Ben's New Greenie

Hey Family,

So sorry this is a super fast letter and super late as well.  Since it is transfers we had pday today (Tuesday).  I was called yesterday as a trainer and so spent all day in the mission home with President Larkin.  It was a GREAT day, but it also means that we are scrambling to do everything else and so this well be a fast letter. 

Yes, I sent off Elder Haro yesterday.  I think that he has pretty excited yet nervous to go home.  My new companion is Elder Carpenter from Lindon Utah. He is pumped to get out and work like any new missionary is, and so I am really excited to be with him.

We met an amazing family, parents and two daughters, on Sunday night that we started to teach.  They were a referral from an English couple who is their friends.  We went over to their house and had a great lesson.  The best part is they live close to the ,and so unlike many of our investigators shouldn't have transportation problems.

Well, that is about it.  I have to go.

Ben

Thanksgiving in FL

After 7.5 months in the Gainesville 2nd Ward, I have received a new assignment! I have now been transferred to.....

(drumroll!!)

GAINESVILLE 5TH WARD!!!!

Haha, yeah, I only moved about 3 miles down the road to an area that I went on exchanges in all the time.  Gainesville is like a black hole that I can't leave - everyone in my zone projects that I will die here.  I suppose it's a good thing I love this place. My new address is:

3461 SW 2nd Ave

Apt #266

Gainesville, FL 32607

Anyway, the University of Florida is now the central feature of my area and we cover the entire east side of the city in the old historic district.  The 2nd ward had a lot of well-off professionals and was pretty upscale for the most part.  My new ward covers the inner city and has a lot of apartments and much more ghetto. I love it!  People will talk with us all the time!  Granted, many of them are looking for handouts or a way to support addictions, but we do get many opportunities to preach the good word! I figure this transfer is God's way of helping me to fulfill my last mission goal: to pay it forward by replicating my own conversion - convert a college student who will also serve a mission!

So this week was a lot of fun!  Thursday was, of course, Thanksgiving Day and we started off with the Turkey Bowl!  The Gainesville Elders, vs the 1st and 5th wards!  Oh man, I got beat up.  By the time we finished 2.5 hours later, my team had won, but at a heavy price. Several fingers on my left hand were jammed, a good size bruise on my ribs from where I collided with the bishop going for an interception, and soreness EVERYWHERE!  I didn't even know there were muscles in some parts of the body where I was hurting.  The next day, it was hard to get out of my bed and my companion and I had to physically lift ourselves out of the car like old people because our legs weren't working. My hamstrings are finally back to where I can walk without stiff pain today.  Hahaha, but oh, it was fun.  =D  The rest of our Thanksgiving Day was spent going from appointment to appointment and everyone trying to feed us. First time I ever tried deep fried turkey, pecan pie, or sweet potato pie. MmmmmMmmm! Great Southern food, but it all starts to taste like sawdust when your belly is protesting with each bite. Our final dinner was with a Philippine family where we had rice, shrimp and noodles, and some other identified stuff that was super tasty, but definitely not the traditional Thanksgiving meal that I had come to expect.

Oh, that reminds me, I didn't tell you about my new companion!  I am now serving with Elder Bryce Bishop from American Fork, UT!  We've worked around each other ever since he came out a year ago in September and have even shared 3 of the same companions.  He's a huge sports buff, and has an insane amount of enthusiasm!  It's very contagious though and I don't think we've had a dull moment in the last 5 days.

Well, I want you to know that I am happy and well.  Last year I was transferred 2 days before Christmas and I felt a little down about that, but then Beaufort ended up being one of my favorite areas of all time and it was the best Christmas I had ever experienced.  This year, I was transferred the day before Thanksgiving, and even though it was spent thousands of miles away from family and without a single familiar person around, my heart was very content.  I've realized that it is so easy to love people and to love the circumstance, no matter what it may be. I'm not sure if that's a blessing from being a missionary, or just a blessing of being surrounded by loving people with strong faith in Christ, but I know God has truly helped me to give my whole heart to this work and these people.

"But godliness with contentment is great gain.  For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out.  And having food and raiment let us be therewith content." - 1 Timothy 6:6-8

I love you all.  Thanks for the pictures of the birthdays!

Elder M.

Working Hard in WA

Family,

Well, due to the internet being down at mom's house, I didn't receive a weekly update on the family, but I am sure you are all doing fine., From the 2 sentence letter from Daniel informing me of mom's internet, I learned that he finally found a job so that is a good thing.

To be honest, this week was a lot of finding and not a lot of investigators progressing.  I think that Elder Logan Kimzey's letter explains it quite well.  We are basically having the same issue in our area right now.  Finding and talking to people is not a problem.  The problem is if you will ever be able to see and teach that person a second time or if they will come to church and progress.  I got a good laugh out of his letter though.  The excellent thing about missionary work is it can always be fun and exciting.  True, you could look at all of the lessons falling through, and the weird foods you are eating, crazy places you are going, and how tired you are and get discouraged.  But then you realize how great it is to be in the service of God!!!  I seriously find SO many things that are great or that make me laugh in a week.  Of course, the truly great thing is when you teach someone who is truly been waiting for the gospel and we see those as well.
 

This week ALL of our lessons came from less active families in the branch or first time lessons with people that we met.  One lady that we met and talked to seems like she has the potential to progress.  At first, when we knocked on her door she was very much against us.  She had some crazy thoughts on the church that weren't true and so had already decided that we were bad people.  After about 10 minutes of her asking us a bunch of questions/telling us how bad we were/not giving us time to respond, we finally were able to teach her and answer some of her questions and teach about the gospel.  After that, she seemed to understand and she even said we could come back and teach her more!   We had some other first time lessons with people that are English speaking, so we referred those to other elders and have no idea what happened there.  We are working hard though and I know that something is going to come through.  This is now the starting of Elder Haro's last week in the mission, so I hope that he will be able to continue to focus on the work.  He has been pretty good so far.

Well not too much to report this week.  Love you all!

Elder B. Howell

Leaving Gainesville

Hi Family,

Not much time today, the place where we use the computers is closing in 10 minutes.  It is confirmed, I am being transferred.  Packing and wrapping up my time here in Gainesville today.

Elder Chadwick's training is now complete and President Barry called just a few minutes ago to release me as District Leader.  I breathed a sigh of relief thinking that I would now be a regular proselyting missionary wherever I end up going. HA!  As soon as he released me and thanked me for my service, he turned right around and told me I would be a zone leader again.  Gar.  Lol, no such thing as rest in the mission field!

We had a lot of excellent missionaries go home this morning (in order to not be traveling on Thanksgiving).  Elder Grant was one of them.  We were both trained by Elder Summers long ago which made us brothers and he was always one of my favorite mission leaders and then companions.  In some ways, I feel like the longer I'm here in the FJM the fewer people I know.  I'm old!!!

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving this year!  I think that makes 4 years in a row that I haven't been able to join the family for this day, but I am grateful for you all.  Tear it up with the frisbee at Grandma's house this year!

"Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name. For the Lord is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations."  - Psalm 100:4-5

Lovies,
Elder M

Teaching Primary in WA

Yesterday was great!  We had a combined sacrament meeting with the English ward because the primary was doing their yearly program.  After that Elder Haro and I were also asked to teach a 40 minute lesson to the primary about missionary work.  We kind of based our lesson around the articles of faith because it is something that most of them know.  I asked them how many of them wanted to serve missions and about half of them already had decided that they wanted to!  One even said he wanted to go to Finland because that is where his grandpa is from.  I was surprised at how much they had already thought of missionary work.  It was great to work with the kids for a day.

 

We met a great family that was a referral from the zone leaders.  The family is from Guatemala but has lived here for several years.  We met the mother and 3 kids and then the mother's brother.  I think there are more people living in the house because people were in and out a lot.  We taught the restoration to them and explained the Book of Mormon.  We realized that we had a problem though because none of them can read.  I guess they lived in a place in Guatemala that didn't really have any formal education.  We plan on just reading it with them in our lessons until we can get the Book of Mormon on disk so they can listen to it. The 19 year old is in school learning to read and speak English but she is at about a 2nd or 3rd grade reading level so still has a ways to go before she can read the Book of Mormon to her family.  They were very open to learning and very welcoming to us and the only thing that may keep them from progressing is the distance they live away from us and the church.  They are on the other side of the zone (about 25 minutes away) and no members live close to them to give them a ride.  We are trying to maintain contact on the phone with them, because we cant even be up there as much as we would like.

We haven't been able to talk with the women that was fed negative info on the BofM but we still plan on swinging by.

We had 4 people that had baptismal dates that fell off this week.  All of them were the same thing: work. That is still the biggest thing that is stalling all of our investigators.  For them it is either go to church or go to work and many of them are required to work on Sundays or lose their jobs. I am pretty sure if the nation followed the sabbath day and the businesses closed (not too likely to happen) we would be baptizing and finding multiple people a week.  Our investigators are receptive to listen if you can ever get ahold of them.  One man told us to call him in 2 weeks and he would see if he would be having a day off of work by then that we could come by.  We can't really help someone progress very well if we can only see him once every 3 weeks. We are in 100% finding mode right now.  Hahah!  It is great some people in the Spanishy apartments in the area have started to recognize me because I have knocked on their door multiple times seeing if they want to learn.  Someday they will start taking the lessons. :)

 

I think I am doing great though.  Spiritually I feel good, my companion and I are working hard, and I think something will come out of the woodwork pretty soon.

Thanks for the support!

Elder B.

 

P.s. HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ALECIA AND TEYAH!!!

Jennie's Baptism in FL

Happy birthdays this coming week to the younger women of the Howell/Miller clan!  ....I'm glad you reminded me, Mom, otherwise I would have completely forgotten!

Thanks for sending the letters/info - I'll look forward to getting that.  I am quite positive that I'll be transferred in another week though, so don't send me anything else within the next couple weeks before I get you my new address.

Elder Chadwick and I had an epic week as we finished teaching Jennie the commandments and preparing her for her baptism.  Words can't even describe how wonderful the service was on Saturday night, but it was by far a highlight of my mission thus far. Half the ward showed up to support, the father of her member fellowship family baptized her, and the Spirit was strong! Incredibly, one of our investigators came and he also brought his wife who to this point had been strongly against even listening as we taught her husband. She would leave the room every time we started discussing the gospel. I think this will turn a new page on his progression, because there was no denying the Spirit and the love that was present that night and I know she felt some of it.

This week has had some rather unique experiences as well.  I spent a day up in High Springs on companion exchanges with the elders up in that branch; I never would have guessed it here in the Bible Belt, but apparently there is a very high concentration of Hare Krishna devotees in Alachua County, FL.  There's even a Krishna temple up there.  The weird thing was, they totally believe in Jesus Christ as a "spiritual master" but don't see any problems with meshing his teachings with their religion. I dunno, I can't claim to understand much of their beliefs, but the paintings they showed me of Krishna depicted a feminine looking, blue man with four arms whom they worship as God.  Definitely an interesting day spent attempting to teach several of them the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.

I've decided that kids are pretty epic - they can be so spiritually sensitive.  After Jennie's baptismal interview, we read some of 3 Nephi and then asked her 8 year old granddaughter to say the prayer.  She had never prayed before and so I had to show her how and prompt her on everything to say, but even though she was repeating me word for word, the way she said it and the absolute sincerity just flooded the room with the Spirit.  Wow!

"And behold, he preached the word unto your fathers, and a mighty change was also wrought in their hearts, and they humbled themselves and put their trust in the true and living God. And behold, they were faithful until the end; therefore they were saved....And now behold, I say unto you, my brethren, if ye have experienced a change of heart, and if ye have felt to sing the song of redeeming love, I would ask, can ye feel so now?" - Alma 5:13,26

Good luck with the job search.  Love you all!

Elder M.

WA Update

Mom!

Thank you for the picture of Kaden, Landen, and Teyah.  I honestly don't think I would have recognized Teyah if you hadn't said that was her.  Obviously, (just as McKay said) she looks like a miniature Jaclyn, but I haven't seen a picture of her in ages.

Sounds like Gabe and Joe are at least having fun being close to Jacob and Daniel and going hunting with them.  If you don't want to have them blasting away at little birdies maybe you can suggest clay pigeon shooting.  I don't know how (because we never owned a shotgun) but I was pretty good at that when I went shooting with some friends.

This week was pretty good.  We have been doing a lot of finding as well as trying to contact the investigators the hermanas were teaching.  We have contacted most of them and have taught several of them.  We contacted by phone one lady that is 65 that the hermanas were teaching.  She told us she loved having the hermanas over and learning but that her husband wouldn't approve of us men coming over to teach even when he was in the room with us.  Really, this has man has nothing to fear of us trying to steal his wife or something.  A little frustrating because she was progressing really well, and now we are on hold as we find someone in the relief society from the branch who could go over and continue teaching her.
 

Through contacting and tracting we were able to find several more people that we met and put on date for baptism.  None of them were a super solid date, but it at least shows that they are willing and open to learn and know what we are working towards.  We have follow up lessons scheduled and we are hoping to really determine their interest level.

Sadly, the lady and her husband with two kids that I wrote about last week dropped us.  We called her on the phone and she said she had been reading the Book of Mormon and she came across a lot of things that didn't match up with the Bible.  It sounded a little fishy, and so we asked her what things she found or what questions she had.  She really wouldn't tell us and kind of dodged around the question.  We are thinking that she was anti-ed by her brother or a friend or something because she was so open and welcoming to us the first time we met her, and then it was like a night and day difference.  We plan on going over to her house this week just to see what's going on.

We just started as a mission to read the Book of Mormon all of the way through before the end of the year.  We have to read about 3-4 chapters a day, but it actually isn't that bad.  I have enjoyed it so far.  At first I thought that going through it that fast may reduce how much I got out of the reading, but that hasn't been the case so far. The Book of Mormon has power no matter how fast or slow you read it.  It has been great!

Well, not much else to report from lovely Washington.  Love you all!

 

Elder B.

Gainesville Update

Hi Mom!

Glad to hear that you made it nicely into your new place.  With all of your heating options, you may be able to keep the house at a comfortable 80 degrees year round no matter what the outside temperature!  I was always miserable in the Logan winters, but I attribute much of that to hiking up Old Main hill to campus every single morning at insanely early hours while a frigid wind blasted out of the canyon and down the neck of my coat.  I'm surprised I still have my ears, nose, and fingers after being a student there for 3 winters.

Thanks for the photo of Jaclyn's kids.  I decided that Kaden and Landen look like Zach while Teyah is a mini version of Jaclyn.  How old is she now?   I don't even remember when she was born....

Well, we found out Gabriel lived outside of our area, so we had to turn him over to another set of missionaries, but they are continuing to help him progress towards his baptism.  God blessed us though for that sacrifice of having to give up our investigator by blessing us with two more people who now have dates!  One is a man named Charles who has been married to an active member for the last 20 years. We finished our discussions with him this last Wednesday and he told us he knew he would be baptized someday but refused to set a date.   On Saturday, our ward mission leader's family picked up his wife for the ward temple trip and Charles was left alone to think all day.  When they returned at the end of the night, he told them  that he wanted to be baptized on December 2nd!  Wow!  It's the absolute best when it's just God and the investigator figuring things out - so solid!

We also have an investigator named Jenny that had been progressing in the past, but had avoided us for about 3 weeks in a row.  We were finally able to schedule another appointment and went into the lesson half expecting to drop her. As we discussed the Doctrine of Christ, the ideas of faith and repentance impacted her quite a bit and the Spirit was there very strong. When we came to baptism, she jumped on the idea and told us she wanted to be baptized as soon as her daughter from out of town could have a clear schedule to come to Gainesville. WOOT!  Amazingly, her daughter usually works weekends, but for some random reason already had the next Saturday and Sunday cleared. Coincidence?  I think not!  So now Jenny is rapidly progressing towards baptism this weekend on the 10th. Her young granddaughter that lives with her was also playing in the background during our discussion.  Apparently she was listening in because after we left she told Jenny that she wanted to be baptized too!  Become as a little child....we're hoping to schedule her for the 17th.

Every three months we have personal interviews with President Barry and mine happened to be this last Thursday.  Oh boy, talk about rough - I still have 5 months left but he started asking me if I go home soon.  "NO!"   However, figuring that as long as we were on the topic, I asked him for an extension.  He smiled and said he would love to, but the mission department doesn't allow  that anymore without an extreme circumstance.  Whatever that means.  I suspect that I'll have to use my creativity and generate an extreme circumstance that will allow me  to extend the mission past next March!  =D  For some reason, the interview  then turned to me being older and he began hinting that I should prepare for marriage after the mission.  "President!!  I'm still set apart!  I can't talk about that.  I don't even want to think about it yet!"  Wow, most stressful interview  I've ever been in.  Moral of the story:  please, everyone, DO NOT mention how much time I have remaining or tell me that I'm a menace to society.  I would like to focus on the mission while I'm a missionary.  Thank you very much.

Terry, Jacob, Mom, and some fellow elders here have all been kind enough to alert me to the event of Lucasfilm LTD being sold to Disney.  Star Wars 7 in the works!  What do you know, my senior yearbook entry was prophetic after all - "Star Wars Forever!"   =D   Terry, I'm sure the old glory days will be easily resurrected.  And now that we're independent there's nothing to stop us from camping out for a week at the theater and hitting up the first midnight showing.  What do you think - could you beat me at Star Wars trivia now that I've been out of the loop for a couple years?

Anyway, enough of that distraction.  I love you all!
(Happy belated birthday, to Dad!)

Elder M.