Happy Homecoming!

Kari is home and doing well. It's wonderful to have her here!

She will be speaking to the YA's this Sunday, Oct. 16th 1:00 pm

and to her home ward on Oct. 23rd 9:00 am

The address is 27976 Marguerite Parkway, Mission Viejo Ca. 92691

la paz 28 - sept 19 "chau"

HOLA FAMILIA!

Esta carta la voy a escribir en español para que aprendan. Jajaja! Naaaa. Mentira. Voy a seguir en Ingles para que no sufran tanto. This is my last, so I better make it good right? This is so weird. I always felt like the missionaries at the end of their missions knew everything and I feel soooo not like that. I have learned a ton, I have grown a lot personally I feel at least, and for that I am grateful. But I still have so much more to learn! Life is just one big journey.

One thing I think the mission has really taught me is how much I really love my Savior, and appreciate all that He has done and still does for all of us. I feel like I have learned just a little bit more about Him while trying to be His representative; trying to say and do what He himself would say and do if He were here. It’s not easy…the Savior’s life was not easy, but He never complained.

Well this week here in “the Peace” was interesting. We are working a lot with Patricia Golly….she is a heavy smoker…but she is smoking a LOT less…before it was 60-80 cigarettes a day…and now it’s 10-20 a day. She is so funny…last night we had an activity at the church, and she came. And I went to go to the bathroom, and I open the door and there is all this cigarette smoke, but there isn’t anyone in the bathroom. The other day she had a box of cigarettes and we told her she couldn’t smoke anymore after she finished that package. And I took the package when she wasn’t looking and marked it with a pen. Then later we returned that evening to check up on her, and she told us she had smoked only that box. So I asked her to see the box. The box had no marking on it, and I told her that she was lying, that this was a different box. And she denied and denied, and then finally gave in and told us. Oh Patricia….so this has been quite the adventure. Her boyfriend is a recent convert, and he has been helping her a lot too. She keeps telling me how much she is going to miss me when I am gone and how she is going to write to me when she quits smoking for good.

So I have my final interview with President tomorrow. That will be good, he always has good things to say. The package was fun. Thanks for sending that mom. The church is true, the book is blue, so yabba dabba doo! Welp, I gotta go. See you guys on Wednesday!

Love, hermana amundsen

la paz 27 - sept 12

Hollllllaaaaaaa.

Wow. 2 weeks. I only have one more letter after this. This week was a tough week. A few thing happened. Let’s see. We went by a mom and a daughter that we have taught, and the daughter came out and flat out rejected the Book of Mormon, saying that they didn’t even have interest in it. We bore our testimonies and invited her to really pray, but she doesn’t even want to. That was tough, I felt like I had to defend the Book of Mormon, because I love it so much and know how much it has blessed my life. It hurt to think that someone could reject it without even giving it a chance.

Then Saturday Sonia was supposed to have her baptism interview. The elders came down from another town to do it. And as we are waiting for the bus to go to Sonia’s house, she sends us a text message saying to forgive her, but she is just not ready for baptism yet. A few minutes later we tried calling her, and her mom answered…sonia had already left. The mom told us that they didn’t want us to come by anymore to teach them. (we had been teaching the whole family for 2 months) so that was a major blow. That one really hurt. I cried and felt like a failure.

Saturday and Sunday morning all my thoughts were, “what did I do wrong?” “why am I here if i’m not helping anyone?” and all that other stuff. I grabbed my scriptures and sat on my bed and decided to say a prayer. After the prayer I opened my scriptures to wherever and began to read Mosiah 2; King Benjamin’s address. Verse 17…

“and behold, I tell you these things that ye may learn wisdom; that ye may learn that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God.”

I don’t know how many times I have read this scripture…I even have it memorized…but Sunday morning it was the answer to my prayer. I remembered a story that President Eyring had once told about his father. They had been pulling weeds for hours, and his father had been pulling weeds in a place where they had already sprayed to kill the weeds. And when they told Pres. Eyring’s dad that he had been pulling weeds where they were already going to die, Pres. Eyring’s dad began to laugh. And Pres. Eyring said “dad, how can you laugh, all your hours of work are wasted!” and Pres. Eyring’s father responded, “I wasn’t doing it for the weeds.” I realized that my efforts were not wasted, like Pres. Eyring’s father…I was in the service of my God. And I felt that Heavenly Father was telling me that.

We need to pay better attention the scriptures…It’s God’s way of talking to us. When we need to talk to God, we pray…but when God wants to talk to us, He uses the scriptures…they are His words.

Welp folks. That’s it til next week. I love you guys a lot! Thanks for the letters.

Love, kari

la paz 26 - sept 5

HOLA

Sounds like a pretty hectic week. Good thing it’s a holiday, so that you guys can slow down just a bit. So marie and rick moved again!? So where are they now? And mom, I’m sure your lesson went well…I think that’s funny that you get more nervous to teach then you do to give a talk, I think I am the opposite.

And dad you are totally right about the spirit. This week was a good one. Our Sonia is progressing. She came to church yesterday, and it was fast and testimony meeting like you guys. Well, the spirit was really strong as the members bore their testimonies, and Sonia was in tears, I was too. She totally knows it’s true. She says she feels good whenever she is with us or at the church, and then when she is out she kinda loses that drive. Her family is kinda sorta supporting her. They always receive us well, and some of the kids are starting to ask some really good questions, but the parents are a little slower. And Sonia wants more than anything to have her family more united and have family prayer and things.

Something that really hit me this week was the importance of families. We have been studying the atonement as a mission, and the other day I was reading a talk called “the atonement” by Russell M. Nelson, and it hit me how key the family is. The earth was created so that the family could have a place to live…Adam and Eve fell so that they could have a family…and Christ died so that we can return to live with God and our families. We cannot inherit eternal life without our families. The temple is so key…it seals us together and helps us return to God and to become like him. This is why Satan works soooo hard to destroy the family, because it is soooo important. He has us believe that living together and not getting married is ok, that you can have relationships with your own gender, and all the other stuff because he knows that when we fall into these traps we cannot reach our potential to become like God.

The other day we were out with Perla, who is a member here…and we were out knocking doors. So, my turn. I clap my hands and out comes a lady and a couple dogs. She walks across the front lawn to the gate where we were. As we are chatting she opens the gate to let the dogs out. All the sudden I feel something warm on heels and look down to see one of the dogs walking away from me. I though maybe it had licked me. No. it had peed on me!!!! Well, I was in the middle of a conversation, so I couldn’t do anything. My comp was holding back a burst of laughter and Perla hadn’t even seen. Finally the lady leaves (didn’t want anything). And I pulled off my shoes and started to clean up a bit. Luckily it had hit mostly my shoes and only parts of my heels….and a little of my dress! We laughed sooo hard! We just kept working, we were far from home and I figured it wasn’t too bad. If you don’t get bit by a dog on your mission you get peed on. I’d rather get peed on I guess. The good thing was that the next house we knocked we found some way rad people! So hopefully we’ll get them going on the straight and narrow path that leads to eternal life!

Enjoy the braces chicas! That’s about it. Thanks for your prayers and your love. I love you guys! I have the best family in the world!

kari

la paz 25 - aug 29

Hello.

well. thanks for the letters and the info. Keep those legs tan jodes. That’s sweet that sara is married. I’m sure a lot more weddings happened while I was gone that I didn’t even hear about. That’s so cool mom that you get to help out so much with the missionary work. Hopefully the weather is still hot when I get back….this whole double winter thing is not my favorite. But it was actually super nice here this week.

The zone conference was fun. Everyone kept saying…”oh my gosh! Hna. Amundsen, you’re dying aren’t you!!?” so that was kinda weird to hear. But the conference was really good. I learned a lot.

I realized something this week. I am loving more. I really feel my love growing for my companion and for the members. I’ve been praying a lot for that, and I feel like Heavenly Father is really answering my prayers and blessing me. Like the other day my comp was really upset with a member. And so I was able to remain calm, and the Lord really guided my steps until I could calm her down. (This was Sunday morning). And on our way to church I put my arm around her and said “hey, you’re going to be ok.” And then later, we saw that member and she was like “¡hug me hug me hug me!! It helped when you hugged me!” so I just laughed and gave her another hug. But when I showed her love, that’s when she was really able to relax.

Also…Sonia is going to be baptized the 17^th of sept. But she didn’t come to church on Sunday, and we don’t know why. They didn’t answer the phone. But we have a cita with them tonight, so we’ll see what’s up. The mom, Delia, doesn’t like it when we invite them to come to church and to be baptized…she wants to take her own time and listen, but without commitments, she doesn’t want to promise anything. So we have to be kinda careful that we don’t wear out our welcome too. But hopefully everything will go well these next few weeks.

That’s all for now. We got our English class back! So we are now teaching again. Have a good week you guys. I love you!!!

hna. amundsen

la paz 24 - aug 22

Hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhola

This week was a gooood week. We have been teaching the flia. Siano since july, they are a family of 9; 7 kids and the 2 parents. Well, Sonia, who is 18 years old started to show a little more interest in what we’ve been teaching. And this week she and her brother Jose came to church!!!! We were so stoked! But that’s not even the best part.

So we are sitting in Gospel Principles class and towards the end Sonia was asked a question, something like “what do you think?” and there was suddenly a silence in the room. Sonia began to cry, and couldn’t talk. And Sergio (another investigator that was there) was like, “I know this might be kinda weird, but I get the impression that Sonia will be like them one day (pointing at me and my comp), I didn’t want to say it at first, but that’s how I feel.” I couldn’t believe it…that same thought had come me the other day when we had been teaching Sonia and her family, but I just figured I was getting overly excited. And then later my comp told me she had thought the same thing.

When Sonia could finally speak she said that she just feels like everything we have been talking about is for her, “cada punto” she said, (every point) was something that she needed to hear. Do you guys realize how good I felt at this moment? Sonia and Jose couldn’t stay for sacrament meeting this week, but next week they said for sure. We have another cita with them on Wednesday…so we’ll see how it goes!!!

It was so funny, because after class we were talking to Sonia about when we could come by, and my comp thought we were talking about her baptism, and my comp says “¡podemos hacerlo ahora!” which is, “we can do it right now!” and so I had to explain to my comp that we were seeing when we could come by. Hahahaha. She was just so dang excited! Like the elder in the Best Two Years. That was my companion yesterday. “we just think you look great in white” type of thing. Later when she came to her senses she asked me, “why didn’t you just slap me or something?”

So anyways…I also gave a talk on Sunday. I talked about testimonies, and shared a bunch of stories from my life. But this talk I really felt the spirit working through me. I felt like this was the topic Heavenly Father wanted me to talk about. But I invited the members to pray regarding their own testimonies and then pray for opportunities to be able to share it with others. And I shared some of my experiences of sharing the gospel. But it is so important that we really do share our testimonies with others. READ D&C 60:2!!!!! We as members have a great responsibility, and it doesn’t matter if they accept everything we say, just share a bit with them. Like Elder Uchtdorf said…when people ask how was your weekend…skip over the normal stuff and talk about something a youth speaker might have said in church, or something you learned from church. SOMETHING! Like, mom and dad, you could totally talk about how Sarah gave her first talk in church and how she spoke about virtue! DONE! Simple. Just do it.

We also had a funny ecperience on Saturday. We as missionaries started teaching an English class every sat….well…there is a member that lived in the US and she speaks English, and I guess even used to teach English. So she shows up and says that she will be teaching the class. Well, she has a very strong personality so we didn’t resist too much….but we weren’t very happy. Our students weren’t too happy either. It was an interesting experience. But that’s all for now.

We have a zone conference tomorrow in Parana. So I am excited for that! I love you guys! Thanks for your letters and for your prayers!

Love kari

la paz 23 - aug 15 "the last stretch"

Hola familia.

So transfers. No change. I am staying here with my same companion, and I am ok with it. So ya, President called me on Friday, and told me he wanted to come and talk to my comp and I. So Sunday he came, and he interviewed me. I wasn’t sure why he had wanted to come, but he later told me. That interview helped me out a lot. He just listened to me, and mostly comforted me. He is really loving. He told us what would be happening for transfers and wanted to know my reaction and how I would be for this last stretch of my mission, and what I thought about it.

While he was interviewing my comp I got a chance to talk to Hna. Giuliani. That was also fun for me. She is really great. I expressed to her some of my fears, and she told me 2 things that I really love. She told me “sometimes you have to make your own rainbows.” And its true. We decide.

She then told me that an airplane can still fly during a storm. She said there is a place in the storm called the “eye of the storm,” and it lies in the center. And if a pilot finds himself in a storm, he has to find the eye, and fly there. She said to me “fly in the eye of the storm”….when everything is crazy and hectic all around, find that eye, and that’s where you gotta go.

But this week was a good week. I felt really pumped and ready to work…and then I got sick. Haha. I woke up Wednesday all congested, and then thurs was a little worse. We still worked, but Thursday after walking for a while my head started hurting and I felt really weak, so I asked my comp if we could sit down for a second. We were right next to the river, so we sat down on a bench next to a man that seemed to be working. I had seen this man quite a few times and had wanted to talk to him, but I never had the chance, I just knew him from a distance. Soon enough he started talking to us. “This is great!” and it was. We shared the message of the restoration with him and left him with a copy of the Book of Mormon. (he said he loves to read, so I was super stoked to give it to him!). He doesn’t live here in La Paz, he just comes here to work often. He has long curly brown hair…I think that’s what made him stand out to me from before. But he was super grateful to us. I was able to bear my testimony to him. I told him that I didn’t have any doubts about what we had shared with him. And he kinda paused and looked at me. “you don’t have any doubts?” he asked. “None” I told him. That seemed to surprise him.

But it just made me think, that maybe the reason that I was sick was just so that we could talk to Dario that day. God works in mysterious ways. But I LOVE the gospel. I LOVE my savior Jesus Christ, and I know that this is HIS church, that it is the only church directed by HIM. The one and only. I feel so blessed to have this knowledge.

This is my last transfer…it’s kinda weird thinking about that. Mom, I laughed about the story of Julie’s birthday celebration. She would pull something like that. Oh ya…and last night we totally had a hail storm, it was gnarly. Our roof is metal…and so it was super duper loud in our pench. Haha! Try sleeping with that! It wasn’t even cold, so it was super weird. Anyway. I gotta go. Time is out! I love you guys. Ttthankss for the letters!

Love kari