again! Jon is so prepared. We are keeping busy with preparing for his baptism now. It can be pretty stressful figuring everything out for it- water heater being broken, trying to find baptismal suits that fit Jon and Tommy, (the guy from our ward who's baptising him) because they are both big and tall guys... and then also figuring out the baptismal program. It's kind of stressful figuring it all out, but, it's my favorite kind of stress on the mission - preparing for someone's baptism. :) I am so excited for Jon. He is so great. This is the best.

There's a lot of different emotions on a mission. There's a lot of ups and downs and the 'ups' override the downs and makes it all worth it- seeing people accept the gospel and find out its truthfulness for themselves. I love it.

Have a good week! I'll let you know skype times next week. My skype name is tiffany.knab (creative, I know) so try and find me/add me so we can avoid complications. I'm looking forward to seeing everyone on the 12! Yay!

Love ya,

Sister Knab

 

April 22nd

My Family,

This week has been fun! They've launched a new website- mormon.org.uk and there's a big hype about it around here. Each of us in the mission were required to make a mormon profile on it and we got brand new pass along cards/proselyting material that has this new website on everything. It's exciting stuff. We've been exploring it with everyone we're teaching. Also, there's a big UK media initiative that they are doing with the Book of Mormon play going on in London. They have us focusing on the play in our finding approaches. So this week and onwards we're focusing on asking everyone we talk to if they have heard of the Book of Mormon play going on in London and how they heard about it. We have to send in a weekly report of where people have heard of it so they can know where to spend their money in their advertising. For the most part, it seems like people have heard about it on the tele. But that could just be the case for us. But it's really great because it turns out to be a perfect conversation starter when we stop people on the streets/are at their door. It's kind of a fun, fresh approach to finding!

Thursday morning was pretty funny for us- we had a knock at the door during our companionship study. Jehovah's Witnesses were standing on the other side. :) Haha. It was priceless to see their expressions on their faces when they realized they had chapped into Mormon missionaries. We ended up having a nice, friendly conversation with them though. They were curious about how long we are over here/why it was that we came to Scotland/how old we are when we come out as missionaries- stuff like that. They really are nice, good, dedicated people to the gospel- they are just missing the full truth. I wish they could see it!

Jon is doing well- he's still set for his baptism on the 5th of May. His baptismal interview is this Sunday. He's amazing. When we taught him the Word of Wisdom and Law of Chastity, he told us at the end of the lessons that he already knew about those commandments because he had studied about them online and he thinks they're great. He used to smoke and drink socially but a few years back he said he felt he should quit smoking and going out for drinks with his friends. I feel like I'm starting to see the meaning of someone being considered 'prepared'. We can see how the Lord has been preparing Jon for the past several years for this time when he would be introduced to the church. I'm so happy we ran into him again in town that one day!!!!

Eric is also doing well and is scheduled to be baptized on the 12th of May. We had to move his date back a bit because he's been having a little bit of a puppy face with the idea of having to give up his five cups of tea a day. But yesterday we had a great lesson with him about obedience and sacrifice and we committed him to sacrifice his tea in order to be prepared for his baptism and he said 'Well, based on what you have told me today and how I felt while you were explaining these things to me, I feel it's something I will need to do. So yes, I will.' YAY! We are so happy. It's something he's been struggling with so I'm so glad the spirit was working on him during that lesson. Eric, like Jon, decided some years ago to gvie up smoking and drinking. I'm grateful the spirit worked on them years before we would meet them.

One of our other investigators, Amanda Donnelly, came to church for the first time yesterday! Her dad is a less active member in the ward and so we've been teaching the two of them together. Brother Donnelly came out to church yesterday for the first time in ages so they were both really nervous but they enjoyed it! Amanda is a recovering heroine addict and she is absolutely incredible. She is completely changing her life around. She had a baby but she hasn't had custody because of her addiction but in the past several months she has made so much progress in recovering that today she gets her baby Christopher back-full custody! It's an amazing experience to be able to teach someone like Amanda, about the atonement of Christ and seeing it work actively in her life. She's amazing.

A couple of neat experiences from this week -

Last week we had a dinner appointment with the Wildes in our ward. We were waiting on the bus when Bishop Broadfoot and Sister Broadfoot drove by and saw us so they picked us up and gave us a lift to the Wilde's home. We ended up being 20 minutes early since we didn't have to take the bus, so we pulled out a list of less active member's names that lived in the Wilde's neighborhood. There was a lady on the list named Lily Dinnen that we decided to try by really quick before dinner. We found her home and she let us in right away. Turns out she hasn't been in contact with anyone in the church for about 15 years. We had a quick, 15 minute lesson with her and set a return appointment with her. Saturday was our return appointment with her where we taught her the Restoration and committed her to come back to church. She said she is ready to come back and that she had been praying for help a week before we showed up on her doorstep. I'm grateful the Lord had orchestrated a situation where we could get to the Wilde's area early enough to find Lily. Because otherwise we would've just showed up for dinner right at 5:30.

Last night, Sister Passey and I both felt we should go and visit a less active lady named Ina. But we had JUST taught her the night before so we were hesitant to go since we had just barely seen her, but the thought kept coming to us! So we decided we would pop by and see how she was doing and tell her we missed her at church. When we went to her home, another lady answered her door and told us to come in. Ina had visitors in- her friend Helen, who answered the door and her husband Gordon. Ina introduced us to them and we chatted for a bit and Ina told them what we do as missionaries and told them they should listen to us. So we ended up teaching the Restoration to Helen and Gordon. It went SO well!! They committed to come to church on Sunday and to read the Book of Mormon! We are meeting with them again on Wednesday. Members are seriously so important in this work. Now, Helen and Gordon have a friend in the church and this will help Ina to come back to church as she helps her friends to come into it. It was one of those moments of understanding of 'Oh okay, that's why we needed to go see Ina'

I love this. I love being a missionary! The church is true and there's nothing like experiencing and helping people to feel that themselves.

Love you all,

Sister Knab

P.S. - Here's the link to my little profile that I made online:

http://mormon.org.uk/me/C494/Tiffany

April 15th

Hey Family-

Hope everyone is doing well! We are keeping busy right now with preparing for Jon and Eric's baptisms coming up. (They aren't related or anything- separate investigators that just happened to start coming to church at the same time a month ago and progressing at the same rate.) It's confusing people in the ward because they always see them together and we always talk about how Jon and Eric are doing so people keep thinking they're related, but they aren't. Haha. Anyways, life is good. This past week we did a lot of chapping on doors and found quite a bit of success so this week we are lined up with some good potential investigator appointments that came from that. I'll let you know how it goes!

This work makes me so happy. I am loving being a missionary. :) I love the Lord and am glad I get to spend this time doing things we are doing!

Have a good week everyone!

Love,
Sister Knab

April 8, 2013

Hey my cute family,

I attached some pictures-
5185: The Quayle Family :) They are so cute.
5193: Companionship photo
5166: Castle/Beach exploring on P-Days
0010: Last District Photo (Yesterday) before moves

Sorry I wasn't able to email last week. I'm okay! The library was just closed because of Easter. :) It was fun for me to see pictures of the easter egg hunt and hear from all of you as usual. I really can't believe how big the kids are getting!!! How can they change that much in just 8 months? It's so crazy... but fun to see how tall they are getting and their faces starting to mature and everything. Cutest little ones ever. I miss them and everyone and wish I could've been there for Easter! Easter isn't a big deal over here so we didn't see anyone celebrating too much so it was fun to see Easter pictures from back home! I've realized out here how much I love all of our family traditions we have - because we have A LOT and I love it!!! It's not a common thing I'm realizing. I love all of our family traditions, holiday traditions, and annual trips to Bear Lake and Bryce canyon and everything else we do as a family. Its so great!

Okay, as for us, things are going well! We had a crazy, busy past week with a zone meeting, an all day Smart Start conference (conference for new missionaries), and General Conference Saturday and Sunday. It was really busy as far as meetings and so that didn't leave as much time for proselyting but it was still a really good and everything we gained from those meetings has left us on a spiritual high. It's been really good.

Conference was so good huh?! We were able to watch all of the conferences except for Sunday afternoon session so we'll have to wait till we get our ensigns to catch up on that session. But conference is the best thing, and especially the best thing while out here. I appreciate it so much because not only are we able to receive inspiration for how we can improve ourselves as missionaries, but we also receive inspiration for how to improve our ward and area, as well as receive revelation for what our investigators need to hear for their concerns to be resolved. Most of the time, it's not even what is being said in the talks, but are clear impressions that come to mind while listening to the talks on what our investigators need to hear about or what changes we need to make in the work or ideas about better involving members in the work. Ah. I just love how the spirit works. And I'm so grateful for it out here and Sister Passey and I are anxious to apply the inspirations we both received this weekend. Good stuff.

As for an update on a few of the people we are teaching- our investigators Jon (33 years old) and Eric (62 years old) are really progressing well. They've both been coming to church for a few weeks now. Eric is scheduled to be baptized on April 28th and Jon is scheduled to be baptized on May 5th. Quick story about Jon from Friday- we were finishing up teaching him our lesson and he was asking us what he needs to do to be ready for his baptism and so we went into a review of the qualifications to be baptized and repentance and so forth for about ten minutes and then he was like, 'Oh. I just meant, do I need to bring a change of clothes to my baptism?' Haha. We felt so stupid. But it's okay- made us laugh. Jon was telling us how he received some bad news about some of his finances last Wednesday, but because he had read the Book of Mormon that morning like he does on a daily basis, he told us that he felt calm about it and that everything would be okay. He related the peace he felt to the fact that he had read his scriptures that morning. So good. He gets it! He also always mentions how the Book of Mormon gives him confidence about his future and helps him feel calm and at peace. So good. I love the questions he comes up with too from his studies. We always have a nice discussion from what he discovers in the Book of Mormon. He's still having a few doubts but he's willing to pray about things so I'm confident his doubts will be resolved because he's willing to find out. Eric is also doing well. He doesn't have any religious background at all and has never had a belief in anything so everything is a completely new concept to him. But he's soaking it all in like a sponge and really building his faith!

We have a handful of other investigators that we are teaching who are slowly but surely coming along. Hopefully things will pick up with them but I guess it's really on everyone's own timetable. One of them is 15 years old- Caitlin- who's a granddaughter of a member. She wants to be a chef and is going to school for it so Friday night we decided to make dinner with her and she loved that idea. It was a lot of fun. So she teaches us how to be better cooks and we teach her the gospel. Works out. :)

Sister Durning, our recent convert, is doing well too! She's really into family history right now and is currently working on her mom's line. She's looking forward to doing her mom's work in the temple. She loves that her mom, who has passed away already, can be baptized in the temple. So we're teaching her all about temple work and family history right now. It's fun to be with her when she's experiencing all of this! Yesterday was her first general conference. She was watching it with some ladies in the ward in Paisley and we were watching it in Ayr so I'm excited to talk to her about how she liked it.

Well, I think that's it as far as updates! We got our transfers call last night and Sister Passey and I are staying in Irvine but that wasn't a surprise- we were already planning on that really since we're only half way through the training program. Oh guess what? We're getting 13 new sisters week!! Pretty crazy. It's quite the shipment of sisters. It's so exciting. So almost every sister in the mission will be training once they come haha. So great.

I love you all! Hope you have a good week!

Love,



Sister Knab