December 30, 2017

Fam,

Two days to Christmas countdown. It's going to be so weird to skype haha. 

Tuesday we had a great trade-off. I went with the soon to be late Elder Wall. We had a good long day of finding planned. We were able to get a few miles in of walking through Little Mexico which was fun and more or less productive.

Wednesday we got a call from someone we talked with about two weeks prior. We met this lady after we got stood up at an appointment and were walking around seeing if there was anyone in the area we could talk with. We started talking with her and offered some service and were able to rake her lawn. We had a good conversion with her and shared Light the World with her. She asked us if we could help her to deliver some Christmas packages with the community organization she represented. We jumped on the service opportunity and met her at this random retirement community. It turned out to be really fun. We delivered hams, pastries, and Christmas packages to a bunch of people.  

The same day I also felt inspired to study "Living water" as found in the scriptures. Throughout the simple study I was thinking about spiritual self-reliance. My favorite scripture from that study was found in D&C 63:23 which says "But unto him that keepeth my commandments I will give the mysteries of my kingdom, and the same shall be in him a well of living water, springing up unto everlasting life." 

Obedience is prerequisite for most of the blessings in the gospel, but what I found interesting is symbolically the well of living water source is from within someone. One can go to church and have to appearance of being spiritually powerful.  However, more important are the little achievements one does privately. Gaining a strong testimony or praying daily is not something public, but these things are personal achievements that lead to large and important consequences. Once you stop doing the little things it's like you stopped watering a plant. It doesn't immediately die but will slowly loses its strength and withers. Your faith decreases and you lose the understanding or testimony you may have at one point had. We had a great experience this week catching a member who is going through some trials with their faith and we were able to read with them. Just reading with members can be surprisingly important to helping members build their faith. 

Zone conference was Thursday. It was really, really good, as usual. President Brennan's remarks are almost always the highlight. He spoke on angels and their role in God's work as well as miracles. He pulled examples from almost all the standard works including, the Bible, Book of Mormon, and the Doctrine & Covenants. It was really interesting and he made the point that God works in one way and that doesn't change. We also watched clips from the Christmas story film "The Nativity." It was really interesting but the acting was not that great. On top of the acting the Angel Gabriel was a little freaky. Elder Wall made the joke that when people have angelic experiences they tend to be scared at first and that this was why. 

Friday we had the first practice for "O Holy Night" with the Reed family. I'm accompanying them on the piano (this makes the editor of these blogs VERY happy) and it sounds pretty good. Turns out when you ask someone if they can count when they don't have a musical background and don't realize that you mean beats in a measure when it's 6/8, they might be slightly offended. Oops haha.  

December 23, 2017

Fam,

Two days to Christmas countdown. It's going to be so weird to skype haha. 

Tuesday we had a great trade-off. I went with the soon to be late Elder Wall. We had planned a good long day of finding people to teach. We were able to walk a few miles through Little Mexico which was fun and more or less productive.

Wednesday we got a call from someone we had talked with about two weeks prior. We meet this lady after we got stood up at an appointment and were walking around to see if there was anyone in the area we could talk with. We started talking with her and offered some service and were able to rake her lawn. We had a good conversation with her and shared "Light the World" with her. 

Light the World---learn more about it (great videos and ideas for making Christmas more meaningful)

She asked us if we could help her to delivered some Christmas packages with the community organization she represented. We jumped on the service opportunity and meet her at this random retirement community. It turned out to be really fun. We delivered Hams, pastries, and Christmas packages to a bunch of people.  

The same day I also felt inspired to study "Living water" as found in the scriptures. Throughout the simple study I was thinking about spiritual self-reliance. My favorite scripture from that study was found in D&C 63:23 which says, "But unto him that keepeth my commandments I will give the mysteries of my kingdom, and the same shall be in him a well of living water, springing up unto everlasting life." Obedience is prerequisite for most of the blessings in the gospel, but what I found interesting is symbolically the well of living water source is from within someone. One can go to church and have to appearance of being spiritually powerful, however more important is the little achievements one does privately. Gaining a strong testimony or praying daily is not something public, but these things are personal achievements that lead to large and important consequences. Once you stop doing the little things it's like you stopped watering a plant, it doesn't immediately die but will slowly loses its strength and withers. Your faith decreases and you lose the understanding or testimony you may have had at one point. We had a great experience this week catching a member who is going through some trials with their faith and we were able to read with them. Just reading with members can be surprisingly important to helping members build their faith. 

Zone conference was Thursday. It was really, really good as usual. President Brennan's remarks are almost always the highlight. He spoke on angels and their role in God's work as well as miracles. He pulled examples from almost all the standard works including, the Bible, Book of Mormon, and the Doctrine & Covenants. It was really interesting and he made the point that God works in one way and that doesn't change. We also watched clips from the Christmas story film "The Nativity." It was really interesting but the acting was not that great. On top of the acting the Angel Gabriel was a little freaky. Elder Wall made the joke that when people have angelic experiences they tend to be scared at first and that this was why. 

Friday we had the first practice for "Oh Holy Night" with the Reed family. I'm accompanying them on the piano and it sounds pretty good. 

(That is the reaction from Eric's Mom and blog editor about him playing the piano!)

Turns out when you ask someone if they can count when they don't have a musical background to know that you mean beats in a measure when it's 6/8, they might be slightly offended. Oops haha.  

August 7, 2017

fam,

Long week. The first week of the transfer is always so long. We also had like no food because the P-day to P-day was super long and the proximity to the end of the month meant we didn't have a bunch of money. We had a lot of burgers this week...

The last two Sundays were really good. The first we had the Aguilars as usual but also Carmen. Carmen had a really good time from what it looked like. She has two young kids who came to Primary with Elder Rencher and me and they really enjoyed the songs and everything that goes on. Carmen had to leave for work during the third hour and they came out of Primary with huge smiles on their faces. 

In the following lessons we talked about their Primary experiences a little and that really sat well with Carmen. A lot of her motivation is to help her kids be better than she was/is. Once you know why someone needs something or what they need, teaching becomes so much easier. The Gospel is for everyone but can be hard to apply in your life if you don't have something pulling you to it. Christ said it best, "they that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but the sinners to repentance." 

This week we did a fair amount of work with former investigators. It was great. We had two days in a row where we prayerfully picked people out to go visit from the old records and we caught nearly all of them as they were walking into their homes. Most weren't really interested in us coming back but one let us come back a few days later. The guy is a non-practicing Pentecostal and we talked about our message. He had a really good memory because he met with missionaries like two years ago. They had three lessons and he remembered the one chapter they left with him to read. He talked about why he didn't believe our message and by the end of our little visit he left it with "I like the Bible a lot and won't read the BoM." He didn't want us to come back which was unfortunate but even though he wasn't willing to try we left on good terms. I left him something to read in Mathew 21 to read which has a great parable about God sending servants to work in the vineyard and something else in the Book of Mormon. We left with a prayer and as we got in the car Elder Rencher saw through the door the guy opening up the BoM and starting to read. That's great but also unfortunate because I would want to come back and follow up on what he did but he asked us not to come back. Not everyone will accept our message, but not very many people accepted Christ when he taught.

Two highlights of the week 

The first was our lesson with Chris and Caryn. They were out of town for a little bit so we weren't able to pass them off like we planned. I don't like holding on the English people because they get attached and it makes the transition to the English Elders much harder. We planned to finally pass the first lesson with them, but they haven't had a solid enough foundation for us to feel like we could move on. We had a warm welcome as usual and after talking for a bit opened in prayer. Chris said something that sounded like he may have read all the way up to Third Nephi but I didn't notice at first and I failed in following up to make sure. He probably just read the first few chapters of Third Nephi, but still that's awesome. He kind of got off on a tangent on the whole day and a half of light prophesy coming true and then the new star in the sky at Christ's birth and at first it was hard to tell if he was bringing this up as some attempt to prove the BoM false but it turned out that he really really liked it. He kind of geeked out about that for a few minutes. That was funny. Caryn had some questions about that, mostly because she didn't read. Her questions were good and sincere for the most part in the first half of the lesson. We planned on going through the plan of salvation but with no time left, mostly because we had very little time to begin with, we decided to share something short. We read through the first 5 verses of Moroni chapter 10 and covered that again. We bore testimony on the BoM again and Chris and Caryn seemed touched by what we said.  That warm good feeling that always comes with the spirit was there and I could tell Caryn was feeling the same thing as we shared how the BoM has affected our lives. After that there was a little silence and Caryn was clearly thinking, but in a different way than before when she was contesting the points of doctrine we taught them. She asked us if she could ask us two questions. We told her we really had to run but we would love to hear them anyway and give answers when we would come back. She asked us, "Why do I need the BoM if I'm already saved?" and "Why do you need to teach me the plan of salvation if I've already come to Jesus Christ and been saved?" Two really good questions. The spirit has been working really hard with her the last few days and she has a whole new demeanor. It's been really interesting to watch her the last few visits we've been with her. I really hope she allows the spirit to continue to work with her and that she really starts to progress. They have been such a great example to me in the importance of the spirit. Caryn tried to pull the Bible on us to prove us wrong but couldn't, which for the most part only means we've done our homework. You can make an appeal from the Bible that nearly every church is correct and all the others are false, but with the spirit you can't do the same. The spirit testifies of truth and is the single most important factor in conversion. 

The other Elders also had a baptism this week! This kid named Diego had a great service yesterday. I played the piano as usual. We came extra early to practice for the special musical number I was going to play and Elder Barrows was going to sing and one of the English sisters was going to sing as well. They sang a duet of A child's prayer in Spanish, it came out so well. We also had great speakers and like 50 people show up, many of whom weren't members. We started about 40 minutes late and I started the prelude 30 minutes before it was supposed to start. Mistakes were made. (editorial note: sounds like Pres. Monson). The piano seat was really hard and after an hour of prelude I was dying, not to mention the hour and a half of practice we had before that. 

10 July 2017 New Mission President, Playing the piano

Fam,

We had a really nice zone conference this week. It was our first week with President Brennan. 

President Brennan

Michigan Lansing Mission

Sterling Arthur Brennan, 57, and Annette Lamb Brennan, five children, Santa Margarita Ward, Santa Margarita California Stake: Michigan Lansing Mission, succeeding President Michael V. Jacobsen and Sister Alice A. Jacobsen. Brother Brennan is a former stake president, mission presidency counselor, bishop, stake mission president, elders quorum president, and missionary in the Oklahoma Tulsa Mission. Partner, Maschoff Brennan. Born in Clovis, New Mexico, to Clifford Arthur Brennan and Stania Clarene Lott.

Sister Brennan serves in a ward Relief Society presidency and is a former ward Relief Society and Young Women president, ward Relief Society and Young Women presidency counselor, and ward missionary. Born in Mesa, Arizona, to John Clyde Lamb and Willa Dean Hamblin Lamb.

He is a pretty interesting guy. He was a named partner with a law firm in California I believe. He worked with intellectual property and also did litigation. When he gave his training he started off with saying "I've prepared a slide show but besides the first slide I feel that's not what needs to be said here." He basically asked us some questions on what the mission should be then went into what he wants from every missionary. He really is putting an emphasis on Preach My Gospel, a lot more than the former President Jacobson. I appreciate the change. He then moved into like a 30 minute testimony which was very interesting. It was framed in a way that everything was simply conveyed, yet was subtle and deeply profound in doctrine. He portrayed many of the characteristics I imagine a litigator would have yet maintained a very loving demeanor. We all arrived early to meet with him. He gave everyone hugs and talked with every missionary there. I'll be interested in seeing what gets changed in the near future. 

Friday we lost power. Elder Rencher and I both woke up at around 3am to some very bright flashes from the windows. I stood up and opened the blinds and we watched one of the most intense lightning storms I have ever seen. 

There was more lighting per second than I've ever seen and it all was very, very close, very loud, and was shaking our apartment. We watched in awe for a few minutes until we lost power. Interestingly the tornado siren didn't go off. In the morning we called around and learned that a tornado came through our area. It hit around the Weston's apartment and there have been intermittent power outages around southern Michigan. We still had warm water in the morning, but without the ac, our weekly planning was a little warm. We planned on our balcony. 

Luckily the less active we set up welding still had electrical power. We brought our metal chair over and did a little bit of welding. We didn't really share any message with him. We just had a good talk and welded. It was fun, he is really nice. One thing I realized about half way through was that the chair was made of aluminum. It's painted black so I didn't really think about it. From what I've read, aluminum is really hard to weld. From what I remember aluminum oxide has a much higher melting temp than straight aluminum, which makes not melting through really hard. We melted through on one of the welds, and the rest are all really rough. We didn't have a bunch of welding material to work with to begin with and didn't finish the job. It was also really sketchy. No safety material is fine, but not having the goggles made it harder than it needed to be. If you can't see what you're welding, it might not come out all that well, and it didn't. I'll get a pic once we go back and finish the job. 

We had a miracle this week! We've been working with this lady for a while but she won't come to church. She keeps saying she will though... Anyway we've been trying to meet with the whole family for awhile.  The problem is all her daughters work different hours that vary week to week and often day to day. We've been praying pretty hard recently for help finding more people to teach and we caught one of the daughters home. She came to us and asked if she could meet with us! Crazy. The best thing about prayer is that God always give answers in one way or another.

 A few days later we had such an amazing lesson with her. We only were going to take 30 minutes with her and get out, but she started having really good questions and so we stayed for a while after that. The best thing is she is honest! She expressed doubts over some things we said and asked good questions which indicated she was actually thinking. I hope she progresses. We had a small miracle in the lesson. Out of nowhere she seemed really nervous about halfway through the lesson. We were outside and I was sitting behind their house and couldn't see. Elder Rencher turned around, but then turned back. We were having a really good lesson and I was praying that whatever was about to go down wouldn't interfere with the spirit in that lesson. She told us her ex boyfriend had just pulled up, but after the lesson Elder Rencher told me that the guy got out of his truck was walking towards us, looked up and made eye contact with Elder Rencher, turned and left. Who knows if anything would have happened, but she was freaked out. 

Did I say it's great being a missionary? 

July 4 we kind of got wrecked. We were told not to knock doors and our area doesn't have many good areas to street contact. We walked around for a bit with little success, and had a BBQ with a ward member and finished our proselytizing time by dropping off cupcakes to the people we teach.  After 6pm we stopped by the Westons and played games with them for the rest of the night. It was pretty great.

The miracle I was praying for with Santiago didn't exactly turn out in the way I wanted. We tried our best. Last week I said he was leaving for an unknown amount of time, this week we figured out why. We were having a really good lesson with him and we were answering a bunch of questions he had. Towards the end of the lesson he apologized because he said he can't give us his full attention in the coming days. He said he is leaving in a few days and really needs to focus on getting ready. We talked a little more about his trip. Turns out he has been having some weird health problems that he didn't get to specific with. He said that the many doctors he has visited with wanted to do some weird things with him to find out what's going on. He told us what they wanted to do, and said he really doesn't want that. He then goes on to explain that he is going to Mexico to seek out some witch doctors to heal him. We gave him a Book of Mormon and showed him how to invite missionaries to visit him while he is in Mexico, wished him the best of luck and he said the closing prayer. It's pretty fun being a missionary. 

(This makes Eric's mother VERY happy!)

Also I am now the branch pianist. With Elder Waters gone, that responsibility is mine now. Playing the children's hymns is way harder and crazy. I'm definitely getting a lot of help in my playing ability. That's helped a lot. 

Pictures to be attached later:
1) Elder Weston and his Chile socks we gave him for his birthday. 
2)B-day pics
3)all the cupcakes + me cooking
4)tacos and no power

1/26/17 Fires, Playing the piano (!), Room cleaning

Dear family and friends,


It's crazy to think that in 20 days I'll be on a flight headed to Michigan. This week had a net positive feel to it, but had some hard parts. We don't have enough time in the day to really study Spanish as much as I want, and our teachers are only speaking Spanish now. I have to give my teachers 100% of my attention to be able to get what they are telling us. I often zone out, and it seems every time I do they call on me to answer something, that's not that fun. 

Admiring a Mexican moth

This week was the week of the fires. The CCM is surrounded on three sides by large hills/small mountains. Over the last 7 days there has been 5 wild fires on the mountains. The fires probably don't threaten the homes on the hills very much because they are of concrete construction. Most of the fires were pretty small, but the largest hill north of campus has a fairly large bowl with houses on the bottom and was covered with small dead brush. A fire broke out around lunch when we were in the cafeteria. It seemed to have started at one of the upper houses and spread up. It burned the whole face of the mountain and had a massive smoke cloud. 

This week was also the week of instruction. We are most of the way through week 4 and are finally getting some instructions on what we have to do during some of our designated study/preparation times. Throughout the day we have periods of time for planning, companion study, language study, and personal study. We haven't ever really used these times as they are designed because we were never really told exactly what is meant to fill the time. Everything points to teaching investigators, and we received this instruction after teaching "an especially boring lesson." Everyone was tired that day, and the lesson was the first thing we did after breakfast. We didn't relate why what we were teaching was important and the spirit was not there. Hermana Gonzales sat us down and asked us what we thought about the lesson. 

After we explained what we thought, she told us we need to plan better. Your planning time is used to figure out what each investigator needs to be taught. Personal study turns out you're supposed plan what topics would help the investigator and think about what the investigator needs to hear. During Companionship study you put everything together into a lesson, and during language study you learn the vocabulary for that lesson you need. I feel like we should have been told this a little earlier.... 

Yesterday there was a worldwide broadcast to all missionaries. There was a rule change that affects our schedule. Most rules are tailored to the region, but the main rule change gave more choice to missionaries in their daily activities. We are given an extra hour of sleep if we want it, and our various study times now have ranges of times they should fill instead of exact times. It wasn't as exciting and new as I had hoped. 

Sunday was another good day. Before church we had a branch counsel meeting. Our zone leaders have had some issues between themselves, as in they have very conflicting personalities and struggle with each other, but they gave a really good message on what it takes to have a successful companionship. One thing they shared was that when someone is criticizing you or correcting you in one way or another you should always look for the truth in what they are saying. 

One thing I do, especially when I'm being told off in Spanish, is I tend to ignore what they are saying and have a mind set that they don't know what they are talking about. It takes a little more to understand where they are coming from and apply the basic truths they are trying to help you out with. In the same meeting one of the sister trainer leaders in our district shared a quote from her dad, she said "you should leave your worst companion leaving them thinking they were your favorite." We should strive to treat everyone with love, even if they are really annoying.  

I played the hymns and Hermana Clayton conducted the music. Five people spoke on various topics about the Bible and Book of Mormon. I took the risk and didn't prepare a talk, which was really dumb but still paid off, because I figured if I'm playing the hymns and teaching the priesthood lesson there is no way I'm also giving a talk. My companions prepared a talk on how the Book of Mormon supports the Bible. Our topics this week are on the attributes of Christ. 

After Sacrament meeting, we have a district meeting which is typically good. That day we set goals for the week and reflected on the teachings from our branch presidencies. Priesthood meeting was taught by my companions and me. We taught about the power of the Holy Ghost. The first few minutes were a little awkward because no one was participating, and Elder Eeves was passed out in the back. After those few minutes we led a really good discussion on how as missionaries we can teach with the Holy Ghost and our duty is to always strive to have his companionship. We talked a little on obedience as well. 

Elder Eeves shared an interesting point about the Pharisees and obedience. The Pharisees were some of the most obedient people, but because they lacked the guidance of the Spirit, they missed the whole point. They were obedient but they weren't perfectly obedient. Elder Eeves then asked what is the difference between obedience and perfect obedience. He said perfect obedience is being exactly obedient, but also following the guidance of the spirit in every situation. We have a missionary manual with all our rules as missionaries, but if we had the companionship of the spirit always we wouldn't need the book. We closed our lesson with the message that ultimately as missionaries we can only do our best to teach the lessons. It's the Holy Spirit that really testifies of truth.

I almost made it through the CCM without getting in trouble. To preface, our room is pretty clean. It is not perfection, but it isn't dirty or unclean. We got a note on Saturday that we failed a cleaning check with some notes on what we need to fix and that we needed to find the CCM President's wife and tell her we fixed those few things. They asked us to put away our suitcases, but they were under a desk because they don't fit in the cupboard, and they asked us to take out the trash, which wasn't full and we don't know where to get more garbage bags. So like idiots we didn't look for her. On Tuesday we got a note saying meet to her at her office at 1 pm. We saw the note at 2:30..... so we walked over and she wasn't there. We left a note apologizing for not being there  and we still haven't seen her...... lol oops. I guess technically we still haven't gotten in trouble. At least now our room is perfection. 

Some things that happened that don't warrant a full paragraph:

-Elder Henriksen slept in the cupboard above our closets for the night for 200 pesos (about $9). He said it was reasonably comfy.

-Elder Wallin tried unsuccessfully to hop a fire hydrant box. At the ccm next to fire hydrants are these red boxes with a glass mirror on the outside that says incase of fire break glass. On this inside is a fire hydrant wrench and 100 feet of fire hose coiled up. Wallin was talking about  how he ran hurdles in high school and could hurdle the box. Well he didn't get nearly enough vertical and broke the glass, luckily he didn't get hurt, but he and his companion ran away. My district was in our TALL classroom and only saw them running.

-For breakfast we had french toast one day but I couldn't find any syrup to put on it. Hermana Petty and Quigley sat down, both with what looked like syrup and I asked where they got it from. Petty turned and pointed to a large plain jar filled with honey and said from there, they realized their mistake and it was pretty funny. They were really disappointed.