October 15, 2013
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| Look at this packing job! It is getting harder and harder the longer Karee is out to squish everything in |
Well
I made it to Merrimack and I have made my way around to see a few
people already. It is a lot different than Worcester or Boston.... It is
super quiet compared to them. Which should be nice. It is a lot more
spread out and the ward here is really big. There are a few people who
speak Spanish (mostly a family from Bolivia) which is pretty neat. I am
not being taken out of the Spanish program is what President Packard
told me. In fact, it sounds like I am actually going to be doing some
more foundation building for starting a group. Sunday, however, I was
given the opportunity to translate during fast and testimony meeting. It
was so much fun! I tried really hard to keep up to the speakers and
feel like the Spanish speakers were able to have the general idea, at
least, of what the speakers were saying. Something that is going to take
some time to get used to is speaking so much non-stop every Sunday. I was almost horse by the end. But I love it!
There are a lot of really good families here who really love
the missionaries so I will be taken good care of. We have a few
investigators (none like Isabel or Hailey) who the members have found
and have invited to many things. A few of these members really get
missionary work, so it is pretty neat.
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| Isabel and Karee at the Boston, MA temple |
There are four sisters in the apartment and we all share the same
room again. It is a lot of fun! This apartment is
actually owned by a member but she is currently living with her mom
because she is not doing to well with her health. Apparently she takes
some good care of us. She brings us apples and oranges. Another member
brings us freshly baked bread and doughnuts from his bakery.... Thursday
(my first day) he handed me three grocery bags full of doughnuts...
What in the world? I had no idea what to do with all of them, luckily
there are a lot of youth and they were able to help us out.
Today
I studied about love and charity. It is one of the greatest
commandments so it is pretty important. One thing that really stuck out
to me was that in the spanish translation of Moroni 7, it says that
charity is "amor puro de cristo" which does mean the pure love of
Christ, but for English speakers like me one might read love pure/full
of Christ. It was really interesting for me to think that charity
involves Christ so much. Not just doing what He did, loving like He
loved, but involving Him. If everything you do is based on what Christ
would do, then your love has become full of Christ. Imagine what would
be different in the way that you treated everyone if you were focused on
Christ. Focused on the love that Christ has for that individual,
focused on the love that He has for you, and focused on how He would
treat that person. If our love is full of Christ, our intentions,
thoughts, and actions should lead us to Christ. The way that we treat
people might change significantly. It will be fuller, stronger and
brilliant. The best thing about this is that we need and we can use the
Atonement of Jesus Christ to seek for this attribute. Through His mercy,
He will help us and we can gain a better understanding of how Christ
loves others and we will be able to love deeper too. Better still, this
love isn't just for this life, it is eternal! What a wonderful gift.
I hope that all is well and that you enjoy the pictures, sorry I didn't have much to say today.
I love you!
Always,
Sister K. Brown
These pictures were taken at transfers where missionaries may get assigned to new areas and receive new companions. Missionaries don't always receive a new area each transfer. Sometimes they may stay with the same companion at transfers also.
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| New companion, Sis States and Karee |
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| Sis Hileman(a former companion) and Karee |
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| Sis Garcia and Karee at transfers |
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| Elder Blackburn, Karee, Elder Gonzales, and Sis Miller |
