Sept. 14, 2009

Chao!

It’s mostly Italian to say “Chao”, but we have been meeting and teaching a lot of people that speak Latin based languages and most of them understand, especially coming from Elder Gasparato. This week has been really good. We have seen a lot of miracles happen in our area, and the zone is doing well. One of those miracles wasn’t the baptism of Kevin and Robin, but Kevin will be getting baptized this Saturday. We felt it would be better for him to wait a week and be more prepared. Robin keeps saying he doesn’t want to do it now. I’m not convinced that he really knows why he is saying no. Maybe he just needs to wait until he is older.
Many of the miracles we have seen have come from new people we are teaching. We, along with the rest of the mission, have been praying to find more families and priesthood holders. We found three families this week that we are now teaching! One is a Sri Lanka Father and an Indian mother that have twins that were born in Germany and who are now 9. Another is a Mauritian family with a father, mother, brother, and sister. The last was another Mauritian family with seven members including parents, kids, cousins, and their Grandmother! The best part about these families is that they have both parents! There are not many full families left in the UK, so it truly is a miracle that we found three in one week. We are also teaching a boy named Johnson (11) who is scheduled to get baptized on September 25.

It’s good to hear that mom is feeling better. (I was sick and unable to go to the cabin over Labor Day. I had asked him about his health and his upcoming driving test.) I hope everyone else is feeling well. My health has been great for the most part. I haven't had any illness yet, so I am very grateful. I have been practicing driving with the member we live with actually and my driving test is on October 5th! Pray for me!

Love,
Elder Kade Karges

Me, Elders Meats and Mclachan, Sisters Pressgrove and Hardisty, Elder Zundel, Dave (A YSA Member from our ward), Elders Gasparato and Trevisan (the Italians)

E. Trevisan knew Elder Noor Sabbah in Italy and has been relayin' messages between us haha!

Me, Elders Zundel and Trevisan, and Sisters Hardisty and Pressgrove while on Pday with Brighton District.

All of the Zone Leaders of the mission, President & Sister Shamo, and the assistants at Zone Leader Council this last Tuesday. We have this meeting the first Tuesday of every transfer.

Jenni (mother), Martina (aunt), Barney (father), and Fran (nan=grandmother) at the baptism of Taylor, (10) Thelvina (8 - cousin), and Darian (12)!

Sept. 7, 2009

Hello again!

Ill apologize straight away for the lack of pictures. I ran out of time last week and I forgot my camera today, but I’ll do my best to send more next week.

Everything is going great here. We always have our ups and downs throughout the week with our investigators... One day we are really excited about how things are going, then they all come up with concerns and almost get dropped, but the next day everything is ok again. Kevin and Robin plan to get baptized this Saturday. We have been a bit worried about what would happen after they get baptized. The reason why is because Kevin is here on a short term visa and leaves back to Mauritius on the 15th! We hope that he will continue going to church there, but he is also the main support that Robin has. Robin's mom is a LA active member, but we are having a bit of a struggle to reactivate her. We have another baptismal date with the younger brother of a Mauritian recent convert. His name is Johnson. He is 11 and is pretty cool, but has some behavioral problems. Their mother and younger brother are potential baptismal dates as well, but all of them have been taught before. We hope that the whole family will come along soon.

Wow I can’t believe how much the old stake changed... its crazy to think our ward doesn't exist anymore. I looked forward to reporting home to our old ward, but I think the changes they made are for the better and I'm happy to have my membership with yours. It wouldn't be the same now anyway. Either you or I need to let the mission office know about the changes though.

I’m grateful to be here to experience all the miracles I have seen in peoples lives. I don’t know why that Lord blesses me sometimes, but I’m grateful for it. I know he takes care of His children

I love you guys and hope you have a great week!

Love,
Elder Kade Karges

September 3, 2009

Heyyy!

Sorry I forgot to tell you about moves, I just read that mom would like to know when they are ha-ha. They happened today! I am still in Crawley though and still with Elder Gasparato. We are both really excited to stay here. We get along and work well together so it should be fun. I think he is the first companion I will have for 3 moves (around 4 1/2 months).

The last week and a half have turned out really well. How they turned out that way, I don't know, but the Lord made it all work out. Darian and Taylor got baptized with their 8-year-old cousin, Thelvina on Saturday. Our plans for the baptism were good and they were prepared, but we had some unexpected things happen. Their grandfather performed the ordinance and had to do it twice for Darian. It’s pretty normal for something like that to happen, but after all three were baptized another problem came up and it had to be done all over again. Everyone attending had already returned to another room when we realized he didn’t use their middle names in the prayer, so everyone came back and the girls all got baptized twice! There were some other things that happened that were pretty minor, so when the night ended we had a strong feeling of relief.

Kevin and Robin (Nando) are doing well. We were a bit worried about them during the week, but just yesterday, Bishop Easter (from Canada) took them to the temple. We heard from Bishop that is was really positive and he feels they will be ready for their baptism on the 12th.

We are excited to have so many things happening in our area and have a lot of new people we are teaching. They all have different concerns, but we pray that the Lord will help them be ready.

I love hearing how everyone is doing back home, it’s something I really look forward to every week. I’m running out of time to write everyone back now, but next week I will try to get it done.

I love you guys!

Love,
Elder Kade Karges

August 24, 2009

Hello again!

This week hasn't been too eventful, but things are going great. We have been doing well as a zone and in our area. The zone had one of its best weeks in months last week.

In our area, there are 4 people preparing to be baptized. Darian and Taylor are 10 and 12 year old sisters with a date for this Saturday (Aug 29th). They are really cool and have a strong desire to be baptized so they can "officially be members of the church." Their grandma brings them because their mother is LA and their dad is atheist. We have met the whole family and they are nice, we just hope they will help support the baptism. The other two are Kevin (20) and Robin (11). They are cousins from a LA Maritian family. They have a date for September 11th. It can be hard to keep Robin focused, but Kevin has been really keen on everything. We hope he keeps his motivation and builds on it.

Today we are going to Brighton for P-Day. Elder Zundel, one of our district leaders, is going home next week and this is his last P-Day. I have been their on exchange before, but haven't looked around too much. It will be cool to be back on the coast for a bit.

For your question about the temple.... we don’t get to go through the temple very often (maybe 2 or 3 times a year). We do get to go to the grounds though. We try to take every convert there before they get baptized, we go there on moves day quite often, and we go on exchanges with the elders there once a moves. If the concern is for post, we also get post from the temple at Zone Conference and Zone Meeting. It’s a great blessing to have it so close even if we don’t get to go in very often.

I hope everyone is doing great and pray that you'll have an amazing week.

Love,
Elder Kade Karges

August 17, 2009

Ca va (Su vah)!?

"Ca va" is what we say to all the Mauritian people we meet. It means 'how are you' in French. Sometimes they get the wrong impression and go off speaking loads of French we don’t understand though.

This week has been full of miracles. Things are really going well. We finally taught the nieces I mentioned last week. Their names are actually Darian (12) and Taylor (10). They are really cool and are excited to get baptized. Their mother is less active and the father isn't a member, but we hope it will be good for the whole family. Their baptismal date is for August 29th. There is also a part member, less active family we found from Mauritius. Two of them, Kevin and Nando, now have a baptismal date for Sept. 12th. They are going to need a lot of encouragement to get there, but we are counting on the Lord to get them there.

We had two exchanges again this week, this time with Elders. I stayed in Crawley with an English Elder named Elder Tomlinson for the first one. He actually came out with me, so it was pretty cool to work with him. The other exchange I had was with an Elder from Bountiful who came out a moves after me. He was trained in the same district as me in London. Both exchanges were pretty good and the second was pretty exciting.... he didn’t know how to drive manual. We didn’t realize that before we started the exchange. Since I'm not allowed to drive, there was nothing I could do except pray and hope we made it through the day. We did, but it felt strange to me to have smooth shifting when Elder Gasparato came back to the area. I know the Lord was looking over us.

Crawley doesn’t have a whole lot of things to do for P-Day, but today most of the zone is coming here. We are going to play some English Football and have a good time, so I’m excited. Hope all is well. Have a great week!

Love,
Elder Kade Karges

August 10, 2009

Hello!

My stress levels have finally gone back down after this week. It was an amazing experience to see the family get baptized and a great way to celebrate my hump day weekend! I’ll try to send a picture with the names of everyone involved with the baptisms. It was a great blessing to be a part of. Even now it doesn’t seem possible, and I know it wouldn’t have been without the Lord. The cake and other food helped to celebrate as well. (We had a grocery store deliver him a “Congratulations” cake and some other favorite foods to celebrate his hump day.) Thank you so much!!! Elder Gasparato says thank you as well :) To top it all off I passed my driving theory test on the 6th! Now I just have to schedule and take my practical. Until I pass that, I cant drive anymore :/

We have been finding and teaching other people all along the way, but most of them haven't stuck around for long. Now that we don't have the family as investigators, we really need to focus on finding new ones. We have some that we are excited about though. There are two nieces of a reactivated member that we have been trying to teach, but are struggling to make appointments with. Their names are Leigh and Taylor. They could be baptized this month if we see them soon. We are also teaching a cousin of one of the YSA that we bring on a lot of teaches. Her name is Emma and she doesn’t want to feel rushed, but she could be ready if she wanted.

We had two exchanges this week, both with sister missionaries. That was a first for me... I thought it might be a little weird, but it actually turned out really good. On a sister exchange we don’t go to their flat, but we can meet at the church and study with them and/or do some finding. With the sisters in Worthing we found on the highstreet for a couple hours and with the Epsom sisters, we did both. All four of the sisters in our zone are good, hard working missionaries, so we are grateful to have them here. We have several exchanges coming up with the rest of the zone.

I love you and hope things continue going well back home. I appreciate all your letters and support and if I haven’t written anyone back, let me know!! It is easy to forget who I have and haven't written. Have an amazing week!

Love,
Elder Kade Karges

Me with all of the food my amazing family sent me for my hump day! Thank you!

All of the Zone Leaders of my mission at Zone Leader Council with President and Sister Shamo

Dave Sinclair, Jason Orr, Dieuma Soopramanier, Katijah Naiker, and others!

Monday, August 3,2009

Hello,

This week has been really full and kind of hectic. Everything turned out good in the end though. It’s always good to hear that back home things are going well.

To start the week we had a meeting called ZLC (Zone Leader Council). All the zone leaders met at Presidents house for basically the whole day Tuesday and talked about things that need to happen, goals, and plans for the next 6 weeks. It was really cool. Last moves they had a different meeting in place of it, so this was my first one. On Friday we had Zone Conference (ZC) where members of three different zones all came to the Crawley chapel to meet with President and Sister Shamo. Immediately afterwards we had an appointment with the family we are teaching.

This is where things got hectic. President needed to come with us to help interview two members of the family, but he needed to interview some Elders right after ZC. One of our district leaders, Elder Church, was supposed to do the rest of the interviews, but we were going to go on splits with President and him so we could be more effective. Elder Church and I finally left to their house over thirty minutes late, but when we got there, they weren’t even in. President came with Elder Gasparato twenty minutes later and the family arrived home around the same time. Eventually things worked out, but it was stressful. Sunday wasn’t much better because the ride for the family to come to church didn’t work out as planned, but the good news is that it did work out and they are still on track to be baptized on Saturday!! Until then I think I’ll still stress out about it a little. It has been such a blessing to teach this family. So many miracles have happened to make it possible for them to be baptized.

I’m sorry if that story sounds kind of confusing. I am out of time for emailing so I was trying to hurry. I hope you all have a great week!

Love,
Elder Kade Karges