It's A Small World Afterall...

New missionaries arrived at the CCM(which, by the way stands for:Centro de Capatacion Missional) last week just like they do every couple of weeks. However, in this week's arrivals was someone from Peru who knew Kyler--or at least knew about him!

Of course, this really threw Kyler for a loop since he has never been to Peru. This new missionary, Elder Monzon, handed Kyler a card that had two names on it. One was Kyler's and the other one didn't click in his head because he was trying so hard to understand what Elder Monzon was saying to him. He finally called another Elder over to translate (yes, translate--a sign of fun times ahead) what he was saying. It turns out that Kyler's cousin, McKay Westbrook, had taught and baptized Elder Monzon a year earlier. When Kyler looked down at the card again, he couldn't believe that he hadn't recognized the name--McKay Westbrook.

McKay told Elder Monzon that when he reported to the CCM in Buenos Aires, he had to find a Kyler Hendrickson. I was so touched that McKay had been so thoughtful. And...what a wonderful testimony of the fruits of his labor! What a wonderful note for Kyler to end his CCM experience on!! McKay returns home next month (November 2010) and Kyler set off for Uruguay on Friday, October 22nd to follow in his footsteps. Such a special send-off! Both are in our prayers!

The pictures with this post (both a little fuzzy) is of Elder Monzon and Kyler. And a picture of the picture that Kyler is holding is of McKay shaking hands with a dog in Peru and teaching it from the Book of Mormon. Go Get 'em, Elder Westbrook!

The Numbers Game...Good or Bad?

Once you have been on a mission, you understand that you have to quantify your progress in one way or another. It helps you to set goals and to put your best foot forward. It is difficult to rate the level of the spirit at a lesson or how close a person is to taking the leap of baptism. It is, however, evident that you are trying harder when one day you talk to one person and the next you talk to 10! If it takes talking to 100 people to find one person to teach--why not strive to speed up the odds by making sure you are contacting as many people as possible?! THEN...learning to include spiritual guidance into the equation...AHHHH! That is when we learn to work into the numbers that are unfathomable to our human mind: ENDLESS, ETERNAL, WITHOUT END, THE SANDS OF THE SEA, BEYOND MEASURE...

Kyler's thoughts on the subject:

So, now we´re in a new area and the name is really weird so i cant remember it. But i have to tell you about our first day. We went to our new area for the first time, September 25th, and it was awesome!! Let me tell you why! The night before we go out we had a planning meeting as a companionship of what we want to do while we´re out prosolighting. (Mom comment: Is that different than the "proselyting" I did in my mission?) Usually we say something like from 2pm to 3pm we´re going to knock doors or do street contacts on this certain street. We thought that was pretty good but then one of the teachers here, Hermano (Brother) Sansi, came in and asked to look at our planners. He said that they were good but that we could do better. He told us if you have an ultimate goal of 30 contacts throughout the day plan how many you want to get each hour. He also told us to pray all the time and to do like a group prayer every hour so we´d know what to teach for the next hour and that we would find someone who would hear our message. So our original highest day for contacting and stuff was 15 contacts 1 lesson 1 return appointment and no references. When we did what Hermano Sansi told us to do, this last Saturday we broke our record and had almost the highest contacts for the day of any of the Elders!! We had 30 contacts 4 lessons 4 return appointments and 2 references. The highest after us was 31 contacts. So we were freakin' pumped!! We met some great people that we're going to teach this Saturday. It was awesome and a HUGE testimony builder of how much this is the Lord's work and that we have to keep the spirit while we´re out working.

The CCM has definitely become every day routine now for Kyler because he can't think of anything "new" to share about his week. But, when I ask him specific questions he has a lot more to say--hmmm--although he still didn't answer all of my questions--grrr!

I asked him to tell us about something new he has tasted (ok...that was just one of the new categories I asked him about, but about the only one he answered) and this was his response:

"We have cow tounge a lot! Its really not that bad. If you didn´t know what it was you´d think it was good :) It's a meat they prepare and eat cold so you put it on your salad and stuff. All their food tastes different!"