This week was great. We saw some great progress with some of our investigators. Sadly, none of them made it to church, but they are reading and understanding our message and they want to act on it which is some good progress. I had a great lesson with a lady named Mimi. She is an older lady, super sweet, she was in the formers area book and we went and saw her with an older couple in the ward and they hit it off and had an amazing lesson. She loved and understood the restoration, she is a Sunday school teacher for her church so its gonna be hard to get her to come to our church. But my district is killin it right now which is amazing to see and its great for our ward. One companionship, the STL's, they are baptizing 4 people this week a family of 3! and a grandpa part of a part member family and they are all amazing people so I'm stoked to be able to interview them and then next week I get to interview another guy who is super solid as well! So, the work is definitely hastening here in Fayetteville! Now I just gotta find those that are prepared as well, but I have loved being around such great missionaries and being able to interview so many people for baptism. It is such an honor and blessing to be able to have that privilege! Yesterday we worked hard all day and tracked for like 5 hours in the super hot humidity to find as many families as possible cause they were home and we found 4 new families. It was awesome. Found a great place to find in with great people so me and Talbot are stoked. We just need to keep working hard and following up with people. But the Lord will provide as we just keep working hard and being obedient the blessing will come. I get to go to mission council with all the Leaders tomorrow so I'm excited for that but sorry its short this week not too much to say.
September 8, 2014....
Thanks for the birthday wishes! It's weird to think I wont be a teenager after Wednesday. It is flying by. Thats sick that Brandon did good, sounds like he and the team did really good. Tell him congrats and no he didnt write me. but this seriously is the hardest time of the year for me as a missionary and not being able to watch any games!! haha its kind of sad but this is what they meant when they say serving a mission is a hard sacrifice.. Only a sacrifice from football season! haha I miss yall too... :) and I'm glad you enjoyed 2 Nephi 4. I just love how fast you can change your attitude on anything and he just says "awake my soul" and to stop letting satan control him or his thoughts and that if we can just trust in the Lord forever he will guide us back home. And ya thats the hardest part for me to get through as well I wish Isiah wasnt so hard to read!
This week was really good though we kicked it off strong. Obviously on Monday with it being Labor day, many families were home and kept our finding pretty consistent throughout the week. I think our find of the week was a lady named Kimber we met her on Wednesday and said we could come back the next day and when we first talked with her she said she was agnostic and was confused why there would be so many christian denominations. So I kind of chuckled and said we have the perfect message for you and bore testimony that she really did have a Heavenly Father that loved her so much. So I went back on thursday with Bro Okonkwo. We were on splits and we taught her family. Her husband is Casey and they have a 7 year old named Garren and being in the south and getting to teach a family who really doesnt believe in God is a blast! I love it. I think its so fun to watch them have a spiritual witness that there is a God and thats what we saw. We taught them the restoration and focused primarily on faith. What faith is and how we apply faith it in our lives. And to someone who really wants proof and can't rely on faith, that's when we need the spirit to testify to them so we said a prayer in the middle of the lesson to let the spirit work in them and progressively through the lesson they kept getting more and more interested and asking more questions and at the end they said that they really wanted to read and pray about the Book of Mormon! And they accepted a soft commitment to be baptized if they came to know it to be true. Then the rest of the week was a little slower for us at least but for the rest of the district it went great so that was good to see.
The interviews went really well. One of them, Bro Ironce Raymond was the grandpa of a part member family. I have never met a man who was more prepared for the gospel than this man! Our interview was like an hour and a half because of how much he was bearing testimony of the gospel and how it has changed his and his family's life! He said he was praying so long for God to send him to the truth and his whole life he thought God didn't answer him and then he realized that God works in mysterious ways and led his family there first and let him find it through them. He and a 3 generation family were baptized as well the grandma,, the mom and her daughter! So it was an awesome Saturday and Sunday to see! and Bro Raymond bore his testimony so many times through church it was so cool. even though he wasn't my investigator, he definitely has changed my life just to be able to see and hear his story. But me and Talbot are just hitting those streets hard and knocking on all the doors we see trying to find that family! We know it will happen in due time with our faith and diligence we'll see a miracle this transfer! My quote of the day "Adversity helps develop a depth of character that comes in no other way." - Dieter F. Uchtdorf
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| Elders Anderson & Talbot |
This week was a great week. We saw some great things happen and some bad, but thats the fun in missionary work. My birthday was great, we had a lot of fun. We went out that night and went to a place called Twisted Taco! A place right in the square of Fayetteville and I did love the package and I will keep the bracelet close so I can where it when I come home. I like the turtles thing we got going as a Fam. But that day was a good day for me, everybody that we talked to shut us down haha we had very little success which is fine. It happens and honestly it strengthens my testimony more when we have so many people wanting to yell and get angry with us cause it just makes them look dumb for one, and it shows how sad "Christianity" has become. We knocked into 2 different pastors that day that got so mad that we were on their porch and tried to anti us and said we don't believe in Jesus and all the good stuff that they try and throw at us. We had one go open his door and when I started talking he leaned over with his finger pushed on my name tag and said "that says Jesus Christ.. you need to take that off now cause you dont believe in Jesus.." and then went off how Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon is crap.. and is all fake. Now.. this was an older man but me being me, it took everything not to punch him in the mouth for hitting my name tag. But I love these experiences cause all you have to say is "Sir, have you read the book?" they say "no, who would read the devils book.."" well if you're too ignorant to read the book and pray about it, you cant say anything about my church. Try it out and you'll see something like this could not come from the devil!" and it's just sad how all these people call themselves Christians and they put everyone else down for what they believe.. I'm pretty sure Christ wouldn't do that. It's just a small testimony builder for me knowing that we don't put down any other faith for what they believe, we just offer more. But I did get to interview another man this week for baptism. He is so strong in the gospel. He has been learning for awhile now and finally made the first step so it was great to see. We had zone conference which was great. Elder Jensen just got transfered into the zone so it was great to see him again. I found out someone we started teaching and got halfway through when I left got baptized 2 weeks ago so that was great news!
That's awesome you got to speak in church this week and ya that is definitely something harming the world today with the youth we don't see things as black and white. The youth like to sit on the fence in the gray area and see what they can do to not harm themselves which is so sad. It just gives satan so much more ability to snatch them when they waver just a little bit. We see it out here in the mission field with other missionaries which sucks but I guess with the Lords work hastening Satan is making it even harder to find our way in this world. We have been talking about that lately in our mission. Our own personal conversion. That is what I am most grateful for in serving a mission, to actually know for myself that this church is true. I dont think I knew that before and I honestly think if any young man who doesn't know that and comes on his mission and can find that for himself and maybe not convert anyone else on the way but if he saved himself it was all worth it. Because later in life he will have a family and he will raise his kids in the gospel and thats how generations will change. So I've just been thinking lately of what my life would have been if I didnt serve and it scares me what could have happened. Im so happy that I've converted myself.
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| Celebrating "20" with a little confetti blast |
September 22, 2014....
Hey, I loved that scripture that you sent. It meant a lot coming from someone else cause I just read that chapter this week and that didn't stick out to me... shows you how much I try to understand Isiah:) The zone conference was at the Fayetteville stake was so amazing. All the relief societies in each ward for like 4 months were compiling a bunch of stuff from everyone and they had a missionary mall for all us missionaries serving in the Fayetteville zones! So we basically just got a bunch of free stuff! and there was so much stuff... your son was in heaven. It was like being at the DI but everything was free and nicer! So I picked up a new suit, 2 rain/cold jackets a bunch of ties and a bunch of hygiene stuff! It was awesome.
But about the week, this week was a lot better than last week! We had some pretty awesome miracles in finding families! One of these families was a mom and a daughter and 5 years ago they moved to Georgia but before they lived in New Jersey and met and learned from missionaries and they loved them. They called them the "Jesus Boys". And when they moved they told the missionaries to make sure ones in Georgia came and saw them and when they first got hear some came but they weren't home and only left a pass along card with no contact info. Then 5 years went by and none have knocked on her door since! So when we knocked on her door she freaked out.. which made us super nervous cause at first it looked like she was going to attack us, but then she was so happy and started bringing up things like the Book of Mormon and Moroni and that she went to the Washington DC temple to check out the visitors center! We were shocked, she then set up her own return appt. and made sure we were coming back! So we are stoked to go back and teach them and get them coming to church! Our other miracle is that we got one of our investigators who lives in our same apt. complex on date to be baptized for October 25th! He is super excited. We just need to help him with his word of wisdom issues and he will be baptized! Elder Talbot and I were happy to see success this week with a few of our investigators and hopefully this week we will have a lot coming to church! and who isn't so excited for General Conference!!! 2 more weeks!! It'll be awesome!
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| A little P-day Golfing |
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| Ran into Dad's old mission companion, Elder Handekamp |
September 29, 2014....
So it was a really good week this week, we got a lot of stuff done. We finally got some people to church! Our investigator, who is on date came with his 2 little girls and he enjoyed it a lot and then we got a part member family that we have been working with for awhile now to come! The member has been coming for 3 weeks now. He is like 70 and on Sunday he received the Aaronic Priesthood so that was awesome to be apart of. Then his Daughter came who we are teaching and she brought her little boy who we will be giving a baby blessing to in the next few weeks. But there is a lot of potential in that family so we are excited for them.
I think the big miracle this week is we finally got back in contact with one of our investigators who was on date before but fell off the map because he had a lot going on but we went and visited him on Friday. We were talking more about what we do and he said that he found out that we cant watch TV or listen to music and can't talk to our families and he said there was no way he could do that. We asked him where he found that out and he said he was in Carrollton over the weekend and met the missionaries out there because he was taking them to get some shoes. So we asked him why he was taking missionaries to get shoes and he said he wasn't but his really good friend was and he was just staying with him over the weekend. I got super excited and asked who the friend was and he said, Tyrus!! I was like NO WAY!! I baptized Tyrus! and showed him the pics on my camera so we were both shocked and then he called up tyrus and we set up a time this week to teach Anthony with Tyrus!! But how cool is that! What a small world it is. But I'm pretty stoked for that. It was just a great week for us in finding new families to listen to us so hopefully we can be teaching more people this week and see many families coming to General Conference to hear the Prophets voice! We weren't able to see Cindy and her daughter this week cause they had to run out to Arizona to see her husband but we are seeing them this week and they are coming to conference! and Conference will be amazing its like Christmas for us missionaries! I can't wait to see what Holland throws down this time!
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