16th week in Spokane

Hey! Jessie's baptism on Saturday was awesome!! It was a good ending to the area. Well tomorrow I get transferred to be with elder Itgel, it will be good to freshin up on the language, but I'm hopin it wont last too long and I'll be headed to Mongolia real quick! So some other big news is this past week on the 8th was my 6 month mark!! That's right, I have officially been out longer then six months! So to celebrate we went over to brother Schlerf's house and we burned two shirts and a pair of pants, don't worry Mom, they were all clothes left behind from past missionaries! But that was pretty fun, bro. schlerf is crazy and keeps things exciting, I'm gonna miss that guy! One story that I forgot to mention with him is about two weeks ago we were wrestling on his front lawn when he decided to hip toss me.. I figured he was gonna throw me down easy, so I didn't fight it too bad, well I was wrong! He decided to slam me down with his body! So now we are both paying for it with cracked ribs! Haha good times with brother schlerf! We've had a lot of good times in this area and I'm going to miss it, especially with the Davis'.. sister davis was like our mom out here, even though shes only like ten years older then us, she always took care of us, wether it was food or haircuts or whatever it may be, and lets not forget the italian sodas!!! and bro davis is just like our big brother and their kids are a riot, harmony is my little 18 month old girlfriend!! the Charbenaus are great too, super funny family! cant forget the dexters! bro dexter is hillarious and always good for a laugh and william is awesome too and sarah is alright i guess.. just kidding sarah youre cool too! im gonna miss family home evening over there! and of course the Olsons, who we live with, bro olson is the nicest man ive ever met and his wife can talk for hours and good ol matt is just hillarious! hopefully I'll be able to stay in touch with everyone! well im gonna miss the area but the Lord needs me else where.. I love you all and thanks for your support and prayers!

15th week in Spokane

Alright so I just realized that I haven't even announced this yet, but on Christmas day, during my phone call home, I found out that my visa finally came through!! I hopefully only have a couple more weeks left before I head out! Also in talking with my mission president, on transfers on the 12th I am going to get transferred to go be with the elder from Mongolia, elder itgel, until I leave, so that will be a huge blessing so that I can freshen up on the language! Well this past week was really good! We went to our newly baptized friends, triston and Cheryl and they are so awesome! Triston just loves learning about Jesus Christ and always gets so excited when ever we come over! Cheryl has taken her baptism very seriously and very literally where nothing before her baptism matters because she has had a fresh start because through her being baptized she was washed clean from all of her past sins and transgressions, so it has really been a blessing to see that in her life! I told you last week about Jessie and how she came to the baptism, well we went over to her house and we talked about baptism and she agreed to prepare to be baptized on January 9th! She is very prepared and loves learning everything about the gospel and is just soaking it up! She said that sleep has just become a burden because she just wants to stay up all night reading from the book of Mormon! She is really excited to get baptized and Satan has already begun to try to stop her from it, but she is strong and stands her ground! I love being able to see the way that the gospel touches and changes people's lives!

14th Week in Spokane

HAPPY NEW YEAR!! this was a pretty eventful week! I told you last time about Cheryl and Triston and how they are getting baptized January 2, well when we met with them this week they decided that they didn't want to wait and that they want their family there so they were actually baptized last night, Dec. 27!! The service went way good, the Holy Ghost was definitely present and everyone in the room could feel Its presence. They are going to be very strong members of the church and we are excited to watch them progress! They will be ones that I will stay in contact with for the rest of my life! Jessie came to the baptism as well and afterwords she was talking about how she's excited for when she gets baptized, so we are excited about that because we haven't even talked with her yet specifically about getting baptized but she knows that its what she needs to do! I also had a very interesting, but very good teaching experience this week. We were on our way to see someone else when I saw this guy named Jessie Jones, I saw him through his window and the Holy Ghost told me that we need to go see him, so we turned around and knocked on his door and he let us in. Well we started teaching like normal and we tried to read out of the Book of Mormon, but every time we would he would act all weird and pretty opposed to it. So I decided to switch gears a little bit and teach him more about the book of Mormon, now this Jessie Jones is a little bit different then most, and he talks like this: "ya man, sweet man ya that's awesome man that's sweet ya" so that's how he talks. I figured out real quick that in order for him to really listen and pay attention and understand is for me to talk the same way. So with that being said, I stood up, so my companion did too, and taught the rest of the lesson standing up and talking in kind of a loud voice, just imagine like one of those sermons you see on TV early Sunday morning.. kinda like that, except a lot more animated and a lot more interactive, I asked him a lot of questions and let him teach himself, it was pretty cool to watch him answer all these questions and watch it form in his mind the point we were trying to get across.. so I asked him, "did you know that Christ is going to come again?" and I guess he's not all that familiar with the bible so he said he'd never heard that so I showed him quite a few places in the bible where it talks about Christ coming again. Then I said what do you think, is Christ perfect and is He the same yesterday, today and forever? He said yes, so I said so what do you think, since Christ called twelve apostles when He was here the first time, do you think He will again? He thought for a minute and, said yes He will. I said that's right, He will. Then I asked him about what he knew about John the Baptist, well he didn't know much so I taught him about John and what his roles were.. 1st he was called to be a prophet to prepare the way for Christ and second to be the one to baptize Christ because since he was a prophet he had that Priesthood authority to do so. So then I focused on the part of john being a prophet called to prepare the way for Christs coming. so I asked Jessie, what do you think, we already established that God is the same yesterday today and forever so will He call a prophet before Christ comes again to prepare the way for Him, like John? So Jessie thought about it and said yes, He will call a prophet. So I said that's right, He will!! and then I showed him some scriptures in the bible that talk about how there will be prophets and apostles before the second coming of Christ.. there's a couple in Ephesians and it talks a lot about it in revelations, especially in chapter 11, and many more places, but those were the ones I showed him. Then I told Jessie well guess what.. it has happened, the time that prophets prophesied thousands of years ago where there will be a prophet on the earth again is happening right now! Then we talked more about the book of Mormon and why its important. Then he asked me how I know all of this is true. So I told him the truth.. that I have prayed about it, all of it, and the Holy Ghost told me that it is true, all of it. So I bore my testimony on it all and then he was all excited and said, I believe you, I don't know why I believe you, I can't even picture it in my head, but I believe you, I believe that the book of Mormon is also the word of God like the bible, I believe that there's a prophet today. So then we explained that the reason why he believes everything is because its true and because the Holy Ghost is testifying it to him through his thoughts and feelings.. so that was a really long story and I'm sorry if you got bored with it, the reason why I wanted to tell you about it and why it was of significance to me is because it was totally out of the normal for the teaching style, but we taught everything exactly how he needed to hear it, and the cool thing about that is even though it was different, the Holy Ghost was leading me through it every step of the way, telling me what to say and telling me which scriptures to share, and not only that but it was very apparent that the Holy Ghost was working with Jessie through out the whole thing and by the end he took a book of Mormon and said that he was going to read it because he knows its the word of God, because it is!

13th week in Spokane

MERRY CHRISTMAS!! Well we didn’t end up doing a whole lot this week cuz my companion has been sick. But out of what we were able to do we had a way good week! we started teaching this couple named josh and jenny and they have two kids, 18 months and 1 month old, her sister is a member and has been trying to get her to talk to missionaries for a long time so when we tracted into her they were excited from the get go. We were also able to teach this girl named katie, she just barely had a baby and she said that all her siblings and her dad are members but she has lived with her mom so that’s why she’s not a member yet, but she used to go as a kid so she’s pretty familiar with everything and so when we tracted into her she was excited too! We were also able to go teach this lady named Jessie, her daughter just moved back in with her and she was baptized about three months ago and she’s actually Natasha's half sister, Natasha is the girl that we baptized in November. So Jessie came to church last week and that’s how we met her and she sat in our lesson in gospel essentials class then we went to her house and taught her this week about the restoration and she also came to church again yesterday so we are excited about her and we feel like she is ready to be committed to baptism! We also taught Christine, she is on date to be baptized on Jan 16, we taught her about the plan of salvation and she really enjoyed that, she said that it answered a lot of her questions that she had about where she came from why she’s here and what’s gonna happen after this life, she's progressing but she has a lot of health problems and is on oxygen so she has a difficult time coming to church. We also were able to teach Cheryl and Tristian, she is about 40 and he's 10, they are awesome and we taught them this week about baptism and put them on date to be baptized Jan 2! Tristian is way cool, he absolutely loves it when we come over and he loves going to church and they are way excited about their baptism! So that was pretty much our week. I hope all of you have a merry Christmas!

12th week in Spokane

Well I hit my five month mark this past week! Kinda weird.. We had a way good week again! We ended up having five people that we're teaching come to church yesterday, it was way sweet!! Audrey, Tony, Cheryl and Tristian, and Jessie all came and elder Wilson and I prepared a way sweet lesson on the holy ghost and taught our gospel principles class and then we met a guy that came to church and liked it and we'll start teaching him this week! Also we went tracting on Saturday in this apartment complex and we were able to find a few more people to teach.. Well the email has been really slow today and I’m outta time but I'll have more to tell ya next week, I love ya!

11th week in Spokane

This week was way sweet! We taught Christine about the Priesthood cuz she asked why she needs to be baptized again because she was baptized in her old church, so I went with my ward mission leader and we explained everything and it went really good! The biggest obstacle for her is coming to church because she is pretty old and has a lot of health problems, she’s on oxygen and her tank only lasts two hours so we are trying to get her to come to church and just stay for an hour. We also met with Doug and Cheryl and their son Tristian and it was a way good visit, Cheryl told us, talking about the book of Mormon, "I really like reading this, whenever I read the bible, it seems like everything isn’t really all that clear and it leaves it open for different interpretations, but in the book of Mormon it spells it out exactly and its all clear and there’s no room for question" it was so cool! And Tristian, there ten year old son, absolutely loves it when we come over and we're like his best friends and he's always disappointed whenever we leave! Then we had a way good lesson with Mary, she says that she feels the tug at her heart that this is what she should be doing but she’s scared because of all the weird things she’s heard about Mormons her whole life. So we gave her a lesson on how to recognize the spirit, we read with her out of Galatians and Moroni and Helaman about the spirit, then we told her that if we pray generally we get a general answer, but if we pray specifically then we will get a specific answer and so we invited her to read Mosiah chapter 18 and then when she gets done pray and ask the specific question if she should be baptized and join the church and told her to pay attention to the feelings that come and to keep in mind the scriptures we shared with her about the spirit and promised her that the Lord would reveal His will to her. So by the end of Friday we were feeling pretty good about the week, but then on Saturday we get a call from a guy named Jim and he says that his girlfriend, Audrey, would like to learn about the church. Jim hasn’t been to church in a really long time but he served a mission and has been teaching Audrey a little bit about the church and convinced her to let us come and continue to teach her, but she was pretty apprehensive about it so they invited us to go with them to a big nativity thing that the church hosts. It is a big community event where lots of people come put their little nativities on display and then there’s concerts in the evening from different churches in the area and there’s probably a couple thousand nativities you go around and look at, its really neat.. anyways so they invited us to go with them to this to kinda get to know Audrey and for her to see if she wants us to teach her. So we went and had a really good time and we all got along really well and then after the nativity she wanted to take us out to eat so we did and we just kept getting to know each other better and of course eventually the conversation turned into talking about the gospel and she opened up to us and started asking questions and we answered them and the whole night went really well and at the end of the night we invited her to come to church with us on Sunday and she said that she would, so she came to church and it was a way good testimony meeting and the spirit was there and she really enjoyed it. Then last night we went back to the nativity with Sarah and Nina, the two students from Germany and that went really good, they both came to church too. So that was the highlights of our week and we are excited to see what happens this week as we continue to teach these wonderful people! Well I hope that everyone is having an awesome Christmas season, I love you all!

10th Week in Spokane

I hope that everyone had a good thanksgiving! We had 4 different meals! talk about bein stuffed!! Well we had a way good week! We got a call from a guy in our ward to come over and give him a blessing because he's old and going into surgery soon. So we did and his wife isn’t a member but while we were over there she said that she has gotten a strong feeling that she needs to join the church! So we started teaching her and have started to prepare her for baptism! We set a date for her and she said that they would pray about it and let us know this week when we go back! We also started teaching this kid named Roma from Russia, he actually lives about 30 miles from the Mongolian border and said that he’s been to Mongolia quite a bit to go fishing! So that was neat, and he said that he's got lots of questions for us next time we come over, and we're supposed to go over there tonight so that will be good! But he goes back to Russia for good at the end of the month so we're just focusing on getting that seed planted! We area also teaching a part member family, the Cavines family, the dad and one of the daughters are members and he has a son that is turning 8 this month. But he hasn’t really come to church for a long time so this week we are going to tell him that its time for him to come back and to prepare himself to baptize his son, and hopefully one day soon the rest of his family! Another lady that we are teaching, her name is Mary, said that she feels the spirit every time we come over and when we taught her about Joseph Smith and the restoration she said that she has zero objections to it, she said that "if God wanted to call a prophet today, who are we to say that He can’t" we both were like EXACTLY!! Why can’t everyone understand that?? So that was a good experience and she told us that she feels that its right but that she needs some time to really get the answer for herself that this is the direction that the Lord wants her to take. We are also teaching a couple named Doug and Cheryl and they have a ten year old son. They just moved into the area and have started going to church so that’s how we met them and in visiting with them we learned that they aren’t members but just like coming, so we've started teaching them and it has been going way good!! And we are teaching about twenty other people that are slowly progressing, so the work here has been way good and we have been way excited about it! Well today I just figured I'd give you an update on some of the people we are teaching. I love you all and hope everything is well!