15 Feb 2016

Well we had to leave e-mails early last week and I was really looking forward to talking about Saturday morning, We had an investigator moving (luckily just to the other side of the ward). It was one of the coolest moves I've ever been in. So we showed up at 10am and that was when it was suppose to start and the only people there were us and her three brothers so we were a little worried. Within 20 minutes we had somewhere between 15 and 20 other people show up and it was awesome. We just had a line of people passing boxes down to the trailers. The total time spent packing everything up was about an hour and a half, and we filled two 20 foot trailers. The total time spent unpacking the trailers was about 45 minutes. I'm proud of that ward for the effort they put into serving someone that most of them hadn't actually met yet. Christ says that when we show love one to another that others will be able to know that we are his disciples. I can testify that that is true. In Mosiah 18 it talks on the promises we make at baptism to serve those that stand in need. So I guess what I'm trying to say is that its important for us to be examples of Christ like love and live in that manner. Even if you're serving someone in the smallest way, like helping an elderly lady get out of the motor scooters at Wal-mart, it shows the light of Christ through us and shows that the things we preach aren't just hollow words. Anyway that's my rant and now I'll get on to the rest of the week.(there may be more ranting I'm not entirely sure)

Monday- so my journal is a little rough. I got like three days behind at one point because I got a ukulele today and I've been learning it every night. P-day activity was a little lame today. The Spanish zone decided to do their own thing instead of merging with us, that and it was just poorly planned. The main issue was at the end of the activity time all the people with cars left like half an hour earlier so there was like 10 Elders there with no transportation and the only people left with a car were two sisters. Then to top that off, all the phones in the mission stopped working for a while so we couldn't call for a ride. Somehow things worked out and people found rides,.We got picked up by a man that Elder Schaer and Christianson were able to get a hold of. The rest of the night we were at the V.C waiting for someone to show up but they never did.

Tuesday-Today I came to a better understanding how the priesthood unifies us. Since you can't perform anything to do with the priesthood by yourself, it teaches us service in helping and blessing others and humility when we go to others for a blessing or whatever is needed. I also had a big study on D&C 24 and it kind of surprised me some of the stuff that God will back us up in. But then I realized its impossible to misuse priesthood authority because if its not in line with the teaching and instructions of God then he just wont let it happen. Part of that realization was just that we don't really hold "power" with the priesthood because everything is still done through God. We had a couple of larcs today and then got ready for exchanges.

Wednesday- I'm with Elder Bushman (one of my zone leaders) and man today felt super productive. First off, we had district meeting so that was fun. My district is just us and the Zone leaders so the zls might come up a lot in these e-mails. For District meeting we each just gave a short training and Elder Browning didn't tell me what I was training on. Then the day before he goes, "just train on whatever you want." I feel that we haven't been putting forth as much effort as we should be in the last few weeks so my training started with a question, How important is our work? Let them answer and then testified that this is the most important work we will do in this life next to raising a family, I say that because hopefully we are raising our family in the gospel which ends up being the same as missionary work. (converting your kids to the gospel) I followed that up by reading Alma 26:30 and asked, "Is that the effort we are putting forth?" (If you don't know that verse, look it up) Then I continued to rant for a bit. Elder Bushman and I did a lot of walking today. We didn't have any set appointments but we talked to a few people and made some good progress.

Thursday- not a whole lot happened today. We had a larc lesson and that was about all that happened. Love the family but it was just a short lesson. We ended up there the same time as there home teachers so that was a little odd. We did wait at the V.C for awhile. We were hoping to take a recent convert to institute. Partly because we wanted to go to institute. But he got busy said he'd show up a little later, then said that again and then finally cancelled.

Friday- This is totally irrelevant but I had probably the most vivid dream of my life. I was a chameleon and I was stuck in this house with a cat that wanted to eat me. This cat was like 10 times my size and I had no defense aside from briefly turning invisible and using my tongue as a grappling hook. I knew that either I was going to die or I had to find a way to kill the cat, and this epic battle took place. Sadly, I don't think this dream has any meaning as to things to come or relating to the gospel. Maybe one day I'll have a vision. I can dream. We did progress records today over at the FHC and ran into the trio companionship. To find out that Elder Moe (sounds like boy with an m) is getting Emergency Transferred to Ashton. The missionaries up there had some issues.... and we are all super bummed about losing Moe from our zone. This will sound racist but I don't know how to explain it in any other words. Imagine like that super loud and hilarious black girl then put that personality in a Samoan guy that is musically gifted. He was super cool.

OK well im running out of time for emails, Hope you all have an awesome week.

Love you guys!

8 Feb 2016

So there's been a lot of fun in our apartment. I don't recall if I mentioned before but I'm living with the Spanish elders and we've been getting along great. This transfer is teaching me a lot on how to have fun on my mission and still be productive. The hour before we go to bed consists of nerf wars and a lot of laughter. I feel a little bad for our neighbors because Elder Browning is just naturally loud. I will say that we need to work on being a bit more diligent in our planning. A lot of times when plans fall through we don't have good back up plans decided. It has been getting better as the transfer has gone on.

Monday- Well most of the morning was just riding around with the Spanish elders. Luckily the people we live with have a car so P-days are pretty easy. For our activity we did volleyball for a while and once we got bored of that we played gator ball, I don't know how to describe it but its super fun and really fast pace. Its like soccer and hand ball mixed. After P-day we waited around the Visitor Center for like 45 mins waiting for an appointment to show up, but she never did. We also had to talk to the sisters that were working there about someone who is living in there area. Once we got back to our area we went to see the Crider family. They are a mom that's coming back to the church and 4 unbaptized youth. Super nice family.  We wanted to check on them and they were packing up they found a new house (still in the ward, which is amazing to do in Idaho). Anyway, when we stopped over we offered to help pack. We called over brother Schuelke and got to work. We got a lot closer to the family and got work done. It was an awesome night.

Tuesday- So my whole mission I've  been drinking apple juice because it helps you have dreams, I've had a dream almost every night of my mission.  Elder B saw me buy the apple juice and he brought up the dream thing, and I was like that's why I buy it. So now we both drink apple juice before bed and share our dreams. Its kinda weird but its helped with comp unity. Nothing much happened today, until we went to the visitor center for a lesson. As we were waiting for our person to show up (who didn't) we were just looking around at some of the kiosks. As I'm around the corner someone came in and dropped off a package for me and left right away. So Sister Reed brought it over to me and I was just super confused. I saw that it was from Rexburg and sure enough it was a package I've been waiting for, for three months..... I had a friend up at BYU-I who said they would send me something while I was in the MTC and I never got anything. So here it is a package long awaited for, and..... it was...*drumroll*.... a potato... There was a note along with it that explained everything and it was actually really humorous. The rest of the night we helped Patricia move. Its been a long while that we've been helping her.  She's moving to a different stake which is going to be rough for her. But the Gospel is true everywhere and she's already met the new Elders. During the move though it was hilarious. We got to the new place and as we were moving things in Patricia goes, "yea know there's a couple of cute girls that live next door and I think they really need Jesus in there lives." So she was trying to set us up with these two girls (Patricia is hilarious) and she had Elder Browning ready to go knock. Before he could they actually came outside and started helping us move. They were super nice and when they looked away Patricia would make like these weird hand signals and what not, but as a missionary, gotta keep our hearts locked. (That's part of a phrase that our mission president's wife uses.)

Wednesday- This morning's study was a lot of fun, I read through Alma 30 the chapter on Korihor AKA the Anti-Christ. I'll talk more on that tomorrow.  We went and made contact with a few people today and then headed over to the V.C. (you may have noticed a pattern, We've been trying to get as many people to the V.C as possible) Today we had a recent convert with us. Thankfully they showed up and we watch the 60 min restoration video and they really enjoyed it (this week I've watched it 3 or 4 times, and its still powerful) so in the 60 min version it discusses a lot of the persecution they go through. So we focused on enduring.

Thursday- Zone training!!!! I wish we could have these more often. I have two pages of notes on this so I'm not going to even try typing about it. When I get back I'll let anyone that wants to, read through my notes. It might not necessarily be doctrine, well it should mostly be, I don't think I write anything in there that is not based on doctrine at least.  A lot of awesome thing are learned at Zone training. I feel like most of what I write the person talking never says. Its cool how the Spirit works. I'll just say that. So we went to the V.C again and the appointment got rescheduled when they didn't show up. We met Jesus (Spanish form of the name). He's a recent convert from the Spanish branch that is changing to the YSA ward and we ended up going to his institute class with him,  It was mostly on Korihor, The teacher was talking about metaphysics and epistemology and philosophy. It was super cool, He did this thing with a stool and asked, "what is this>" We would say a stool, He asked how do you know? People would answer my parents told me, Then he would counter with, "well does that mean everything your parents tell you is true?" These were all points that Korihor brought up. Then he hid the stool and asked is there a stool behind the pulpit, and we all answered, "yes." Then he asked, "how do you know you can't see it?" "Can you be 100% sure that I didn't have a trap door rigged and the stool is now gone." So he related it back to Korihor who wanted physical proof of God's existence. Then after people fall away or cast him out of the city he finally is asking these things to Alma, Alma goes on the offensive and asks, "What proof do you have that God does not exist?" For all things in this world tell me there is a God, What is there that tells you there is not. So the professor goes on to talk about how unless you could be everywhere at once and know all things, You can not disprove God and when you're able to do that you've become God. It was a pretty awesome lesson. It might have been a little crazy for Jesus considering he's only 3 months old in the gospel.

Well I have to get going we have a lot to do this P-day, so peace out I love you all.

1 Feb 2016

Big week. I got a new companion and we lost our car.... sooo that's been fun. My comp is a cool guy and a good kid but he hates walking so that's a challenge we need to work on overcoming, and just figuring out how to be productive on foot.

Monday- I wrote a lot on my studies of Ammon and Lamoni and it wasn't my best writing. I feel like it probably didn't do the actual story justice but in the chapters where Ammon is taken prisoner to when the Anti-Nephi-Lehis come about, there's a lot of parallels to modern day missionary work. At E-mails I met my new comp for a few seconds, and he is a super goofy kid. The opposite of Elder Gillespie in how he acts around people. Oh and when we met him he was under the impression we would have a car. Then as soon as we left e-mails the APs give us a call saying we are not going to have a car anymore... It was awesome to finally get my debit card just because, you know, its nice to actually have money. We went bowling again for p-day but I was cool with it because this time
*drumroll* I could actually pay!!! We spent the entire proselyting time pretty much just talking with Patricia and Mike, They are slowly making progress, but they need a lot of help.

Tuesday- We spent like 2-3 ours at the Chevy dealership because of a recall on the car and they told us it would be like 30 min tops.... so that was kind of annoying. Most of the afternoon was spent packing and prepping for transfers. We got a call and just like I thought, the Spanish Elders are moving in with us again. This time we have four beds so no one is living on the couch. Most of the night was Elder Gillespie just saying his farewells to investigators and recent converts.

Wednesday- Transfers!!!!!! So we spent most of the morning at the transfer site and it was cool to see all the missionaries that I haven't seen for like 3 months, Obviously the highly anticipated part was meeting Elder Browning. Super crazy kid and has been out for 6 months in a small farm town. For those back home just imagine Gresham. Not a lot of people but most of them are members, so he has to get used to serving in a city and I have to figure out how to make this transfer work without a car. Making back up plans is a lot harder now. After all the transfers where finished and we got Elder B settled in a bit, we walked across our area to meet up with Patricia and Mike.  One thing that's been helping them overcome their problems is taking walks so they walked us to dinner and we had a good conversation. They both took to Elder Browning really well. Patricia is about to move into a new apt. out of our area and Mike never technically lived in our area so it will be a little rough for her to move into  a new stake/ward but we are still planning on seeing her once a week at the V.C with the new Elders she will be with. We ended the night at the Visitors Center (V.C). Elder B just became a District leader so he had some interviews to do. Once those finished we watched the God's Plan video with the family he interviewed. That movie is sooo cheesy but it does a good job of inviting the Spirit and teaching on eternal families.

Thursday- Starting last night Elder B noticed I had apple juice and he's like, "did you know that gives you crazy dreams?"  I told him that's exactly why I have it (I've had a dream almost every night of my mission). Not all of my dreams make sense but now every night he asks what I dreamed about and he's going to start drinking apple juice every night also. So today we had a correlation with the Z.Ls because Elder B is new to being a District leader.  The Z.Ls pick where to meet and we decided to do a lunch/meeting at Buffalo Wild Wings. We walked in and we all had the same thought, "this is probably the most worldly place we could have chosen." So we all talked and what not and even in BWW members pay for us. I'm very appreciative but also very tired of it. They always say, "Oh I have a son on a mission and I know he's always saying they don't have money,.."  I think to myself, "Just give this money to your son then!" I just feel wrong when I get money for being a missionary. We got back home and we are still having trouble with the whole figuring out how to make this work on foot, We wasted a ton of time walking to a stake center to make copies, then our dinner appointment tried to pick us up at our apt. and we were trying to call and tell them we weren't there but they wouldn't answer. They got to the apt and the Spanish Elders had just moved in and when they pulled up the Spanish Elders answered in their p-day clothes, The guy was super confused and thought we were slackers for a while until we got the chance to explain everything. We finished the night meeting with a guy named David, I might have mention him before, but he's like super prepared. He turned his life around a few years back and got a huge testimony of Christ and His atonement, but he has never really attended a church. We have a lesson set up for the visitor center and it should be awesome.

Friday- I'm just going to start summarizing. The biggest thing that happened today was going to Chick-fil-A with the Spanish Elders. Then later  we just set a baptismal date with our investigator Jason. So I hope you could pick up the sarcasm in that but we are super excited for Jason. He's ready to go. He keeps his commitments, the ward has taken him in and he was hesitant to make a date just because he wanted to know EVERYTHING, I guess he's finally had enough witnesses and he's on track to be baptized on the 20th. Then later we went to the V.C to have a lesson with the Criders. The mom is less active and coming back and the four kids are all getting on track to be baptized. They have no relatives in Idaho so the mom has felt alone for a while and was hesitant to let the ward in. But now she's doing a lot better that she was and the ward is treating her awesome, and its looking really good for this family. Elder B never had the chance to teach at the V.C before and he's kind of fallen in love with it. Partly because its easy to teach lessons there and I think partly because you always run into other missionaries there.

This week has been awesome but also really different and kind of challenging.  All in all we cover one of the most compact stakes in the mission so walking isn't that terrible. I just want the snow and ice to go away so we can bike.

Hope you guys are all doing great, have an awesome week

25 Jan 2016

I've been debating sharing this miracle mostly because it doesn't pertain to me but its pretty amazing to say the least, So the sisters, Bueno and  Park, have been teaching this couple and got them commit to get married so they can be living the law of chastity. The guy has lung cancer and was given four years to live. They got him to go get a blessing from the bishop and he was promised as he faithfully followed the commandments he would see great miracles. A few days later he went to see his doctors and they did a scan and the cancer was gone! So I can testify that miracles still happen, God lives, and THIS IS the Church of Christ. Not all our miracles will be as obvious or incredible as being cured of a terminal illness. But as we are faithful and obedient the Lord WILL bless us according to our needs.

Monday- P-day and we had a pretty legit activity! We took pvc pipes and used them as blow guns for nerf bullets. We did team death match Capture the Flag and just had a ton of fun with it! We flipped over tables for bunkers and used folding chairs for shields. Brother Kaveinga, I hope you're taking notes. After P-day we had a dinner appointment with the Herringtons, a less active family that started coming back. We are prepping their 8 year old son to be baptized and also working to get them sealed. The wife is a pastry chef and made us breakfast for dinner so we ate well to say the least. I'm not positive it was healthy but we ate well. Then we stopped by a referral his last name is Hamilton and this guy has already attended church with his neighbor. He's dating an LDS girl that also lives next door, so he seems pretty golden. He's been softened to the gospel through over coming a drinking problem, so we are excited to work with him.

Tuesday- We had tons of stuff planned for this evening and none of it really turned out, except our recent convert lessons with the Kisely family. Brother Kisely was the first baptism on my mission and that family is just hilarious to be around. He had an appointment to get interviewed for the Aaronic Preisthood and he is now ordained as a priest. A few other things happened today but not anything I'm going to share or bother to take your time with, Before we went to bed we got trainer calls for the coming transfer, and thankfully I do not have to train yet!

Wednesday- In studies today I realized one of the best parts about reading the Book of Mormon is we learn how the adversary attacks us. 2 Nephi 28 or 29 is all about how the adversary works on us. Then every time we see people like Zeezrom contending with prophets like Alma, it shows a lot of the ways that the Adversary tries to lead us away by twisting the words of God. We had a worldwide missionary broadcast for the first time in like 10 years and I took four full pages of notes on everything that was talked about. The funniest part was when David A. Bednar just sand bagged this missionary's answer. He asks what is the role of missionaries and the Holy Ghost in conversion? The missionary answers its our job to put the Holy Ghost into the hearts of the investigator. Elder Bednar responds and goes on like a 5 or 10 minute rant on how we cannot put the Holy Ghost into their hearts. We can only invite and hope that they accept it. Otherwise every person that ever talked to the prophet would be converted. After that spiritual high the rest of the day was pretty good. We had a few lessons and we have one girl that is super beyond ready to be baptized but her mom won't let her. Sometimes agency is just irritating but not much we can do about that.

Thursday- today was a good day a lot of lessons but I'm getting a little tired of going into detail on as many lessons as I am. I had a lot of personal revelation this morning, mostly on building faith and different aspects of repentance that apply in my life. We did a lot of contacting today and set up like 5 visitor center appointments and set up things for like the next two days. As we were leaving a house we saw a car drive by with a teewee and we thought it looked like the Spanish Elders were lost so we followed them for a bit and flagged them down; flashed our brights and stuff trying to get them to pull over and when they did we noticed it was sisters Bradshaw and Miller. They were freaked out because we kept following them and etc. They were on the edge of their area so we helped direct them quick and then went back to contacting.

Friday- I'm skipping Friday. Most stuff canceled and just nothing much happened

Saturday-  We had tons of stuff  fall through but I think I had revelation in a dream. I'm not positive so that might be something to share in a future time. The biggest thing that happened today was transfer call!!!!! And I knew that this was coming but my time with Elder Gillespie is coming to an end, I will be staying in Idaho Falls Central but my new comp will be Elder Browning and I know that this will probably be the best for me, Elder G and I got into a weird teaching dynamic, and I needed a new comp to help me grow more.  Most of the day was people crying because we had to tell them that Elder Gillespie was leaving,

Ok. I'm wrapping this but probably the funniest thing this week was we went to the Ziels. We were talking and their daughter was freaking out because she wanted to say something. So we let her talk (keep in mind shes 5 years old) and we all here her say "my pants are keeping a secret from you"...... We all paused for a second then burst out laughing. We realized she was trying to say parents not pants, but it was hilarious.

18 Jan 2016

This week was crazy, every other day we were super busy then not super busy. There are a lot of good things going on in Idaho Falls,

 

Monday- The Zone leaders planned ice skating and I'm still strapped on cash so Elder Gillespie and I just skipped out on it. We did get some sweet stuff at the D.I. (Deseret Industries). The crowning item was a ceramic bust of Joseph Smith that we got for $1.00. Its pretty legit. I should have taken a picture of it. While we were there this one employee kept helping us. Turned out he's a convert and turning his life around to go on a mission. We talked with him for a while and helped him with some questions.  Not much else happened today. We taught Patricia a short lesson. Then her friend Mike showed up and he's a different guy; very open to aliens psychics and etc. So he started asking all the random questions which lead into deep doctrine. We talked about Kolob for a while and different blessings from the tribes of Israel.  It was just a little weird.

 

Tuesday- I could go on forever about today. Just like last week it was insanely busy. We taught a total of seven lessons and that was after one of our lessons dropped. The first lesson was our buddy Eugene. It was one of his last days in the hospital and he actually started reading!!!! We could tell because when we asked what he read about he didn't start going on a tangent about Porter Rockwell, he actually talked about the Book of Mormon and doctrine. Then we taught Patricia again. We meet a lot with her. If we don't, things normally go bad. As we pulled up to her house she stepped out to smoke a cigarette after like 30 seconds of talking she says, "I cant do this." *puts out cigarette* "It just feels wrong to smoke in front of you two." It's weird but awesome to have that presence that makes people want to be better. Then we taught 4 more lessons so I won't go on and on in detail on each one.

 

Wednesday- Probably one of the harder days in the week. I went to the north stake for exchanges. The missionary I was with, I talked about him before, most people agree he's one of the hardest to deal with as a missionary companion. He has a good heart but just thinks he is exempt from some rules and he wants to hang out with the families he meets more than teach them lessons. This morning I woke up at 6:30 told him to get up and he wouldn't so I put the alarm next to his bed and took a shower. When I came out he still wasn't awake so I took the alarm and put it on his pillow. He woke up turned it of and fell back asleep. After my workout I went to pull his covers off his face and tell him to wake up. I didnt realize his sheet was wrapped around his face, so when I pulled on them he freaked out and sat up, yelled at me for doing that then went back to sleep. So I started my studies around 8:30. I got him to wake up and we never got any comp study done or 12 week because he was still doing his morning routine at 10:00. The day wasn't a total loss. We didn't teach any lessons but while we were tracting we came to this door and she was a member. She was talking on the phone. About 2 minutes into our visit she started to sniffle and asked for a blessing. So right place, right time. Its awesome how the Spirit leads you so these things work out. We did contact a family and broke the ice but we never got a message in which would have been preferable ( the other Elder was playing nerf wars with the kids).  I should have just stepped up and offered a lesson before we left. It was a tougher day but I had a lot of little revelations.

 

Thursday- Interviews with the President! Soooo we were told to bring our Area Book to the interviews and if there's one thing we've been terrible at its teaching records. So we spent like 4 hours updating 2 1/2 months of teaching. We had to go over to the Stake Center and first we had to actually organize everything and figure out what had been recorded. That took a while. We had a lunch break and then I realized, "Hey, I have a journal that has everything we've done for the last two months!" So I can without a doubt that keeping my journal has been a huge blessing. We finished up the teaching records just in time; ran over to the interviews and he never even looked at the area book.... but it was a good motivation for us to get it done. So I was talking with President then the question I feared he would ask came up. "So how would you feel about training next transfer?" I've come a long way and training just sounds scary. I told him that I can't say I would be super comfortable training but if that's what I'm called to do; who am I to disagree with the Lord? So this Thursday we will find out all the transfer information. Then with what we had left of the day, we just visited a few members and talked about how they could help us or how we could help them. 

 

Friday- nothing happened today and I mean literally nothing. Elder G was struck down with an illness so he spent all day sleeping. I tried and tried to find people that could come teach with me and someone that could watch Elder G. Alas, no one was able so I studied a lot. Although I would have had preferred not canceling all our appointments, a day just to study and pray was good for me. I had a huge witness that PRAYER WORKS. But that's a little personal sooo sorry I'm not sharing all of that.

 

Saturday- Exchanges again. This time I got to stay in my area and I got to comp up with Elder Jones. Awesome and obedient kid but you have to remember we are still 19-20 year old kids. We were driving from one appointment to another. Then I just see his seat fly backwards and his legs shoot up in the air. He whips out a lighter and yea lights a fart on fire in the car.... and it reeked. But it was still pretty funny. So back to the work. Since it was my area this was my first time taking lead in an area and it went pretty well. I had a good plan. Together it was going to be a super productive day but our lessons started to fall through just because people are busy. As a missionary you like to think that people always have time for you but sometimes they just don't. You kind of forget what its like to have a normal life. We did have one lesson and it went really well. A less active mother with 4 kids. The mother is getting interested in the church again and a couple of the kids accepted our invitation to be baptized! So if anything else, that makes up for how the rest of the day went.

 

Alrighty, I got to get going, hope you all have a wonderful week!

11 Jan 2015

So now that the holidays are over a lot of work has picked up. People don't have family over and they are willing to let us in again!

Monday-nothing too special as far as preparation time went. I have literally like no money right now because my debit card won't work until my new one gets sent, so all I have is my grocery card right now and a couple of spare dollars. The zone leaders are still pretty lazy about p-day activities,. This is the second week in a row we went bowling, which was fun but we are all rather poor and we can't afford to keep paying money to do stuff! So the coolest thing happened. One of our investigators that struggles with addiction relapsed a week or so ago and has just been avoiding us (this isn't the cool part). Today we got a call from her and she had set up and intervention for herself and had us and some of her close fellowshippers just talk and help her out. She even set up a meeting with the bishop all by herself and she's not even a member yet!!

Tuesday- Today was insane!!!! My studies recently have been in Mosiah. I love king Benjaman's address to his people. Its like the first General Conference. Then we had zone training and I really love those meetings. Our first training was on kindness/charity and the next three were all on the Godhead. The main lines that stuck out to me was a quote that pretty much said we cannot have spiritual progression unless we understand who God is! Then the next one is the role that prayer plays in coming to know God. The best way to get to know someone is to talk to them and that includes Heavenly Father.  After Zone training we went to the hospital to help our boy Eugene. We needed to take some things to his landlord for him. As we are leaving the hospital we stop to talk to a nurse who was concerned about Eugene. When we got done a lady stopped us and asked us to give a blessing to her son who had liver failure. He's less active but wanted the blessing and we referred missionaries to him for when he returns home. Then we start leaving again this time we get to the lobby and this guy is walking next to us also about to leave. Then this like 70yo lady stops us and gives us hugs because she's so proud of the work we do. After the hugs the man that was walking next to us had the impression to ask us for a blessing also (the blessing was for his less active daughter).  She was having surgery and she was actually a nurse at the hospital but she wanted the blessing. We left a B.o.M with her and shared a short lesson. Then we got to the lobby again and where stopped a third time. This man wanted us to give a blessing to his son who is active. So we agreed and went to give him a blessing. We spent 2-3 hours meeting with people and giving blessing,. I was drained after that but we had a lesson to get to. Anyway to avoid typing too much about today, we had a total of six lessons and it was an amazing day.

Wednesday- Studies today were Mosiah and it is the end of King Benjamin's address. My favorite part about chapter 4 is that this is where it promises blessing for families. Anyway we started the day by moving Eugene's stuff.  He's getting a new and cheaper apartment to move into once he's out of the hospital. Once we finished moving Eugene's stuff, which wasn't much (it took maybe 40 minutes) we got to move our stuff. We got a new apartment so we are no longer living with other elders which is less fun but probably more productive. We spent a good chunk of the afternoon moving our stuff and picking up furniture for the new apartment. This place has way more room than we need. There's two bedrooms and the living room is almost twice the size of our old one. We even have a back yard! We've had a lesson with the lady that relapsed every day this week, so shes going in an upward direction. We called the 1st councilor in the mission presidency today and he say that because of the relapse he wants us to wait until she's been two months clean until we extend another baptismal date. We had one other lesson tonight then met with one of our ward mission leaders and got like 4 or 5 referrals from him. Lots of good things happening!

Thursday- Our first night in the new apartment and I had a crazy dream that me and Elder Gillespie were fighting evil and random things happened and I became the Green Lantern! It was a pretty sick dream but I don't think it was a symbolic one like Lehi's dream *sigh*. So at 6:30 in the morning we got a call from the lady that we keep meeting with. She is moving this week to another apartment in the ward but as she was cleaning up some stuff from her place she found an old stash she forgot about. So she texted us because she didn't want to relapse again.  We were just telling her to stay strong and 10 seconds later we get a call from her. Shes crying but happy. Turns out she threw it down the sink! We were pretty proud of her to say the least. We had several lessons again today. Its been an awesome week. I'm running out of time so I'm going to start skipping a lot of details (the green lantern dream was probably not necessary to add)

Friday- I did a lot of study this morning more than I'm going to go into, but Elder G had a migraine and spent the first few hours of the day resting so I just had lots of study time. The main thing we did today was we helped the lady move to her new apartment and met a new friend of hers named Frank, This guy has done a lot of time but has also had a lot of change in his heart. Crazy past that i'm not going to go into but he's super nice and willing to help people now. We might even try to see if we can teach him some time.

Ok, well I'm out of time, I hope you all have an awesome week!!!!!

4 Jan 2016

Well my entire mission people have been asking where I'm from and every time I say Wisconsin they go oh... well it must be a lot colder there. I never really had an answer until this last week. It dipped down to -14F one morning and everyone lost there minds! Like not even just other missionaries but locals too were freaking out about how it got that cold. Personally it would be weird to me if it didn't get that cold at some point in the year. The temp jumped back up into the teens the next day, but I have my answer now I guess Wisconsin is colder in general.

Monday- I spent way to much money today, We went to Orange Leaf for Frozen yogurt, then to Cafe Rio and I've decided I'm not going to splurge that much anymore. Today we got to drive around the zone leaders because their car broke down. So we were booking it to get from place to place because we all had different things we needed to get done.  It was a lot of fun too. The zone leaders aren't that proactive when it comes to setting up activities so they decided to try and change that today. They got permission to organize an ice skating activity.... well that didn't matter because the ice rink closed like two hours before they were planning on going. But we came up with a backup plan and we all went bowling! (I shortened this up a lot, there was like 40 minutes of location changes and phone calls). So before bowling we went to get the ZL's car and it wasn't until we left the dealership that I had this realization. As we pulled out, the Teewee yelled, "no driver." I then realized that I had been driving as Elder Green all day because they borrowed our car in the early morning. Luckily I didn't have any violations so all is well. Bowling was pretty sweet; not going to say I did that well but also no one was trying too hard. We met with a less active after the activity and this guy has a long story. He was baptized a year ago and is trying to recover from his old lifestyle but that's along story I don't need to go into. Pretty much he took two hours to tell us he's thinking of moving which we are super excited to hear because that's the only way he's going to start improving his life. This guys literally needs to run away from this town, There's just too much bad influences and history for him to start improving while he's still here.  He ran over a lot of our plans for the rest of our evening, so the only other lesson we kind of had was with Brittany They were leaving for a friend's wedding in Utah, so we couldn't stick around long.  We are so close to getting her to actually progress but she's super ADD so trying to focus on a lesson is a challenge.

Tuesday- We went to the Kisely's (the first baptism on my mission), to do the recent convert lessons. We ended up focusing on the importance of the Book of Mormon. It was funny, as soon as we brought it up he just starts apologizing to us because he wasn't reading over Christmas, and it just shows that he actually has an understanding of how important reading is. We ended up sharing 2 Nephi 29, and focused on the Book of Mormon being a second witness of Christ. Its always a strange one to share though because in a way it yells at people who only believe in the Bible. So if you're sharing that one you better know you're not going to offend anyone.(side note Elder Gillespie's favorite line in that scripture is Thou Fool!! That should say a Bible, we have a Bible and we need no more Bible). Then we decided to go through some OAY lists. Some of them on there are a little older than the typical youth. One guy on it was 33, but we didn't have much success with that; mostly just not catching people home, because no one is home during the week of Christmas!  We got some plans for new year's. When we went to make copies of the list, we ran into our stake president in the clerk's office. I don't know if I've said this before but President Stuart reminds me a lot of President Jones (comparison for those back in Shawano). He's always super smiley. His resting face is a smile. I've never seen him not happy. The best part of the night was making contact with Olivia again. The past two weeks she's been at her grandparents' house who don't exactly like missionaries. She's back with her mom and we could hear her before she opened the door. She just yells, "its the missionaries!" then you hear mom run upstairs.  Yea she's been avoiding us but it gets better later in the week. The last part of today was the death of our car, it hit 50,000 miles! I'm just excited because I got to kill the first car of my mission and if I stick around this area for one more transfer I might get to "kill" my "father". For those who don't know that just means he'll finish his mission with me as his comp.

Wednesday- This morning's study was Jacob 5, the allegory of the olive tree.  It talks a lot about the scattering of Israel and has a lot of symbolism for the Nephites and the Jews and the Gentiles. I feel I'm going to have to read it a few more times to get everything out of it. Then we had District meeting!!!!!! and i forgot to prepare my training!!!! so I winged it.... I mean followed the Spirit. I had about 20 minutes to prep which is honestly the same amount of prep time I put into most of my talks. I normally just think about what I want to say and I can do pretty well with that and a couple of bullet points.  I taught on humility and obedience. The emphasis was on humility in Alma 15:29. It talks about a great check among the people after he establishes a church in that city. That was my challenge to my district. Just because we are on missions and set apart doesn't make us exempt from sin. So every night I invite you to check yourself. Not to get down on yourself about how terrible you are but as a way of refining yourself. Every night reflect on your day and check yourself for one way you can improve on some aspect of your character and if you continually do that, you will continually become more Christ-like. After our training we did some demos which honestly probably were not to effective. We all got into character and chose the most extreme personalities possible which led to goofing around. We had another lesson at the Ziels were we had around 9 kids we were teaching at one time. This time we focused on baptism and I can probably say that I have had better lessons, but the kids enjoyed it and hopefully we can get more individual lessons with each kid or at least family. Today we went to the chiropractor and found out that Elder G's back is pretty terrible, to put it plainly. He had a stress scan on his back. Usually people that come in complaining have around a 30 to 60 on the stress scan. I have no idea what that means but Elder G's back was at 250ish on the stress scan. So we have a few visits that we are going to make to help his back.

Thursday- Today was pretty cool. I got the care package that the youth in my ward sent. The only reason I bring that up is for you Matthew Kavenga. Your letter got a good chuckle out of all the missionaries in our apartment! I'll make sure I'm being obedient, especially in that aspect of my mission. Today was the start of being really unproductive. It was New Years Eve and we got a p-day during the night and all of tomorrow. We all got new not smart phones in our mission and that took a huge chunk of the day just to transfer contacts and set up all the stuff. Today almost nothing happened missionary-wise. We did end up having dinner with a kind of, not really, but a little less active family and they are going to try and prioritize church more in there life. So at least we got that. The rest of the night was movie night and we had about four different stake centers that we tried to use but they were all filled until we got to the Central Stake center (that's mine) and only the ZLs Elder G and I know where that is.Well I wasn't driving today and Elder G drives a little crazy *cough* phoenix drivers *cough*. The only two that kept up with him were Sister Bueno and Sister Park so we had to wait for 20 other missionaries to figure out how to decipher our directions and get to the stake center. We spent the rest of the night playing B-ball and watching Monsters Inc, Not a very productive day.

New Years- We woke up at 8:00 and I've never felt so rested in my life, We visited our buddy Eugene, the one in the hospital with the crushed pelvis, and hes recovering really well. This has definitely been a humbling experience that he needed. Its forcing him to quit smoking pretty much. Its at least a nice jump start. He has pretty much nothing to do all day so he's actually been reading the Book of Mormon. Before he wasn't that keen on keeping our commitments. He would say he read but we asked him what he read out of the Book of Mormon he would start talking about Joseph Smith and Porter Rockwell, so we were able to deduce that he wasn't reading. Also the members have helped so much in his situation. He said he's never felt so much love from others, even in his own family. Its all through simple acts of kindness where people visit for an hour and bring him a snack or a game to play. That's one thing I want to stress to every member is just to be loving and charitable towards others. I'm not saying towards other church members, just to everyone. People notice what we do and that's why we have to be an example of Christ in all places and at all times. We took his name upon us. That's my little rant for this message. The rest of the day was pretty much just board games. We played Ticket to Ride with some other missionaries, went over to president Stuart's house and played Catan,  Some of the most intense ping pong I've played since soccer spaghetti dinners. Then we went to one our Bishop's homes for dinner and ended up playing several board/card games. Then we met back up with the other missionaries and watched Ratatouille, but we left early to do some shopping. Then WE GOT TO PLAN! I never thought I'd be so happy to plan out my day just because I knew that meant we were getting back to work.

Saturday- going to wrap this up. We saw Patricia!!!!! We were waiting outside her boyfriend's house and as we were knocking she pulled up so we talked. Lessons are going to resume and hopefully she'll be baptized in a month or so. She was already ready once, but I'll just say the adversary went to work on her so it'll take a little more time.

I'm out of time for today, Elder G's chiropractor appointment this morning kind of shortened up our time. I hope you all have an AwEsOmE new year, and please just be charitable it makes the world a better place and make us better people!

Love,

Elder Hoffman