Jenna's Happy Birthday

THANK YOU everyone for the birthday wishes!!!! Holy cow, I can't believe I'm 20 years old! Two whole decades!! Ahhh!!! haha. It was a great birthday! Well, a looong day, but great nonetheless! We were at the church for 9 hours with meetings and stuff and after a while everything starts to blur all together when you're at church that long. But I'm lucky because the YSAs always have donuts after church (long story) so it felt like a party! Haha. Also, an awesome family in our ward - the Nussbaums - had us over for dinner and birthday cake. Man, I am SO grateful for all the families that have brought me into their home and made me feel like a part of the family! Mom, Dad, THANK YOU for always having the missionaries over for dinner!! (even though I always hid from them in my room... sorry bout that haha). It makes all the difference in the world to be invited to warm welcoming homes and sanctuaries from the world! (Not that Wisconsin is all scary or anything but you know! It's nice to have a refuge once in a while!) :) So once again, THANK YOU!!!!

This week was my first time going on exchanges as an STL. Our mission is doing this thing where we go on blitzes for exchanges now; instead of switching places, we bring BOTH Sisters to our own area. It's actually awesome because double the work gets done in 24 hours and we saw a lot of miracles. I got to take Sister Hall from Port Washington around to work in the Brookfield ward, and what did we do all day? We knocked doors!!!!! Haha. I felt a little bad making her tract for so long but our mission president is really emphasizing teaching the First Vision as many times as possible in a day, and we were able to teach it a LOT and found a couple people who seem truly prepared! Sister Hall is awesome and I learned a lot from her, and actually really enjoyed the exchange! Which was a blessing because I was so nervous!!

The best birthday gift ever was that Kayla came to church yesterday!!! YAY!!! And the part-member family in Brookfield all came too, and one of our other investigators! It was great! I am learning more and more how refreshing church is - that really IS where we're supposed to be on Sundays!! - as well as the significance of taking the Sacrament every week. It didn't used to mean too much to me, and in fact I thought the ordinance was kind of odd, but as I've been reading the New Testament, I've realized that we need as many reminders of Christ and His sacrifice for us as we can get!! It's a huge blessing to be able to renew our baptismal covenants every week. I feel like every time I make or renew a covenant, I am binding myself to Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ again and again. And I NEED that binding. We all do! That's how we get access to the powers of Heaven!

Thanks again for the birthday wishes! Love you all!

Have a great week!

xoxo

Sister K.

P.S. car selfie with Sister Hall!