with love, elli: 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