10 things i love about columbiana...May 22, 2017...extra surprise letter

here's a surprise post to post all pictures i wanted to be posted that weren't AND my top 10 things that ill miss about that cute little town!

1. biking on HIGHWAY 70. yup that's right a real highway with no bike lane. makes things interesting that's for sure.
2. the way the courthouse randomly creaks and groans when you walk upstairs and you feel like you could just fall through the floor any second.
3. the bees that like to live right outside our door of our apartment and like to try to hit us as we leave every morning.
4. davis drug store and their cute little grill we would go and eat at every now and then!
5. the creepy feeling you get when you see hand prints going up the wall in the back room of the courthouse. #haunted
6. getting banana pudding from tin top bc it's 10x better when someone else makes it when it's from tin top
7. Clem calling 10 million times a day. im gonna miss those calls!
8. biking along the back road by the senior living center at dusk. i swear yall its the little things that are the most beautiful at times.
9. that wretched bike ride we would have to endure going up the stupid hill on egg and butter rd. up to our church building
10. jennifer always yelling "hey ladies!" as we would walk into the courthouse every morning. gonna miss her!

well there you have it. hope yall enjoy!

love 

sis ken

"yall need to tease your hair or somethin"...May 15, 2017...week 32

hey yall!! its been a crazy week especially the past 3 days!! one of the reasons being that it was mother's day which means we got to SKYPE HOME!!! best day ever!!! and since i did that yesterday this one is gonna be a short one today, i promise this time!!

friday night was the yw fundraiser for girls camp which included a spaghetti dinner and a silent action of baked goods and live auction of free service opportunities. and so we missionaries put all our funds together and outbid the ward on this awesome cake that were saving for district meeting tomorrow. pretty pricey cake if i do say so myself but i bet you its gonna be the best money spent out here hahah. also this lady runs a gym and was actioning off 7 days of personal training and we wanted to buy it, cause southern squish is real yall, but we didnt have anymore money, cause we just blew it all on the cake, and so this nice lady bought it for us!! how cute is that! our first day of working out is later this afternoon. heres to dying! but its worth it. ill let you know how it goes!

saturday we had all the senior missionaries and President and Sister Sainsbury come experience a tour of the courthouse and the project we are running and it was so fun! im so grateful for all their service and time they put into helping us out! it was a nice afternoon.

but also realize that night was transfers calls and so we were freaking out after the court house because lets be real you can only knock so doors before you go crazy especially when you are checking the clock every 2 seconds. but thats okay we made it through. all thanks to a little store contacting and little ceasars. blessed. oh and we bribed our zone leaders to call us first with the news and told them if they did we would bring them a cake to our district meeting on tuesday. little did they know we were doing that anyways but oh well they called us first and we got the news and...drumroll please...... im being transferred. sad day. i just got comfortable here but thats okay! im going to companions with sister durbin, a cute girl in my zone and we weill be white washing a town called Anniston! fun day!

sunday was mothers day was awesome and i loved it and just ahhh so good! loved talking to the fam it was much needed! we spent the rest of the day with our Bishop and his family had foil dinners and strawberry shortcake and it was just awesome! i love that family!! hard to say goodbye to all these awesome families out here but oh well heres to a new adventure!!

all right yall well i guess it wasnt too short but i guess youll live! oh funny moment of the week. this lady at the yw fundraiser pulled us aside and told us that if we are to wear our hairs in buns that we need to tease a little bit because we were lookin a little pentecostal. i mean sister winter and i were feelin pretty good so i mean if thats what pentecostal looks like well then they be lookin fly! hahaha oh how i love the south!!

yall its the moment you all have been waiting for! i finally chose my scripture to go on my missionary plaque! i know i know i was suppose to do it 10 years ago but oh well better late than never!! i have chosen one of my all time favorite scriptures and it is... drumroll........

Alma 26:36 Now if this is ^aboasting, even so will I boast; for this is my life and my light, my joy and my salvation, and my redemption from everlasting wo. Yea, blessed is the name of my God, who has been mindful of this people, who are a ^bbranch of the tree of Israel, and has been ^clost from its body in a strange land; yea, I say, blessed be the name of my God, who has been mindful of us, ^dwanderers in a strange land.

i hope yall had a blessed mother's day and have a blessed week! 

love yall!

sister kennedy

jesus take the handlebars....May 8, 2017...week 31

hey hey hey its fat albert!

just kidding it's sister kennedy...but is there much of a difference? anyways....

this week was so busy, including today. we had a zone activity in tuscaloosa playing gatorball, which was surprisingly really fun. But it resulted in short emailing time so i'm gonna try to make this quick!

found the only projects in columbiana. no joke y'all it was only 6 apartments but man i have i missed them. people there actually talk to us and we were able to set up our first return appt while being here in columbiana! and she flaked on our appt and actually gave us a fake number but oh well its a step in the right direction! am i right?

we had a miracle this week with a surprise member meal. can i just say blessings or what?!? cutest little family ever we love them!! had to bike to their house and thinking we were taking a backroad/ shortcut to avoid the highway we actually biked way past their house, got lost then ended up a ways down the highway which we had to backtrack, backbike? (nope doesn't work like i thought it would) on the same highway we were trying to avoid. almost got hit twice and my bike hit a rock and i almost sprawled out in the middle of the highway but don't worry, God watches over us and i was saved and all was well. Jesus take the handlebars!!!! -carrie underwood. don't quote me on that.

helped 2 ladies find their family history and can i just say i LOVE it. who knew family history work could be so much fun!! i am so grateful for this area and for giving me the opportunity to learn to love genealogy!!

friday was the busiest day of my life! interviews with President Sainsbury, Courthouse, apartment cleaning checks, and another member meal. i mean how much better can it get?? looking at it all written out it doesn't look very busy but when your biking/ walking in the rain between all those activities it starts to add up. trust me on this one. 

i haven't talked much about them, but the elders taught this cute little family and they got BAPTIZED on saturday!!! jessica, the mom, is a year older than us and we LOVE her!! she is the cutest person ever!! and ahh i'm just so excited for them!! it was a beautiful baptism!

a lady saw we were mormons and brought in a super old book of mormon to the courthouse and it was the coolest thing ever!! people are starting to recognize us here! its awesome!! on a first name basis with people of the town. its awesome!! i love these cute little towns!!

sister winter and i tried to do airplane and she didn't have full trust in me and lost balance and she fell/ i didn't catch her so technically that means i dropped her but tomato tamato am i right?

i finished memorizing The Living Christ and man i'm so glad that i did. i LOVE it!! i just wanna leave with one of my favorite parts of it!

 Jesus is the Living Christ, the immortal Son of God. He is the great King Immanuel, who stands today on the right hand of His Father. He is the light, the life, and the hope of the world. His way is the path that leads to happiness in this life and eternal life in the world to come.

And I know that to be true!

Have a blessed week!!

love always 

sister kennedy

how far along are you? 7 months...May 1, 2017...week 30

hello peeps!

this week i hit my 7 month mark. and nope i know it looks like it, but im not 7 months prego, just been in the south for 7 months. looks similar, i know i could see why you would think that but nope just officially been out here for  that long of a time! crazy huh? but im glad i got to spend it with homegirl sister winter! we celebrated by attempting to make cafe rio and peach cobbler. key word attempted. oh well its the thought that counts. 

got to support our homie from the courthouse. she was the falcon scholar from the university nearby and shes just the cutest thing ever! she put together this quilt show for her senior thingy mackgigger at the courthouse and it was the cutest thing of my life. props to cassie! gonna miss having her around!

go to meet the cutest little old lady named dot this week and unexpectedly had our first member present lesson of my time being here! yay! sister tilton lives in the same senior complex and came out to a swing on the swingy chair with us and got to teach Dot about the Book of Mormon. she was pretty receptive but yet kept asking us the same questions over and over so may be just a bit of memory loss but we will take what we can get!!

carried a buttload of food from the grocery store on our bikes and i will say if thats my one accomplishment out here ill take it! our backpacks were stuffed and had food on our handlebars hahah. all going up a slight hill too! rough day but we made it! 12 bottles of soda, a 4 lb. pork butt and all!

dropped my milkshake on the way home. funny feels like ive done this before.

had a potluck after church yesterday! blessings and so that totals up to 1 member meal for these past couple weeks. can i get a what what!

well not too much other than that and working at the courthouse! itll be a sad day when i have to say goodbye to that cute little courthouse but good thing thats not for a while!

something i came across this week in the book of mormon was something i much needed and i loved it so much i wanna share it with yall! its found in ether and it says:

"26 And when I had said this, the Lord spake unto me, saying: Fools mock, but they shall mourn; and my grace is sufficient for the meek, that they shall take no advantage of your weakness; 27 And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them." i just loved that and hope that there something in those verses that you can love too!

hope yall are having a blessed week! 

love,

sister kennedy

what a week...April 24, 2017...week 29

hey yall!

did you know that sometimes mission can be rough? no? well they can and this week was one of those rough moments. but all is well because we can do hard things.

we got to do some service on our exchange with our stls (leaders) in bessemer at sheila's house and the bessemer elders too. we cleaned out pickle buckets with bleach, thank goodness or else i don't know how else you could get rid of the smell. i mean i'm all for pickles but man that smell was something else, and also helped clean out her garage which was filled to the brim with all her pottery creations. it was so cool! she is so talented and im so glad we got to help her out! she also made us some peach cobbler and had us all crackin' up over the dinner table! she started tellin' us yo mamma so ratchet jokes, and i was just dying. it was hilarious. 

we went to a senior center this week to try to recruit some volunteers. key word try. anyways...

got to eat dinner with the martineaus on wednesday! i love that family yall, words cannot describe.

oh i got a call from my southern mama, sister glenn. literally made MY.WHOLE.WEEK. ps shout out to brother glenn for having her call a second time it was perfect timing!

we got a gallon of blue bell and its already gone. and the crowd goes wild.

were too scared to drink our tap water cause of past experiences and we ran out of water bottles yesterday and it was quite the trial cause you know we couldn't just go out a buy a water bottle but we made it through. #blessed

stayed up saturday night to write a talk i was giving in sacrament meeting the next day. procrastination at its finest y'all. then had to get up early for all the meetings, got to the church and found out i wasn't scheduled to talk until may 28th. what a time to be alive. so if anyone needs a talk about about prayer, i got one all written up for ya. i guess ill share a part from it. short and sweet and to the point:

Nephi writes, "I cry unto my God in faith, and I know that He will hear my cry." Nephi is always a great example of faith and shows the comfort that is can bring into our lives. Are we able to declare with Nephi, "I know that He will hear my cry"? ill just leave that with ya to ponder on for this week!

I hope y'all have a blessed week!

love always,

sister kennedy

(sorry no pictures for this tough week)