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