October 31, 2016

Happy Halloween!!!

We went to the temple this week! But elder carpenter wrecked his ankle... But there is a girl who wants to be baptized! AND her mom is good with it! AND our zone leader (he's a solo zl) and his greenie got famous for dressing up as the Book of Mormon and the bible!

So yeah, It's been a pretty good week...

The temple was awesome! We went with the other Sparks zone on Thursday. I'm so happy I'm in a zone that is able to go to the temple! Those 4 months in Fallon were awesome, but I wasn't able to go to the temple, but oh how I longed to go back...

For whatever reason, I had a super strong desire on Sunday to testify to someone about the Book of Mormon (man, I must be a missionary... :) and so I prayed that I would have the opportunity to testify to someone at church about the Book of Mormon. Well it turns out that there was a missionary farewell at church, and during the announcements, NOT EVEN BEFORE CHURCH, the first councilor in the bishopric asked me to bear my testimony... So I got up there and testified of the book of Mormon and the Prophet Joseph Smith and challenged everyone there to pray for someone to share a copy with. Guys... God answers prayers!! It's true! Even though I had no expectation of being asked to share my testimony in sacrament meeting, I was still able to testify of the Book of Mormon.

Dang what a rush! Well that's about it!

God be with you 'til we meet again!

My Zone Leader and his companion

October 24, 2016

What's up everybody! First week in sparks and I stumbled into a baptism! So that's a total of 4 baptism just this week! Their names were Ed and Dee E., they had been taking the lessons for 6 years on and off, and they just got baptized on saturday! So, needless to say, this has been an awesome week.

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!!!!

We had one of the members bring their friend to the baptism and feeling the spirit so strong, she decided she wants to be baptized as well!!!!

I love Sparks...

Other than that, my new area is a lot like South Meadows and Foothill, with sort of an upper middle class feel to it. one of the biggest differences is that a couple months ago, the Sparks stake was split, and all the wards were realigned. so both wards are really new with completely different leadership and everything, so both are awesome and excited wards in regard to missionary work. Once again, my Sundays are super long, with Red Hawk meeting at 9 in one building, and then Spanish Springs meets at 1 in another building across town, neither of which are in the east stake... But having gone to church with them, I can say that these wards are super awesome! When the split happened I swear they took the most awesome members in the area and stuck them in these two wards.

Well that's about it! Until next week!

Stay Obedient Y'all!

When I asked if he had received the package we sent the week before transfers, this is the reply he sent:

No, I didn't get it, so I'll probably see it sometime next month... Sparks is awesome! Elder Carpenter and I were both trained by Elder Corry, so that means we're Half brothers! 

Just for future notice, transfers are every 6 weeks on a Tuesday, so six weeks from six days ago will be another transfer, just for future notice that is a hazardous time to send stuff.

As for Christmas? I've been needing a new watch ever since mine lost the thing that holds the flappy thing broke...

It only ever feels like spring here, it gets "chilly" but never cold, not like MN anyway.

Here's some pictures from my week!

Last picture with Elder Sorenson with Mimi and Aniah who were baptized.

First picture with new companion Elder Carpenter? He didn't label it.

Last photo with the Fallon missionaries

October 17, 2016

Reno is so close to Hell, you can see Sparks...

What's up everybody! I got Transferred! If you can't tell by the title I'm headed to Sparks! I will be covering the Red Hawk and the Spanish Springs wards. I don't know too much, but it's northern sparks. I'm super Excited!

Here's my new address:

6717 Rolling Meadows Dr. #916

Sparks, NV 89436

Well, It's been fun here in Fallon. I've been companions with a district leader for the last five transfers, and it doesn't seem like this next one will be any different. 

This last week has been an awesome one to finish out my time in fallon. First, and most important, We realized that the two little girls we were helping get ready for baptism, Mimi and Aniah (Ah-Nye-Ah) will actually be CONVERT baptisms! their "grandparents" (long story, the girls are cousins, one of them is sister to a girl who is the grandaughter of a semi-active member of our ward. long story, but it makes sense... trust me) so they are going to be baptized tomorrow! I will just miss it, as their baptism will be at 5, and I have to report to the prater bldg at 4... so that's gonna be great! oh well, thus is missionary life.

Chris STILL hasn't come to church, He seems to just disappear on the weekends... We were so sure that he would come, but he didn't... sometimes you really, really want to take away others' agency and just make them be good, but you know who wanted to do that first right? I'm beginning to realize how Heavenly Father feels when I do things that I KNOW I shouldn't. I don't think I'm  a horrible person, but I'm definitely not perfect. I think missionary work is one of the best ways to learn what Our Father in Heaven feels, When our friends make the decision to accept the gospel, we rejoice and Incredibly Happy for them, but when they decide not to, we are sad, because of what might've been. I know, and have experienced that the good feelings of someone accepting the gospel FAR outweigh the bad feelings of someone rejecting, so we shouldn't be worried about if our friends accept the gospel or not, because if they do, it will all be worth it. I promise all of you, as a representative of Jesus Christ, that If you don't hold back from sharing the gospel in ANY way that you are prompted to, you WILL see at least one person join the church and then, You will be able to have an eternal friendship with them, and they will be forever grateful to you for opening your mouth and sharing the gospel with them.

The next time you hear from me I'll be in making Sparks fly!

Stay Righteous Y'all!!!

-A cool moonshot

-The one and only Elder Clark (lol there's 2 of them in the mission)

-I love my companion...

-The Johnson Squad

Random pictures from October

 The Johnson Family

Corn maze

Writing to his Momma!

Excerpt from Elder and Sister Southam's Newsletter, a Senior missionary couple serving with Elder Stotts

Sept. 3 Sat. –When Elders Stotts and Sorenson did their laundry the other day Elder Sorenson had a blue gel pen in his hand. When he threw the shirts in the washer, the pen went in also. When they took the shirts out of the dryer, they found blue spots all over their shirts and under clothes. Elders Sorenson and Stotts spent the morning and early afternoon removing stains with the help of Sister Southam’s idea to use some bleach and Qtips. It took a little elbow grease but they look good as new now!!! We also ate breakfast together and had waffles, hash browns and eggs. We LOVE our missionaries!

Inky shirts!

Good as new!

Forgot some pictures! October 10, 2016

The Milky Way lol (:

-Chickens!

-I FINALLY MADE PIZZA, but we ate some of it before I had the chance to take a picture... Oh well...

-A classy Book of Mormon I found

October 10, 2017

Hello everybody! I'm glad that Hurricane Matthew wasn't as bad as it could've been. Out here the weather was basically the same as it always is. But something interesting about the high desert is that there really isn't a spring or fall, it's like someone just flips a switch and It's summer/winter. That hasn't happened quite yet, but I can see it coming, the days are still hot, but the nights are getting colder.

The car was in the shop for a little longer that we first thought, hopefully we'll be able to get it back before Thursday. On the bright side, even though we can't go to morning program with the rest of the zone anymore, we've been getting plenty of exercise! Living 4 miles out of town and biking it 4-6 times a day in addition to all the biking we do in town, my Quads are feeling great! We also have been making some really good contacts while we're walking around in town. Handing out Copies of the Book of Mormon left and Right!

Chris has been going to church in Sun Valley for awhile because he drops off his son with his mother on Sundays, so he hasn't been able to come to our ward yet. He should be coming this Sunday though. I'm really grateful for this opportunity I have to teach him. I know he will get baptized soon.

That's our highlight reel for this week! I'm loving the book of Mormon more and more all the time, I can feel my testimony of it growing stronger and stronger every time I testify of it. Read it, then read it again, ponder it, Then Pray about it. It's true, it's the word of God! I feel it every time I read it!

Have a fantastic week!

October 3, 2016

Hello everyone! I hope you conference weekend was awesome! Elder Sorenson and I watched it at one of the Sorensens, The family that we live by. I loved so many talks so much, I am especially grateful that our car has a usb drive and I can listen to them all over again, along with like 800 other talks I have collected over the weeks... although that will have to wait a couple days since right after this we are taking our car into the shop. A couple months ago, Elder Sorenson accidentally gouged the side of the car against a low hanging wall about shin high. Our vehicle coordinator Elder Hammond (Who's super awesome btw) told us we need to get it fixed, so we are going to be on bikes for the next 3-4 days! Hooray!!

Chris wasn't able to come to conference, which is sad, but we'll be working with him. He had a seizure from withdrawal from chew tobacco (he gets those every so often, Cerebral palsy) so his doctor said to cut down slowly, so he got some different chew which is better for you, but he won't go through withdrawal pains as bad.

This week was a week of service, we had 9 hours this week, the most I've ever had in one week yet. We helped someone move, waxed and buffed a car, bucked hay, and got a Papa Murphy’s pizza we ate before priesthood session on Saturday (which was awesome!)

That's about it for this week! Stay righteous Y'all!

Random pictures sent to us from ward members. I love it!

September 26, 2016

What's up everyone? This week was fun. We met this one guy named Shawn, He had been taking the missionary lessons out in Reno, but for whatever reason he and the missionaries lost contact. He just moved out here to Fallon with his mom and brother. Quick aside, The water here in Fallon is questionable. It comes out the faucet slightly yellow and smells a little weird. Many years ago Fallon was a place where there was a high amount of cancer diagnoses (my guess is that everyone smokes here but whatever) they weren't sure what was causing the cancer on such a widespread scale, so they questioned the water (as does everybody), they couldn't figure out what was in the water that was causing it but they blamed it anyway (because there wasn't really anything else that they knew that could be the culprit), Because of that, the church doesn't want to take any chances and so they get bottled water to all the missionaries. That's a little bit about the water in Fallon. Because of that, Shawn didn't have any water and no money with which to buy it. Due to a shortage of missionaries there is an apartment that is usually filled that doesn't have any missionaries currently living in it, (it's in our area, so we go there for pit stops a lot) and they have like 15 5 gallon water bottles for the  (normally with missionaries living there you only have 3 or 4 spare and that's PLENTY), so we grabbed some and gave them to him. 

We also got a new bishopric yesterday, the new bishop, Bishop Skabelund, was in the stake presidency that just got released (the reason we need a new bishop) so he's awesome! I know him as one of the most missionary minded people on the planet, he was ward mission leader for a year before he was called to the stake presidency where he served for a year. So it's gonna be fun!

We're excited to start teaching Shawn and his family and Chris is doing good with quitting tobacco! It's gonna be a fun week!

Here's a couple random pictures 

-

RAINBOW!!!

I love Fallon sunsets, they look like sunrises in Africa

When your meat won't thaw...

Part 2 (We got 2 letters today, since we didn't get one last week!)

Hello everyone! Sorry for not sending anything last week, I dun messed up and forgot to hit send, So now you get 2 this week! 

I love being a missionary, although sometimes it's terribly frustrating when you have to sort through tons of people who are definitely NOT interested in order to find the 2 or 3 "pineapples" as the assistants called them last zone conference. Being the most visible part of the church is awesome and slightly less awesome at the same time. You get members honking at you when you're riding a bike, and you get anti's yelling profanity and other undesirable comments at you as they drive by. Ahh missionary work, gotta love it!!! But you also get to see people change and start to accept the gospel, and when that happens, the spirit is so strong! Such an experience is happening with Chris. He loves coming to lessons, but for the last couple weeks he hasn't been able to come to church for one reason or another, and all the reasons have to do with someone going to the hospital. The first week his boss got sick and so he had to cover all the work on the farm where he works. The next week his son did something to his knee and he stayed up with him almost all night. Satan's working hard to keep him from coming, but he'll pull through. I know he will. Chris has also said that he's trying to figure out which path on this "Crossroads" as he put it. Whether he wants to do the Indian thin, or the Normal Christian thing, or the Mormon thing. The spirit is definitely working super hard on him, he feels the spirit every time we meet. I think we're going to be focusing on the book of Mormon a lot, specifically what it means for him. 

That's an update from this last week. 

Till next week!

September 12, 2016

HELLOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! It's been a pretty awesome week. We were able to meet with Chris twice this week and the second time we were able to set him with a baptismal date for October 8th, So we are super excited to keep working with him towards that date. He has a problem with chewing tobacco, he's about as redneck as they come, but I'm certain that he will be able to overcome his addiction. He works on a farm out here, and his boss is making it hard for him to get Sundays off. He works from 5:30am to 5:30pm every day, even Sundays. We suggested that he ask for just 2 hours off so that he would be able to come to sacrament meeting, but as of yet, he's been unsuccessful. Maybe with a week's heads up he'll have a better chance of getting it off.

One of the things I've learned on my mission is just how important partaking of the sacrament is. The sacrament is a time to reflect on our week and make a personal commitment to Christ to be better next week. It is the only ordinance that we do for ourselves multiple times, because we aren’t going to be made perfect the week after we're baptized, if we were, we wouldn't have to partake of the sacrament every week. But we make mistakes and sin every day, and it is through the sacrament that we are cleansed from them. The sacrament is super important, so we should look forward to it every week.

Gotta Blast! 'Till next week!

P.S. sorry for the lack of pictures, but this computer isn't recognizing my sd card for whatever reason...

September 5, 2016

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY BRO DAVID!!! I can't believe you're already 12!

Well, I survived transfers! Elder Sorenson and I will be staying together for another 6 weeks in the Fallon 6th ward. I'm happy That we get to stick together, Elder Sorenson is a super hard worker. I'm happy that I get to keep working with the wonderful people of Fallon. About which, I don't remember if I told you about Chris, so instead of trolling through my emails... Chris is our investigator with the most potential, he's 22, he's a quarter Cherokee and he has a 4 year old son. He has cerebral palsy and so he has limited use of the left side of his body. He's all there mentally, so no worry about that. He also did bareback in the rodeo for awhile. Chris has grown up in a very anti-religious home, his grandma had the Idea that all other religions other than the Native American traditions were no good. Since he grew up in that environment, he actually grew to be very interested in different religions. I wasn't able to talk to him too much when Elder Winsor was here, but we've taught him a couple lessons last transfer, we're seeing him again tomorrow, we 'll hopefully be able to set him with a baptismal date then!

Recovery form whatever knocked me flat is finally 100% over. This week is gonna be awesome! 

Stay righteous y'all!

August 29, 2016

Hello everyone! This has been a rough week. It started out well enough. We had a good district meeting on Tuesday, and we were able to teach this semi-active family who have two 8 year old granddaughters who are getting ready for baptism this next month. Our bishop told us to go teach them the lessons to help them prepare for it. We've got only one more lesson to go! The don't count as convert baptisms since they've been blessed. 

So far so good.

But then the next morning I woke up at 4am with a fever of 102.6, so we called the mission nurse in the morning, she said to take it easy, take fluids, and use ibuprofen. I was thinking this was going to be a one day thing and then everything will get back to normal. So I did what she said and tried to rest. Well, day two wasn't any better. Once again we stayed cooped up all day because my temperature wouldn't go below 101. but then, Friday morning around midnight, I woke up feeling like I just popped out of the toaster. We took my temperature and found that I had a fever of 104.4. We drove down the the emergency room where they helped me out a bit and did some tests to see what was wrong with me. (we actually woke up one of the members of the stake presidency who was the CEO of the hospital because we didn't know where it was and our zone leaders weren't waking up to our calls)  They determined that it was some kind of virus and so I couldn't do anything but treat the symptoms and sleep it off.

And so, poor Elder Sorenson had to stay cooped up all week with his dying companion. He was so bored he drew out a piano and started practicing on it... (see first picture below) 

I love my companion... (:

Also the stake presidency was reorganized yesterday, our bishop is the new stake president, so we'll need a new one soon... If I had a nickel for every time I lost my bishop to the stake presidency, I would have 2 nickels, which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice right? Especially since I've only had 2 stake conferences on my mission. Watch out Dad...

Lizzy Spoke at the why I believe fireside! She said that ever since she was baptized she has been happier than she ever has been in her life! This is true! The gospel is true! It WILL make you happier than you have ever been in your life, and when you embrace it more fully, you will see the joy of the gospel touch every part of your life!

Due to Physical difficulties with elder Stotts' brain this is basically everything that happened this week. I learned that being sick on your mission stinks, especially when it goes for more than one day. Don't get sick on your mission... Stay healthy, stay active in the church, stay in school... STAY RIGHTEOUS Y'ALL!

August 22, 2016

Forget the black widow, check out this monster I found on the side of our house while I was cleaning off spiderwebs today! We named him Aragog...

This guy was HUGE! If I held him in my palm, his legs would spill over the sides of my hand. The belly was about the size of a 50 euro cent piece, or a little smaller than a quarter. Does anyone know what kind of spider this is? if so, could you tell me? It looks nasty...

We had Zone conference this week! My favorite thing I learned about was the rule of 7. The basic premise is that it takes people about 7 solid positive experiences with the church before they are baptized. The assistants trained us on how we can get that number closer to 7 with everyone we meet, one contact at a time. It really changed my perspective on talking with everyone. Before I was talking with everyone, trying to find 7's, I was trying to find those people who are prepared, now I'm looking to also help prepare people in addition to looking for those "Pineapples" as they called them.

This is also super applicable to just members too! Whenever you invite a friend to a church sponsored party or picnic or whatever, it's helping them to be more prepared to receive the gospel. Inviting people to church seems a lot easier now, doesn't it?

Let me know how your own personal missionary efforts are going! write me!:

4730 Shurz highway

Fallon, NV 89406

Stay righteous y'all!

Thank you for sending me a camera that takes really nice pictures!

HI DEF Spider pictures!

Zone Conference!

-The Fallon zone! (and the Assistants: Elder Woolsey and Elder Krey)

Aragog had a friend...Yes, we named her Shelob, Elder Sorenson and I are both nerds (:Here's a picture of the two of them together!

August 15, 2016

What's up everyone? Nevada is still Nevada, a hot, dry desert and because of that I've decided I want to live someplace cold for my adult years, like Alaska or Montana or

We've been working really hard on finding new people to teach. Every day we try to spend at least an hour street contacting downtown, we haven't seen much success directly from that, we're talking to more and more people as time goes on. But there's only so much street contacting you can do in the little corner of downtown we have in our area though. We've been watching the 1984 talk by M. Russell Ballard "Write Down a Date" with the families of the ward council, and then inviting them as a family to write down a date that they will find someone to take the missionary lessons by, and then fast, pray, and always be on the lookout for opportunities that will surely come to them. We have had 2 families do this that were able to find someone for us to teach.

Here is the talk. Watch it!: https://www.lds.org/general-conference/1984/10/write-down-a-date?lang=eng

I encourage all y'all to do it as well! If we do our part, we will be able to find someone for the missionaries to teach.

Stay righteous Y'all!

We have really good sunsets here.

We have George Foreman, so we made burgers :)

-I saw a black widow!

August 8, 2016

What's up everyone? If you ever thought your state was the wild west and your state wasn't Nevada, I'm happy to say that you were wrong. We have the sunsets to prove it. (:

And also a llama...

This week was awesome. Elder Sorenson has type 1 diabetes, so he trained me on how to save his life if he ever starts seizing during the night. Let's hope that never happens...

I FINALLY saw Randy with a shirt on, he's kinda like David in that regard. We decided that we will get the entire elder's quorum (or as many as we can get) to have a big service project to get him settled. This will let him get to know more guys from the ward and HOPEFULLY get him comfortable enough to go to church. His prior experience with any church was people who lived a different life at church than at home, they would party and do drugs and then come to church like nothing has happened. That made him lose his faith in churches as a whole.

For my personal study I have started to reread the Book of Mormon but with trying to understand how I can become a more powerful priesthood holder. If you remember elder Bednar's way of studying the Book of Mormon, that's what I'm trying to do. Through doing that, I have found that studying the Book of Mormon Invites the spirit much more than merely reading it. I have had ideas come into my mind when I read a specific verse that I never thought of before, even if I had read that verse 20 time before. Don't get me wrong, reading the Book of Mormon is awesome, you can learn so much from it. But when you study it, the Spirit can tell you what YOU need to do and the revelation is so much clearer. Now I understand why the Prophets and Apostles never say "Read the book of Mormon" rather "Study the book of Mormon"

Stay Righteous Y'all!!!