Week 12

Yo,

 

So it's officially open season out here. Saturday opened rifle hunting, so everyone around here was out in the forest on Saturday. Seriously everyone. Actually everyone that had a beard was out. You can tell who the hunters are because they all have thick gross beards. They think they are all really tough just because they look like the guys on Duck Dynasty. Everyone loves that show out here. Another thing about hunters is that they will not hold a conversation with another human  being if that human being does not hunt. Here’s how most of my conversations with men go around here.

 

Me: How's it going?

 

Bearded guy: Alright. Just went hunting today.

 

Me: Cool

 

Bearded guy: You like to hunt?

 

Me: No

 

Bearded guy: ……

 

They will then proceed to not talk to me and/or say condescending things to me (“do you even know what a 6 point is”) as if my only purpose in life is to take up space. Its fun.

 

Anyway, this week was really packed with stuff. We combined our areas because we are a temporary trio, so we had a lot of people to see this week. Everyday from Tuesday to Saturday was stacked. We had to skip dinner a couple times too. It was the most fun week of my mission that's for sure. I didn't think that I would ever be that busy.  I can't really pick out what we did on each day because its kind of a blur. The investigators that we inherited from Elder Klumker are Christian, Ray, Denny, Stanley and Dorothy, and the Dispenzas. Christian is the guy that I mentioned like 7 emails ago that had the drug problems.  He’s doing alright. He still is trying to get off alcohol, and he’s waiting to see if he can get approved for detox. He came to Stake Conference with us yesterday though so that was good. We’re really excited for Tuesday because we’re going to go to Palmyra and see all the Sacred sites with him. Its going to be sweet.

 

I’ll talk about everyone else as I get to know them. Nothing new happened with any of the investigators that I've mentioned before. I don’t really know what else to tell you. It snowed this week. Now its all melted. I can’t really think of anything else that was interesting this week. We had stuff to do but nothing noteworthy happened.

 

Oh, I forgot to put this in last week but we had zone conference 2 weeks ago and President Francis told us this really funny story. He was telling us how he always dreamed of dunking in a basketball game and all through high school he never did. Then it was his last game of the season against their rival, and he was like “so I got the ball on a fast break with 30 seconds left, and I was going to the hoop and there was a defender coming on-AND THEN I DUNKED IT!!! YAHHHH!!!” He screamed it so loud out of nowhere and had this terrifying look on his face, ha, ha. It was so funny but we were all trying not to laugh that hard because we were still in the chapel, but it was so funny. I love President Francis.

 

Alright well have a good week everybody.

Love, Elder Holt

Week 11

Hey People!

 

Yesterday was Veterans day so we couldn’t write, but The Owens had all their kids off from school and they were going to the “National Museum of play” up in Rochester so we went with them. They have a 15 passenger van so the 6 elders in our district went up with them. It was pretty fun, except by national museum of play, they literally mean national MUSEUM of play. They had things to do, but most of the time I was looking at toys I wanted to play with that were tightly secured in glass cases, and then they had a bunch of signs all over the museum that said “learning IS playing!” to rub in how much you weren’t playing. It actually was pretty fun though and there were some interesting exhibits.

 

Anyway, things have been changed up again, except this time it was in the middle of the transfer so it was really unexpected. We had Zone conference on Friday and after that President Francis pulled the four of us that live in Springville aside, and then he pointed at me, Elder Lewis, and Elder Klumker and said “starting Monday you guys are gonna be in a trio, and Elder Knudson you’re being transferred to Amherst.” Apparently an elder that is going home at the end of this transfer has to leave 3 weeks early for military reasons, so Knudson's going there and that leaves the 3 of us in Springville. So now that we’re with Elder Klumker we now have 10 investigators that we’ll have to plan around, which is pretty funny because on Thursday Elder Lewis had suggested that we should fast for opportunities to teach more people, so we did, and then the next day we inherited Klumkers 7 investigators. Besides that this week was pretty normal. On Tuesday we had service, on Wednesday we had service, and then Thursday we finally got to see Joe and Amanda. I don’t know if I've mentioned them, but they are a couple that live downstairs in our complex and have a 3 month old baby. We met them a few weeks ago and they said we could come by, so we went down there and we got to know them, and then we left them with a Book of Mormon and we’re coming back this week to talk more about it. They’re pretty cool so I'm excited to meet with them.

 

Friday we had Zone conference which was sweet. I love having President Francis as a Mission President. I love Zone conferences, and hearing what he has prepared. On Saturday we pretty much just tracted and tried to go see people that said we could come back from previous tracting, but nobody was interested. This week will be really interesting though because it will be packed with seeing people. It will also be weird because we’re only gonna be in a trio for 3 weeks, and then we will probably get another elder in Springville so it will be interesting to see how all of that works out.

 

It snowed last night, about 5-6 inches. I think it's here to stay.

 

Alright well I hope everyone is doing well. Letters are welcome around 100% the time.

 

Love, Elder Holt     

Week 10

Hey everybody!

So this is gonna be really short because nothing happened this week. We did service all day Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and then I got sick on Saturday so we couldn't do much. Our service has just been more chopping wood, doesn't get much better than that.

 

We couldn't meet with JP this week. We met with Chuck, but he didn't read so we have another appointment next week. Marie fed us food and we left her a Book of Mormon, and Ed moved to Florida so he's way gone. The missionaries there will get a good referral. So that's it.  

 

Halloween was fun though. The night before we had 'trunk or treat' and it was a really good turn out.

 

Alright well gotta go. I am fully aware that this email was kind of lame. 

 

Love,

Elder Holt

 

 

Week 9

Hey People!

This week was good. It was a little weird at first because I suddenly had to plan everything with my new companion, but its normal now. My companion is a really good missionary, I've learned a lot from him so far. I don't think I have too much to report though.

 

We went and saw JP again. It was exactly the same as every other visit has been with him lately. He did agree to read the Book of Mormon, if we read the New Testament though. Its funny because he's  trying to convince us that the Bible is true and we're like, yah we know. We'll read the New Testament if it gets him to read the Book of Mormon. Our other investigator, Ed has been stuck in some other city because his van broke down. We couldn't see him all week which was a bummer because I was really excited to meet with him. Hopefully he can make it home this week.

 

We also met with out investigator Chuck. I don't know if I told you guys about Chuck, but he owns an antique shop, and for months he's told the missionaries that he would read the Book of Mormon "when he has time". We were finally able to get an appointment with him to read, but he had already read 10 pages and just asked questions the whole time. It was great because he apparently has two history degrees or something and he kept on saying "its amazing how much this just makes sense and fits in with history". It's funny because thats the first thing he noticed when people usually wont pick it up at all because they think its historically inaccurate. He really likes reading it so far and he wants to read more and then have us come back to ask questions. I'm excited about him. Oh also, we met this lady tracting a few weeks ago. her name is Marie, and she said that she didn't want us to "preach" to her, but she said we can come back to see if she needs any service. Well we went back this week, and she weirdly invited us in and fed us these danishes she was making and gave us milk, and then invited us back for pies on Friday. We were a little weirded out because we thought we might have a Hansel and Gretel situation on our hands, but it turns out she is just ridiculously nice. she really likes having us over and she's also becoming more curious about us so thats great. Besides that we just did service and did normal missionary stuff. It snowed this week so that wasn't cool. 

 

Alright BYE

Elder Holt

Week 8

Hello family, friends, and other people,

SOOOO Big news. My companion was just called to be a zone leader, and he was only 6 weeks into training me. I'm pretty sad about it since it was really unexpected and I really like him, and also he was training me so I'll have to figure out how to function without him. I'm getting a new companion and he'll have to finish training me, but he's never been in this area so I guess I kind of have to lead for a few days. That will be weird. 

 

Anyways, I just got back from playing 27 holes of golf with 3 other elders. They had a deal where it was 20 bucks for unlimited golf with a cart, so of course I was going to spend the rest of my money for the month to play. It was pretty fun, except it was the worst round of golf of my life.

 

So last week was fast. We did more service, like painting and mowing and raking, we saw JP for like 15 minutes in his shop and he once again just went and talked to his pastor about everything he told us and then got a world religions book so he could read about Mormons. Its like he's doing everything to learn about Mormons and find out what we believe except reading the Book of Mormon. We have another "Bible study" (thats what he calls it) scheduled with him on Wednesday so we plan on going over the restoration again and then re-encouraging him to read the Book of Mormon. We also went over the Ed's once. We did some service for him too and I think he said we can teach him a lesson this week so we'll do that too.

 

So after we saw Ed last week, Elder Allen wanted to go see a less active lady that lived near by. She is old and hasn't been seen in a while, so we went to the address and as we pulled into the drive way we saw four really angry looking pitbulls chained up to various parts of the house. We both screamed "nope!" and then drove away. We called her house though and her number had been taken by someone else so we don't know what happened to her. 

 

So I think that's about all the interesting news from this week. I wish I had more to tell you, but I can't really think of anything else. Anyways, I love everybody, and don't be shy to write me a letter, physical letters are fun. K BYE

 

Elder Holt

Week 7

OY!

So myldsmail.net wasn't working for the first half hour of my writing time today, so I'm pretty much out of time. I'll try to write a good letter next week though! We had a lesson with JP about the plan of salvation and it went pretty good. He's still stuck on some stuff with his religion though. We'll see where he goes, we basically just said, "stop googling stuff and pray about it" so hopefully he does. We have a new investigator whos name is Ed. We were driving to someones house for dinner, and we had all 4 elders in the car, and we saw someone on the side of the road and it looked like he was having car troubles. We pulled over and he was just checking his oil for some reason, but he's a really sensitive guy and was grateful that we stopped. He said we could come visit with him, so Elder Allen and I went over there on Friday. He's a really lonely guy with health problems. he said he's open to new ideas though so he agreed to read the Book of Mormon and we thought he would come to church on Sunday, but he couldn't make it. Anyways I gotta go, but everyone should watch this video: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5FxdCgD-qI

Alright till next week!

Love Elder Holt

 

Week 6

Hey Everybody!

Once again, uneventful week. Conference was sweet, though! I loved it. It was the quickest GC of my life because I was so into it and it just flew by. I got so much out of it. Everything is going great.

We mostly did a lot of service this week and we went back to talk to JP. He didn't read but he said we can set up appointments with him right when he closes his barber shop so that's great!

I'm cutting it short this week because time is low and I want to attach these pictures.

Elder Bailey, me, and Elder Hart in front of the Provo Temple. (While still at the MTC) It was sunny so we were squinting.

Elder Hodson and I (one of my best friends in the MTC)

The is the view from the deck of one our our branch members homes. It's fall so everything is colorful. (Springville, NY)

Our sick risk game we played today.

 Alright, I love everybody,

Elder Holt