I hope yous have a good day!

Hello everyone! So this week we almost hit a deer, just as I turned my brights on a deer popped out of the trees like a daisy, ran half way on the road, and turned around and went back. If he would have kept running straight I would have hit him for sure, but the Lord protects his missionaries :). We also lost our phone for a solid 24 hours this week, we knew for sure that it was somewhere in Gresham so that was good, turns out it was laying in our ward mission leaders drive way. Also my companion is sick and she got Grandma and I sick. So Grandma made me drink this concoction of onions, garlic, lemon juice, honey, and ginger, so that was interesting, I feel better though. 

We got to meet with Killian, our recent convert yesterday and we were talking about missionary work and he said "I would be a dope missionary" haha and we were like yes you would be! So that is pretty exciting that he wants to go on a mission and he is going to the temple for baptisms in the middle of November so that is super exciting as well. His friend, who is a member that is preparing to go on a mission, told us that Killian came up to him and said hey do you want to go on a mission together? and he was like, well it doesn't really work that way, hahaha. There is that scripture in D&C 18:15 that talks about how great shall be your joy. And you know, baptisms are great, but it is even better when the people who are baptized continue to live the gospel, that is what brings real joy. Nothing else super exciting has happened, but things here have been going well, they are definitely on the upside. I hope everyone has a great day and a great week! 

Love yous! 

Sister Koyle

(everyone here says yous, instead of you guys, or you all, or ya'll) 

We had Zone Training this week. 

Stay on trail or stay home. 

I think my companion is a little chilly 

​The leaves are falling down

Bonus picture of grandma sleeping on the couch:

Wheat and the Tares

Hello everyone!! I hope you are all having a happy Columbus day. (1 Nephi 13:12) It is Columbus day right? Well anyways, this week was pretty normal. We tracted and we did some service for a few people we saw some less actives and had dinner with some members and saw some recent converts. When we tract here, almost every door is the same. They all say "I have my own religion", so it is pretty hard to get past that, if anyone has any ideas of smart comments to say back please let me know :) Although yesterday we had a different one, they just opened their window and said "thanks" and then closed it. I was like, so. . . . you don't want to talk to us? Also we knocked on a door and saw a car drive by and stare at us and then we went to the next house since the first house didn't answer and when we were knocking on the second house that same car that drove by us pulled into the drive way of the first house, I was like are you kidding me? Another time we were in a nicer part of town and we offered this lady a card, jut a simple card and we told her that it had a great website on it and she gives it back and says oh I don't have a computer, I was like okay first off pretty sure everyone in this neighborhood has some way of using the internet, second please just take the card so that this isn't awkward. It is amazing to me the things that people do to not talk to us, we are trying to bring you salvation!! Now I know how all of those teenage boys feel when they ask a girl out on a date and the girl says no, except the only kind of dates that we want are baptism dates. We just keep trying it's pretty much all we can do. We are trying to have the attitude of, if these people don't accept the gospel it isn't going to be because we didn't try to share it with them.

We drove to Wausau on Wednesday and had district meeting and also interviews with President. President Williams is really awesome, it's like he is a normal person or something, so that was nice. I really like the parable of the wheat and the tares in D&C 86 how it talks about then growing together. Sometimes I wonder why there are so many different churches, and why some people are so against us, and then I realize that there is opposition in all things and that my testimony has grown a lot on my mission because of the opposition I have faced from other people. Everything happens for a reason right? I hope you all have a blessed week! 

Love,

Sister Koyle

 Grandma's Grandson got this 12 point buck so that was pretty cool to see it hanging up in the garage.

The corn is gone and they put a ton on sewage/cow manure on the field and lets just say smelling the Wisconsin dairy air is priceless.

​Maybe not forever . . . but 5 or 6 months is good. :)

Heavenly Father doesn't want weekend visits, he wants full custody!

We were trying to contact less actives for the relief society president and we knocked on this one house and the person we were contacting had moved, but we explained that we were from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and the lady that answered said "Do you baptize?" and in my mind I was just thinking well heck yes we baptize!! In fact that is my whole purpose in leaving my friends and family for 18 months is to try to baptize people!, how did you know? turns out she actually wants her 9 month old daughter to be baptized, we didn't tell her that we don't baptize babies yet, but we set up an appointment with her, taught her the first vision, and gave her a book of Mormon. She said "I guess I should learn about the religion that my daughter is going to be baptized into" we plan on sharing Moroni 8:10 with her :) we will see how it goes! 

Also we are teaching this awesome couple, sorry I can't remember who I tell you about, but Sister van Overbeek invited them to baptism this week and the husband was like yes I totally want to be baptized before the year is over, and the wife was like do you really think that I can be baptized? And when we told her yes she started crying. They set their date for Christmas, which is like 3 months away, that is a long time for missionaries, so we will see what happens. 

Conference was great! I really enjoyed Elder Oaks talk about missionary work. And fun fact, Elder Uceda (who spoke about prayer) is the Father of the bishop in the Sheboygan ward, so that was pretty cool. One of my favorite quotes was probably from K. Brett Nattress when he said something to the effect of, I am unaware of anyone who reads the Book of Mormon everyday that has fallen away from the church. I thought that was a very good point and it really shows the importance of reading the Book of Mormon each day, it is something that each one of us needs, it brings the spirit into our lives, and it brings peace to our hearts. I wish you all a wonderful week of missionary work! 

Love,

Sister Koyle

Look at this cool hammock swing!! For a second I felt like I was in Logan canyon again. 

 Going to do service #lookingood

This is what we call an Amish Pie and they are bomb.

Conference is this Saturday and Sunday!! Watch it, and apply it!

Mom got this text:

We were blessed to be able to have your daughter in our home. What a wonderful spirit she brings. We are lucky to have her serving in Shawano.
With love The Henning's

This week has been pretty good, had district meeting in Antigo, we met with a few people, and we had 3-6 week training on Friday. The Assistants and the President and his wife were all about an hour late, so the 8 of us missionaries just sat in the chapel studying for an hour and a half, so that was fun. The actual training and things were really good though, very needed. Satan was getting really good at getting me down, but President Williams took care of that. Also Friday we missed out on chicken butchering, I was actually pretty disappointed about that, I wanted to cut a chicken's head off just to say that I did it, but oh well. Saturday was great, we were in Bonduel most of the day and then that evening we had a Birthday party for Sister Helen, with a bunch of the Relief Society and then we all went and watched the Women's Conference at the church it was great! I really loved Bonnie L. Oscarson's talk, she was very straight forward. I need to be more bold like her. Yesterday my comp and I both gave talks in church which was pretty fun, it was only like 7 minutes long so it wasn't too bad. And the primary kids all wrote us cute little letters that say cute things on them, so that was nice. Other than that nothing too exciting is happening here, we just keep knocking doors. 

This one Lutheran man that we met tracting told us that we are working way too hard because all you have to do is believe, you don't have to do anything else, and that really bothered me. I keep pondering that and I was just thinking even if I didn't have to do anything else besides believe, if I really believed wouldn't I want to do something because of that. If I really believed then I would want to share that belief with others so that they could also believe. To me it just makes sense, it's not like we are forced to knock on doors all day, we do it because we want to, because we love our Savior and our Heavenly Father and we want to serve them. Just like it says in Matthew 7:21 "Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven." This is my Father's will for me at this moment, I am in the right place doing the right thing, and it's wonderful.

Love,

Sister Koyle

P.S. I hope everyone is super stoked for conference because I know that I am.

My District this transfer: Elder Melle, Elder Bennett, Elder Velasquez, Elder Jorgenson, Me, and Sister van Overbeek 

So the Rekow's butchered over 100 chickens on Friday and we missed it, but grandma likes to can the feet just to freak people out, so she had a bucket of chicken feet in her kitchen so we had some fun taking pictures with them. 

This is Grandma Rekow, the lady that we live with, she has bad eyes, so she often wears these sun glasses, aren't we stylin? 

This is Sister Helen, she turned 91 on Saturday so the relief society threw a birthday party for her on Saturday night, she was lass active for 60 years, and she recently started coming back to church, she is the most tender, classy lady I have ever met. 

I wonder if the Provo jail makes our name tags . . .

What a week! Tuesday night to Wednesday I got to go on exchanges with Sister Naughton, we served together in Sheboygan during April and May. But now she is serving in Wausau as my STL. She is a really great missionary and I was able to learn a lot from her on exchanges. We had a bomb restoration lesson with that native couple, he had a lot of really great questions that he asked us. We just need to get them to come to church, and get baptized :) 

Apparently Friday was a crazy day, here on my mission, and at home. I got an adorable new nephew (that makes me an aunt 12 times), it was my sister's birthday, we had zone conference, and a baptism! We were at the church for 11 hours straight on Friday. We went early to practice a song we sang at zone conference. My companion forgot her name tag, she was freaking out, she said "the only day we see president and have a baptism, and I forget my name tag, I'm such a greenie weenie" Hahah so she borrowed the pocket one on my scriptures. Since our house is 30 minutes away from the Shawano church we couldn't go back and get hers. Then we had an awesome zone conference. It was actually both the Green Bay and the Wausau zones together, because they had a guy from Salt Lake come and update all of our Tiwi's (the little box in our car that tells us to check our speed). President Williams gave a training on the infinite atonement it was really cool. And our zone leaders had a super great training about living up to our potential, and they showed us this great Mormon Message with President Utchdorf. Check it out!  https://www.mormonchannel.org/watch/series/mormon-messages/your-potential-your-privileges-1

Also on Friday morning when grandma was making us beakfast she had made some grape juice and she wanted to mix it with apple juice, so she unthawed some from the freezer and and mixed them together, then she drank it and realized that what she thought was apple juice was actually chicken feet broth. So she just drank it anyways, my comp had some and said that it didn't taste awful, but I didn't feel adventurous enough to try it. 

Saturday was Bonduel founders day so we went around to all of the people selling things and we would talk to them about the things that they were selling to get to know them a little bit and then we would hit them with the gospel. We have a goal each week to teach the first vision 14 times. On Saturday as we were in the act of sharing our 14th first vision we got a text message for a media referral for a girl who lives in Clintonville who ordered a Bible, so we called her and set up an appointment with her, so that was a blessing. 

I love you all! Happy Fall! 

Sister Koyle

Kayleen's baptism

 Wausau zone conference is Shawano.

​I got to go on exchanges with my old companion Sister Naughton, she is my STL now!!

It doesn't matter if you have the truth, it matters what you do with it.

That moment when you walk out to the garage and there are two dead chickens laying on the car with blood dripping from them. Just another day at Grandma Rekow's house. On Friday night we had fresh chicken for dinner though, it was walking around that morning, but by dinner time it had been fried and was ready to eat. 

Well we tracted a lot. I shared the first vision with more people this week than I ever have before. We found this one lady who was super prepared, so we are excited about her. The 16 year old girl that we are teaching is getting baptized this Friday, it is a long story, we made a lot of phone calls and talked to a lot of people and we did a lot of praying and fasting, and she is getting baptized. So we are excited about that. I think she is more excited than anyone though. This is something that she wants so badly, it is so cool to see that conviction within someone who is so young. 

Someone gave a talk in church yesterday and he was talking about Elder Cook's talk called See Yourself in the Temple and in that talk he says, "Church leaders organize stakes, wards, quorums, Church auxiliaries, missions, and so forth in our chapels and other buildings. The Lord organizes eternal families only in temples." And I just thought that was so awesome. Families are so important and eternal families are of the utmost importance that they can only be organized in the House of the Lord. Thank you all so much for all that you have done, thank you for reading my emails each week. I hope everyone has a wonderful week.

Love,

Sister Koyle

We actually took a few pictures this week :)

We saw this sweet sign on the way to Tigerton. 

Grandma's son got twelve little chicks, they are so cute. 

Tracting in the rain.

Alma 29:9-10

So we were tracting, as usual, and this lady came out of her house to let her dog out. And we started talking to her and she was so prepared for the gospel, she seemed like our best friend and she seemed really genuinely interested in the gospel, she has been going through some hard times and she was just the perfect investigator, we gave her a Book of Mormon and she told us to come back the next week. So we came back the next week, and just as we were walking up to the house her husband came out of the house to let the dog out and we talked to him and taught him the first vision and gave him a Book of Mormon. He seemed even more interested than she was and we set up an appointment to come back and teach them. We showed up for our appointment and Sister van Overbeek says "How crazy would it be if they let their dog out again when we show up" And sure enough just as we approach the house the lady lets her dog out, and then she turns and sees us, and she yells at her dog to come back in and she goes back inside and closes the door. But we still went and knocked on the door and rang the doorbell twice and she never answered. That my friends is why everyone needs to share the gospel with their friends so that the missionaries can actually have people to teach, because when someone has a friend in the gospel they are way more likely to meet with missionaries and if they have questions then they have a friend to ask their questions to. That is why we should all be praying that we can have missionary opportunities, and looking for missionary opportunities and acting upon them when they arise. Because there is a better way to do missionary work than knocking on doors all day and that is through your friends. We have the truth, the means to salvation, we need to share it with those around us.  

On a lighter note, the 16 year old girl that we are teaching is supposed to be getting baptized on September 16th, but it is kind of up to her Dad, so we will see if he allows her to be baptized. 

On Sunday the spirit was like hey you should go see that one potential investigator. So we did and turns out that they wanted to come to church that day but they weren't sure where it was at or what to wear. So they are planning on coming to church next week and we set up an appointment with them to teach them. They are a cute native couple with a little boy and I have high hopes for them. She already has a testimony of the Book of Mormon and the Priesthood because some elders in the past gave her little boy a blessing a while ago when he was really sick.

Labor day was just a regular proselyting day, so we tracted a lot, and the ward had a picnic for lunch, so we went to that and that was pretty fun. We have had 3 new families move into the Shawano ward in the past month, so basically the ward doubled, which is great! 

I hope you all have a wonderful day and a wonderful week! 

Love,

Sister Koyle

Life in Gresham . . . nothing too exciting

 This is where we go running every morning

 Roxy

and pigs . . .