13 October 2011 Mission Complete!!!

(This entry is written by Mom - Kris Bloomfield)

Elder Bloomfield arrived home on Thursday Evening.  Kara flew in from Salt Lake City just a little bit before Kyle, so we all headed out to the airport and awaited both of their arrivals.  They were both right on time!!  It was so great to see Kyle as he came around the corner to where we could see him.  Of coarse we were all excited and screaming and crying.  It was an awesome sight to have him return home after completing a very successful 2 year mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.  I have to admit, he looked a little worn from the well dressed boy we sent out 2 years previous.  His shoes were worn out, his shirt was discolored (yellow in the armpits with a brown tint to it), he had on tan pants that were not fitted and a black pinned stripped suit coat that was a little large for him, but he had the "Kyle Smile" that we all knew.  He also had a "New Smell" about him.  In fact the first thing the girls said is, "Kyle you Stink".  I think two years of eating beans and rice and what ever else they found had settled in on his body, but smell or no smell, we were sure glad he was home.  It was such a awesome feeling having us all (Mo also came to the airport with us) back together again.  We took a few pictures while waiting for his suitcase to come out from baggage claim at the airport.

Mo, Kyle and Travis posing for a photo????

Cassi, and Olivia happy to have their oldest brother home.

Once we got Kyle's bags, we headed for home.

So good to have him back!!

We decorated the table and house with a Flag from Nicaragua and Blue and White decorations (the colors of the flag).  We of coarse had Chicken and Cheese casserole (Kyle's favorite dish) in honor of Kyle's return.

We all loved just sitting around and listening to the adventures of the last 2 years of Kyle's life.

We missed this face around our home!!!

And this one too!!

And this smile!!!!

After dinner, we all loaded back in the car and headed to the Stake Center where Kyle was released by President Speirs as a Full-Time Missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.  Pres. Speirs shared some thoughts with us and then had members of our family share thoughts as well as Kyle. It was a very bitter sweet night.  Kyle was a little more quiet as I am sure he was contemplating what this all meant.  His life would never be the same after the experiences he had just had over the last two years in all aspects of his life!!!!  He now has the challenge to decide what will come next in his life!!

Before doing anything else, Kyle wanted to go to the Temple and talk with the Lord about his last two years and what directions he should head in for his future.  Steve, Kyle, Kara and I all awoke early Friday morning and drove 2.5 hours to the Houston Temple.  We did a session in the Temple and then spent some time in the Celestial Room praying.  Kyle went off by himself for a period of time and talked with the Lord in Prayer.  It was a very tender time for all of us.  It was such a blessing to be in those circumstances with our two oldest children who had successfully completed their missions and were now ready to move on to the next stage of life - school and what ever it may be.

10 October 2011 Last Email and Pictures from Managua, Nicaragua North Mission

Well here is my last email as a missionary in Managua, Nicaragua.  It is hard to believe more than 2 years has gone by.  Wednesday morning at around 4:00am, I will go to Managua and hang for the day with all the other missionaries that are going home.  We will do some shopping, have a devotional/testimony meeting and go to dinner, then on Thursday I fly home.  I could go to Managua today if I wanted but I am going to try and get 3 or 4 more baptisms in before I get sent out of here. They are all basically members already but have never had a reason to be baptized so we are going to help them out.  All the other members of their families are members but they are the hard ones but it looks like good is going to win the battle. We had 2 baptisms yesterday.

For my last P-day today, I have no real big plans. There just aren't many sights to see.  Only on occasion but it is hard to go sight seeing cause basically every where is prohibido. We will do the usual, just play soccer in the morning and hang out and eat and stuff like that nothing exciting.            

Since I have been out on my mission for 25 months, my email ended and my mission credit card was cancelled already, but don't worry they put extra money on my companions credit card for me.

I guess that is all.  I am off to family home evening see you on Thursday!

The following pictures were taken on the last night of Kyle's mission.

Elder Lundquist and Pres. and Sis. Arredondo

Elder Bloomfield (Kyle) and Pres. and Sis. Arredondo

The group of missionaries that are going home.

The missionaries that are going home, the office elders and Pres. and Sis. Arredondo

Elder Bloomfield (Kyle) and Elder Ball

Notice Kyle's nice suit.  Everything was stollen a few weeks back, so this is what he came up with from the second hand stores to get him through the last weeks of his mission.  He has on tanish pants with a black (to big) pinned stripped jacket.  

"The Last Supper"

Kyle will truly miss these 2 people.  They have influenced his life forever!!!!!

The Arrendondo children with Elder Lundquist and Kyle

Elder Stark and The Arrendondo's

26 September 2011 Pretty Cool Week

This week was pretty cool, as a zone we baptized 9 families this month and that is pretty good considering that the most baptized in one month here is 10, so we did good.  We will see how next month goes, because things aren't looking to good.

We also had 8 investigators in church on Sunday.  It was pretty cool.  

On Wednesday, a missionary from my ward came home from his mission early and the stake president was at the temple and could not release him, so the elder had to stay with us.  He was way funny and really excited to me a missionary but real sad to be home (He came home for health problems but leaves after he is operated on).  He was only in his mission for 6 weeks and then was sent home.  It was great working with him cause he still had so much energy and stuff to be a missionary.  He gave us a ton of references and leads,  so it was a good week.  

I am really excited for this next weekends  General Conference.  It is going to be sweet.  

I am not sure what else to say.  

Hope you have a great week making decisions.  I am going to have a good week preaching the gospel and learning from the spirit of God.  

Love you,

Elder Bloomfield

3 October 2011 Only 10 days left!!!!

So Cali. huh?? (Steve just accepted a new position with a company in California.  He was also offered a position  in Utah, so there was much fasting and prayer to get an answer. Kyle just got the news.)   I knew we were going to California, it just felt like the right decision to me.  You never know maybe there is some kind of special mission for you there.

As for the PlayStation, I just want to say that it is not all bad (there was a talk in conference that referred to it as the Satan Station and as the mother, I agree).  What is the one thing that brings all your boys together on a daily basis?  Yes, that is the PlayStation. Maybe it doesn't look like any thing good to you, but some of the best bonding times Mason and Travis have are playing that thing together.  It can bring the family together.  As we know there is something good and something bad in all things.  

Well this week went faster then ever and I am hating it.   I want things to slow down so I can enjoy my last little time here on my mission.  Every day we did lots of work.  Thursday was interesting.  There was a group of people that were suppose to come with us to teach and help out but one of them was beat by her mother so we gave her a priesthood blessing and helped her out.   After we taught a really spiritual lesson to a lady that her husband is member but she isn't.  We asked her to pray with us and she just wouldn't do it.  The spirit was so strong but she just denied the opportunity to accept the blessing of the Lord in her life even though it is so clear that we could be really blessed for following them.  We as members still do that but to not such a great extent, we have the opportunity to do so much more and we just lay back and stay with the normal,  but when we leave the normal and are uncomfortable is when we will receive the blessings.  

It sounds like you had your own personal experience (Coming to the decision to move to California) this week that really helped build your faith. That is good.  Things are so different when the Lord tells you what to do then when just a normal person tells you what to do.  That is why he has the spirit to testify to us.  

As for conference it was absolutamente amazing.  I learned so much and took so many notes.  The Saturday Priesthood session was amazing like usual.  There was even a talk just for me by Elder Waddell.  He talked about what missionaries should do when they get home, it was great.  Now I have so much to study for the next 6 months.  I am so excited.  

Only ten more days like you said.  I am not to excited about that.  The closer it comes the more I don't want to go.  Today something great happened,  I saw the first family that I baptized here in Nicaragua.  They are doing great and are still active.   That made me real happy.  

Well guess that is it for this week.

Love ya,

Elder Bloomfield

19 September 2011 Nearing the end of my mission

This week was way frustrating, we had a great week and great spiritual lessons with the investigators, but none of them came to church it was really annoying but that's life so we are moving on.

That is cool that they are so excited about missionary work back home.(Gladis Night did a performance in our area as a missionary tool).  

It was weird at church, we had 4 gringos from Utah attend.  In fact one of then was Elder Francis uncle.  Just talking to them made me not excited to go home at all.  The way they acted made me frustrated.  Don't get me wrong they are way nice people and stuff -they weren't mean or any thing but just the whole cocky I am better then you vibe was coming off and I am not excited to get home and live with people like them again.  

Also at church I gave a talk on the Book of Mormon.  It went pretty well.  I based it off a talk by President Ezra Taft Benson.  

It's  good that you got some rain,  we got like 20 feet of rain and almost struck by lightning every day.  I would get home and put my boots and shoes by the fan so that they would be dry for the next day.  One day it was so bad we just put on sandals and rolled up our pant legs and went out to preach the gospel.  Great times here in the mission field.  

As for what to eat when I get home,  I don't really care.  Eating Wendy's or P- Terrys would make me happy or good old Chuy's  or just a sandwich and a bag of Doritos.  I don't really care.  You know me, I don't care about any thing.  I am just happy to receive things. 

I have some bad news, I am pretty sure I lost all the photos from my mission.   I have really bad luck these days.  Haha   I had them on my hard drive but I think it has a virus. I am pretty sure that the virus just made all the folders invisible or other words hid them so usually I would just go to the search bar and find them but this time there weren't any when I searched but it is probably the computer as it is a piece of crap.  Hopefully                                                       our computer back home works with the hard drive.  Since my camera was stolen, I can not take any more pictures.  Elder Bott has a camera and he takes more photos then you can imagine so don't worry about that. I have tons of photos from these last 3 months.  I am going to buy a memory for 10 dollars so I should be good on the whole memory thing that way I can get the Photos from my companion.

For the last few days of my mission, I will have Elder Lundquist to take pictures, he is like my brother or I could buy a camera just to take pictures of Mom when I get to the airport in Austin. That would be a       photos that I would never forget.

       

Well we are leaving to Managua in just a bit, so I will write a little later or tomorrow maybe. We are going for conferencia de lideres.  My last one.  Woo Hoo    We are going to sleep there. It takes like 2 and a half hours to get there.  We will take like a 15 person bus (like the van that the packers had)  to get there and we will sleep in the house of the office where I use to live.  

My companion is just finishing the slide show of what we did this month then we are out of here  but he is one of those people that just sits for hours staring at the slide show, so it could be a while or it could be in just a moment.  Well actually, he just stood up so we are out of here.  Love you all.  Have a great week see you soon.

Love,

Elder Bloomfield

12 September 2011 "The Lord comes in and does miracles"

Well first off, about the whole music thing, lets just say you can go to a country that knows nothing about music and try to sing and no one knows you can't.  They think it is pretty good. All singing ability I had is now gone,  I might even be worse then the Nicas at singing.   So as for singing in church when I get home, I will have to tell you - um no...

Yes, Elder Lundquist got his ticket changed so every thing is good.  We will fly until Dallas together then he heads to Utah and me to Austin.  That will be cool to travel home together since we went out together.                                                           As for our last day, we go to the changes meeting and give our last testimony in front of the whole mission then we go to the market to buy our last little things to take home.  After that, we have our last interview with                                                           Pres. and  then we go to dinner and sometimes you go back to his house and have a spiritual meeting and some times you don't. It just depends on the day.  

Alright, I think those are all the questions you asked so as for my week it was rather frustrating because the zone had some many baptismal possibilities and all kinds of stuff happened and after every thing a ton of them didn't get baptized but like always we say a ton of miracles took place.                                                

The lady we baptized 2 weeks ago is amazing.  She can't read but she makes her in recently activated husband read the Book of Mormon to her so she is just super converted and her husband is doing so much better.  It is great to see the gospel change peoples life's.  

The mission assistant to the President came and was my companion for 2 days also this week.  That was fun he helped me go do baptismal interviews.  This week I probably did like 5 or 6 interviews.  I was thinking this week I have probably taken part of like 500 or so baptisms in my mission that is amazing the things that just one person can do with the help of the Lord.  

Haha    Well my companion has gone insane.  He got a 15 foot chain and he chained his new suitcase to the bed it is way funny.  I will show you a picture of it when I get home.  Now I figure if they break in again it is cool with me. The pillow case is still there with out a chain.  You will think its funny until you see me on the airplane and all I have is a pillow case in my hand with brown pants and a black suit coat.                                      I gave away all my other pants.  

We got a big metal barrel and we filled it with water so the sink is no longer needed that the robbers threw through the door so don't even worry.

Just so you know when I am missing a tooth don't be worried, same thing when I have like 30 parasites.  It will be all normal that is how life is here.  I am doing pretty good and not so sick.  I don't eat much these days.  I have only spent 2 dollars all day on food. I think I am down to like 150lbs or so these days.   I feel so skinny and week.  I can't wait to work out for real and run. I will put my ipod on and just run for hours.    I really want to play college soccer so I want to get into great shape.

My mission has taught me if you do all you can the Lord comes in and does a miracle.  That is why it rocks to be a member of this church.  

Well love you all,

Elder Bloomfield