May 28, 2013

 

This week has been going pretty good. We didn't get to write until today because of Memorial Day and all the library being closed. I did get the cookies and they were still good, they got here last Tuesday so not quite as long as my package took to get to Minnesota.

The weather has been really nice here, but only me and my companion think so, haha. We are more used to the cold, I guess, but the temp has been in the 60's so it's weird seeing people in sweaters walking around like it's cold when we think it's great. I saw the picture of all my clothes burning so I guess you got that problem figured out, haha. I hope you saved some of my jeans and if you did, could you send some to me please? If not, that's fine.

This last week went by pretty good. On Thursday we had an Area 70, Elder Eduardo Gavarret visit on a mission tour. That was pretty cool, he gave a talk on how we should trust our mission president and teach people not lessons. which was pretty interesting.

O is doing well. We plan on having him set with a date today. So far, he has been doing good on keeping his commitments and we are still excited for him.

B is moving to Oklahoma with E's ex-boyfriend P, another guy we have talked to a little but hasn't really progressed much. B is still interested in talking to the missionaries, though, so we plan on keeping contact with him so we can refer him to the missionaries there. We finally got a hold of E, who has left the house and is living with B's ex-girlfriend R, the girl that his emotional break down was about, which is a pretty funny story. My companion and I are walking down the street to a recent convert family's house when we hear some people call out to us. It was her and a couple friends who were "dressed" to go to a club, I will let you imagine what such a dress would entail. They decide to walk with us to the members house and we got her information so that we could set an appointment for a lesson this week, but the members we are visiting were standing outside their house and see us walking down the street with our entourage. The Brother shook his head and the Sister started to laugh and walked into the house. As we walked away, E calls out "Call me!" and the Sister just loses it with laughter then proceeds to give us a hard time. She said, " So that's why you guys became missionaries!" while we just sat there red faced and laughing, trying to explain what the situation was.

We also got kicked out of a guys house this week. Missionaries have been visiting him since he joined the church because he still has a few hurdles to overcome.He is convinced that Brigham Young was an adulterous slave holding thug, does not believe Joseph Smith or the Book of Mormon, and did not like what we had to say when we asked him to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it and Joseph Smith as well as to read more about Brigham Young. He got so mad and said he knew all he needed to about Brigham Young and wanted nothing to do with the Book of Mormon then told us to get out and never come back because we were trying to brainwash him. We aren't to worried about this, though, he has apparently thrown out several sets of missionaries over the years and he was at church on Sunday so we are still hopeful for him.

We had a ward talent show on Saturday which was pretty fun. On the way, my companion and the other set of missionaries that work with us decide to do a skit about the day in the life of a missionary. We put it together in about 10 minutes before it started. My companion and I pretended to tract into 4 different people. The first was a drunk guy who passed out when we tried to teach him. The second was a woman that flirted with us then slapped us and slammed the door when we told her about chastity. The third was a guy who pulled a gun out and started shooting as we ran away in slow motion. The last house was a guy who was super excited about the gospel. As we went through the skit, we progressively got more disheveled-looking and downhearted so by the end we I was crawling on the ground and my companion was limping. When we got to the last house and knocked, we apprehensively showed the last guy a book of Mormon and he jumped around the stage and hugged us then we bowed. We had the whole ward laughing and everyone came up to us and said it was super funny.

We have started to work with S, the daughter of one of our investigators who has, up until now, not been very open to us. She says she an atheist, but not strongly. She had recently started sitting in on the lessons we were having with her dad, and had mentioned that she felt a little uncomfortable around us because our suits made us look to formal and uptight. So we went over in our normal clothes one night just to talk to her and ended up playing the board game LIFE. She opened up to us a lot and agreed to start taking the lessons with her dad and also said that she feels differently when we are around and believes the gospel more and more every time we teach her dad. We are very excited for her.

We are also working with a guy named J, who has been talking lessons for 14 years. He is a really nice guy, but for some reason he just refuses to be baptized. We fasted and prayed and spent 2 hours on Sunday preparing for his lesson that night. We decided to take a different tactic with him, something other missionaries hadn't. We were very blunt but not in a condescending or hurtful way. It went very well, he said he would consider it more this week and we plan on doing the same thing again this Sunday. We are very hopeful for him and feel very strongly he is ready for it even though he claims otherwise.

I love you and miss you all.

May 21, 2013

Congratulations on graduating! That's awesome. I know, it's weird already having my associates. My companion did the same thing as me during high school and got his in Accounting before coming out. We are both glad we did it, though, it saved a ton of time and money.

Elder Dallin H. Oaks came to Reno South for stake conferences and the missionaries were invited if they could get investigators to come. We got there super early so we were pretty close to him when he spoke. He is a really smart guy and also really funny and after he finished he had about an hour of question and answer which was cool. After wards, he walked around and shook hands and talked to us and others, which was awesome. He mentioned that she (Sister Monson) had passed while he was speaking, and all the missionaries were surprised, we had never heard.

Things are going well here. We are staying busy. On average, we rode our bikes about 20-25 miles a day and we taught a lot of lessons. C. decided he wanted to visit his family in California for a few weeks before getting baptized so he pushed his date back to July. His family is very Jewish and he wants to talk to them in person first, which we understand. He lives in Reno with his sister S. who hates the church and wont let us teach lessons in her house but she is really nice and loves us and loves talking to us for some reason. One time, we went and visited him just to see how he was doing. She came home and thought we had been teaching and gave us the death stare, I don't think I had ever been so scared in my life. After we had reassured her we were not teaching a lesson, she was fine, but man oh man, I thought she was about to murder us the look she had. She really is a nice person though, she has invited us over for dinner several times and likes to talk but is not open to the gospel.

We haven't really been able to teach E. and B. again. The whole situation in that house among other things is making it very hard to get a hold of them, but when we do get to talk to them they still want us to come over, the timing is just not right and it is worsened by the fact that we are so busy and our availability is limited, but we make and effort to stop by every day and see if we can't get a hold of any of them.

All I have to say about O. is that he is unbelievable. We meet with him about every two days and he completely accepts the gospel. We got him to come to see Elder Oaks and he thought it was great. We were worried about him because he accepts everything without question, so we were trying to get him to pray and ask and to change if he got an answer and he got frustrated with us and said,"You guys keep telling me to ask God but I already know it's true. If I didn't believe you guys and know it was good, I wouldn't let you come back." His mother had also come up to us and said what ever you are telling him, keep telling him, it's been good for him. He also said he wanted to know more and that if he came with us to church he would be able to learn more, which astounded us, we hadn't even brought up church yet. Then he asked us if we didn't smoke or drink so we then brought up the Word of Wisdom and we thought for sure he would have a problem with it, we had met him biking down the street intoxicated. He asked if he could still drink to and smoke weed, and we explained he couldn't but that we are blessed for it and he said, "OK, I will stop drinking beer and tea, I don't drink coffee or smoke cigarettes, and I was going to quite smoking weed anyway." We were speechless. Everyone else we teach has had problems having faith in the Word of Wisdom but he is all for it. There are still somethings he doesn't understand quite yet, but he wants to be be baptized and wants to be married in the temple, we are very excited for him.

I love you all and hope you have a great week

May 13, 2013

I really enjoyed talking to you guys last night too. Hopefully be Christmas we can figure out Skype and I can see you guys. Nothing much has changed here. After we talked we went to dinner then went to a neighborhood and visited a few people with the little time we had left. Erica is still really excited to here more about our message and Brandon has been talking about how great he thinks we are and the things we have been teaching him so we have high hopes for them. We also visited the F___s, an older recent convert couple in the ward. They introduced me to their birds, all 30 of them, haha, it was so loud I could hardly hear myself. They are super nice, though. We also visited Oscar, an investigator we met while he drove his bike down the street while intoxicated. He still loves the Book of Mormon and the "Jesus boys" as he calls us, haha. We are going to try and meet with him again tomorrow night.

Nothing much new has happened this week. I went to California for the first time last Tuesday for Zone Conference in Susanville. That was alright but I can't wash California off myself, hahaha. We might be getting a car next transfer, but since the other Elders we live with already have one, we might not get it because technically we already do, even though we can't use it.

I love and miss you guys.

May 6, 2013

Jen: I was lucky today and got to do some email/texting with Jake, so I will just combine them all in here. Also I saw today that the Mission President's wife put up a bunch of pictures of Jacob on their blog http://nevadarenomission.blogspot.com/


Dear Mom,
I hope you are able to find a new home for the ducks or sort something out with them. That's awesome that they follow you around, though, it looks like having them upstairs is working out. Hopefully the wheezing one isn't going to die or get the other ones sick. I don't think I would clean 16 turds for only a dollar, but I guess it's good that they will, haha (This is referring to my letter to him about his brother and sister cleaning up the winter's dog mess in the yard). I'm not sure where dad's wrenches are, maybe downstairs or in the Lumina. I cleaned out all the cars before I sold them so I'm not sure. The tires are mine.

I gave them both cards, is there a way to get that information to them? I'm not sure how much I can do from here. Do you need the information off my health card? (This is referring to a medical bill we got.)

I've gotten a few different letters, no cookies though. I don't think there is anything I need this week.

Things are going well here. My companion, Elder B___, and I stay pretty busy. We taught over 18 lessons this week, with one investigator, Charles, that is committed to baptism either on the 18th or 25th depending on when one of his close friends can attend. So far, I haven't ran into anyone that has wanted to kill me yet, haha. I love being here and I love the people. There are so many people that we teach that have had really rough lives, it's crazy and heartbreaking sometimes. Yesterday, Sunday, was probably one of the coolest days ever. After church, we visited Dianna, a recent convert who hasn't been to church in a while. After we talked with her, she and her husband offered to drop us off at our next appointment but we both felt that we should walk. As we walked, there was an older guy walking towards us but when he got to about 100 yards he crossed the street, not uncommon for us because it's pretty easy to pick out the missionaries. However, when we got closer he crossed back over to talk to us. He had lost his dog and wondered if we had seen it. We hadn't but we offered to help him look. As we looked, we started talking to him about religion. He told us that while in prison some time ago, he had found god. We asked what religion he was affiliated with and he said none but that the people he had talked to in prison and been LDS missionaries. We never found his dog, but he asked if he could come to church with us, before we had even had a real teaching lesson with him! We said he could but we set up a time to meet him first. That was pretty cool.

After that we stopped by the house of Brandon, another person we had met earlier this week. He was at work but a couple of his roommates, Erica and Fancy, were there. Everyone that lives in that house is our age or a little younger and think that we are nuts for being missionaries, but they always have questions and like talking to us. Erica wanted to know where god came from so we said we could tell her, but we would have to start from the beginning. We ended up talking a little bit about Jesus Christ and the atonement, because she also wanted to know about forgiveness for sin, and she invited us to come back the next day because she wanted to know more. We are very excited for her. It's crazy how being a missionary opens doors for you. Even though they thinking we are out of our minds, they are impressed that we put other people before ourselves, something they aren't used to. People that don't even know us feel comfortable sharing really personal information with us. In the case of Erica and Fancy, it was very personal, let me tell you. It is really sad, though. They have very low standards and expectations for themselves and the people they associate with. Fancy told us about her boyfriend and said," He has a job, a license (no car though) and a high school diploma, what more could I want?" At first I thought she was joking, but she was absolutely serious. Elder B___ and I were shocked, we didn't know what to say to that. It's their lifestyle, though, they don't think they can do better. They are interested in the Gospel, though, so we are hopeful for them.

 

ETA: Email 2: Did they tell you my area? If not, my zone is Quincy, which is technically pretty far into the California part of our mission but my area is in the Stead ward, which is pretty much in Reno.

I love you and miss you.

ETA: Email 3: ...on mother's day I will probably call at about 4 your time.

ETA: Email 4: I love you too. I forgot to tell you about my new companion. His name is Elder B___, he is from Orem, Utah. He just turned 19 back in April and has only been out 3 months himself. We get along well. I think he is the second kid out of a few, I know he has an older brother serving a mission in Canada right now and a sister that is in high school. He is pretty mellow but he takes missionary work seriously. I think we will get along for the 12 weeks he is training me.

 

Dear Joy,

I hope your scratches get better. I'm also sorry you hurt your arm again, I hope that it's not causing you any problems. How do you like playing the piano? I bet you'll be really good by the time I get back. I'm glad you're having fun. I love you and miss you everyday.

 

Dear Jaeden,

I'm happy that you are starting the piano again. I wish I could have learned how to play it when I was little, I bet you'll be really good at it and happy that you learned how to play. Mom had said the ducks were being a bunch of goofs. I know you will do good on the MCA's. I love you monkey monkey underwear!

 

Sorry, blogger is not letting me delete the second saluting picture. :/

May 1, 2013

Today we received an email from Jacob's mission president letting us know that Elder K had arrived and they attached pictures of Jacob with the Mission President and his wife, and also a picture of Jacob with his new companion. They also sent a picture of his handwritten letter to us, that they had him write right away when he got there. Jacob's P-Day, which is a preparation day, is on Mondays and so that is when we will receive letters from him.



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