Hermana Emmaline Kmetzsch

Hello Everyone!  Christmas this week! It was great! We didn't have power in our house the whole week so that was a little bit of a bummer, but we brought our mattresses out and slept by our little tree and made the best of it :) We also didn't have snow but it rained a lot so I think that's a close second. THE GOOD STUFF: So Christmas was this week! We didn't really have much to do, (nobody really wants you to come to their house on Christmas here). So we decided to go Christmas caroling to some of the members houses with the Elders in our ward! We were at a member of the bishoprics house and he told us that he wanted us to go over to his neighbors house with him to sing. He explained that they aren't members of our church. We decided to sing "Noche de Luz" (Silent night). A woman answered the door and we started to sing. Once we got to the last verse she had tears rolling down her cheeks. She explained that she is having a lot of trouble with h...

Hello everyone! This week was great! I picked up my new little greenie on Wednesday and she is the cutest! Her name is Hermana Kirkham and she's from South Jordan, Utah! She's super spunky and we are having a great time :) This weeks email is going to be a little bit different. I wanted to take this opportunity (because Christmas is this week) to share my Testimony of the Savior. I KNOW that He lives and that He loves us more than we could ever imagine. He doesn't only love us but He knows us personally. Whenever we feel lost or like we just can't go on, He is there to strengthen us and to not only walk beside us, but to carry us. He is in every detail of our lives. All we have to do is look for Him. I KNOW that He atoned for our sins and He sacrificed so that one day we can live again and that death is not the end.   We are not alone. Our Savior, Our Redeemer, The Prince of Peace, The Bread of Life, The Great Shepherd and was born on Christmas day to save us, to...

Hello everyone!  This week was kinda crazy! We had our Christmas zone conference which was amazing! We got to watch the new Lion King movie which was such a cute little Christmas present :) We also have transfers this week and President called me and I will be training a new missionary! I am a little bit nervous cause I still feel like a brand new missionary, but I am excited for the new adventures to come! THE GOOD STUFF: So this week in Sunday school we had an amazing lesson about the words "love" and "light" and what they mean. We were talking about the word love, and how it relates to our Heavenly father. The Hermano teaching (who is actually from orem) said something very special that I want to share. He was talking about the name Father and how many more ways you can say it (dad, papa, daddy etc). He said that as a Father, there are only certain people that can call you that name, the people closest to you, your children. He related that to our r...

Hello everyone!  This week was so great and full of miracles! God is so good and I am just so happy!  THE GOOD STUFF: GARY WAS BAPTIZED! This Saturday was such a sweet day! We showed up early to Gary's baptism and he was already there ready and waiting! He was SO excited and was dancing around in the church before it started. The baptism went great and the spirit was so strong. Gary was just glowing the next day in sacrament and couldn't stop smiling. All the members just took him right in and it was just beautiful.  I have been studying a lot about faith recently and I love the story of Peter in Mathew 14 when he walks on the water. When Peter sees Christ he exercises his faith and begins to walk on the water. But once he sees the waves and the wind he gets scared and begins to sink. Immediately Christ reaches out his hand and saves him. Life is hard. And sometimes we feel like our faith is wavering and we feel like we are drowning. But we have th...

Hola everyone!  This week was crazy and full of miracles! I also hit 6 months so that is just crazy sauce. Time is flying by and I just can't keep up!  THE GOOD STUFF: So. Gary. We went back to his house after the tithing lesson and he said that he feels so good and he just can't wait for Saturday to come! I have never met anyone so prepared and ready for the gospel. He said that he knows how much his life is going to change but how he is willing to give up everything because the changes he is going to make are worth far more than anything else.  We also have a new friend we are teaching named Carlos. He is 21 and speaks English! He is so interested in the gospel and really was looking for the truth when we found him. We gave him a Book of Mormon this week and he told us that he was going to read the whole thing as fast as he could cause he just wants to know if its true for himself.  I am realizing the importance of putting the gospel first ...

Hello Everyone! This week was great! The weather is starting to cool down and we have that nice ocean breeze :) THE GOOD STUFF: So we have an investigator named Gary who is getting baptized this next Saturday! He loves everything about the church but he has mentioned to us before that he left other churches because he had to pay tithing and told us that he has a lot of doubts about that subject. So we have been a little nervous about teaching him about tithing. So yesterday we met at the church with some members to teach him about tithing. The members ended up being 1 hour late so we decided to start the lesson without them. We taught him the whole lesson and asked him how he was feeling after, he said that he was feeling good but that he still had doubts and needed to pray A LOT before he could get baptized. I was feeling a little nervous and then our sweet member friends showed up to the church. They are converts of about 1 year and they just got sealed in the temple...

Hello Everyone!   This week was crazy and full of changes! I got transferred and I am now in Torre Alta, Puerto Plata. It was hard saying goodbye to all the people I love in Esperanza, but it's great to be in a new place! My new comps name is Hermana Butterfield and she is the sweetest! She has one transfer less than I do, so the Spanish is a little bit of an adventure but we are doing great!   THE GOOD STUFF: Something that I have been learning this week is about the importance and the power of prayer. Life is hard! And sometimes we just feel like we can't handle it all. BUT. The amazing thing is, that God is always here with us and he hears and answers every single one of our prayers. Whenever we need him he is there.   THE FUN STUFF: So Puerto Plata is BEAUTIFUL and you can see the ocean from my house which is the sweetest little treat every morning. We got to visit the beach today for P-day and wow. We walked up a little watchtower and you can see almost all of Puert...

Hello Everyone!  So we got transfer news this week and I am getting transferred! I am SO sad to leave this area and all the people that I love so dearly, but I am excited to start a new adventure. I am going to Puerto Plata which is a tourist city by the beach! You got that right, we're gonna be spending Christmas on, (well close by anyway) the beach this year :)  THE GOOD STUFF: The mission is hard but it's amazing to see the changes that the gospel brings in people's lives. We are teaching a girl named Dali, she is Hatian and doesn't speak a lot of spanish, so teaching her is a little bit different. But we brought a member with us our last lesson who speaks Creole. She told us that if God wanted her to be baptized then that's what she wanted to do. She comes to church every Sunday even though she doesn't understand and it's amazing to see her faith. The language of the spirit is really what connects us all. It doesn't matter who you are or...

Hello everyone! This week was great and full of miracles! The mission is hard but God has a plan and he is watching out for us! THE GOOD STUFF: So this week was full of miracles! We have a lady that we are teaching named Maribel. We found her one day while we were contacting. This day wasn't anything out of the ordinary, our other appointment had fallen through and we were just contacting in her neighborhood. We knocked on her door, (when I say knocked I mean we yelled, "Saludos!!" at her front gate) and her mom came to the door. We started to introduce ourselves and then Maribel came out of her room to the door. She immediately invited us in and told us that God had sent us to her. She explained that she had been passing through a really hard time and that she was praying that same day for God to send her someone to help her. Then we came to her door. She came to church last week and we asked her this week if she was going to come again and she said, ...

Hello everyone! This week was great! The weather is finally starting to cool down a little bit (and when I say a little bit, I really only mean a little bit), but we got some rain and life is just great! I also hit 5 months today?? Time is going by so fast and I can't keep up!  Also, I didn't get any responses from my email a few weeks ago about whether or not there are going to be dinosaurs in heaven. Me and my comp genuinely want to know and don't have many resources so if anyone can help us out that would be very much appreciated :)  THE GOOD STUFF: Here in the mission I am learning a lot about the Lord's timing. We all have a plan for how we would like our life to turn out, but most of the time the Lord has a different and a better plan for us. We found out this week that the couple we have been working with can't get baptized soon because Nicolas is waiting for his visa to go to the US and he is registered as "single" so they can'...

Hola everyone! This week was hard as far as the work goes, but we are seeing little miracles every day and I know that the Lord is blessing us for our efforts! THE GOOD STUFF: So the work has been kind of slow her in Esperanza. We are trying to find new people to teach and help the people that we are teaching to progress, but it's been a little rough. BUT the Lord is always watching and we had a miracle this past Sunday. We had just finished sacrament meeting and we thought that none of our investigators were in church, but we stood up to go to the next class and one of the members called us over and told us that one of our people was in the back. We ran back to see who it was and it was a guy that we had contacted about a week and a half before. We hadn't put an appointment to go back with him and we didn't even leave a pamphlet. He told us that he couldn't come last week but he wanted to make sure that he was there this week! So we put a day to go visit him...

Hello everyone! Okay so this week was great! We are working hard here in good old Esperanza and we are finding lots of new people to teach. This week my comp and I and some members were having a friendly discussion about whether or not there are going to be dinosaurs in heaven.. If anyone has any articles, scriptures or anything about this topic PLEASE send them my way I really need some answers. Thank you! THE GOOD STUFF: So we had a lot of new people this week and we talked a lot about the blessings of the gospel and the difference that doing the little things can make in our lives. Sometimes it's hard to find time and the motivation to read our scriptures, pray or go to church. But it really is the simple things that bless us the most. The ways of the world are easier and we can find temporary happiness. The ways of God are harder but we can find happiness for all of eternity. It's so important that we realize and focus on what is really important in this l...

Hola everyone! So this week was a little crazy! We had transfers and I am staying here in Esperanza but I had to say goodbye to my mission mom Hermana Heaton. It was very bitter sweet but I have been blessed with the cutest new companion named Hermana De La Cruz (yes, like from the movie "Coco") and she is from Mexico! She is so sweet and such a hard worker.  Me and my cute new comp THE GOOD STUFF: Noelia and Nicolas came to conference! They loved it. We are currently working with them to get enough money to get married and baptized by the end of the month! To say I am excited is an understatement. They have such a desire to follow christ and do what is right.  Speaking of conference, WOW! The Prophets and Apostles really are inspired and Christ really is the head of this church! I loved every minute of conference and if you haven't had a chance to watch it I encourage you to! I loved the stress of the importance of making Christ the center of our li...

Hola everyone! Okay so this week was full of lots of lows but the highest of highs. We saw SO many miracles this week and my heart is just so full. THE GOOD STUFF: Okay so last week I talked a lot about Xiomara, we are teaching her and her daughters and when we first met her she made sure that we knew that she was Catholic. But after teaching the restoration last week she said she might be able to come to church. Me and my comp were sitting in church and the sacrament hymn had just started. I look up at the doors and I see Xiomara and her two daughters walk in the chapel. I have never been so happy! They came and sat down next to us. During the meeting she was wiping tears from her eyes and afterward she told us how much she and her daughters loved it. It is amazing to see how fast her heart opened up and how willing she is to act on the feelings that she had. We went back and taught them again that day and they said they want to come to a session of General Confere...

Hola everyone! Alright I know I talk about the weather so much but this entire week it was either cloudy or it rained!! It was honestly the biggest blessing. Thank you to whoever sent their prayers over to the two little roasting hotdogs because it worked! We actually had a huge rainstorm on Saturday night which was fun :) The rainstorm (I know it looks like snow but it's rain I promise) THE GOOD STUFF: So we had a really cool lesson with a lady and her two daughters that we have only taught once before. The first time we met them Xiomara (the mom) told us that she was Caltholic, but that she wouldn't turn away "la palabra de Dios" aka the word of God. So we shared a scripture about Christ and left them with the restoration pamphlet and put a day to come back. We came back the next week and were very surprised to find out that Camila (one of the daughters who is 18) had read the whole thing and had lots of questions about Joseph Smith. So we sat down...