August 5, 2013

Dear Family,

this has been a bitter sweet week. We were able to get a couple media referrals and from them able to get two new investigators. They live right next door to each other in an apartment complex that we call the "homicide apartments" because there are always police cars there :). One of them Jackie is in her 30's and her father is a very religious man and she said that 'he can tell you how every religion is wrong. its amazing'. so of course she had some questions that he had put into her head. One of them was of the Sabbath day being Saturday instead of Sunday. I told her that I can show her in the Bible how the day changed from Saturday to Sunday and we also explained that it was changed to commemorate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. She then proceeded to call her dad and tell him the great news of what we opened her mind to! After me arguing with him for a little while we said that we don't want to argue and then after hanging up the phone told her that we teach truth and she needs to pray about it. She seems lie she will be a great investigator!

The other investigator we were able to meet with was actually referred to us by Jackie. According to Jackie, her neighbor needed some financial help of which he heard that the church might help out with. When we were finally able to meet with the neighbor her situation was a bit different than what we expected. Her name is Teke and she was just looking for a job. we went in and talked with her for a while and told her about the church's recourses and about what we do as missionaries At the end of the conversation she was like 'man you guys are pretty cool. I was expecting you to come in and shove that literature down my throat. But you guys did a very good job!".

We were also able to get some good progress with our other investigators Karma, Gary, and a few others.

The down side to this week was that no one came to church! we had 3 individuals that we were totally expecting to come and a few others that were questionable. but no one came! I was very... disappointed. and the ward mission leader, as we were talking about them not showing up said, "our job is not to worry. Our job is to work". So that is the little bit of wisdom that I would like to leave with all of you! no matter the situation that you find yourself in and no matter the trials that come your way. "Our job is not to worry. Our job is to work."

Love,

Elder John

July 29, 2013

Dear Family,

This week has been going very slow! we are trying to meet with a hundred different investigators and potential investigators and non of them can meet!!! hopefully this week we will do better with lessons. but I did have a great lesson that made the whole week worth it! We visited a less active family that we visit about once every 2 weeks and the son was at home (we have never met him). He is in his high 20's and he has a real desire to come back to church. since his family moved to the United States from the Philippines he has not been active, since age 14. He has a non member wife and he discussed the challenges of having a non member spouse and how he doesn't feel comfortable going to her church. We told him that if he lives up to his covenants that he has made that he can receive all the blessings that Heavenly Father has promised him and everything will work out.  

We had a lesson with a potential that our ward mission team found while "member finding". He has had open heart surgery and he has other heart problems/ But he is very knowledgeable about the Bible and he is eager to learn truth. We were able to get him a large print Book of Mormon and he is eager to read! We are very excited to have another progressing investigator!

We were also able to have another lesson with our potential investigator Karma. Her husband seems more interested than she is so that is good! Kinda haha. she has had a hard life and she doesn't believe in anything. she said that she has tried prayer before but it didn't work then so why should it work now. So we are still working with her.

We were also able to finally have a lesson with our investigator Nelsy. She doesn't seem to believe in Christ and we are working on helping her with that. We asked her if she believes that the bad things we do have an eternal consequence. then we talked about justice and mercy. hopefully we will be able to meet with her soon! 

Thank you for all of your support and prayers!!!

Love you all!

Elder John

July 22, 2013

This week went fairly well. We didn't get to teach that many lessons but we were able to do some service and meet a few new people. We had a lesson with a pm/la family and their two young girls. One is 4 and the other is 6 years old. They have not had any upbringing in any church or anything relating to God. We taught them how Christ takes away our sins. we used the analogy of cleaning our rooms. We asked 'do you always clean your rooms exactly how mom wants it?' we then explained that we can do all that we are able to do and then mom will help us clean it up and finish it the way she wants it. The girls were so cute during the lesson! After the prayer we told them that they could open their eyes and after a few minutes told them that they can unfold their arms. haha so great!
We are also going to start teaching a la family with a 13 year old boy that is not a member. The dad is a very funny guy! when we call he sounds like he is bored until he finds out that it is the missionaries calling. After he learns who we are he says, 'This is the missionaries??!!" in a loud voice.
We had a party for the 24th of July this last Saturday. We have invited literally everyone we have talked to and nobody came!!! It was still a very fun event! we had Dutch oven chicken and vegetables. Elder Sanders and I were in charge of a few dutch ovens and got to help cook. It was 109 outside and plus the head of cooking the food, it was almost enough to make my tag melt. (I thought it actually might). But the party was not a complete failure, missionary wise. A returning less active, Ryan, brought one of his roommates and we invited her to come to the next lesson we have with him. She said she believes in God and I said, 'Well then we will talk about God.'
We had a lesson with an investigator this week who is our closest to being baptized. However, she does not have a social security number and does not want to quit her job, seeing that it will be even harder to find one without a green card. And She needs to quit her job to be able to come to church! So we will see! We told her to fast and pray about it and she has a lot of faith so I'm sure she will be able to find something.

I love you all and hope all is going well!

Love,

Elder John

"God does not send thunder when a still small voice is enough" - Elder Maxwell

July 15, 2013

Another great week! We were able to go on exchanges with the asistants on Wednesday and we had a great time! We were able to teach some good people that need to come back to church and also a recent convert as well.
We are working with the Stake to find out ways that we can improve working with the wards more. Elder Sanders and I are also working on an incentive that we can create so that the Zone will reach more baptisms in the future.
We had a lot of lessons cancel on us this week but we were still able to teach a few people. We were able to meet with one of our progressing investigators, Jasmine. She has had trouble in the past understanding, recognizing, and feeling the  spirit. We went in to start the lesson and we asked how her reading was going. she said that she read and prayed to know if it was true and then she felt that it was true and was able to recognize the spirit. I was so excited!!! When people actually do what we give them and want to progress, it happens! we then gave our lesson that we prepared on the holy ghost. we showed the Mormon messages from elder Bednar, Patterns of Light. We invited her to church but she wasn't able to come this week.
We were able to meet with a potential investigator Shirley. She opened the door and said 'Ive been drinking'. she then stammered out of the door and told us how here work had shorted her on her pay check and she was very upset... crying and a lot of stuff. we pulled out our book of Mormons to give her comfort. as we were doing that she asked if we could share the story from the bible about the well... So I was very grateful that I knew where the woman at the well story was! We pulled it out and talked about it then elder Sanders read 3 nephi 11. about putting the kingdom of heaven first. She came to church this last week and I was so grateful because I spoke Sunday about Finding Happiness. She really needs to find happiness through the Gospel.

I closed with reading Isaiah 53 and then said 'Jesus Christ died for you, so what are you going to do about it?'  I explained that through the gospel of Jesus Christ we can choose to be happy through our trials and find strength through the atonement of Christ. Its all up to us!

I love you all! Sorry I don't have much time left!

Love,

Elder John

July 8, 2013

Dear Family,

I love being in the Meadows 1st ward! It is a lot different from Red Rock however!

This is a very low income area but the people are great! (and interesting at times). We have a while list of potential investigators and we are working on visiting them. most of them are not home but we have been able to set up appointments with some of them. My zone leader in my previous area told me of his observation of missionary work, while on exchanges. He said, "its funny that all we do for two years is knock on peoples doors for 2 years and see if they are home". Its so true! all we do is knock on their door and see if they are home. if they are then we say what we need to and see if they would be interested, if we could set up a time... and so on.

Elder Sanders is a great missionary! He is very quiet but we get along great.

I love living and breathing missionary work 24/7!!!

We were able to have a lesson with a returning less active member on Thursday and it is great to see the change in people! He has tattoos all over and he looks pretty rough. but he is the kindest guy in the world! from age 15 he was out of the house and into selling drugs. Now he is in his 30s and he is changing his life. He talked about all of the horrible things that are on tv and even on commercials. He has been able to recognize areas of his life that he needs to improve on and he is doing it.

We had a discussion with a man named, Demario. He was a potential that neither of us have met before. We knock on the door and the first thing he says is, "hey guys I'm really not interested". but the conversation soon changed and we were able to see what he thought about religion. He does not believe in organized religion but he does believe in the original church that Christ set up. He basically taught us the Great Apostasy while he talked. We told him that the original church of Christ is back on the earth. we talked for over an hour in 113 degree heat on his door step and it was good to finally be able to see him grasp what we were trying to say. For most of the conversation we were trying to tell him that what he was saying is exactly what we teach! and he wasn't getting it! But by the end he started to understand and he was willing to have us back again.

I love the mission and cant wait to get out there and meet some more awesome people!

Love,

Elder John

"wishing will not make it so. The Lord expects our thinking. He expects our acting. He expects our labors. He expects our testimonies. He expects our devotion." - President Monson

July 1, 2013

This week has been great! I am being transfered to the Meadows 1st ward in the Meadows Stake. My companion and I are the zone leaders there and his name is Elder Sanders. I dont know him very well but he is very quiet so things should be great! haha

we were finally able to meet our mission president and his wife; President and Sister Ahlander. They did a power point presentation at a chapel with the whole missoin! it was very warm in that room :) They seem really nice and they have great stories and experiences that they shared with us!
We finally were able to get one of our investigators, mimi, to pray last week! this week we didnt even have to give her reasons why she should pray in front of us. After the lesson all we did was say, 'will you give us the closing prayer?' and she did it. She is progressing very well and I cant wait for her to be baptized! she said she wants to get baptized in October but we asked her to pray and see when God wants her to be baptized.
I have learned much in this area while serving with Elder Pierre-Louis. I have learned to be patient. I have learned to give my opinion and stick to it without allowing others to feel bad. Elder Pierre-Louis said the other day 'if you dont get what you want its your own fault'. and I feel that is true but its still ok if I dont get what I want because I could force my way and finally get what I want, but at the end of the day I wont have very many people that like me.
This week we were able to have a lot of great opportunities to talk to people! We met a 90 year old Italian guy who loves to talk with his hands! and we were also able to meet a guy who we met while knocking doors who actually seemed very interested!

This really wasnt a missionary experience like those but ater we had our mission meeting with the new mission president we went to 7-eleven to get lunch and when we walked in there was a female employee smoking outside and inside the 50ish year old female employee was helping all of these customers by her self. she had a line and she got us our hot dogs from behind the counter and she seemed to handle everything very well. we waited for everyone to leave, then bought our lunch. I asked her how long she had been working there and she said only 8 months. I said 'wow, it seems like you have been working here for a long time. You are doing very well.' I told her how well she handles the customers and how she can keep her cool. she then said, 'God bless you. I've had the worst day. that just made my day. God bless you'.

Let us not keep our good words to ourselves! :)

I am happy to be able to serve in Meadows 1st ward with new challenges and great experiences ahead!
Love,

Elder John 

June 24, 2013

Dear Family,

Wow! Changes are coming in the way we do missionary work! "The Work of Salvation" broadcast yesterday announced changes in how we do missionary work and I am so excited to be a part of them!

This week has been fairly slow but we have been out doing all we can. We were able to get the husband of a part member family to start progressing in the lessons! He believes all that the church teaches and sees that baptism is where his journey needs to lead him but he doesnt want to just do it, look back, and then realize that he left something out. We are working with him to help him dig deeper inside himself and see what he really needs to work on and how we can help. It is so great to get humble people that are willing to accept our help, who know why we are there! I feel like I am actually needed somewhere when we find people like this. I will give you a short history of this family:

    so the wife is has been a member for around 5 years and about 6 or the 8 kids are baptized. The husband is out of work and they have one car. 4 of the children that live at home have jobs, the mother works as well. They are able to get their schedules so that they can have a rotation between who will drive the car and pick people up. They all come to church every week! I have seen from their examples that none of us have any excuses to obey gods commandments. "does the journey seem long" (I think the name of the hymn is). does it matter that the journey is long? would you have it any other way? Elder Pierre-Louis says "if the mission were easy I wouldnt be here". Exactly! If life were easy I wouldnt want to be here!

I have learned so much from this families example and I hope that we all can follow the commandments of god, regardless of our status, position, or posessions.

 

"when we are on the lords errand we are entitled to the lords help."

This week has been another great learning experience for me and I am sorry I havent written that much but I am running our of time!

I love you all!

Love,

Elder John 

June 17, 2013

Dear Family,

This week was a great learning experience!!!

We were able to do exchanges this week with our Zone Leaders and I was able to go with Elder Manning into his area while Elder Pierre-Louis stayed in our area with Elder West. While on exhanges we had dinner with a sister from Hawaii. She is serving as a senior sister missionary and is awesome! She said that she woke up one morning and said 'I do the same things everyday. I wake up. make breakfast. clean the house a little. I want to do somehting different. So she told her bishop that and he said, 'do you want to serve a mission?' she said, 'yes'. 'For how long', he asked. 'for the rest of my mortal life'. She now has no ending period on her service as a misisonary. She is agreat example to me and is so inspiring!

Elder Pierre-Louis and I got to have dinner with an amazing family this week! they came from the philippines (dont know how to spell that)  and he served as a bishop there. he came in and sat down and started talking about all of these spiritual things! he could reherse any scripture and he could apply them to his life and our lives very well. He also showed us his scriptures; five years ago he started to read and to go to every cross reference in the standard works. he is almost done. that is one of my life goals!

He also shared with Elder Pierre-Louis and I that he can feel the spirit with us because sometimes he sees that missionaries done get along but he sees that we fit together like this... (imagine him interlocking his fingers :)

That was a great experience and definitely one that I needed. During the prayer tears were streaming down my face because of the faith of this humble man who is definitely the elect of God.

Yesterday I had the worst headache of my life! (so far...) and I threw up while we were driving making visits! It was so fun!!! I just thought I would share that as some extra words of wisdom... BE SURE NOT TO THINK SO HARD ALL THE TIME!!! haha jk. but seriously :)

 Love you all!

Love,

Elder John

"Trouble has no necessary connection with discouragment- discouragement has a germ of its own, as different from trouble as arthritis is different from a stiff joint" -F. Scott Fitzgerald 

June 10, 2013

Dear Family,

This week was another great one!!! So happy to finally be 20! less than a year left... :(

 It was discouraging because we had 5 lessons lined up for Wednesday but only 2 went through!!! oh I knew it was too good to be true! anyway... President and Sister Black came to our sacrament meeting this week and they gave great talks! Sister Black talked on things we need to do to always have the Holy Ghost. She mentioned that service is one of the things we need to do to have the Holy Ghost. she said, "Service is not service if it is convenient. Service is service when it is needed."

We had 4 investigators at church this week! We had a lesson with alyssa and Zach, two primary age kids, and they havent come to church this whole time I have been here! so we told them that if they want to get baptized they need to come to church! So they came this week! We were so happy!!!

I think thats it for this week... kinda boring.

Well I love you all!!

Love,

Elder John 

June 3, 2013

Dear Family,

This week went really well! We met a new investigator yesterday! A family from the ward brought a young man to church yesterday and we talked with him and he wants to take the lessons!

We had a dinner with a part member family this week and we talked about the non members beliefs. We answered both of their questions and got to know them a bit better. We gave them some sugestions on what they could do together so that they can have the spirit in their lives and to be constantly thinking of the gospel. After we talked the sister told us how much she appraciated us and appreciated our worry for their concerns. I have never felt more appreciated on my mission than that experience!

We had an awesome experience yesterday! (well it wasnt that exciting, but there is no way to put half of an exclamation mark haha) anyway, we were visiting members after church and we decided to visit this one brother that took us to dinner and the beginning of my first transfer here. He is divorced and he gets his son on weekends... but his wife doesnt want him to take him to church. So he cant go to church either. well we drop by his house and he was so excited to see us! he said 'I've never had a drop in visitor'. it was aweosme because he ws so excited! I think he asked us how we were doing like 10 times during the conversation. well as we talked he asked us if we could come over next sunday and teach his son. it was funny because he was like 'I know you are busy and I dont want to take up your time'. uh... THIS IS WHAT WE DO!!! I was so happy that him and his son will be ble to get the spirit in their home this way!

 Yesterday it was 101! starting to get hot!!. since we got a car we dont want to get too soft so we decided that we wont turn the air conditioning up to level 3 until it gets to 103, so we are praying for it to get just a little hotter :)

That is about it for this week! I hope you all have a great week and have a happy last week of school!

Love,

Elder John

"For our light afflictoin, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal. "

- 2 Corinthians 4:17-18