The Awesome Life of Sister Kiene

First of all, OH MY GOODNESS I can't believe Greg and Aubs took Ty camping! That is just adorable. Also, that is so crazy Garrett Heiner is going to Brazil!! Tell him congrats and we'll see him in a couple years! haha mom, i just got your dearelder this morning and still haven't finished it but i'm getting timed on here so i wanted to be able to write everything! Thank you for the package too, everyone loved it all! Anyway, as for my week, it has been pretty wild. I am constantly learning SO much and I have to really sit back and soak it all in sometimes. I feel that my teaching is improving a lot and I know that's because the Lord is helping really understand it better. I've realized how IMPORTANT it is to be yourself. Because who you are personally is what is going to really touch someone else's heart. We've had subs throughout my whole time being here and then the last about week and a half we had a bunch of subs and so we hadn't been going over the language. It has made me really frustrated because I feel like we are behind in some sense. But I am grateful for the time spent on learning to teach, even if it's in English. We are teaching in Cantonese for the first time this Saturday and we are going to need A LOT of prayers. We know it will be a learning experience but we still need a lot of extra help. This language is very tough. But i just have to look at the positive and see how much I've already learned. Also, the younger district comes soon (With 12 new missionaries!) and we need to know enough to be able to teach them. Something that has really helped me this week is really understanding the meaning of Faith. It would take forever to go into detail about what i've learned but just know that obedience and faith is so vital in this life! And that's how we are able to receive personal revelation. I'll share a quick experience before I run out of time. One of the teachers is a progressing investigator and sometimes it's hard to pretend they are someone else...but my teaching partners and I really tried to follow the spirit when teaching her. I can't describe the feeling, but we didn't go anyway near what we had planned to say because we knew that she needed to hear something else. We knew that the spirit was guiding us. Another teacher we taught as an investigator asked all these questions and i really felt like we were able to share experiences and tie it into the plan of salvation. Afterwards he thanked us because he said the questions he asked as the investigator were actually his own questions and we really did meet his needs. It is hard, I'm not going to beat around the bush...i think mostly because of the language...but I know that satan wants me to get discouraged. I am really striving to have more faith. Sorry this is short, but just know that this work is amazing and I can't even begin to explain the kind of impact it has had on me already. I've only been here 4 weeks and I feel like i've grown and learned so many things that never came close to crossing my mind before. I love it, and I love you all too! I pray for everyone each night, in my broken Cantonese.

Love,
Sis Kiene