There and Back Again, An Elders Tale

Family,

What an amazing week it was!!!! We had a great lesson with Patricia and the girls and and even a greater lesson with Howard! Things are continuing to roll forward and as we know, "No unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing!" No matter what anybody does this great work will continue to press forward until it has entered every continent and sounded in every ear! What a privilege it is to help that work progress! To answer your question Dad Brianna is 13 and Courtney is 10.

Congratulations on making me super trunky Mom and Dad!!! Those pictures are amazing and I am soooo excited now to go down to St. George and see some of those amazing red rocks. Yes, I'm going to miss the crazy amounts of green here in England, but I am not going to miss this darn rain..... Yep another week of heavy rainfall here and I'm about to freak out... Where is summer!?!?!?!? Apparently it is all in St. George and they are not sharing!!

Emma has got it easy if she is working with the 5-8 years olds!!!! When I worked for the city they put with the the 3-4 year olds.... Seriously those children where little monsters sometimes. Seriously the only way that I could entertain them was to scream, I bet you can't catch me and then to start running around!!! Haha, but I really enjoyed working at the city and working with the kids they are so fun!

So on to the most exciting and epic part of my week! I Got to go back to Nottingham!!!!!! You remember me telling you about Boris right? The older Polish guy who just walked into church one day. Well anyway Boris was baptized this weekend and he asked if I would come up and baptize him! It was such an amazing experience and I was absolutely overjoyed to go back Home to Nottingham. I got to see a lot of members that I was close with as well as baptize one of my favourite investigators! It truly an awesome weekend and I was so lucky that I got to be a part of it! It was also really nice to see Elder Wagner again and catch up!!

Me, Boris and Elder Wagner

Besides that it was a week of the same old stuff, Find, Teach, Baptize!! Haha, things are good on my end and I am so excited to see you all in just a few short weeks!

Love,

Elder Kmetzsch

Rain, Rain Go Away

Family!!

Seriously, I am soooooooo SICK of the rain..... It has been raining like crazy this last week and I am done! It is like impossible to do anything when it is raining cause nobody wants to talk to us in the rain. We can't even do service projects when it is raining. Needless to say if it decides to rain when I get home I am going to be hugely disappointed. So if everyone could just join with me in prayer that it won't be raining in Utah in July, that would be much appreciated! I am sooo insanely excited to go to St. George! Thank you mother for being the best and probably putting a lot of effort and planning into making this happen! Love you!

DAD!! Happy Fathers Day!!!!! Yesterday we had a great program at church all about dads and how great they are. I couldn't help but think about my amazing father and just how very much that he has done for me. Love you dad and again happy Father's Day! One perk of being a missionary is that when they have leftover Father's Day chocolate they usually share it with us! Also Happy Fathers Day to Craig and Cameron! And Happy birthday to Craig! Someone call him an old fart for me!

Ahh, that is so exciting that you got to meet the Solomon's! Brother Solomon is quite the joker, haha. We had some good times up in Nottingham together. I hope that he only told you guys the good stuff!! It is really cool that you met them. I also really like the garden boxes and can't wait to eat some zucchini bread from the zucchini that you are about to grow!!

The Chishiri family is amazing! Patricia is the mother and the two girls that we are teaching are Brianna and Courtney! The girls were born in England and so they sound pretty English but Patricia sounds very African! It's great and they are an amazing family. Cool story about them. We had a lesson with them this week and since Patricia is a Single mom and there aren't any males in the house we have to take a member with us to every lesson. Well are usual member broke his hand this week and so he wasn't able to go. So we were calling everybody trying to find someone who could come to this lesson with us and we could not find anybody!! Well the lesson was a 7:00 and we had dinner with some members at 5:30. They are an older couple so I didn't think they'd be able to help us out. But as our last ditch effort before we had to cancel the lesson we asked if he could come with us at the end of dinner. Turns out he drives, (even though I didn't see a car in the driveway), and he was able to come teaching with us. It was a small miracle but it was big to us because the baptism is coming up fast and we have a lot to teach them before that happens! Heavenly Father bailed us out on this one.

Not too much else happened this week,  we just got really really wet and kinda irritated, but we saw the hand of the Lord and had some good fun. Love you all and hope that y'all have a great week!

Love ya,

Elder Kmetzsch

We enjoyed a nice game of Laser Tag today! It was way fun!!

BYU Dancers

Family,

Father sometimes I question whether or not you actually read the emails that I send. No I don't think Costco was a shock for Elder Lam because he is not from China, he is from Hong Kong. I swear on my life that I mentioned that but anyways, yeah he wasn't too shocked. It was great though and I am enjoying my peanut butter a lot.

We did not get to go and see the BYU Dancers perform, but they did come to our church on Sunday, so we still got to see them. They also had a pretty cool little fireside that we got to go to last night. It was cool because one of the Dancers served in the Quezon City mission with Brigham. So he was like your Elder Kmetzsch's little brother! And I was like yep I'm little Kmetzsch. It was cool to talk to him and all the other dancers. They won the British Championships this year which was way cool for them. They are a very talented bunch.

So did you guys end up getting to meet the Solomons?? If you did you probably know that they are from Nottingham. They are a really great couple, Brother Solomon is actually related to Elder Shaw by marriage so that was cool. I hope you did get to meet them cause they are great and if you did I hope you took pictures, haha.

I will definitely keep Uncle Al in my prayers. But somebody has got to tell him to stop getting sick! It has been crazy humid here this last week. It was quite warm and really humid as well. The English term for how the weather has been is "muggy" not a nice warm to have. But we actually had a really big thunderstorm this last Friday as well and it cool things down. It cleared the air out and things are much nicer now. Though we got absolutely soaked in the storm, but such is life.

In exciting news we have been working with a part member family from Zimbabwe, well the mother is from Zimbabwe and the girls were born in England. She is a single mom with 3 daughters and her and the oldest daughter was baptized but the younger two are not. They have been less active for a few years and recently have been coming back to church. We had a amazing lesson with them on Friday and have set a date for the girls to be baptized! It's very exciting for them and they are progressing so well! Howard is also doing well but he hurt his back this week and we were able to see him as much as we would have liked.

Things sound exciting back home. You know you are getting old when you start getting more into gardening right Dad?? Haha, but I'm excited to eat some of those fresh zucchini maybe in a freshly baked zucchini bread?? I'm glad Dads calling is going so well. The Book of Mormon is such an amazing book. It truly does change lives and when we read it every day it can change ours.

I love you all and am so looking forward to seeing you all soon.

Love you,

Elder Kmetzsch

Darkness Falls across the Land

Family!

It has been a fun week of catching up with Elder Lam. I'm really glad that I'm serving with an old friend rather than someone that I don't know here at the end. But unfortunately for Elder Lam that meant that he had to come and experience the cold weather of Leicester. For the last week or two we have just had a crazy cold spell and I'm just thinking to myself, what the flip it's flippin JUNE!!! Why is it soooo cold and rainy, but that's just England. The sun finally came out yesterday and today looks like it is going to be a winner. I was talking to someone at church and we decided that the Angel in charge of the weather for Leicester pushed a wrong button on accident. Then left for a bathroom break only to come back to see that he had sent us back into winter. One of the days this week was actually colder than it was on Christmas Day. Needless to say I'm excited to see the sun again cause I haven't see him in a week or two.

This week was cool we got to go to Costco!! There is a Costco in our area and one of the members offered to take us along. Of course I said yes, haha! We walked in and I looked at Elder Lam and said, "Welcome to America." It was just great. I bought some Skippy peanut butter and some Pop-Tarts, good stuff! And we of course got a hot dog and a drink. Which was soo good. I'm a happy guy now that I have my American peanut butter cause the English stuff is just wrong.... And Pop-Tarts

what a great invention.

On another note and back to missionary work. But it was a good week. Nothing too exciting happened. We did however get to practice our missionary skills for selling stuff. So the BYU Dancers are coming to Leicester and they needed people to market for them and pass out fliers in town. It was crazy trying to pass out cards for a dance group rather than talk about the church. It felt really strange, and I realized that people are not just avoided me as a missionary they just hate people that are handing out stuff. Or maybe it's because I looked like a missionary and they thought I was pushing religion on them. Finally I was like hey, it's a dance group. Then they were like, oh okay I'll take a card. Funny how people blow off stuff before they even realize what it is. The dancers are coming this weekend and we might actually get to go watch the show but we will see what happens.

Our investigators are doing well. Howard is doing really well. We get to see him once a week and he is progressing really well! It's going to take a bit of time because of circumstances, but he has already given up smoking and drinking and has come to church the last few weeks in a row! He is a really funny guy and it's fun to teach him.

It sounds like you guys had a crazy week! Emma sounds like she has just done waaaaay too much partying and needs to calm down and start doing some work around the house, Haha! I remember those days though, we had some good times. Especially the first few days after school ended. I'm sure Dad was feeling it, he is an old man now!! But I wish it was 90 degrees here.... Can't wait to be back in the sunshine! I am sure that Mom did a great job with all the little primary girls, she is an actress at heart!

Elder Lam has been out about 18 months so between us we have about 40 months of missionary experience. Things are going really great with us and things are just good. We are having fun and working hard.

Hope all is well for everyone! Love you all!

-Elder Kmetzsch

The Last Transfer

Family,

Well we have had our transfer calls and I am staying here in Evington for my last transfer! I will however be saying goodbye to Elder Davis and saying hello to an old friend from Birmingham Elder Lam! We served together in a tripanionship for a week in Harbourne and I was his district leader for a transfer! We get along well already so I am excited to spend my last transfer with him. He is from Hong Kong which is pretty cool. I am excited!

I did see Brigham's record player and it looks way sweet!!!! I can't wait to listen to it. There are absolutely loads of places her that have lots of old records for really cheep! So if Brigham wants I could look around for a few classics. Weird to think that he is 23 and I'm going to be 21 in just a few months. Hey, I hope all goes well with the girl from Kaysville, haha! I guess Kaysville girls are okay! Too bad that she probably went to Davis High... It is just too bad.

This week was good. Slow but we did see a really amazing miracle. It was Thursday and not much had happened yet in the week. We decided to go visit a part member family that has been showing a lot of interest in the church and has been coming out. Howard the father of the family is the nonmember and so we decided to go and stop by. He let us in and we got talking and found out that he genuinely wants to learn about the gospel. He is going to try his best to find out if it is true. I was just so excited to see someone so excited about trying, in his words "I really wanna give it a go". We talked more and agreed that we would come over a couple of times a week to teach him. Which is so amazing considering we don't have very many other investigators. It was a small but tender mercy from the Lord.

Ah I wish I had gone to one of the colour festivals! They seem way fun and I will definitely be going to one in the future! I'm glad Ems had fun. You guys are really getting old! It really has been 26 years since Cameron, Torie and baby Nate signed the cement, wow! But I don't know how I feel about this whole taking part of the basketball court for a garden thing! But I won't really be living there anymore, plus we don't even have a basketball hoop anymore. I guess I'm okay with it. I do remember Connor Child he is a good guy, keep an eye out for him! Speaking of seeing family when is the Kmetzsch family reunion this summer?? Cause if you could persuade them to do it after the 20th of July that would be great, haha!

Well that about does it for this week. Hope you are all doing well and that life is treating well.

Love you all!