AMAZING GRACE

Hey Everyone!!!!! 

This week has been spectacular, and weird, and hard, and great! all in one!  I am just meeting some really awesome people! One of our new investigators is Karen and she was in a bunch of bands, and so her music shrine room was so fun to see.  We talked music for a bit so that was fun. 

We are teaching Elaine, who is seriously the Golden investigator! She is so amazing, and so sweet! She is from the south, and seriously Southern Hospitality is alive and well in miss Elaine.  I just love her! She is like a mom to me out here.

One new investigator is Steve and he plays the bag pipes! He is so awesome!!!  At first, we went over to meet his wife Mary, and he wasn't interested, but his wife wasn't home one day so we just sat on the porch and talked and built a lot of trust with him.  He is a really awesome guy! In our first lesson with him, his wife's friend came over really really drunk and kept interrupting saying weird things to us, and wanted to pray with us in a circle holding hands and she kept saying weird words we didn't know, but it was fine.  It was an unexpected turn in the road, but bless her. I hope next time we talk with her she is a little more sober.. what an awesome lady.. haha.  Because of the craziness happening with that lady we didn't leave their house til late and we got home past curfew that night. We felt terrible cuz we have been trying hard to be obedient.  It was scary riding our bikes home after curfew because we didn't have the blessing of safety because of obedience so we felt like we were definitely in the danger zone. our bad.  But it was an opportunity to really repent and to search our souls for things that the Lord really wanted us to improve so that we can have His Spirit with us more.  I was reading in D&C 25. It was written to Emma, but I likened it unto me.  I want nothing more than the Lord to consider me an "elect lady" and so I really need to use the Atonement more to become the woman He wants me to be.    

So Steve loves us and played amazing grace on the bag pipes for us and told us the story of how it came about.  A guy worked on a slave ship as a free man, but was captured and made a slave himself.  He worked for years and finally bought his way to freedom, and the day that happened he wrote Amazing Grace.  that man knew that Jesus Christ helped him through those hard times and had set him free - spiritually and physically.  It's amazing that he still does that today.  That's the source of my Spiritual thought today.  Just what an AMAZING gift the Savior's Grace is.  He gives us hope and peace in this crazy world because we know that because of Him we can live forever with our families.  We can be forgiven of ALL of our sins, and be strengthened through ALL of our trials.  I know that when each of us goes through our own personal Gethsemane, what better Friend to have with us than our Savior Jesus Christ, who has experienced it all.  He has done so much for us, and all He asks is that we follow Him. (And when we follow Him it is the naturally safer and happier way, and THEN the Lord turns around and blesses us even more.)  It really AMAZES me how much the Lord loves us, and how good He is to us.  I love Him so much, and it is an honor to wear His  name on my chest, next to my name.  It is AMAZING to see how His grace changes me, and the people I meet for the better! We all are saved by Grace, but are we changed by it?  I hope each of us will turn to the Savior and have Him help us with one way to be better. One step at a time, one day at a time.   I love you all SOOOOOO MUCH! I miss you, and think about you all, and laugh to myself.  (my companion is now starting to realize just how crazy I am.)  I love you!

Onward Christian Soldiers!

From me to you, Kinzie Lou