Halloween and Sleepovers.

November 2, 2014

This is what you call a successful STL training night.

Kia Ora to my beautiful family!! This week has been so spiritually uplifting, it's been fantastic! On Tuesday I traveled down to Wellington for our Mission Leadership Council. We discussed many things and we actually impressed our Mission President. One of the Sisters stood up to present a topic of discussion, the Hudson's moved to the side of the room, and then the 23 missionaries just counseled together and we all came up with a solution. The Hudson's thought we were so impressive to be able to just take lead and find solutions. Yay for the future of the church! Ha. But the best part of the Leadership Council was when all the Zone Leaders went back home and all the Sisters (7 of us) got to stay at the Mission Home for another day. We had from 2 on Tuesday until 2 on Wednesday to continue to learn and council together.

Can I even have a better sleepover on my mission than with 7 of the best sisters?? They're all my favourites!! We practiced our cooking skills and make soups and stir fry, we had the Zone Leaders from Wellington come and train us on how they have successful exchanges, and we did some fun brainstorming and created the outline for our role as Sister Training Leaders (because every mission does it a bit differently). President Hudson's Mission President was Elder Ballard so they took our picture and promised they'd send it to him. Whee! Ha that was fun. I came out of it feeling totally uplifted and realizing just how great it is to be a Sister Missionary. You think I should have figured this stuff out earlier! Ha 4 of us are leaving in the next 2-3 months and we're like "what have we been doing this whole time??" It's all part of the good, better, and becoming Great in Christ!

On Thursday President and Sister Hudson came to our District Meeting (3 days in a row of the greatest couple!!) and they taught me so much about the Holy Ghost. I always have known that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ love me, but on Thursday I finally clicked that the Holy Ghost loves me just as much!! I've worked really hard to be able to listen to the promptings and follow what's given me from the Holy Ghost.

On Saturday we had a baptism for this little Samoan boy named Talosaga. So cute! His mum actually made my blue puletaci :)

Talosaga's baptism!

Halloween was not very exciting. People celebrate it.. but not really. A lot of people think you're evil if you celebrate it and they totally thought I was crazy when I told them what we do in America. We did do a bit of doorknocking and got some candy, so yay!! We also met this guy who kept us on his porch for almost an hour. He believes God is a woman, interesting, but because of that he thinks women are way awesome. He told us he could see our angel wings, ha so I told him it was our costume. But it was actually really cute of him.

My Halloween cake for District Meeting, courtesy of Mum's package:)

Overall, this has been a fantastic week. We had our Stake Correlation Meeting yesterday and it was great. I really love being apart of leadership meetings and hearing how we can be better. That's all Heavenly Father needs, for us to be willing to change and be better! I love you all!! Have a beautiful week :)

HAPPY 80th BIRTHDAY GRANDMA STRATFORD!!!

Love, Sister Rachel Kennedy

P.S. Check out the blog with our pictures from the last couple weeks!