Week 90

June 15, 2015

Hey Everyone!

Everything's been going pretty well here in Rochester. We're
teaching a man named Thomas, and he will be baptized soon. He's
the nicest guy, and he would have been baptized this Saturday, but 
he's been feeling a little sick and didn't come to church so we've had
to push the baptism back a week or so.

We also have gotten a couple really sweet new investigators. This one
guy moved into our area, who was just released from prison. He studied
the LDS faith with his prison room mate who was LDS and wants to be
baptized. It's pretty sweet.

Let's see what else. I'll send a picture of me with a garbage plate.
Garbage plates are the bomb. You all need to have one. It looks like
junk but its so good. 

Garbage Plates...the best thing Rochester has to offer

My own road

In The Hill Cumorah Visitor Center before Stake Priesthood Meeting

Also, its been raining like crazy. There have been thunder storms everyday
this week. It's been awesome.

Ok, I love you everyone!

Love, Elder Holt

Week 86

Frontier Field

Me at Frontier Field

Week 85

Dear Family and Friends and other people,

Well hey! This was my first week in Gates/Chili. Also known as 4th City. I don't really know what to call my area. It's not Gates or Chili, it's Gates-Chili, because we cover both and live on the border, and its by the city, and it's in 4th ward. So pick one. We also live right next to the airport.

First things first, there's a bar 300 feet from our apartment, and I guess things got pretty rowdy Friday night and a guy got shot dead and 6 other people were injured. The day after there were TONS of cops all around and news teams were in the parking lot all day.  There's a vigil right in front of the bar with candles that people made for the guy that died. Crazy stuff.

This week was the bomb because we got 6 new investigators and 4 more are coming this week, which is the most I've ever had in a week, so I'm pretty happy about that. They were all mostly from investigator referrals and part members families so that's pretty sweet too. 

We're teaching this one guy named Ed, and I met him for the first time on Tuesday night. He's a guy probably in his 60's, and he likes to yell really really loudly for no reason, but he's great. He wants to be baptized at the end of May. He just has to quit smoking, and a few other things first.

The area is cool. Half of our area is the city, sort of way ghetto, and then the other side is decently normal for Western New York. It's kind of cool because it's like two types of areas combined. Instead of when I was in downtown Buffalo and it was just city or when I was in Lewiston and it was just suburban. They say, variety is the spice of life, and we get that here.

We had a Regional Stake Conference yesterday. Well it was just a regional broadcast from Salt Lake, and Sister Reeves, Elder Anderson and Elder Hales, and then some one from the seventy all spoke. It was sweet! it was like general conference, but a secret session only for the cool people in the North-Eastern United States. 

Also, our mission is starting "just serve" in a month. So that will be cool.

Love Elder Holt

Me & The Stone's on my last night in Pittsford. Brother Stone was the best mission leader
of all time and they were the bomb in general.

Me & the office secretary, Sister Ballard. She goes home next month. She is the Best!

It Snowed.

Week 84

Hey Everyone!

Sorry it's been so long. Today we got transfer calls and I am being
transferred from Pittsford to Gates /Chili. It's in Rochester but not
totally downtown, but pretty close to it. That should be good.

There hasn't been too much to report on our area, which is
probably why I don't get super motivated to write a weekly
email. We have been trying to find people to teach, so we go walking 
around the city of Pittsford talking to people or tracting, but we 
haven't had much luck.

There is a lady that has been coming to church with her member
husband for a year and a half now. She's been taught all the
lessons. She was waiting to get baptized until her husband was able to 
get the priesthood. Recently he received the priesthood and she came 
up to us and said she's ready to be baptized, so we will go over all the 
lessons with her again and she'll be baptized on May 9th. 

So that's pretty cool! Sort of random, because it's not like she's an 
investigator we meet with and teach because she's been
active for over a year and even had a calling. We are excited to
prepare her for her baptism. Well I'm leaving now so I can't
stick around for that, but its still cool!

In other news, its been getting really hot lately, and the other day
we were walking around and I went to feel my lower back, and I haven't
felt that much sweat on my back since I was riding bikes with a
backpack on in the middle of summer in downtown Buffalo last year. 
There was no winter to spring transition. It was just winter winter winter 
then HOT AS HECK!

The Eerie canal has been cool lately though, because a lot of people
will go chill by the canal and walk along the path they have, so its
fun to go try and talk to people there.

I hope everyone is doing well! This next week should be
interesting in the new area, so hopefully I have cool stuff to say
next week. bye!

Love Elder Holt

Week 83

Me, Elder Allen, Elder Knudson, and Elder Knudsons new 'son' he got at Transfer Meeting

I got a hair cut the next day...I know it was insane that day, alright?

Elder Ryser and his Suisse Bear

Me looking really cool when I drive

My Trainer, Elder Allen right before his last Testimony at Transfer Meeting

Week 82

March 23, 2015

Hey everyone!

Everything has been literally the same. We only have one less active to visit 
and besides that we spend all of our time finding. We haven't found anyone 
though so we might try to go down to the very bottom of our area to Honeoye 
Falls and try to work in that area.

Let's see....we got new iPads last week. It's the start of the new
internet proselyting roll-out, so we won't be on Facebook for one to
two months. We have a couple online ipad trainings to do that will
teach us to Internet proselyte effectively. So, that's about the
only new thing.

What else....it still snows every once in a while, but it melts pretty
quickly so that's cool.


My companion, Elder Garland and I get along pretty well so that
makes things nice.

On Saturday I was on exchanges with one of the AP's, and we decided to
drive out to the country and tract the really big houses where people
own lots of farm land...that was pretty fun. Mostly just pointing out the biggest 
houses we could see and figuring out how to get there. There was one big house 
we knocked at, of a guy that had 8 or 9 buffalo in his front yard. We didn't get any
answers from the really big houses but we might try to go back.

President Francis says we need kingdom builders, so we're going for it

Alright, well that's about it. Cya later!
Love Elder Holt

Week 75

Hey!

Tuesday we had our big mission-wide ipad meeting with a Seventy 
(Elder David. F Evans) and an Area Seventy (Elder Stephen B.
Allen) and it was pretty sweet! The church is rebooting the whole
entire internet proselyting program. We get brand new ipads and
they actually have manuals for how to use them to proselyte, and then
another manual for protecting ourselves against anything harmful
online.

I was expecting the meeting to be about the changes to
proselyting online and how we do it, but that's not what it was at all.
At the meeting they pretty much made it sound like the whole
reason they gave us ipads in the first place was so we could learn to
resist temptation. There's an analogy they used about how when
different diseases were introduced to Native Americans back when
Settlers came over, they had no resistance to them and they would get
super sick or die. Other people with the same diseases would just
get sort of sick or not get sick at all because they had been
surrounded by it and their immune system had adjusted. They related
that to missionaries and said that they found that missionaries would
go on their missions and be isolated from technology for two years,
and then come back and not be ready for the different temptations and
changes in technology that had happened while they were gone and they
would fall. 

They talked about how this is the time on our missions to learn how technology 
can be used to spread the gospel and be used productively, and also how to 
continue to use it righteously when we get home and for the rest of our lives. 
That's pretty much the brethren's vision in a nutshell.

When we get the new ipads next week we will not be on Facebook for 1-2 months 
because internet proselyting has been going on for 5 years in this mission and 
for a long time in other missions too. They are re-teaching us how to do it so that 
we can do it right.


Wednesday and Thursday were normal days where we tried to see some less 
actives and find some new investigators, and then on Friday and Saturday we 
helped two different people in the ward move. Sunday was a normal Sabbath
day where we had lots of meetings and didn't have much time to proselyte.

The weather is still cold, but it actually has been in the 20's for the past couple 
days so I've been happy with that. (Better than -20).

Love Elder Holt

Week 74

Hey Everyone!

Sorry it's been a while! Here is an update for the last 3-4 weeks.
        
I'm in Pittsford, which is pretty much as nice of a town as it gets
in Western New York. It's like Western NY's very own Yorba Linda. 
I came in right as they dropped a couple investigators, and
we essentially don't have any investigators right now. So for the past
month we have been trying to find some, but we have not had much
success. We really don't have much of an option to find new
investigators except from tracting. We're trying to think of other
ways to meet people. We've gone around to all the churches in the area
to ask about any service opportunities they have, but none of them
have anything right now because it's February. We went to our first Mass
the other day! That was fun. There was a guy we tracted into a couple
weeks ago that recognized us (I guess that's not hard) and came up to
talk to us for little bit afterwards. As far as working with less
actives, we only have one that actually will let us come in and teach
him.


That's pretty much the story of the last month. It has snowed like the Dickens. 
It's not like there's been a 4 foot blizzard, but it just won't stop, and it's been 
cold as heck. Church was canceled a couple weeks ago because of how cold 
it was. There are New York building policies about possible fire hazards if 
the water is frozen. That was the same day that we had to stay in
because of the windchill.
        
OK, so here's a couple random things that have happened though. So back
in Geneseo, we had an investigator that was one of my favorite people
I've met on my mission. His name is Dan, and he was easily the kindest
person I have ever met in my life, and also the funniest. He was a
Pastor for his local church which was really small in numbers, but
before he moved to New York he was apparently the pastor of a
mega-church in Detroit with 1000 people or so. Anyway, he had a lot of
health problems, specifically with his liver, and when we were
teaching him he had 5-10 years to live. He was always going in and out
of the hospital, but a couple weeks ago things took a turn for the
worst and he was given a few days to two weeks to live because his
kidneys couldn't take the treatment they were doing for his liver
anymore. The hospital he was staying at happened to be 15 minutes from
our apartment in Pittsford. A week and half ago we went to visit
him. It was really good to see him again, and he was completely at
peace with what was going to happen. He was mostly worried about his
two daughters that are both still in high school. (his wife had
passed away a few years ago.) They have been taken in by a super
awesome family that was in our ward. I think the day we went to
visit him was a Thursday, he was taken home for hospice care on
Friday, and then Monday he passed away. I was really grateful to
have seen him that last time.

On Tuesday we have not one but TWO members of the Seventy
coming for a special ipad meeting. Apparently they are making
A LOT of changes dealing with ipads and internet proselyting, and we
have a four hour meeting on Tuesday with them to go over them. We will
all be getting new ipads because they are pretty much re-launching
ipads and internet proselyting in general. Internet Proselyting has
been going on for 5 years in this mission (I guess we were the first
mission to be on Facebook), but those 5 years were mostly an
experiment, so now they have finally narrowed down a system for the
best way of doing things, and there will be some big changes. It's
pretty exciting. Part of the re-launch might involve us not internet
proselyting for a month or two though. I think it is pretty much a big
cleansing process, because they are starting over and they want us to
take a break from the old way we were doing it, and then be ready to
start this new system they are introducing. It should be cool.


That's pretty much all the interesting stuff that is going in
my life right now.

Love Elder Holt

Week 70

Hey Everybody!

Sorry, it's been a few weeks. Transfer calls were this morning and 
I'm being transferred to Pittsford to serve as a Zone leader with Elder 
Ryser. 

It was unexpected since I was in the middle of training Elder Bates. 
I'm excited, but we had a sweet week and taught new people and I 
was totally stoked to keep teaching them, so I'm sad about that. 

Pittsford is over by Rochester, where I've never served before. I've 
been in the Buffalo area my whole mission and I feel weird about going 
there because Buffalo is like, my home. I know it so well and I know all 
the elders really well, and now I'm going to a completely different side 
of the mission, where I don't know anyone. I know Elder Ryser is a cool 
guy though so it should be good.

This week was way sweet though. Mostly because of one wicked sweet
appointment we had. So the other elders in our district have been
teaching this family. The mom is named Stephanie and she is being
baptized in February. She was talking to her parents who live in
our area, and she was saying how this church was different from
anything she's ever felt. She asked if her parents wanted the
missionaries over, and they said yes! So we went there and we taught
them about the Restoration and it was such a good appointment. They 
will totally be able to go to Stephanie's baptism and they have all these
family connections and its going to be sweet. I won't be here to see it
all happen though.

We got a few other new investigators this week, and we have some sweet
teaching appointments set up for this week that I was really excited
about. This areas teaching pool is growing and I'm excited to hear what
happens with the people we are working with. 

I'm sure I'll have a lot to say next week in my new area, and I will have 
pictures! I didn't get around to it this week because we didn't go to the 
library, but hopefully next week I can get those sent! 

OK, gotta get running, cya!
Love Elder Holt

Week 67

(From Jan. 5, 2015)

Hey!

Happy New Year all you crazy people. This week was good! Except I got sick all day Tuesday so we couldn't do anything, and then Elder Bates got sick all day Wednesday so we couldn't do anything either. Then we moved our weekly planning to New Years Day because we wanted to have Friday open so we could actually see people, Friday and Saturday were good! 

Our Stake is thinking about doing a once a month Sacrament Meeting in Niagara Falls because there are a lot of people that don't come to Lewiston because they don't have cars, so we've been put in charge of going through the ward list in Niagara Falls and trying to see if people will come to our mini-branch sacrament meeting. There are a TON of people on the ward list from Niagara Falls, so we've been going through every single name. It's been pretty fun though! We've been able do some finding as we go so it's been pretty productive! 

We usually park in Niagara Falls and then walk around to all the addresses that we have on 'lds tools'. That's what we did on Friday and Saturday. Saturday was crazy because there was freezing rain, so we got really wet and then all of the sidewalks were just ice. We found a new investigator though! We went to an apartment building to look for someone on the ward list, and a lady started asking about where we were from and who we were. She had recently started going back to church, so we talked a little about the restoration and she wants to meet next week! Woo! Her name is Alisha and she's really cool.

Most of the addresses that we go through have people that have moved. I would say there's a 30% chance with every address that we go to that the house has been vacant for a few years. We will go to a house and all the windows are broken and there's 3 or 4 city orders of cleanup stapled to the front door from 2011....but we always knock, haha. I'm guessing it looks really funny, and we get weird looks, because we will go up to the porch of these houses and knock when there is absolutely no chance that anyone has lived there in years, and then we'll turn around and people will be walking by giving us looks that are like "what the heck are you doing?" I can't remember if I've mentioned this but Niagara Falls is pretty run down. It has a worse crime rate than Buffalo, and I would say there are worse looking parts here than in the bad parts of Buffalo. So, yah, it's a fun time. 

That's all I've got for this week. We're going to go play soccer with some other elders today, but I don't know how it will go, because it's really really cold outside, but we're still going to try. 

OK, bye!

Love, Elder Holt

Week 66

(From Dec. 29, 2014)

Hey! 

It was Christmas this week! We did a lot of cool fun stuff. On Tuesday we went caroling with the Romero's, a family that we have a weekly dinner appointment with. Wednesday was our mission wide Christmas Eve Party, which was sweet because we never get together as a whole mission except on Christmas Eve. It was the bomb. We had a white elephant give exchange ( I got an old picture of a fish that I promptly threw away) and lunch was catered by a local Mexican Restaurant, and then we were able to just hang out. 

There was a talent show too, which was pretty cool. Elder Haines and I performed a song that I wrote about orange juice. I played the piano while he played the harmonica and we both sang, and we pretty much rocked everyone's socks off. Well sort of, haha. But anyway, Christmas was way fun. We went to a couple members houses and got fed a lot and then we skyped our families and it was awesome. Then our district went to Denny's for Christmas dinner. It was more crowded than you would think, plus they don't let you order off the normal menu, so you have to order off of their expensive holiday menu. 

The next couple of days we couldn't really do much because everyone was still with their families, so it was pretty slow. Things will pick up after the holidays are over. I can't wait for that. The holidays are like missionary kryptonite! Cya later!

Love, Elder Holt