HuoGuo (Hot Pot)

Family,

I love all the pictures of the beach! I hope my next area is Swansea so that I can be on the beach! I hear it is beautiful. Not gonna lie Peter already looks like a beach bum with those cut off shorts and his rocking sun-glasses! 

I can imagine all the kids loving Dads crazy voices and just goofiness! I remember when Mom used to read to me and Brigham when we were in the bunk bed. The chronicles of Narnia were by far my favourites! I think I miss reading more than Netflix so that's good, ha ha.

This week has been full of miracles for us. We have had a few investigators that have had some very spiritual experiences. Most prevalent was a girl named Chloe. We met Chloe on the street and for about ten minutes were trying to convince her to meet with us. Eventually she just said that she was going to pass this time, and we were super bummed. Turns out that the Lord really wanted us to meet with her because we met her in the morning and later that night we ended up running into her again. She of course took it as a sign from God that she needed to meet with us. Which of course it was! But we met with her the next day and had probably the most powerful first lesson that I have had on my mission. Everyone of us was feeling the Spirit hard core and she recognized the power of the Book of Mormon immediately. We gave her a chapter to read (3 Nephi 11) and set an appointment for a couple of days later. When we met with her she told us that the Book of Mormon had answered a question she had about her Grandmother who has recently passed away, and how it gave her a lot of comfort and how she knew that it was true. It was a powerful witness to me about just how amazing the Book of Mormon is. Here in England a lot of people say a lot of bad things about the church and different people in the church. But when someone puts everything aside and just reads the Book of Mormon with an open heart, they cannot deny the divinity of it. As Joseph Smith said it is the Most correct book on the earth. I know that to be true. I have seen it change lives, and I am beginning to see it really change my life. 

Our District

The other highlight of the week was that we had a Chinese Hot Pot. A lot of the recent Chinese converts cooked a traditional meal for us and it was sooo good! Hot pot is a pot of boiling water with loads of spices in it and you just drop your food in a bit at a time and it cooks it right there. So there was Squid rolls and Lobster balls and Beef rolls. Just different meats and vegetables that were in bowls and you just picked what you wanted and dropped it into the pot! It was, well, cool! Ha ha, it was really fun and cool to see and the new members getting to know each other. 

Hot Pot & Chloe and her boyfriend

I'm getting really nervous about transfers and may actually end up staying in Coventry for another 6 weeks! Elder Costigan thinks I will, but I feel like I'm gonna go. But we will find out tonight! 

Love,

Elder Kmetzsch

Fried Lettuce?

Family!

It sounds like Mom and Dad are living the life in Florida. I love the pictures! Pete is such a little stud. I'm sure all the girls at school think he is the cutest.:) Evie just looks as adorable as ever. I think when I take the road trip to Florida, when I get home, I'll have to get Cameron to sort me out with my teeth. We will also have to go deep sea fishing, and maybe Pete and I can go wrestle some alligators! 

The Japanese restaurant sounds good, I love Asia food! This week we ate some delicious Chinese food! One of the recent converts (Arnold) fed us, and I must say he is a really good cook. He made us a few different traditional Chinese dishes my favourite of which was fried lettuce! It blew my mind that he just threw some romaine lettuce in some oil and salt with some chicken seasoning thing and it came out to be this beautiful and delicious masterpiece, ha ha! It's not even a joke guys! It was amazing! The other dishes were really good as well but they just couldn't compare to the fried lettuce. Me and Elder Costigan have tried a few times to reproduce the lettuce but have not been fully successful in getting it how Arnold does! But we try are best;)

This week was another slow one. We honestly have been working like crazy and not much seems to be coming of it yet. On Thursday we did what we call GQ-ing or street contacting for 5 hours! Normally we can break it up with a lesson or two, but we just did it straight. I am not going to lie after the first two hours I was pretty discouraged. To make it more interesting Elder Costigan and I decided to have a race to see who could get 20 potentials the fastest. Take into mind that in a normal day we would get around 10-15 together. We set some stakes and just went for it, it was pretty fun. Both of us were talking to everybody and having loads of success. But in the end Elder Costigan beat me. He got to 20 and I was only at 13. I now have to call all of them because I lost the race, but we still had lots of fun and met a ton of cool people! It was the most potentials that Elder Costigan and I have ever gotten in one day so we were pretty happy! Hopefully we can now turn those potentials into progressing investigators who will get baptized! 

I learned a pretty big lesson on prayer this week. It is not a complicated or deep thing, but it was very powerful. I don't know about you guys, but I find it hard to say personal prayers out loud, it can be pretty awkward. So I never really did it. But this week I tired it, and I have to say it was one of the most powerful prayers that I have ever had. I would encourage everyone to take a minute by themselves and say a personal prayer out loud. Don't just say it to the ceiling, talk like someone is actually listening and you will feel the presence of Heavenly Father like you have never felt before! 

I will know whether or not I am getting transferred and to where next Monday night. So you guys will find out two weeks from today! The exact transfer date is the 28th so we will find out Monday what is happening and then transfer on Wednesday. 

I hope all is going well and that you have fun in Florida! I love the pictures so keep them coming! 

Love,

Elder Kmetzsch

Work, Work, Work

Family,

Time is flying! We are already almost to the end of this transfer and I will probably be leaving Coventry in a couple of weeks. It's crazy, it is about time for all the seniors to start putting in their mission papers back home. I have been praying that someone from Viewmont comes to the EBM. Not just because it is the Earths Best Mission, but because I think it would be really fun to serve around someone from home! 

Dad's talk was probably really good, but he probably was a little too goofy for Mom to handle! I can just imagine the joke he told. If I am right you have to email me the joke next week ha ha! I actually remember the talk that Bishop Daines gave where you replace faith with trust. Something really cool about the word faith in Chinese is that it can also mean confidence. When I first found that out it put faith in a whole new perspective. If you just say that you need to have faith in God than I would just kinda brush it off. But when you say, put all of your confidence and trust in God it means so much more. Trust and confidence help us to understand faith a lot better.

I actually have been trying to find out who the new mission president will be. All the missionaries are getting really excited to find out. We have heard rumours that he is Italian, but who knows. Also I know that rumour is spelled with the U in the end just like Saviour. In England they use a U in most the words that end in just "or." So get off my back Dad ha ha! It says it is spelled wrong if I do it the other way. 

This week Elder Costigan and I have probably worked harder than we have worked in all of our time together and nothing has happened.... It has been a very humbling and very disappointing week. We have had to take a hard look at what we are doing and hope that we can do something to turn it around. We just need to continue to work hard and I know that the Lord will bless us for the last two weeks that we have together. Not all that much has happened that is very exciting except for that we found out they are looking at starting a Chinese branch in Coventry! It would be the first Chinese branch in the UK, which is a pretty big deal! We have started having occasional separate Sacrament meetings or Sunday school classes in Chinese which has been a really cool thing to watch! One of our new members, Chris, gave a talk in Chinese sacrament meeting and I have never been so proud! He is so cool and I was really excited to see him do something that was extremely hard for him. I love him a lot!

I love you guys and hope that you all have a good week!

Love,

Elder K  

New Years and Wensleydale Cheese

Family!

Well, it's a New Year. It feels weird thinking that I have almost been out 6 months. A fourth of my mission has already passed like a lightning bolt! Craziness! On New Years Eve we had to go inside by 6:00 because of the amounts of alcohol being consumed by the general public and we didn't do much. We just cleaned the flat a bit and went to bed a little bit early! Not gonna lie it was nice to catch up on a little sleep. The boys weren't kidding when they said I was going to be tired for two years! 

With the new year always comes the thoughts of last year, how much you have learned and how much you need to learn still. It is amazing how much my own personal testimony has grown in the last year, the last six months especially. I have been really humbled with how little I actually know and with how much I can improve. I know a lot of you may be thinking to yourselves that Jake could never be humbled, but it's true! During the last few months I've been shocked by how little I know the scriptures, and how hard it can be to teach someone a concept that seems so simple to me. We all have so many weaknesses, me especially. But with the New Year also comes a new hope. A hope that this year we are going to be even better than last year. So we all set goals. In the past setting goals always had something to do with money or weight loss. I never really thought of setting Spiritual goals, besides the goal of maybe reading my scriptures more. As a missionary I don't need to set any monetary goals and though I could always use some more weight loss, I don't want it to be my focus. But rather I have set a goal to get to know my Savior better, so that I can come closer to my Heavenly Father. I have been thinking a lot about how I can achieve this goal. What more can I do? Serving a mission is surely enough? I have had this mindset for most of the last 6 months. You just need to, "grin and bare it" or "bite the bullet," and soon it will be over. It is not supposed to be like that. I was reading a talk called, "The Fourth Missionary," and it has taught me a lot about how I can let my mission change me! 

"You may permit the Lord to change your nature if you give yourself to Him and to His work. He cannot work on what he does not have, and He cannot have you, unless you give yourself to Him.!"

Sacrificing my time and my efforts is simply not enough. I have to sacrifice my will. All of my time the Lord has given me, all of my talents are things that he blessed me with. If I give those things back to him then I am just giving him back things that he already has. But if I give him my will. The one thing that he can't take from me, then I can come closer to him. So that is my new years goal, to give myself to the Lord. I am not sure of all the ways that I can do that, but I am sure going to try! I hope all of you can focus your new year on the Savior! I know it will bless you so much. Thank you so much for your testimony of the Savior Mum! I absolutely know that Christ Lives and that he loves me. He is my best friend, and has pulled me out of holes that I could have never climbed out of on my own.

My district

This week has been a really good week, because all of the people are coming back from holiday! Things are starting to pick up and we are getting really busy! I think the highlight of this week was eating at the Tops. They are honestly my favorite family in the ward, (shh don't tell). But they are honestly too good to me! We eat with them like twice a week. They are great! But this week they introduced me to some really good cheese. So now I've found my new favorite cheese! It is called Wensleydale with cranberries! I don't know if that is how you spell it but it was really really good cheese, ha ha! I didn't think I could be that impressed by cheese until that moment. 

There is a lot going on but not much that I can remember! So next week I'll fill you in on some funny stories! I love you guys and hope you have a great week!

Love,

Elder Kmetzsch