July 29th - Facebook Mission!

Hello Family and friends!!

Well this past week has been amazing!!  We have been so very blessed!  Jen Kramer got baptized Friday and confirmed Sunday.  We had another double baptism with the elders in our area.  The work is growing in University City!  I am so grateful to be apart of it! 

We found Jen through a pestcontrol guy named Trey.  He knocked on her door and somehow they started talking about the Book of Mormon.  He invited her to church and that is how we found her.  We started teaching her since that day and Friday she got baptized.  She is an amazing woman.  I am so excited to see her go to the emple and do her husbands work.  He recently passed away.  I know God had been  preparing her to hear the gospel.  Her live has changed so much because of the gospel.  I have been so happy and feeled with because of working with her!

I am so sorry this letter is going to be pretty short..

Real quick some highlights!

We went on exchages with sisters Webber and Jameson.  Sister Jameson worked at doTERRA for a while in the call center.  Small world!  It was so much fun serving with her for the exchange!  SHe has such a sweet spirit and love for the gospel!

We had a BBQ on pioneer day as a ward and we were all stuck under a pavillion b/c is was raining so hard!! hah but it was so much fun.  After the rain settled  we played a little b-ball with Nautykah's little Sister Nyemah.  She is interested in the church.  She came Sunday.  She is so sweet!  and AMAZING at b-ball.  It was a super fun night!  Jen was telling everyone about her baptism!  haha and just beaming!!  The ward has been so great with her!!  I love this ward!!!

My mission is now a facebook mission so I will be on facebook a lot more.  Everyday actually.  so don't be surprised if I message you! haha.  and please message me back!!

AH!  THere is so much I want to share but I am running out of time :(

I love you all so so much!!!  Thank you for all you do!!!

Sister Shoemake!  I love you and miss Stateville!!  How are the new sisters? 

Love,

Sister Knell

Sorry I Missed One...

Hello faithful readers!  So sorry I missed a letter in my inbox!

June 3rd - University City

Here's the Link:

http://sisterknell.blogspot.com/2013/07/june-3rd-university-city.html

July 22nd Letter - Only 13 Months Left?

Hello family and friends!! (: 

This week was hot, HOT, HOTT!!!  Sister Reid and I were dying!  Plus we were on the bikes this week.  We tried our hardest to get rides everywhere, we did pretty good! (:  But for some reason when ever we go visit this lovely lady in our ward we always think, "lets just go through campus, it'll be a lot faster!" (we live across from University of North Carolina - Charlotte) but every time we go through campus we get lost and it ends up taking us forever to get to our apt! haha its ridiculous!  You'd think we would learn by now not to go through campus.. well at least not walk through campus, biking isn't as bad.  Since we are piloting the iPads with only WiFi we always have to find places that have WiFi.  Our apt. complex has an office that if you sit outside of it you can get WiFi.  Well that's exactly what Sister Reid and I do like every night so we can sync our area books to each other and get on Facebook.  But its also near the pool which means mosquitoes! :S poor Sister Reid has 27 bites!!  I only have like 5 but it feels like millions!  I am always so itching from the bites..  We have this nasty bug spray that smells like mountain men in our apt. but we don't want to stink.. ha so I guess we deserved it.. today hopefully we'll buy yummy smelling kind.. if such a thing. haha

GUESS WHAT!  We have another baptism this weekend on Friday.  Jen Kramer!  And this morning we got the best text from her it said, "My baptism is going to be AWESOME! I'm so excited!"  Which just made my day!  We are super excited as well and feel so blessed to have been able to work with her!  Her husband died a year and a half and go and she has been having a really hard time but ever since we've been working with her, her countenance has changed and you can see the light of Christ in her glowing!  I just love her!

This past week has felt like one of the slowest weeks of my life.. hahaha...  Also, I have come to love "Pasta-Roni".. haha.  Sister Reid and I eat it A LOT!! haha

Sister Reid and I had dinner with Sister Roman a lady in our ward who we have been working with and just LOVE!!  haha.  She is so funny!! We live pretty close to her so we told her that we could just walk home but she was worried that we would die from the heat and so she gave us a ride home.  As we were driving home there was a man walking on the street and Sister Roman says, "Should I hit him?!" then, "I'm going to hit him!!!" (while sister Reid and I are just dying laughing) then she turns just in time to BARELY miss him.. haha oh wow.. and says, "Did you see how scared he looked!!!" Then she crazy laughed.. hahahaha so funny!!  We love her!  That was one of my highlights this week.. hahaha because this week was never ending!

We did have a Zone Conference this week!  It was GREAT!!  I love President and Sister Craven!!  They are so inspired and take such great care of us.  We learned: "How to Give a Talk" from Sister Craven.  Sister Craven is so sweet and proper.  I love learning from her!  She makes me want to be a better missionary and daughter of God. 

I love being a missionary!  I hit my 5 month mark the other day and it was so weird to think I only have 13 months left--that may not sound like a little but then next month will be only a year!! Crazy!!!  I am so blessed and grateful to be here in North Carolina!  The people here are amazing!  I feel the spirit of the Lord each and everyday!

We had a wonderful Sacrament meeting yesterday and one thing that stuck out to me was, "Are you just active in the church or are you active in the gospel?" I encourage all of us to always remember to read our scriptures and say our prayers daily!  I know that when we do these things it will help be active in the gospel and not just the actions of going to church every Sunday.

I love you all so much!!

Have a blessed day!

Love,

Sister Knell

 

July 15th Letter - Facebook & iPads

Hello family and friends!! (:

 

This past week has been pretty busy with lots of meetings!!  First off some of you may have noticed my facebook page has had some recent activity on it!!  Well Guess WHAT!  We are testing facebook for our mission! AND...my district is one out of seven other districts to be piloting the new mini iPADS!!! President Wade from Church Headquarters came to our District Meeting Thursday and introduced the new iPADS.  Sister Reid and I each have our own ipads and they will replace our planners, areabook and ward roster!!  It pretty neat all that it can do!  We only have ipads no iphones.  Also, we only have wifi uses on it which is anther new thing they are testing because the other missions that are using them have iphones and a data plan so they can use them wherever they go.  But we can only use them in areas that have wifi which makes it kind of hard.  But we are excited about this new change.  We already miss our old white planners..  I was hoping I'd keep all of mine when I got home.. haha.  And I just liked how easy it was to quickly jot something down or I'd use it to write funny things that happened that I would write later in my journal.  A lot to get use to! 

 

Now facebook.  So we will be proselyting off of facebook too!  Which is very exciting!!  But I am still trying to figure out how it'll all work with my facebook page.  They said to use your old facebook page and to just modify it but I can't figure out how to hide things..  So if any of you can help me out with that, that would be much appreciated (:

 

So how it will work is Sister Reid and I will be able to teach lessons now over facebook, Skype and facetime.  We will be able to have member present lessons by having members Skype in or be apart of our facebook lessons.  They want us to have our friends and family apart of the facebook process so they can see how our missions are going and to hopefully interest friends and family who may not be members or are inactive.  We cannot communicate with friends or family over facebook unless it is for a missionary purpose, meaning a lesson being taught to a friend or non-member family member.  We are still learning a lot about it!  But so far that is the basics of it!

 

I hope I answered some questions!  I am running out of time!  Let me know if you have any other questions! (:  Pray for me!  I'm a little nervous about this online proselyting.. ha

 

This is an exciting time to be a missionary!! (:

 

I love you all so much!!!!

 

Love,

 

Sister Knell 

July 8th Letter - Baptisms & a Seventy!

This past week has been GREAT!!!  The baptism was AMAZING!!!!  I had never felt the spirit so strong!!  We had Nautykah getting baptized and then the elders in our area also had a baptism-the Valley family (4).  So there were 5 baptisms!  And over 100 people showed up!  It was beautiful!  Nautykah was just glowing!  Her mom and little sister came and now her mom is curious to learn more!  Sister Reid and I feel so blessed!  It was truly amazing!  Elder Parker from the seventy was there because he helped work with the Vallery family, he is one of the main reasons they got baptized.  When he heard they were going through with getting baptized, he changed his whole schedule to be there.  He also said so many amazing and powerful things!  he said that when you are released from your calling of being a Seventy your journals during that time period are put into church history.  He then said that, that night he was going to write about this baptism and that Nautykah and the Vallery family were going to be a bit of church history, which we all thought was pretty neat!  He then said toward Nautykah, "Nautykah, you will travel the world telling people about the gospel and through your example many of your family members will be baptized as well."  I thought that was amazing!!!  Many great things are going to happen in her life!  I am very excited for her!  And grateful I got to be a part of it.  President and Sister Craven came as well and President came up to Sister Reid and I and told us that he was very pleased with the work we were doing in University City and that we get to stay there and stay together(b/c it was transfer calls)!!! HAPPY DAY!!  It was a great finish to an amazing day!  OH! and President told us that Thursday we will be having a meeting for my district to introduce the IPADS!!! Our district is the one that gets to try them out!!!  WOOHOOO!! (:  SIster REid and I are super DUPER EXCITED!! ha (:

 

Then Sunday was just as beautiful!  The Vallerys and Nautykah got confirmed!  And her little sister and cousin came to that.  They sat behind us and it was so sweet to hear Nautykah teaching them about the hymns and sacrament.  It touched sister Reid and I.  We could already see her being that example.  After church we ate with our favorite family.  The Roisums!  Then later went to a Fiesta for the Spanish branch.  A YM was going to leave for his mission and that was his goodbye party I guess and they wanted us to sing with the Spanish elders Called to Serve.  It was a lot of fun!  It made me wish I new Spanish.. hahaha.  I love that culture!

 

The Lord is blessing this area and I feel so blessed to be here.

 

I love you!!

 

Love,

 

Sister Knell (:

-- 

July 3rd - University City Ward!

Dad,

I am still in my mission!  Do you remember my first night here I slept at another set of sisters appt.?  Well I am now serving in that area!  University City ward!  It is located in Charlotte, NC!  It's so pretty here!  I love all the buildings and greenery!  I am training Sister Reid.  She is from Sandy, UT.  She is super sweet!!  I am so blessed to have her as my companion!!  I know we are going to do great things here!!

This past week we had Elder Evens and Elder Nielsen from the seventy come and speak to us on Thursday.  It was AMAZING!!!!  He talked about the whole age change process and all the new changes that were the outcome of the age change and then some new things that will be coming out too for missionaries!!!  But we can't share them yet (; its a secret he said.  But it's exciting!!  The missionary work is growing so fast!!!!  I am so grateful to be here on my mission and be a part of this great time of missionary work.

The ward here is great!!  They are taking such great care of us!!  We live in a new apt from the one the other sisters use to live in and the scenery is soooooooooo pretty!!!!  Sister Reid and I saw out FIRST fireflies!!!!!  It was so fun!!  We tried to make videos... didn't turn out too great!  but it was fun!!  The ward has 600 members only 250 come on avg.  So we will be working with less actives.  They don't want us to really knock on doors anymore.  That's one thing Elder Evans said.  He said they are hoping to get rid of it completely and to work fully through the members of the ward. 

The city is a lot harder to drive in..  I;m the driver now and I keep getting lost haha.  We are driving a brand new 2013 Chevy.  Its nice!!!  I love it! hahaha.

Training isn't too bad right now but it's a lot of pressure.  Please pray for me to know what Sister Reid needs and how I can best serve her.  Now I'm the example... lots of responsibility...  freaks me out a bit!

I love you!!!

Love,

Sister Knell