Week 30 - Back in the Driver's Seat....Literally!!

Leadership of our zone from last transfer

April 13, 2015

Hey everyone!!

Well last night we made transfer calls....annnnddd I am staying. And I am getting a new companion, Elder Krey! He is freakin awesome. He served up in Quincy, California, and I spent a day with him on exchanges. (He is the one who I sang the California Elders song with). But I have actually known he was my companion since Thursday, because President told us early. On Thursday, we had zone training, and then afterwards we had a fun run/walk around the Sparks Marina to celebrate our mission-wide diet being over. We did it with the Sparks and Reno zones, so that was fun to see all of my old friends. 

This picture was taken 30 seconds before we found out
our transfer calls.  My new companion, Elder Krey,
is on the left!!!

Afterwards they gave us lunch and I was talking with Elder Krey and his comp, Elder Hawkes when President came and huddled us up and said, "Can you guys keep a secret?" And I knew immediately what was going on. President said, "Elder Todd you have your arm around your new companion, Elder Krey you have been called as a Zone Leader. Elder Hawkes you will be training a new missionary." We all started freaking out, cuz me and Elder Krey are pretty tight. I was in the MTC with his best friend from high school, so we had that cool connection. He still has a greenie fire, so I am really excited to get another fellow greenie like myself so we can tear it up. But I am back to being Senior Companion, and that means I get to drive again! I am SO freakin excited for this upcoming transfer. We sent 5 people home from our zone, but we are getting a few new awesome people. We also lost two companionships as President shut down two areas...the mission is still shrinking. Our zone had 17 baptisms in March, which was 10 more then the next closest zone! So we are hoping to keep that streak up!

Breakfast with the Quincy District Elders when they
came down for the night.

But Zone training was a lot of fun. Elder Klingensmith and I did a training and we started it off by giving a funny example of how to be terrible missionaries. It was hilarious; the zone got a kick out of it.

Also, Wednesday night we had 4 other elders stay at our mansion before Zone Training, and that was a lot of fun. I made them all muffins and eggs for breakfast the next morning...the ones you sent me for my birthday!!

So in regards to actual missionary work...we had a baptism this weekend!

Brother Dotson got baptized!!

Brother Dotson got baptized. He is the Old American Cowboy that I told you about. He is awesome. He is so down to earth. Not to mention he drives a big Ram diesel truck and drives trailers around for fun and had his own construction business back in the day. We had a lot of fun teaching him. He got into a terrible car accident 3 years ago, and so his memory isn’t great, but he truly has the desire to learn and understand the gospel. He listens to the Book of Mormon on CD while he works out in his yard. Elder Klingensmith baptized him, and I confirmed him yesterday in sacrament. That was cool.

Blizzard in April

I was able to go on exchanges and spend a day up in Truckee, California which is like a resort town right off of Lake Tahoe. It snowed like 4 inches while I was there.  It did NOT feel like April!! I wasn’t ready for the snow, so I about froze my feet off, but I lived. The work up there is hard because most of the people are rich and snotty, or they are tourists. The missionaries up there live in a TINY motel room...literally their whole place is the size of our study back at home (on Canoe Landing Court)...just imagine having a bunk bed, a fridge, a table with a hot plate to cook and a microwave, and two study desks all crammed in our study at home.  I was never so appreciative of our double wide trailer with two luxurious bathrooms and our own exercise room and all kinds of space!!

Yesterday we had a great discussion in gospel principles class about Heavenly Father. The thought came to me that truly in this life, the ONLY reliable thing is this gospel of Jesus Christ. Sometimes governments fail, businesses fail, countries fail, everything can fail – EXCEPT this Gospel. So truly we all need to do as we are told in Proverbs, when it tells us that we need to Trust in the lord with all of our hearts, and lean NOT unto our understanding. Any other way we fail, and we fall short. I am so grateful for our Savior, Jesus Christ. I know that he lives. I know that he loves us.

Well life is good here in Cold Springs!! I hope you all have a great week!! I love and miss you!

Elder Todd

On exchanges with Elder Fletcher in Truckee, CA.
Cute family fed us dinner and took us out for ice cream.

Tiny apartment in Truckee, CA...makes me appreciate
the huge double-wide that we live in!!

Tiny apartment in Truckee 

With Elder HAN!!!!  He used to live in Virginia -
 and we were in scouting together.
Now both speakingSpanish in the same mission!

Two of my favorite missionaries...Elder Sheats and Nieves

Our car covered in snow in Truckee, CA

Spent a day in Truckee with Elder Fletcher...funny coincidence
because he was my temporary companion for that first night
in the mission when I was so miserable...and here we are
six months later on exchanges and I am his Zone Leader! 

My "father"...Elder River...goes home next transfer!!

Posterity picture with Rivera...the grandpa of us all,
with my "son" and my "brother" 

The snow was bad for a while in Truckee 

My boy Elder Lewis 

Me and my son!! (Elder Short) 

Me and my homie Elder Nieves who I freakin miss!!

Exchanges with Elder Lewis 

With my homies from the CCM 

President Hermansen at the Zone walk/run

Brother Dotson and his wife and another missionary
that helped teach him a few transfers ago 

Elder Talbot...a friend who reminds me a LOT
of Chris Miller from back home

All the Span-Ams in the mission (except like 10) 

Burning Elder Klingensmith's clothes before he goes home

Week 29 - Word from COLD Springs

Cold Springs...my domain!

April 6, 2015

Hello YALL!

Elder Johnson and I...in the snow! 

What’s up?? Happy Easter!! How is life back in VA or wherever you are reading this?? Is it spring yet there?? Because it WAS spring here two weeks ago, but now we are back into winter. I think Heavenly Father played an April Fools joke on us, because I was on exchanges with Elder Johnson and it started snowing. And then we drove back to swap back with them and it was coming down!! And when we woke up Thursday morning, there was like half an inch of snow on the ground!! Like what the heck?? It’s been a little cooler here, and I am hoping for warmer weather!!

Mom...quick question...How do you do all that you do?? We are working with a few moms, who, like you, are super busy running around kids and school and some even work part time. Most of them put the church on the back burner and don’t read the scriptures often and don’t attend church regularly. So I just want to get your opinion on how you do it!! Because maybe I can share some of your ideas with the women that we work with. Sometimes I wish you could be my companion for a day and let you do all the teaching to some of the people we work with, because you would be perfect!! Oh well haha.

I got to watch "Meet the Mormons" this week! It is out on DVD (btw, can you send it to me so we can watch it with investigators and stuff) and President Hermansen told us that we should watch with the people we’re teaching. I thought it was great!! Honestly after watching it, it made me miss football like no other and made me want to coach when I get home!! I also loved the story at the end about the single Mom and her son.  That was great.  Here's a link to the "Meet the Mormons" trailer - the movie is incredible:

So General conference was awesome!! We were able to watch all 5 sessions with people we are teaching, and so it was fun! (How bout those bozos who screamed NO in response to the sustaining, huh??) Obviously a HUGE focus on families and marriage. It made me so grateful for the wonderful family that I have been blessed with. The only thing our family lacks is a beautiful ski boat...(Pops took care of that for a while but now someone else needs to step up...)

Old friends at the MLC

How is the missionary work back at home in the Goose Creek ward?? Have we had any new converts recently?? Are the Elders back at home working hard?? I sure hope so. I am actually excited to go out with them when I get home, I think that would be a lot of fun.

Well Happy Easter! I hope that we all have had the chance to reflect back upon our Savior and His sacrifice for us, and truly the greatest miracle of all time, his resurrection. It is magnificent. I know that as we strive to follow his example, and grow to become more like him that we will be lifted up at the last day, and through his grace we can receive exaltation. I know that he is Our Redeemer, and our Savior and our brother and that he loves us. I am so grateful for him and love him so much. I consider it an honor to wear his name on my heart everyday as a constant reminder of who I am representing.

Well I love you guys!! You are great!! Thanks for your prayers. I truly can feel that strength that can comes through your prayers. I don’t know what I would do without it.

Love,

Elder Todd

 

The child of a recent convert who works on ski boats for a living
has the same heart as mine...a Lego boat and trailer and truck!!!
I about died when he showed me!

More old friends

On exchanges with Elder Johnson

Cold Springs!!

Week 28 - Birthday Week

Birthday Banner sent from friends and family!!

March 30, 2015

Hey guys!!

Thank you all so much for the birthday banner and all the little letters with the notes, it was really a fun surprise to get a bunch of little notes from everyone. I have the best family ever!!! (And thank you, Mom, because I know it was probably all most all of your doing!!) I am super excited to use my new Quad for scriptures!!! It is awesome!!

Verduzco took us to dinner on Saturday

My birthday was actually great!! We had 4 investigators at church, including a Mom and her 9 year old daughter her came for the first time!! Her name is Candace. I'm sure you will hear more about her…she is very interested in the church, but she has two twin 2-year-olds who keep her busy. Our church starts at 11:00, which is right during their nap, and yesterday we stopped by her place after church, and she said that she didn't want to come back again because it was too hard on her with the kids. So we will keep praying that she will be able to come back again. It was awesome. We also had a ton of less active members that we have been working with, and so it was a great day. We got to teach the 3rd hour lesson about missionary work and we feel that it went pretty good. I forwarded the little handout we made and went over that with everyone and had them practice with their neighbors. It was actually a lot of fun.

I also discovered a new workout this week...wood-chopping. MAN it gets tiring after a while. We chopped wood for like 3 hours on Saturday morning for a less active member and this man had SO much wood. He had a wood splitter too, but Elder Klingensmith and I were just using axes and sledgehammers and all that good stuff and man I was just exhausted afterwards. And my hands are still super sore from it all too. But it was fun. I also got unlucky because one of the mornings I did the workout with 5 Pull-ups and 10 pushups and 15 squats for 15 rounds...and it was the first time I have done squats in like almost a year...and then the next day we walked probably the most I have on my whole mission. So I was hobbling around like an old man for a few days, it was pretty bad haha.

Driving to Quincy, CA
(California is a lot prettier than Nevada)

But this past week we were able to drive up to Greenville, California and have dinner with the Quincy Stake President. The drive was like 2.5 hours, but it was actually a lot of fun. And President Meyers lives on this awesome ranch...and I think I found what I want to do with my life. President Meyers builds custom homes for a living, and most of his work is building lake houses for the lakes up there in Northern California. And then they have a ranch with like 400 acres of land and a bunch of cattle and stuff. It is classified as a "Hobby Ranch" because it is big enough where they don’t have to hire help, but it definitely keeps them busy. They bought an old ranch house that was built in 1860, but remodeled it and everything. It just seems like

Stake President's Farm

the funniest thing ever. They live in the middle of nowhere, but I think it would be so fun to have a ranch like that and build houses for a living.

Things in Cold Springs are going well. We are just trying to build our teaching pool, and have been spending lots of time out and about and trying to find new investigators. So far not too much has come from it, but we are going to stay diligent.

Stake President's Barn

One funny thing that happened this week was that one morning while we were doing our studies we looked out the window and saw a bunch of people outside in the street - which is really uncommon, because nobody is ever on our street, it is pretty desolate. But we looked out and immediately identified them as Jehovah's Witnesses. And sure enough, we watched one of them come up and knock on our door. We answered it, and immediately he was like "Ohhhhh...uhhhhh" and it was funny cuz he seemed kinda scared of us. But he handed us some little pamphlet thing, and then we of course turned around and offered him a Book of Mormon. He declined, and then we offered to say a prayer with him, and he turned that down too. He was not too excited to see that it was us, and wanted to leave ASAP. We were surprised that he didn’t want to bash with us, because most JWs that I have run into always start bashing with us. But we got a kick out of that. I sent a little video clip as well.

Well that’s about it for this week!! Thanks again for all of the birthday cards and the banner, that was so much fun!!!

I love you guys, hope you have fun in Rosemary Beach!!

Love,

Elder Todd

Verduzco and Me

Stake President's Farm

More pics from the drive to Quincy, CA