Peace

Dear Friends and Family,

This week was incredible! Every week I am here I think, "There is no way the MTC could get better than it was this week. No way." But somehow it always does. :)

Last Thursday, we had the opportunity to teach TRC's, which is kind of like "Visiting Teaching" or "Home Teaching"! We just taught a simple lesson on faith to a member of the Church (most of them served in Poland!) in Polish, and then we were able to get to know them, ask about the mission, hear stories about their missions, and so many other things! It was AMAZING! :) It made me so happy! TRC has become one of Siostra D and I's favorite things! AND we just found out this week that in a couple weeks we will be Skyping people in Poland and teaching them!!!!! Ahhhh!!! I am so excited! :)

The Polish is coming along really well! It is hard to learn, of course! But it is sooo rewarding! I love having to push myself. :) We have started learning cases in Polish this week, which is SO GREAT! Everything makes so much more sense now!! :) Polish is such an amazing language! Having to work so hard to learn just makes my love for the Polish people grow every day. Siostra D and I still try hard every day to speak to each other in Polish instead of English. It's amazing how much we know already! The Lord is definitely guiding us. There is no way we could do this by ourselves. :)

Siostra D and I were able to teach Relief Society this past Sunday! We taught on the Holy Ghost, and it was amazing. We are always very worried about how our lessons will go, whether we teach our investigators or Relief Society or just share a simple testimony to someone on the street! But they always turn out a lot better than we think they will. :) The Lord answers prayers, and we are so blessed with the Spirit here. There is no place like the MTC. :) Anyway, our Relief Society lesson went just swimmingly. :) I was so happy, because we taught on the Holy Ghost, so I was just hoping and praying that the spirit would be present in our lesson. Well, prayers are answered because not only was the spirit there, I don't think there was a dry eye in the room when the lesson was finished. :) It was incredible. But it had nothing to do with anything Siostra D or I did, it was all the work of the Spirit. The Holy Ghost is the real teacher. :)

So... We had an amazing guest speaker in our MTC devotional on Sunday!! His name was Greg Droubay, and he is the Media Marketer and Director of the Church! He surprised us with a little sneak peak to the theme of the Church's marketing for Christmas this year!!!!! I'm sure most of you remember last years theme: "He is the Gift" :) That one was AMAZING. But oh my lanta, this year's theme is perfect. He showed us the Christmas video, and the spirit was so strong. I don't think there was a single heart in the whole auditorium that didn't feel it! So... It will be released on November 29th!! Keep a watchful eye out for it, it will touch your hearts! :) I'm so excited for you all to see the video and know the theme!! christmas.mormon.org is where to go to find it! :)

Well, us Poles had the most wonderful lesson the other night about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Our teacher asked us to describe what the Gospel of Jesus Christ is in one paragraph, which was pretty easy! Then she asked us to describe what the Gospel is in one sentence, then finally she asked us to describe it in one word. At first, I had no idea which word I could possibly say to summarize every aspect of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but once I sat there for a moment. The one word that came to my mind, was peace. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is PEACE. It is hope. It is the map that guides us to eternal life. Sometimes, I think I try to go too in depth about the gospel in my lessons with my investigators. There is just so much about the gospel that I know would bring them so much happiness! But, as I sat and thought about it the other day, I realized... Imagine how much our Father in Heaven knows. He is omnipotent. If He tried to give us all of His knowledge at once, we wouldn't be able to comprehend anything! Our minds can't handle all that knowledge yet. :) So... how loving is it of our Heavenly Father to give us exactly what we need, when we need it, and how we need it, little by little? He loves us so much that He is willing to be patient enough with us to only give us things step by step, krok po kroku. And it just hit me. Shouldn't I love my investigators like that? :)

Anyway, just a little thought that changed my perspective on some things. :) The Gospel is amazing. It is so simple, yet we could increase our knowledge about it forever. :) It is beautiful, because every aspect of it applies to everyone differently, at different points in their lives. The Book of Mormon is the same way. One day, I will read a verse of a specific chapter, then the next week I will read the same verse, and gain a completely new aspect of what the verse is saying. It's wonderful! 

Our lessons this week with our investigators have been so wonderful. Siostra D and I have gone into the lesson with only our Księga Mormona (Book of Mormon), Biblię (Bible), and an index card of how to say a total of five words!! It amazes me how much the Lord will guide our lessons if we put our trust in Him, and not ourselves. Our teacher told us, "If you want to know if you are teaching by the spirit, don't write a script and read it. Put your lesson in your coat pocket, and let the spirit do the rest." So, we did! And man, our lessons are sooo much more spiritual, and touch our investigators so much more now than they ever did with our scripts. With our scripts, we had perfect Polish because most of the sayings we said were taken right from our Preach My Gospel books, but our words weren't as sincere because they weren't OURS. Now, without the scripts, our Polish grammar may not be as good, we may not be as easy to understand, but our lessons are so much better. I've learned that the spirit is the best teacher. Everyone is the world may not be able to speak the same language, but... we all feel the same language- The Spirit. 

Well, that's about all I have time for, but I love you all and pray for you every day. :) I hope you all know the testimony I have of this gospel. This Gospel is peace. It really is. It is joy for the good days, and comfort for the bad ones. It is your flashlight when the power goes out. I know our Heavenly Father lives. He loves you all so much, and I can feel the love He has for you each time I write you all. The Book of Mormon is the true word of God, it is a testament of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is our Savior. He loves enough to have suffered and died for us. Because of Him, we don't have to be perfect. But through him, we can be. This church is true. God lives. I know it with every bit of me.

I hope you all have an amazing week!!

∞,

Siostra Kamp

Our Zone's sweater Saturday GQ Magazine cover photo.  I love these people!!

I love this tree.  And this temple. And this country.  So, I love this picture.

What?! We're missionaries?! :)  These are our Slovak's!  :)

Siostra D's mom sent us a Christmas tree!!  We are SO in the Christmas spirit, and just CAN'T WAIT to open our Christmas countdown package from Mamma Kamp! :)

More pictures...November 1-12, 2015

Krok po Kroku (Step after Step)

Dear Friends and Family,

Oh my goodness, I love you all! Your love and support means the absolute world to me!! :) Thank you for all you do for me, and for all the prayers :) I promise you that I can feel them every day :)

This week in the MTC was AMAZING! The MTC is so wonderful! It is everything I ever hoped it would be, and so much more!! The spirit is incredible here. Not a day goes by that I don't feel the love our Heavenly Father has for all of you, and all the amazing people in Poland. :) I know He is there, and I know He loves us all more than we could ever imagine!

I got a lot of questions about what I meant when I talked about having an investigator!! Okay, let me explain! :) So, I didn't know this at the time, but our investigators are actually our Polish teachers, and they pretend to be an investigator so we can teach them! But it is such a neat experience, because they pretend to be someone that they taught while they were in Poland on their mission! They ask questions like they would, they think like they would, they act like the would... It's amazing! But it is also wonderful because even though we now know that they are actually our teachers, we have developed a love for them not only as our teachers, but also a love for the person they are pretending to be. I love it! We teach real lessons, they ask real questions, and the spirit is felt so strongly!!  Siostra DeMourdant and I were teaching a lesson to our investigator, Karina, yesterday about Faith in Jesus Christ, and the spirit was just so strong in that room. There were times when "Karina" would get tears in her eyes, and we knew that was the spirit. :) I love being a missionary. My heart is always so full of love for everyone I see. I tried to love everyone I met even before I came on my mission, but I feel like the more I turn to the Lord and give my heart to Him, the more He gives me the ability to see others through His eyes. It is the most wonderful feeling. 

My district now has two Polish teachers (WHOO!!!) and we are learning Polish more and more everyday! It is so crazy to look back on the past two weeks and see how far our Polish has come! We work as hard as we can to soak in everything we learn, and are constantly practicing Polish, but we know that the reason we are able to learn so fast is because of the Lord. :) Our teachers are great! The first teacher we had ended up quitting, because we are so awful! No, I'm just kidding :) He got another job for the career he is majoring in, so we were so sad to see him go, but we know he will do amazing!! We love Brat Jensen. (Brother Jensen) :) Our two other teachers are Siostra Cheney and Brat Fotu!! Can I just say... I LOVE THEM. They are amazing. They are wonderful teachers for the language, but they also make sure we know that our purpose here isn't to learn Polish, it is to Invite others to come to Christ. :) We absolutely love them.

We have two investigators at the moment: Karina, and Sławek! They are so wonderful! We just met with Sławek for the first time on Tuesday, but I am so excited to continue teaching Him. He is so kind, and we love how excited he is to meet with us. :) Karina was very closed off at the beginning, and would hardly ever smile when we taught her. But now, it is AMAZING how the spirit has worked in her heart. She glows, and always has the biggest smile on her face when we teach her. :) I love seeing that light of Christ in her eyes. She is amazing. :)When we first began teaching our investigators, Siostra D and I would write out our lesson word for word and just read it to them. It was so bad! ha ha! But this week, we made it a goal to only write down a few key words for our lesson, and then teach the rest without notes! And you know what? We prayed and prayed to be able to do it, and guess what? It happened!! This last lesson with Karina, we wrote down maybe 10-15 key words, and taught the rest with just our brains and the spirit! Whoo!!! It was the most amazing lesson, too! It was all about Faith, and we even told her analogies (I talked about the lightswitch analogy that I said in my farewell talk) and Siostra D talked about this amazing ladder analogy, all mostly without notes! :) We were able to have a good conversation with Karina as well! We actually talked with her, not just to her. This gospel is true, the Lord answers prayers, and He loves all of us! He knows the desires of our hearts. :) This week, he has taught us that the best lessons aren't taught from one mouth to another, they are taught from one HEART to another. :)

 

Here at the MTC, if you are learning another language, they encourage you to SYL (which means Speak your Language) as often as possible! It is very difficult, but it has helped our Polish so much! Every sentence Siostra D and I say to each other has at least a few Polish words in it. It's so awesome. :) Whenever someone holds the door open for us, we always say thank you in polish and they look at us like we are crazy. ha ha! I love it!

Man, my emails are always so long... But I just have so much to tell you all! :) You know when you find a really good song, and you just HAVE to share it with everyone you can?! Well, that is how I feel about this gospel, and my experiences here! So please forgive me for how extensive my emails are! :)

You will never guess what we had for dinner on Monday.... CHICK-FIL-A!!!!!!!!! Oh heavens... I was about to cry a river of happiness! :) It was the BEST. DAY. (And all the missionaries in my zone that don't like Chick-fil-a sauce gave me their sauces... So I have a whole mountain of Chick-fil-a sauce in our room, which makes me so happy inside. :) ha ha!)

Siostra D says the best things ever, and I love her! Her current catch phrases are:

"That's a negative for Raquel!"

"Oh my LANTA!"

and then she always gives me directions (or gives herself directions... out loud... ha ha!) when we are following people like, "Veere! Follow!" 

Cracks me up! :) 

Our favorite thing to do is belt out every song from every musical we know, play "markerball" (basketball with markers), play volleyball at gym with our district (best thing ever) and just have the BEST day every day. :) She is the biggest blessing, and makes me laugh so hard my abs hurt every day! ha ha! I don't know what I'd do without her. :)

Anyways, I am out of time, but I love you all so much! Thank you for your support and love! Everything here comes step by step, little by little,but I absolutely love it. "By little things shall great things come to pass".The MTC makes me so happy, teaching the gospel I love makes me so happy, learning Polish makes me so happy, this whole gospel makes me so happy... Just being a missionary makes me SO HAPPY. :) I absolutely love it here, and am so grateful I still have 7 more weeks to soak in all this MTC GOODNESS! :)

I pray for you all, and all the people of Poland, every day! 

Try to find someone to serve today, it will make you so happy. :)

I love and miss you all!

∞,

Siostra Kamp

 Polish Girls at the temple :)

 It started snowing during class!!! Ahhh!  (even though you can't see the snow in the pic)

 We finally got bins for all of our Polish books!  (My teachers are happy because now the room is much cleaner! :)

Our Starzsy. :)  We love him!

Mission Call Opening

Ummmmmm .....I'm in love with the MTC!

Dear Friends and Family,

Oh my goodness... I can't even tell you how happy I was to open up my email today and see so many emails of love and support!! You guys are absolutely amazing, and I love you all!

(Before you read any further, I am just going to apologize right now for how long this email is probably going to be... I have so much to tell you all!! :) )

The MTC is SO wonderful! I need to have a serious chat with whoever said that Disneyland is the best place on Earth, because obviously they have never been to the MTC! :) The spirit is always constant here. I wake up smiling every day, seriously, and it doesn't leave my face until I'm asleep! I love it here!! 

My companion's name is Siostra DeMordaunt, and she is AMAZING. Everyone in our zone has a real hard time saying her name, so we all just call her Siostra D! Her and I talked to each other over instagram a little before we entered the MTC, but we had NO clue we would be companions!! She is seriously the most amazing person. She is so outgoing, and makes me laugh so hard I cry, every day! :) I am very shy here, but she brings me out of my shell, which I love her for! Her and I have this "companionship vibe" thing goin' on that is seriously awwwesome. We think the same things, we say the same things, we do the same things... We're pretty much the same person. It's so great. She says the funniest things, like: "Coo-coo-cachoo" instead of "Cool!" or "Okay. This is all a lie." when she can't find something in her bag, or when it is cold outside, or just basically for everything! ha ha! We like to have sing alongs every day. It's a blast. Especially, now that it is November, we sing Christmas songs all the time! :) Anyway, she is amazing, and has been the biggest blessing here. I am so grateful for her. I honestly don't know what I would do without her. 

So, my zone is the best thing since sliced bread!! In my zone, we have to Poles (that's us :) ), the Czech's, the Slovak's, the Bulgarian's, and the Slovene's. They are all so great! Every Saturday our zone has a tradition that we call "Sweater Saturday". Preeeetty self-explanatory, but we all wear sweaters and take a picture! Our zone leaders say that during that picture is the only time we are allowed to "pose like we are on the cover of a GQ magazine", which... I didn't even know what that was, but apparently it's super fashionable! So... yeah! :) We are sending in our picture to the GQ magazine editor's, so... Look for us on next month's cover! ;) But that night our whole zone gets together from 9-9:30, and we spend that half hour standing in a circle and singing hymns. It was the most incredible experience, and the spirit was SO strong. 

My district... THE POLES. I loooove them!! There is Siostra D and I, Siostra Barney & Siostra Lerch, Siostra Yochim & Siostra Dekker, and our one and only solo Elder- Starszy Ashworth!! Poor guy, surrounded by all us girls... ;) But he loves it! He is from Manchester, so we are all pretty entertained by his accent! ha ha! He says the funniest things, and is suuuuper sassy. It's great!! We love him! ha ha! Siostra Barney is from Herriman, and I just love her! She is so sweet, and has this "RinderCella" story that she told the other day after we were struggling with the language and it CRACKED us up. ha ha! She just has the best attitude. :) Siostra Lerch is from Gilbert, AZ and is the funniest person I have ever met in my whole life. She talks to herself all the time, and gets so into her stories, I just die whenever she talks! :) Siostra Yochim is from LA, Cali and she is the sweetest person ever. She always sees the good in people, and you can't help but love being around her. If you ever need a self esteem boost, go to her! She'll make you feel better about yourself than if you were to get a letter from the King of England tellin' ya how great you are! Siostra Dekker is so so cute. She is itty bitty, and has the cutest voice, we all love her! She is sooo sweet, and is always smiling! Gosh, I got pretty lucky in the District department! 

And, all us Polish sisters share a room!! It is sooo much fun!! We have a blast talking each others ears off at night. :) One thing we do that I absolutely love, is we always say a group prayer in Polish before we go to bed. I love it. It's just the perfect way to end our perfect days!

The language, uh.. Ohhhh the language... ;) ha ha! It is extremely hard, and confusing 99.9% of the time, but I LOVE IT! Is that crazy?! I love how hard it is, and I love how I spend 12 hours a day trying to sound out words that have a-funkies and e-funkies and s-funkies and c-funkies and l-funkies and all sorts of other funky letters! ;) It's THE BEST. :) It is really hard, but you want to know what? I'm SO grateful that it is hard!! :)   If it wasn't hard, it wouldn't be as rewarding!

On our third day here at the MTC, Siostra D and I had to teach a lesson to an investigator IN POLISH. You should've seen our faces when they told us we would be teaching that day! ha ha ha! Oh man, it was great. So, honestly, it took us 6 hours to plan our lesson! Yes, 6! We planned it all out in English, which took probably 10 minutes, then the rest of the time was spent translating it with this nifty little thing called a Polish-English dictionary ;) We were soooo nervous in that lesson because, uh, we don't speak Polish and here we are trying to teach in it! So, it's safe to say that we stuck to our script and read every word! ha ha :) But the most amaaazing miracle happened a few days ago. So, since last Friday, we have taught our investigator Karina every day! It's crazy! And just to make things crazier, I think we have had a teacher a total of.... 8 hours since we have been here. We've had a teacher for 1 classroom block for two days. That's it! (Hiring problem I guess? I don't know. The supervisor came and talked/apologized to us the other day, and said they are hiring more teachers for us! Weird right?!) So... we've basically been teaching ourselves Polish! :) It's been great though because we have had to learn to really rely on the Lord and turn to Him. 

Anyway, our second lesson with Karina was just awful we thought! She kept asking us questions and we just had absolutely no idea what she was saying, or how to respond, so she would ask us a question, we would stare at her (with a look that I'm sure was like, "What in the world are you saying, lady?"), and then go right back to reading our lesson! It was so bad... ha ha! So, while we were planning our third lesson, we were kind of frustrated, so we decided- you know what, this isn't working when we do this by ourselves. We need to pray, and trust in the Lord. Let the spirit take the reins on this one. So, we prayed harder and more fervently than I think we both ever have in our entire lives. After we prayed to be inspired what to teach her, and for the Lord to loosen our tongues, we both sat there for a moment, then at the same time we both said, "The Gospel Blesses Families". (I'm telling you, this companionship vibe thing is craaaazy. (It's called the spirit ;) ) ) It was amazing! So, we wrote a basic lesson plan, but went in there with prayerful hearts that the spirit would guide our lesson and touch her heart. Long story short, we understood every word she said in that lesson, were able to answer her questions, and not a single one of us (even karina) left the lesson with a dry eye. It was AMAZING. Goodness, I am sitting here getting teary eyed just thinking about it. :) The Lord answers prayers. He is there! The gospel is true. I've never been more sure of anything in my life. :) 

Since that lesson, I've come to realize that the best lessons aren't taught from one mouth to another, they're taught from one heart to another. I love it here. :)

Well, I am almost out of time, so I've got to get going! But I love you all so so much, and miss you all! Thank you for all the letters, packages, love, and support! They mean more to me than you will ever know. :)

Thank you for all the prayers also. I can honestly tell you that I feel them. They make me strive to be the best I can be. :)

dearelder.com is like the best thing ever if anyone ever wants to send me a short letter. Seriously, missionaries ADORE them! (Especially me!)

I love you all and will talk to you soon! :) I hope all is well with you all! Don't worry about me, I am pretty much in heaven here! I LOVE THE MTC. :) & ALL OF YOU. AND THE GOSPEL. 

I'm the luckiest missionary in the world!

∞,

Siostra Kamp

 We dressed in the Poland flag for Halloween. Best thing ever.  :)

 Siostra D and I with alllll our Polish books.  We love it here. :) 

 All the sisters in our zone!

 Look who I found!  Elder Gray and Elder Lyon!!

Cleaning bathrooms for service.  We mean business!! :)