Week 39

Yo!

Bikes, trains, buses. That's our order of preference for transportation
in the gorgeous (dirty) city of Buffalo. I would say that anyone of
these emails I send in my time in Buffalo could be my last, because I
swear, one of these days I am going to clip my handlebars on a parked
car's mirror on a busy street and then proceed to get run over by a
car. That wouldn't be an unlikely scenario, I've almost done it 20
times already. It makes for a good time though! Missionary work on the
edge. For reals though, some roads are crazy skinny and theres no
space between the passing cars and the parked cars, and it doesn't help
that insane people still try to pass. I'm actually pretty comfortable
with it by now, but my first day here I was fairly confident that I
was gonna die.

Anyway, I love the city! Completely different from anything I've
experienced in my mission so far. Our apartment is right in the middle
of it, and there are people everywhere and it's just a good time. We
ride around town all day visiting people. People will call us out to
talk to us every now and then. Everyone in the city is pretty nice so
far. Some people know us as the "Jesus people" which is kinda cool
haha. As for our investigators here, so far I haven't taught a single
lesson to people that understand what I'm saying. That's not because we
teach Spanish people, it's because our main pool of investigators are
all Burmese. We have 3 Burmese families we teach, and before we would
go to teach them my companion would always say "they know some
 English, and can understand what we say". No they don't. Our lessons
usually involve us saying the simplest sentences of doctrine we can
while still attempting to cover everything, and then in each house
there is a young teenager who knows more English than anyone else
because they go to school, so they translate (kind of) what we say to
the rest of the family. If they don't understand, we just get a bunch
of blank stares (which is most of the time), and we have to reword
what we just said. It's a little confusing because for each state or
section in Burma there is a different language for it. Two
of our families speak Carenni, and the other family speaks Caren,
which are apparently very different. The other Burmese people they
taught before I got here spoke a different version than those two.
Anyway, they don't have a Book of Mormon in the national language of
Burmese, much less all the different off shoots, but they do make the
lesson pamphlets in Burmese, which is really our only shot.  The
problem with that, is that Burmese is the national language that no
one uses and is only taught in certain schools, and the only people
that know it are the older generation. So pretty much the parents know
it, but not the kids, so when we do get the pamphlets the parents will
have to read them in Burmese and the kids are still going to end up with
a translated version of what's in there because they have to translate
it into Caren or Carenni. Oh, and we just found really cool potential
investigators today. They are French speaking Congans, and only the
mom knows English haha. We teach completely differently than how I've
taught my whole mission, but it's a lot of fun.

I'll end my email there. Maybe next week I'll talk about our
adventures in the really sketchy parts of town haha. Alright cya!

 Love, Elder Holt

Week 38

Hey Everybody!

It's been a couple weeks, but the biggest news is that we had transfer calls last night, and I'm going to Buffalo Spanish! I don't speak Spanish, but apparently it's just a normal area with the title

"Spanish" because every once in a while there might be a random person that speaks Spanish. I'm really excited about it, because I've been away from the city for the most part and now I'll be right in the middle of it. I'm sad to leave Geneseo though. It's a really nice area and the people in the ward are really nice.

This past week had some good stuff. Lets see, so Tuesday through Thursday was pretty normal. Thursday we had interviews with President Francis. Those are always fun. I learn a

lot and it's nice to talk one on one with the 'Prez.' Thursday night it started raining like crazy, and the next day a lot of people's basements were flooded. Our investigator Dan had all his inventory for his antique/trinket type shop in his basement, and he also went in for surgery on Thursday, so he called us and asked if we could go try and get the water out of his basement as soon as we could.

We spent a good amount of time taking water out in buckets, and calling people looking

for a dehumidifier. We eventually got one and dried out all of his stuff pretty good so we were happy about that.

Saturday we had a ward service project over at a sister's house. She and her non member husband have both been pretty sick, so we all went over there and did a lot of yard work and people were working on their deck that was in pretty bad shape. We had a ton of people there and it all went well.

The sweetest thing that happened this week was on Sunday night. We had gone through our former investigators about a week ago, and there was this kid named Jared who had been taught when

he was 17 (he's 20 now), loved the Book of Mormon, came to church all the time, and then just dropped off the face of the earth. We left him a voicemail a week ago just asking if he ever wanted to meet up with us again, and randomly he decided to call us back on Sunday (people literally never call us back) and he wanted to meet that night. We went over, he had joined the army and just had stuff

come up with work and school back when he was being taught, and he lost his commitment to reading the scriptures and stuff, but that he had been rethinking his faith as of lately. We probably had one of the best discussions on faith that I've had on my mission. He thinks really....genuinely.

I don't know if that's the right word to describe it, but it was one of the few lessons I've had where he didn't have to be compelled to listen to us, he was legitimately trying to figure out God's place in his life and wanted to hear our thoughts. It was really cool, and I'm disappointed that I don't get to teach him more since I'm being transferred. It was good way to end the transfer though.

I'll tell you guys about my new area next week! peace!

Love, Elder Holt

Week 36

Sup!

        So on Tuesday we had a specialized training at the Peter Whitmer farm! It was pretty cool being there, but we didn't really get to explore the place or the visitors center too much because we were getting trained on random things all day. Mostly all of the training was focused on "how to live" things, like eating right and shining our shoes. It was good, but it would have been cool to have some of the training happen in the visitors center, because I hear they have a lot of cool stuff about the restoration and organization of the church that you don't really get to see anywhere else. It was fun though, and it was awesome to see Elder Knudson (from Springville) again because I haven't seen him in a while.
        The rest of the week was pretty average. We tracted a bit, and we had a couple good conversations but no one really to come back to. We had a really good visit with a less active who's husband died a year ago. She's been in a depression since and doesn't like being in social situations so that's pretty much why she doesn't come, but we were able to give her a blessing and she really liked it.
         We also have an investigator named Vinnie. I don't know if I've said much about him, but he is a Doomsday prep-er. He has a magazine that he writes every month, and he has a radio show with a decent following (for a doomsday guy I guess). It's pretty cool because people will send him in sweet gadgets that they have made to try out, and he even gets random things from Cabella's that are pretty cool. He got these pants from them that change their camouflage depending on the temperature. He's a bit out there, and we don't really get anywhere teaching him because  he usually gets to the Second Coming and the Apocalypse no matter what we try to talk about. He is probably our most promising investigator if we are  measuring by church attendance. He loves coming to church, he likes talking to us, and he says he "feels good" when he reads the Book of Mormon. We never really get in to sit down and have a lesson with him, but we have learned if we go over a couple times a week to just say hey and remind him about church that he comes, and he will usually read the Book of Mormon more too. A lot of the time we just end up walking around his apartment complex a couple times while he talks about random life things and then at the end he'll just say "yah I've been reading the Book of Mormon, I like it, oh and can you guys set me up a ride to church on Sunday?" and that's about it (haha.) But if it's just small visits that get him to come to church then we'll take it.
         I think that's about all the notable things from the week. Hopefully this week we'll meet with all the people that can only meet every other week and I can talk about those people next week.

k bye!
Love, Elder Holt

                         

 President Francis photo-bombing the picture of me and Elder Knudson