Faith is Power

Nuedi! Nue gambi!  That means hello, how are you? in Kuna. Bien.   I am glad to hear that everything back home is going well. Grandpa is a trooper so I am sure he will be fine in a couple of weeks! 

This last week was a pretty interesting one, as changes week always is!  Coming out of the office, I thought changes week would be normal for me, but it seems I was wrong. We shipped out Tuesday morning for the city, and had to wait until Wednesday to get the money and start the shopping spree.  In the meantime, we found out who was leaving the zone and coming out, and we found out that Elder Oakley and I are in a trio now!  Elder P from Kent, Washington is our new companion!  Since Elder O leaves four weeks after I do, President wanted Elder P to have a lot of time out here to get travel and all the zone things down before we both leave. That means that this change, we will be travelling a lot between all the islands doing companion exchanges with all the missionaries.  And, we will be able to do double work in our area, doing exchanges with the members!  I am super excited to have the new experience!  Also, Elder S from Bluffdale is in our zone with Elder A!  He played football at Riverton High, but I never knew him, but it is fun to talk about Riverton High!

This week, I started to read the book called "Lectures on Faith" that was written for the school of Elders back in the early days of the church.  It has given me a whole new idea on faith.  I have always looked at the word "hope" with a bit of doubt attached.  But, in Spanish, I realized that the word "hope", "expect", and "wait" are all the same verb. Esperar.  I much prefer the word expect.  Faith is an assurance of things that we can't see. Christ couldn't see the earth before he created it, but He expected that it would appear at His command.  It has changed my viewpoint of faith in missionary work.  Instead of just being obedient and expecting the Lord to shed blessings upon me, I can have those promised blessings at the front of my mind, and really truly expect them to be given me. I can envision results and through my faith bring them to pass.  I don't really know how to describe what I learned, but I recommend reading the Lectures on Faith.  Faith is power.

We are going to start district meetings through Skype this week! It will be a great pick me up for the zone.  We are one of the highest baptizing zones in the mission and we know we can improve even more!  There are so many people prepared in San Blas, and we think that doing regular meetings will give the missionaries the training necessary to find and baptize those people! Things are taking off here!   I am going to give more details on the call home on

April 6th in an email to mom a little later.  I love you all!

Love,

Elder Austin Michael Kipp

P.S. Pizza mas an gumbie! ( I want to eat pizza.....)