August 1, 2016

Hello Everyone! Elder Winsor went the way of all the missionaries and returned home triumphant. My new companion, Elder Sorenson, and I are doing awesome, even though this last week was a lot of getting used to the area and learning it since he's brand new to the area and I've only been here 6 weeks. I definitely learned the area more this week than any other so far. Funny how in both of my areas, my first companion leaves me after 6 weeks and all of a sudden I'm the one that knows the area best...

Elder Sorenson's a stud! He's always super calm and collected, I don't think it's possible for him to get angry! Not that I'm going to test the limits or anything... 

Elder Stotts and Elder Sorenson

We were able to meet with Chris, an investigator whom I had met, but never taught. He has Cerebral palsy, so he can't use his left side very well at all. This was the main subject of our lesson, he was upset at God for not only letting him be born with it, but also letting it get worse. We taught him that the book of Mormon was a Book of answers. And lo and behold he flipped open to the story of Limhi and his people. They were going through a severe challenge just like he was, He was able to learn that he was to be patient in his trials, just like they were (eventually). 

Miracles like this happen all day every day as a missionary. I encourage all who are thinking about going to go. It will be the most difficult 18 months to 2 years of your life, but you will learn more during those 18 months or 2 years than your entire life up to that point. I've only been out about 6 months, but I've already seen that happen to me. I love all of you, I know that Jesus Christ Lives, He is very involved in this work. If you have any questions about how to be a better member missionary: Ask the Missionaries! They can help you!

Stay righteous Y'all!!

More Sunset Pictures!

July 25, 2016

Hello Everyone!! Another week gone by, and it was Awesome! Most important first, LIZZY GOT BAPTIZED!!!And all went well! 

We had a lesson on skype with her the night before when we taught her about temples and eternal marriage, I have never been in a more spiritual lesson on my mission as of yet. The Spirit was so strong, I know how important the temple is and how much God wants us to be worthy to always be able to attend it, and always have those blessings available to us.

Transfers came! Elder Winsor is heading home tomorrow, It's been fun serving around him, I was able to learn a lot from his experiences. My new companion will be Elder Sorenson, which is really funny because half the people in the ward are named Sorenson (farming community remember?) That'll be interesting.

I also started cooking a little more, I think I'm doing alright. I made Olibollen (dutch for Oil Ball) for a Family home evening with a recent convert family, I made biscuits and gravy for breakfast, and I made Snickerdoodles for a zone lunch we had, celebrating the opening of little Caesars. Oh well, beats Ramen...

Biscuits and gravy

Oliebolen

Yum

If I could name all the miracles that happen while you're a missionary it would be way to long for a simple email. Here's one. We were going to see this potential, they weren't available at the time and so they told us to come back later, when we did, they had gone out to dinner, Funny how that works out... but when we knocked on the door, we met someone who had met Mormons before and loved how nice they were. She was actually interested! So an apparent sluff off, turned into a really cool miracle. It was the same house that the dog tied me up at.

That's all for this week folks! Stay righteous y'all!

This dog thought he was funny and tied me up...

We also went milking today!

July 18, 2016

Aloha peoples! 

Another week in the paradise of Fallon, NV! If you recall I said that we cover the Fallon 6th ward, the Hawthorne ward, and the Gabbs Branch. I've told you a little bit about Hawthorne, and everything else has been about Fallon, yesterday I had the opportunity to see Gabbs. We usually hitch a ride from the high councilors when they go down there, so I spoke in sacrament meeting and it wasn't even hard! (of course Gabbs has only 16 active people in the branch and only 12 were there so that kinda kills the mood. But whatever.) 

Gabbs branch HQ

Gabbs is a teeny weeny town of 162 people, and the only reason it exists is the small magnesite mine (whatever magnesite is, I asked, they said it's in everything, so I still don't know...) On the way down we passed by one of Fallon's many curiosities, Sand mountain, We don't know why it's there, or how it got there, It's just, there. It's a hot spot for 4-wheelers and other atv's. 

While I was in Gabbs, Elder Winsor went to Hawthorne and taught Lizzy, Who CURRENTLY has a baptismal date set for Friday, so I'll let you know if that works out, her Grandma is still mad about it though. President told Elder Winsor that he needed a baptism before he goes home (which is in 9 days! But he's STILL not trunky!) and so it'll work out. Courtney is struggling being a single mom, she get's pretty bad anxiety too, so she's missed some of our meetings due to her recovering from dealing with her 15 month old all night. We're getting a little worried, but this has happened before.

Little Caesar's opened today! I'm so happy... We don't have any good cheap restaurants, and Y'all know how much I love Little Caesar's.

Until next week! Gerritt, my bro in new Caledonia, told me that I forgot to say this last week, so in honor of him, Stay righteous Y'all!

Ghetto Chimney, I see you there swamp cooler...

What else did you expect?

July 11, 2016

Hello everyone! Another wonderful week gone by, another email full of miracles 

Miracle #1: I saw my first Black Widow, but it was dead. We were helping Randy destroy some wasp nests when he saw it. See pic below.

Miracle #2: I don't remember if I told Y'all about Courtney, But whatever. So when we were in Hawthorne last week , Elder Winsor put together a list of people he wanted me to meet before he dies, and then he called them. One of them, Courtney, seemed really excited that we called saying that it was "a perfect time" for us to call her. Elder Winsor taught her a little bit back in February, but her husband was less Happy to see them. But he's out of the picture now, and because of that, Courtney, being a stay at home mom, wasn't really able to get a job to support her 2 kids, and so she might've lost her house. It was in these desperate circumstances that we called her. She came to church two weeks in a row, since she started meeting with us she received support from her family so that she could keep her house, she came to a baptism on Saturday and had a lot of really good questions which shows that she is actually interested and not just respectful!

On a slightly different note, Lizzy's grandma wasn't so excited when she found out that Lizzy would be baptized on the 16th, and kinda put a stop to it. She was Kinda giving her the Cold shoulder for a couple days. From what I've heard, someone offended her and she let that stop her from being active in the church, and now has somewhat of a grudge against it. She Somewhat is now resigned to the fact that Lizzy has a strong testimony of the church and the Book of Mormon, and whether it takes a month for her Grandma to relent, or a year for her to turn 18, she will join the church eventually.

I know that God is mindful of and loves each one of us. During lunches I've been studying the old testament, specifically Daniel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Exodus. Throughout my studies there is a common theme of God pleading with Israel to repent and stay in the path that He know will lead them to the most happiness that we can attain in this life. We can easily substitute Israel for our own names. I know that the most Happiness we can have will be found through the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and That even though we may have the hardest day of our life every day, there is one who has descended beneath them all. And that one is Jesus Christ.

July 4, 2016

Hello everybody! Happy 4th of July! Has this week been amazing or what!? To start off, we met Randy, and helped him fix up his house and teach him the restoration! He's super cool, and the story of how we met him was even cooler. We received this referral for a part-member family, but the address we got was for the trailer park where they lived without the trailer number. It was in these perilous circumstances that Elder Winsor and I decided to pray that we would be guided to the right trailer. We felt drawn to 3 different trailers, so we decided to try them all. As we were going up to the 3rd one (the first 2 were unsuccessful)that was their house. we knocked on the door and talked to the lady that answered, she said she wasn't interested, but her boyfriend (Randy) Would be. He's super awesome and he hasn't been wearing a shirt the 6 or 7 times I've seen him. They just moved here from Sacramento where they had been living out the back of their van. They were a lot more awesome to meet than the referral turned out to be. Randy is super open and humble I love it!

a guy drove up and started working on the trailer, and lo and behold, he was the owner of the entire trailer park! And he knew exactly where they lived! Talk about a miracle! we went up to the trailer, but no one was home. We felt that we should knock on their neighbor's door to see if

The other miracle we had this week was in Hawthorne. We have an investigator there who is super golden. Her name is Lizzy, she lives with her grandparents who are less active. it's a struggle to teach her because Hawthorne is an hour drive away, and so we can only go there once a week. For whatever reason her grandma is a little reluctant to let her get baptized even though Lizzie really wants to. We saw her Friday, and we committed her to fast and pray on Sunday that her Grandma's heart will be softened. Lizzy is the kind of investigator that every missionary in the world prays for. I'm so lucky to have gotten the chance to meet her and be part of her conversion.

A little bit about Hawthorne, it's the worlds biggest arms depot, and so they have a lot of dissembled tanks, helicopters and missiles.

a huey gunship tail

l

Heaven smiles on Fallon

Best P-day ever!

June 27, 2016

Hello everyone! Another week in paradise, if paradise for you involves small towns, farms, silly goats, and dairy, lots and lots of dairy...

Fallon is a fun town. It doesn't have a lot of chain restaurants, but it does have a Walmart. The tap water has arsenic or some poison that kills you slowly in it, so everyone has a filter or they get those big water jugs delivered every other week and they use the office water dispenser thingy's, I don't know what their called, but they have the red and the blue buttons, you know what I'm talking about right? As for the dairy, we live on a dairy farm and so the smell of cows is omnipresent during studies, planning, and lunch. You get used to it after awhile... ;)

The Fallon 6th ward is a really fun ward to be in. Half the members are Sorenson's and Whitaker's, and all of them are related. There isn't enough Spanish speaking members for a branch, and so they meet in our ward, and there are enough people who are Bilingual to translate. Because of that though, the Spanish sisters also attend our ward, so we see them a lot in coordination meetings and so on.

The Hawthorne ward (which is about an hour drive away) I's a really fun ward to go to. Hawthorne is a tiny little town that is about a mile square. and it has 1,000-2,000 people. Despite it being so small, we have 3 investigators and like 4 solid potential investigators. We Try to go down there once a week to see them. One of our investigators, Lizzie, is a 17 year old girl, and is AWESOME! Her Grandparents are less active and because she lives with them, when the missionaries came to visit her grandparents, she said she wanted to learn. She would be baptized already but her Grandma doesn't want her to. (she was offended, hence the Less Active status) she was at Youth conference this last week, and she bore her testimony at the final testimony meeting, AND THEN SPOKE IN CHURCH!!! AS A NONMEMBER!!!

So yeah, She's awesome... (:

We have a couple investigators in Fallon, none of them are as cool as Lizzie though.

Elder Winsor and I are getting used to each other's teaching style, and we are starting to be able to work really well together, so expect to hear about miracles!

June 20, 2016

I made it to Fallon in one piece! Sorta... There's a town about 30 min west of Fallon called Fernly (funny thing is, people in Reno call them Falabama and Ferntucky) Anyway, I was hitching a ride with a guy who was also getting transferred down there, and our new companions were together in Fallon. For whatever reason, we didn't have a phone or a GPS, so we were following the zone leaders down to Fernly because they were giving a ride to an elder and His trainee who were in a biking area in Fernly. When we got there, the Zone leaders called Our companions who needed to come to Fernly for whatever reason, so they told us to go to the Walmart and get our food for the week. We did... only issue, they thought we were in Fallon... the zone leaders left, our companions came to Fernly and left to go back to Fallon to pick us up at the Walmart there... Do you see where this is going? I hope so, Because I feel like I was rambling a bit... We were waiting until about 7:30 until we decided borrow a phone to call our mission president (a number I put into my planner a few days earlier per suggest from Elder Corry) So we got that figured out. Anyway, Fallon is More of a Farming town than anything else. I've included some pictures of our house and some pretty cool looking sunsets I wanted to ride off into. Elder Winsor, my new companion, actually was Elder Corry's MTC companion. and so he goes home at the end of this transfer, So I'm killing him! (not actually)

 He's been here for 3 transfers already, that's him in the inside picture of our house in the back. He's really awesome and I can't wait to see all the miracles we'll have this transfer!

This was a picture that was e-mailed to us from Steven's mission. 

Elder Winsor, companion