Week 55: Two Funerals and a Super Bowl
Dear Loved Ones,
First off, shout out to the Kansas City Chiefs for winning the playoff game last night and heading to the Super Bowl! I hope they win and they throw a parade and I somehow get to go.
All of Kansas City is obsessed with the Chiefs, but I'm serving in the Arrowhead Stadium First Ward and take the brunt of it. One time I had to drive past the stadium and the crowd of red to get to a pre-set appointment only for us to get there and hear them say, "The game's on." Once their door shut, we had to knock around their complex and face every other Chiefs fan with some better way to spend a Sunday afternoon than talking to us. I better not have to knock doors during the Super Bowl.
Quarterback Pat Mahomes is from Whitehouse, Texas and so is my companion. They're probably the only two Whitehouse people in Kansas City right now. She was a freshman when he was a senior so she didn't personally know him, but that connection was enough to garner favor with a Chiefs fan Saturday night.
On Wednesday, we showed up to a dinner and the wife answered the door in tears. Sometime in the past ten minutes, when we had called her to say we were on her way, someone came to tell her that her daughter was dead. They had food ready and left us to eat it while they sat in a back room and discussed funeral logistics.
The wife came back out at the end long enough for us to share a message. It felt weighty because I knew I was the first person to talk to her after the initial report of her daughter's death and I didn't want to mess it up.
I told her that if there's anything God knows, it's what it's like for a child to die. God knows, Jesus suffered it, and the Spirit won't leave her alone, so she has all three members of the God head pulling for her. She thanked me and hugged me and we got on a discussion of how many deaths there have been in the stake this winter. I think the total is eleven now. Back home, I wasn't aware of random deaths in other wards, but Independence people are all intimately connected to each other.
She told me, "The adversary's presence is strong in this place. The stake used to be bigger, but they made it smaller so we could help each other."
I like that. Also, that's another devil reference to go in my portfolio of devil references. When I got my mission call, I was prepared for Baptist Bible bashers. I was prepared for restoration branch Book of Mormon bashers. I was not prepared for Devil worship.
Friends who served missions other places, did you come across devil worship from time to time? I always wonder whether I notice it because I've started looking for it or if Jacked-up County has a more sizable than usual problem.
In my old area out in Kansas, a nineteen year old boy passed away from a freak seizure a while back. I loved their family, especially his eleven year old sister, who cried when she couldn't ride with her mom to drop us off the last time she would see me before I left the area. Yesterday, the family came into the visitors' center. Even though I wasn't slotted to give the next tour, they asked me to do it. I took my journal with me on the tour so I could work on a letter to the little sister, who had stayed home, while all the tour videos played. I tried to ride this line between making it nice and spiritual for them and doing comic relief.
One segment of the tour talks about W. W. Phelps. As we moved into that station and I told the group what we were going into, the Father spoke up. "My great-great-great-great-grandfather was W. W. Phelps."
Me: "Really? That's a cool connection because my great-great-great-great grandmother...divorced W. W. Phelps."
And the entire room full of people in town for a funeral laughed.
This was my first time ever doing a tour for people I already know. I loved it and feel like i did better than usual.
I LOVE MY JOB! I LOVE INDEPENDENCE! It may be in the middle of Jacked-Up County, but it's a place of church history and church history and Pat Mahomes is going to take the Super Bowl.
Sincerely,
Sister Smith
First off, shout out to the Kansas City Chiefs for winning the playoff game last night and heading to the Super Bowl! I hope they win and they throw a parade and I somehow get to go.
All of Kansas City is obsessed with the Chiefs, but I'm serving in the Arrowhead Stadium First Ward and take the brunt of it. One time I had to drive past the stadium and the crowd of red to get to a pre-set appointment only for us to get there and hear them say, "The game's on." Once their door shut, we had to knock around their complex and face every other Chiefs fan with some better way to spend a Sunday afternoon than talking to us. I better not have to knock doors during the Super Bowl.
Quarterback Pat Mahomes is from Whitehouse, Texas and so is my companion. They're probably the only two Whitehouse people in Kansas City right now. She was a freshman when he was a senior so she didn't personally know him, but that connection was enough to garner favor with a Chiefs fan Saturday night.
On Wednesday, we showed up to a dinner and the wife answered the door in tears. Sometime in the past ten minutes, when we had called her to say we were on her way, someone came to tell her that her daughter was dead. They had food ready and left us to eat it while they sat in a back room and discussed funeral logistics.
The wife came back out at the end long enough for us to share a message. It felt weighty because I knew I was the first person to talk to her after the initial report of her daughter's death and I didn't want to mess it up.
I told her that if there's anything God knows, it's what it's like for a child to die. God knows, Jesus suffered it, and the Spirit won't leave her alone, so she has all three members of the God head pulling for her. She thanked me and hugged me and we got on a discussion of how many deaths there have been in the stake this winter. I think the total is eleven now. Back home, I wasn't aware of random deaths in other wards, but Independence people are all intimately connected to each other.
She told me, "The adversary's presence is strong in this place. The stake used to be bigger, but they made it smaller so we could help each other."
I like that. Also, that's another devil reference to go in my portfolio of devil references. When I got my mission call, I was prepared for Baptist Bible bashers. I was prepared for restoration branch Book of Mormon bashers. I was not prepared for Devil worship.
Friends who served missions other places, did you come across devil worship from time to time? I always wonder whether I notice it because I've started looking for it or if Jacked-up County has a more sizable than usual problem.
In my old area out in Kansas, a nineteen year old boy passed away from a freak seizure a while back. I loved their family, especially his eleven year old sister, who cried when she couldn't ride with her mom to drop us off the last time she would see me before I left the area. Yesterday, the family came into the visitors' center. Even though I wasn't slotted to give the next tour, they asked me to do it. I took my journal with me on the tour so I could work on a letter to the little sister, who had stayed home, while all the tour videos played. I tried to ride this line between making it nice and spiritual for them and doing comic relief.
One segment of the tour talks about W. W. Phelps. As we moved into that station and I told the group what we were going into, the Father spoke up. "My great-great-great-great-grandfather was W. W. Phelps."
Me: "Really? That's a cool connection because my great-great-great-great grandmother...divorced W. W. Phelps."
And the entire room full of people in town for a funeral laughed.
This was my first time ever doing a tour for people I already know. I loved it and feel like i did better than usual.
I LOVE MY JOB! I LOVE INDEPENDENCE! It may be in the middle of Jacked-Up County, but it's a place of church history and church history and Pat Mahomes is going to take the Super Bowl.
Sincerely,
Sister Smith
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