with love, elli: come what may and LOVE it!

Brothers and sisters! YAY for the holidays and for happy hearts! it has been one heck of a week! Unfortunately I was sick AGAIN (Virginia does NOT like sister kennedy in December) and actually had to stay in for an ENTIRE day. which was the absolute worst... I think the worst part about staying in when you are a missionary is the anxiety of being home and thinking "What if there is someone who is outside who I was supposed to talk to who is ready for the gospel?" "I am not working every available moment! I am the worst missionary ever!!!" its like this constant mental STRUGGLE aaaaand it was the worst of the worst. But here we are :) happy and healthy now!

This was a fairly average week... we had interviews with President, which are always rad, and it is always so fun to talk with him. He knows exactly what to say and he can make anyone feel like a million bucks. WHAT A BLESSING he is to me. I am super grateful for him and for his confidence in me as a missionary, he keeps me going!!!

THEN we had interviews with our zone leaders. Now, mind you, our zone leaders are super intimidating and REALLY hard to relate with because they are in the Spanish program... The Spanish program has WAY more success than English. So they sat me down and asked me about training and basically told me I needed to step up my game. I told them that I just felt like I didn't know how to be a good enough missionary! I told them I felt like I had to say the PERFECT thing for people to accept our message and the invitation to be baptized. Elder Erickson just paused. looked at me and said, "oh sister kennedy... you thought they had to ACCEPT the baptism invite?" I was like "uh yes. of course." then both of them just started LAUGHING and said "SISTER KENNEDY!!! YOU ARE DOING SO MUCH MORE WORK THAN YOU THINK YOU ARE! STOP BEATING YOURSELF UP AND GO TEACH SOME PEOPLE!!! you don't have to say the right things! they don't have to accept the baptism invite!!! if they did NO ONE would have investigators!!!" moral of the story, I didn't know what counted as a new investigator, so I had been SUPER worried about finding and teaching using the PERFECT wording so that people would want to get baptized, when that isn't it at ALL! its WAY easier than I thought!!! NOW I AM SO PUMPED TO GO OUT AND FIND, TEACH, BAPTIZE!!!! WHOOOOO!!!

ALL of our investigators flaked on us this week. we had 5 investigators say they would be at church and 0 showed up... #HOLLER but its ok, we have 2 lessons with potentials already set up this week and we are going to do a TON of finding this week. AHHH YAY!!!

We tracted quite a bit this week which is always interesting, you never know whats going to pop out of the other side of that door... hahaha we had one guy open his door and literally jump back and gasp as if he had just seen a ghost, I thought I was going to pee my pants. hahaha

THE KINGSTOWNE WARD ROCKS. like lets be real. I am SO OBSESSED WITH EVERYONE IN OUR WARD. The amount of love they show us is out of this world. we have literally been invited to like 15 peoples houses for Christmas Eve and Christmas. #rad. I LOVE THEM! and they are all really willing to help us out with whatever we need. like a lot of you know, our mission president has been pushing member work... and it is SO cool to now be seeing the fruits of it. He told us it would take a while, and it has, but now we are getting the referrals we want and we are building the relationships we want with the members so that they can have friends for us to teach. it is SO COOL. we haven't found any investigators directly through them yet, but I have faith that we will soon :)

I am SO GRATEFUL for the love I have felt this week through mounds and mounds of letters and packages this Christmas season! I get teary eyed every time I open the mailbox and I see all the sweet notes from home. I am feeling that coloRADo love all the way out here in Virginia and I am LOVING it.

This week, I found a lot of comfort in the October 2008 conference talk "come what may and LOVE it" by Joseph B Wirthlin. First off, he is HYSTERICAL, and second off he talks about how there are so many things in life we cant control so we better control our reactions to be POSITIVE. Throughout my whole 4 months ;) on my mission, I have learned that there are a LOT of things we cant control, one of those things being the AGENCY of those around us. We cant decide what our investigators are going to agree to commit to. we cant control whether or not we are going to be screamed at, we cant control other people cancelling on us, BUT we can control our OBEDIENCE and our LOVE for the people and our DESIRE to do WORK. I hope that one day I will truly be able to LOVE whatever comes my way. one of the funny stories he tells in this talk is this: "I remember when one of our daughters went on a blind date. she was all dressed up and waiting for her date to arrive when the doorbell rang. in walked a man who seemed a little old, but she tried to be polite. She introduced him to me and my wife and the other children; then she put on her coat and went out the door. we watched as she got into the car, but the car didn't move. eventually our daughter got out of the car and, rad faced, ran back into the house. the man that she thought was her blind date had actually comet o pick up another of our daughters who had agreed to be a babysitter for him and his wife. we all had a good laugh over that. in fact, we couldn't stop alighting. later, when our daughters real blind date showed up, I couldn't come out to meet him because I was still in the kitchen laughing" hahahahaha that story gets me EVERY time.

may we all learn to truly LAUGH at whatever comes our way and LOVE it!

MERRY CHRISTMAS ALLL!!!!!! I hope you all feel so fully of the Saviors love this Christmas season because it is there WAITING for all of you!!!

keep it real and keep the faith,

sistah KENNEDY