April 11, 2016

Hello everyone! I don't know if you have the new mission blog (apparently they stopped updating the one on blogspot last may) but here it is! http://nevadarenomission.com/

Things have been pretty cool around here. My companion Elder Corry said that I would only see lightning about 2 or three times on my mission, and one of those times was earlier this week. This whole week has been really rainy, which is weird because it's Nevada. I loved it though, you forget how much you miss rain when you're living in the middle of a mountainy desert. The views are awesome though. The people are pretty cool too, and they'd be even cooler if they would just hear what we have to say... But I'm not bitter... Agency is an important part of Heavenly Father's plan, even though it can be super frustrating sometimes. It's funny, I think I actually know how He feels when I choose not to obey Him, and if I feel this bad about it, how much worse does He feel when His children choose not to accept Him. The fullness of the gospel is a tremendous gift that we have been given, but we cannot enjoy it completely until we try to share it with everyone we meet. (we don't all have to wear tags though) Every day I find myself feeling torn between wanting to feel bad that my brothers and sisters don't want to hear the wonderful news of the restoration, and not wanting it to interfere with the work. I always knew a mission was hard, but I could never imagine just why it was so. Don't think this means that I don't like being a missionary, although it's hard, I have the witness of an apostle of the Lord that the strength I don't have to complete the work here will be given to me if I give all the strength I do have. The work of spreading the gospel is the most important thing we could do in this dispensation. Whether it's talking to your neighbors and friends about what you believe or raising children in such a way that they will know to choose the right and be an example for others doesn't matter. We all should be continually focused on sharing the gospel in all we do.

Not much else happened this week... we're still working on filling our teaching pool...

Stay righteous!

Reno Zone Conference

April 4, 2016

How's it going everyone? I hope you had as wonderful a conference weekend as I did. I can't decide which talk was my favorite, but it's between President Uchtdorf's or president Nelson's priesthood session addresses. It's so different watching conference now that I'm a missionary. One thing that I learned was how to better forget myself and how to truly put my all into the work. It's amazing how you can learn something that is never said during general conference. 

Anna's car was stolen the other day and her social security card was in there, and so the lesson we were going to have with her last Tuesday was cancelled. I sincerely hope that this experience drives her to her knees and increases her faith rather than detracts from it. She told us to pray for her, which we definitely will, so it seems like she's taking it good thus far. We are also planning on setting two of our other investigators, B and his wife, with baptismal dates. He found a book of Mormon in a Marriott hotel and wanted to steal it, but he was forbidden by his wife. (we chuckled at that :) He then talked to one of his Mormon friends and he was referred to us to give him one. He has read everything we gave him and has read through Mormon in the Book of Mormon. He works in Winnamucca during the week so we can only see him on Saturdays, but every night he calls his family and reads to them from the Book of Mormon over the phone. Hopefully he's as gold as he seems. the one issue we run into with him though is that he loves to talk, and to make it worse, he's really good at it, and so we struggle to teach much of a lesson each time we go, but lately (thanks mostly to the resolve of Elder Corry) we are starting to make progress. We're going to try to get them to church for stake conference this Sunday.

I finished the Book of Mormon for either the 10th or 11th time the other day. With spending just about 35-40 minutes on it a day I was able to read it in just under 2 and 1/2 months. Upon doing so, I was thinking more upon the importance of the Book of Mormon in our lives. I realized that the Book of Mormon should be far more important to us than we usually see it as. It's just so rich and you can dig so deep into just a verse or two. The prophet Joseph Smith wasn't lying when he said that a man can get closer to God than by any other book. The Book of Mormon is powerful. So powerful that the word powerful isn't powerful enough to describe just how powerful it is. Not only is it just good to bring us closer to God, but it is the convincing evidence that Joseph Smith and every one of his successors are true prophets of God, and that this church is God's kingdom on the earth. When one truly knows this simple truth, that the Book of Mormon is true, you then can know that God is real, that God knows you, and that He has provided a way for us to return to live with Him again, and all other plain and so very precious truths taught therein are indeed, truth. Read the Book of Mormon, it will bring you more happiness than anything else. I know that it will.

Until next week! Stay righteous!

March 28, 2016

Hello everyone! Happy Easter! I hope you're having a great day today! biggest thing that happened this week? It's still happening, IT's SNOWING!!! dang this high desert life is weird yesterday was so nice and today we woke up to snow! and not just a little bit, like 8 inches, and still piling up! I can handle the extremes, but it's weird having them in the same week. And of course my parents are enduring the heat of Miami right now. The world is so wack right now...

First week with Elder Corry! I found out that I was relying waaayyy to much on elder Day's knowledge of the area... so yeah that's been an adventure, and our miles are pretty wrecked... but on the other hand, elder Corry is a super experience missionary, he goes home in July and he's coming up from Carson City where he was a zone leader. Now he's a district leader, so that means I get to go on exchanges with the zone leaders here! in just one week we made a program to help the wards get excited about missionary work, and despite the short notice all the ward leaders loved it! 

Here's the program: it's called "April Showers" when the members sign up on our dinner calendar, they fast on that day that they will be able to find someone to visit with the missionaries, and when the dinner appointment comes, they break their fast and tell us who they could find for the missionaries. 

The mission had a lot of success with this program last year so we thought we could try this again. So far, everyone's pumped!!

I don't think I mentioned this but everyone's super rich in our area, like Mercedes', BMW's, Audi's and Range Rovers are almost more common than the regular Toyota's and Honda's and such. We even saw this super cool "Alfa Romero" just sitting on the side of the road! I'm pretty sure it's worth more than a million dollars...

 (I'd send pictures but I'm pretty sure my camera's busted so I'll try to get elder corry to send them to me) I'm pretty sure it's all the rich people from San Francisco coming over because housing prices are cheaper here (they're still not cheap, trust me take one look at the houses here and you'd agree with me) Elder Corry was just blown away, he started his mission in Sun Valley, the 2nd (formerly 1st) biggest trailer park  in the world, and the most released convicts per ca pita, and now he's here...

With this easter season I've been thinking a lot about the atonement. We went to give this less active Man a blessing to help him stop smoking, I love that the atonement isn't just for sins, but it can also help us overcome addictions, pains, emotional or physical, and even just our little mistakes. I hope all of you choose to take advantage of this wonderful gift. As a missionary, I have the opportunity to help people to repent and become whole again. As I daily repent of my own sins, I gain a greater appreciation for the atonement, and thus a more fervent drive to share it with others. I hope all of y'all do the same!

Until next week!