Power of the BofM

January 23, 2012

Hi Family!

This has been an odd week.  We had the Republican primaries going on here in South Carolina and Mitt Romney came down to Hilton Head (about 15 miles away) so the whole county was buzzing with political talk.  We met a lot of people who wanted to talk politics over the past few days!  About the only thing we could tell them is that we are aware Romney is LDS, but other than that we haven't read the papers, watched the news, or followed him in any way, so we have no idea what his ideas and/or campaign platform are all about.  Most people don't want to talk with us anymore after we try and navigate to the actual religious side of things.  =D

It makes me wonder what it would have been like to be a missionary back in 1844 when Joseph Smith was running for president and the elders had the dual job of preaching the gospel and campaigning for him.  (I'm just glad they don't beat elders in the South with hickory clubs like they used to!)

Our progressing families all were distracted by other things this week and couldn't meet with us, so we focused a lot on finding and had some really neat experiences with that. One was a lady whose teaching record we found in our Former Investigators list.  The things written down actually made her sound aggressively hostile to religion, but we were going to be in her area, so we decided to swing by anyway.  We found Marly sorting hundreds of beer cans and alcohol bottles for recycling which gave us some apprehensions, but she soon cleared up they were her neighbor's and she was just helping them dispose of them all.  We got to talking with her and at first she was like, "yeah, yeah, I've heard missionaries already" but the Spirit just told me strongly that we needed to read Joseph Smith History, so Elder Housel and I opened up the Pearl of Great Price and started reading with her.  Within one or two minutes her entire outlook on our message changed 100%!  She was getting very excited and eagerly took a Book of Mormon when we told her about that and asked her to read and pray.  Good thing is, she is also a devout reader (like Judy) and will probably be halfway through the Book of Mormon by now!

We also found a Catholic, Philippino lady whose member husband is deployed right now and she's been getting more and more interested as well, so we have high hopes that good things will happen with her.

There is so much power in the Book of Mormon!  It always gets me so excited when people actually have a desire and a thirst to read it and know what it speaks of concerning Christ!  Being a missionary is so much fun; I think I could do this forever! 

Mom, I got a good laugh out of your hooker story.  The old saying "modest is the hottest" must be especially true in your case.  ;)  It sounds like Gabe has finally caught up to me size-wize; I'm hovering right around the same 135lb/29in waist. Good luck with the winter floods!

Photo of the Week:  Elder Housel and I were having some fun with time-lapse photos the other night after planning and I drew this one with my rear bike light.  It's the symbol we use for baptism (down arrow showing immersion beneath the waves).

Have a blessed week!

Elder M.

Baptism Symbol

January Christmas

I would have to agree that every week seems to go by pretty fast.  I had the same issue with my mail as Mckay did with his.  I have now been at this new area for over a month and a half and somehow my mail is still going to my old area.  Just yesterday I received my Christmas package from Grandma and Grandpa Kimzey that was mailed to me on the 9th of December.  Really surprising to receive a Christmas package in the middle of January, but it was fun to open.  It was also a little fitting because on Sunday we had our first snow of the season and it was looking more like Christmas than Christmas day did.

What?!?!  Jacob and Daniel both have been on blind dates in the past week?  hahhhaha way to go.  Let me know how those turned out!  Gabe and Joe are both doing church ball?  That is something that I never really got into.  Do we even have enough kids in the ward to make a team?

Mom, we actually had both a church tour and a lesson at the house of the Peruvian women (Araceli).  We unfortunately picked the night to do the church tour when two other wards had cub scouts and young women activities.  Needless to say, the little wolf and bear scout age kids were running around the church and maybe it wasn't the most conducive to the Spirit.  The chapel part went amazingly well though when we could have had a little more peace and quiet.  We had a member family with us as fellowship and I think it all went well.  We also found out that Araceli has a 15 year old daughter, who we didn't know of before because she is usually in school when we have lessons, and so during our next appointment with her we brought the Young Women's President.  They both seemed to hit it off really well right as they meet and the Young Women's president even stayed after the lesson to talk when we left.  We quickly noticed while starting the lesson that we needed to go over The Book of Mormon.  She had read the introduction and testimonies of the 3 witnesses, but was still a little confused.  All we did is read the first chapter with her and she absolutely loved it!!!  It was amazing and she wanted to continue reading. :)  The power of The Book of Mormon in bringing people closer to Christ is truly amazing.

We also had a lesson with a man named Eduardo.  He is a boyfriend of a member and they have two kids together.  Just recently he has been investigating the church more seriously.  He already had a strong relationship with the 2nd counselor in the branch presidency because they are from the same town in Argentina and knew each other before they even came to the United States.  (Random side note: If I could ever have a Spanish accent, it would be to talk like these guys.)  So we were just planning on having a lesson with a few people, but somehow word got around and literally 8 people from the branch showed up to this lesson.  We thought it was a little bit excessive and would be a little intimidating for Eduardo, but we decided to go with it.  We started out with a great lesson and got everyone involved with sharing testimonies.  It maybe was a little too much when Eduardo had a question and everyone had to answer it with their own personal story, but over all it went well.

We had a great lesson with a part member family last night.  The Elders and Hermanas visit this family once a week to teach a lesson.  After explaining what the Word of Wisdom was, this guy completely accepted it and said he was quitting coffee.  He even gave his coffee can to the Hermanas to throw away.  He is progressing well and wants to be baptized near his b-day in March.

We have a lot of potential in this area, but have yet been able to capitalize on it all.  We have had a lot of the English elders giving us referrals -- only problem is that they are so spread out over the zone that we can't always get in contact with them in a very timely manner.

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

 

Elder B

The Epic Journey Begins . . .

Wow!  What a week for mail!  Haha, I think I must have had 8 letters/cards and a package to open this P-day!  Most of it was mail that was sent to my old address around the time of transfers and I just got it at Zone Conference this weekend, so it was all about a month old. Sorry to anyone that I haven't replied to in a while - this is why!  Thanks for sending Caleb and Lindsay's announcement; I think that officially makes all of my friends beyond the original Three Amigos (Terry, Jon, and myself) that are now married. 

So it's freezing in Manti, but no snow?  That's rather odd.  Then again, I'm getting the same here, so maybe I just passed some of it back home.  :)  So much for Gabe and Joe going Klondike camping in ice caves this winter.  Good luck to the older brothers with these blind date women!  (Bahahahaha!)  I always had odd experiences with those....

Well, our "epic" expedition to the far reaches of the area did turn out to be epic, but for very different reasons than we anticipated.  The day started off well -  overcast, cool, a breeze in our favor - and we were making good time.  About ten miles out the clouds turned a darker shade of gray and the rain started coming down.  Thankfully, we had our coats, but those were soon very soggy, so we stopped for a quick PB&J under a tree.  Not more than ten minutes later, I was hit with some gurgling bowels and we stopped at a gas station for a break.  Elder Housel laughed at me, but another mile down the road, he suddenly veered off into the woods and dashed behind a tree with a severe case of diarrhea. We managed to make it a few more miles down the road, but then a very kind Episcopalian couple had pity on us and offered a ride back into Port Royal 15 miles away which we gratefully took.  We spent the rest of the day just working from home and alternating turns in the bathroom.  Not fun.  We'll be attempting a repeat in the next couple of weeks though. The vision of bicycle infamy has not been defeated - only delayed!

Our streak of a baptism and/or confirmation each weekend finally ended, but Elder Housel and I have some very wonderful people in this area.  Judy, the lady I told you about last week, is cruising through the Book or Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants and actually loaned me a book on the Handcart Pioneers that she'd read. I read through that book in a couple nights and think I finally understand why the pioneer stories come up so often in general conference.  Makes me wonder how many modern saints would be willing/able to do the same...

Well, the journey continues!  Consecration requires sacrifice! (Acts 9:15-16)

Elder M.

"Keeping the Gullah Culture"

"Pray as you pass"

Going Great!

Howell Household,

  

Well, work does seem to be looking up in this area.  I think that getting some fresh missionaries in this area was a good idea.  Unfortunately, missionaries in the past have not had a lot of work in this area, and when I got here it was a little stagnant.  Good thing for us, neither Elder Mitchell nor I believe that an area is "that is just the way it is" and we have high hopes on finding new people to teach.  Just this past week we found 3 news.  Some people can't always meet with us in between work, school, and taking care of kids.  We did get a referral of a lady from Peru that we are really excited to continue teaching.  We taught her the first lesson and she was really interested in reading The Book of Mormon.  I guess missionaries had taught her when she lived in Peru, but never explained Joseph Smith or The Book of Mormon very clearly and she was confused on a lot of things.  We ended up answering a lot of questions and clearing up really what the BOM was.

 

It is true that a lot of people think that the Mayan calender predicts the end of the world, but it actually doesn't.  I'm not saying that something crazy couldn't happen, only that that isn't what the Mayans believe.  A member is Seattle studied Mayan history and ruins and talked with a lot of Mayan people before he moved up the United States.  Apparently, the calender only predicts the destruction of a civilization or a country in 2012, but not the whole world.  The Mayans definitely know some stuff because of what they have predicted in the past -- I guess several huge destructions that came about.  Most likely ties into the Book of Mormon, but it is all in their hieroglyphics.  I had 4 people in my MTC district that got sent right into the heart of Mayan civilization.  I'm sure it will be interesting for them come the end of this year.

  

That is pretty funny that Jaclyn and Zach could move into the homeward of Elder Mitchell.  How did they know that it was his homeward?  By far, out of the companions that I have had the chance to get to know in the field, I work with Elder Mitchell the best.  I really liked Elder Wagner as well, but was only with him 10 days.  We just seem to be on the same page with the work and work effectively together.  I agree that the work is great and most likely won't come home at the end of my mission like McKay.  At times, when you literally have one investigator that can only see you once a week it looks pretty grim (past experiences) and you are wondering what you are going to do, but something turns around and you realize that you love it out here.  Seriously, even finding people to teach can be fun if you let it be!  The work continues, and you learn something daily, and overall this has been a superfanbilantasticify awesome experience.

 

  Well got to go...love ya all! :)

  Elder Howell

 

We Split Up

This week our area split and I'm now covering the Beaufort East area which takes in most of Port Royal and then all of the islands to the east.  I really enjoy Lady's Island and Elder Housel and I have plans to make the longest bike ride ever on Wednesday to reach the furthest parts of our area out to Hunting Island and Fripp Island.  It's something like 55 miles round trip so we've planned to spend all day out there. It's gonna be epic!  Haha, hopefully we'll be able to walk the next day!  We do have a really awesome new media referral to see while we're out there who got on mormon.org and requested a missionary visit, so we should have some good things come from it.

Mom, I think you are right.  If Ben is having the same experience I am, then there probably isn't a whole lot of desire/motivation to return home.....ever.  =P  This mission is a total blast!  I only wish I didn't feel tired all the time...  I think it's a combination of both mental and physical stress that gets all missionaries in a state of semi-exhaustion.  It's definitely very rewarding work though.

On Sunday, we had one of the best testimony meetings I have ever been to!  Person after person stood and bore actual testimonies of Christ and his atonement!  No travelmonies.  No thankfulmonies.  Just simple testimony.  I don't think anyone spent longer than 2-3 minutes at the stand; the investigator family that we had there came away "very enlightened" and the mom wants to read the entire BoM this week!  Wahooo!

So, I think I may have told you a few weeks ago about the Gullah people and how an elder in my last area was working on memorizing the Luke 2 excerpt from the translation of the Bible into their language (which is kind of like Ibonics; a morphed form of English).  Well, I found out this week that the Gullah people actually live in my area all out on St Helena Island!  We're going to be working out there more in the future, but Elder Housel was telling me a story of one man they tried to teach a few weeks ago and probably would have needed the gift of tongues to communicate!  Haha!  I'm looking forward to it.  We did get some fresh sugar cane from a road side stand from a Jamaican guy a few days ago and chewed on that for a while. Yum!  He called it "Gatorade that came before Gatorade!"  I wish I'd gotten a picture with him - he had a ginormous knitted and very colorful hat that contained all of his hair, but it looked pretty funky perched on top of his head.

Well, I think we have reached the worst of our winter season here.  There were a few weeks where it was bitter cold - 20 degrees once - but it feels a lot different here than out West when it gets chilly.  I think it's the humidity, or maybe it's just that I'm out in it all day, but the chill seems to seep into the bones no matter how many layers we put on.  The weather is a bit bi-polar though and we ended up with 75 degrees yesterday, so who knows what the future will hold.

I'm glad to hear all is well with the family.  Are Gabe and Joe doing any sports this spring?  Track maybe?

Love ya,
Elder M

Elder Housel & Elder Howell

One Gnnnnaaaarrrrly Tree

New Year from the West Coast

Well the work in Renton is looking up....

 

This past week with Elder Mitchell was the best that I have had since being transferred to Renton.  Elder Mitchell works hard and goes about missionary work in just about the same way that I do, and so far we have gotten along great.  In this past week we found 5 new investigators, which is usually unheard of in the Spanish branches, and taught several more lessons than we were seeing in the past (thanks to several members bringing friends to the New Year's party and us going about tracting in a more efficient manner).  To answer your question, Mom, Elder Mitchell is from Scottsdale, AZ.

 

So we decided to go out and try and do some new finding methods in our area.  We decided that there would be a lot of Hispanic people that ride the bus, so we called up the mission office and got bus cards. We get on the bus and my companion decides for us to split up to we can contact more people. I go to the back of the bus while he stays in the front (don't worry still in sight and sound) and we start contacting.  Lets just say that the back of the bus was a little more shady than the front.  There were seriously people dealing drugs in the back. It amazes me who you will talk to on your mission that you probably wouldn't before the mission.  I don't know the Bible verse, but when Jesus says something to the effect of "the whole need no physician" I guess that hit me a little.  I'm not here on the mission to find people who are whole, but people that need Christ in their lives.

 

It always amazed me to get the viewpoint of other people on who "Mormons" exactly are, and it usually makes me laugh or smile.  We were in the middle of town contacting on a busy street and this guy apparently had made up a song about Mormons and decided to sing it as loud as he could.   just say that the song wasn't really filled with gospel truths or anything that we even believe, and all my companion and I could do was look at each other and smile wondering where he got his information.  I tried to contact him a little but he wasn't very open to listening to anything I had to say about the church, so I just offered him a card.

 

My birthday was great!  I waited and opened your present on the birthday and it is exactly what I had been wanting.  Thank you!  Elder Mitchell found out it was my birthday and took me out to eat lunch, the Hermanas serving in the same branch as us came over and sang me happy birthday and gave me a cake, and to top it off we had a branch party at the church!  This is now the 5th week that I have been serving in this branch and we have already had 3 branch parties.  Talk about crazy!  Really great way for the members to invite friends and family to the church in a "non-threatening" way.  Yes, I did end up getting a cake in the face.  I plan on sending my SD card to Alecia later today with photos.

 

 

  Elder B

 

 

 

An Eastern Happy New Year

This week has been a fun one!  For example...

Last Monday, Elder Housel and I decided to swing by the Rasmussen home to introduce me and see if we could boost their enthusiasm to share the gospel, get referrals, etc.  We walked in and I immediately thought, "hmmm, this man looks familiar," but I couldn't quite place it.  We started chatting and he asked me where I was from; "oh, just a small town in Utah by the name of Manti."  "Manti!  Do you know my brother, Brent?!"  "Yeah!  He's in my ward!"  Lol, so yeah, I happened to bump into Brent Rasmussen's brother who is living in a tiny town in South Carolina 2,000 miles away from home.  The story continues though.  His wife comes in from the kitchen and says, "did I hear something about Manti?" so he tells her the whole story and then she pops off with, "oh well you might know my sister; she's married to a James Geloff. Do you happen to know either of them?"  Bahahaha!  "Yes, I know your sister Sharee and James!  I went to high school with both of them!"  Wow, what a small world.  I've also found several people who've gone to Snow College and/or Utah State since I've been here, so I've decided that the military brings a lot of people from home to places they otherwise wouldn't be.

On Saturday, we had the baptismal service for, Nick, one of the most prepared 11 year old kids I have ever met.  We were having a lesson with the whole family talking about occasions when they have felt the Spirit and were going around, one by one, sharing experiences. When we asked him when he felt the Spirit, he told us, "when I'm reading in the Book of Mormon, especially from Enos."  What?!  Haha!  I didn't even know who Enos was when I was 11 much less have that book as a favorite!  The next day in his baptismal interview, Elder Bishop (district leader) asked him why he hadn't been baptized a few months prior with his older brother and his reply was simply, "because God hadn't told me it was right yet."  He'll be an amazing missionary someday.

My new companion is Elder Preston Housel, from Salt Lake City.  He's only been out for two transfers and has been in Beaufort the whole time, so I'm suspecting I was brought in to phase him out.  However, we work very well together and I'm glad President Barry put us here. He says we've already accomplished more together than he did in the past few months, so I'm not sure if that's a compliment to me, or just means his trainer was ineffective, but I'm glad he's happy to be with me as well.

New Years eve was an odd day to be out and about.  I think almost everyone we talked with was drunk or in process of getting there.  Thankfully, we didn't get run over or anything. Thank you Grandma and Grandpa for that new light!  It is very bright and much better than my last one!  Benj, if you got a cake to the face, I want to see the photo of that one!  Hahaha!  I hope you had a wonderful birthday with minimal tracting and numerous appointments!  ;-)

Mom, I was good friends with both Caleb and Randy Mellor and would like to see Caleb's announcement.  I've been suspecting/awaiting that engagement for several years now.  If you see them, give them my congratulations.  =)  It sounds like Jake and Daniel are both staying active on the dating scene.  Tell Jake that he has nothing to fear - he's competed at the international level in Vancouver!  =D  (BTW, let Daniel know that I never understood the big deal about "meeting the parents."  All the parents I've ever met have been very nice and usually seemed to like me.... Just sayin'.)

Well, I love you all!  Thanks so much for the Christmas package, Mom, and also for yours Grandma and Grandpa!  Like Benj, I think I now have enough sweets to last me the next 10 months, so maybe I'll share with the other elders.  :)  I loved the photo book, Mom, nicely done!

Ya'll have a happy new year!

Elder M.