July 29, 2013

Dear folks,

I had to get a new bike chain and service cloths which I can't buy with MSF. I also bought a game, haha, we get so bored on P-Day there isn't much we can do, especially since we don't have a car and aren't with walking or biking distance of anything.  

I'm glad this week went well for you guys at the fair and with the dog. That's funny that the very first egg was a double yoke, did someone eat it or did you just crack it to take a look?

Yeah, we get along really well and figure it's probably down hill from now on with companions. This week was pretty good, we were pretty busy. This was the first week in a long time that we actually met our goals which was very nice. 

 

We have started working with a family called the Ss. They are a less active family that saw us walking down the road and asked us to stop by. They are a super cool family that are a blast to visit. They were converts to the church about 6 years ago but stopped coming because of a fight they had with the bishop of their last ward. This last week has been a pretty rough one, their oldest daughter who is 11 was taken by CPS because of some things Brother Ss sister said. They ended up getting her back a couple days later, but not until after they had decided to start coming back to church because they said leaving had been the biggest mistake of their lives and making big changes in their lives. Unfortunately, for some reason they didn't come so we are kinda worried about how things are going to go for them, especially after as many blessings they had received this last week, but we haven't gotten to talk to them yet so we don't know the whole story. 

Other than that, most of our investigators are doing pretty good but we are worried about O. He want's to change and said he had given up alcohol but is not ready to stop smoking weed. He is also in a rough spot with being able to convert because he is in a tough position to be able to do much for himself since he lives at home and doesn't have much motivation. We are still working with him an set him with a date so hopefully he will have more motivation but we don't know if he will make it. We are still working and praying for him. 

We started visiting a woman named Sm who is awesome as well. She asks a lot of the right questions and is well on her way to becoming baptized if she keeps the commitments we leave. She also had a friend with her that said she was a Wiccan and also said she wasn't interested but sat in on the lesson and asked if we were going to come back so  we might get to work with her as well. 

Ts is also doing well. He is thinking about inviting a friend of his to sit in on the lessons because he was also interested in the things we were teaching Ts. We are pretty excited for him, he is doing really well. 

Other than that, not much has happened. I miss you guys and hope you have a good week.


Mom's Note: It was fun to check out the mission blog and find pictures of Jacob  in this post! http://nevadarenomission.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2013-07-21T21:25:00-07:00&max-results=7&start=2&by-date=false

July 22, 2013

Dear folks,

Transfers went well, Elder B is still my companion which was a surprise since he has been here for more than 6 months. We are both pretty happy about that, he was really afraid that he was going to get a bad companion but he does want to get out of Stead. The other Elders in our ward are also staying as well, which is pretty unusual too. 

This week has been pretty slow. We had a fireside last night that we had been planning. It was about the importance of families and it went pretty well we had a good turnout. One of our Zone Leaders, Elder G just finished his mission so he is about to go home, which is pretty sad, we all liked him a lot. A lot of people haven't been home and we have been walking a lot, I will probably need some new shoes pretty quick here actually. We saw a rather large woman run from the police the other day, that was pretty entertaining. She ran out of these apartment complexes screaming at the top of her lungs at another guy that was following her, then hopped into a car but they didn't get very far. Other than that, we haven't been doing much. 

Hope you guys have a good week.

P.S. You could send like cookies or Mt. Dew or music or other stuff, haha. Music especially, as long as its church appropriate. Could you also send easy to make healthy recipes too?

July 15, 2013

(Letter to Mom)

You guys are going to have so many eggs, hahaha. You will have to send me pictures of all the new chickens and the new dog. 

This week was pretty good. We had a lot more to do this week than last week. Last week we barely taught 6 lessons but this week we went back up to 13. We have a couple new investigators as well, when of them is S, a middle aged women that really wants to know more about the church and what happens after we die since her brother passed away a couple weeks ago. We also ran into a kid named K who ran into a couple missionaries a few weeks ago that gave him a Book of Mormon. He has read about half of it and his mom also started to read it so we gave him another one and asked if we could come over. We are pretty excited for the both of them. 

O is progressing along well. He is still struggling with the Word of Wisdom, which is pretty much his last obstacle to being baptized, but he has improved a lot since we first met him. We also committed C to live the Word of Wisdom, which is also her biggest obstacle since she loves tea and cigarettes though she has been trying to quit those. We haven't been able to see T yet this week because we haven't been able to catch him. 

Other than that, the weather here has been ok. It's supposed to get pretty hot this coming week. Transfers are also coming up so Elder B will probably be leaving the area, which kinda sucks since we get along really well. According to the ZLs, I might be training, I will know for sure by Wednesday but I don't think I will be since there aren't that many new Elders coming in this time and there are a lot of other more experienced missionaries. 

I love you and hope you have a good week.

(Letter to Dad)
This week has been going by pretty good. Geez, that's a lot of chickens. What are you going to do with all the eggs? We are supposed to be in the high 90's into the 100's this week. That'll be nice, I can hardly remember what good a/c feels like. Our apartment's is pretty good but most people here only have swamp coolers which don't really work when it's higher than 80 or no a/c at all.

Things are going pretty well. We talked to the ward council on Sunday because our ward doesn't have a Ward Mission Plan and the Bishop doesn't like to work with the missionaries at all which is really bad for us. We did get them talking about it so hopefully we will get the ball rolling for a complete plan in the next few weeks. We especially hope so because of the broadcast a few weeks ago which specifically said that Bishops and the Ward Council are supposed to head the missionary work of a ward and they need to have a Ward Mission Plan and that they should do almost all the finding of people for missionaries to teach. We did not get to baptize C this week because he came down with a bad case of Bronchitis so we had to postpone it. 

Hope you're doing well and have a good week next week.

July 8, 2013

Dear folks,

The heat this week wasn't too bad. We had a storm on the 4th that came out of no where and also caused hail which was pretty fun.

 One of the families in the ward took us to Virginia City for a firework show because we had permission from President to stay out past curfew and leave the zone. Virginia City is an old mining town pretty much situated in the top of a couple mountains, it was pretty cool. There were a lot of "interesting" people there but we were not allowed to wear proselyting clothes or name tags so we blended in for the most part. It was kinda weird because we would walk past people and want to talk to them but we couldn't because we would look like a couple weirdos, or at least more so than usual I guess, haha.

This week was a pretty slow one. Other than the 4th, we really didn't do much. On Tuesday and Wednesday we ended up having to go to California for most of the day, one for Zone training and another to go pick of one of out ZL's that stayed back to go on exchanges with the Elders in Susanville so that took up a whole lot of time. Then most of our investigators weren't able to meet with us for one reason or another so we spent a lot of time walking around and talking to people. Since both sets of missionaries are on the street a lot more since we lost our car a lot more people are noticing us which is nice because often times they come up to us and ask us questions.

One of the families we were working with might be going through a divorce which kinda throws things way off. We had primarily been working with the kids and the dad since the mother was already a member. The father used to take lessons from us and things had been going very well for their family, they had even renewed their wedding vows a couple months ago. but all of a sudden he decided to stop because of work and now won't meet with us anymore and then walked out of the family and things just fell apart completely. We are super heartbroken over it but there isn't much we can do except encourage them to start living the gospel. To complicate the matter, there is a legal issue between one of the family members and one of the members of the ward so in order to attend church they have to go to a different ward or move.

We also started to teach a guy named T who the Spanish missionaries tracted into. He is a pretty nice guy, does a lot of service for the homeless community because of his past. The first couple times we met with him, he didn't seem to interested but last night he started to ask a lot of questions so we pretty much went through the whole restoration with him. He said it made a lot of sense and pretty much accepted it right there and also asked where he could get a Book of Mormon because he wanted to read it. Luckily for him, we carry like 5 so it was no problem to get him to commit to read and pray about it. We are pretty excited for him.

 

We will be baptizing a guy this Saturday named C and we are excited about that. I won't actually be baptizing him but I will be confirming him on Sunday. I probably will not be transferred for at least another month and a half.

I love you guys and miss you.

July 1, 2013

Dear folks,

Yeah, you guys should probably keep the .22 upstairs and ready to go. It's (a coyote that's been hanging around our property) not going to hang around and wait for you to shoot at it and it's probably thinking of some tasty chickens. That's great that Mittens (our cat) came back, I was worried about her. Are you guys going to let her out more often or try to keep her in?

 

Yeah, don't ever feed the missionaries tacos or spaghetti or lasagna or anything pasta related for that matter. I can't tell you how often we eat those for dinner, it gets really old really fast and I bet it's the same for them. That's nice that they get the 4th off this month, we don't and none of us are looking forward to it. It's supposed to be like 105 degrees out and everyone will probably be drunk and won't want to talk to us. We are just going to go around in our service clothes and do random service all day.

It's been pretty rough this week especially with the heat. Both my companion and I lost about 10 lbs this week. We didn't have anybody signed up for dinners so we didn't get overfeed and we didn't want to go back up the hill to our apartment so we ended up not eating until about 9:30 most days this week. We also walked and biked probably over 130 miles this week as well because nearly all of our appointments fell through and we barely broke 10 lessons this week, which is, sadly enough, more than the average amount for the whole mission but terrible for us. The other elders in our area only taught 4. We also found out that we will not be getting a car next transfer as well so we will be on foot and bike for awhile.

On Sunday we were walking down the street when this family drove passed and called out to us. The ended up turning around and pulled up next to us. They said they were an inactive family that had moved here more than a year ago and had not been to church in over 2 years. They asked us to come to their house and teach them again and they want to get more active in the church. We are hopeful for them, they are a pretty solid family with four kids and they really want to come back.

We also have started teaching C, another referral we got from another set of missionaries. She had been to church a few times with her grandma when she was younger and she wants to know more. We taught the Restoration and the spirit was very strong, she said she had never felt like that before. We are excited for her.

S's mom has been taking her for extended periods of time without warning so we haven't been able to see her for a long time. According to her step mom that we see quite often, she has been reading the Book of Mormon a lot since we challenged her to and has been bringing it with her to her moms house. She's still got a ways to come, but we have high hopes that she can make it.

On a funnier note, we got the worlds sketchiest DVD player for the mission office the other day. There is absolutely no brand on it so we don't know who made it and the instruction manual looks like someone ran it through Google translate. One of the funniest things it said was,
" If the device to hoot, witch of the power so as to avoid the conflagration."

It also kept mentioning that if things went wrong we needed to call the technical service people "to obtain legislative declaration", what ever that is. The only problem with that is that there is absolutely no phone number to call in the booklet or on the box it came in. Our ZL's are going to take the manual to President and read it to him and ask where they got these DVD players. We spent a night reading the whole thing and by then end we were laughing so hard, it was so ridiculous.

That was pretty much my week. I love you guys and miss you.