|
4/16/18
Oh my goodness, what a week! This has been one of the busiest - haha! I know that I keep saying that, but they just keep getting busier and busier every time! What made this one so crazy is that we had transfers, MLC [Mission Leadership Council], and another "I Believe" fireside on Sunday. All of which Elder Christensen and I were in charge of!!
The beginning of our week revolved around transfers. We finished with the new assignments on Monday night with President Savage, at about 1:30am. With that all done, the next two days were spent calling all the zone leaders and letting them know who was being transferred and who needed to pack. We also put together a new way to run transfers, because the old way we were doing it wasn't working anymore. Also, we helped set up the smartphones that would be handed out at the leadership conference last Friday!
Transfers took place Thursday morning. We started at 9am getting everybody to their new areas and then finished around 11am. The new missionaries from the MTC came by then and we had an orientation meeting where they each met their new companions! All of the new missionaries are studs. We have 6 new Elders, and we got to spend some good time with each of them. We are super excited for their service here!! The Savages then took the departing missionaries to the temple and we drove some of the trainers and new missionaries to their new areas. We spent some time in the office after that, and then drove to the mission home to have dinner with the departing missionaries and help around the house.
On Friday, Elder Christensen and I helped load up the departing missionaries and their suitcases and headed to the airport. Then we went over to the church to set up for the Mission Leadership Council. We had a great meeting. It was separated into two parts: a meeting from 10am-1pm, followed by lunch, and then some breakout meetings from 2-5pm where we helped set up the leadership's new phones! For the first part, President Savage went around and told each of us what our spiritual gifts were, and how it helped each of us to be a leader. He said that I had the gift of administration, the gift to be healed, and the gift of faith. I don't really know what those mean, but I have been studying up to try and figure it out!
Saturday was the first day of the week where we were able to spend some time as missionaries! We taught Gloria, Monica, and were supposed to see Valerie too, but she got caught up in traffic. It was good to be able to do some teaching.
On Sunday Brittany came to church! She came to sacrament meeting and really liked it! Then we had the "I Believe" fireside that night, where we had a lot of musical numbers and all of us missionaries sang a song together. Things ran smoothly and it was a good meeting with the spirit very present.
Things are looking good for us this week, with some exchanges planned and some really cool people to teach. I am so grateful to be out here doing the will of the Lord! Thank you all for your wonderful examples and great support!
Elder Bird
4/7/18
Hello!
Such a good week this week! So much teaching happening! There were lots of highlights, but the biggest joy this week was watching the work grow like crazy in Skylake! We were able to find and add 4 new people to our teaching pool!
All of our finding and grinding has finally paid off from the last transfer or so. We have started to teach like crazy! We have Gloria, Monica, and Valerie. And, we have started to teach a woman named Brittany, a guy named Francis, a guy named Jay, a guy named Juan, and a young man named Dangelo. And we have lots of people with lots of potential to be taught in the future!
Valerie was out of town this last week, so we weren't able to see her. Hopefully we will be able to teach her this upcoming week when she gets back! The person we saw the most was Gloria, who is doing great! We taught her on Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday!! We taught the Restoration lesson fully through and just finished teaching the whole Plan of Salvation. It is so cool to see things click when she hears truth. She is progressing really well and is working at gaining a testimony of the Book of Mormon.
We also saw Monica this week, a lesson on Friday and a short visit on Sunday. With the lesson, it was the first time her kids were someplace else and the first quiet setting we had to chat. She really opened up and asked some really great questions. Then on Sunday, it was her cousins birthday and she invited us for a little stop by. They gave us some great food, bosoles and tres leches cake (I don't know how to spell any of that). Her cousin spoke no English, but was super kind to us in having us over. We sang Feliz Complionos to him :)
Brittany is kind of a cool story! She was taught by the sisters missionaries probably about 6 months back, but was a little offended by something one of the missionaries had said to her, so she stopped investigating. We met her and built up a good rapport with her on Thursday, joking around and showing her that we were fun Elders. Then we met on Saturday. She had a list of super good questions, and we got to talking about the Restoration and the Spirit came strong in to the lesson. She told us she would come to church the next day...and I had to pause and ask, "Wait, do you mean our church??" She laughed and told us of course! Unfortunately, something came up and she wasn't able to attend, but she said we could shoot for next week.
I love teaching and seeing people actually have things click and progress along the pathway to conversion. I feel like all our hard work really is paying off and God has seen our efforts to find people to help. I know this work is from God and I am just so glad that I get to be a part of something so great.
I love you all! Thank you for all of your support and love!
Elder Bird
4/2/18
Hello!
Happy Easter everyone! Easter is such a fun time because it is all about the Savior and the most important time in all of history, when he died and then rose again for each one of us! We had a great Easter yesterday and a fun week to match!
General conference was this weekend also. That is always fun as missionaries becuse it is like our Superbowl!! We just kind of camp out at the Stake Center and enjoy each session (I even brought snacks). My favorite part of this conference was the Saturday morning session that was a "Solemn Assembly." On January 2nd, our dearly beloved prophet Thomas S. Monson passed away, and so at this conference we had the opportunity to sustain a new prophet, Russell M. Nelson. In the Solemn Assembly, everyone in the church had the opportunity to stand and raise our hands in support of the new prophet and new First Presidency of the church. As Elder Christensen and I stood in the Stake Center to sustain Russell M. Nelson, the Spirit was so strong and I could feel that this was right and that he is supposed to be our new prophet, God's prophet on the earth today.
This conference was also historic because of other exciting things that happened as well! It just seemed like one thing after another! First the change in having the Priesthood session in April and the Relief Society session in October as the third session. Two new apostles were called to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. It was exciting because these two men are the first Latin American and Asian American apostles to be called. Then President Nelson made some significant changes to the organization of the church and how some of the things in the church is currently run. These changes are very important and I think most agree, will be a great thing for the church. He also announced 7 new temples, one of which will be in the country of Russia!! This General Conference is the last one I will have on my mission, and I will definitely remember it forever.
As for the rest of the week, good things happened with our missionary work. Unfortunately, every lesson we had scheduled with Gloria, Monica, and Valerie fell through. That was a pretty big bummer. The Valerie lesson was especially sad, because our Mission President's wife had come to teach with us and Valerie wasn't there and wasn't answering our phone calls or texts. We were pretty distraught and worried. But the next day, as we were walking down the street, a car randomly pulled off and someone came running to talk to us...it was Valerie! She said she had lost her phone and felt so bad for missing our appointment. That was super nice! She is such a sweet lady. She'll be out of town this next week, but we are super excited to see her when she gets back.
Because some people fell through, we had lots of time to look for new people to teach. The good news is that we did! We found 2 new people that are super solid, Dangelo and Jay. We found and talked to Jay last week, and this week when we stopped by, he let us right in. We taught him the first part of the Plan of Salvation and he said it finally made sense and that he loved what we were teaching him! As for Dangelo, he was a former investigator that the sisters used to teach. We got back in contact with him and taught him about the Book of Mormon. He loved it! He is a 17 year old kid with a good head on his shoulders who is really looking for guidance from God. We are excited to be teaching him.
So good things are happening!! Elder Christensen and I are loving the work and loving working together! We are excited to start work on transfers this next week! I know that what we are doing in people's lives matters, and that we are making a difference, which feels so good. Thank you so much for your support and love!!
Elder Bird
1 Easter Peeps!
2 Watching conference on Sunday at the Bigalows
3/26/18
Hello!
This has been a great week because Elder Christensen and I were able to get some great things done in the Skylake ward! Things were a bit hectic the last couple of weeks, but this week was super calm and we were able to focus more on missionary work.
We went on 3 exchanges with 3 great elders, including Elder Call! It was awesome to be with him again, it felt "just like old times." We worked in the Skylark area. To build up our teaching pool, me and my different companions try to talk to 30 new people a day on average, and we are now teaching about 3 or 4 people that have some real potential to join the church, with hopefully more on the way!
We were able to do some awesome teaching this week too! There are a few people we are working with. The first is Gloria, who I have written about earlier. She is doing really, really well! We had two lessons this week with her and focused mostly on all the questions she has for us. When we went to teach her, we brought along a sister from the ward, named Sister Martin. She used to be JW [Jehovah's Witness], but converted to our church a couple years back. Gloria had also studied for JW's for years, and so it was pretty cool to see them interact. Gloria had all kinds of questions for her. The coolest thing was how much Gloria kept on saying that she felt something different when we came, and how she hadn't felt this feeling about any other church she has looked into. It was powerful to think that the Spirit is present when we see her, even when we only have a chance to say a prayer.
The next person we are teaching is a woman named Monica. She has 3 kids, Tien (7), Tristan (4), and Tiana (2). The kids are super cute. We taught them the whole Plan of Salvation yesterday. Monica had tons of questions about our existence here on earth, and so we were able to lay out the whole plan for her and help her understand it. She seems to really understand things and the lesson was super helpful!
The other person we are currently teaching is Valerie. We stopped by Valerie's house every other day, this week to try and catch her, with no luck! So we were quite surprised when we saw her standing outside the church on Sunday morning with her son! She had just decided to come! And they stayed all three hours and loved the whole thing! They said they would be out of town next week, but would love to come again the week after! How awesome is that? It was the biggest miracle we experienced this whole week.
Having to talk to about 30 new people every day has been so cool. It's nice to meet so many people and get to hear 30 new stories about each of their lives. I love how much missionary work is tied into learning and getting to know people. I also love how much we get to feel and experience God's love and understanding of the people we meet and teach. I know that this is God's work and am so so grateful to be a part of something so miraculous.
Sincerely,
Elder Bird
A few pictures at the temple
This is a picture of a map of our ward, with the members and some or our investigators mapped out into it. Lots of work to do!
3/19/18
Hi everybody!
Elder Christensen and I had a great week. The big events of the week were zone conferences and another missionary "Why I Believe" fireside! We also helped with a little "fietsa" for a departing Spanish missionary. It was a little stressful being in charge of everything, but we have really come to love the missionaries that we are serving.
Zone conferences were on Wednesday for the South half of the mission and Thursday for the North half the mission. On Tuesday, Elder Christensen and I took the day to prep for what was going to happen at the conferences. It was actually pretty funny because this week my dad was prepping and presenting at an embedded Linux conference and I was prepping and presenting in the zone conference for the mission. One of the trainings I gave was about "weekly planning vs weakly planning". Sister Savage had a great idea for it! She had us dress up as Hawaiian Tourists to show the missionaries that planning out a week of missionary work was kind of like planning out a vacation. We dressed up in Hawaiian shirts, leis, and big hats and did a little skit about two guys that hadn't planned out a Hawaiian vacation. After that, we also had a chance to talk to the zone leaders and some of the STL's about how to work better with their stake leaders. Both conferences seemed to go really well.
Friday night we had a Fiesta for a departing Spanish missionary, Sister DeLeon. She was leaving a little earlier than expected due to some visa problems, so President and Sister Savage wanted to send her out with a little bit of a hoorah. Elder Christensen and I helped in the kitchen and made all food for all the Spanish missionaries who came. It was a fun night! We started with a pinata and then had dinner. Afterwards, all the missionaries got to go around and say what they had liked about Sister DeLeon and also share a little bit of their testimony. It was a cool night to be a part of, and we got to do all the dishes afterwards! Fun stuff :)
On Sunday, the "Why I Believe" fireside was held in Arvada. It was super cool because I got to see some of the old members that I used to serve with, back in the Arvada 2nd ward. We were also able to hear some pretty touching music from the missionaries around the mission, and then hear the testimonies from some converts of the church in Arvada area.
This week was also interesting because Elder Christensen and I, and a few other "IT" missionaries around the mission were given smartphones! We walked into the office on Tuesday morning for a little meeting to prep us for the smartphones our mission will be getting soon, and walked out unexpectedly with smartphones to use! They want us to kind of "beta test" them for right now before we start handing smartphones out to all the missionaries. Actually right now, I'm writing this email using talk to text with my smartphone. It's been cool to see how they they can help us and our missionary work. It is still super weird to have one. I'm a little worried that missionaries will waste time on them instead of doing missionary work. It kind of feels like I am back home with it. We will be getting a bunch of cool apps soon, including Facebook! Exciting times here in the CDNM.
It really was a great week, but I am super excited and looking forward to this week because we will get to do a little bit more missionary work in Skylake. Good things are happening!
I love you all! Thanks so much!
Elder Bird
Showing: [11,12,13,14,15 of 107 entries]
|
