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1/23/18
Hello!!
Hi everyone! I hope everyone's weeks back home was great! I had a pretty busy week out here with transfers and snow and just lots of fun stuff going on. I'll start by telling what happened with transfers.
The Mission President called me to be his new assistant this last week, which came as quite the surprise. Elder Call and I were sure we were going to stay together in he Skylake ward again, but I guess the Lord had other plans. My new companion is Elder Bjerga, from Norway. We will actually be staying in the Skylake ward, which is pretty sweet for me (no packing!!). Elder Call went to the old AP area to become a zone leader. Elder Bjerga is a fantastic missionary and he is really teaching me a lot.
With the new assignment, came lots of changes in my duties. I am now always "on call" to help out around the mission, if the President needs us. We still go out and proselytize, but we have to be a bit more flexible with our appointments and lessons. We still get lots of time to knock on doors, and we've been spending lots of time in Commerce City :)
After I was called to the new assignment, our week was spent helping with transfers and getting missionaries settled afterwards. One of the things we did was drive the departing missionaries to the airport to fly home. That was a little strange, to see the airport again! I am really going to miss the Elders that just went home, a lot of them were really good friends of mine out here.
One of the biggest highlights from the week was reconnecting with Steven, an investigator that Elder Call and I had found together and that was really solid, but had been out of town for about a month. He is finally back in town and Elder Bjerga and I were able to teach him this last Sunday. He is a high school kid down in Commerce City that lives with his Grandma and loves when we come over. He is looking for happiness and says he feels peace when we come over. He is excited to come to church and to learn more about Christ! This week, we will be giving him a tour of the church building and teach him more about the Plan of Salvation. We are super excited for him!
This week has been crazy, but good! I love this work so much and am just thrilled to be able to serve the missionaries more here in the mission. I know that this is God's work and am grateful to be an instrument in the Lord's hands out here. I am so grateful for everyone back home and their support as I try my best out here. Love you all!
Elder Bird
Post from Mission President on Facebook
President & Sister Savage with Elder Bjerga
1/17/18
Hello All!!
We had a pretty awesome week this week! There was a lot of fun stuff that happened!
On Tuesday Elder Call and I went on another exchange this week. I was able to go with another really cool Elder in our zone, Elder Burt! Elder Burt is a great Elder in our zone. He and his companion serve in a biking area, so we rode our bikes all day, which was super fun. It rained and we got to see a rainbow!
Also, on Friday, Elder Call and I got to lead a zone conference for our zone. We got to teach and model different teaching methods that we learned last week and that the mission is trying to teach us. It was a super fun meeting and we were able to get so much stuff done!
I don't have too much time to write today, but good things are happening. Transfers are coming! I guess I will find out today because we have interviews with the Mission President later today. I hope you all have a wonderful week!
I love you all,
Elder Bird
1/8/18
Hello Everyone!!
What a wonderful week here in the Skylake ward! Elder Call and I are just loving it here so much and wish things would slow down just a little bit! I feel like things are just flying by all the time!
Elder Call and I had the chance to go on some more exchanges this week! Our life has been just chalkful of them lately. It's been good to check in with the missionaries and to make sure they are all doing good. My first exchange was with Elder Hugie, a newer missionary in the Spanish area. He is a great missionary. He is great with people and works super hard. We had a great day together out talking with people and working hard. He is pretty funny and so we laughed the whole day. He has red hair and kind of looks a bit like the Lucky Charms guy, so I teased him a bit about it with the other missionaries, and the people on the street. Elder Hugie was a good sport about it. :) My second exchange was with Elder Cluff, a missionary I served near when I was in Parker area (not my companion, but in my zone.) Elder Cluff and I are super good friends and we had another really good day together. We were out finding and doing service most of the day. The people who had signed up to have us to dinner cancelled on us, so I decided to take him to Red Robin as a special treat. (I had a gift card there from my mom.) That was super fun, and we were able to have a super fun day together.
Another highlight of the week was spending the day with Elder Call at a mission leadership counsel on Friday. It was a great conference where we talked a lot as leaders about what we could do to help the missionaries in our zones, and their needs. It was a really good meting and we learned a lot. Elder Call and I are planning on passing on the things we learned to our missionaries at our upcoming zone meeting on Thursday.
The Mission President, President Savage spent all day Saturday with our missionaries from our zone. We all had the chance to have interviews with him. We are so grateful to him and all the work and care and efforts he is putting into us as missionaries. He is a really great man,
Elder Call and I are doing really well together out here. I am super grateful to have him as my companion and for the help he is out here to me and all the missionaries we serve. Today we are planning on having a zone P-day and are planning to have a Nerf war. I am super excited! It should be super fun and we can't wait to just have some good fun with everyone.
The work is going well and we are just loving it, like I said before. I love being an instrument in the Lord's hands out here. We have miracles daily and I know the Lord is helping us in our endeavors.
I hope everything is well for everyone back home,
Elder Bird
1/2/18
Happy New Year's Everyone!
What an awesome week here in Denver over the holidays! Elder Call and I are loving it so much here. Before heading into the week and what went on, I just wanted to give a special shout out to all the people who sent me packages or letters over Christmas! Thanks to: Grandma and Grandpa Bird (before she passed), Grandma and Grandpa Snook, Amanda and Cameron (and the girls), Melanie and Andrew (and Eli), Aunt Norine and Jake, Grandma Janet, the Smith Family, Sister Simmons, Randi & Jonathan Springer, Aunt Susan and Uncle Roy, and of course my rockin' parents and brother! Thank you so so much for making it a special Christmas for me out here! (I think that is all...I hope I didn't forget anyone.)
Okay. This was a pretty fun week! We had a great week where we went on exchanges. I spent a day with a newer missionary, Elder Carling, and then with an experienced missionary, Elder Barberan. It was so fun to spend these days with them and see how they work! I was really impressed with how both are doing, and how the work is moving forward up here in Brighton! Next week is going to be full of exchanges also. We have some planned for tomorrow, Thursday, and Saturday, so it should be another cool week of checking in with people and seeing how the work is moving along and how people are doing. It gives us a really cool chance to get to know the missionaries in our zone.
As for the stuff going on here in Skylake, it has been pretty slow moving with everybody out of town for the holidays. Elder Call and I were finally able to see Yolanda again last night, who had been out of town in Nebraska...but had come home to a flooded house! How nuts is her life??? At this point, Elder Call and I just want to go in there and help her with anything that will get her back on her feet. She just has so much on her plate. She is super strong and tackling it one thing at a time and doing a super job. Hopefully we can help her this week. As for a couple of our other investigators, we should be able to see them again either at the end of this week or the beginning of next week, when they get back in town. Then things can settle down and we can start the ball rolling. Elder Call and I had a super fun day yesterday in Commerce City contacting all day and finding some super cool people!
The biggest highlight of the week was definitely New Year's Eve. The whole mission got together for a little party to celebrate New Year's Eve and Sister Savage's birthday, which is on the 1st. We played some "Minute to Win It" games, had dinner and some cake & ice cream. It was super fun to see everyone again and say "hi" to friends and previous companions, as well as hang out with the zone and compete against each other. When Elder Call and I got home that night, we went straight to bed, and then at midnight we woke up to fireworks going off. We said, "Happy New Year" to each other before falling back asleep. A missionary New Year's Eve. :)
I love you all and hope you have a great week!
Elder Bird
12/26/17
Hello!
What a seriously awesome week it was here in Denver over Christmas! I think this is one of my favorite Christmas's of all time. There was just so much goodness about and so many people watching out for Elder Call and I. For my letter, I think that I'll focus my thoughts around a big miracle that happened on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
The big miracle this week was the miracle of Yolanda. On Monday night, Elder Call and I were out knocking on doors before dinner and met this woman named Yolanda. She couldn't talk right then so we set up an appointment for us to come back in a few days. We saw her again on Thursday and got to teach her. At first, Yolanda just sat there and dumped her whole life story on us. Yolanda is a single mom from Nebraska raising three kids here by herself, with no family or anything. She moved here for her son who has autism, because of the good hospital in Aurora that has great programs for him. Yolanda used to have a pretty hard life before, she had been in gangs since she was little and dealing drugs and all sorts of crazy things. She has completely flipped her life around and has sacrificed everything for her kids. She moved into a cheap home here in Thornton, that used to be owned by some people that trashed it. The home is falling apart on top of her. She let us in because she just needed someone to talk to and some spiritual help! Elder Call and I were amazed! She asked if she could come to church that week, saying she "had never been invited to anywhere yet." We asked around in the ward and found someone that could have her over for Christmas dinner too! Unfortunately, Yolanda's heater broke on Christmas Eve and her son had a seizure Christmas Day, so we missed her on both of those days. She is an amazing woman and we are looking forward this week to finding other ways we can help her out.
Okay, Christmas Eve - Sunday! The day started with our Christmas Eve service at 11am. One of our investigators came, a young guy named Conner (about 12). It was Conner's first time at church! Elder Call and I both sang in the choir, and Conner didn't want to sit in a pew alone at church, so he ended up sitting in the choir with us! That was pretty cool! Connor's first week at church and he was already up in the stand! We had an awesome service and felt the Spirit super strong.
Then we went home and changed, grabbed lunch, and went over to the Bigelow's house - a family in the ward. They were super nice and we decorated Christmas cookies with them. They gave Elder Call and I presents of our favorite cereal and then we played Apples to Apples with them. After seeing them, we drove over to the Kusch's house, a super fun family with five young kids. We were greeted by a Nerf war and some fun games with the kids! Then we helped put together dinner and played some board games the parents afterwards. They are both actually from San Jose, so it was super cool to meet and hang out with them! They also gave us some Christmas gifts and stockings! That was super awesome! To close off the night, we had a zone gathering and acted out the nativity, in both Bethlehem and the Americas, as a zone. It was hectic and rushed and crazy, but everyone had a fun time and it was a great time to remember the Savior. Elder Call and I rushed home afterwards, I opened my Christmas Eve present from my parents which of course here new PJ's. Then I read Elder Call the "Legend of the Candy Cane" before heading to bed that night.
Christmas!! For Christmas morning we invited over two other sets of Elders from the Stake and all opened our presents together and ate breakfast. It was super fun! Thank you to all who sent something, it was wonderful to feel all the love and support from home that morning. After our little get together, we all got dressed and went and did some service that morning with our zone, putting together some hygiene kits for the homeless. We finished a little earlier than expected, and so we went around the circle and said our favorite Christmas traditions and memories.
After meeting together with our zone, Elder Call and I went over to the Picthforth's house. We had a quick lunch and then got to Skype with our families. That was awesome! I feel like I just fit right back into the family right then, which was so nice. It was a good 45 minutes, and sad to say goodbye. It's crazy to think there is only 1 more call left (Mother's Day) before I come home! That is pretty nuts. After Skyping, we went to dinner at the Larson's house and had a really good, relaxed Christmas dinner with them. Then we watched my movie pick, "Wreck it Ralph," (Elder Call and I each got to choose a movie to watch for Christmas.) It was so good to see a movie again. I forgot how much I love movies. After "Wreck it Ralph," we drove over to another member's house and watched "Moana," (Elder Call's movie pick.) Neither of us had seen it before so it was the first time for both of us! That was super fun as well!! Seeing those movies was a really good way to end the season and just sit back and relax for a few hours.
So that was Christmas! I loved it and I loved focusing on the birth of our Savior. I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas, and will have a happy New Years as well!! I am loving it out here and can't wait to get back to work :)
Love, Elder Bird
Church with Conner
Making Christmas cookies
Presents
Skyping with my family
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