Katelyn in Kentucky: Black Mold, A Tornado & a "Yes" to Baptism

This week has been one of miracles but I will be only sharing a few of them this week since I have little time.

Great and amazing things are happening here in Richmond! One of them is in this investigator that is getting baptized on May 16th! His name is Blake Dean and he is a 19 year old kid here on the EKU campus and he has been the most humbled and most genuine investigators I have gotten the opportunity to teach! One of the things he said to us this last week, while we were teaching him the Gospel of Jesus Christ, is "At this point I will do anything to get baptized." !!!! He said that he would quit smoking and that since we have taught him that he is significantly happier. I know that the Gospel is the literal happiness that is brought to a darkened heart! Also yesterday our ward was absolutely enthusiastic about what we told them about Blake and when Blake showed up to church 40 minutes early (In a white shirt and tie, no less) and we hadn't arrived yet, our ward went directly to him and talked to him and took care of him until we got there. In the meantime we got a few text messages from people telling us that he had already arrived. He told us himself later that day that he loved coming to church because he felt excepted and that the members were nice. My testimony has grown so much in the last few weeks of how big of an impact it is when missionaries and members coordinate to help less-active members and investigators! It is so cool!

This week stared out awesome because finally spring break passed away and and the EKU students of our teaching pool are finally back! We got to teach Blake a few times this week and we got to teach him the third lesson-which is the Gospel of Jesus Christ and also show him the restoration video. He got emotional and teared up with a lot of what we told him. Also our second lesson that we taught was the Word of Wisdom and Sister Hannah and I went in thinking -he doesn't have any issues with it, he's probably a dry Mormon.... NOPE! He smokes and we had no idea that he did and while we talked to him about the importance of it all he was very sincere and then we committed to it and he said that he would follow that commandment because at this point he knows everything we have said to be true.!!!! :D

~~Sorry friends and family if you can't tell Sister Hannah and I are so proud of Blake. He is gonna get baptized!

(Sister Hannah fills us in on the Tornado they experienced):

Highlights from this week though, it was an eventful one!

WELCOME to Richmond in April. One day Sister Jones and I walked outside and it literally hit us. The trees POPPED, EVERYTHING is turning GREEN and everything is blooming now. The tulips... don't even get me started. THEY ARE INCREDIBLE. Everyone has tulips in their yard too. By far my favorite flower! :) They are just gorgeous!!

-Last Monday we came home to NO CARPET. All of it had been ripped out! GONE. See ya later! Remember that black mold? Yeah... the carpet had to go! BUT bow we are left wit ha cement floor. We have resorted to kneeling prayers on our chairs because the ground is just not good for our knees! Thankfully we still have carpet upstairs. The leak is still not fixed so when the tornado came in this week our house did flood again... but no more black mold! HAHA. LIFE :)

Oh yeah, there was a TORNADO! Let me just start with the west coast is the best coast. I can handle an earthquake, a forest fire, a lightning storm, but a TORNADO!?!?! yeah, these two west coast girls did NOT know what to do. The sirens started to go off... the campus (Eastern Kentucky University) told people to seek shelter NOW and Sister Jones and I are worried. We were on BIKES only a couple minutes from our house, but on bikes nonetheless. It was an interesting night. This was right around 6pm. We get home and it is STORMING like a BANSHEE. DOWNPOUR. At this point, I am legitimately terrified for my life. The wind is blowing so hard, the power is flickering and our district leader is calling us to make sure we are safe... I am terrified. OK. So we get our bikes out of our bike closet, sweep up all the dirt, throw a sheet down, throw a case of water in there, make some food, grabbed our scriptures, pillows and blankets and then hid in there for an hour... I seriously thought we would be sleeping in this bike room. Our next door neighbor and Kentucky native, Crystal comes over to ask us if we want to stand outside and watch the storm with her... HECK NO CRYSTAL!! She then told us to not sleep in the bike closet and move our couch into the corner of our exercise room and build a fort. HAHA. I love Crystal. We ended up moving our couch because our carpet got ripped out and we found out it was a pull out couch!!! YES!!! We were both terrified to sleep upstairs because the storm hadn't cleared and we were scared the roof was going to be ripped off... clearly we are from the west coast. CLEARLY. We ended up both sleeping on the pull out couch and it was AWFUL. I slept horrible. (Sorry we made you sleep on the pull out couch on all of family vacations Jeff. I now know why you complained so much about them!) SO that was my tornado experience. Turns out there were indeed two tornadoes but category 0.... It was exciting and terrifying! Hopefully the one and only tornado of my mission.

Pulling back the carpet and revealing the mold,

too much rain and flooding.

Bike closet became our shelter from the storm

No carpet, cement floor since finding black mold.

back to warm & sunny days

(back to Sister Jones):

So here is a fun yet irritating story! Sister Hannah and I get a call from our District leader about one their investigators that came to a session of general conference wants us to come teaching him since he is moving into our area.

We called this guy and tell him we will meet him on campus. We arrange a time to meet him after his bible study group. Mind you its already 8:30 at night and he tells us that they will be ten more minutes so we wait. In the meantime this investigator texts us asking what a certain verse from the scripture they are studying means-we tell him its about the restoration of the church. ten more minutes pass by and we are about to leave because of curfew and they are finally done.

We stay just to talk with them for a minute or so and they ask us what we do and we tell them. Than they are pouncing at us with literal interrogating questions about what we believe.

We tell them okay we will answers those and open our Book of Mormons and the one "leader" of this bible study says: "Can you find it in the Bible? Without using the Book of Mormon?"

I kinda became hesitant for a moment because I wasn't expecting the question. Then Sister Hannah (being a daughter of attorneys) pipes up and says "Well we could but this is the proof of what we say!" and I then say "Yep" , like a great little side-kick. We continue to testify as they break in with more and more questions and then finally I stop them and say "we could answer all your questions but...."*Sister Hannah steps in and says "We don't believe in the spirit of contention because it is of the devil." My eyes widen because at this point arguing doesn't even know how to escape out of my lips and the "leader" says "Well here is what I think. I think that the Jesus you worship is the wrong Jesus Christ and I hope and pray that you both will one day wake up and come to see who He really is." He says this with the most genuine and straight face as though we sold our soul to the adversary and that he wants to save us from it.

I say "There is only one Jesus Christ, what do you mean?"

Then he goes on and tells us that we are not true.

Then at this moment I remember what my dad said before my mission when he said

"Some people want to bible bash and at this point all you can do is bear your testimony and walk away."

So I did. And we asked to say a prayer and walked away. But I just remember coming from that situation and just being in awe. Now I had a clear understanding of what Joseph Smith had to go through, especially since he didn't have the truth. He could have believed anything he wanted, but because it didn't sit right with his soul he asked of God. Because he was faithful and asked of God, God showed himself to Joseph and called him to be his latter-day prophet. How incredible is this in our history?! I know that Joseph Smith was a prophet. I know that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ are two separate and physical beings and that they organized their church once again on the earth.

Time for some service!

Richmond, KY - Fun group of mish's.

We also got to walk to the library today and everything is popping up with flowers galore! So we took pictures and especially took pictures of this random window we have that has grown so much vine over it that we call it our own personal window to the Sacred Grove! Everything here has sprouted so I hope everyone in Idaho and Utah are jealous of the wonderful green that is happening here! I love you all! have a wonderful week!

~Hearken To It, Then Do it!, Sister Jones