May 9, 2016

Hello everyone from the land of the many slot machines! There has been so much rain lately, which is extremely weird because it's Nevada and there has been a ton of rain already this year. And because of that, everyone was smart enough to NOT go outside so we could talk to them. Although, it's still Reno. I've heard many times that if you don't like the weather just wait ten minutes and it'll change. That held true for most of this week. It went something like this: Rain, sun, rain, sun, rain, hail, rain, sun, rain and sun, rain. all in the course of an hour or two.

Despite the really bad weather (for Reno) we actually had some pretty cool miracles this week. Probably the most prominent one happened as such: on Sunday, the lesson in Elders' quorum was something to the effect of noticing the tender mercies of the Lord. One brother sharing an experience in his in-laws family about how they had a tragedy in the family and to help him deal with it, his father-in-law started a tender mercy journal, where he would record all of the tender mercies that he experienced that day. So my mind was open to seeing those tender mercies throughout the week.

There was one day we had 5 lessons set up and all of them fell through but one, typical missionary work right? But in that one we were able to set Andy with a baptismal date of July 2nd! Too bad we'll pass him off to YSA... It's shown just how evident the tender mercies of the Lord can be. All you have to do is look for them and realize that there is no such thing as a coincidence. Nope, believe it or not, those little things that make you smile are directly from God. He makes it just evident enough so you notice it. People say that God works in mysterious ways, but really He works in a way that we can understand that it's him working. If God truly is all knowing and all powerful, which He is, and His entire purpose is to help us progress and become happier, there is no way that coincidences are real. I don't think I really noticed too many tender mercies until I came out here, and now all of a sudden they're everywhere. There was a time this week when we ran into a really anti-Mormon couple, no, we didn't do anything stupid, but it did discourage me a little. But immediately after we walked away, this one family with young kids drives by and says hi to us. I can't describe the emotion that came over me, and this explanation doesn't really do it justice. But It felt as though God Himself were telling us that everything's okay, and to keep on going, we were doing the right thing. That gave me a renewed hope and fervor for the work. Other than that, not much else happened this week. We worked hard, we gave our all, and that's all that matters.

May 2, 2016

Hello everyone! Elder Stotts survived another transfer! So it looks like I'll be staying here in the south meadows and foothill wards for a little longer. So I still get to see Mercedes, BMW's, and Maserati's (yes even those) every day. It's interesting though, the last two transfers we went on exchanges with the elders in the skyline ward, which is in downtown Reno. If you know anything about Reno, you know about the many homeless/poor people that crowd around the super fancy casinos. There are so many humble people there who are very open to listening to the missionaries. In our area, the cheapest houses are around $200,000, and the most expensive are around $3-4 million. We have a lot of people in our area, but they aren't exactly looking for something better in their lives. So it's a little tough. We were also crunching to meet our mile limit, so we were biking around a lot, and it's also been very rainy as well, perfect timing I know... we were able to talk to more people though, so that was a blessing in disguise! Biking actually was really fun, the only downside is that our area is just a little too big to be an effective biking area, So we had to spend most of our time in the south meadows ward. Sorry foothill... but hey, that's Mission life. So yeah, other than that it's been a rather slow week, mainly just setting up a lot of lessons for this

 week.

April 25, 2016

Hello everyone!

another week gone by and it wasn't quite as fun as last week... but still awesome!

The reason that this week wasn't as good was because Alan, the guy we had an awesome experience with, decided to become Buddhist with his wife, so he dropped us... I have to admit, it was hard on me. I was really excited when we got the text, and then that all turned to sadness. it was tough.

But anyway besides that, Jacob, the 9 year old kid we've been teaching, has a baptismal date set for June 11th, so that's exciting. we also are almost out of miles for the month so we're biking everywhere. And of course once we start biking we get a ton of rainy days, in Nevada... So that's been fun...

We ran into this awesome guy named Shannon, he works on some super expensive lakefront property over in Tahoe. He's also interested in listening to us! Miracles for days! We also were able to have another lesson with Barrie and his son. They're both super solid, we just have to be able to talk. They're huge chatterboxes. But Barrie love the Book of Mormon, and he says he reads it an hour every day. I was a little blown away by that, he's actually reading as much if not more than we are! (because we have to study the book of mormon as well as Preach my gospel everyday) He goes off on the most random but super interesting tangents ever so it's almost impossible to tech him anything. But when his wife's there she kinda reigns him in a bit. they'' get baptized though. She works for the FBI and has a lot of member friends at work. They always try to keep up with where the family is at with the lessons, so hey! we have people keeping us honest!

That's basically the week, some pretty hard lows but I know that when bad things happen, it's only because something better is coming.

Until next week! Stay righteous

April 18, 2016

Hey everyone! This week has been amazing, I mean absolutely amazing! Miracle after miracle all in the course of just 2 or 3 days! The last time we met with Anna, her car had been stolen, and her parents are fixed in their minds that they will not let her get baptized until she is 18. they're totally cool with her meeting with us, but no baptism ): but this last lesson, elder Corry promised her that if she kept reading her scriptures, praying and coming to church, that her car would show up some time... and guess what happened... IT DID!!! they found it parked in a super sketchy part of town in a parking lot of a casino. So yeah, she's definitely going to keep coming to church and everything else now!

Next miracle, we got a text from salt lake that said there was someone who wanted to meet with us, but when we went to the address no one was home. I had learned from elder Corry that whenever you see an open garage, you investigate, because an open garage usually means someone's in there. We were on exchanges with the zone leaders so Elder Corry was up north, and the elder I was with started to walk back to the car, but when we walked away from the house I saw a few open garages and had a thought that I should check them out. No one was in them, but we did run into this dude walking a dog, who, lo and behold, was the guy we went to see. He was so happy to see us and it took everything elder Todd and I had to contain our excitement. It turns out his mom and younger brother are going to be baptized on the 23rd and he wants to be baptized as well now! he know almost nothing about the Church let alone Christianity because he is Hmong, and his wife is from Thailand and Buddhist. But the desire is there. His wife is also interested, I feel like it will take longer with her, but it will definitely happen We also set the 9 year old kid we are teaching with a date for the 18th of June. So we could potentially, at the end of this week, have 5 people set with a baptismal date! the work has just exploded! we also invited the Blueians to be baptized, they said that they aren't to that point yet, but if they do get there they would! I know they will get to that point, they're super solid and love having us over. In their own words, "you guys just bring a happy feeling into our home".

April Showers on the other hand has been an utter failure thus far. But I don't think that that is a bad thing at all. We showed the Lord that we had a fervent desire to grow the work in our area by instituting it and working so hard to have it be successful, that He has blessed us with that success in other ways than we were expecting. I know that the reason we are so successful is because of our dedication to the work and trying to find new people to teach. It's not just "ask and ye shall receive" it's, "ask and then work your tail off and then ye shall receive."

Thank you for all the birthday wishes!

Stay righteous y'all!!

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!