February 24, 2014 - Dos Hermanas, Espana

Hola otra vez a todos!

This week was great. I have a new companion, Hermana Folsom. Holy cracker jacks, she is amazing! I am super excited to have her. People say we are the same person, just different hair. We are having a lot of fun and working hard.

Well, we started off this week saying goodbye to Hermana Wilcox. That was pretty tough. On Monday night, we spent it with a family in the ward. The Villa family. They are one of those families where you wish they were a part of yours. They have 4 kids and are a lot of fun... always have something to laugh at. Then I said goodbye to Hermana Wilcox. She will be missed.

We found a new investigator named Linda. She is from China and has only been here since September. She knows no Spanish at all, but speaks a little English. She contacted us because she wants to practice her English with us, so we have been helping her out. Well, we share the gospel with her as well and boy is it interesting. She knows nothing about it. We talked to her about prayer and she didn´t know what it was. We gave her a Book of Mormon in Chinese and tried to explain it and she hasn´t heard of the Bible. It's actually super cool. It´s like teaching a young child. I haven´t ever had to go so basic as to how to explain who God is or what the Bible is. It´s a really good experience for us. And it´s cool when she prays cause she has never done it before and she is so real with it. We love her. 

 

We also went to this 15 year old kid's house who is going inactive. There we found his cousin who just came over here from Italy. Well, he has lived there for 12 years and barely remembers Spanish so guess what I got to do?! Speak in Italian! He is getting ready for college and wants to learn English so we made a deal. We would teach him English if we could teach him out of the Book of Mormon...but in Italian! So we have an appointment with him on Wednesday. Pretty awesome.

Yesterday at church was one of the most interesting days ever. Our Bishop changed giving the Sacrament to the end and the talks for the beginning so that messed us up a little. But then our little investigators wouldn´t come to church unless they could come with their birds. So they brought their birds with them. It was pretty funny. Then our Bishopric and Elder Adamson sang a special musical number, but the Bishopric had never heard of the song and they didn´t practice before. Pretty awkward couple minutes. There were just so many things yesterday. Haha, Hermana Folsom was pretty confused. One to remember that´s for sure.

Hmmmm, what else. I think that´s it. Today we are going back to Plaza de España where the Star Wars part was filmed, and just like last time, I'm bringing my light saber. But this time I'm bringing two so we can fight. Should be awesome.

Well, I think that´s it for now. Love you all and miss you all! Thanks for everything!

Hermana Kunz

 

Burning Hermana Wilcox´s boots on her last night with our investigator and his mom.

Being a ridiculous missionary

Silly district

The Elder's baptism this week. Funniest kids ever.

 

February 17, 2014 - Dos Hermanas, Espana

Hola todos!

Well, what a week!

First it was Valentine´s Day and it was fantastic. The elders and us hermanas went around to members´ houses and heart attacked them. Then at night, Hermana Wilcox and I decided to have a romantic dinner on our roof and just enjoy the full moon and the stars. It was incredible. And at the end, we burnt a few shirts. Plus, it was nice because it was one of our last nights together. Speaking of, my new companion is Hermana Folsom. I know absolutely nothing about her so I´m excited for it. We will see on Wednesday! Sad to see Hermana Wilcox go, but excited to get to know Hermana Folsom.

We found a new family that wants to learn English. They are the sweetest family. It is a mom and two kids. The little boy is 4 and is the cutest thing in the world. Everytime he gets something right, he jumps up and down all excited. We are excited to teach them and to get into the gospel with them. We were very lucky to find them.

A member, Ricardo, was in the hospital for a surgery so we went to visit him on Tuesday. This is the man who is non-stop making fun of me for just about everything, but when we went to visit him, it was the calmest I´ve ever seen him. We sang him a song, and I couldn´t believe it but he started to cry. Haha, I wish you all could know this guy. The fact that we saw Ricardo cry is a once in a lifetime opportunity. It was pretty cool. We  had dinner with them last night and he was back to normal...finding whatever he could to make fun of. They are one of our favorite families.

I was reading a talk and I was thinking about how the beginning of the mission is always so hard for people. Then after a while, it gets better and people end up loving their missions. At first I just thought it was because we become accustomed to the life here. But from reading the talk, Elder Bendar talks about how our burdens remain the same but people are strengthened so the burdens become light. Missionaries don´t just get use to the life here. The Lord strengthens them through their work and makes the burden light.  That´s why we end up loving this so much. Don´t know...just a thought I had.

Alright everyone, well it´s a new week and a new start. I am super sad to see Hermana Wilcox go. I reeeeeeally don´t want this change to happen. She will be missed for sure. She is an awesome missionary.

Thanks everyone for everything and we will catch you all next week!

Hermana Kunz

At leadership conference...almost everyone there now is from our MTC group. It´s a fun reunion :)

P'day at a castle

Haha...it says ¨Read the Bible¨

Heart attacking everyone!

February 10, 2014 - Dos Hermanas, Espana

Hola todos!

Well, Happy Valentine´s Day to all you love birds. We are thinking about going heart attacking to some people around here.

This week was good. Nothing too crazy happened. I went to Jaen on splits and had a great time there. We gave a Family Home Evening in the church with their members and shared a message on the Restoration. It was actually a really good discussion that we all had.

Hermana Wilcox and I gave our part in zone meeting. We talked about faith and how we can use it when we don´t make our goals. Everyone really needs it right now because many missionaries here are so number focused, and so when we didn´t make our goal of baptisms this past year, everyone thinks our mission doesn´t have enough faith. We tried to teach that sometimes the Lord has other things in store for us and that we need to look at the things we did accomplish and not the things we didn´t. Focus on all the people we helped this past year and go from there. I hope everyone can start to change how they look on it. It was a good topic to talk about, and when Hermana Deere gave it to us in Málaga, it blew everyone away.

This is the last week of Hermana Wilcox. It is the time when everyone gets nervous about transfers. Who knows who my next companion will be! We will find out this Friday.

Well, that´s about it for now. Thanks for everything everyone and hope you have a great love day.

Hermana Kunz

February 4, 2014 - Dos Hermanas, Espana

Hola otra vez a todos!

Great week we had! We just got back from Málaga at the conference. It was a really good one. Left some in tears. Our President has a powerful testimony. It was fun seeing many of the missionaries. It´s cool because many of the zone leaders and sister leaders now are from my group from the MTC. It´s fun being with everyone. Almost like a MTC reunion.

So this week we had a complete miracle. Seriously complete miracle. By far one of the coolest things that has happened on my mission. There is a new church that is being built here in Dos Hermanas. We were invited to go see all of the construction being done. When we got there the director of all of the LDS churches being built in all of Europe was there. He was only there for that day inspecting it and would leave later that afternoon. So we are in there and I went up to him and asked him where he is from. He says Germany. Then he looks down at my name and looks at me for a long time with a puzzled look. He then asks where I am from...me: ¨Idaho¨...him: ¨Where in Idaho?¨....me: ¨Sun Valley.¨  Then he gets tears in his eyes and says, ¨Are your parents Kyle and Shari?¨ Well, at this point I too started to tear up....because for those of you who don´t know, my parent's names are Shari and Kyle. He told me that 20 years ago, he was serving as a missionary in our ward! We talked forever. He asked all about my parents and so many people from the ward. It was actually really impressive how much he remembered. I was in complete awe the whole time. On the one day he came to Spain to look at the church was the day that we went to look at it and it just so happen to be that I was serving here in Dos Hermanas at this time. Just incredible. I´m sorry, but that is not coincidence in any way. Orson Teubner was his name. So that was the main part of the week. A definite miracle.

Other than that, let´s see, we found a woman who fell away from the church a while ago and we had a great conversation with her. It's interesting...the church here in Spain is almost like the beginnings of the church with Joseph Smith. There aren´t too many members, so many of them have 4 or 5 callings. Well this woman had many when she was active and she got so burnt out that she just couldn´t handle it all anymore. It´s sad, but boy does she have a strong testimony. It was really cool to talk to her. She is leaving for a month on vacation, but we will definitely work with her when she gets back.

We had stake conference this past weekend and it was really good. Talked all about missionary work. Us missionaries had to sing. Haha, let me tell ya, it sounded like a bunch of Americans trying to sing in Spanish. Here is the best part...we all got together four Sundays in a row to practice, and in the real thing it came out alright, but many people asked us to sing our mission song at the end, and without any practice we sang that with so much power. You could really feel the Spirit. It was a cool experience. We were proud of it.

Well, that´s about it. The mission is great. Greatest week in the mission, this one. Love you all and thanks for everything! 

Hermana Kunz

'Hermana Kunz gleefully opening Elder Ellsworth's letter with her hobbit sword' - per her mission website

Orson Teubner, who served as a missionary in Sun Valley 20 years ago!