From leadership to trainer in a new area with a new companion

     Katelyn's mission is quickly coming to a close.  She only has about three months left and she will be home.  But the Lord still has more things for her to do as a full-time missionary.  For the past seven months Katelyn has been serving as a Sister Training Leader.  Having this responsibility has really helped her to grow in many ways.  It has also given her the opportunity to meet and work with many other missionaries who are serving in leadership positions as well.  In addition to that, she has been able to work with many of the leaders in her Ward and Stake.  Katelyn recently was invited to attend a Priesthood meeting as well has a High Council meeting in her Stake.  In this particular High Council meeting, several missionaries who had recently returned home, were reporting their mission experiences to the High Council.  Katelyn told us that the best part of the meeting was when a Sister missionary who had recently returned from Peru, reported on her mission.  Katelyn said that it was wonderful to hear all about this Sister's mission experiences and just how much she truly loved her mission.  Then after the Sister missionary sat down, one of the High Council members leaned over and told Katelyn "now you know what to prepare for when you get home".  Katelyn will have that same opportunity to report on her mission to the High Council in our Stake as well.  I am sure that in her report, she will also be very grateful for her mission and express just how much it has changed her life.

But when I said that the Lord still has more things for Katelyn to do on her mission, I was really talking about her new responsibilities.  As I mentioned previously, Katelyn has been serving as a Sister Training Leader for the past seven months and with this transfer, she has been released from that responsibility.  Her new assignment is to be a trainer for new missionaries that are just now entering the Edmonton, Canada mission.  Katelyn has also been assigned to the Young Single Adult Ward in the River Valley area and she and her new companion are replacing the missionary companionship that was there before.  So not only does Katelyn have to train a new missionary, she also has to get to know the members of the Ward and the area that she will be serving in.  Needless to say, Katelyn is very excited to be a trainer for the last few months of her mission.  When she wrote us last week to tell us about her new assignment, we could tell just from the tone of the email, just how excited she was.

Katelyn has been working with and teaching the Gospel to a number of people in their area.  Some of the people that she and her companion have been teaching have really come to know that what they are being taught is the truth and are preparing to be baptized members of the Church.  These experiences have been so exciting for Katelyn.  She has been able to teach and prepare some wonderful people who have accepted the Gospel in their lives and are ready to take the next step.  Katelyn and her companion have also been working very closely with some of the members of their Ward.  These members have assisted the missionaries in teaching some of the lessons and helping to testify of the truthfulness of the Gospel.  Katelyn told us about one recent experience where they were planing on teaching a lesson the next day and had prepared a very specific lesson to teach.  One of the members of the Ward had also agreed to accompany the missionaries and help them teach the lesson.  Just before Katelyn and her companion were about to leave for the teaching appointment, they had a feeling that they should change the topic of the lesson that they were going to teach.  Later on as they were teaching the lesson, the Ward member who accompanied them recounted how he had woken up the night before with the same feeling that a different topic needed to be taught the next day.  As it turned out, the topic that Katelyn and her companion were prompted to teach was the same topic that the Ward member had also had a feeling should be taught.  The message that they taught that night was just the right message and the whole evening was filled with the spirit.

Katelyn recently had another experience that, like many of her experiences, can be described as a miracle.  I won't go into a lot of the detail here so it may not sound as miraculous as when Katelyn described it in her email.  So this last week Katelyn and her new companion decided to go tracting.  Just like Katelyn has done many times before, she and her companion start out by driving around and stopping when they feel that they are in the right place.  They ended up at an apartment build and started knocking on some doors.  As tracting usually goes, some of the people politely told them that they weren't interested and others told them the same thing, but not quite so politely.  Finally they ended up talking with a person who seemed very interested and said that they already knew some members of the LDS church.  To make a longer story short, the person that they knew was a Ward member of the Ward that Katelyn had been serving in over the past few months.  So out of all of the places that Katelyn and her companion could have tracted, they ended up in the right place at the right time to talk with the right person.  How's that for being lead by the spirit?

So here is a really cute picture of Katelyn, until you look really closely and notice that her left eye is a little red.  Katelyn told us that the reason for the red eye is because of the fight she had with some toilet bowl cleaner.  Fortunately, she was able to wash the cleaner out of her eye and the worst of it was just having to explain why her eye was red all of the time.

The Elders and Sisters of Katelyn's district, celebrating a little for Halloween

Waking up to Canadian snow in mid-October

New companionship as a new trainer and trainee