Week 35

Hey everybody!

This week we spent most of our time visiting less actives and recent converts,
which was good but we didn't have a lot of lessons to teach, which was a bummer.

A while ago we got a call from the Stake President saying that he was close
with this 28 year old guy who was about to get out of jail and has been wanting
to get baptized for years. He grew up in foster homes but for multiple
reasons he was in jail for a while, but we were told that he would be
released soon and we would get a call from him to go and meet him. His
name is Brendan and he called us on Tuesday this week. He's staying at a
motel in Mt. Morris which is meant for people who just got out of jail and need
time finding a place to live and what not. We went to meet him and he is the
nicest guy ever. He's read the Book of Mormon multiple times, but he just needs
some help getting started with life since he's been in jail for around 14 years.
We got some clothes for him from a few members since he pretty much doesn't have
anything, and he came to church on Sunday too. There's no question
that he will be baptized, but he just can't with all the legal stuff and
with him on parole right now. I don't know, it's an interesting
situation.

Anyway that's about all that was new this week, but I'm
attaching pictures to make up for my lack of email alright? alright

Love,
Elder Holt
                                                    
                                                         

Me with the Owens Family

Me

Me and Elder Lewis

Elder Williams had to clean out the Baptismal Font and he looked a lot like

Sam Wise from 'Lord of the Rings'

Elder Williams fell into a hole

Me with our investigator, Chuck

Me with our investigator, Charlie

Me with the Snyders (The Senior Couple in Freedom)

Me and Elder Williams (from Springville)

My Red Sox buddy, Brother Duncan

Me and the Stoddards (Brother Stoddard was really happy)

  

Me, Elder Klumker, & Elder Lewis

(from when we were a Trio)

How I fell asleep one night...I was tired

Week 34

Hey Everybody!

So I didn't get a weekly email sent out last week so I guess I better
update you guys on the past 2 weeks.

So two weeks ago was a really good week! We had some really good
appointments with Nona, Randy, and Cassandra. Nona is a lady that we
met going to a dinner appointment one day, and she invited us back to
talk. We went over and she had us come in, and we just started talking
about normal things. My companion Elder Allen is really good at just
taking something from normal conversation and using it to jumpstart a
lesson, so we basically went right into the restoration. She liked it
and said she would read 2 Nephi 31 right after we left, so that was
cool!

We met with Randy later in the week. He's been an investigator for a
while, and has a kind of hard to explain situation. In short, he just
needs to come to church consistently for 4 months before he can get
baptized because he's on parole. He's been taught all the lessons and
will get baptized, but he also has a plan to get his wife to start
coming to church with him. We usually go over and talk about whatever
he has studied, but we had a really good visit with him.

On Sunday we met with Cassandra. She's the librarian lady that I'm sure
I've mentioned, but meeting with her is always really funny. We
asked her if she had read the Book of Mormon at all, and she said no,
but then she said how she's read Mosiah 3:19 every morning because she
wrote it down in her notebook which made us kind of confused. We
pretty much just talked about the restoration with her and how it
allows us to be even closer with Christ, and we started reading more
 Book of Mormon verses with her, and every verse we showed her, she would
just go crazy. She would make us stop and say "OHHHH
thats VERY good" in a thick African accent and then write it down.
Pretty much at the end of our meeting she had done that with 10
different verses and realized the Book of Mormon is really cool, so
she said she would finally read it. The only thing with her will be
getting her to connect the Book of Mormon with the restoration and
having Christ's church on the earth, because she's already very
religious.

This past week on the other hand, was really, really slow. We got
canceled on multiple times, and we had one appointment with Jen that
went well, but it's getting to the point where she needs to start
taking action with reading and coming to church or our visits will be
a waste of everybody's time. She didn't come on Sunday which was
disappointing but hopefully we can have a visit with her that gets her
going this week. Besides that though we really had nothing else going
on.

Easter was really good, we had a dinner at the Larsen's, the
family with 2 year old quadruplets, and it was fun playing with them.

Alright well I hope everybody's doing well. Also if you haven't seen
the "Because of Him" video that the church put out yet, I command you
to go to youtube and watch it right this instant. It puts the
Atonement and Resurrection in a really cool perspective, so go watch
it!

And I finally bought a thing to put my sd card in so I can send
pictures, so I'll do that next time we go to the library.

K bye!
Love, Elder Holt

Week 32

April 7, 2014
Hey!
So transfer calls were last night and my companion and I are both
staying. I'm pretty happy about that, this transfer should be a really
good one.

So we had a really good lesson with Jen this week. I can't remember
how much I've mentioned about her but she is the daughter of a lady in
our ward, and she's in her 30's I think. Anyway, we have taught her
most of the lessons and have invited her to be baptized, which she
said she will do if she sees the Book of Mormon make a difference in
her life, which it will, she just needs to work on reading it
consistently. She lives far away so we can only see her once a week,
but this week we just reaffirmed the importance of the Book of Mormon
and the direction it gives, and I think she will do a lot better with
her reading.

Other than that, not much else happened. We usually do a lot of things
on Saturday and Sunday, but of course we had conference, which was the
bomb! a lot of good talks. every question I wrote down before
conference was specifically answered. It's funny how that works.
President Uchtdorf's Sunday morning talk was my favorite.

We tracted more than usual this week. Not too much success though. One
old lady opened her door, and she looked crazy, then told us she was
Catholic and that I should feel guilty whenever I think about faith,
then she shut the door. Usually we can tell what point people are
trying to make when they say things like that, but with her we still
have no idea, haha
.
Oh, so we had a dinner appointment on Thursday night and we had
cinnamon roll waffles. You literally just take pillsbury cinnamon
rolls and put them in a waffle iron and then put the frosting on
after. So good! and also fattening, but really good.
Anyway, see ya later! pictures are coming by the way. I'm using my
procrastination to teach everybody patience.

Love, Elder Holt