March 31, 2014 - Dos Hermanas, Espana

Hello all!

Well just as we knew, I am leaving Dos Hermanas. I am pretty sad about it. Yesterday I think I got rid of all of the water in my body from crying so hard in church. I didn´t think I was going to, but right when I got into the church and people came swarming, the river started flooding. Giving my testimony was the worst. Haha, my Bishop said to give what I could of a testimony. Ya thanks Bishop! I will miss so many people here. We are spending tonight and tomorrow night with our two close families and then I´m off. Oh ya, I should probably tell you where I´m off to. 

So for my last split as the sister leader thing I went to Jaén to be with Hermana Demayola. It was kind of sad because we weren´t with our companions for transfer calls but it was the only time we could do it. So I´m up there with her and President calls while we were planning. He says, ¨Hermana Kunz, you are going to serve in Jaén with Hermana Demayola.¨ Haha well President, I´m already a step ahead of you there! So that was pretty funny. Jaén is where it is. It´s pretty cool. Jaén is literally on a mountain. It is all hills. Whew, time to work these legs!!! I´m excited. It´s an incredible looking city. They don´t really have investigators as of now but we are going to work hard to change that. The Lord will show us the miracles.

Oh my buckets, Linda everyone. I am going to miss her so much. Listen or I guess read this amazing story. So we explained who Christ was last time and she had never heard of him. So this past lesson, we decided to watch the movie Finding Faith in Christ with her and it was in Chinese! Bang! So we watched it and we didn´t understand a single word but we were just praying the whole time she would feel something. So the movie finishes and she is quiet. We ask her how she feels and she says, ¨Canto.¨ That´s Chinese so we don´t know what she said, but then she says, ¨Don´t know how explain...feel very good.¨ Wooooow I wish all of you could have felt the Spirit in that room. Anybody in that lesson would have felt it. Incredible. We then explained to her what she was feeling and the Spirit and she just kept saying that she wanted to know more and more. It was incredible. I have never felt the Spirit that strong in all my mission. Very cool experience. I can´t wait until the day she is baptized, and even more, gets to go to the temple. She is an incredible woman.

Monday was an awesome day of work. We went to look for a less active member and two women came up to us and asked us where we were from. We explained our church and they asked us to come in. We of course went and they started calling their sisters and moms and aunts and neighbors and everyone. Well we had a gathering of about 8 women, a few men and all the kids sitting on the floor. It was awesome! We explained the Book of Mormon and with a few of the women, it was like a light came on in their heads. They were saying that it all makes total sense and of course God would call a living day prophet. We are excited to work with them. Fun little miracle.

We also had the most investigators come to church this week than we have had in a long time. It was cool to see them there. This area is growing. It has been really cool to see it grow over the last 6 months. You really don´t recognize it until you look back and think what it was when you started and how it is as you leave. The Lord has definitely showed His miracles to us here. I so wish I could stay here for a little longer but I have to trust that the Lord needs me in Jaén. Hard change though. This ward has become my family here in Spain! I will never forget them and can´t wait to visit them in the future.

Alright enough of the sad things...I am really excited to go to Jaén. It will be a great new experience. I have heard good things about the members. Well, we have less time today for email because we have a little party tonight for Elder Woodford and I who are leaving. 

Thanks for everything everyone and we´ll see ya in Jaén! Adios!

Hermana Kunz

March 24, 2014 - Dos Hermanas, Espana

Hola todos!!!

Great week this week. Started out in Huelva for splits with Hermana Grant. She is from my group. It´s way cool to see people from my group because we really see how much we are growing. Very fun with her. We taught a guy the Restoration and he was set on seeing the prophet before he would decide if it was true.  He was so excited to know there was a prophet on the earth, but he wants to meet him and look him in the eyes. He was a great guy. Ha, we told him we would let him know if the prophet ever makes his way towards Spain.

On Thursday, we burnt a skirt in our apartment and ate girl scout cookies that some amazing members gave us. That was an adventure in itself!

Yesterday at church was awesome. George, the kid from Italy who got baptized when he was 8 but then totally dropped out came! It was amazing because after we taught him, he didn´t seem too interested, but then he randomly showed up and asked for a Book of Mormon and what he has to do to come back. We were so excited. We are looking forward to helping him grow strong.

We also taught Linda yesterday. Holy cow people, this woman is just amazing. You have to remember that her English is very little so all of this makes it 10 times better. She starts off by saying that she has something to tell us. Well, after our fail of asking her to baptism last time, we thought she was going to tell us she wants to stop meeting with us. Then she tells us that Buddism is really big in China and that her family is from this religion. She said that it is really hard. Then she asks what the difference is between our religion and Buddism. So we explain Jesus Christ and His role. Well, she had never heard of Him and didn´t recognize pictures of Him so we took the chalk and wrote God and an arrow to Christ and explained that He is God´s son. Then we drew the earth and talked about how He came to earth and what He did here. It´s so cool cause it is all brand new for her. It´s actually really hard talking about Christ and explaining who He was to someone who doesn´t know Him. Well at the end, she said in her cute English, ¨Buddism hard...I want know more Jesus Christ.¨ Wow, I almost was brought to tears. She is so prepared. The Lord definitely brought her to Spain for this reason. I´ll tell ya, when they open up China, it is going to be the coolest thing in the world.

Well let´s see, what else. We learned how to make the Spanish dish Paella with a member Loli. It´s probably the most amazing thing I have ever eaten. We are excited to try to make it on our own. I´m learning some pretty random skills out here. All the Elders have had me cut their hair, and now I am learning to sew their pants. I don´t know why they trust me, but I have done two of them now. Slowly learning. It gets better every time, ha. Just another reason why everyone should come on a mission!

Alright, well, that´s about it. Unfortunately, this might be my last week here. I don´t like to talk about it because I get a very strong sinking feeling in my stomach. I have been here 6 months and our President doesn´t leave people in areas longer than that. I am really sad. I don´t want to even think about my mission in another area! I love this place too much. Well, like I said, I don´t like talking about it so I am going to stop. Maybe by some chance my prayers will be answered and I will get one more transfer here. We´ll see. Thanks everyone for everything and I love you all! Hope all is well and take care.

Hermana Kunz

The result of Hermana Kunz sewing pants!

Little Vadagorn, the rat! Hahahaha!

Vadagorn and friends!

March 17, 2014 - Dos Hermanas, Espana

Hola folks!

This week was really good. We went to a place called Valdepeñas to stay with the hermanas there for a couple of days to help them out. It was awesome. We found a few people to teach and we set a baptismal date. The girl is so stinking prepared. I´m excited to hear about her baptism. It´s a cute little town. Exactly like Spain.

We had an investigator come to church this week name Pablo. He seems really prepared. We haven´t taught him too much, but he agreed to come to church. And get this...he gets there and he says that his boss only comes in once a month and of course, he decided to come in today so he had to go to work. He only had about 25 minutes. The adversary is sure working hard. I´ll tell you, the power of the adversary is one of the things that has most strengthened my testimony on my mission. Every time people decide to do something right, without fail, something goes wrong. So why would he be trying so hard to get people to not do all of this if it wasn´t the church of Jesus Christ. So anyway, Pablo came in and after 25 minutes he says that he really wants to stay but he can´t. But he asked us to come over on Tuesday because he has a lot of questions. We are excited for that.

Oh boy, funny story with Linda. So Linda is that Chinese investigator that we have been teaching that doesn´t speak Spanish and little English. Well we decided to teach her baptism and we brought all the right things for it. Chinese pamphlets, several pictures of baptisms, and we practiced that morning a few times how we were going to teach her in simple terms. Well, what an epic fail it was. We ended up inviting her to be bathed. We explained baptism and told her she would be clean. That was a mistake because when we extended the invitation, she was very confused and asked why she needed to shower and what that had to do with God. Hahaha, we all had a good laugh. We tried to explain it in different words, but it was hard. She looked at the word in Chinese and hadn´t heard of it and we showed the pictures and she didn´t know. It was crazy. It´s not only hard to learn about religion when you have no background, but to learn it in a different language is even harder. We are going to try again. It was pretty funny. She will get it though!

Oh my, so yesterday at church, a member named Ricardo comes to church and tells me he bought me a present. He takes my companion and I out to his car and opens the trunk and takes out a little baby rat. I wanted to die. It was a little baby and was the cutest thing my eyes had seen in a year. But the problem is that we can´t have pets in the mission so I was devastated. I held that little guy (his name is Vadagorn...cross between Vader and Aragorn) for a long time before I had to give him back. Ricardo was mad I couldn´t take him and I´m pretty sure he is going to let him loose. I´m pretty sad about it. I wish I could have kept him. So that was an interesting part of the week. 

Well, that´s about all. Happy St. Patrick´s Day. Hope you are all wearing green. Thanks everyone for everything and love you all lots. Have a fantastic week!

Hermana Kunz

 

who are these people???? Beautiful girls all over the world...

We were just about done with trains...

Sometimes companion study gets difficult

Jonny and Alex...recent converts

March 10, 2014 - Dos Hermanas, Espana

Hola todos!!!

Well, another week out here in the mission and it was great. I´m loving being here with Hermana Folsom. Everyone wonders what President was thinking putting two crazy hermanas together, but we love it because we are laughing about 90% of the time. She is awesome. Plus, she is from Seattle which is will always be a special city to me. We never run out of things to talk about.

Linda sure is progressing. She came last time and said she read the whole pamphlet we gave her but wanted some explanation.  We only wanted her to read the first part, so she is incredible. It´s fun teaching in English and trying to teach it out of a Chinese Book of Mormon and pamphlet. We are going to try to explain baptism this next time with her so wish us luck!

We had zone meeting and it was possibly the best zone meeting I have had on my mission. Hermana Folsom and I started it out with talking about having more hope in the mission. Hope, that everything will be okay. A quote that we heard from Hermana Deere was, ¨In the end, it will all be okay, and if it isn´t okay, then it is not the end.¨ That hit all of us hard. It was good to go over with everyone because it seems that everyone is just giving up hope. So we are working with them! And plus I got to talk about Lord of the Rings in it and still keep it spiritual so that was a bonus. After, our zone leaders did an incredible job. We talked about obedience, but in a different way than usual. We got in a circle and we all just talked about it. Everyone participated and we all put in our input. The zone leaders did it in a great way because they showed us that they have their trials with obedience as well, so it was comfortable for everyone to talk about how they really feel with it. Really, a great zone meeting.

After, we had splits with the hermanas in Cordoba. When we were finished we all ended up in Cordoba to switch back. Our train was suppose to leave at 3, but because of an accident we ended up leaving there at 7! Whew, we were going crazy in that little station. We literally got home and fell on the floor and couldn´t get up for a while. Love being home.

Last night we had a really good lesson with a less active and his wife. His name is Amelio. He use to be very, very inactive. Didn´t want absolutely anything to do with the church and wouldn´t let missionaries come over. But over time he has been opening up to us. It´s been a long journey with him, but now he is open to us. He was just diagnosed with Parkinsons and he just doesn´t understand why. He feels that he is finally opening up to the gospel again so why would the Lord give him something like this. We prepared a lesson on adversity and why the Lord gives us trials and what we can do during the trials. Whew, the Spirit was strong! It was good for him and as well as for me. That is something that I have been learning from my mission more than anything. When I plan for these people, I learn so stinking much and a lot of times I think it might be benefiting me more than it does them, haha. But I hope it helps them sometimes. Anyway, Amelio sure is an awesome guy.

Well, let´s see, I think that might be all for now. Oh, haha I swear I didn´t mean to do this but we had interviews with President this past week and we ended up talking about the Hobbit the whole time. But it wasn´t my fault! I know you all think I must have started it, but he started with a joke about me not being able to see it and then we ended up talking about it the whole time. Love our President.

Alright everyone, love you all and appreciate you all. Hope all is well at home and hope you all celebrated the day of the woman on Saturday :) Thanks for everything!

Hermana Kunz

March 4, 2014 - Dos Hermanas, Espana

Hola todos!!!

Alright, well this one is going to be a little short because we just got back from Málaga for Council and we have to go to an appointment. Everything went well. President talked a lot about obedience and how we can improve as a mission. It was good overall.

This week was good. Linda, the Chinese woman, is just incredible. She is so prepared! I only wish we could fully communicate with her. We had a great discussion with her. We have to talk in very simple terms with her but she is awesome. We were talking about families with her this week and she finally stops and thinks for a moment and asks, ¨Does God know when I´m sad?¨ Oh my word did the Spirit fill the room. It was so cool! I wish all of you could have been there. We testified and we knew she felt it. We are very excited about her. It will be a slow process, but she is so stinking prepared. She is a miracle.

We have been talking with a less active lady whose son is an investigator.  She brought up tithing and how she just doesn´t understand how we can give all that money to buying churches and temples. Especially the temple...she didn´t understand why we pay so much for them to look like that. Well, she doesn´t understand the importance of the temple right now. She hasn´t been yet so we are going to start with her talking more about the temple. She will get it. It sure made me grateful for the temple though. 

Well other than that, I was sick this past week. One day, I couldn´t taste at all and was just feeling pretty awful. Well, normally we have no eating appointments here and on that day, we had 3...and one was with pancakes! Pancakes in Spain! That doesn´t happen. But it did when I couldn´t taste any of it. Haha, I would call it missionary luck but it´s more like Laura luck. 

Well, I´m out of time. Wish I could write more. Love you all and am so grateful for all your support. Hope all is well!

Hermana Kunz

Plaza de España...being a Jedi and Sith Lord for a day

 

Companion and I kicking it