New area, day by day

August 17, 2015

WEEKLY EMAIL REVIEW. Monday. Elders PDay. I visited Brooks then took a picture and came back. Then I had dinner with Carol's and they gave me a lot of pasta- a lot of pasta! Then visited Bonnie then the Sanders then visited the Chandler's then visited Welches then went home and slept.

Woke up at 6:30. Changing areas. At 7:10am  Ian took us all the way down to transfers. Dropped off Elder Taylor. Then we went to short pump mall. It was closed so we played chess. I barely won by accident. After we went to Chicken Fiesta for lunch. Afterwards we went to transfer meeting. Met my new awesome companion. Then we were stuck in traffic and I went to Five Guys. I got a ride from members from previous area to King George  (that’s a city) where I am now.

Elder Johnson is my new companion. Between transfer meeting and actually getting on the road it was two hours. We didn't have much to do but sit around and talk and see how my new companion is. We got all my stuff unpacked and then dropped Toby off. Then we came to King George  Ward building. Also we went to Burger King and got a shake. Afterwards, we did area book work and then had stuff going on where we at night we planned for our week. My companion filmed me as I'm doing this. It is quite interesting. This will be a fun transfer. I audibly say this so it types faster. Go voice type!

Wednesday, we woke up and jogged for the first time (for me) since the Glen Allen, my first area. Took a nap on the couch in the morning when we had to be in the apartment and we just had a good personal study. Comp study we had the repairman come in to fix our wall in our apartment and we talked with Juan about the importance of family and he totally agrees. He finds God in nature and sees that the degradation of the family causes the collapse of society.

After we checked up on some potential investigators and taught a family from Florida who was sitting outside. After we went to the library and had Mormon.org time then to the post office to get the boxes that I want to ship home because I have a “crapton” of stuff. After lunch we went to visit Mary. After we gave a blessing to a jdubbs (Jehovahs Witness) lady, we chatted with Mary. Went to Reggie's place and saw the McNamara household and they are super cool. We are excited to see more opportunities to help out. We then had dinner but our dinner was cut short by being able to teach Sierra at the library. We basically gave her a copy of preach my gospel then asked if next time we come by that she teach us (instead of us teaching her), she likes to talk a lot and it's kind of hard for me to fully listen for that long. Talked to a referral then went to the Edneys place then helped Sister Simpson move in with some members of the ward. Then we went to the building to sync and plan then we were done.

Thursday 

Woke up pretty much every hour on the hour last night.... Had personal and comp study then had part 1 of weekly planning, part two was after lunch at the ward building. We tried contacting a contact after to take a break but she wasn't home so we discussed religion with a lady who loves helping people out. We then went tracking and tried talking with a guy who wasn't too interested in what we talked about concerning prophets. Then we went back to weekly planning, had dinner at the apartment and discussed what we were going to do. There was an event at the ward building and we went so that I could meet some of the congregation and after we did some paperwork. Found out my companion likes the anime films I like but not the anime TV shows in general. He is a cool guy from Syracuse Utah and loves sports and Los videos juegos. This is already turning out to be a good transfer, we are helping each other get out of the wedges we have been stuck in and constantly progressing forward.

Friday 

Woke up and jogged again, killer man!  Then we had personal study and comp study where we discussed smart goals for the transfer and spiritually planned and created an individual that we will find. We then went and I cleaned and organized while Elder Johnson did area book work. We then went and visited people and I met some new folks today. We had dinner at Cindy's place and we had to go quicker then we would have liked but we also taught a man named Brother Cousins. He is cool, we then had the leftover of dinner as dinner because our dinner was a lesson with Cindy. We then walked 2 miles to save on miles and visited an investigator named Regina. We then stopped by a potential and learned some new things about each other (elder Johnson and I) we helped build a 30 ton wood splitter and visited some members. Our miracle that happened today was we stopped by a guy's house right as he pulled up to his driveway and his name was Leroy, a minister from another church but he accepted the Book of Mormon and said his neighbors were LDS and we all were very good people. 

Saturday so we woke up and I lifted some weights and stretched and stuff. Companion can bench more then me in the mornings. So we basically went to the church building and stopped by for a baptism for an 8 yr. old girl, we had to go to visit someone. Turns out they asked us to come by the time they leave for work. So we decided to go tracking and found a pretty solid potential. We stopped by the McNamara dam and dropped off/picked up food and water. We them visited and went finding some more. We helped a lady named sister Deel and helped her and a friend of her daughter cut down a huge bush. We then went to do area book work and have dinner. After we went to see Bro Toller then to check up on some potentials. We met Marvin and he wants to come to church! We also met a nice lady who said we could stop by Thursday. Visited some people in a trailer park to find out that they were moving. We gave a Book of Mormon to their father and he was really great full for it and had a desire to read it. We then came to the building and nightly planned.

Sunday we went to church in the morning and had a meeting at 7:15 am because church started at 9am. I was able to meet some new people. We had a good lesson the second hour about how God asks us to work for us to be capable of growth and development. Third hour we talked about how to be a better father and husband. I learned some new things and even some things when looking back I had already learned from my father about seeing his example of being a good dad. After church the youth invited us to their meeting that they had and they discussed how to be able to invite people to events and how to better share the gospel. From the people so far I have seen and met in this ward, it is awesome and I fee like I will be able to learn and help. From there we went to the Strickland family household and discussed patience and reverence with them. We went to the Neimen household for dinner and had some über good food over there. Bro Neimen came out with us for visiting one or two people (funny story, when we knocked on a lady's door and she just got out of cleaning after work) then went and had a lesson and found the desire of an investigator and went after and stopped by a potential and a family who haven't come in a while. They are both doing well.

Elder Day

Transfer Coming ...

August 10, 2015

This week has been pretty crazy.

Monday went as follows, most of our preparation day was spent with a

member playing board games and a member had us over for dinner and

during dinner we played a board game with him and his wife and their

cousins. After dinner we took the member's cousin to come visit some

people we had planned to see that night and he really appreciated it.

Heck the people we visited were awesome too!

Tuesday we had a district meeting and I learned more about the

cleansing powers of the atonement of Jesus Christ. That day was also

spent "area book hunting" where any person that the missionaries

previously had kept a record on, we stopped by their house. After we

went to the Hanna household and had dinner and a lesson. We became

really good friends with the father of Landon (the kid that was

baptized last Saturday) and guess what, his name is Jeremy too!!!! It

is super awesome and he is starting to become more interested in the

church.

Wednesday we went to mutual and taught the teenagers importance of being able to be yourself and also do missionary work (something I have been

struggling with severely since I started my mission work actually).

There were a few other things that happened that day too but the main

one was the mutual (or youth group) activity.

Thursday we went and taught the people that we had set up appointments

with and was able to take Ian and Xander with us to different people

to have them help us teach.  We also taught at the Hanna household.

Friday and Saturday we did service and taught. 8:30pm on Saturday I

found out from my mission president that I would be leaving Staunton

and my companion will be training. When the transfer comes where he

starts training there will be 140 out of the 250 missionaries either

training a new missionary or they will be a new missionary. That's a

scary thought.... I hope they are all doing well. Sunday was goodbye

day, I said goodbyes to many people of the congregation and was able

to get in contact with a few people and have a lesson with them.

Goodbye day in Staunton 

Buddy the bird, Baptism

August 3, 2015

So here is my week so far

Monday we hang out with the elders from Waynesboro and also had a

blast rescuing that baby bird because the member who had it said that

we needed to take it to a shelter and see what was going on. We found

out that Buddy the bird had a broken leg and needed to be put in anesthesia

immediately. After we were worried about buddy but we said "You know

what, it's in the Lord's hands now." So we went on with our day hoping

Buddy was okay. We had dinner with some new move in members from the

Bay Area and we talked about the importance of the temple. Later a

member invited us over for family home evening so we went there and

shared a message about planning and how it helps for what we may have

happen in our lives.

Buddy the bird 

Tuesday we went on an exchange so I went to Elder Rhineheart's area

and Elder Hansen went to ours. All I know is that we were visiting

many people and the person that went with us was never a member yet,

although he was planning on it when he turns 18, his name is Sam. Sam

is awesome and we had a good lesson with Sam. I learned a lot from the

new missionary and how important teaching simple truths is, we went

over to a youth pastor's house and we (as peacefully as possible)

explained and discussed the importance of personal revelation gained

from reading the words of the prophets, whether they be from the Holy

Bible or the Book of Mormon.

Wednesday we exchanged back and we were involved in two things. Both

were done with a member named Ian Jarvis . The first was clean the

branch building for the baptism on Friday. The second was visiting

people after we cleaned (and did some paperwork). We visited the Smith

family and Tony Burke, both were doing well. The Smith family's home

was where the bird was found and we found out later that day that

Buddy passed away during surgery from internal bleeding from his

suicidal tendencies from jumping off a 2 story building more then

twice... May Buddy the bird rest peacefully eating all the worms and

stuff he (or she, we didn't really check if Buddy was a dude or a

girl) so desires to the little stomach can't hold it anymore. During

our dinner break we played a game with Ian called Bang, Halo edition.

It was quite adventurous and we had some good times with that game.

Thursday we had a few major things go on. We helped brother Weber move

11 railroad ties that were 100lbs each, usually... That was the light

ones. Then we helped someone move. One was Kaylie Hanna's baptismal

interview and that went well. Right before that though we had a lesson

with Bonnie Sharp and discussed and reviewed exodus and the 10

commandments. Since Monday we only have 40 miles total we are allowed

to use in our car before we exceed the allotted monthly mileage so we

have been involving people with our work and driving a lot more then

usual and we now only can use 10 miles per the 30th and 31st but once

it hit August then we were fine. We then had dinner and after then

were asked by a couple in our apartment complex to stop by and pick up

some food they had made us. We discussed with them missionary work and

shared with them more of our beliefs.

Landon's baptism 

Friday was basically 2 things. One was a meeting in Harrisonburg and

another was the baptism for Landon and Kayliee. Thankfully both went

well and I learned for myself on why I am doing what I am doing on the

mission. We had an investigator come to the baptism! It was an awesome

experience.

Saturday we had service and another baptism and Sunday we visited and

taught many people(investigators and those that are new members) we

also had an interesting experience wit people sharing what they

believed in sacrament meeting. It was interesting, and we kinda were

smiling during that too. Here is one of the two kids we helped be

baptized. His name is Landon.

I hope I stay

July 27, 2015

Hey so kind of a lot happened this week and it started with last Monday

For our preparation day,  we went emailing our families then the missionaries from the other area came over and we hung out. I cut Elder Rhineheart's hair and it turned out pretty good! We then went antique mall hopping (all 4 of us) and Elder Taylor got a comic book of Marvel, I got a comic book from an older TV

show I watched growing up called Samurai Jack. The original comic

still in the plastic bag thingy. So great!

Tuesday: we had a whole lot of trouble Tuesday morning because we

didn't get all the info we needed for the baptism we are having on the

31st of July. Oh yeah, baptism is happening on the 31st of July so

that has been super hectic, especially because it is a 9yr old that we

are teaching and we didn't have any info about near any of what was

going on and we're just able to set up times to come and teach, gahh

it's just hectic. But other then that, we went with Ian to visit some

people and we got to visit many a people- The Smiths, The  Welches.

Wednesday We had what we called “area book day” where we digitally

imputed records into the devices we now have for area book use. We

then had dinner at the Wrights and talked about movies and keeping a

gratitude journal. One of the Wright boys found out that their mom was

going out of town for something and first thing he said was "what?

Who's going to clean the house!" And we all started laughing so hard,

even the parents.

We then had “youth night out” that was cancelled so I made some awesome basketball shots for 5 minutes when the two youth that didn't know it was cancelled agreed to have us teach more about missionary work so we went to Chick-Fill -A and discussed all the questions they had about missionary work ranging from workout equipment you can bring to how to share gospel things online.

Thursday we had a Meeting in Harrisonburg that was from 11am-5pm, the

main thing that I took away was thinking about what type of man do I want to

be for my friends when I come back home, family members, and future

family. Afterwards we have been limited on where we can drive so we

cleaned our apartment that night.

We had another day of area book work because there is so much of it

and then we called a potential investigator and he said to come right

over to be taught so we taught A new investigator, afterwards we had

Ian Jarvis come with us to give a branch building tour for the grandma

of the girl that is getting baptized this Friday, had dinner with members (Jarvis) had a person we had recently began teaching invite us to baseball event for the town so we went and talked about Jesus Christ with them and even related it to baseball (more then I thought was a possible actually).

Saturday we were updating records in the morning then when we came out

of the library some members saw us and they said "hey we are taking

you to lunch" so of course we weren't going to say no to that, we went to a sandwich place called firehouse subs. I got the engineer sub and it was super good! I have been feeling like not in a pasta mood so I haven't had pasta for 4 days and I think my companion is getting worried about me... Anyway, after lunch we went and taught 2 people, one a recent convert and we talked about the power of prayer and the second was Smokey, one who is investigating the church. Smokey opened up to us a lot and we felt an over abundance of peace and calm when discussing the power of going to church with him. We honestly had no idea what we were going to talk about but the heavens knew what all

3 of us needed to hear.

That is where I found more clearly the question that popped into my mind on the meeting Thursday. I have seen throughout my life those whom I want to emulate and I have many good examples from back home on what kind of individual I want to be and after talking with Smokey, it was confirmed to me how much those good attributes meant. Smokey is a good man. The main person we are working with is Smokey who is a 91yr old ww2 vet who seeks to find answers that he has had questions to for all his life.

Sunday we visited many a people and saw how important it was to

remember and contact those whom we have come in contact with. We also

found a bird that had fallen from its nest so we made a box for it

(because it's nest was so way up high and then brought it to the next

person we were intending on visiting, who loved animals anyway, and he

took him for us. We had a good gospel lesson of helping the injured

from that experience.

The next transfer day is in 2 weeks and I hope I stay but I am slightly prepping to leave just in case so I don't cry a ton because of all the wonderful experiences I have had here so far.

I got the letters from the family reunion so thank you momma, have fun with all the stuff going on these days