The answer is YES!

So this week has been great but rather crazy!! ha 

So your all asking did i get transferred, do i have a new companion, am i still in the VC, did the baptism go through????

The answer to all of those questions is YES!!!!

Your probably wondering why i seem so enthused but that is because the Lord has bless me tremendously. I was serving in Nawton last transfer and it was double covered by us and a set of elders. Now i am in an area called Tuhikaramea. I stayed in the same flat and now i can walk to my area so we don't have a car. i am still in the VC and training the new VC sister! She is wonderful. Her name is sister Prince and i couldn't have asked for a better companion. She is just like me when i came out in the mission field. She has such a desire to do such good work and be prepared for everyone and it's quite refreshing actually. We laugh together all the time and are constantly trying to improve and see what we can do better and i love it. We are out here to bring people into the light of the gospel and closer to Christ and if we are not willing to change then what is the point. So i am glad that we improve each day. 

Sister Prince is from West Bountiful, Utah. The typical american state that everyone here asks if we are from!! She is beautiful and she is 19. Her birthday is oct 27 so she'll be turning 20 in our companionship. She is truly inspiring and we get along well:)

For the last question, yes the baptism wen through and it was so beautiful. With the help of the ward members that we brought to the lessons all turned out great. Pauline looked so beautiful. She looked like she was ready to enter the temple and she just glowed:) She was so excited. Her son came late and we asked if she wanted us to wait for him and she said "no, it's okay darling. This is important, i need to be baptized" or something like that. it just touched my heart. She then said "he'll come, he'll come" He ended up showing up right after that. And we were able to start. I gave a talk on the holy ghost and it was great. i felt good about it and i could feel the spirit in the room. Then she was baptized. She was so happy! She said it felt so good. I cried a little because i was so happy for her and it's going to change her life. I think her son will listen and hopefully be baptized. After the baptism i sang "when i am baptized" for her.

I am so blessed to have been the missionary to bring the gospel into Paulines life. It has brought me so much joy to see her have so much joy:) I never thought i would have a baptism in my first transfer.:)

So this transfer is going to be 8 weeks instead of 6 because we are catching up on getting the transfer dates accurate with the other mission. We messed it up somehow. 

So this week was the first time i have ever road my bike... and in a skirt. It was actually quite fun and we both enjoyed it. We felt like real missionaries! ha It's definitely fast to use the bike but it's always awkward to get off and talk to someone. We stalked someone the other day. WE got off the bike to talk to her and followed her and never caught up to her to talk tot her. We tried but we found she had earbuds in. ha it was a funny story. Sister Prince and i laugh at ourselves all day. The weird experiences we encounter. It's fun to laugh a lot.

Yesterday we were talking to people on the street and i felt prompted to knock on this door that we passed. i wasn't going to turn around but i decided to. As we talked with the man at the door he told us he wasn't interested but i never stop there. i ask them if they believe in God and then i asked him what it would mean to him if the gospel of Jesus Christ was restored. He said he would have to see it to believe it. i explained that we must ask God for questions like that. God has never just shown someone without faith first, so we cant expect to see things like that. We gave him the restoration pamphlet and invited him to read and pray about it. he said we could come back next Sunday to meet with him. I'm not sure if he is legitimately interested but it was cool to see the conversation turn around and have him kind of accept it. I'm anxious to see how it goes but more importantly i'm glad i followed my prompting. We will never regret following the promptings of the spirit but we always regret the ones we don't follow.

 

Sister Bird, Pauline, Sister Prince

 

I'm so excited about an upcoming baptism

23 September 2013

So I’m getting pretty excited!! Pauline’s baptism is this weekend on Saturday at 11! I’m so happy for her. She was so prepared and loves the gospel so much already! She wants to get to the temple! We’ve been meeting with her every day and will up until her baptism. I am so excited. I can’t even believe this is real. The scary thing is that transfers are on Thursday and we don’t know who will stay and who will go. I hope at least one of us can be there to support her. I can’t believe I actually, already have a baptism. It’s my first transfer. I don’t really feel like it was me though, it was definitely the Lord. He did it all.

-Sister Simkin's and I are getting really close and I am getting sad at even the thought of us being separated. I will miss her heaps. I will also miss this area a ton. I have gotten so used to the area and the people, just the atmosphere. It will be weird to change but I’ll do it if I’m asked. I trust my mission president and I trust the Lord. He knows what I need. I truly do love the area though. Yes, I do feel like it’s slow sometimes but that’s my fault. I need to get out and work harder to find people. The elders in our ward/area just found 2 new investigators and they have baptismal dates. So it is possible in any area.

 

I really do love missionary work but honestly sometimes I just don’t feel like doing it. Some days I have to force myself to get out there and talk to people. But I know when I feel like that it’s the adversary tempting me and that means that something great is going to happen and he doesn’t want it to. I hate how I have to consistently try to have charity, as in the circumstance where I want to go out all day and serve and talk to people. I just wish that desire was there. But where would be the learning in that? It is hard to go out and be rejected all day, but when you do find that one who will not only listen but who accepts it and wants to know more, then it becomes worth it. But recently I’ve found joy in just bearing my testimony to people. I’ve thought so many times ‘what more can I say that will help them feel something and want to know more’, what am I not saying. It must just sound like a nice fairy tale to have forever families. It’s interesting because we’ll share that and ask them if they want it and they say yes. Then we ask them if we can come back and share more and they say no. very contradicting. Ha I guess they don’t know what they want. ;P 

 

I am happy. I  love sharing the gospel. My testimony has grown heaps. As I share it each day I realize how much I not only believe but find comfort in knowing. I never realized how much of a blessing it is to be brought up in the gospel. The same church that Jesus Christ established when he was on the earth is now on the earth again and I am a member of it. That is so incredible!!! Who wouldn’t want to be a member of his church? Who wouldn’t want the many blessings that are promised and seen? I love it, I love this gospel with all my heart and find so much joy in being obedient to it and in doing the best in life that I can to please my Heavenly Father.

Ok Friends and followers.... please write to me.. I miss you all and love hearing from you. Email me at kailey.bird@myldsmail.net or send mail.... Oh how missionaries love mail!!!

Address is on the blog

A hint of the hard....with great blessings.

So this week was hard for me, I didn't feel like working, like talking to people or anything. It was hard and stupid. Then I sat down and thought about how ineffective I was being and how I wanted to be more diligent. So I studied diligence and how that is a Christ like quality and I needed it. I felt like I was just wasting time. I didn't like thinking that I was doing that and wanted to change. So after I studied diligence and learned that I am out here to bring souls to Christ and I need to put everything I have into the work because that is what Christ would want me to do and what he would do, I started to change. The next morning I studied charity and love and I realized that I did not have it. Without charity, faith and hope which recently I've had none of, I am nothing. I was doing no good because I felt inside that no one would accept or want to hear my message. It was an awful thing to think of. I realized that to have charity you care so deeply for the people that it hurts your heart to know that they don't have the knowledge of the gospel and can't be saved. I prayed and pleaded with the Lord for forgiveness of my thoughts and omitting actions. I already have grown to love the people so much more. I think about them 90% of my day now and how I can help them where before I would rarely think of them. Things have changed and the Lord is already starting to help us. The day that sister Simkins and I talked about this and decided to change and help each other and ask the Lord for help and forgiveness, we received much success that day. We received two new investigators, I was speaking with the spirit and being guided by the spirit. It was amazing to see these blessings from the Lord in my life. I was directed who to bring to our lessons and it was the perfect person, I was directed which of the ward members should go over and help the elders give our investigator a blessing (we couldn't be there because we were at the visitors center) and it was just who and what she needed because he had been through similar experiences. I was directed to knock on a specific door(first one of the day) and we were let in, I was given what to say to our investigators in a lesson, we were directed to teach our investigator about tithing and we ended up teaching the gospel principles class on tithing because someone asked us to give it on that topic instead. The Lord has prepared and given us so many amazing opportunities. I am so grateful to be a part of the Lords work and see his hand in all things.

By the way... one of my favorite cereals 
is Raising Bran Crunch... and I found my 
close second....

Bridal Viel Falls

                 This past week, I got to go to bridal veil falls, and it was amazing! So gorgeous. One reason why I wanted to go foreign or to a third world country was to experience the jungle and this is what I experienced. It was absolutely gorgeous. It was such a dense forest that we walked through, you could barely see the sky peering through the leaves. It made me think of what costa rica would’ve been like. My favorite trees were the ferns trees. They were so tall and beautiful and sprawled out like an umbrella in the sky. They were everywhere and just beautiful. We saw some silver ferns, which is the popular nz symbol or rugby symbol kinda like the melaleuca symbol. They are a neat plant. The top of the fern is green and underneath is very silver. It is beautiful. The falls were amazing and so beautiful.  I'm sure you  could imagine the awe I was in. I honestly did not want to leave, I could’ve built a hut and lived there because of the beauty.

                A lady in our ward gave us a referral for the lady that cleans her house. We taught her, Pauline, at the members house the first time. Pauline has been attending the Jehovah witnesses for about a year now. Pauline had a stroke about 10 years ago and has many problems with understanding, comprehending, speaking what she wants to say and also short term memory. But she is so great and we love her so much. We first taught her about the plan of salvation because so many of her family had died such as her husband, her daughter and all of her 12 siblings. She found comfort in this and was so happy to know that she could be with her family forever. The second lesson we had with her we taught her the restoration and explained the church had been restored and explained the book of Mormon. She was excited about reading it and praying. She had already received an answer that the plan of salvation was real, which was so cool! We then committed her to baptism and set a date to work towards which is September 28!! We are so excited! And when people say that you want to scream about how excited you are, it’s so true!!! We got in the car and screamed with excitement! The date is after transfers and we will most likely be transferred because we have 16 new sisters coming in and right now there are 16 companionships. So that is sad, but to me it’s not about me, it’s about them and their salvation. So if it happens when I'm not there, yes I’ll be very sad, but it will be okay. Also crazy, this lady lives on the other side of the street in our area, so she is not in our area or ward. But the zone leaders are over that area and said we could. They asked one of their relief society members to come with us to teach and it was amazing and will be excellent fellow shipping for her.

                 So Mal has been progressing rather well. We also taught her about the restoration. We found out a little more about her so the things that we have taught her should bring her comfort. Her mother suffered from a stroke a while back and her sister died not too long ago. She has been struggling with these things. Mal is also out of area and has been attending our church because her friend Kharslee brought her. She said that the message of the restoration makes so much sense and that she would actually make time to pray about it, because she hasn’t been praying. She did and said she hasn’t received and answer yet but knows in due time she will be answered. I am so excited for her to grasp all of this and just pray that she will want it.

                 We had no idea before but today we found out that Pauline is Mals mother. They live in the same house and everything. Mal never mentioned much about what she was doing and today was the first time we taught in their actual home. So we found out thru her mom and Mal wasn’t home. So if you put the pieces together while reading this, then you are better than me and my companion! We were so surprised but it was so cool!! We are only afraid Mal might be uncomfortable about it. So we’ll see how that goes. Unfortunately, she doesn’t have the greatest relationship with her mom…

                 We had our first public back

out with the car. It was kind of awkward backing my companion out of the parking lot at the grocery store. First time. Usually we do it at the VC so it’s not a big deal. Let’s just say we get weird looks sometimes.
                 

               I’ve had some hard times out here, not too hard yet, but just know I love it! I love every minute! I know that the book of Mormon is true( I finished it again, finally just Saturday!), I know that Jesus is the Christ, the Savior of the world. He knows us and understands us and can help us through anything we are going through because he has felt it to. We just need to ask. I have felt his help and influence in my life, I actually feel it daily. It’s incredible. I can’t do this alone!

Something i want to gain a testimony of this week is that we can know all of these things and more if we know that the Book of Mormon is true. As we read, ponder and pray about it, it is all because the Book of Mormon is true. I challenge you to do the same!

        

       I am having the best experiences of my life, and I am loving every minute of it! I love and miss you all!