Make-Up Blog Posts & Photos of Eyebrows.

This picture has Kathleen in it.  If you look at Sister Jackson, in the red jacket, and look behind her and behind the Sister in blue, you can see Kathleen's eyebrows.  She is a little too short to be in the 3rd Row.

We have been quite remiss in posting Kathleen's emails, so we are going to catch up with excerpts from the last three.  Sorry for the delay.  We know everyone wants to know what she's up to.  So here they are:

Generic Weekly Email-5/17/15

This week was slow, but we still had some good experiences! Monday really started out strong when we taught a new investigator (M) who was really open to listening to us. She has cousins who are in the church and one that´s even serving a mission in the United States. She has a really cute family and seems like a really special person.

We are also teaching a boy named J. He is somehow related to Aa. We keep asking both of their families, but everyone gives us a different story, so we might never know. Nonetheless, he´s proven to have a lot of promise. He´s really liked meeting with us. We went to visit Aa this week and she asked us if we were teaching him. We told her that we were, and she said that apparently he was so excited about it that he was telling his non-member brother all about it. He´s a really sincere, sweet kid.

We taught Jx again, and he´s been progressing really well. He´s a really inquisitive person and he wants to know everything. He´s asked a few questions about the Word of Wisdom this week (mainly because the members kept telling him about the Word of Wisdom despite our efforts to control the amount of information he receives), so we decided to teach him about it. Since he´s been so curious about prophets and modern day revelation, we decided to give him a copy of Doctrine and Covenants and gave him a few things to study. He appears to be taking it all very well.

Also, this was a copy of Doctrine in Covenants that we found in our apartment. We didn't realize that two other missionaries wrote in it to a different investigator a few years ago, and we suspect that they never had the chance to give it to him. But we had the chance to give it to Jx. Our member at this lesson, C, saw Jx coming and told us "Quick! Cross out the other missionaries names and put your own in!" And so we did. Jx thought it was hilarious.

We've been really lucky this transfer to have a lot of people really invested in the welfare of our investigators. Ca, an older Spanish gentleman, took a real interest in Jx. He asks about him all the time and has even given us things like movies to let him borrow. We were worried that they wouldn't get along at first, but they really hit it off.

We invited him to meet Aa this week, and he loved being over there. Aa is always willing to just let us pass by with our investigators. She loved meeting him and we think he appreciated it as well.

Also, our district leader, Elder Gao, has really pitched in on helping S. He said he will invite him to go to appointments with him. He asks about him a lot. It´s really inspiring to see how much the people in our ward are working to help someone come unto Christ.

I've really put a lot of thought into what it means to depend on the Savior this week. I've felt discouraged at times and I've felt a little sick this whole transfer. Sometimes it felt like I didn't have any physical or spiritual strength to do anything. I've prayed a lot to know what to do and say that would carry me through a lesson, and we've had many good lessons that were really guided by the Spirit this week.

Sopresas!!

In response to the last email, here is what happened with transfers: The unexpected.

First unexpected thing, some of our investigators almost cried when they heard one of us was going to leave. It was good to know that we had a good relationship with them.

We received our phone call on Saturday night and I was just expecting to get something that went something like "Hermana Sykes goes to Barrio 6 with Hermana So and So and Hermana Griffin gets So and So."

What we really got was a lot more shocking. Hermana Griffin was told she was going to Barrio 8 and I was staying... To train another missionary.

Actually at first we were told that our area was closing, which was much more surprising considering that we had a lot of progression this last transfer. Luckily, one of us was staying. Nonetheless, I´m still really nervous for tomorrow when I pick up my new companion. Please pray for me. I really want to be a good trainer and help her be a good missionary.

I´m pretty sad about losing Hermana Griffin.I loved her and she was a really good missionary, friend and companion. I know she´ll do great in her next area.

Right now I´m having an adventure with Hermana Barkle. We´re companions until tomorrow. She only has been on her mission for 5 months and she´s whitewashing an area (Translation: The sisters before her both left and left the area for her and she doesn't know anyone or the area) AND she´s training.

She´s really worried, but I saw her spring into action immediately when we hit Móstoles and get to work. We planned for an investigator who has a baptism this Saturday and started sorting through the apartment for resources. We´re going to be doing a lot of preparation for her new companion tomorrow. She´s going to do a really good job. (Also on an unrelated note, she´s from Australia and is really cool!)

We saw some incredible miracles this week. We realized this week we really needed to find people, so we had dedicated about 4 hours this week looking for old investigators and street contacting. We found some very wonderful people including a Spaniard who told us he really needed the message we shared with him.

We also found a woman who was really excited to talk with us. I felt a pretty strong nudge to go and talk to her and I´m happy we did. She has family that are members and at least one cousin who is serving a mission in the United States. We stopped her when she was with her 4 year old daughter and she told her "Honey, shush. We´re going to listen to the nice elders." We thought it was pretty funny she thought we we´re elders but even happier that she wanted to listen to us. 

S is plugging along really well. We invited a member to come help us go over the baptismal interview questions with him. He told us that he was at "85%" on Joseph Smith and the Restoration. He says he believes it and wants to believe it, but he´s not quite sure yet. Aj, the member we invited for this lesson who is a convert himself, was able to relate his personal experiences. Smith´s attitude started to shift a little. You can see more and more that he´s starting to develop a testimony.

J, Aa´s relative, is progressing at full force. He´s reading, praying and made it a point to come to church for all three hours this week. He even mentioned that he want´s to serve a mission. One of the Elder´s lent him his name tag to see how it fits. :)

Ja, our less-active member who´s coming back to church for the first time in 26 years, came to a baptism with us this week. She loved it. She said it brought back so many warm memories to her. We explained baptism to her later this week and the covenants we make. I bore my testimony of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the sacrament. I remember the room was filled with the most wonderful feeling of the Spirit. She stared at us in silence for a few seconds and then told us she didn´t want either of us to go. It was really satisfying to me.

Also, as a side note, she´s a make-up artist. She did my make up this week as a nice, natural, day-time look. It was really pretty, but I felt like I was dressed up to go to the opera. :)

We met with a new investigator this week, Zx. She´s from Brazil and had met with the missionaries for some time in another part of Madrid until she lost contact. The elders brought her to English class one time and she sought us out afterwards to tell us that she wanted us to come by and teach her. The elders were a little confused, but were happy to pass the referral. She was so prepared to hear the Gospel. She loved the whole message and even wrote down scriptures we gave her. She had been sick for the last few months and we offered her a blessing. The elders came and gave her one and she said she had felt so much better when we were around her.

This is only a tenth of the awesome things that happened this week! I wish I could write more. I´ll talk with you next week. I love you guys!

Sincerely,

Hermana Sykes 

The Voyage

This is Kathleen's most recent letter.  I am posting the entire letter.

Familia y Amigos!

Let me explain the title of this email. A few weeks ago an Elder once told me that his brother told him that all missionaries get to a point in their mission where they look back and all they see is mission. Then they look forward and all they see is mission. A little like being in the middle of the ocean.

I hit that point this week. It´s a little surreal.

Also, I had to strain my eyes at the word "voyage" to remember if it was actually a word in English.

I´ll start with the funny stuff this week.

We had a ward activity this week that was a lot of fun. We met a few people and have some good leads of new people to teach. This was also one of the funniest culture shocks of my mission.

We had a barbecue, and I´m kicking myself for thinking we would eat hot dogs and hamburgers. We are in a ward that is about 95% South American, and the food we eat with the members is usually stuff I don´t recognize. We went into the kitchen to see what they were preparing and they had a GINORMOUS tub filled with some sort of organ meat. I´ve eaten various organs before, but I didn´t recognize these. This is what ensued:

"Hey, Paa. What are these?"

"Oh! They´re whatchamacallits!"

"What?"

"They´re whatchamacallits."

"I don´t know what that is.

"Oh... Um... It´s the part of the chicken that holds the eggs. They´re great! I promise!"

What she was describing were chicken ovaries. We both tried one, and we politely left the room to find a place to spit them out. I also ate what I´m pretty sure was chicken tongues this week. I was at a lunch where one of the elders was served cow tongue. He hid most of it in his napkin and later described it as "It was like kissing a cow!"

We had two investigators -- Jx and S -- show up to this ward activity and they had a great time! They stayed all five hours and played games, played with the children and made a lot of friends. We both felt pretty strongly that this was going to help them progress a lot. 

I´ve noticed a strange quirk about the people in Spain. The last few days have been REALLY hot. Normally people tell us to put on a coat even when it´s warm, but they usually believe that it´s cold out (it´s not). It´s been 70 and above, and I´ve still been seeing people with winter coats and sweaters. We saw several women in wool coats fanning themselves with flamenco fans on a hot bus yesterday. In case there was any doubt before, we´re in Spain.

Now on to the more spiritual stuff.

The fifth person contacted us on the street this week. He had met with missionaries before and had wanted to know if we knew one. He invited us to come talk to him next week. We´ve been having a lot of luck with people contacting us!

We met with a less active woman this week named Ja. She was baptized with her cousins in Peru when she was 8, but when she was 13, she inexplicably stopped coming to church. She lived her life as normal: Went to school, moved to Spain, got married, had a baby. Everything was going normally until her life started to unravel. She started to realize how much she needed God in her life and she had spoken to just about everyone: Jehovah´s Witnesses, Pentecostals, Hari Krishnas, but nothing seemed to work. She ran into the Elders in the neighboring area and she told us that it just seemed right that she ran into them.

She was so excited to have us come over to meet her (even though we woke up her baby, Ls). We discovered that she didn´t know much about the church, and we started teaching her about the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We had asked her if she had ever asked herself why there were so many churches in the world, and she told us that was one of the most prominent questions in her mind. She also wanted to know why -- if there is a God -- so many bad things happen in the world, especially to children.

We promised her that if she prayed and asked God, that he would reveal an answer to her. She was very confident that she could receive an answer. She might be one of the most amazing people we teach. We could tell during the whole lesson that she has the Gift of the Holy Ghost. She is very in tune with the Spirit.

We´re really excited about Smith. He´s super enthusiastic about church and loves coming. He´s working really hard on keeping the commandments and is doing a good job! He´s been progressing really well and, assuming he keeps pushing along, will get baptized next week. We´ve been praying for him that he can receive and nurture a testimony. Your prayers are appreciated too.

Ji left for Barcelona this week and won´t be back until the 15th. She might even move there. We´re going to be in contact with her. Nonetheless, she´s progressing really well. Please keep praying for her and her family.

I learned a lot about seed planting this week (in the spiritual sense). I´ve finally started to see that no matter how small my actions are, if I´m trying to be like the Savior and teaching people (even though they reject us sometimes), I am actually making a difference.

I read something in Preach My Gospel this week about what it means to be an effective missionary. It doesn´t matter what the external factors (number of baptisms, lessons taught, etc.) but what you are trying to do and if you are trying to follow Jesus Christ. I found this list and I loved it so much I made a poster for my desk:

You´re an effective missionary (or member or person) when you:

• Feel the Spirit testify to people through you.
• Love people and desire their salvation.
• Obey with exactness.
• Live so that you can receive and know how to follow the Spirit, who will show you where to go, what to do, and what to say.
• Develop Christlike attributes.
• Work effectively every day, do your very best to bring souls to Christ, and seek earnestly to learn and improve.
• Help build up the Church (the ward) wherever you are assigned to work.
• Warn people of the consequences of sin. Invite them to make and keep commitments.
• Teach and serve other missionaries.
• Go about doing good and serving people at every opportunity, whether or not they accept your message.

I love you guys all very much. Have a great week!

Love,

Hermana Sykes

A Whole Bunch of Letters

We've received a whole bunch of letters from Kathleen that I have just neglected to post for the last few weeks.  So I am going to make up for it by posting this cute picture and excerpts below from a few of her letters.  -- Rebecca Sykes

April 20, 2015

We finally met with Mle this week. This was the woman who ushered us into her house to talk to her children a week ago. We finally caught her when she was home and we had a wonderful lesson with her. 

This was another one of those times where you have something planned for someone, but you realize that they need something else. We wanted to teach her about the restoration this week, but the Spirit guided us away from that as we started talking to her. She first started talking to us and peppering us with questions: Why are we on a mission, do we have two last names or just one, who was our family etc.

As we started teaching I was going to ask why she was interested in meeting with us, but I got an impression to instead ask who Jesus Christ was in her life. She opened up to us about how she is really struggling. She is out of work because she broke her hand and still can´t move it. She has a daughter that is in jail in her country. Another in France who´s about to have a baby and she can´t visit. Her son ran off to go live with a much older girlfriend. And last of all, her other daughter got mixed up with gypsies and a dangerous lifestyle. Like any parent, she is very pained, but she believes the Lord is still with her. And he is.

We talked about the Atonement of Jesus Christ and that he understands what she feels. We also explained that because of the Gospel, families can be united now and in eternity. She has many things to hope for. We taught her how to pray and invited her to pray at the end of the lesson. She really appeared to feel that the Lord was listening to her. You could tell that she knew she was talking to her Father in Heaven. Hermana Griffin asked her if we could do anything for her at the end of the lesson, and she really appreciated that we took such an interest in her and her needs.

4/27/15  Grandes Noticias!!

I have some awesome news... Followed by more awesome news. Actually I´m pretty sure this is going to be a great email.

First off, we were in companionship study today when we recieved an ominous phonecall from our district leader. He said that all the missionaries are to read the ENTIRE bulletin. Hermana Griffin and I were both a little nervous about what this meant. Maybe it meant there was going to be a split in the mission. Perhaps we were going to be collectively called to repentance (although I´m not sure why I thought this as we appear to be a pretty good mission).

We had to go to 4 different computer cafés in order to find two computers side by side (mission rule) in the small space of 45 minutes. We quickly signed on to see what happened only to find out... Drumroll please... 

We´re getting iPads!!!

We have a seminar on the 7th to train us how to use them. I´m crazy excited for this!

In the way of spiritual things this week I wanted to talk about something really important to missionary work: Invitations.

It´s basically what all good missionary work is based on. It´s part of the plan of God for us to learn how to put off our natural inclinations to be selfish and serve ourselves. As missionaries, we can not make people do the right thing no matter how much it will make them happy. The only thing we can do is invite. This is the way that the Lord works with his children in order to help them do good.

I read this in Moroni 7:13,16

"But behold, that which is of God inviteth and enticeth to do good continually; wherefore, every thing which inviteth and enticeth to do good, and to love God, and to serve him, is inspired of God... For behold, the Spirit of Christ is given to every man, that he may know good from evil; wherefore, I show unto you the way to judge; for every thing which inviteth to do good, and to persuade to believe in Christ, is sent forth by the power and gift of Christ; wherefore ye may know with a perfect knowledge it is of God."