Letter #20 . . . 4th of July in Kansas City!

Endowment session at the Kansas City Temple! Loved it!

Happy Fourth of July my lovely friends!! Enjoy your parties and fireworks. All fireworks are slightly banned and illegal here. How lame is that... Guess having fun is against the law in Kansas. As for us... Nobody parties harder on Independence Day than the missionaries in the flippen INDEPENDENCE Missouri Mission... #Pun (I've been waiting all year to say that) Transfers are on the 15th, We went downtown today, checked out the World War II museum, and explored the city a bit. Taking some cool pics along the way. One of our favorite families, the Pace's, let us borrow their nice Canon DSLR camera. So y'all betta believe we are having some fun 
with that... :) I will send you those pics 
tomorrow. I miss making videos. 

Kansas City on the 4th of July, 2016

Happy Fourth!

We got to go to the temple with Cecil Short, a recent convert of about
a year this week. Torrico was asked to be his escort for his endowment
session. He started to serve in Cecil's area when he had already made
the decision to be baptized. I loved it. The temple is amazing.
Torrico's leaving in less than two weeks, so we decided to put on a
funeral at district meeting. We went all out. I was a speaker. We have
a video of it but it's too long to send. I'll send a little clip of
it. It was hilarious.  (Here is the little snippet!)

Beautiful Kansas City Temple

That night we went to the church to sync our area books on our iPads. We also went down to Liberty for an appointment, and we went and visited some people Torrico knew in his first area. That was super cool. I loved being out in the beautiful open fields . . . a good change from rich Leawood.

This week we've been meeting with a couple new investigators that are friends of a returned missionary in our ward. One of them, Monica, is a sweetheart and seems genuinely interested. The other is a little more hard hearted and intelligent minded. He seems like it's more of a curiosity, and not a sincere desire to learn. HE GOT A 36 ON THE ACT TEST, AND EVEN SKIPPED A GRADE. Crazy... We also met with Madison and Christian a couple times this week. I love them so much. 

We're doing lots of service as well. We helped a less active move. Remember Renlund's talk this past conference where he says that the further away the person is from the church, the more entitled they feel to immediate assistance from them? Let's just say, this lady was that, times 100. She was so unpleasant to be around, and was not ready to move. So we spent the first three hours packing everything for her. It took all day and she still didn't hesitate to boss us around and be very impatient with us the whole day. She felt very entitled to the free labor of 20 men. Haha It was very frustrating.

Finished Jesus the Christ yesterday. I felt so peaceful as I finished
it. I KNOW without a doubt in my mind, that God the Father and Jesus
Christ appeared to Joseph in the Sacred Grove (which I'm dying to go
back and visit again) and that the fullness of the gospel was restored
by divine power through Joseph Smith. I just know it!!! I know the
Book of Mormon is true. Because I've read it three times, and have
prayed about it, and have felt by far, the most peaceful, happy
moments of my life as I've read it and finished it. I'm so thankful to
be born into this gospel. I'm so excited to show my future kids how
amazing this gospel is as well. I think about that all the time. That
is going to be the most fulfilling thing to see my kids eventually
read the Book of Mormon, and feel the truth of it like I did. It means
so much to me. I love my Savior Jesus Christ.

And I Luvs Youz,
Elder Townsend