Elder McKade Kerr Mission

Hello all! Well, we're finally here. This is the last group email I'll ever send. Yay! I fly to Barbados tomorrow, and then home on Thursday! I'd love to tell you information about my homecoming talk, but all I know is that it'll be at 9 on Sunday morning. Also, there should be some sort of open house too. You are all invited, I just don't when it is, haha. My mom told me, but I kind of don't remember. I have lots of stuff going through my head right now.  Anyway, Marie Lyvie got baptized this week! It was so awesome! I was so excited. She is so amazing, and I'm so happy that she can now have the blessing of the gift of the holy ghost in her life. Oh man, I'm just so happy for her. It was the perfect ending for my mission. Well, it's not over yet, but it was the perfect last weekend. Well, it definitely wasn't the perfect last weekend either, but the baptism was perfect. Well, actually, there was lots of stress with that too. Ok, fine, th...

Hello! This week was good. I had an interesting surprise when I opened up my email today. I've been trying really hard to not count the days I have left, but when I got on my email I had an email from my family with the heading "The Countdown!" I opened it up, and it was a picture of the number of days I have left. So, I guess I'm counting now, haha. I'm just sad that I have to wait 19 days after I get home before Braden gets home. Anyway, that's enough talk about going home. This week was good. We had zone conference, which went really good, and we got to see President and Sister Fisher again too, which is always fun. Other than that the week was pretty normal. I did go on an exchange too, which was fun. But that's about all. I guess I'll send a couple pictures I took. Have a great week everyone! Love you all! Love, Elder Kerr One is me with a member, and the other one is a weird plant that we see all the time here. I think ...

Hello! Well, we had another week this week. That's probably not too surprising considering that we have a week every week. But this one was special, because it was a semaine. Look that up in French. You'll be happy you did. You might also realize that I'm just saying n'importe quoi, mais je sais même pas si j'ai bien écris ça parce que je sais pas écrire en français. Aussi, je ne sais jamais quoi dire même en anglais parce que ça fait deux ans que je suis en mission, et chaque semaine et la même. En fait, ça c'est pas exactement vrai, mais chaque p-day c'est comme ça, haha.  Sorry if any of you take the time to google translate that. I promise that it's not even worth your time. But anyway, this week was good. Our friend Marie-Lyvie is still on date for baptism, so that's good! And we did lots of fun contacting. We had an exchange, and I was with Elder Jack, who is fun, but I also got sunburned pretty good with him. Oh well. And I can't r...

Hello! How are you all? I hope you're all great. This week was good. We had a cool experience at church this week. We have a friend that we are teaching named Abnel, and he really wanted to come to church but had no ride. We called a couple members, but no one answered or was able to go. So we had to call him and tell him that we couldn't find anyone to give him a ride. We got to church about 45 minutes before it started, and pretty much the only other person there was the branch president. We never asked him if he could give Abnel a ride, mostly because I never know what he has to do before and after church, so I don't want to bother him by asking him to give rides to our friends. But Elder Plowman insisted that we ask him, so we went over to him and told him that we had a friend who wanted a ride to church, and before we could get any further the branch president was like "Ok, let's go get him", and he got up and walked outside. So we followed him and he...

Hello Everyone! Sorry that I didn't write anything last week. My brother got on the computer at the same time as me, which almost never happens, so I was talking to him instead. And I don't have much time this week because I need to set stuff up for college, so I think I'll just put some random highlights from the past two weeks. I saw a turtle. We set two baptismal dates this week. I saw a frog. We helped a less active come to church for the first time in months. I saw a cat. We were eating dinner at a restaurant, and a few drunk or crazy people came in at different times and were asking us for money. With that and a lady next to us who loved to talk, we didn't get one quiet second during all of dinner. But the lady who was talking a lot also is one of the people we put on date. Lots of miracles with that. I saw a dog. I cut my hair two weeks ago, but we didn't have the 1 inch guard for the razor, so I cut the top to 3/4 of an ...

Hello everyone! I was determined to write a good, long email today, but then we played basketball this morning and I jammed one of my fingers pretty good, and it hurts to type. So you all lucked out, I guess I'll just have to send pictures instead. Love you all, and have a great week! (And don't worry mom, it doesn't hurt that bad, it's just uncomfortable to type with)  Love, Elder Kerr Pics: It was Elder Plowman's birthday this week, and the Noel family gave us a super nice dinner and some birthday cake! And I can't remember if I already sent the yoga picture.

 Hello! I think I'll write a shorter email this week. I'm kind of tired of writing long emails, haha. But one cool thing that happened this week was zone conference! It was great to see President and Sister Fisher again. Also, I learned so much stuff. It's crazy how simple missionary work is, but how I never stop learning about how to be a better missionary. I wish I knew everything I know now at the beginning of my mission. Oh well, I guess it'd be smarter to not worry about what I didn't do in the past, and just do better for the rest of my mission. I'm sorry everyone, I'm really drawing a big blank on what happened this week. It was mothers day, so I got to skype home. It's kind of weird how the less you're able to do something the more important it becomes to you. For the first two Christmases and the first mothers day of my mission, those were the only times I could skype home, so it was super exciting and a big deal. But now th...

Hello! This week we had some sweet miracles. Mostly with our friends Steeve and Linsay. They live in the apartment right next to us, and they are super cool. They have the cutest baby too. He is 7 months and 3 days old today. The first lesson we had with them Steeve told us how old their baby was to the day. Yeah, like I said, they're elect. Or just really weird. But anyway, we've had lots of super great lessons with them since we met them, and they have decided that they want to get baptized! We set the date for June 22, so unless something weird happens with transfers (which it probably will), I should be here for it. They also came to church this week and they really liked it. We were also blessed because it was a super good fast and testimony meeting, and we had a super good sunday school lesson too. And throughout my whole mission I've heard how great the members are in Martinique, and holy cow it's true. Almost every single member at church...

Bonjour! Oh wow, look at that. It's only been four days and I already remember how to say hello in French. Hopefully by the end of my mission I'll remember how to teach the restoration. That's alright even if I don't though, a good hello and a smile goes a long way. But anyway, yep, I'm speaking French again. I'm sure most of you didn't even realize that I wasn't speaking French for the past two transfers, but that's ok. I don't really know where I am or what's going on most of the time either.  It was really sad to leave Barbados. We had lots of really cool people we were teaching, and I've gotten to really know them and love them a lot. I'll be back on Barbados for a day before I go home though, so hopefully I'll be able to see them then. And not much work has been done in my new area for the past transfer because the missionary that I replaced hurt his ankle super bad and had to stay inside for a few weeks. So w...

Hello! Holy cow, I have so much I'd like to say about this week. But unfortunately, lots of very Christ-like people decided to email me this week, and I don't have much time because I want to respond to all of them too. So we'll see how this goes. Wish me luck.  First off, transfers! I've been in Barbados for a whole two transfers already, so naturally, it's time to get transferred again. I'm really sad to be leaving, I've loved Barbados. The people here are so nice, and we have such an amazing area with so many awesome people we have been teaching. Also, I've been so blessed to be here and be able to work closely with President Fisher too. He's really taught me a lot about how to be a better missionary and how to be a better person. It's been a huge blessing. I also had the chance to serve around lots of missionaries I wouldn't have met normally because they got called English speaking. I've met lots of people who w...

Hello! Well, most of you probably know this, but General Conference was this weekend. And it was AWESOME! I love listening to conference so much! The spirit was so strong, and I felt like I learned so much, and also got reminded of many things that I need to do and need to do better. It is such a blessing to have a prophet on the earth today to help us with that. I want to encourage all of you to read and watch the conference talks again and again, and to study them. The Chruch doesn't do general conferences just to give us a spiritually uplifting weekend, and then have us keep doing what we've always done. It is so that we can receive counsel and advice, and then change. And like we learned this weekend, changing to come closer to Christ is repentance, and we need to repent every day. I know that if you keep studying the talks and applying the things in them, you will see miracles and many blessings in your lives.  Also, I have a kind of funny story to tell about m...

Hello everyone! I've got a little bit of a funny story to share. So when we knock on doors here, we always yell in too. So if it's morning we say "Good morning inside", or if it's later we say "afternoon inside" or "evening inside". I learned that my first day in the mission, and even though it's different on the French islands, that's what I've always done on the English islands. But there was an activity for the young single adults on Barbados this week, and we went to the end of it. They were sharing stories about being with missionaries, and how they always think it's so funny that missionaries always yell the word 'inside' when we contact houses. It turns out that most people here just yell "good morning" or "good evening", and don't actually say the word inside. That's just something missionaries do. Whoops. It only took me over 20 months to learn that, haha. So I thought that was ...

Hello! I wasn't sure what to write about today, so I decided to talk about what I ate. Yeah, I know, it's not uru and poisson cru and all that crazy stuff my brother is eating, but at least you know what I'm talking about. And I made my food myself. Kind of. So it's kind of a little exciting. Anyway, this morning I decided to make pancakes for the three other missionaries living with me, so I mixed up the batter, and then I realized that we didn't have a ton of time, and I didn't want to spend forever making one pancake at a time anyway. So I took a page out of Calvin's book and poured the entire thing into the pan. It was the thickest pancake I've ever had, but we turned the head down so it actually cooked really well. It was super hard to flip it though because it was still wet on the top, and the pancake was the same size as the pan, but it worked out ok. Then we just cut it into fourths and ate it. It tasted like..... pancake. Or, in French, ...

Hello! Wow, this week was so awesome! We had so many miracles. It was probably one of the coolest weeks of my whole mission. I'll try to explain some of the stuff that happened so you can understand a little bit. First off, I don't remember if I already said this, but I am kind of in a trio half of the time now. I live with three other missionaries, and one of them works in the office half of the time, but his companion doesn't. So his companion is with me and Elder Newman for half of the week. And when we are together we need to try to cover both of our areas. It is really weird how it is organized, but it just kind of had to be like that this transfer. Anyway, we were all a little frustrated at first because we knew it would be harder to teach all the people we wanted to and to plan and work effectively, but I think that God saw all of our hard work and desire to be obedient and He blessed us because of it. I won't share everything that happened, but I'll ...

ma Hello!  Well, this is the moment you've all been waiting for. I took pictures. I brought my converter. It is all in the computer working properly. So instead of sending a long boring email with no pictures, I'll send a short boring email with pictures. Yay! I'll just briefly describe my week, and bear a little testimony too. This was transfer week, which means drive to and from the airport a million times for us, haha. It was fun to be with the missionaries going home, so that was cool. And it was really sad to drop off Elder Steed. I really loved being his companion, but I know he'll do great things in his new area. And now I'm with Elder Newman, who is super awesome, and also my same height, so that's nice. I'm super excited for this transfer though, some good things are gonna happen.  I just want to share a cool experience that happened this week. I was kind of nervous that Elder Steed was leaving, because he has been in Barbados for...

Hello! So, funny story. I haven't hardly taken any pictures this past month, which is why I haven't been sending any in my emails. But I made a goal to actually take pictures this week so I'd have some to send. So I took lots of cool pictures this week, and I was so excited to send them too all of you so you wouldn't be disappointed. We have a lot we need to get done today, so we planned out the day really good, and already got a lot of it done. But now here I am, doing my emails, and I got out my camera, looked at all my pictures and what I wanted to send, and then I realized that I had forgotten to bring the card reader for my camera. So I can't actually send any of the pictures. Haha, whoops, sorry. But I'll send them next week! Other than that this week has been pretty normal. We got transfer calls this week. Me and Elder Steed get to help call all the companionships and tell them their transfer calls, so that was fun. But sadly Elder Steed is gettin...

Hello! Well, I don't want to say that I had a week-long vacation to Guadeloupe this week, but I kind of had a week-long vacation to Guadeloupe this week, haha. Elder Teixeira from the Presidency of the 70 came to speak, so President wanted us to come too. He only spoke on Thursday, but because of delayed flights, and how flights work between the French and English islands, we left Tuesday morning and got back Saturday night. And we had a couple other things to do Sunday, so we had about 4 hours of proselyting in our area this week, haha. So that part was a bummer, but everything we did do was super great. I'll try to share just a couple highlights. First off is I got to be in Guadeloupe again! I love all the missionaries there and got to stay with Elder Anderson and Elder Griffin, who are both awesome, so it was a party. But I think the best part was Thursday night when I got to see all of the members from my old branch. It was so great to see them again. I can't ev...

Hello everyone! I suppose you have all heard about the new rule that we can now call our families on Pday, so I used up most of my time today talking to them. So I'll just share a super short story from this week in my email today. We went to a Chinese restaurant called the Guang Dong. Well, that's the story. Have a great week! Love you all! Love, Elder Kerr These are pictures of us at the Guong Dong, and my new address so that I can pretend that maybe one of you will actually mail something to me. Or, maybe these are three different pictures and I clicked on the wrong ones. I could check, or I could be more adventurous and just send it. I'll do that. Have a great one!

Hello! Before I forget, I totally forgot to write about something that happened last week that I wanted to write about. We got invited to go to a church called "The Door Christian Fellowship church" But they mostly just called it The Door. Anyway, we went, and it was quite the experience. They started by singing a bunch of Christian songs, and they weren't too bad, but it went on for a little while. One of the songs was called "My God is awesome", and I think that was the only line in the song. The song was maybe five minutes long. Good stuff. But then after that the preacher started talking about the offering bucket or whatever you call it, the thing they pass around and people donate money. He talked for maybe another 20 minutes just about that and why it was so important to donate. And then the guest speaker got up and started praying and blessing people very loud and irreverently so that they would be blessed financially. By then we had already been ther...