O holy night, the stars were brightly shining

Thanksgiving was a really special day! As yall know Pdays were changed to Wednesdays, so we now have transfers the day after PDay, Thursday. So elder Hamblin left me, and is headed home and I received Elder Stucki! Pronounced Stücki. He is from just outside of Seattle Washington in a city called Renton. He sang in choir all throughout high school and loves Christmas. He has been pretty excited to be able to start listening to Christmas music. He keeps telling me about his flash drive that his mom is going to send him with a bunch of christmas music on it and I'm just like, Yo, I got apple music. Hahaha none the less he is stoked for Christmas. 

Its weird training again. If yall remember to 14 months ago I trained a new missionary. Lemme tell you what. It is 100% different types training now, being 18 moths in than it was only being out 3. It makes me understand how much you really learn as a missionary. It's also very humbling because it kinda forces me to slow down and look at things from a newbie perspective. I'm so very grateful that the Lord has trusted me to help another new missionary. I'm doing my best to help him become the best missionary he can be!

We had a rough week in regards to teaching people. We found a couple families to teach but it's so GOSH DANG HARD to teach these families because they "No hablo  the Ingles." I have noticed that there are a bunch of kids/teens who are getting baptized but are going inactive because the parents aren't. So we really need to find a way to get adults involved in the gospel more. What we are trying to find is a strong African family who will be active and will be willing to help us start/restart a Swahili/kinorwanda group. We are running into the problem that these families don't want to come to church because the don't understand a thing that happens. Not a word. Does anyone have suggestions? We've thought about giving them some translation headsets and playing a general conference talk but that kinda seems like lying. I don't know. HELP!! 

Thats just about it for the week! I CAN'T BELIEVE CHRIS IS WHITEWASH TRAINING!!! I saw that email from him on Sunday night and cried. I was so happy. I told some of the other missionaries and they were like "Next AP" Get ready Chris! 

Love yall! Have a great week! 

Love 

Reese 

I am a child of God and he has sent me here

It was completely unexpected for our pdays to change to Wednesday, so I’m sorry that I wasn’t able to write on Monday! This past week has been a little stressful with some logistical things like transfer calls and how we are supposed to get Elder Hamblin to the temple yesterday for his departing session. But! It was all figured out. It’s hard not knowing how things are going to work. But usually we end up throwing it all together and it works. Somehow....

So we have been having some really good lessons with some amazing people. Stiven, yes that’s how you spell his name, has come to church for the past 3 weeks! We are now trying to help him understand why baptism is so important. He told us that he needs to wait until he is 20. He is only 17. So that’s a little bit of a problem. But he said that if he gets his answer he will be baptized. 

We had a pretty cool lesson with him and all his brothers and sisters. We were talking about the song “I am a child of God” and Elder Hamblin said we can sing it for you right now! So we did. All the little “afrika watoto” (African children) stopped running around immediately. They all ran over and sat right next to us. Some of them wanted to words so that they could sing along. It was pretty cool. 

Moise is another kid that we are teaching a lot. He is 15 and has become a pretty good friend. His is from a very well to do family who works really hard. The parents know hardly any English. They speak Swahili and Kinorwanda, but moise speaks really good English. He has agreed to be baptized but hasn’t come to church. He also told his parents about baptism and they weren’t the happiest... so we want to have a lesson specifically focused towards the parents so that they can understand why the priesthood is so important. 

One more thing. Had to say goodbye to one of my best friends on the mission on Monday. Sis. McFarland. A day one homie from the good ol MTC Days. It was great Being able to see her pretty much every transfer for the past 18 months. I also had a great opportunity to be in her district for 2 of those one being her departing transfer. I'm gonna miss you! Good luck in the real world fam! 

I’m very excited for Thanksgiving tomorrow! Lots of good food is coming our way with a lot of thankful hearts as well. I’m am VERY excited for the #lighttheworld project coming out on Friday!! It should be a great time. The video this year is really great. 

Love y’all! 

Happy thanksgiving! 

Reese 

Oh Lord have Mercy on a country boy

This week has been a great week! We went out and have been finding and trying to talk to a bunch of different people who want to come to church. I found a quote from President stone from a MLC a few months ago, “Find people who want to come to church.” So we have been doing that. Trying to find people who want to come to church has made missionary work a whole lot easier. 

I don’t have a whole lot of time today because we went to Mammoth Cave! So I’ll send a bunch of pictures from that you won’t feel too lost from the mission lyfe. 

Love y’all! 

Reese

It don’t have to be miracles the fire’s within our soul

Progress is being made here in Bowling Green, KY!! This week we finally are getting our wheels turning! We were able to teach some great lessons to people. One of the kids name is Steven. He is an 18 year old kid from Uganda. He is very soft spoken and is kind of standoff ish. We found this out in previous lessons. So we decided on Friday to just go over there and get to know him. We went and talked with him for probably 30 minutes and he totally opened up to us. He told us about why he and his family came to the United States, we talked about sports he enjoyed playing, and he even invited us to a party he was having the next day. 

So we went to the party on Saturday for a little while, they fed us some amazing food. I can’t remember what the dish was called but it was African flatbread with some chicken... soooo good..... the flatbread was huge!! It was probably 18 inches across and 9 inches wide. So I tried to eat all of it. I just couldn’t. Could not do it! That was probably the most food I’ve eaten since last thanksgiving.... after we ate we invited Steven to church! He came to church and testimony meeting was perfect for him. There was a man who had just moved here from Utah. But he was originally from Africa. He asked a member to translate for him up at the pulpit. So as he spoke in Swahili, the members translated into English. The spirit was very strong. Steven listened and watched the whole time. It was awesome. 

We were also able to teach a few lessons with the sisters. They are still slowly giving us people to teach, so that’s pretty fun. I’m kinda, well pretty dang sad to see Sis. McFarland get ready to go home. If y’all don’t remember she and I were in the same district way back in the MTC together. We both just hit out 18 month mark on Saturday. Time on the mission just goes by so quick. 

Well I love this gospel. I love my Savior, Jesus Christ. I know the Book of Mormon is true. It will change your life. I promise you that as your read it, you will see a difference in your life. You will draw closer to God and Jesus Christ. 

This Tuesday, at 7:30 PM KY time, we will be giving a tour of our church building here in Bowling Green live on Facebook! So if you want to tune in and see a church building, and what some of the rooms are for, you are more than welcome to join in on the feed! 

Love y’all! 

Reese