30 Jan 2017

This has been a pretty great week! We have been teaching a couple who has been working towards the temple and we helped them set a date, well we are still working on the date but they know they want to be ready by august and we are hoping to have a more specific day in the next couple of weeks. We also had an awesome lesson, with one of our backups. We don’t really plan lessons for our back up plans. Before we went in we said a prayer and took a couple minutes and we felt impressed to share the Mormon message "Gods Will" and the spirit just flew into the room. We have been meeting with this family and helping them get back to activity. But they never really notified us of any issues or concerns they have had, but it was obvious that this lesson was an answer they needed. The spirit is awesome and it’s great to know that it will work through weak and simple things. And im sure my family knows that im a pretty simple person, but even though I still have a good chunk of time left on my mission, every one we meet makes sure I know that im on the downhill slope..... Every person asks how long then when you say oh a little over a year or 15 months, they make sure to announce that you are close to the end. Anyways I've realized my time out hear is getting shorter and shorter and it’s made me ponder a bit about what it’s going to be like when I face the world again. I've realized the spirit and its guidance is something im going to need in my life, and I plan to hold it close. The best council I can give is to work on the seminary answers, do scripture study at least once a day, pray oft, and strive to attend your church meetings.

Oh yea and with that picture, Elder Stingham did the pancake challenge and got super sick... We ended up missing a day cause yea it was just bad.

Love you guys.

23 Jan 2017

Hey everyone hope things are going well with you guys! Things haven't been too crazy around here. Still the same old same old in missionary work. Don't get me wrong, I love it but its very similar week to week.

This has been a really fast week. We've started doing family home evenings with ward members to help build trust and relations and all that good stuff and its been pretty fun. We got to help out with the food bank and the semi that dropped off all the food got stuck in the only road going to the food bank. It was a bit of an ordeal getting that thing out. We had exchanges this week. I was with the new elder, Elder Sinaca, and we had a really awkward lesson.  We were focusing on teaching the kids in this family and they were in a bit of a rush to head out but they gave us some time. The member we brought was the gospel doctrine teacher.  He started teaching the lesson like it was a gospel doctrine class; the kids were a little lost. But things came around and the lesson got back on track a bit. But for the most part exchanges went really well.

Anyways a little low on time, but I hope you all have an awesome week!!!

16 Jan 2017

Hey everybody!!! Things this week have been pretty good Elder Stringham and I are doing great, and though the week was slow lesson wise we were able to schedule things every day for the next week!

Monday- fun day, we had an appointment scheduled that night and as we got leaving for it this huge blizzard hit and the member driving got a little freaked out. So we had to reschedule.

Tuesday- mostly shoveling from the snow.

Wednesday- it snowed again so we shoveled more. We also had the rescheduled lesson. It went pretty well. She an Rlds member so she feels like she’s basically in the same church and it’s hard to find differences to teach about, so it’s an interesting situation. At least different than usual.

Thursday- it’s stopped snowing!!! But most of this week consisted of introducing Elder Stringham to the ward council members. Very exciting stuff.

Friday-We went out to Dingle and met with a lady we visited a couple weeks ago. Apparently she has been studying since then but not the right stuff. She’s a born again and wanted to teach us why we were wrong so we were not really able to teach her anything. It may have got a little bashy towards the end, but some people just aren't prepared.

But I’m out of time so I’ll talk to you guys later.

Peace!

9 Jan 2017

Welp it’s been another crazy week things have been going really well though!

My little boy Elder Graham is all grown up and done with training, and he's moved on to the highland area in Poce. Surprisingly I was the one that stayed and Im the new district leader for the Cokeville district. So far that hasn't really made much of a change in the mission life. But my new comp Elder Stringham and I are doing really well together, so far our teaching and personalities have meshed really well.

We actually had transfers a day late, we got like 18 inches of snow on Wednesday so transfers were a no go, and President asked us to remain in doors for most of the day. Once it stopped snowing we just figured we would spend the rest of the day shoveling walks and then it snowed like 5 more inches... So we shoveled more.

The last couple of days we have been introducing Elder Stringham to the ward leaders and just figuring out how we can work more closely with them. It’s all been going pretty well it’s been nice the last few days to just get back in my area and stop jumping around between here and Cokeville. Nothing to crazy happened this week but it feels like a lot of work is about to come

I hope everything back home is going well!!!

3 Jan 2017

So this is on the wrong day but don't worry I'm not being disobedient. We went to the temple today so we had to proselyte on Monday and switch our p-day.

I don't have a lot of time. The big news this week is that transfers are upon us and my "son" Elder Graham, is going to Poce over in the Highland area, It is a really nice area. Very very high LDS populated part of Poce and it is the richer part of Poce. I'll be with Elder Stringham and I know very little about him. He came out around the same time as me but he started in Boise and when the missions were being reorganized we got a few of the Boise missionaries. I'll also be a district leader this transfer so I guess that should be fun, I get to plan district meetings and report more stuff.... should be fun. But I am kind of excited. I'm sure there will be some learning curves and that means I get to grow more!

New Year's Eve was cool. We just hung out as a district and stuff. New Year's day was odd. It was an all day p-day on Sunday. So we mostly just stayed home and didn't do much.

But it's been a good week and I hope all you guys have a good week

Love ya

26 Dec 2016

Pretty good week, a little slow because of Christmas But it was a lot of fun. I don’t really know what to say cause I told everything to my family last night.

Monday pretty typical p-day stuff, after p-day we went to see a referral and they were moving in furniture so we gave them a hand, turns out they are not active members but would love to have us over for dinner and such. Hopefully we can figure out how to help him. The husband was baptized 5 years ago so something must have drawn him to the church and hopefully we can rekindle that and build off of it.

 Tuesday- we had district meeting about using dinners as a time to build member relations and find people to teach. So we did this practice and sister fielding (who was doing the training) asked us to do a bad practice. So I was sharing a bad dinner message. President gives us a scripture to recite and learn every few months. So I decided to use that (it’s a good scripture) the scripture is D&C 131:6 "a man cannot be saved in ignorance". They continued to ask if they knew any one that was ignorant that we could teach. They said no one was ignorant and that everyone they knew was Mormon. So I asked why it wasn’t just taken up like the city of Enoch. But that was the bad example. Later we had a much more spiritual good example. Later that day we met a lady that recently moved in and she said she was Greek orthodox. Im not sure she even knows what that means. She was talking about Christ as their belief at some points at other points she was talking about Zeus. We ended the night at the Schwarting's house. They are a part member family everyone is active daughter is on a mission, but he just has something holding him back from really investigating the church. But he's a really friendly guy and we shared the Christmas message with him.

I'm getting a little bored of typing so im going to summarize the rest. WE went down to Cokeville and I was a bit surprised at how many people remembered me considering I was only there for a few days of six weeks. There was a white tail running around town that was weird I’ve really only seen mule deer out here. Christmas Eve and Christmas were fun we had a White elephant exchange with the district, got fed very well, and it’s a nice little break for a day. But all and all this week was really good.

Love you all and hope you had a great Christmas!