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Driving around in the van and trailer this morning
to open up new apartments and such |
August 17, 2015
Hello everyone!!
How is everything back at home?? How are the fall sports going??
Sounds like we have a family of full of runners and I am the odd one out! I
need to start running more, so I can keep up when I get home.
Well, like the subject line suggests, tomorrow is transfer day!!
I can't believe it, I feel like transfers are like every 6 days instead of
every 6 weeks. This past transfer went crazy fast. We spent the past week
mostly in President's office, making arrangements and setting everything up for
the upcoming transfer. The last two transfers we were
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| The lunch room in the mission office |
shutting down areas and
combining them, and now this transfer we are opening up 6 new areas, and
closing one area that was just not productive at all. So it has been a
different ball game, we have had to find new apartments, and figure out who we
need to take a car away from, because we now have less cars than we do areas.
We have also had to find 20 new trainers, and so we have some missionaries who
are opening up a new area and training a new missionary at the same time, which
is always a little harder. Elder Rivera had to do the same thing when he
trained me, he came from the Elko side of the mission and we opened up a new
area together. So it has been a good week. I have absolutely loved working with
President Chesnut and the chance that it has given me to get to know him
better. It turns out that President and Sister Chesnut love to play tennis, so
I told him that one of these P-days we will have to go and play. (Hopefully I'm
not too rusty that I embarrass myself...!)
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| Transfer planning |
It has been such a neat experience to help plan for transfers.
It took us about 3 days to figure out what areas to open, and all the new
companionships, and who is training and so on and so forth, and then it took us
about 2 days to make all the plans for the transfer, like all the specific
instructions and figuring out the car exchanges and housing issues. And then on
Friday we found out that one missionary who was a visa waiter assigned to our
mission got his visa, so we had to make a bunch of changes. And then over the
weekend we found out that two different members who were housing missionaries
basically kicked the missionaries out, so now we have to find more housing, and
sadly we have a really bad mission-wide bedbug problem, which never helps
either!! And then about an hour ago we found out that we lost one more
missionary, so we might have to make some more changes...it just never ends.
But honestly it is fun and it is cool to see the Lord's hand in all of it –
like we first had the board all set up and everyone matched up, but President
Chesnut came in the next day and said, "ya know guys, I just don't feel
good about a few companionships, we need to make a few changes." So we
changed a few things and now we all feel good about it.
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| Sister Allred's dinner she set up for us!! |
We didn't have much time to proselyte this past week, but we
made the most of it. We had a really cool thing happen this past week…a single
sister in the ward signed up to feed us dinner, but then last minute she got
called in to work at the temple. She called in and ordered pizza for us, and
had her neighbor come over and eat pizza with us, and it was so much fun! She
set it up perfectly, because not too long ago she gave him a copy of the Book
of Mormon and so we were able to follow up on that and establish our purpose
with him, and set up a return appointment with him. It turns out that his
daughter is a member of the church, and he has had a chance to attend Sacrament
meeting many times in the past! So we are excited about him.
Teresa is still doing well. It is funny because she loves the
church and loves us and wants to be baptized, but she just can't find a place
to move into! She is living in a really rough part of town and her roommates
are a terrible influence on her, so we have been praying that she will be able
to find a new place to move to.
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| The mission office |
This upcoming transfer should be a lot of fun. For starters, in
10 days we will have a mission tour with Elder Snow (a member of the 70) and we
are going to be traveling across the mission with him for 2 days. Then at the
beginning of September we will be having our first round of zone conferences!!
I am super excited for those, to really get to interact with all the
missionaries in our mission, and get to know those that I don't. It should be a
fun transfer.
So we have been struggling to get investigators and less active
members to church lately. It is an ongoing struggle that missionaries have, and
aside from Teresa, really no one has come to church in a while. So we have been
teaching many people the doctrine behind the Sacrament, because we all know
that "if any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine…" or
in other words, "Doctrine Understood is Doctrine Lived." We know that once people truly come to
understand the doctrine behind the importance of coming to church and taking
the sacrament, they will instinctively come to church. What better way to do
that, then to read from the Book of Mormon, right?? 3 Nephi 18 is a great chapter that gives us the
commandment to partake of the Sacrament...Verse 12: “I give unto you a
commandment that ye shall do these things (talking about partaking of the
Sacrament) and if ye shall always do these things blessed are ye, for ye are
built upon my rock.” Wow!! Pretty
powerful stuff. Most people we read this
with are always pretty shocked that taking the sacrament is a commandment, not
just a suggestion or a bright idea.
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My home for the past week - haha!
(The mission office) |
I am so grateful for the chance that we have to partake WEEKLY
of the Sacrament. What a huge blessing it is. I know I take it for granted way
too much, and I often just take the little bread and water and pass it on
without really realizing what I am doing. I know that we can truly renew our
covenants with our Father in Heaven as we partake of the bread and water. I
know that it is an extremely sacred ordinance and we should not take it for
granted or take it lightly.
That's all I have time for today, but I hope that everyone has a
great week!! The mission is great. I am loving every minute of it!
I love you guys!
Love,
Elder
Todd
