Week 23...West Virginia here I come!!!

Kody...Elder Killian had a great chance to e-mail with his mom and send letters back to those who emailed him so we did not get a letter from him...BUT he sent some fun pictures....thanks to his GREAT brother Desmond who sent him a piece of equipment to slide is USB drive into and send pictures home!!!!


We do have his new address in Petersburg, West Virginia...1604 Michael Avenue, Petersburg WV 26847

 Kody and his current Companion in Luray, VA.  As of right now we do not know if this companion will also go onto Petersburg to open up that area again for Missionary work.

 Last week Kody talked about being invited into a home and the gentlemen was a hunter and had a lot of taxidermy...Kody LOVED it...

 Kody also mentioned that he was going to have to come back to Virginia every hunting season since he can get 3 bucks and as many does as he wants!!!

 Plenty of Black Bear's but no Grizzly bear's here in Virginia....

One final picture...this comes from our family..."the Lane Gang", this what makes Luray, VA so famous...this was taken in the Luray Cavern....this picture does not even come close to showing the beauty that is there...this area has water on the bottom that reflects back the top of the cavern, this is also an organ that plays through the stalactites and stalagmites it is just breathtaking...

Week 22

Hello Firthites

                                    So i am back in Luray, VA , things are not going to bad we can still find people to talk to (you always can if you keep working hard.)

my new companion is Elder Thueson he was in the MTC with me so that's pretty cool. It's always weird changing back from a TRIO. but definitely we are having fun and working hard here. They mad the church or dentist office a little bigger or at least the sacrament room but you walk in to the clerks office and the sundayschool class it is super small, so small that you have to walk outside to turn around. But we have been teaching another person that fell off date he still didnt come to church but when he is not busy which is hard when you drive ambulance and are on call all the time, and also everybody has the stomach flu here, thank goodness i have not got it yet, with the quick weather change almost all of Luray is getting sick.

Went to this one guys house named travis he let us teach him but he was not super interested but was nice and let us in. Anyways after we got done teaching he took us around and showed him all his mounted whitetail bucks and all the animals he has shot which made me feel at home , and here it is crazy for hunting season you can shoot a maximum of 3 bucks or as many does as you want in one season, so when i get home i am taking a trip down to Virginia every hunting season.

street contacting and door knocking go pretty good here even though a lot of people aren't on the street we have talked to 75 people in 4 days so that's cool last transfer it was 510 people in one transfer, it's not a super big deal but it's cool to count the full efforts we get in a transfer.

Anyways not much more to talk about this week but talk to you next week!!!!!

                            These are pictures of the {dental office} church in Luray, VA

                                          This is where Sacrament Meeting takes place....

I had to add this cute message that Kody sent to jour family..the bummer is that I cannot make it to our "date" because of having to be in Baltimore that day.....darn it..

Hey Aunt wendi you wanna come down to Luray thursday and @ 4 and i will give you a tour of the church and take us to dinner that would be super sick, if not thats fine thankyou for all the food i definitely wont shop for awhile 

Love you tons and i can see that jim is just as distuctive as i am not quite as much but but he is getting there.

Elder Killian and others from the mission on the day they went to the temple, now serve as the main page on the Baltimore Mission Page on Facebook...

Week 21...Back to Luray!!!

 This is the Missionaries that attended the temple the Washington D.C. Temple that Kody ( I mean Elder Killian) talks about in his letter.

This is the missionaries or at least a group of Elder's all together preparing for their transfers.

This is Kody's new companion!!

Hello,

Got transfer calls last night, turns out I am leaving a trio again and it's a little confusing what they did but it should go well.

They are putting me back in Luray Virginia for 2 weeks or so with another elder I came in with from the MTC and then they are sending me to Petersburg west Virginia, which means I am opening up that area it was closed after a senior couple left, that's at least what I heard, so I will see how that goes. I am going to the transfer point Wednesday but at least half my stuff is in Luray 

and I am 23 minutes from there.

Anyways I went to the temple last Tuesday and had a great time, the inside if the Washington D.C temple is amazing, and we went to the visitors center after that. And then enjoyed that thoroughly.

Then Brother Stickley took us to golden corral, he is awesome.

We have been getting a lot of work done here in Front Royal and having a blast as we do so, so I am going to be a little sad to leave, we had good times here and good food as well, I am afraid to go back to Luray and open up the fridge again, because we definitely have not been there in awhile and milk and meat do not last forever believe it or not  :( 

The weather here has been super weird it went from 0 degrees to 68 degrees in one day, and then the next day it was 14 degrees so long story short it sucks

Their school system is weird all the kids got out of school early and it got shut down just because the weather channel said there was going to be freezing rain ( I wish we could get out of school because the weather channel said it was going to snow) and by the way, it didn't even rain, it actually warmed up. Lucky kids.

Something I really have to get used to is watching football I don't know any of the game scores( I know I am not suppose to so I haven't ask) 

We have to knock late, its just the rules, we can't go inside until 9:00, people don't like that at all, so we have got to see quite the gun collection, and how to speed walk really well. Other than that everybody is pretty cool. just not late at night. But I am still having an awesome time on my mission, wouldn't trade it for anything, so thanks for all the support Love you all.

ELDER KILLIAN

 In order to make sure that Elder Killian had food when he and his new companion return home...The Lane Family made a surprise delivery...the funniest thing is that the door was not locked...so we just left it right inside the door except for the milk which was in the fridge...

 This is the area that is covered by the Luray missionaries it is a big area but except for the actual town it is very, very rural.  One other thing about Luray is that it is a tourist area so in the winter it is very quite and many places are closed.

Elder Killian may have thought he was leaving Luray, VA but for now the Lord has other plans.

Week 20...the blessings of missionary work

Hello very cold week in Front Royal Va 

There still has been no snow but that's, but it is bone chilling cold outside!

It hasn't been a petty eventful week, but since we are covering to large areas we are definitely always on our toes moving along, a ton of people want to get baptized just not go to church but we are working on that one definitely have been very diligent in all things we do so we are getting blessed. A member of the quorum of the seventies came and talked with us saturday and it was really good, liked it a lot, very strong into the book of mormon and testimonies in, said some stuff i needed that week, so i was already diligent in reading but it helped me get moving a little faster.

So missionaries we are suppose to show an example and teach repentance and get people to keep the sabbath day holy-- but we may have been really cold yesterday and forgot it was sunday (it felt just like a normal day of proselyting) so we went in there to get hot chocolate  it and we talked to the store manager and she said she is interested and might come to church next sunday!!  so then we got are drink and right exactly when we left the store we all look at each other and yell it's sunday, so you can look at it like we just bought a cup of sin or we picked up a potential investigator, so thats the story of 3 mormon missionaries purchaing hot chocalolate on the sabbath the same thing we taught that day to keep the sabbath day holy. Just thought i would share my apostate story there.

But that same Sunday morning we had 2 investigators come to church, they really liked it, so us 3 missionaries went and bore our testimonies yesterday for them and us of course, but they said they loved it and are willing to come again so thats awesome, we had also taught them keeping the sabbath day holy......oops hopefully they did a better job then us? but at least we kept true to are fast until 5:00.

Been having a fun time but kind of stressful, good thing we are going to the D.C temple tomorrow that will be a relief, good thing we get to do it this week it is closing down pretty soon for renovation, so i am pretty excited for that, it kinda messed our schedule up But the temple is always worth it. Trying to get more pictures but don't have time to take them and they are hard to send because the computer we have does not have an SD card slot so its harder to get them to you,

The members have been super nice in front royal and supportive of all things we do, we also get fed a lot again not as much as Hagerstown but a fair amount it kinda evens out when you are always busy and don't have a big window to eat, but we have been eating healthier, so i am losing more weight and we are working out in the morning we are splitting what little weights we have in the apartment between 3 of us, so that is one con of a trio also i have been sleeping on the floor for the past 3 weeks, i took one for the team! Any ways that's about it for this week letter THANKS LOVE Y'ALL 

ELDER KILLIAN

As Kody mentioned in his letter they had the privilege of hearing from a member of the Seventy.  With this privilege they were able to sing as an entire mission.  The current challenge is who can find Kody....we can hear his voice but cannot identify him!!  Below is the link

https://www.facebook.com/jane.b.simpson.56/videos/10208460806116825/

This is Kody along with other missionaries taking the opportunity to enjoy helping those who have passed away receive the blessings of the temple.

Week 19...Baby it's Cold!!!!

Hello,

Didn't get to email last week because of holidays and because of skyping my families which was fun. We got to spend the Christmas with our branch president in front royal

This week has been quite crazy. we were in luray and we got a call that we had to go to front royal mission because elder mortensens companion broke his foot, so i got to experience an emergency transfer while i am 4 months in, and i am in a trio again with elder Harvey and elder mortensen my MTC buddy in my district so thats really cool, trios are really fun and we are getting a lot more work done then if we were in luray but we are also covering luray still as well. so we get to cars, the Malibu and a legacy so that's cool.

We have been teaching quite a few people, one of them , which are progressing well, but he  told and interesting story after he said he likes hunting, he told his great hunting story

to begin with he had his Firearms taken away for other reason and so he thought he could by a cross bow, so he did then he went out back of his apartment complex and popped a deer with it and clearly said he didn't know that you couldn't hunt in city limits, it ran on somebody else's lawn and died he was really mad somebody called the police on him....poor guy

another one, well let's just say some lady still thought we believed in polygamy, but she had it backwards and all 3 of us got ask to marry her, we had to double clarify that one, quickest change from the restoration i have ever seen!

Havent got much snow but it is freezing its got to like 13 degrees but this is a different kind of cold it goes straight through your skin and like burns, with the humility it really sucks but we just proselyte in it for hours on end because we are missionaries.

Cops were watching us as we walked into an apartment hopefully protecting us, but was thinking they knew how much i got pulled over, that was just first thought that came to my head but we are also across the country. 

Anyways much more stories but i'd rather not go into them here they are in the journal for when i get home so thanks love you all my apartment number for all who want to know is 1122 north shenandoah ave apt.8, Front Royal, VA 22630 but just thought i would let you know.

ELDER KILLIAN

(Note: When Kody talks about how cold it is with humidity...is is the truth. I grew up in Idaho as did Jim and so we know cold ...but this brings a new level of cold....so if you want to send hand or foot warmers he would appreciate it :) )