The Work and the Glory

BROTHERS AND SISTERS. what an incredibly miraculous week... whoa whoa whoa. I cant even begin to explain how much love and peace I have felt this week. I LOOOOOOVE Kingstowne, as usual, lets start with the funny.

SO this week we have a dinner with the Petersen family. I didn't know who they were because they are both in primary, so we went over pretty blind. well come to find out they literally ROCK MY WORLD and we quoted Nacho Libre at the dinner table for 30 minutes. So is life good? or is life good?

ALSO, the bishops wife stops me in the hall at church yesterday and I notice that she has these adorable big framed glasses. She goes, "Sister Kennedy... I went to the eye doctor and ordered these glasses thinking 'oh my gosh sister kennedy looks so cute in these so im going to get some too!' and everyone told me not to get them because I would look horrible and they are too big and 'not cool' and I just kept telling them that they don't know sister kennedy! she is hip and cool and I am going to rock them!" hahahah it was so awesome!!!

 

 a couple of days ago we were at a stop light and the car next to us was bouncing like crazy, so we look over and there is a guy in the car who wont stop making kissy faces at us while revving the engine and blasting one of my all time favorite songs... let me tell you, turning up Mormon tabernacle choir rather than jamming to his tunes was literally the hardest thing EVER #consecrated

SO TONS OF LESS ACTIVE WORK THIS WEEK. LIKE TONS. HOLY SMOKES. the stake president here just made the announcement that if there are any "unassigned" families without home teachers and visiting teachers, the missionaries can visit them and that will count for your home and visiting teaching visits for them. SO with that said, the ward council went CRAZY with giving us literally 25 names of people to check up on to get in contact with... a lot of them don't have phone numbers listed, so we had to go and find them. You can imagine the different responses we got from people... haha some screamed at us (most screamed at us), some were like uhhh what church are you from? haha they hadn't been to church in over a decade, others were super chill, and others were long lost less actives that no one could get in contact with that agreed to let us come and meet with them! #MIRACLES. we got 3 who are letting us come back! SO AWESOME!  It has been so cool to see how the Lord has helped them prepare to return to the church at THIS time... ahhh i love it!

ALSO, we taught Shelia this week... what a champ. she has been PREEEEETTY flakey, but we got a hold of her and had an incredible lesson about the priesthood and WHY that authority from God is important... sidenote... while we are teaching her the bulls vs the pelicans game was on. and you know what that means. JIMMER FREDETTE was right there. HOLY SMOKES I HAVE NEVER BEEN SO TEMPTED TO WATCH ANYTHING IN MY ENTIRE LIFE. IT WAS SO BAD. luckily, sister malufau knows about my weaknesses, one of them being mens basketball, so she asked her to turn the tv off #phew... anyways, it was an incredible lesson and we felt the spirit SO strong. AND she agreed to pray! it was her first time praying OUT LOUD and in ENGLISH in her whole life, it was incredible. one thing she said in that prayer that i will never forget was, "In the name of the lord Jesus, i place my sweet sisters in your hands to guide them, protect them, and save them". now imagine that being said in a deep, think, Ghanain accent. it was BEAUTIFUL. what a lesson...

AND we taught Eric again. I WISH I COULD TELL YOU HOW INCREDIBLE ERIC IS. He is so so so prepared. we taught him with a member this week about the plan of salvation and he LOVED it. he has been reading the Book of Mormon and he LOVES is and he is planning on coming with us to the Temple Visitors Center this weekend! It is going to be AWESOME! HE IS SO GREAT!

There is a part-member family we have been working with who have a son that has autism who LOVES the sisters. LOVES the sisters. and this week he has a panic attack that was really bad. his mom called us crying and we could hear Garrett screaming in the background, she said, "sister  kennedy, Garrett needs to go to the emergency room, and he says you are the only person he can trust. He needs you here to tell him that he needs to make this choice." stressed and worried we drove over there where there was also a case worker and their neighbor Kristin. I sat down with Garrett and talked to him about Christ and peace and what we can do to find it, and he looked at me and said with tears in his eyes, "sister eli (that what he calles me haha) i think youre an angel". it was the sweetest thing on the earth. MEANWHILE, sister malufau was talking to the neighbor who told us that she was looking for a church and any church that focuses on service and love is the kind of church she wants to join. She wants to learn more and come to church with us next Sunday!!! we are so pumped! pray for Kristin!

Remember the less active that I found the wedding ring for? She called us this week and said with tears, "sister kennedy come over here right now so I can hug you" she proceeded to tell us that her and her husband lost some really important credit cards that they needed within a couple hours to pay some bills that they couldn't put off any longer. she said she prayed and prayed and they still couldn't find them. then she said, "sister kennedy I prayed to have the faith that YOU have to find these cards. so I went downstairs and I told my husband that we needed to PRAY right now to find this wallet. and right as he said amen, I looked over and in the bottom of the trash can was my wallet and the cards I needed to pay my bills" WOW. We were both just crying on the phone together. HEAVENLY FATHER ROCKS

also, we had 11 less-actives at church this week! what a miracle!!!

I wish I could tell you how much I love it here, I wish you could all walk with me and witness these miracles. I wish I could bear testimony to everyone in the world of the LOVE of the savior and the power of the atonement. I LOVE BEING A MISSIONARY. I LOVE BEING A MORMON. AND I LOVE KINGSTOWNE VIRGINIA WITH EVERY OUNCE OF MY BEING.

"the mission is a miracle, it changes your eternities"

keep it real and keep the faith

sister kennedy

 welcome to the mount Vernon zone, Franconia district, where we recently welcomed our newest trainee, ELDER HARRY STYLES

 Happy valentines day luv sistuh Ka$h, sisuh Kardashian Kelly and elduh harry styles 

werkin it 

our first Skype lesson! whoooo! 

abe Lincoln and George Washington at their finest. 

 The following four are at the beautiful Botanical Gardens!

 the statue of brigham young in the capitol building!

 More Botanical Gardens

Standing with the statue of astronaut John L. Swigert

If You're Happy and You Know It... Share It!

BROTHERS AND SISTERS!!!!!!! KINGSTOWNE IS SACRED GROUNDS. I am dead serious. I AM SO in love with and OBSESSED with this place and I want to stay here for my entire 18 months. #realtalk. The people will forever have my heart.

as per usual... lets start with the funny. SO this week we had to privilege to go to the temple visitors center with a less active woman and her son that we are hoping to start teaching. While we are walking in, there are 2 elders in front of us, but pretty far away. Sister K, the less active, was like, GIRLS!those boys think you are SO cute! they wont stop turning around and looking at you! I look at sister malufau with a super confused look because neither of us had even seen the elders... and then we brace ourselves. because sister k is also referred to as crazy k...  So SHE SCREAMS AT THEM. literally SCREAMS AT THEM to have them come and talk to us. I thought I was going to DIE. the elders, just as confused as we are, come over and sister K goes, "ok introduce yourselves, tell each other where you are from, I know you think these girls are cute elders." They turned bright red, we turned bright red, none of us had any idea what to say. So me being my awkward self just started walking the other way. hahahaha and Sister K just kept talking to them telling them how "great" sister Malufau and I are. literally SO awkward.

ANYWAYS... so this week was miraculous. so so so miraculous. last Monday we had a lesson with Eric. I don't think there is any word other than MIRACULOUS that can describe him. We brought one of our ward missionaries over and we taught him the Restoration. HE WAS LOVING IT. he asked SO many good questions and had so much good input. he is SO ready to accept it. He is from Lima Peru and he has seen the temple there...  that's how he knew who we were when we stopped him on the street. what a champ. He was raised Catholic, and has some questions regarding what makes us different. SO today we are teaching him again with one of our ward missionaries who is from Poland and who was LITERALLY baptized by the POPE. #wut. yeah that's completely real. it is going to be rad. He is just an incredible guy so willing to be changed and molded through Christ to be better. SO PUMPED for Eric

We also were able to visit and long lost less active this week :) AND WHAT A MIRACLE IT WAS! she is a recent convert and her story will change your life. She was meeting with the missionaries and wanted to be baptized but she couldn't come to church because she worked 2 jobs both on Sundays. She prayed and prayed to know what to do and she took a leap of faith and quit both. ON THE SAME DAY. She said that she knew Heavenly Father would bless her because she was doing what was right. WITHIN 5 MINUTES of quitting her second job she got a called from the FBI saying they wanted her to work for them! she chose how much she made and how much she worked. She knew that that experience was because of Gods grace and so she got baptized and joined the church. THEN. she lost that job 2 years later and was working two jobs again keeping her from going to church. This was the exact time she moved to Kingstowne and she met sister schooley and I. She knew that God was telling her that she needed to quit both jobs and go to church. we talked to her about faith and knowing that God would provide. then we lost contact for about 2 months and this week we saw her again! she took that leap of faith Again and quit both jobs. She didn't get a job within 5 minutes BUT the bishop met with her and she is going in for an interview with the CIA this week that she feels she will get. GOD IS SO GOOD when we PUT HIM FIRST. what a miracle!

This week was a slower week for the work. We were trying just has hard but we were seeing less results. anyone who has served a mission knows the struggle. There are weeks like that A LOT. and it can be super frustrating. BUT it all works out. Yesterday was fast Sunday and I fasted to know what MORE I could be doing to be giving my ALL to the Lord. I have been working really hard to be obedient to every rule and exert every effort and so I was just a little frustrated. BUT THEN I remembered a card that my sweet best friend Isabella wrote me that said, "open when you need some spiritual upliftment" so I did. and in that wonderful letter I found the quote, "No one will care how much you know unless they know how much you care". and I KNEW that was my answer. LOVE THESE PEOPLE. love them with EVERY OUNCE OF ME. love them for their FEARS, DOUBTS, and WEKNESSES. and more than anything love them SO MUCH that you desire their salvation and you WANT them to COME CLOSE TO THEIR SAVIOR.  So brothers and sisters, LOVE the people around you. love them with every inch of you no matter how much you don't want to. We are all children of God. we are all destined to Succeed and we are ALL worth it.

The best part of serving in DC is that I haven't come to just love the people of DC. I love the people of Africa. I love the people of India. I love the People of Europe and I love the People of Costa Rica, Peru, Canada, Mexico, and Russia.  

This work is SO sweet and this church is SO undeniably true.

keep it real and keep the faith

sister kennedy

  gasssssssin up

face masks make life better #compunity 

 ready to ROC? (thank you Isabella Errigo for being the BEST and sending me a little piece of home this week)

 hahaha I couldn't resist. h8 h8ers guys.

setting up family search accounts with andy and michelle so they can bring family names to the temple! 

 Family Search #ferdayz

me literally trying to climb this fence so we didn't have to walk alllll the way around this apt complex to our next appointment. I was unsuccessful..

just kickin it with mai gurl 

 #DISCOVERTHEBOOK