Mission Accomplished!!!!!

JULY 20, 2016

This is it!!!

Family, 

We'll it's been about twenty three and a half months since I left good old Centerville and it's time to come home. This last week in the mission field has been surreal, truly a strange experience. Not too much excitement happened but a lot of thought and preparation has gone into this last week. I don't know if I'm ready for this whole real life thing, but I'll give it a good shot. 

I did have one amazingly crazy experience this week and it happened yesterday at dinner. So I'm just chilling at my bishops house waiting for my last dinner appointment to start and sitting across from me on the couch was a single sister from the ward. Her name is Sister Brown. Well we got to chatting about me coming home and she asked where I was going home to. I said oh a little town called Centerville in Utah, you've probably never heard of it. Turns out I was wrong she had heard of it. She got excited and said I know Centerville! "Do you happen to know the Clays??" "As in Tom Clay," I said!! "Yes," she exclaimed. She went on to tell me the story of how 33 years ago Tom Clay, then a young and handsome missionary with a full head of curly hair, baptized her and her husband Albert. Truly an amazing experience and what a small world. I'm just glad I found out before I left!! 

Meet Sylvia Brown

Other than that whopper nothing much else happened this week. I am overly exciting to see you all in just a few short days!! Love you all and see you soon!! 

Tada Bwtts!!! 

Elder Kmetzsch 

What a Finish!

Family,

Thanks for the Sacrament meeting subject, (talk about your mission)..... I hate not having any direction to go but hey such is life! I guess I just talk about what I've been up to for the last couple of years. I will definitely be talking about freedom Dad! I love America ( MURICA), Haha!!

The baptism of Courteney and Brianna was so amazing!!!! We had quite a few people show up and everything just went very smoothly. I had the privilege of being able to baptize both of them and what a privilege that was. What a way to finish off my work here in England. Not that I am done but yeah that will probably be the last big event of my mission. But is was a very special time especially for the girls and Patricia.

Courteney is next to me in the red and Brianna is two away from Elder Lam next to the pink hat.

That's way cool that Kristen and Nate are moving up to Bountiful! I bet now we will be seeing a lot more of them. That is exciting that they have extended the parade route. I wish so badly that I could have gone with you guys! I miss salt water taffy! They don't have it over here in England and it is just a shame because it is amazing! So if there just happened to be some watermelon and caramel apple taffy's around when I get home that would be much appreciated! Ladder ball sounds fun! I don't know that I have ever played it before? And I am sure that Samwise cooked up some dang good ribs! Ah I miss good BBQ...... And I miss Sam but mostly BBQ, Haha!!

Ah I am so happy that Ems had such a good time with the Book of Mormon read-a-thon! It has changed my life and I know if anyone reads it that it will change their life too. There is a reason that it is the keystone of our religion because without it we would have no religion! Read it, I dare any of you! You will definitely find out that Joseph Smith is a prophet and then you will know that we have a Prophet on the Earth today!

A thought for you all that I had at the baptism this Saturday. It was the closing Hymn of the baptism and we were singing, "I am a child of God." It was in the third verse and we sang the line, "If I can learn to do his will" and the Spirit hit me very strongly that learning to do little acts of Obedience is the reason that we are here. Not to show God that in a time of great crisis that we can stand by him, but simply to learn, "His Will." If we can learn his will by doing the simple things then the promise is sure, "We will live with him someday." How amazing is that. All we need to do are small simple things and we can again live with God and receive the greatest of all of his gifts, the gift of eternal life. That is a gift that I want very badly.

Well, I hope you all are doing well and that you have a wonderful week! See you in 9 days!!!

Love,

Elder Kmetzsch

The Final Countdown

Family,

Oh man I missing you guys a ton on this beautiful Fourth of July! But I'll be home for the 24th and we can blow some stuff up then!!!! Haha, I can't believe that I will be home sooooooo soon!! It's blowing my mind and I just can't believe it. But to answer your question the girls are getting baptized this Saturday!!!!

This week was good, nothing really exciting to report. Honestly I can't be bothered to email that much today seeing as it is the Fourth of July and I am out of my mind trunky!! I hope that you all have a wonderful day without me, haha. Tell Pete and Evy that I love them and also Torie you can tell James and Clara that I love them!

AMERICA!!!!!!!!!!!! The land of the free and the home of the brave!!!!

God Bless America!

Love you all!!

Elder Kmetzsch

P.S. I also forgot to ask what my topic is for my homecoming talk?? I would like to start preparing for it.

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