Dear Family and Friends!
My heart is leaping with joy and breaking all at the same time! I have absolutely LOVED serving in Lake Placid, and getting to know all of these wonderful people. I will truly miss their sweet spirit, and fun personalities. I accomplished so much in this area, and grew to know how much God loves all of His children. Each person here touched me in some way, and I will always remember them! I know that my next journey will be just as rewarding as this one was!
I suppose you want to know where I am going! We got our transfer calls on Saturday. So there I was, minding my own business, eating some cereal at 8 in the morning. When all of the sudden, our phone rings. Huh? That's a bit early... The Zone Leaders don't usually call until later in the afternoon.. Then my companion notices the caller ID "Mission Home: President Wirthlin" OH BOY!!!!! Every missionary knows that if President is calling the day of transfers, something big is going to be happening!! (Well, everyone except my companion knows this)
So I'm freaking out, while she answers the phone looking at me in a weird way, and President Wirthlin says "Sisters, I'm about to change your lives!" So then we both start freaking out. President says "Sister Keller, you first. You will be OPENING ELMIRA, NY! Not only THAT, you are going to be training AGAIN! Sister Dahl, you will be transferred to Liverpool!" So Lake Placid is getting two different sisters!
A fresh start!! I am so excited!!!!!!! I am white washing/opening a new area, and training a new missionary!!!! This will be awesome learning a new area at the same time as my trainee. We will both learn the area together. Yes, I'm a bit scared, but as my companion keeps telling me "Faith over Fear, Sister!" I know that the Lord will be with me. I am very grateful for another opportunity to train. It is such an important, and sacred leadership responsibility because we are training missionaries who will be serving and taking over the mission after we are gone. The Lord must have liked the way I did it the first time, and trusts me to do it again.
So we have been deep cleaning our apartment like crazy, trying to pack all of the stuff we have and cleaning some more all in such a little amount of time!
I have to get going, because I still have so much yet to do!
I love you all! The church is true!
Love, Sister Keller
Dear Family,
Guess what! It snowed yesterday!!!!!! I just about cried... not really, but I was not ready for it! I don't like the cold. I can't ride my bike any more now! I have been told by just about everyone to stay off the roads for the first few snow days because everyone forgets how to drive on snow and ice. I guess it gets pretty dangerous. I'll be careful!
So on Tuesday we had our Branch Family Home Evening, which was so fun!! We ended up doing a great job with the skits! I tried to post them on Facebook, but they are too big... well one of them is. The other one takes too long to load and I haven't had the time to load it. So I will send home the SD card so that you can watch the videos sometime. You will get to see me and hear me :) I will want the SD card back so that I can show investigators. Acting out Book of Mormon stories is a great way to help people understand the story easier before and after they read them.
Our 3 day exchange went a lot better than I thought it would! I had a poor attitude about it a couple days before it began, thinking it was just going to be another opportunity for someone to point out all of my flaws in the everyday work. As it turns out, that was Satan making me feel that way, and I do a lot better than I think I do, or give myself credit for. I have been working on patience these past 12 weeks as my Christ-like attribute. I know that I really struggled with patience at home as well. So I knew that if I could learn how to be patient while on my mission, it would be such a blessing for me in the long run. Sister Glenn, one of my sister training leaders, pointed out to me that I have so much patience, and that SHE learned a lot from ME from the exchange! I know that the Lord places us into companionships not to help us make life-long friends, but to help us grow and learn how to make ourselves the person we want to become. Becoming friends is just a bonus if you have a good companionship.
I have been sick these past couple days. We didn't do very much on Saturday and Sunday and we almost had to cancel appointments. But our Branch President told us to do splits with some sisters in the branch. So Sister Pascarelli (branch missionary) stayed at the apartment with me while I rested, and Sister Mitchell (member) took my comp. to all of our appointments and more! It was awesome. I'm slowly starting to feel better now. Just a really annoying cough and stuffy nose. My comp says I snore :)
Today we have a district activity and we are going to be carving pumpkins! I went out and bought one today and I am pretty excited! I don't know what face to make, but hopefully it will look good. Tomorrow we will be having a district lunch just before our meeting in Plattsburgh. I love those! I am pretty excited for Halloween. We don't get to be out late though, and I don't think we can hand out candy. The Robinson's sent me a package that had chocolate mummies inside. We loved them! Thanks!
"Devoted disciples of Jesus Christ always have been and always will be valiant missionaries. A missionary is a follower of Christ who testifies of Him as the Redeemer and proclaims the truths of His gospel." -David A. Bednar
I love you all! The church is true!
Love, Sister Keller
Hello dear family and friends!
I have had a pretty fun preparation day! We got to go to Goody Goodies (a foreign game store) and play games with the Elders, Trent, and Jaremy and then go out to lunch. We also got to plan a really fun Family Home Evening activity we are putting on for our branch tomorrow evening. We are going to be doing skits, acting out Book of Mormon stories, and have the members guess which story we are doing. It is going to be lots of fun and we have props and everything :) I'm excited!
This week we will be in a trio again for a 3 day exchange. This time with Sister Glenn. She will get to be in the skit as well. We have 3 stories in mind that we will be doing. Maybe I can get a member to film it and show you all some how. I don't know though.
I heard about Elder Jackson.. I saw his Facebook post saying he is going home for medical reasons.. I pretty much threw a fit in the library when I found out! Not really, but I was sad! I haven't gotten to see him while I have been out here so I hope he comes back. If not, I know he was a great missionary. I heard lots of really great things about him. An elder that I came out with, Elder Wendt, was his companion for a little while and he is serving in my zone now and he got to tell me a little about that. So, Elder Jackson, now that you aren't in New York, write to me! tell me about your mission!
Well family, it is getting pretty chilly here! I had to get my tights, coat and gloves out.. not my big coat, just my light coat. Just shows that Christmas is right around the corner!!
I love you guys! The church is true!
"Teaching in the home is becoming increasingly important in today’s world, where the influence of the adversary is so widespread and he is attacking, attempting to erode and destroy the very foundation of our society, even the family. Parents must resolve that teaching in the home is a most sacred and important responsibility. … The leaders of the Church spend a great deal of time thinking about how to improve teaching in the Church. Why do we invest this time and effort? It is because we believe in the immense power of teaching to increase the faith of individuals and strengthen families. It is my belief that one of the most effective things we can do to improve teaching in the Church is to improve teaching in our homes. Our teaching in the home prepares us to teach more effectively at church, and our teaching at church helps us to teach more effectively at home." -L. Tom Perry
Love, Sister Keller
Dear Family,
Patience Mom, letters are coming :) I haven't been able to give myself any time to write any letters. I have had lots of people write to me, and I feel terrible that I haven't responded in forever. So I just want to let everybody know I have your letters and emails! I am little by little writing you all back!
General Conference was AMAZING!!! I absolutely loved all of the talks! Elder Bednar's talk... WOW! That was just perfect!!!! I can't wait until I get a copy of the Ensign so that I can read it all over again. All of the talks were just fantastic. I think it was the best conference I have ever listened to. I had so many questions answered and felt the spirit SO strong! We really had a party at the church! The Whites came, (member family) (love them) and then there was us, the elders, Trent and Jaremy. We stayed there all 6 hours of the day. In between sessions we were either on Facebook saying how amazing first session was, calling people to come to the next session, or playing games with everyone and eating food. General Conference is just like Christmas to me now :) Best part is we get it twice a year!
Sister Dahl and I took quite the road trip this week! She needed to see a doctor for some medicine and he works on the other side of the mission! Luckily there were some elders who needed to go too so we car pooled with them. 13 hours in a car on Friday! It was a very, VERY long day! It was a lot of fun though! We got to drive through so many areas of the mission. The elder who was driving served in almost all of them so he was excited to see all of his areas again.
We had Zone Conference this week too. That was really awesome! President gave each of us a little bouncy ball that has a smiley face on it and told us to bounce it when ever we are feeling sad. In order to catch the ball, you have to keep your eye on it. The higher you bounce it, the more you have to "look up" Get it? It was pretty awesome. We have Zone Training this coming Thursday now. I don't know if you heard, but there is a movie coming out called "Meet the Mormons" We get to watch it!!!! President is allowing all of the missionaries to view it at their Zone meetings. The coolest part is that my zone gets to see it before it even comes out in theaters. It comes out October 10th. We see it the 9th.
I hope you all had a great week! If you missed any of the General Conference talks, I would like to invite and highly recommend you watch them. The brethren all testified that the church is true!
Love, Sister Keller
