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| Grillin' up burgers at Jonathan's house |
February 22, 2016
Hello everyone!
This has been a crazily awesome week! Honestly it has been a
very spiritual week, full of miracles!
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| Apartment flooded by the washing machine |
To start off, last week I uploaded a picture of our apartment
flooded by the washing machine...and no one was able to get to the problem
until Tuesday afternoon because of the President's Day holiday. So our
apartment smelled like mold for the first half of the week...but we are just
glad that it was taken care of.
Definitely a highlight of this past week was the exchange I went
on with Elder Woolsey. He is a STUD missionary who has only been out about 7
months, but he is rock solid. We had a total blast together in the YSA 1st Ward
in Reno. There are two YSA wards for the UNR campus, and he serves in one of
them. It was way fun serving there for the day. It was also kinda weird! But
they have actually been having tons of success the past little while, and many
young college kids have been joining the church. And the coolest part about all
of them is that they are all ROCK solid.
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| Exchanges with Elder Woolsey |
It really grew my testimony, because Elder Woolsey was telling
me about all of their investigators and recent converts, and 90% of them do NOT
have their parents support in joining the church, yet all are very solid. There
were a handful who hadn't even told their parents yet…they just get baptized
and hope it works out later down the road. It’s also funny because many of them
join the church because their boyfriend/girlfriend is a member, and many are
dating missionaries who are in the field right now. They had two convert
baptisms this past week, and I had the opportunity to interview one of them,
and she has such a strong testimony! She brought her study journal with her,
and it was so exciting and fun to see someone my age join the church who was so
pumped to learn about the gospel. Her journal was more full than my scripture
study journal!
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| Kenzie and Garrett after Kenzie's interview |
The other baptism that happened in the YSA ward we were able to
attend on Tuesday night. It was a girl named Kenzie who was dating another YSA
member, named Garrett. Garrett's parents live in the Prater ward in Sparks, and
so I knew his family fairly well. They would often have us over for dinner, and
they would invite Garrett and Kenzie, so I was actually one of the first
missionaries to teach her - just after dinner appointments. We then committed her to actually sit down
and take the lessons, so we passed along her information to the YSA Elders.
That was about 3 or 4 months ago, and she just got baptized this week! Kenzie's
parents are divorced, and her dad was totally cool with it, but her Mom was
totally against it. Her mom called her all sorts of bad names, and said that
she would never talk to her again if she joined the church. She offered her
alcoholic drinks on many occasions and tried to persuade her against it. Early
on in her teaching progress, the Elders promised her that if she read her
scriptures and prayed daily, her Mom would attend her baptism, and so Kenzie
took that promise to heart and made sure to read and pray every day while she
was learning and progressing towards her baptism. Two days before the baptism,
her Mom told Kenzie that she would NOT attend the baptism because she was
disgusted with her choice. However, on the day of her baptism, Kenzie's mother
showed up. She wasn't happy, and as soon as the service was over, she left
super quick, but the promise was fulfilled because she was faithful and read
every day and prayed every day. Kenzie said, "My mom wanted me to wait, to
make sure if it was what I wanted. But I told her 'Why would I want to wait for
something I know I am going to do regardless?' and besides, I couldn't wait any
longer to receive the gift of the Holy Ghost." Kenzie already has such a
strong testimony, it was awesome to see. Because Kenzie was baptized on
Tuesday, she had to wait until Sunday to be confirmed and receive the Holy
Ghost. We had a lesson on Friday with her while I was on exchanges, and she was
SO stoked to get the Holy Ghost. I had never seen anyone be so happy to be
confirmed before, it made me realized that I often take the Holy Ghost for
granted!
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| Garrett's family with Kenzie (on the far right) |
Serving in YSA was lots of fun. It helped me grow and get out of
my comfort zone, because I can talk to anyone about the gospel all day, but we
were street contacting on campus at UNR, and as soon as I was put in a place
with a bunch of people my age, it got really hard for me!! Thankfully Elder
Woolsey is a stud and showed me the ropes.
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| That is A LOT of meat! (Grillin' up hamburgers with Jonathan's family) |
We went and had dinner with Jonathan and his family this past
week, and it was a great experience. We actually cooked hamburgers for them,
and had the other 4 missionaries of the branch come join us, too. It was a
great opportunity for us to get to know Jonathan's mom better. We also had a
lesson earlier in the week and she really opened up to us and explained that
she has noticed good changes in Jonathan, but that she still had lots of
questions, because Jonathan hasn't been telling her anything about what goes on
at church. He just always asks for rides, and then never communicates about
what he learns or why he likes it so much. This bothered her, especially when
he then asked to be baptized without telling her anything. So we committed them
to pray together about baptism and the church, and she agreed. She is open to
let him be baptized, but it won't be this Saturday.
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| Stuck in the mud - Part One |
At dinner on Thursday, we were able to talk more about it and
get to know her better. We fired up their grill and grilled some burgers for
everyone (BTW, the weather here can't make up its mind, on Tuesday it was 70
and sunny, and then on Thursday we had a blizzard and got a few inches of snow,
and now it is 60s and sunny again...) But we had the food all ready, and then
the other two Elders were in charge of bringing the buns for the hamburgers.
They called us at about 5:05 pm and said, "Hey, come outside, we have a
surprise for you!" We were all confused about what it was that they had
for us, and so we went running outside, and found that they had gotten stuck in
mud, just like we had a few weeks ago!!! This time we knew what we were doing,
and then someone actually came out and pulled the other Elders out of the mud
with their Jeep that they had. We ran inside and ate quickly, and the other
Elders had to go because they had a baptismal interview for their investigator,
and so they really didn't have time to sit around and eat with us, they just
grabbed their food to go. We were hoping to have a nice lesson with Jonathan
and his family about the church and stuff after dinner, so we were happy.
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| Stuck in the Mud - Part Two (Elder Jarnigan trying to go four-wheeling in a Chevy Cruze!) |
About 3 minutes after Elders Romney and Jarnagin left, we heard
a knock at the door. We were joking that it was the Elders again, and that they
got stuck once more...and sure enough, we opened the door and Elder Romney was
on the door step and said that his companion and just driven into a ditch!! So
once again, we went tearing outside, and once again, the same dude who helped
the first time came and towed him out. I was helping attach the cable to the
Elders car, and my hands got FREEZING because it had snowed that morning, and
the mud was just like super cold, and the sun had gone down by the second time,
and my hands went completely numb except for my left index finger. It hurt so
bad, and for the rest of the night my hands were killing me!! But they are
still intact now, so no worries. By now this had taken like an hour of our
time, and we now were going to be late for our next appointment. So we went
inside and tried to defrost ourselves while we ate, and then we spoke briefly
with Jonathan's family, but mostly had to set up another appointment for this
evening. It was certainly a night to remember!!
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| Going on exchanges with Colton He was awesome. |
On Saturday, the Sparks stake had a mini-mission, where they had
all the youth ages 16-18 come to the stake center and then they paired us all
up with a mini missionary for the day so we could go on splits and show them
what its like to be a missionary for one day! I was paired up with this really
cool Priest named Colton, who actually lived at the member’s home, where I
lived in the Sparks loft back when I served in Sun Valley. I recognized him,
but I never got to know him very well. He was a super cool kid, and I was
praying all day to have testimony-building experiences that would help him grow
his testimony and his desire to serve a mission, and we honestly had a
fantastic day! We saw tons of miracles...like we knocked on this one guy’s door
who was a potential investigator that I had never met, and he didn't answer,
and then Colton was like, "maybe we should try his neighbor’s door!"
who was right across the hall from the other apartment. So we knocked on it,
and it turned out to be this super solid Hispanic family that agreed to let us
come back later this week!! It was cool to see that Colton could receive
inspiration, too. I want to stay in contact with him and hear about his future
mission experiences!
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| With our new favorite investigator |
We are teaching another man…I attached a picture of him, and he
is hilarious. He has been coming to church faithfully for the past few weeks,
but we haven't been able to teach him until this past week. He always shows up
to church super late, and then sleeps through all three classes!! He even snores,
and the whole branch looks back at him, so we have to nudge him to wake him up.
Then he speaks in this very loud, very deep, very raspy voice that is
impossible to whisper. He cracks us up. He is set for a baptismal date on March
12th, but we aren't sure if that is going to happen. I will keep you posted on
his progress.
Well guys, the church is true. I know it is. I have seen soooo
many miracles first hand to say other wise. I read Enos today in my studies and
he teaches us how we should pray... he says,
"I kneeled down before my Maker, and I cried unto him in
mighty prayer and supplication for mine own soul; and all the day long did I
cry unto him."
So he teaches us that we should kneel down, and "cry"
unto the Lord. In my mind this means making the prayer sincere. Like we have to
really want the things we ask for, and we need to really be grateful for the
things that we say that we are grateful for, and we need to be willing to act
upon the answers that we get to our questions. I know that Heavenly Father
hears and answers our prayers when we pray like Enos and kneel down and pour
out our hearts to him.
I love you guys, have a great week!!
Love,
Elder
Todd
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| Someone took this picture of Elder Romney and me out street-contacting |
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| With Alberto |
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| Romney's selfie of getting stuck in the mud |
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| Elder Freeman came back for a visit! |
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