Monday, September 29, 2014

my second week in the city :)

My dearest family and friends,

This week went better than last week. We did not get lost one time but the car is going to be able to turn around automatically by the time i get done with it. haha!

We saw so many miracles this week. Thursday was just a miracle overload. We had set a goal the evening before to have two members come out teaching with us. Well on Thursday one of our lessons fell through so we were only going to be able to get one member. But we just kept going on with the day doing what we could. Then we got a call from one of the members and asked us if we wanted to come over for dinner. So we went to her house for dinner and after dinner she asked us if we wanted to go and visit her neighbors with her. Well one of her neighbors was an investigator that we had talked to the day before. So we were able to teach her a little with out member there and we were able to meet the goal we had set. Then the other lesson we taught with a member was so perfect. We were struggling really bad at trying to find a member but then this last member came to mind and we called and he was able to come. The investigator we took him to has been taking care of his mom who has alzheimers. When we got to the lesson with the member we found out that he had to take care of his mom who had alzheimers. They were able to talk and the member was able to help him know things that he can do to help the situations. It was so wonderful. Now i know it is not all about the numbers but it is truly the people behind the numbers that really matter. For that member to have such a strong testimony that she wanted to share it with her neighbor is what truly matters and for the other member to be able to help a new friend with the situation he is in is truly what matters. But the reason i wanted to share those stories is because i know that God is so aware of each of us and our needs. He knows what is going to be best for us in this life to help us learn and grow and remind us that he is in charge and to trust in him.

We also found this lady who is so amazing. So she was walking down the side walk quite a ways in front of us but i got this thought to just call out and ask her if we can give her a card with mormon.org on it. So we called out to her and sometimes people look at us really weird when we do that but she didnt. She was so sweet and on the other side of the card was a picture of the salt lake temple and she said it was so beautiful and asked us about it. We told her how we know that our families are meant to be eternal and that we will see them again one day and that the temple is where we make a promise with God and he promises that our families will be together. Well after we explained that she said that she totally believed it. She said that she just burried her daughter last week and she knew she was going to get to see her again. We told her that she would and that i knew it without a doubt in my mind. She agreed to let us come back and tell her more about it. We are going back on tuesday and we are so excited. She is so amazing! I know our families can be together forever and it is through the gospel that it is so possible. I know we all are so loved by our Heavnely Father and he wants to see us succeed. I hope you all have such a great week and know tha i love you all so much!!!

Love your Sister Davis :)

Monday, September 22, 2014

I am in the city!! :) Area: Indian Hill, Ohio, Companion (Training): Sister Jeralynn Lane, Payson Utah

Sister Shell... my mission grandma
How are you all doing? :) Holy cow this new area that i am in is nothing like the last area i was in! We get to stay with a wonderful member which is so much fun :) We are in a little city outside of the big city of Cincinnati. It is called Indian Hill. But me and my companion are over Madeira, Indian Hill, Mariemont and Terrace Park. There havent been sisters here for a long time. It is amazing and the ward here is so tiny. But everyone seems to be so sweet.

So when we first got here we were trying to find our way around to meet some of the member and stuff. Well somehow we ended up in downtown Cincinnati trying to find someone. I am probably the worst city driver ever. People drive crazy here and the roads just like randomly end and turn into turn only lanes. It was a bit stressful! But looking back on it now it was so funny. The elders in our area gave us a nicer area to work in and told us to stay out of certain areas after dark. We sure are getting taken care of here.

Page family... my mission family

I am starting to understand how to truly love my mission. I dont think i have ever been so "not knowing what to do" in my whole life. But yet somehow we still manage to make it through and find people to teach. It is because even though i have no idea what i am doing God knows what he is doing and what he wants me to do, so he provides the way for me to do it. I have no doubt that this is his work. He is truly guiding us and taking care of us.

I am training a new missionary and that is quite the experience cause i still feel like i am a brand new missionary and i have been out for nine months. But it is good cause i am reminded of simple things that i can do to keep this work moving forward as i share with the new missionary the things that i have been taught.

Right now we are just working on building up our teaching pool. There are so many people here I just gotta figure out how to get this message to everyone of them. We met this really nice guy the other day and are going back tonight to teach him more. He is so awesome.

Well next week i will have some more fun stories to share but until then i will just leave you all with my testimony....

I know this gospel is true. I know Jesus Christ lives. He takes care of us and carries us through everyday. Heavenly Father knows each of us. He knows what we each are facing in life and he is ready to help us. He is ready to answer our prayers and fulfill our dreams but in  order to do that we must pray and we must dream... (I did not come up with that it is a quote that i did not quote word for word cause i dont have it with me) But in know that is so true. He wants what is best for us and he knows what we can become. I am so grateful to serve my God. I am so grateful to have a loving family and friends :) I love you all so so much!


P.S. Check out this mormon message

Love you:)
 
Moms Additional Comments:  It has been a long week not knowing where Kirsten is.  But I do love the idea that she is staying in a members home. 
 
Kirsten: Her name is Maxine Blotter, she is a character. She is like 80 years old and is so funny. I love it cause it is like coming home to a grandma to answer to. We are the first sisters here in Cincinnati for like 10 years. We opened up this area :)

Second Area Address

Sister Kirsten Kelly Davis
7280 Algonquin Dr.
Cincinnati, OH 45243

Monday, September 15, 2014

Miracles never stop!!

My dearest family and friends!!


Sister Davis & Sister Fausett
President & Sister Porter, Sister Davis & Sister Wight
What a week this has been. We have seen so many fantastic things!! So i am going to start off with the biggest miracle of all. There was this less active family that we were working with when i got here back in January. They have a grandson that is not baptized and he is nine years old. They have custody of him and his little brother cause their parents were in jail. well when i first got here we were teaching him in hopes that he would be able to be baptized but we quickly found out that his dad did not want him to be baptized until he was out of jail. We were a little disappointed at that time but we kept that family in our prayers and had faith that Heavenly Father would help make it possible for the little grandson to be baptized. Well we have kept visiting them and helping them get back to church and the family has become active again and last monday we got a call from the grandma saying her son was getting out of jail and would be home that evening. He is on probation but this means that we get to start teaching her grandson again and prepare him for baptism. The dad wants to learn more about the church as well because he didnt grow up with it always in his life. So we went over there last night and got the little grandson on date and he is preparing to be baptized and is so excited. Holy cow i know our Heavenly Father has timing for everything and he totally makes everything work out. We dont need to worry about a thing... i know i know that is so much easier said than done.


?, Sister Herndon, Sister Davis & ?
We also had another miracle. We have this excommunicated lady that we absolutely love and adore as well. We have been working with her ever since we got here as well. But the last two weeks she has come back to church and met with the bishop. Awe man i am  so excited for her. She is so strong and i love her so much. She says it feels good to be back and her countanance has totally changed. It is amazing to have the opportunity as a missionary to see peoples lives change. '


Sister Davis and Sister Wight at the Cincinnati Reds game :)
Okay funny story for the week. So sister Wight and I wanted  the little boy that i was telling you all about in the first paragraph of my letter and his little brother to come and sit with us at church yesterday. Well let me just say we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. So the little boys (9 and 5) were sitting by each other in between sister Wight and I. It wasnt bad for the first little bit of sacrament. But then they started to get ansy and didnt want to hold still. Well the 5 year old start to get really squirmy and started to head butt his brother and me so sister Wight got up and sat in between the two boys and we got some paper out to keep the 5 year old busy. Well that didnt last very long either. We were not sure what to do then i remembered i had some sweet mints in my bag and told him if he could sit still he could have one. Well that didnt last long either considering the fact that as soon as he stuck it in his mouth he bit it... So i told him to wait 5 minutes and he could have another one. Then when i gave him another one i told him that he had to make it last 5 minutes and i  would give him another one. This went on every 5 minutes for the last 20 minutes of church... but it kept him quiet. He was focused more on that clock then what was being said at church but he is five... what do we expect. Haha we had some good laughs about it after though.

Now lastly for the sad news. I am leaving the wonderful little town of Bright. I am not for sure where i am going but i will let you all know next week when i email again. I am so sad but i know that Heavenly Father is going to take care of me. He always has and this is a good time for me to learn to trust in him even more. I am so grateful for the opportunity i have had to serve in this wonderful area. And the friends and memories i have made here will be in my heart forever. Thank you for all your love and prayers. I sure miss you guys. But i know i am where i am supposed to be and having family and friends back home being so supportive makes it a ton easier. I love you all and pray for you constantly!!!

Love your sister Davis :)

Monday, September 8, 2014

Good times in the mission field :)

Hey everyone!!

This week was quite the week. We seemed to have a ton of things going on. But i would rather be super busy than not have enough to do.



Happy birthday to us...
too bad it was neither of our birthdays...
We saw so many miracles this week. So i dont know if you all remember me talking about this cute couple we were teaching back in June? Well they were having marriage problems and we lost contact with them. But then on thursday the husband called us and asked us if he could take us to dinner. So we went to this mexican resturant. He told us that he has been reading the Book of Mormon and is like half way done with it. HOLY COW!!! That was a miracle in itself. He said he feels that the things he reads could be true he says he has a problem believing that they were written on gold plate... we think there is a deeper concern but any advice that any of you would have for me and my companion to help him with that would be awesome. :) But anyway we were getting ready to go and he told us that we couldnt leave yet... so we sat back down and all the sudden sister Wight and I get these sombreros put on our heads and a whole bunch of waiters and waitresses singing us happy birthday... The husband told the people it was our birthday. Haha so we got sung to whip cream smooshed in our faces and free fried ice cream. It was hilarious.

It is so amazing how the lord works.

We did a service project for one of the members in our ward. She asked us to come and help her clean out her grandsons closet cause her son is coming home from jail and needed some closet space in the closet. So we got there and looked in the closet and it didnt look like it was going to be that big of a project but once we got in there and started moving clothes around we realized there were piles and piles of clothes in the bottom of the closet haha... it took longer than we thought it would. :) but it was a lot of fun! I kept thinking "man, if my mom caught me doing this i would be grounded for a year."
....so how do I knock on this door?

It is amazing the things that we learn on our missions. I love the opportunity that i have to serve the Lord. I thought i knew a lot about the gospel before i left but i have quickly realized you can never know a lot about the gospel. There is always something more to be learned. That is one of the things that makes this gospel so fantastic is it never ends. We have never learned enough. That is why we have all of eternity to live. I love  you all so much! You are all in my thoughts and prayers always. Stay strong :) Love you!!!

Love your sister Davis :)
P.S. I hope my stories make sense... :)

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

i dont know what to title this email... :)


UTAH!!!! :) 
Hey my beautiful family and friends,

How have you all been this week? Things are going good here in the fantastic humid land of Indiana!!


We had an awesome experience this week. We were teaching one of our investigators and we asked her if she had any friends that have been struggling or could use any service or anything and she told us about her one friend that had been going through a really hard time. So we went and contacted her friend and we talked to her for a while and told her about what we do and she was so humble. She agreed to let us come back and share more with her. So we went back later this week and shared more and after we got dont sharing the restoration we asked her how she would feel to know if Christ had his church restored on the earth again. She said it would be a miracle. She told us that she believes in having apostles and all the wonderful stuff. We were so excited and told her to pray and ask God if this is all true she said she would. It was so awesome. Both me and my companion feel that she is super prepared. Our other investigator that told us to go see her is so fantastic too. She has two little girls they are 8 years old and they are twins. Sometimes they can be hard to teach with because they get side tracked super easy. But the mom wants them to listen and is truly looking on how she can bring peace into her home. Well there is no better answer to that than to have the restored gospel in her home. 

Something funny that happened this week we got to go and do chalk drawings on Labor day. We went and drew the plan of salvation in a park. And while we were there we were talking to people about it. But anyway my companion and i were drawing the pre-earth life. Well i was drawing the us as spirit children... it was kinda just and outline of a human but it was squiggly to make it kinda spirity lookin. Then we thought it would be fun to get the kids that were at the park involved so we were going to use them to outline Adam and Eve. So things were going just great and we were almost finished and one of the little kids pointed to the spirit children i drew and asked his mom what those were and now i know i am not the best drawer but i thought they looked pretty good but the mom responded with "I think they are gingerbread men"....... But in my defense the little kids responded to his mom and said "I think they are ghosts"... Which is better than gingerbread men. But that just confirmed to me two things...one i probably should not be put in charge of drawing us as spirit children next time and two that little kids are much closer to that veil than we give them credit for. 


Now my companion shared something with me this morning that i want to share with all of you. She told me "God says yes in three ways he says no and give you something better... he says yes and gives  you what you want... or he says wait and gives you the best" I know this is so true. Sometimes we dont recognize the answers to our prayers when Heavenly Father doesnt answer them the way we want him too. But we always got to remember that he can see the whole picture and he knows what it best for you. As we come closer to him and increase our faith in him and his beloved son his will for us becomes more evident to us and we notice our prayers are answered in the way we want them to be because the will of the Father for us is what we want as well. (I hope that made sense) Then other times we feel that Heavenly Father isnt answering any of our prayers because we dont get and answer right away. In that time we do a lot of growing and shaping into what Heavenly Father wants us to become as long as we keep doing what is right. I know that God has a plan for each one of us and at the end of that plan he wants all of his children back home to live with him as families. I am so blessed to have my family sealed to me and know that we will be together forever. That is the greatest blessing i could ever ask  for. I know God loves each one of you and each of you are so special to me. I love you all so much!!! Have a great week :)

Love  your sister Davis :)