Week 13

Hello Familia,

 

It's been snowing out the wazoo out here. Well, not that much, but all the roads were covered and we’re supposed to get more tonight. Its good. I'm the designated driver right now so my companion’s lives are in my hands. Anyway, this week was good as always.

 

Tuesday was awesome because we went up with Christian to the sacred sites. We had the tour of the Joseph Smith home and then went into the Sacred grove for a little bit which is always an awesome experience. It's really nice because when we go into the Sacred grove we are allowed to separate and go off on our own, so it’s the only chance I have on my mission to be alone and think. I also got lost in there because all the leaves were covering the trail and I didn’t know where I was going. After that we went to the Hill Cumorah visitors center and watched The Restoration movie.

 

Christian’s vaporizer broke in the morning, so he had to go all day without smoking it and he’s addicted to it so he was in a bad mood most of the day. He didn’t have the experience we were hoping he would have, but it was still good. Oh and we went to Nimas after, which is this pizza place that all the missionaries like to go to because they have calzones the size of my upper body that are really good.

 

The rest of the week was good. Chuck was especially awesome. We taught him the Restoration, and after he talked about how he was initially only curious in the Book of Mormon but now he’s starting to feel something. He’s a really smart guy and gets a lot out of the reading, and he’s really interested in going to see the sacred sites as well so we might do that soon. It's really sweet to have the Sacred grove so accessible for investigators, and after taking Christian we want to start inviting our other investigators to go too.

 

Also we visited with Marie a couple times this week. She bakes all the time so we asked her to teach us how to bake pastries, so we went over on Friday and spent a couple hours baking stuff. It was really fun, and we were able to watch the Restoration video with her which she liked. She also said she would read a chapter we left with her in the Book of Mormon so that’s awesome too. Chuck and Marie were the two highlights of the week pretty much. Nothing really happened with our other investigators.

 

On Saturday the 2 other elders in our district had a baptism. That was really cool for the branch. Her name is Olivia and I think shes 17. She might be 18 though. Anyway, she got baptized and her mom will probably be baptized soon too, so that’s cool.

 

Oh and rumor has it (President Francis told us) that we are all going to get “digital devices” (ipads) pretty soon. That’s gonna be awesome because we will be able to whip out videos in the middle of a lesson, and whats even sweeter is that our area book and planners will be on there, so all we have to do is type in information about our investigators instead of getting the huge binder out and dealing with all the paperwork in there. Seriously its gonna make everything like 20 times easier.

 

Alright well that’s it. BYE. Oh and heres a scripture I liked from this week

2 Nephi 28:24 “Therefore, wo be unto him that is at ease in Zion”

 

Love,

Elder Holt 

Week 12

Yo,

 

So it's officially open season out here. Saturday opened rifle hunting, so everyone around here was out in the forest on Saturday. Seriously everyone. Actually everyone that had a beard was out. You can tell who the hunters are because they all have thick gross beards. They think they are all really tough just because they look like the guys on Duck Dynasty. Everyone loves that show out here. Another thing about hunters is that they will not hold a conversation with another human  being if that human being does not hunt. Here’s how most of my conversations with men go around here.

 

Me: How's it going?

 

Bearded guy: Alright. Just went hunting today.

 

Me: Cool

 

Bearded guy: You like to hunt?

 

Me: No

 

Bearded guy: ……

 

They will then proceed to not talk to me and/or say condescending things to me (“do you even know what a 6 point is”) as if my only purpose in life is to take up space. Its fun.

 

Anyway, this week was really packed with stuff. We combined our areas because we are a temporary trio, so we had a lot of people to see this week. Everyday from Tuesday to Saturday was stacked. We had to skip dinner a couple times too. It was the most fun week of my mission that's for sure. I didn't think that I would ever be that busy.  I can't really pick out what we did on each day because its kind of a blur. The investigators that we inherited from Elder Klumker are Christian, Ray, Denny, Stanley and Dorothy, and the Dispenzas. Christian is the guy that I mentioned like 7 emails ago that had the drug problems.  He’s doing alright. He still is trying to get off alcohol, and he’s waiting to see if he can get approved for detox. He came to Stake Conference with us yesterday though so that was good. We’re really excited for Tuesday because we’re going to go to Palmyra and see all the Sacred sites with him. Its going to be sweet.

 

I’ll talk about everyone else as I get to know them. Nothing new happened with any of the investigators that I've mentioned before. I don’t really know what else to tell you. It snowed this week. Now its all melted. I can’t really think of anything else that was interesting this week. We had stuff to do but nothing noteworthy happened.

 

Oh, I forgot to put this in last week but we had zone conference 2 weeks ago and President Francis told us this really funny story. He was telling us how he always dreamed of dunking in a basketball game and all through high school he never did. Then it was his last game of the season against their rival, and he was like “so I got the ball on a fast break with 30 seconds left, and I was going to the hoop and there was a defender coming on-AND THEN I DUNKED IT!!! YAHHHH!!!” He screamed it so loud out of nowhere and had this terrifying look on his face, ha, ha. It was so funny but we were all trying not to laugh that hard because we were still in the chapel, but it was so funny. I love President Francis.

 

Alright well have a good week everybody.

Love, Elder Holt

Week 11

Hey People!

 

Yesterday was Veterans day so we couldn’t write, but The Owens had all their kids off from school and they were going to the “National Museum of play” up in Rochester so we went with them. They have a 15 passenger van so the 6 elders in our district went up with them. It was pretty fun, except by national museum of play, they literally mean national MUSEUM of play. They had things to do, but most of the time I was looking at toys I wanted to play with that were tightly secured in glass cases, and then they had a bunch of signs all over the museum that said “learning IS playing!” to rub in how much you weren’t playing. It actually was pretty fun though and there were some interesting exhibits.

 

Anyway, things have been changed up again, except this time it was in the middle of the transfer so it was really unexpected. We had Zone conference on Friday and after that President Francis pulled the four of us that live in Springville aside, and then he pointed at me, Elder Lewis, and Elder Klumker and said “starting Monday you guys are gonna be in a trio, and Elder Knudson you’re being transferred to Amherst.” Apparently an elder that is going home at the end of this transfer has to leave 3 weeks early for military reasons, so Knudson's going there and that leaves the 3 of us in Springville. So now that we’re with Elder Klumker we now have 10 investigators that we’ll have to plan around, which is pretty funny because on Thursday Elder Lewis had suggested that we should fast for opportunities to teach more people, so we did, and then the next day we inherited Klumkers 7 investigators. Besides that this week was pretty normal. On Tuesday we had service, on Wednesday we had service, and then Thursday we finally got to see Joe and Amanda. I don’t know if I've mentioned them, but they are a couple that live downstairs in our complex and have a 3 month old baby. We met them a few weeks ago and they said we could come by, so we went down there and we got to know them, and then we left them with a Book of Mormon and we’re coming back this week to talk more about it. They’re pretty cool so I'm excited to meet with them.

 

Friday we had Zone conference which was sweet. I love having President Francis as a Mission President. I love Zone conferences, and hearing what he has prepared. On Saturday we pretty much just tracted and tried to go see people that said we could come back from previous tracting, but nobody was interested. This week will be really interesting though because it will be packed with seeing people. It will also be weird because we’re only gonna be in a trio for 3 weeks, and then we will probably get another elder in Springville so it will be interesting to see how all of that works out.

 

It snowed last night, about 5-6 inches. I think it's here to stay.

 

Alright well I hope everyone is doing well. Letters are welcome around 100% the time.

 

Love, Elder Holt     

Week 10

Hey everybody!

So this is gonna be really short because nothing happened this week. We did service all day Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and then I got sick on Saturday so we couldn't do much. Our service has just been more chopping wood, doesn't get much better than that.

 

We couldn't meet with JP this week. We met with Chuck, but he didn't read so we have another appointment next week. Marie fed us food and we left her a Book of Mormon, and Ed moved to Florida so he's way gone. The missionaries there will get a good referral. So that's it.  

 

Halloween was fun though. The night before we had 'trunk or treat' and it was a really good turn out.

 

Alright well gotta go. I am fully aware that this email was kind of lame. 

 

Love,

Elder Holt