August 26, 2013

Dear folks,
The weather here has actually been really cool, mostly because of the fires. Forest fires in California have flooded this valley with smoke so bad you can't even hardly see the mountains sometimes which has caused the temperature to be about 10-20 degrees cooler.

This week has been pretty good. Our Mission President chastised the Stake pretty good because apparently a lot of the missionaries here have been very unsatisfied with the way the work is going. Our Stake President had a big leadership meeting where he put the Bishops and ward mission leaders in one room and went through Handbook 2 and told them what their job was in missionary work. Hopefully things will start picking up. We haven't been doing too bad ourselves because we've been working pretty hard at finding people without the ward, but the other set that lives with us have been struggling and the other ward have also been struggling pretty bad.

Sorry I have to make this letter short because we have to take off pretty quick here. Love you guys and hope you have a great week.

August 19, 2013

Dear folks,

I'm glad the weather there is nice. The heat picked up a little here this week. There has also been a pretty big forest fire nearby in California so our whole valley has been filled with smoke this last week and we have been coming back home smelling like a campfire almost every day. 

 We still haven't heard anything about the changes from our mission president so I don't know what's going to happen. I will let you know though.

It's always tough dealing with families involved with drugs. It really clouds their minds and causes them to make really poor decisions. It's especially tough dealing with kids because there is not much we can do if the parents aren't on board. We were teaching the 11, 9, and 7 year old of a less active woman but she is was also involved with drugs and abusive relationships and had super bad depression that often lands her in the hospital because she freaks out. She has since stopped having us come over because her life is so messed up and it's hard because the kids were doing really well. Just keep working with him and being an example. Even if he can't be baptized right now, there can be a seed planted that will sprout later. Meth is a huge problem out here as well, most of our investigators have been involved with it, it's really nasty stuff. You can always tell who is on it too or who's done it because most of their teeth are rotted or missing and they have pieces of skin missing from their arms because they pick it off. 

This week has been pretty good and pretty bad. We have Ts who is doing really well and is progressing very fast. He is also doing more missionary work the half the ward combined, he wants everyone he knows to talk to us and hear about the gospel. Cs on the other hand, who was supposed to be baptized back in April before I got here, has given in to his sister and decided to stop meeting with us and go back to Judaism for a time, even though he has told us before that he has received the answer that this was the true church. The only problem is he lives with his sister and talks to her every day but hasn't been meeting with us for various reasons.

Elder Js, another missionary in our ward who also lives with us, was made district leader after our former DL was emergency transferred to Eli to replace a sick missionary. Now every time he enters a room he says,"Your District Lord!" and sings Darth Vader's theme song from Star Wars. He is a pretty funny guy, very easy to get along with. 

We also started teaching this guy named Js who is an alcoholic we met on the street. He always passes by and yells out God bless you or something like that, sometimes it's hard to understand him because he really slurs his words. He's a pretty interesting guy and really wants to stop drinking. We will see where he goes, him and his wife are planning on moving pretty quick here. 

We had a pretty interesting experience on Saturday. We were supposed to help Cty paint her doors but she wasn't feeling well and asked us to stop by later. We then decided to go to a different less active members house but he wasn't home either but as we turn to leave we see Sm running across the street. We decided to go say hi because she's a hard person to catch. When we walked up she saw that we were in our service clothes and asked what we were doing. We said we were doing service and she said, "Oh, you remembered the block party I was setting up." And we were like, yeah, even though we had completely forgotten. We ended up helping her set it up because she was was running very behind and then we also got to meet the whole neighborhood and show them that LDS missionaries aren't that weird. 

We also ran into a woman named Csy at the party who is a "Pagan Christian" or she practices witchcraft and Wicca but believes in Jesus Christ so it's ok. We have ran into a lot of Wiccans before and they all say the same thing, "Everyone always says Wiccans are bad but I'm a good witch, I only use magic for good not for bad like some others do." It's really hard to talk to them especially because they are not use to the Spirit. It often makes them feel bad inside so they interpret that as "evil" instead of realizing if you surround yourself with a bad spirit, you're going to feel bad around the Holy Ghost because that's what happens. Casey had been to an LDS church before and thought it was "evil" because she felt sick inside, but Elder Bm and I looked at each other and were like no kidding. That was an interesting conversation, we spent like half an hour talking to her. 

Other than that, not much else has happened. We are still walking everywhere and there is no sign of a car in the near future. They might be cutting our ward down from 2 sets to 1 set again but we will see. I love you guys and hope you all have a great week.

August 12, 2013

Dear folks,

We are getting fed pretty well here.

This week has been pretty good but kinda slow. A lot of people haven't been around because school was starting up again today and there was also a big car show called Hot August Nights downtown. We are still working on getting Cs recommitted with another baptismal date but his sister is fighting tooth and nail against it. She had a rabbi come talk to him and asked him go to Jewish temple services this weekend trying to convince him not to do it.

Dl is doing well, but he started school again last week so it's been kinda hard to meet with him. Ts is also doing very well, we have high hopes that he could be ready for baptism within a few weeks if he can quit his cigarettes. Cy came to church with us this weekend and seemed to enjoy it although she is pretty shy and doesn't like all the attention the ward members give whenever we have an investigator come to church. Sm is also doing very well, we had a good 2 hour discussion with her and she is super interested in the church. She had also been getting a lot of grief and hearing a lot of false information about the church from her neighbors because she has been meeting with us so she prayed and asked if having us teach her was a good thing. She said she felt very good about it and so didn't care what other people said about us. We also told her about the First Vision and she said it makes sense that a lot of people would hate Christ's true church because of the influence of the devil. We are pretty hopeful for her but there is a lot of stuff she has to change in her life first so hopefully she can.

We have anther lesson scheduled with a guy named Jk . I can't remember if I told you guys about him. He's been investigating the church for over 14 years and still hasn't been baptized. We took a different approach with him and fasted and planned for a couple hours the lessons we were going to have with him. We decided to be very blunt about addressing all the excuses he had and all the blessings he was giving up. He has been out of town for the last month or so so we haven't gotten to meet with him for awhile but the last time we did he said he didn't know why he wasn't baptized yet and that he would talk about it with his family, who are all members, which is something he had never done and would pray about it. Hopefully he has done the things we told him to do and that this next meeting will go well.

We also ran into a Messianic Jew, or a Jewish person that believes in Jesus Christ but still keeps a lot of the Jewish traditions. We were walking up to her and I asked her how she was doing and she replied "Shalom. Do you know what that means?" And we were like, not really, then she said, in a very mystical voice,"It means 'peace', peace that passes all human understanding." She started talking about her beliefs and that we should try to read a Hebrew Bible because a lot of the words can't really be translated into English and that we didn't really understand a lot of the Bible because it was mistranslated and that Christ didn't end the law of Moses but when he said that he fulfilled it, it didn't mean that he ended it, it only meant that he lived it perfectly and that we should as well (even though further into the New Testament it makes it clear that the law of Moses ended). At first I though, ok, she just really believes in her religious ideology and, you know, we do believe in the Bible as far as it is translated correctly which is why we have the Book of Mormon to provide clarity and further doctrine and we were going to talk about that but then she started talking about how we shouldn't call Jesus Jesus and should use the Hebrew form of his name and then told us she knew all about Mormons and that our religion was wrong and that no one had ever studied the Bible as much and as in depth as she had. She also had shaved her head because God told her to, and that he had told her to shave her head at least 3 times before and that something bad in the world always happened when she did and she also believes that the government is spraying us with chemicals mixed with human blood to control our minds and that the only reason we could talk to her is because God was blessing us with that ability. It was at this point we realized she wasn't all there and that we really couldn't convince her otherwise.

I hope you all are doing well and have a good week this week.  

August 5, 2013

Dear Folks,

Just regular music, like classical or instrumental stuff. As long as it brings the spirit and doesn't have romantic overtones really. CD's, this isn't the 80's hahaha. We only have CD players.

This week has been pretty good. We went into down town Reno to email today, it's an interesting place. We had a homeless guy walk up to us and talk about how he was related to Jesus and Mary Magdalene and that they had 4 kids, that was an interesting discussion. This week was pretty slow but we had a lot of success. We found a new investigator, Daniel, while street contacting. He is a petty cool guy and has a big interest in religion which is unusual for a 17 year old. We also ran into a lady who is inactive and had served a mission 3 years ago. She invited us to come visit and we talked with her boyfriend who is a pretty cool guy who was also at one point a priest in the church. We will see where that goes, hopefully we can get them to come back.

We also had one of our most spiritual lessons ever with Dianna. She has been investigating for a couple months but has been very strong in her faith. At the end we asked her to pray about the Book of Mormon and she said she was afraid to because she would get an answer. She also said everything we taught and clicked with her and we asked why and she said because it all sounded familiar to her like she had heard it before. We are excited for her and hope she does read and pray.

That's all for this week, I hope you guys are doing well and have a good week.

Love,

Elder Jacob Klingensmith