...You Know You Made a Difference in Someone's Life.

Well this week has gone by a lot faster, thank goodness!! 

Been tracting a lot lately, probably at least 2-3hrs a day if not more.  Found an older couple, Rod and Wendy, that we taught this week from tracting, but I don’t think Wendy really likes us.  Rod was pretty interested in what we had to say though!  Wendy has her own religion and Rod is just kinda there it seems.  We kind of have an invitation to come back to their place, they said when it’s warm and we can sit outside to come back ha-ha so we'll see.
We have a new investigator named John that we found this week, he’s a little odd but he’s good. I like teaching him.  We have a lesson with him again this week on Wednesday I do believe. 
Finally met Kurt, he’s 62 and an interesting guy to go teach, or try to teach.  He had a near death experience the day before we came to see him, guess he blacked out on the sidewalk and thought that was it for him, he was gone.  But they got him to the hospital and told him he was perfectly fine.  So the lesson was on the plan of salvation for him since that’s what he wanted to know.  He was like, I can’t die now! who’s going to take care of my place and do all this stuff I’ve started!? Things like that.  So we tried to help him understand a bit better what would happen and all, but between him and his buddy John, when they are a little drunk and John is smoking a cigarette  the whole time, and they both need to wiz every 10min it was kind of hard ha-ha but it was fun.  Tippets was frustrated I could tell, but hey you just gotta kinda roll with it when they aren’t all there.  By the end of the lesson I feel he understood the stuff a bit more, even if he was a little drunk.
Found out that lessons are a little harder when you have people cussing in the background at each other telling them to clean up their mess, or when their dogs are messing around.  But we try to maintain the spirit and somehow through all the chaos we manage to feel it, and we can tell they feel it too.
Every house here it seems has at least one dog, and 99% of them bark at you.  Haven’t been eaten yet though or chased so I can’t complain too much!  There was one dog that was at least 3ft wide, looked like a mini buffalo. 
You would be surprised at how many religions there are out here.  I’m not even sure that some are even religions though, and I didn’t think there was so many that don’t believe in God, it’s kind of sad to see.  They are the ones that are the worst it seems when we knock on their doors. One guy was waving his hands at us and whistling at us to get off his porch ha-ha I just laughed at him and went to the next place. People are weird.
Gonna see how good Tippets is with haircuts today.... hope it turns out good!  To be honest though I’m a little nervous ha-ha
That’s about all I have for this week.  Miss you all.

I know that I’m in the right place though, and I have a reason for being sent to this area. Some days are a little rough, but it’s the days you are walking home late at night and you can smell the cigarette smoke blowing off Elder Tippets and myself, that you know you made a difference in someone’s life that night.  I love this gospel, I know it’s true and that it can bless families if we try to use it every day and stay strong in it. 

I love you all.

 

                                            Elder Tippets

 

I asked him a couple questions. these are his answers:

I'm teaching a lesson in church this next week. We had about 15-20 people out this week, but it sounds like we'll have like 10 maybe this next week.... 

You could pray for me not to be home sick, in the morning while I’m studying and eating breakfast... it’s been bad the last few days, but it’s getting better. Just need to stay busy.

 

                                                  A real igloo

 

 

Flin Flon, Manitoba

 

Well I’m finally in the field!! I’m up in Flin Flon, Manitoba, about as far out as the mission goes Elder Tippets says. He’s my trainer, only got 3ish months left on his mission.

As soon as we were introduced to our new comps, me and Elder Tippets headed out to Cabela’s to get some stuff he was needing, then went tracting in Winnipeg for about 6hrs, that was a cold night tracting like -40ish.  But we got a lesson for the Elders there with a guy named John so that was good.

In the morning we left for Flin Flon.  It took 8hrs to get out here... long day of driving, and a lot of singing in the car to mo tab, haha, we still got a ways to go before we are as good as them.

Saturday we did our planning for this week, then came to the church here to get my FB set up, did some tracting again. We had a lesson with Angie, she’s an investigator who has committed to baptism, had a member Gordy come with us to help out but Angie wasn’t able to do the lesson because her baby was sick.  We met her husband Ken, seems like we could get him in on the lessons too.  So since her lesson didn’t work we went and taught Gordy at his place.  Gordy is 62 and still smokes a bit but comes to church every week, and still doesn’t remember much of the lessons so he was happy to have us teach him again.  

Sunday was interesting here, we only had 10, maybe 15 people show.  Branch prez gave a talk. Meeting here are only 45 min so it goes from 10-12 and church is done.  After church we took sacrament to Jemima since she couldn’t make it to church with her knee bugging her. She’s a funny old native lady.  Did some tracting, and potential investigator visits later and then came home.

Days are pretty busy out here but that’s alright I like it.  knocking doors is probably the funnier part of the day ha-ha cause you get some funny looks when its 8:30 at night, freezing cold and these two boys knock on your door wanting to teach about Jesus.  Most people say no, but that’s okay, we just go to the next door and bug that person!

The fresh air our here is a little different then back home, here the fresh air smells like weed and perfume, so we've got a lot of work to do here. 

Every night we come home we smell like smoke from people’s homes, but all that means is that we must be doing something right. I love the people here, even if they are sometimes a little rude on the door but all you can do is smile when that happens.

Miss you all back home, but I can already tell this 2yr stuff is gonna fly right by.  So I’ll see you on the other side of two years! Love you all.

 

Apartments pretty good! Enough space for the two of us to find something to brake eventually ha-ha 

Elder tippets is my trainer, he’s pretty great.  He’s from Utah, worked on a sheep farm, used to live out on a church ranch when he was little so we got a bit in common to talk about!
Last night we made freezer burnt burgers and fries with bad mayo and some good cheese!  Livin high up here, and I’m loving it!  No sarcasm there, for real I like it here even if the food is sketchy! 
Tippets is pretty clean to so our place isn't nasty like some of the places I stayed at on the way to Flin Flon, so that’s a bonus!
Well I gotta go, talk to you all next week!

Send me my cowboy boots the lace up ones to work in, my old jeans with the mark on the zipper, my rope, and whip, oh and my belt.  If you could do that I would love that! And some junk food:) I don’t want to buy all that my self ha-ha!

                                      First class fight to Winnipeg!

 

                                                Elder Tippets

 

View from the home place, that’s our little white Nissan car by the power stroke. 

 

                            Dinner: Freezer burnt burgers and fries.

 

 

Off to Winnipeg

Hi family.  Hope you get my letter and all the pics.  Leaving the MTC at 4am tomorrow.  Probably try and call you once I hit Canada, or the mission home, so some place between noon and 5, idk really but we are supposed to be in Winnipeg about 4.

 

 Spirit animals of our district:

Nelson: horse

Mclean: bird

Childs: cat with hand sanitizer 

Young: Giraffe

Thompson: fox

Dryden: sea otter 

Street: dog

Madsen (the one who drew it all): mouse. 

 

Well, it’s the last day at the MTC.  Crazy it’s over already, kinda wish it was longer but I guess I’m ready to go...

This week has been great.  Mclean and I got 2 of the 3 investigators/ TRCs to commit to baptism.

One was our PI and that lesson was by far the most spiritual one we've had this whole time here.  We asked him to think about baptism the lesson before this one, and he said he would so we asked what he decided in this lesson.  He said he didn't know if he could do it, and that he was scared his family wouldn't like him anymore for becoming L.D.S. and leaving the Catholic Church.  Another thing was, he didn't want to be baptized in case this really wasn’t true.  So this was kind of a hard lesson to know what to do. We sat there for a while, just silently listening to him, and listening for what we should say.  I told him that life is full of surprises and we can’t know everything that’s gonna happen all at once.  In order for us all to grow, and become better we have to take those big steps, without those big steps we would never know what we can become or what we missed out on because we were scared.  We sat there in silence again for a while and we could tell he was thinking.  I got this feeling that I should tell ask him why he keeps coming to these lessons if he doesn’t think what we are teaching is true, but I was thinking to myself, what if that turns him away or what if this or what if that, finally I just gave in and asked him.  I don’t remember what he said but I know that the question that had come into my head was something that the spirit needed me to ask, and we believe that was the question that turned his thoughts around, and had him say yes. Mclean was almost in tears by the end of that lesson, and I’ll admit that I was close too... the spirit was definitely there in that lesson, and without it we never would have gotten a yes. 

The musical number we did on Sunday was alright, could have gone better.  But for only a week of practice and 15 min a day it was good I guess. 

My hair cut was alright, not like mama cuts it though.  They didn’t even cut a straight line in the back, so I had clean touch it up with my razor.  

Done lots of street contacting practice this week, so we think we are already...

Yesterday was our last day together as a district, Dryden, Street, and Young left this morning at 3am for their mission.  So we had kind of a relaxed day.  Sister Childs had a little container full of this goop that when you pushed it down at made a farting sound so we, being the good missionary's we are, walked around or waited for someone to come past our class, and she would make that sound.  One group of sisters we did it to, they ran around the corner of the hall holding their noses, it was good.  We've finally gotten to the point that we thought we would never get to, where we start going so insane from being at the MTC that we do those kind of things.

This morning we went to the temple for the last time, it was good to have nothing to worry about for a while.  Saw Derrick again there, that’s the guy that gave us an investigator last week, talked to him for a bit.  

Now we are back at the MTC doing laundry and writing emails, then we gotta go pack... 

Next time you hear from me I’ll be in Winnipeg.  

Love you all, miss ya a bunch. Only 23 months to go. 

Be BOLD in listening to what the spirit tells you

 

 .

 

 

 

 

Loving Mission Life

Well it’s hard to believe that the MTC is almost over, I've only got a week left here.

This last week went by super-fast, been doing lots of teaching with TRC's and P.I's which is good. 
We got one of our TRC's, Teddy, to commit to baptism on the 8th of March, now we got to see if he is a real investigator or not.  We got 2 new TRC's this week Huck and Jeff.
Huck is great and is willing to do about anything to know what he needs to do next in his life.  Jeff on the other hand... he is super hard to talk to, because all he says is one words answers when you ask him questions, so he'll be kind of fun to teach.

Today we went to the temple and had breakfast.  During breakfast this guy comes up to us and is telling us we should go teach this guy he met on his way to the temple, it was hard to understand him, cause he was kind of quiet about it.  None of us knew what he was really talking about so we kind of brushed it off.  Then one of the temple workers came and asked if one of us could take this guy back to the baptism office in the temple so we said we could do that.  We got to talking with him a bit and finally got what he was saying about this guy he met.  The guy’s name was Derrick, he is a newish convert, and was doing baptisms for the dead that morning and saw us there and figured we should go teach this guy he met.  So we said if we saw his friend we would have him go to the MTC to be taught.  On the way out of the temple we saw Derrick sitting in the guest entrance of the temple by a man that was asleep on the couch.  We all had a group huddle and decided to have only 2 of us go in and talk with this man, cause 9 of us all going in might have put him off.  Elder Dryden and Nelson (not me sadly) went in and taught him for a bit, while the rest of us went out and talked with Derrick.  

I’ll finish the story after I get done with my hair cut.   

Alright I’m back. 

Hopefully I can pick back up where I left off... so Dryden and Nelson taught Gary while me, McLean, Street, Young, sister Childs, Madsen, and Tompson talked with Derrick about how he was converted and about why we came out on a mission.  Derrick is wanting to serve a mission soon, he’s already started his papers.  The best part about this whole thing was even though the rest of us weren’t teaching Gary, we could feel the spirit so strong.

About 20min later they finally came out from teaching Gary, and Derrick came back to the MTC with us so that he knew where he was going to go soon, and so that he could bring Gary there if he wanted. We even got a pic with Derrick before we all said goodbye.  We all kind of wished he could have stayed with us because he was a really great guy who said he could feel this powerful spirit we had with us and knew we talked truth in our words.  He also said something I thought was kind of cool, it was "I know you guys won’t lie to me, because when I see someone with a badge on, it makes me believe that that person wouldn’t lie to me, and that’s what I really like about you guys."
So we had a really good spiritual high this morning after our first investigator not even in the MTC, and not even out in the field yet that we had. 

Elder Nelson is the guy with the stripped tie one the left, and Dryden is the one with glasses and green tie standing by Derrick.

Nelson isn’t a part of our district but he was tagging along for the morning because he was leaving at 1:30 and had no comp to be with tell then.  He was supposed to be on his way to India last night but he is visa waiting in downtown salt lake for a bit until it comes through, so he’s gone now to Salt lake.  He says now he knows why he was to wait here for his visa instead of somewhere else like the rest of the elders going to India. 

I’m loving the mission life out here, kind of hard at times but love it none the less.  Having all sorts of cool thing happening when I’m teaching TRC's or P.I's.   Honestly we are all kind of sad that we have to leave here next week. We have all grown so close together in the past few weeks, and are going to miss our new little family as sister Childs calls it (she’s the one out in front of me in the red flower dress).  We already have our travel plans, with the layover, a 2hr flight turns into an 4-5 hr flight:(

 

This Sunday for our last one here, we are planning on playing and singing "Come unto Christ" it’s a really nice song.  I’m going to be on the piano, and Sister Madsen is going to play the violin, and the rest are going to sing.   Should be good.  We practiced it for the first time today and we are decent.

            Leave Elders alone for a few minutes and they will build something out of furniture.