Week 22

Sup!

Nothing too new this week. We had a busy week but it was with stuff that didn't really deal with our investigators. On Tuesday we had a wedding happen in our branch, and it was so an investigator that the senior couple (The Snyders) in our branch have been teaching could get baptized. It's a pretty cool story. The Snyders went to visit a less active named Cheryl, and she said she would come back if her fiance Larry went with her, and then he took the discussions, and they moved their wedding from August up to this past week, so he could get baptized as soon as possible. His 18 year old son Kyle wants to get baptized too so it's pretty cool. 

 

We still haven't been able to set a date with Chuck, which is just classic Chuck because he takes everything reeeaaaally slow. Our investigator Charlie wants to be baptized too, so we will hopefully set a date with him soon. 

 

Besides that though we mostly came up empty this week. There were 3 people that we were excited to go back to from tracting and they were pretty much all a miss. We couldn't make appointments with our progressing investigators either this week, but I'm sure this next week will be packed.

 

Tomorrow we are having zone meeting and then having a "zone p-day" which is cool because I have never had a p-day where I got to be in a gym.

 

Oh, so after the wedding on Tuesday, we went to this place in Holland for the reception/dinner, and they have a deal for unlimited chicken wings for just 5 bucks. What a steal right? I then proceeded to eat my weight in garlic parmesan chicken wings. We'll probably go back there again...

anyway, I hope everybody's doing good!

 

Oh here's a quote I saw this week. "Trying times are times for trying". I'm sure all of you are now extremely inspired...k bye

 

Love, Elder Holt 

Week 20

Yo!

So last night we got transfer calls. I pretty much had already started packing because I was sure I was getting moved, and I took pictures with everyone at church too. Instead they made Elder Lewis a Zone leader and moved him to Buffalo and I'm staying here. I'm really happy I'm staying though! this area is awesome and I didn't feel ready to leave, so that's good. 

This past week was pretty good. We didn't get to see everyone that we wanted but we still made some progress. On Wednesday night we went to the Methodist church to play basketball again. Everybody that played last time said hey to us and we're meeting some cool kids there. The Owens, a family from our branch, have their son, Nate out on a mission in Arizona right now, and we met this kid named Darnell who knows Nate really well, so hopefully we can talk to him more.

Oh yah, so a big storm/cold front came in this week, and we got a Mission wide text Monday night saying that if temperatures were under zero on Tuesday that we needed to stay inside. The snow storm missed Springville, but it was negative 7 all day so we didn't really do much. We drove to visit a couple people but that was about it. I'm guessing that Dad probably tracted in that type of weather in Finland all the time, so he'll think we're pansies.

Anyway, I think that's it. We spent most of our time this week working with a couple people/complicated situations that I would like to tell you about, but it would take a really long time to explain them fully and they wouldn't make sense if I only mentioned a couple things about them.

Alright, well I hope everyone has a great week!

Love, Elder Holt  

Here are some pictures...

                         

Sister Barts and I. She is 70 and her farm is still going strong.

  

Me and Dennis "The Legend" who Reigns

Me and Brother Becker

The truck that the other Elders "Totalled"!

The Daily Sunrise

Week 19

Hey Everybody!

I'm having trouble remembering what happened this week. It went by so fast. It hit -12 for a bit,
then it was 40 yesterday, then this week we are supposed to have a crazy, crazy snow storm
with -30 wind chill and stuff like that...should be fun.

 

We did have a cool miracle this week! On Wednesday, we were just having an off day. All of our plans fell through, and we really didn't have much energy either. We didn't know what we were going to do in the evening either because when it gets dark no one answers the door, and if they do they aren't happy about it. We got a text from Kelly saying we should come over for dinner. So we drove the 20 minutes to her house, ate, and we were driving back from Springville, and I was coming around a corner going decently fast (we were driving on snow) and I saw two cars stopped on the road, and one was sideways on the road, so I slammed on my breaks and we started skidding toward the car, and there was no way we were going to stop in time. Somehow I was able to steer the car just enough to the side while we were skidding to avoid hitting the other car. Then we got out, because this guy had gotten his truck stuck in a ditch on the side of the road. He had gone and got his other car to try and get his truck out, but he was having a lot of trouble. Anyway, we were able to get his truck out of the ditch with ours, and then he invited us into his house for a little bit. He asked us a lot about what we do as missionaries, and he was interested to hear more, but he was really sick so he said to come back another day. He's a recovering alcoholic and has been sober for 4 years, and just by talking to him he seemed like he's open to hearing what we have to say. So we are excited about him.

 

On Saturday we were able to go to the temple because a girl in our branch received her endowments (she's leaving on her mission soon) so that was fun to go up to Palmyra for half the day. I think thats about it for last week. Besides meeting that guy, I think we had a pretty normal week. I hope everybody's doing good!

 

Love, Elder Holt

Week 17 & 18

Hello,

Well I didn't write an email last week so I guess I have to cover a couple weeks. I think that nothing too big happened 2 weeks ago. Chuck did say he would be baptized though when we invited him, so that's sweet. We're going to try to see him more often so that we can speed up his growth because we have only been seeing him once a week. This past week was pretty crazy though, with all the Christmas festivities going on. 

 

On Monday last week we were driving to a dinner appointment and we pulled up to an accident, and it was actually the other elders in our district. they were going to an appointment the same direction and we pulled up like 30 seconds after their accident. Apparently there was a tractor that was driving on the road that didn't  have any lights on, except a tiny white light at the top that can barely be seen, and they just rammed into the back of it going around 55mph. The kid driving the tractor was completely fine, and the elders didn't have any injuries at all, but the truck was wayyyyy totaled. We hung around till everything was cleared up so that we could give them a ride, and it took almost 2 hours for everything to be sorted out. That was pretty crazy.

 

The next day was the Christmas Eve mission party, so we all drove up to Rochester for that and that was awesome. We got to hang out pretty much all day and there was a talent show and stuff. It was pretty fun. We also were given a brand new 2014 Chevy Silverado while we were there, so now we get to drive that around. It's pretty awesome. Then the next day was Christmas! We got to go to a few members houses and we also got to skype which was really nice. I appreciate all the packages and stuff too! I have sooooo much candy though, and I don't want it to go to waste so I've just decided that once a day one of my meals will just be candy. So far that's been horrible and I just feel fat and gross.

 

Thursday through Sunday were just normal days. On Saturday we went to the Myers, the people that have the goats and stuff, and we helped them clean out their chicken coup. I'm not going to lie, that was straight up disgusting. Chicken crap is the worst smelling thing I have ever encountered. I was trying to breath through my mouth the whole time, but sometimes I would accidently breathe through my nose and I would almost throw up. At least I know how to clean a coup now, I'm sure that's a skill I can utilize later in life. Anyway we're supposed to have a big storm this week and I am not looking forward to it. Enjoy the 80 degree weather you Californians. Alright bye!

 

Love, Elder Holt