Week 26

Hey Everybody!

So transfer calls came last night, and I am OUT. I wasn't expecting it and it will be really hard leaving Springville, but it is what it is. I'm being sent to Geneseo, which apparently is a little bit more populated than Springville. Springville was in the bottom left of the mission, and now I'm going to the center-rightish of the mission, below Rochester. A change will definitely be interesting.

 

So this week was supposed to be super packed and busy with teaching and then it wasn't. All of our appointments fell through. We were still busy with other things, just not the stuff we wanted to be busy with. It's all good though! Some weeks are just like that. 

 

So on Friday our branch had our "Chinese auction". Sister Barts, the lady I had a picture with, puts it on every year, and pretty much everybody brings stuff that they don't want to the church, and everybody gets raffle tickets and you put tickets in the cups next to the items you want, and then they just draw to see who wins. so there's actually no money involved, and I ended up winning a sweet hat that looks like the one Walter White wears in Breaking Bad. There was also a rooster up for auction but I didn't win it.

 

On Sunday, we went up to Amherst for training and then a fireside. The training was about helping members create mormon.org profiles, so that's another thing that we will be doing with our ipads. That should be fun.

 

Anyway, I think that's about it. I should have a lot to report next week with changing areas and stuff. Alright, cya later!

 

Love, Elder Holt

Week 25

Yo!

Man this transfer went by so fast. We only have one week 'till transfer calls. My companion thinks I'll be out but I think I'll stay in Springville one more. I've spent the first fourth of my mission here, this place is like home.

 

This week was pretty slow though. Most of our investigators just couldn't meet with us, and we had stuff going on in Arcade so we were out of our area for a couple days. We really want to make this last week good in case we're not together next transfer, so this week should be filled.

 

We were able to see Ray again this week. We went to breakfast with him on Saturday. He couldn't come to church this week but we should be able to see him a couple times this week. 

 

Well the winter is starting to calm down! It was in the 20's all week this week. I was able to wear my short sleeve shirts which I haven't been able to do for the last 3 months. I'm really looking forward to Spring, because all we can do on p-days around here is bowl and it is literally sucking my money away. On the bright side, I have gotten a lot better at bowling. I'm looking forward to when its warm enough to play sports though

. 

Well...I don't really know what else to say. Everything has been pretty low key lately, and nothing crazy has happened to us. I've suddenly started putting on weight though so that's a new development. I might come home fat just yet. Oh I forgot! so last night we were at the Owens for dinner, and they have missionaries do the "hot sauce challenge" and then video tape us doing it. Brother Owens bought this insanely hot, hot sauce 7 years ago, and he made us all do the challenge. He put some on a spoon and we all took it, and at first the kick wasn't that bad and I could handle it pretty well, but then after a minute my hands and feet started going numb, and also my face, and then I started getting dizzy, ha ha. It was ridiculous. I thought I could handle hot things but apparently not.

 

'till next week

Love, Elder Holt

Week 24

Hey!

It's been a couple of weeks. Nothing really happened the past two weeks, but this week was sweet!

 

On Thursday we got our ipads! Woo! We had a 3 hour training on them, but it will take a while to get used to them. We are supposed to not be using our daily planners within a week, but I really don't think that we can do that, because there is stuff that we write down in our planners that we don't have a spot to record in the "Area Book" app. The app is pretty sweet though. It decides automatically whether an investigator is progressing or just an "other" by the data we enter in for that person. We pretty much never have to use paper ever again for anything. The ward list is on there, and instead of printing out giant maps and color coding less actives and things like that, we can just go into google maps and enter in all the addresses of people. It is seriously the bomb. It helps us be wayyyyy more on top of things because we have to record what happened in lessons the same day it happened, and we have to make sure to record everything because numbers are reported automatically through the app. It'll make us be better missionaries though because we're more accountable!

 

On Friday, we got a call from Ray. He's the guy we almost slammed into, back at the beginning of January, and we towed his truck out. Anyway, we haven't been able to get in contact with him since then, but he called us on Friday and said he had some wood he needed stacked. We went that night because he wanted to show us what to do, and we ended up talking for a while about a lot of different things. The next day we came back with the other Elders from Arcade, and we stacked all the wood he had into his garage. The wood was covered in snow so it was hard to kind of find it all. Anyway, we invited him to church thinking he was just gonna be like "oh, I can't" but he was like "yah of course! give me all the info". Then he came to church the next day. I was pretty stoked because I haven't had an investigator at church my whole mission. All of our investigators either don't have a car or are scared to drive in the snow (even though they have lived in new york their whole lives). 

 

I think Ray liked it. He stayed for sacrament meeting and then had to leave. That might have been good though because people in our gospel principles class have a habit of getting into deep, deep doctrine that has nothing to do with a gospel "principle". Anyway, we are excited about him. I think thats about it for this week. I hope everybody's doing good! Ladies are welcome to send me valentines day packages.

 

Love, Elder Holt

Week 22

Sup!

Nothing too new this week. We had a busy week but it was with stuff that didn't really deal with our investigators. On Tuesday we had a wedding happen in our branch, and it was so an investigator that the senior couple (The Snyders) in our branch have been teaching could get baptized. It's a pretty cool story. The Snyders went to visit a less active named Cheryl, and she said she would come back if her fiance Larry went with her, and then he took the discussions, and they moved their wedding from August up to this past week, so he could get baptized as soon as possible. His 18 year old son Kyle wants to get baptized too so it's pretty cool. 

 

We still haven't been able to set a date with Chuck, which is just classic Chuck because he takes everything reeeaaaally slow. Our investigator Charlie wants to be baptized too, so we will hopefully set a date with him soon. 

 

Besides that though we mostly came up empty this week. There were 3 people that we were excited to go back to from tracting and they were pretty much all a miss. We couldn't make appointments with our progressing investigators either this week, but I'm sure this next week will be packed.

 

Tomorrow we are having zone meeting and then having a "zone p-day" which is cool because I have never had a p-day where I got to be in a gym.

 

Oh, so after the wedding on Tuesday, we went to this place in Holland for the reception/dinner, and they have a deal for unlimited chicken wings for just 5 bucks. What a steal right? I then proceeded to eat my weight in garlic parmesan chicken wings. We'll probably go back there again...

anyway, I hope everybody's doing good!

 

Oh here's a quote I saw this week. "Trying times are times for trying". I'm sure all of you are now extremely inspired...k bye

 

Love, Elder Holt 

Week 20

Yo!

So last night we got transfer calls. I pretty much had already started packing because I was sure I was getting moved, and I took pictures with everyone at church too. Instead they made Elder Lewis a Zone leader and moved him to Buffalo and I'm staying here. I'm really happy I'm staying though! this area is awesome and I didn't feel ready to leave, so that's good. 

This past week was pretty good. We didn't get to see everyone that we wanted but we still made some progress. On Wednesday night we went to the Methodist church to play basketball again. Everybody that played last time said hey to us and we're meeting some cool kids there. The Owens, a family from our branch, have their son, Nate out on a mission in Arizona right now, and we met this kid named Darnell who knows Nate really well, so hopefully we can talk to him more.

Oh yah, so a big storm/cold front came in this week, and we got a Mission wide text Monday night saying that if temperatures were under zero on Tuesday that we needed to stay inside. The snow storm missed Springville, but it was negative 7 all day so we didn't really do much. We drove to visit a couple people but that was about it. I'm guessing that Dad probably tracted in that type of weather in Finland all the time, so he'll think we're pansies.

Anyway, I think that's it. We spent most of our time this week working with a couple people/complicated situations that I would like to tell you about, but it would take a really long time to explain them fully and they wouldn't make sense if I only mentioned a couple things about them.

Alright, well I hope everyone has a great week!

Love, Elder Holt  

Here are some pictures...

                         

Sister Barts and I. She is 70 and her farm is still going strong.

  

Me and Dennis "The Legend" who Reigns

Me and Brother Becker

The truck that the other Elders "Totalled"!

The Daily Sunrise

Week 19

Hey Everybody!

I'm having trouble remembering what happened this week. It went by so fast. It hit -12 for a bit,
then it was 40 yesterday, then this week we are supposed to have a crazy, crazy snow storm
with -30 wind chill and stuff like that...should be fun.

 

We did have a cool miracle this week! On Wednesday, we were just having an off day. All of our plans fell through, and we really didn't have much energy either. We didn't know what we were going to do in the evening either because when it gets dark no one answers the door, and if they do they aren't happy about it. We got a text from Kelly saying we should come over for dinner. So we drove the 20 minutes to her house, ate, and we were driving back from Springville, and I was coming around a corner going decently fast (we were driving on snow) and I saw two cars stopped on the road, and one was sideways on the road, so I slammed on my breaks and we started skidding toward the car, and there was no way we were going to stop in time. Somehow I was able to steer the car just enough to the side while we were skidding to avoid hitting the other car. Then we got out, because this guy had gotten his truck stuck in a ditch on the side of the road. He had gone and got his other car to try and get his truck out, but he was having a lot of trouble. Anyway, we were able to get his truck out of the ditch with ours, and then he invited us into his house for a little bit. He asked us a lot about what we do as missionaries, and he was interested to hear more, but he was really sick so he said to come back another day. He's a recovering alcoholic and has been sober for 4 years, and just by talking to him he seemed like he's open to hearing what we have to say. So we are excited about him.

 

On Saturday we were able to go to the temple because a girl in our branch received her endowments (she's leaving on her mission soon) so that was fun to go up to Palmyra for half the day. I think thats about it for last week. Besides meeting that guy, I think we had a pretty normal week. I hope everybody's doing good!

 

Love, Elder Holt

Week 17 & 18

Hello,

Well I didn't write an email last week so I guess I have to cover a couple weeks. I think that nothing too big happened 2 weeks ago. Chuck did say he would be baptized though when we invited him, so that's sweet. We're going to try to see him more often so that we can speed up his growth because we have only been seeing him once a week. This past week was pretty crazy though, with all the Christmas festivities going on. 

 

On Monday last week we were driving to a dinner appointment and we pulled up to an accident, and it was actually the other elders in our district. they were going to an appointment the same direction and we pulled up like 30 seconds after their accident. Apparently there was a tractor that was driving on the road that didn't  have any lights on, except a tiny white light at the top that can barely be seen, and they just rammed into the back of it going around 55mph. The kid driving the tractor was completely fine, and the elders didn't have any injuries at all, but the truck was wayyyyy totaled. We hung around till everything was cleared up so that we could give them a ride, and it took almost 2 hours for everything to be sorted out. That was pretty crazy.

 

The next day was the Christmas Eve mission party, so we all drove up to Rochester for that and that was awesome. We got to hang out pretty much all day and there was a talent show and stuff. It was pretty fun. We also were given a brand new 2014 Chevy Silverado while we were there, so now we get to drive that around. It's pretty awesome. Then the next day was Christmas! We got to go to a few members houses and we also got to skype which was really nice. I appreciate all the packages and stuff too! I have sooooo much candy though, and I don't want it to go to waste so I've just decided that once a day one of my meals will just be candy. So far that's been horrible and I just feel fat and gross.

 

Thursday through Sunday were just normal days. On Saturday we went to the Myers, the people that have the goats and stuff, and we helped them clean out their chicken coup. I'm not going to lie, that was straight up disgusting. Chicken crap is the worst smelling thing I have ever encountered. I was trying to breath through my mouth the whole time, but sometimes I would accidently breathe through my nose and I would almost throw up. At least I know how to clean a coup now, I'm sure that's a skill I can utilize later in life. Anyway we're supposed to have a big storm this week and I am not looking forward to it. Enjoy the 80 degree weather you Californians. Alright bye!

 

Love, Elder Holt