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| Selfie in the van with the new missionaries! |
July 13, 2015
Hello everyone!
Whats up? Sounds like a lot of fun stuff is going on outside of
the mission field!! All sorts of camps and vacations and fun! Especially the
Claytor lake trip...that sounds like a TON of fun, we might have to do a Todd
family high adventure version of the Claytor Lake trip when I get home....
Well, as the subject line suggests this past week was President
Chesnut's first transfer with us and it was nothing short of crazy haha. We had
22 missionaries leaving, and 17 incoming, and so it was a crazy day on Tuesday
for all of us, and Elder Freeman and I spent a lot of the day driving around in
the van and trailer! (which I will NEVER complain about...) I'll give you a
brief run down of the day:
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| At the airport |
8:00am - Set up the Prater building (next to the mission office)
for all of the meetings and orientation and meals that we will have for the
day.
9:00am - Departing missionaries arrive, and we weigh their
luggage and put it in the trailer
10:00am - We take the departing missionaries' luggage to the
mission home, and then take them
to the temple for a session.
11:00am - Go from the temple to the airport, where we pick up
the incoming missionaries. One of the flights was running late so that messed a
lot up, but oh well!
12:00pm - Take the new Greenies back to the Prater building and
have a short lunch with them, and then we begin their orientation by giving a
short presentation on the Atonement and missionary work.
1:00pm - Go back to the temple to pick up the departing
missionaries, and bring them back to the Prater building.
2:00pm - Have big lunch with all the incoming and outgoing
missionaries
3:00pm - Take down and set up tables for the meetings in the
evening and brief break
4:00pm - The trainers for the new missionaries arrive and we
train them on how to be a trainer.
5:30pm - President Chesnut finishes his interviews with the Greenies,
and we meet in his office to decide the match-ups of the trainers and the
trainees. (Cool experience… I'll talk more about it later)
5:45pm - Everyone for the transfer meeting gathers in the gym
and we announce the greenies and their trainers...this part is a TON of fun
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| Departing dinner with Elder Freeman and Elder White |
6:00pm - We move into the chapel and have the transfer meeting
7:30pm - We send everyone home
7:45pm - We have dinner with the departing missionaries
8:30pm - Devotional with the departing missionaries, and then we
take down all of the chairs and tables for the day, and get the van ready to go
out to Elko in the morning.
9:45pm - Go home and plan for the next day
10:30pm - Collapse in bed and sleep like a rock
So that's a brief overview of our Transfer day! It was a total
blast, but I was exhausted at the end of it, and my back hurt because we moved
so much luggage all day! But oh well, I need it because I no longer get to move
rocks for a living to have a strong back.
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| Got our free Slurpees on 7-11 |
But my favorite part of the day is picking up the Greenies from
the airport!! It is so fun to wait at the bottom of the stairs, and see them
come down all excited and stuff, it is great! And this group that just got here
is awesome, they are all a bunch of studs!! Especially the sisters, we have
some great new sisters who just came in who are sharp and ready to get to work!
It was fun to have lunch and get to know all of them and work with them
throughout the day.
One of the most spiritual parts of transfer day was when we
matched up the Greenies and their trainers. President Chesnut barely knows the
trainers, all he had to get to know them was a brief handshake and a hug, but
we knew the trainers pretty well. He knew the Greenies pretty well because he
actually was in the MTC with them haha, and got to know them a little bit then.
So the night before transfers he said he went into a room and had pictures of
the Trainers and the Trainees and prayed about each one individually, and then
sat down and matched them up based on the little he knows and the Spirit. Then,
on Transfer day, after he completed the interviews with all the new incoming
missionaries, we raced over to his office and knelt down and prayed that we
could match them up. Then we told him who we thought would be good match-ups,
and why. Then he looked at his list that he made the night before, and it was
the same except for like 3 companionships. It was amazing. I felt the Spirit so
strong as I saw how President Chesnut can receive revelation for the
missionaries that he barely knows!! It was so cool. I know that God truly
qualifies those he calls.
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| Goodbye Elder Brush :( |
The most spiritual part of the day, however, was the transfer
meeting itself. The departing missionaries had the chance to share a brief
testimony with all the other missionaries, and it was so powerful. Especially
because the last two people to share their testimonies were Elder Twitchell and
Elder White, and they both gave great testimonies...and I was an emotional
wreck! I was sitting up their on the stand just crying like a baby and trying
not to show it!! But man those two Elders were great missionaries, and even
though we were only together for 6 weeks, the 4 of us grew really close, and I
miss them so much already!!! They were great examples to me and I learned so
much from both of them. (Elder White sent a picture of him kissing his
girlfriend to Isaac with instructions to show Elder Freeman and I the other day
and we got a kick out of that hahaha.)
Wednesday, the day after transfers was crazy, too, because we
had to help take people to the airport and get them dropped off, and I said
goodbye to Elder Brush, who I was pretty close with :( And then we rode with President back to the
airport in the afternoon to go and pick up a Sister who is serving in the
Temple Square Mission, but gets to spend two transfers here in our
mission...and I actually know her because she and Braedon Bird were friends back
at home. (Small world!) And then we had to update the mission office phone
contacts and the President's contacts, because after the transfers everyone
gets moved to a new area and has a new phone number and stuff...so that took
like 5 hours because we couldn't figure it out!
In the middle of all
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| Selfie with Isaac and Verduzco |
We had MLC on Friday, and that was a total blast because almost
all of my mission friends are Zone Leaders now, so it was fun to be with them
all day. But basically we didn't have much time to proselyte again this past
week, but I am looking forward to having this whole week to proselyte like a
normal missionary!! We have a senior couple that serve in our ward with us, and
they are awesome. Elder and Sister Buetler are just great!! They cook all three
of the meals for the missionaries on transfer day, which is no small task
because we have like 30-50 people eating at each one, which is a lot of food!!
And it's good food, too! They are a huge help on transfer day, and they cook
great food, too!! (Which can be hard when cooking for big groups!) But they
also love coming with us to lessons, and giving people rides, because we can't.
A few weeks ago we ran into a woman named Teresa, and she was outside smoking
on her porch. I was with a priest from the ward at the time, and we were on
splits, but Matthew and I went up and talked to her, and she expressed interest
in learning more, so we started teaching her! We got her going to the ARP
Program (Addiction Recover Program) each week with a member in our ward who was
willing to take her, and it is helping a lot! She loves going and she wants to
quit smoking and drinking, and she is slowly waning off! When we first met her, she smoked half a pack
of cigarettes a day, but now she is down to one every other day...so we are
happy about her progress! She is set with a baptismal date for August 8th, and
we are pretty confident that she can make it. The Buetlers have been a huge
help for her, because Teresa doesn't have a car, so they have been taking her
to church and took her to a baptism on Saturday, so that she could watch. The
Buetlers also make sure that we get fed each night. They always pass around the dinner calendar
and call people to get it filled up, it is great!!
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| Me and my comp - Elder Freeman |
Elder Freeman and I were given basically free reign to talk
about whatever we wanted in MLC for Friday, and we only had one day to plan our
training and prepare, so on Thursday, during our study time, we studied and
thought about what we could train on, and we both had the exact same two topics
come to our heads, it was so cool!! He told me when we started our
companionship study that he felt good about the sections "personal
revelation" and "pray with faith" from PMG (Preach My Gospel),
and I literally had the exact same two sections written down as my thoughts. It
was a huge testimony-builder to us that it was what the leaders and the
missionaries need to hear about! So it made it easy to plan our training haha,
when we both were on the exact same page.
I have grown to really love my hour of personal study that I get
each morning. I have broken it down so that each day I spend 20 minutes
studying from PMG, 10 minutes from the Book of Mormon, and 10 minutes from the
New Testament, and that leaves me with 20 minutes to study whatever I need to
study for that day. I just started that pattern recently, but I love it! I have
had some of the most effective study sessions ever, it is great! But recently
in my Book of Mormon study I have been studying King Benjamin, and man he is
such a STUD!! I love him. I think he is one of my new favorite prophets from
the Book of Mormon. He teaches such great stuff, and what an experience it must
have been to be there for his "general conference" of sorts. I really
like what he teaches, and today something that really stuck out to me in Mosiah
Chapter 4 was the following in verses 17 &18:
“Perhaps thou shalt say: The man has brought upon himself his
misery; therefore I will stay my hand, and will not give unto him of my food,
nor impart unto him of my substance that he may not suffer, for his punishments
are just…But I say unto you, O man, whosoever doeth this the same hath great
cause to repent; and except he repenteth of that which he hath done he
perisheth forever, and hath no interest in the kingdom of God.”
I think those verses stuck out to me because I am guilty of
doing that so many times!! Too often I think to myself, "Oh those people
got into their situation because of the poor choices they made, and so they
need to figure it out on their own." But King Benjamin teaches us that if
we think that, we need to repent!! And then in verse 19 I like the famous line,
"Are we not all beggars?"
Because it is so true. We are all beggars, and because of that we need to help
those around us, regardless of their situation and how they got into it. And I
am SO SOSOSO grateful for the chance that I have to do that now, and to help as
many people as I can come closer to Christ. It is truly a blessing in my life,
and the past 10 months or so have been the best of my life!
I love you guys!! Have a great week, the church has never been
truer!!
Love,
Elder Todd
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