Week #70 - Turkey Potatoes

Hey Everyone!

My final mission Thanksgiving was about a hundred times better than my first mission Thanksgiving. Here are some reasons why!

1) The family we spent it with was awesome
2) The food was absolutely delicious (even though there was no corn...or broccoli with cheese. the mom still takes the cake for best Thanksgiving dinners)
3) I got special permission from President Bunker to shoot skeet (he said I could shoot the gun three times. I hit the clay pigeon with my very first shot which made me feel way awesome, but then I missed the second two. Either way, I got to play with a shotgun and even hit something).
4) It was a delight.
5) Thanksgiving morning, the senior couple in our zone hosted a bake-off for us missionaries. As expected, I won first prize with my cookies and received an award that said "You're The Best." I can't say that was too earth-shattering, but it's nice to have it in print now in case anyone ever questions my best-ness.

So, it's been a good week. We had an incredible lesson with Christina on Wednesday. The spirit was there and it was powerful. We were very excited with how things went and Christina is solid. Devin is currently praying for a baptismal date, so we'll see how that went tomorrow. Life's exciting!

I don't really have too much else to inform everyone on, but basically the week was awesome. I got some good mail this week so thanks to all who contributed!

Merry Crimbo to all and to all a good pants. The gospel's true!

Elder B

Week #69 - Turktacular

Hey Everyone!

Before I forget- this has been bugging me ALL week. Has Mom been using her Snorflat or did Jonny swipe
it and give it to Erin? I guess it doesn't matter that much (for me at least) but either way I'm excited for Thanksgiving.

Anyway, this week was awesome!! I have gained a much deeper testimony of

A) The Book of Mormon (I finished it...still true)
B) The Ability of God to soften hearts
C) The Hand of God in the work

So, beginning with letter A, I finished the Book of Mormon. This was the fastest I've ever read it and probably the best experience I've had doing so. I constantly prayed over it and just looked at it from a logical point of view- and I also came across some pretty intense information about how the entire book is written exactly like a literal Hebrew translation would be if translated directly from Hebrew (wasn't quite sure how to put that explanation into words, so hopefully that made sense). I started seeing all of these examples of things that you wouldn't typically say in English, or ways things were worded that almost didn't make sense in English, but apparently, they make perfect sense in Hebrew. But anyway, on top of all that, I'm closer to Christ by reading that book, and that's one thing Satan can't do for anyone.

Letter B: We have an investigator and yesterday was her second week in a row going, and it was PERFECT for her. She ever stayed for gospel principles. I was teaching and we had a really good lesson/discussion about the Atonement.

C: The High Councilor gave an AMAZING talk about a bunch of stuff- but the big one was tithing. Our investigator had briefly brought it up at our lesson because she mentioned how "if I need to feed the kids, I'm going to feed the kids". We didn't feel it was the right time to explain any of it, so we just left it at that. But, this man's talk had the most incredible tithing story I'd ever heard. He basically talked about that same thing- how he could barely support the family, he started selling things from the house, but he had committed that he would never not pay his tithing. Long story short, he needed five thousand dollars (he had told no one a dollar amount- let alone that he was struggling financially) and got it as a gift from anonymous people of a congregation in one envelope. Our investigator loved it. Hoorah for Israel!

Anyway, it was a great week. Another investigator called us on Wednesday to see if he could come out with us and "see what we do." We took him tracting, visiting people- he loved it. Within two years I bet he'll be serving a mission.

Well- I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving and remembers the importance of sending letters to missionaries during the holidays. :-) Happy Thanksgiving!

Elder B

Week #68 - A Brief History of Time

Hey Everyone!

This has been the best week ever of my stay in Ukiah. Elder W. Craig Zwick from the Seventy came and did a conference with the mission in Santa Rosa and it was amazing. When I sat down for lunch, he came and sat in the seat RIGHT next to me with his wife, so that makes me way cool by association. We chatted it up and I gave him some tips on how he could better fulfill his calling (not) and he helped me out a bit too. It was pretty cool though- we had a good conversation.

I got to sing (for about the 10,000th time) Come Thou Fount at the conference- but it was definitely the best one yet. I had some help on that one. Every time I sing that I gain a deeper appreciation and love for the words. Elder Chaichana played piano for me and it just went really really well. After the conference, he had a short meeting with the zone leaders and that was really good too. He just told us how to include the ward more in our work and how to get them going.

Other than that, we had some intense miracles this week. We picked up an investigator who's the wife of a very less active member (only less active because his wife is against the church and makes him go to hers instead). She's a really cool person but just has her issues with the church that we starting resolving on Saturday. We started answering tons of questions she had and she was liking what she was hearing. Anyway, it was a pretty casual discussion, but we were VERY shocked to see her and her husband attend church the following day. It was the primary program, no less, which is probably the best sacrament meeting she could have attended for her first time. She loved it. We're teaching her again Wednesday, so hopefully things go well there!

There's a lot of potential stuff popping up and the members are really starting to cooperate more with the work which is excellent.

That's about all I've got for this week, but send me mail! Please and Thank you.

Life is good and the gospel's true!

Elder B

Week #67 - Go Yanks!

Happy 500 Days to myself! Yay me! I had no idea!

It was a great week this week- Ukiah is continuing to treat us well. We had some good lessons with a few of our investigators. An investigator came to church and and really enjoyed it. He's a really cool guy - he's 20 years old and he's got a nice lil' head on his shoulders.

We were asked to teach gospel doctrine on Sunday because it was all about "every member a missionary" which was awesome. The lesson went really really well and there was a lot of class participation. We committed them to be awesome instead of not awesome, and it was received pretty well. Also, a shoutout to the birthday boy, I used an experience Jonny told me about a few weeks ago when he was praying to recognize missionary opportunites in medschool and then ended up having two shortly after. The Lord will give them to us if we're sincere in the prayer. Booyah. Anyway, the attitude toward missionary work in the ward is starting to look up a lot.

I did not get one letter this entire week.

I've been reading the Book of Mormon like crazy and I just started 3 Nephi. Samuel the Lamanite was right again with his prophesies of Christ's birth. The signs were all given just as he said. Take that, unbelievers. Also Captian Moroni still ended being amazing and the sons of Helaman were the bomb.

I got to accompany Sister Crawford (a Spanish sister missionary in the ward) on the piano for a song. As usual, I ended up messing up at the climax of the song (something about playing piano in church...) but I was just glad I wasn't the person most of the focus was on. Other than that, though, it went well.

This Thursday we're going to have Elder Zwick from the Seventy do a half-mission conference with us so we're all pretty excited about that. Also on Saturday Elder Berry and I did service for about five hours. She was very appreciative and she said we could start teaching her, so it totally worth it.

Welp, that's about it for the week. The gospel's true!

Elder B

Week #66 - Happy Prelated (opposite of belated) Birthday

Hey Everyone!

A very happy birthday wish to my favorite brother:

Jonathan, you have really impacted my life for each and every one of your years on this planet. If it wasn't for you, the hope of me being named Hordak would never would have been there. If it wasn't for you, I would have never learned how to get a worker in a furniture shop off my back when I'm playing on all of the couches and comfy chairs. If it wasn't for you, I never would have been properly taught how to apply make-up to a black eye. I will never forget you. Please, for me, have a happy birthday this year. You are the man.

I can't wait until Friday. I've told just about everyone in the mission that someone's going to be WAY cool in the family.

This week was crazy excellent. I'm healthy (with the exception of a very minor cough), I'm slowly regaining my favorite fourteen lost pounds, we picked up three new WAY solid investigators and had some awesome lessons with current ones, we have a much stronger zone this transfer with people who are actually willing to be obedient. Also I haven't asked, but judging how our first meeting went, I think they might even believe in prayer.

We've had a ton of baptismal dates come out of nowhere across the zone this last week which has been AWESOME. Miracles in the ol' Ukiah zone. Miracles. We had an incredible leadership council with President Bunker on Thursday that blew our minds as usual. It's always nice to see old mission friends- and the spirit at those meetings is amazing. They never cease to get us fired up for the transfer.

I'm working on finshing up my camera card. I still have to record a Halloween video. It's going to be awesome with a VERY spooky costume.

The conference cds have been GREAT. Thanks a ton. I listened to Elder Christofferson's talk again about covenants and I also reread his talk from this last conference about moral discipline. I'm thoroughly convinced that he doesn't get the recognition he deserves. His talks are some of my favorites. He's the bomb.

Life's great in Ukiah. I'm way glad I stayed up here. The gospel's true!

Elder B