Week 65

Hey!

So I'm training now! Elder Anderson got transferred and I went up to pick up my 'son' at transfer meeting on Tuesday. His name is Elder Bates and he's from Pocatello, Idaho. He's young, just out of High School.

Training is definitely different than what I was expecting but I'm liking it so far. 

No one could meet with us this week because they were all busy with Christmas stuff or with family. We also had a couple training meetings to go to so we didn't have too much proselyting time. We did do a little bit of tracting though. I knocked a couple doors and then it was Elder Bate's turn to do his first one, and he was nervous about it and didn't really know what to say. He knocks on the door and two seconds later this lady answers and before Bates can say anything she says "Guys its cold out there come inside!" which never ever happens. (I've been let inside only once my whole mission.) It turns out that they have good Mormon friends and that elders helped them move from Pennsylvania 10 years ago. They were super nice and we gave them a "He is the gift" card. They were pretty set in their own church though. 

Also on Saturday the other elders in our district drove up to our area and we went carol tracting. We went to Rite Aid to buy Santa hats and the employees wanted us to carol for them in Rite Aid so we did, haha. That was fun. Then we just went around to some less actives in our area to carol and it was actually super awesome. We were going to do all the less actives and then carol random doors but we didn't have time. One of the families let us in for hot chocolate so that was cool too. 

I think that's about it for the week. Last night I got the 24 hour stomach flu AGAIN, and it was horrible. Just thought you should know. Ok cya!

Love, Elder Holt

Week 64

Hey Everybody!

I don't have much time so this is going to be a quick email. Two weeks ago we had Zone conference and Thanksgiving and we helped someone move so there wasn't too much to say there. This week was pretty standard. We tracted a little bit, Visited with some less actives, and found more addresses on the ward list that have had vacant houses for a couple years. All of our investigators have illnesses so it's hit and miss whether we will have good appointments with them. We were able to give Mary a blessing though. She is so promising but she has been sick and can't meet with us. She really liked the blessing and we set a return appointment with her, but then her granddaughter snuck out the night before so when we called her she was out with the police.

We (our district) write an email every week to the ward council and just put in what we've been doing and how investigators are coming along, so I'm just going to copy and paste the paragraph we wrote about Victor.

"We saw Tony and Victor again this week. They are an interesting situation because Victor is probably the most interested and Tony is indifferent. We've been trying to figure out how to teach them without ignoring Tony, but also still focusing on Victor progress. As it turned out Tony was asleep when we stopped by so we were able to teach just Victor for an hour. He told us he's been praying to know if Joseph Smith was a prophet, but hasn't received an answer. He hasn't been reading the Book of Mormon though, so we had a really good lesson about the Book of Mormon and answered a lot of his questions, most of which had to do with why the gospel had to be restored. We committed him to read at least a page of the Book of Mormon every day so hopefully he can combine that with his prayers and receive an answer!"

Here's the picture of our second flat tire that I forgot to send two weeks ago, and then the first one too. 

k bye!

Love Elder Holt

Our 2nd flat tire

Our first flat tire

Week 62

Hey!

Elder Anderson and I got our second flat tire together this week. It was the same tire that went flat last time, so it was a brand new tire that got popped. It wasn't a shard of metal this time, it was just a nail, but we had to change it while it was snowing, so that was fun. Then we went to Firestone and sat there for two hours like we usually
do, and we had to reschedule our appointments for the day, fun stuff.

Anyway, I'm sure everyone's seen all the crazy snow in Buffalo on the news. In case you were wondering, the area where I'm in got like 4 inches. We missed all the fun stuff. Some Elders I talked to said they
were stuck in their apartment for 2 days. But we just had a normal week. It would have been cool to be in an area where all the snow is because shoveling snow for people is the greatest finding activity of all time.

This week we had a lot of good visits with less actives. We also might be teaching this less active ladies daughter and boyfriend pretty soon, and the daughter is moving a couple neighborhoods over this month so if we could help her move that would be perfect. We also had a sweet lesson with the Headquarter referral we got for the Book of Mormon. His name is Lennie and we taught him the Restoration and about the Book of Mormon. He wants us to come back and teach the same lesson to him and his girlfriend on black friday which is sweet. I
forgot where he said she is living but she's just coming into town for Thanksgiving weekend. That's about the extent of what we did this week!  This upcoming week is going to fly by because we have zone conference all 
day Tuesday. I'm going on exchanges with the zone leaders on Wednesday, and then Thanksgiving  is Thursday and other stuff this weekend. Should be fun! Cya!

Love Elder Holt

Week 61

Yo!

I think I mentioned in my last email about a sweet lesson we had
tracting a couple weeks ago with this lady named Mary and her
grandkids. Then she dropped us the next week over the phone. Well 
we decided to just stop by to see how she was doing, and she said she 
was hesitant because her pastor had told her the Book of Mormon would 
confuse her. She believed him and told us she didn't want to meet anymore 
on the phone, but then she realized that she needs to stop taking peoples 
word on it and find the truth for herself wherever it comes from. She said 
we could come back and continue teaching her and her family, so we are 
going to have another lesson with her this week! That was pretty cool.

Other than that, It has been a little slow. We've been trying to meet
with less actives that really need visits. Work really slows down in
the winter which is super annoying. It's been getting dark at 5 pm so we
can't really tract or anything when its dark, plus its been
snowing and getting a lot colder. People around here do not like to
open the door in the winter because it lets heat out of their house,
and they don't have much sympathy for whoever's at the door. 

We've been trying to work with members more so hopefully we can get some
referrals. Oh and we got a sweet headquarters referral this week for a
guy and his girlfriend that went to the Washington D.C. temple visitors center
and they requested two Book of Mormons. We called him and we have an
appointment for Tuesday, so that should be sweet!

We had Stake conference this week, so that took up our Saturday night and 
first half of Sunday because of the driving to get to the stake center. We 
went as a district to the temple on Saturday too,  which was awesome. Maren, 
who just got back from her mission a month or two ago, drove us up which was 
super nice of her. I'll try to attach some pictures.

These are my sweet new sunglasses

Our District has trouble taking functional pictures

This is how I usually report numbers on Sunday nights

Jonathan and Me

Oh and I keep on forgetting to attach the picture of me and Jonathan,

who I taught in Buffalo and was baptized a couple weeks ago. He's the
bomb. K bye!

Love Elder Holt

Week 60

Hey Everybody!

I decided this week that I will never even consider swerving for a
squirrel ever again. Well I guess I never have swerved for them
because I'm not going to wreck a car over a squirrel, but now I won't even
feel guilty about it. I went to get my Halloween package that the
mail man set by our mailbox, to find that apparently squirrels really
like Halloween packages for Elder Holt.

Exhibit A

They also liked my M & M's

   

and my Ramen Noodles

  They also stole half of my Reeses, which I am the most upset about,
and there were bits of the Reeses foil wrappers all over the yard in
front of our apartment. I was ticked, actually I'm still pretty ticked.
There is a massive population of squirrels in Lewiston, and we usually
see a new dead one on the road every day. I used to think "oh that's
sad" but I found myself muttering "serves you right" under my breath
the other day, and that's when I realized I have a lot more bitterness
bottled up against them than I thought haha. I guess I have to work on
forgiveness.

I ran out of time for last weeks email, so I'll back track a
couple weeks. Two Saturdays ago we went to the Sacred Sites with
the Schultz's. They are the parents of Maren, who just returned from
her mission in Provo about a month ago. I think she joined the church a
couple years ago, but we've been visiting her parents every week and
reading the Book of Mormon with them. We always have good visits with
them, we usually just go over what they have read and answer any
questions. They've been taught in the past by other sets of
missionaries so they've had all the lessons, but they are just reading
through the whole Book of Mormon right now. They're in Mosiah.
Anyway, the sites were sweet! I'll just attach a bunch of
pictures in here.

First we went to the Hill Cumorah Monument which has a statue of Moroni on top.

                           

and some sweet engravings on the side.

I don't know what was happening in this picture

Then we went to the visitors center, watched the restoration movie and explored around there a little bit.

                               

Then we went to the Grandin Building where they printed the first order of The Book of Mormon. That was super interesting. It was a crazy tedious process and a massive order (5000 copies) for back then.

         

Then after that we ate at Nima's. You can't go to Palmyra and not eat  at Nima's.
The calzones are top class, and huge. Then after that we wrapped things up at the
Joseph Smith Farm and the Sacred Grove. I think the Sacred Grove is a
lot cooler in the summer, because it's so thick that it creates a roof
over you and you feel like you've entered a bubble that's totally separate
from everything around you. In the fall you can see through it and its
not as cool, but it was still pretty sweet. I think the Schultz's enjoyed it and learned a lot.

                               

I was trying to take a selfie with the Temple

 

A view of the Palmyra Temple 

The works been a little repetitive lately. We've been going through
the big list of people that we've been meeting with and narrowing it
down to the people that are worth the time.  Two weeks ago we had the
sweetest restoration lesson I've had on my mission with a family we met
tracting. It was seriously the bomb, and then she got sick for a week
so we couldn't have a follow up appointment, and then we called her and
she dropped us. If I wrote my weekly email last week I would have said
why the lesson was sweet and tell all the details, but she dropped us
this past Thursday so I don't really feel like it.

Sunday was awesome, because someone I taught in Buffalo got baptized
and I got permission to go. His name is Jonathan, and he was a media
referral for a bible a few months back. We taught him the first three
lessons and invited him to baptism before I left, and then his parents
recently gave him permission to be baptized so he was baptized
yesterday. It was a really nice service and I got to see a lot of
people that I missed from the Buffalo Ward. I'll have to throw in that
picture too.

Oh and we just got transfer calls. Elder Anderson and I are staying
together which I am happy about, and the other area in our district is
getting flushed and a new elder will get trained there by the ex-AP.
So yah, that's about it. Alright, I hope everyone is doing well!

Love Elder Holt

PS Here's some pictures from P-day at Niagra Falls

These are from "Cave of the Winds" which is a tour spot at Niagra Falls

                

They gave us these sweet ponchos

                                                    

Niagra Falls

Week 58

Hey Everyone!

I didn't mention this last week, but all the missionaries were able to have an advanced screening
of the movie 'Meet the Mormons' at the stake center 2 weeks ago. It was pretty dang cool. If you haven't seen it, go see it. 

In other news, Elder Hamula came to our mission this week. The training lasted pretty much all day because we had talks by President Francis and Sister Francis, and then Elder Hamula's wife, and then he got up and did a Q&A for an hour, and then the last hour was just whatever he wanted to say to us. He came down and stood in front of the pews so that was cool. The training was super sweet. I wish I would have recorded it, because he is super intelligent and has an incredible way of explaining things. He definitely gave us some ideas on ways to improve. 

 

We went to the temple on Saturday, and Friday is weekly planning, so really we only had Wednesday and Thursday as our full proselyting days. It didn't help that it seemed like every person we tried to see canceled at the last minute. It was just a slow week, so not much of an update on our investigators. It's starting to get cold though. It might snow soon.

 

Anyway, I don't have much else for this week.

ok bye!

Love Elder Holt

Week 57

Hey!

So this week we have Elder Hamula, a member of the Seventy coming to
tour our mission and give us a training. That's happening on Tuesday so
it should be pretty cool! Seventies are always sweet when they come.

This week was good. On Wednesday an older couple that we are
teaching invited us to go to Fort Niagara. It's this Fort that was built
before the revolutionary war by the French, and it claims that it was
the key to North America and really, really important. I'm not so sure,
but it was still really cool. It changed hands 3 times between
the French, the British, and the States which is pretty interesting.
Anyway, it was insanely windy, but still pretty cool and historic and
such. It was good to spend time with our investigators too.

At Fort Niagra

Another picture at Fort Niagra

In the Gift Shop - I really wanted to buy this

Every Friday we go to help out at a soup kitchen. It's called "Heart, Love,and Soul" and we go to help serve breakfast to all the people that come in.
It's fun and I get to wear a hairnet. So yah, if you ever wonder what I'm
doing on a Friday morning, I'm probably serving cereal to people. That's the
station I usually get. Except last time I had to do the coffee station, so that
was fun.

I'll give you a vague rundown of who we've been teaching lately. We teach
a part-member couple every week. The woman, Kathy, has cancer and doesn't
have much time left to live, but she wants her husband to be baptized and she
wants to be sealed before she passes. We've taught them a couple times and we
have good visits. We also teach a couple guys around our age. We teach a guy
named Matt who is 18 and has a baptismal date, and we also teach a guy named
Gerald who is 22 and should be getting baptized next week, but I think he's
going to be baptized in the YSA ward. Those are the main people we are working
with, but we also have appointments with a good amount of recent converts,
because we are supposed to keep teaching them up to a year after their baptism,
and we also have a few less actives to see.

This week we will not have much time to see people, because we have Elder
Hamula training Tuesday, and we are going to the temple on Saturday. The other
days of the week are open but when we lose two days of time that's a lot.

Alright, I've got to go. Cya!
Love Elder Holt

Hiking on P-day

Another from our P-day hike

Me and Elder Anderson



Week 56

What's Up? 

Sorry I haven't been able to get an email out the past couple weeks! Things have been a little

busy. I was transferred up to Lewiston, which is right by the city of Niagara Falls. I love it here.

The City was great but I was definitely ready for a change. My last week in Buffalo went well,

and a couple of the people that we were teaching should be getting baptized this month.

Lewiston has a good teaching pool. Two people that they were teaching before I got here

are getting baptized in the next couple weeks, so that's pretty cool. The past two weeks here
have gone by really, really fast. We have a lot of appointments with people, some are
investigators and some are less actives, so we just drive around to each of our appointments
all day. Things are slowing down a bit though, so we're going to try to do a lot more finding
(tracting) this week.

  

A shard of metal punctured our Tire!

One notable thing that has happened since coming to Lewiston is that we were going through an intersection last week, and when we came out of it there was a loud clicking coming from the car.

We pulled off to see what it was, and some shard of metal or something just punctured the HECK

out of our tire.

Put on the Spare Tire



We still have no idea what it was. We put the spare on and then we had to drive to Firestone to get our tire replaced, so that took about 2 hours from the time the tire popped. Fun stuff.

I'll update you on the people we're working with as I get to know them better. My companion's name is Elder Anderson. He's been out 6 months and he's from Provo. I like him a lot and we get

along really well.

Sorry this is short! Unlike Buffalo, people are pretty normal here so there's not too much crazy stuff to share. I hope everyone is doing well!

Love, Elder Holt



Me with the Burmese Family - the way they take pictures

Me in front of Niagra River

Week 54

Hey!

We seem to always get into conversations with crazy people when we are
in train stations or on the bus. I think it's because there are a lot of crazy people
in Buffalo, and we go around trying to talk to everybody, so naturally we end
up talking to some pretty weird people.

A recurring thing that happens a couple times a week is that we will meet someone
right before we get on a train or bus, and when we get on the bus or train they will
sit by us and just be ranting about something to us really loudly which usually causes
a scene of sorts. Buses and trains are usually dead silent so whenever anyone talks
everyone on the bus can hear, and when someone is talking really loudly it gets uncomfortable....pretty decently uncomfortable. It depends on what they are ranting
about though. But yah, that's just something that happens on public transportation
as we go around Buffalo.

This week went by really quickly and it's pretty blurry when I try to think about it.
As far as our main investigators, we taught the Key Mey family again. Our lessons
are pretty much family home evening lessons at this point, but they have been helping
them a lot and they have been coming to church every week. We are teaching Mark and
Jack the last few things they need to know before they are fully ready to be baptized.
I don't know if I mentioned this, but their date is the second Sunday of October instead
of late September now. We also spent time teaching an investigator that came from
the Kenmore area. The previous missionaries have had an investigator for a long time
that would have been baptized in June, but because of on going court stuff he can't be
baptized yet. Hopefully the court stuff will be wrapped up by October.

We have a new investigator named Allen. He's a 60-70 year old man that the Kenmore
Elders met tracting, and we had our second lesson with him this week. He is really cool.
He's a super nice guy. In our first lesson he was pretty hesitant, but this last lesson he
was really interested. He asks really good questions and is really straight forward which
is funny. We told him about The Book of Mormon the first time and he was like,
"Well I guess I'm going to have to read this book!" Then in our last appointment he said
"I'm going to read this whole thing....and then im gonna pray about it!". It's just funny
when he tells us that because when he says it the man means business. We have another
lesson this week which will be fun.

Besides that though there's nothing too new. Our apartment building fire alarm went off at
4:45 am one morning this week and didn't go off for 20 minutes, so my companion and I
left the building, then went back inside because no one else was coming out and it was
raining. Then 3 fire trucks showed up and came to check it out but there was nothing.
They left and then the fire alarm went off again for another 15 minutes, then turned off,
then kept turning on and off until 7:30 am, so we didn't fall back asleep which was horrible.

Oh, yah, last thing, so Gladys Knight is coming to the Rochester Stake with her "Saints
Unified Voices Choir". Apparently she will go to different stakes doing a devotional/concert
type thing that is focused on her testimony, and the whole thing is directed toward non-members,
specifically African Americans. You can't get a ticket unless you are bringing a non member
with you....luckily we know a lot of non members, so we are bringing one of our African
American potential investigators to it. It's going to be awesome. No photography though
so I won't have any pictures.

Anyway, that's it.
Love Elder Holt

Week 53

September 8, 2014
Hey!

The Buffalo Bills won yesterday. Everyone was sure to tell me that.
Buffalo for the most part is pretty depressing. It has good hospitals,
but that is the only thing it has going for it. Except, when the Bills
win. I have never seen people so happy and friendly around here. I
also learned that there is a big difference between people being drunk
for negative reasons and people being drunk for positive reasons. We
were just walking around to our appointments after church and everyone
was just stoked. People that were barbecuing on their porch were
calling us over to talk to us, and they were all telling us how the
Bills won in overtime. None of our conversations went anywhere with
them, mostly because they were all drunk, but at least they were nice
to us. Usually people that are drunk on their porch aren't very nice
at all. Cars would drive through the neighborhood with a Bills flag
and everyone around would just start yelling "GOOO BILLLLLLSS!!!" It
was pretty funny.

Anyway, this week was good. We had zone conference on Tuesday, and
right after it ended, Elder Rawe left with President Francis and the
AP's to go home. I was pretty sad to see him go but he's going to
BYU Idaho so I'll hang out with him at college. Our zone conference was
good, and we had a training on how to use family history to find
people. Other missionaries had tried it out, and apparently it got
them in homes that normally would never let missionaries in. Me and
Elder Clinger thought we'd go try it out on some super nice streets in
the north of our area, because that's where the nice suburbs are with
rich people.....that did not go well (haha). We were all excited about
it, but I don't think I have had quicker rejections my whole entire
mission. We decided to shy away from telling people we were
missionaries because when we did that they would just immediately
close the door, so we just started by asking people if they knew about
family history, but apparently it doesn't really matter what you're
going to say, they just want you off their porch as quick as possible.

That was about the only thing that was different about the week. We
saw Mark and Jack again, and we are teaching the commandments so that
they can be prepared for their baptism. They are still excited about
it and super willing to keep any commitments we extend to them. Our
other appointments didn't happen because they canceled on us,
so we should get in contact with them all this week.

Cya!
Love, Elder Holt

Week 52

September 1, 2014

Sup!

This week has been a little chopped up. I was on an exchange with Elder Whatcott from my district on Tuesday, and then Wednesday we went to zone meeting and I left after that with one of the zone leaders for an exchange up in Amherst. I didn't get back to my area until the next night. So Tuesday through Thursday is all a blur, but we did stuff and we taught people, that's all I know (haha.)

I don't know when the last time was when I mentioned Mark and Jack, but we had a lesson with them on Sunday after church and it was sweet. We taught the Gospel of Jesus Christ and asked them how they felt about baptism, and they said that they were ready, so we set a date for September 21st with them! They are awesome kids, and I think I mentioned they were twins before, but anyway they are sweet and are really smart.  They were the first people I've taught that when we asked them what they remembered about the Restoration or the Plan of Salvation, they would just recite the whole entire lesson back to us. They've been reading The Book of Mormon everyday for close to a month now and they are so involved with the young men that fellowship isn't a problem at all. They are working on their First Class Scout Rank and went to High Adventure with the Stake this year and they are just way awesome, and are pretty excited to be baptized. They were a little hesitant when we invited them a couple weeks ago, but that was only because they thought serving a mission was mandatory, and they have always planned on going into the military and they don't think their mom would let them go on missions. They were asking if they could be set apart missionaries while they were in the army because they want to do both.

Besides that I don't have anything new from this week. Isabelle hasn't called us back so that's a bummer. Elder Rawe is going home in two days so that he could get home in time to start at BYU Idaho, so today for p-day we're going to go site seeing around Buffalo. By "site seeing", I mean go up to the top of city hall and look around, and that's about it, because there aren't any other sites here. We might go down by the lake front though so that might be cool.

Alright, cya later!
Love, Elder Holt

Week 51

August 25, 2014
YO!

The past couple weeks have been filled with a bunch of stuff, and we've been pretty

busy working out the kinks with our area almost tripling in size. I'll try and hit

the main stuff that we've been doing though.

There's a 33 year old lady named Isabel that called us out of the blue two weeks

ago. She met with missionaries before, but because of pressure from her family

she stopped visiting with them and backed off. But then after a year of thinking

about it and reading The Book of Mormon, she decided that she shouldn't care

what her family thinks and do what was right for herself, so she called us and told

us she wanted to meet. We met her that night, and she was the most prepared person

I've ever talked to. She's read all The Book of Mormon, knows it's true, and wants to

be baptized. We met with her twice that week and she loved everything, and she

came to church and loved it too. We set a baptismal date with her, but then this week

we texted her to remind her about our appointment, and she said that she needed some
time to do some "soul searching" and she said she'd call us back when she was ready.

We still have no idea what happened, we haven't heard anything from her since that text.

We also contact a lot of mormon.org referrals in the city, because a bunch of people

google free bible, and mormon.org comes up first, so we always are going around

delivering bibles to the people that requested them, and we are usually able to

get a return appointment with them. We had one referral this week for a guy named

Jonathan, and we delivered the bible and he turned out to be a 15 year old kid. He said

we could come back and teach him, so we went to go see him on Saturday.

Apparently, he had requested a bible with no outside influence. His family is not religious,

he doesn't have a church that he goes to, and all he said was that he thought the bible was

a good place to start to get closer to God. We had a sweet lesson with him and talked a lot

about The Book of Mormon, and he was really excited about it and said he'd read it,

so that was pretty cool.

We haven't been able to see April, but the Key Mey family has come to church 5 Sundays

in a row which is awesome. We haven't  been able to have the skype lesson with them

with one of the members from the Karen Branch in Salt Lake, but we're working on it.

Anyway, we have tons of other stuff going on. It makes missionary work fun being busy all
the time.

Oh and we also went to the temple this week, which was the bomb. Love the temple.
I've got to run.

Love, Elder Holt

Week 49

Yo!

We had transfer calls last night, and our district got slashed. Before last night it was Elder Rawe and Elder Detlor in Eggert, Elder Klumker and Elder Giroux in Kenmore, and me and Elder Clinger in Buffalo. We used to have sisters here a couple transfers ago so it was 3 sets covering 4 areas, but Elder Klumker and Elder Giroux both got transferred out and Kenmore is being closed down, so now we have two sets covering 4 areas. Elder Rawe is going home in 3 weeks in the middle of the transfer so he can get back to school, so Elder Eggert will be in a trio for 3 weeks, and me and Elder Clinger are the same. Elder Rawe is district leader right now, but after he leaves I'll be made district leader, so that will be interesting. So the next transfer will be crazy because we have to realign our boundaries, and we have to take all of Kenmores investigators, and we still only have our bikes to get around. It will be fun being super busy, but probably pretty stressful too.

Our week was good though. My birthday was fun. I was on an exchange with Elder Rawe, and a couple in our ward took us out to Anchor Bar for wings which was the bomb. We had a couple really good lessons, one particularly with April. I think I talked about her a while ago, but we were finally able to see her again and teach the Plan of Salvation, and she loved it a lot. Our lessons always go so awesome, but then we won't be able to see her for like 3 weeks. We should have a regular Thursday appointment with her now though. Also, with the Key Mey family, we found out there is a Karen/Karenni/Burmese branch in Salt Lake, and we were able to get a hold of them, so we can skype in a member who knows English and Karen so they can translate with the family. This is actually a super big deal, because we can finally teach them and they can actually understand what's going on. Also, on Sunday they showed up to church again for the third week in a row, even though every week I ask them where they are going to church and they say their Burmese church. I asked them why they decided to come and they never understand what I'm asking. We will have our first skype lesson with him this week which will be super awesome.

That's about it for our investigators. Me and Elder Clinger have our new tradition of "Sunday Night Tracting" which is usually pretty fun and kind of effective. Oh also, they have a General Mills Cereal factory in South Buffalo, and every couple days the wind will be blowing into the city from the south, and the whole entire city will smell like Lucky Charms. Those are always great days. But yah, that's all I got for this week. Cya later!

Love Elder Holt

Week 48

Sup!

Everything's going good here. I couldn't get an email out last
week so I guess I have 2 weeks to catch up on. I've been doing that a
lot lately because our p-days have been packed.

There is a kid in our ward named Kombi. He is 13, and he
and his family immigrated from Congo a few years ago. He is one of
the coolest kids and has been bringing his friends, Mark and Jack to
church for a couple months. The Young Men's leader took
them all to the pageant and after seeing it Mark and Jack said that they
would feel comfortable taking the missionary lessons, so last Sunday
we had our first lesson with them and it was sweet. We taught them the
Restoration and Kombi was able to sit in with us and bear his
testimony. It went well. Mark and Jack are both really good kids
that sincerely want to learn. English is their second language too but
I'm not sure where they are from. We're excited to teach them.

With the Key Mey family, we have been trying to re-teach them the
lessons in more creative ways so that they can understand better. We
taught them the Restoration using cups to build a pyramid and
represent the apostasy and that went really well. They are still
coming to church every other Sunday and we visit them every week.
We have hit a slow spot with them. The kids want to be baptized, but Key
Mey is not ready, so we won't be able to do much until we can help him
gain a testimony. That's the hard part because he can't speak English. We
are trying to figure out how to best help him to progress. 

Last week before zone meeting we went out for district lunch at the famous

"Anchor Bar". It's the most popular wings place in Buffalo and is apparently

where the first buffalo wing was invented. It's a place you have to go to if you

ever visit Buffalo (except I don't know why anyone in their right mind would take

a getaway to this city). We bought a hundred wings and they were sooooooo

good. The best chicken wings I've ever had. The BBQ wings were the best.

Since I'm talking about food, Elder Clinger and I also went to one of the most

popular pizza places in town. "La Nova". Since Buffalo is so big into chicken wings,
the pizza places around here make the best chicken finger pizza ever. It's

just a Buffalo chicken wing in pizza form. Really, all Buffalo can offer to people is
pizza and wings, but at least they do it right. 

           

Elder Newold and I went down to the harbor to see these warships

  

Lake Erie

 Alright, cya!

Love Elder Holt 

Week 46

Yo!

So last week was pageant week! President Francis said we could go 3 times, once
with a member, and twice with an investigator. The problem is that we are all the
way in Buffalo, and none of our investigators have cars, so we couldn't go with any
investigators.

We went on Wednesday night with the Hunts though, and it was sweet! We showed
up, and all the Anti's were standing in their designated areas right in front of the
entrance. I was expecting much worse. It was kind of disappointing, there was just
one guy on a mega phone saying stuff, except he wasn't even saying anything that
bad or controversial. It was actually pretty funny, and then there were people passing
out pamphlets. We passed by them and then you walk through the entrance and
everything completely changes.

One of the Elders in my district says that walking into pageant is probably exactly like
walking into the spirit world, because the cast members are high fiving you, and there
are people everywhere and you get to see a bunch of people from your old areas, and
you can talk to elders you haven't seen in a while, and everyone is super happy. It's
kind of hard to explain, but I guess it's sort of like going into Disneyland, except better.
Anyway, I saw some people from my old areas, and I also talked to Randy Francis for a
 while. That was the first time I've seen him since he got back. It was fun to talk to him.
We had sweet seats for the play and it was awesome. It was really well done. My favorite
part was the soundtrack. I'm sure you can find scenes of it on youtube so you should look
them up.

Hill Cumorah Pageant Set

                     
I think the coolest thing that happened this week was our lesson with April. April is

someone we met about a month and a half ago on the street. She had talked with
missionaries before, but when they were transferred she was never met with again.
We had an appointment a while ago but she wasn't there. We decided to try her house
again since we hadn't tried in a while, and she answered and we were able to set an
appointment up for Monday night. We met with her on her porch and it started out kind
of awkward, especially because she didn't seem too excited to meet with us, but as we

started asking her questions she really opened up. She talked about how she just isn't
happy with life and we were able to talk about the Book of Mormon, especially Alma 7
(that's my go to in lessons. I think I use it 95% of the time). She didn't really have a
religious past but we testified that God is real and that life has more purpose than we
think. It turned out really well and we have another lesson with her tonight!

Besides that we just went less active hunting. That's going alright. Most of the people
on the ward list have moved. Also on Tuesday we had an AMO by the senior couple in
charge of housing, the Rays. AMO stands for 'apartment makeover', and they do one
once a year for each apartment. We requested one since our apartment is full of leftover
stuff from years of missionaries. AMO's take up all day, and the Rays literally go through
everything in our apartment with us. We got rid of sooooo much furniture that we didn't
need, and now our apartment is the bomb. It's so clean. Anyway, I have to go! 

Love Elder Holt