The Month of May!

After our Mother's Day phone call, I searched around the apartment and around the car for my camera. I found it in the car. So, I have it now. I took a bunch of pictures, including one of my "pants burning".

Speaking of pants-burning, one of my former companions got transferred...I was super sad to hear that. He's going to miss the burning. He saw my shirt burning at my year mark, so it kinda adds to the reason why I wanted him to come. "But behold, [he is] gone, and my sorrows cannot bring [his] return." (Mormon 6:20)

So, before our Mother's Day phone call, we went to our branch president's home for dinner. His mother came to dinner with us, and we were able to have a member-present lesson on mothers for Mother's Day. It was really cool.

Our mission president is super cool. I talked with him about how I could improve in missionary work, and I talked with him about how I could open my mouth better when street contacting, because I've always struggled with that. It was cool. Our mission president's wife asked every missionary she interviewed to share about repentance. I shared something that I have been studying more on about a certain aspect of repentance because I gave a talk on that aspect, which is: storms. I talked about the storms in the Book of Mormon, and she told me to look up something in the Doctrine and Covenants Institute Student Manual . So I'm gonna do that. Super excited to do so.

I've been rereading the Old Testament, studying it more fully with the new set of scriptures you guys sent me for Easter. Right now I am in the Book of Judges. It's a good book so far.

Now for the pictures!  My parents wish I would send them more frequently!

Our last district meeting in my old area. Afterwards, we played basketball. Ties against no-ties.

A ward member and me in my last area...

...and her "demon dog", Sophie!

Saying "goodbye" to a family in my last area.

The storm shelter near our current living quarters....It pitch black in there.

I burned a pair of pants. It is a missionary "tradition" to burn some pants when you reach your eighteen month mark.

Our church's pews.

This is in Tahlequah. The movie, "Where the Red Fern Grows" was filmed here. The actor who portrayed the main character is LDS. I went here for exchanges. It was super cool, and spiritual. We taught a teenage girl about the Restoration.

We had "Braums" at the church while waiting for a ride to our next appointment.

Our weekly planning meetings have been highly effective. My companion and I have set some really good goals that we are both striving to keep.

We played Red Light, Green Light with some children in the area and connected it with covenant making and keeping. Spiritual and fun!

We also found an less active member who wants to come back. He wants to feed us dinner. It was awesome.

We went to an 7-hour long duration of meetings for stake conference. Instead of being a long day, it was absolutely cool. We met a Seventy who knew a lot about the scriptures. Enough said.

Our area is amazing. We got transfer calls toward the end of the month and I did not get transferred, but my companion did. I got one of his trainers for my new companion. I am super excited I'm staying in this area. The members are the best people you can ever meet.. They're true, they're hard-working, and some of them have to travel 50 miles to get to church. One member sees more people than we do throughout the week. Our mission leader always comes to church despite health problems. Our branch president is willing to feed us whenever we don't have a dinner as long as we give him a half-day's notice. The first counselor takes us out every Tuesday. Our area is full of the most faithful members I have seen. Whenever I see how far each of them are from the church, I marvel at how they can do it. I would be content if I stayed here the rest of my mission. Probably not going to happen, but it could.

We said "goodbye" to everyone for my "transferring" companion, which wasn't too hard. We already saw 95% of the people that he wanted to say goodbye to before Thursday, so it's super easy.

Here are a few scriptures I shared with my companion who transferred:
1 Corinthians 16:22-24, 2 Corinthians 13:14, and 3 John 14. The last one is my favorite.

On transfer day, I helped other missionaries clean a ward house while we were waiting for the next group to get here. We finished around noon. After transfers, we were able to have dinner over at the president's house the first evening my new companion was here, so he could meet his family. We then got a call from the second counselor in the branch presidency, asking as to speak in sacrament meeting. We prepared our talks, had a few solid lessons on Friday and Saturday, then spoke on Sunday. It went well. Afterwards, we had a wonderful time at the linger-longer eating Mexican food. A ton of people gave us food to take home. We had two cartons of eggs, enchiladas, and one and a half bag of tortilla chips back at the cabin. It was a lot.

I Got Transferred...A Cabin, a Lake, a Storm, No Power!

Here is the installment from the last part of April...

My new area is the greenest place I have been thus far. We are actually opening up an area that has been a dual area for a number of years. My new area has a small branch of less than 30 active members. I had an uber long drive down to the new area, I left my old apartment at 6:30 in the morning, and finally got to my new area around 4-5 in the afternoon. Long day on the road, but on the bright side I did get Sour Patch kids, Twizzlers, and some other candy....All gone in a day or two....well, maybe 4 days. Don't have diabetes, yet, so I'm good :j

My companion and I have a cabin. We live pretty much where our branch president lives. He owns a trailer park, and he built a cabin just for us to stay. It's awesome. It's pretty fun to be in a cabin...you see a ton of bugs, we have to climb a ladder to get into bed. We sleep over the bathroom and the kitchen. Our oven and stove doesn't work at the moment...our branch president is working on it. He's a really cool dude. The fridge was empty, as was expected seeing that we opened up a new area. My companion and I went on a shopping spree to grab lunch food for all meals. We have a furnace, but we don't have an air-conditioner quite yet.

The church is also very exciting. The LDS meetinghouse used to be a Baptist Church...then the Baptist Church became a mortuary, or a morgue. Then it became the LDS meetinghouse. The chapel pews have crosses on the sides. The baptismal font is also in the front of the chapel. It looks really cool. The church is one of a kind. The people really love us, though. Our branch president is happy to feed us if they are not busy....so his family has fed us each night since I came here. His family is super cool. The food is delicious, too! We then share a spiritual thought, which is great because the branch president's mother is not a member of the church. She loves the church and has been to many church history sites including the Hill Cumorah and the Sacred Grove

Church was super exciting. A whole lot different than church usually is. We have a reverence hymn at the beginning, then an opening hymn, and we continue on the meeting. The sound speakers for the stand are actually only at the stand. So when you speak, it sounds loud to you, but to the people in the back, it's difficult to hear.

We are doing a ton of finding in this new area because we have basically no investigators. My new companion is from Utah. He has been out for six months.

Our area has a huge lake in the middle of it. We are in the middle of two towns (about 10 miles to each) leaving us with a ton of miles used because those are the two closest cities, and we have people we teach in other towns that are about 20-50 miles from us. It's actually really fun. We get to cross the lake every day. We have no choice, too. It pretty much surrounds us. We have a ton of less active members that we see, but not close enough to keep ourselves busy. We did meet some cool members one Sunday at a linger-longer (It's theme was Italian food...mmmm. It was quite delicious). They were from Orem, Utah.

I misplaced my camera after videoing the village where we live, so no pictures for a little bit. I know the camera is somewhere in our apartment or our car, though, so it's okay, it's not hopeless.

We had a tremendous thunderstorm hit close to us. It caused a tiny tornado 5 miles north of us, but no fatalities from it, so we're good. We were out of power the day after from 8:00. I was showering at the time, (The thunderstorm kept us awake because of the large amounts of rain that hit on our roof. It was the loud, so we didn't wake up to our alarms in the morning.) So, I half showered in the dark. We were without power until after 10:00 in the evening. We're linked to the power station up north, so the thunderstorm damaged something. Some of our food went bad, but it's okay. We got sick of the salami, and there wasn't much other food in the fridge. We actually had to get a ton of food on Friday ("pay-day" for us) because of the spoiling of the food. My companion took pictures of us in the night with no power, and trying to light up the cabin with two flashlights, because my camera was lost in the darkness of that night. It was super awesome, but I wasn't able to read anything for the evening, which I love to do.

We were able to meet up with an investigator with our branch mission leader. He was able to relate to our investigator in many ways, because they were of the same age group, they had experienced similar trials, and they both loved to garden. It was a really cool visit with him.

We also visited with a family and taught them two lessons. Both lessons were wonderful. We were able to teach some of the kids that were involved in a baseball team, and they provided some amazing insight. The second visit, we were able to answer some of the dad's questions about the church. He asked questions about polygamy and if the Book of Mormon was changed, etc. Some of his questions may have arisen from him reading stuff about the church on the internet. Nevertheless, he did not want to contend with us, they were honest questions, not the other kind of questions used for arguing. We were able to answer all his questions as I have experienced similar questions to his. It was a really spiritual visit.

We tried to find some good OTMing places (places where you could see a lot of people) nearby, but no luck, thus far. We were able to find a service opportunity where we helped clean up the town. It was good.

Sundays are absolutely amazing, with great church services. We were able to help a member on the computer (well, my companion helped him. It was a one-person job). I was looking through an old LDS hymnal that the member had...It was super cool. It had songs that weren't in the one we have today, the songs were named differently after the first couple words, such as, "Count Your Blessings", it was titled "When Upon Life's Billows", and "If You Could Hie to Kolob" had a completely different tune than the one we have. It was sweet.

After we helped him, we had a lesson with the assistant branch mission leader and his daughter. We then had dinner with the branch president and his family. We had delicious grilled hamburgers and hot dogs. We watched the John Tanner story with them. Finally, we went to help the Branch President finish working on our stove...well, he hasn't finished it quite yet. The flames are still too high.

Easter...and Other March Happenings!

The month of March was phenomenal! We were really busy, and the time went by really fast. We did a ton of service, visited quite a few people, and I interviewed baptismal candidates.

First, and probably the most amazing thing, we went to give a sister a blessing because she was pretty sick. It was a very spiritual experience. Afterwards, we sat and talked with her for a bit. It's been awhile since that experience, but she has not smoked since that blessing. We, along with the bishop and others in the ward, were excited about that. I think the coolest thing is that we had a specific ward fast for people with physical needs such as addictions, ailments, etc. It was awesome. The bishop told this sister he will give her a temple recommend at the end of April, if she will continue to give up smoking. She's so excited. I love it. I'm super excited for her. She gave all her cigarettes to one of her friends. She wants me to come with her when she goes for her endowments so that she can be sealed to her husband, who passed away a couple years ago. The temple is going to be awesome. I'm super excited to go. The only problem is transfers are the middle of April, and that’s before she's scheduled to go to the temple. Based on my luck, I'm going to be transferred. I hope I'm not transferred too far.

During Missionary Coordination Meeting, we found that our ward was excited about everything we did. They wanted to know a lot more than they used to in ward council.

We found another investigator while we were serving in the pantry.

We traveled, with a member of the ward, to an adjoining town to contact a couple of new member move-ins. One of these was a family, of whom their address was wrong. Nevertheless, we found them, and they wanted to learn more. We were also able to meet the zone goal that day, by getting five contacts...and more.

Our whole zone fasted for another goal we had set: at least one baptism in each one of our areas on April 9.

Our whole district did very well on indicators. VERY well.

I interviewed two baptismal candidates. I love interviews. They're very cool experiences.

I went to our mission headquarters during the month, since our mission president held a leadership conference and invited the district leaders. We drove from our area to an area about one hour away to sleep in the zone leaders’ apartment. Then at 4:30 a.m., we woke up, got ready, and I drove another 205 miles to the conference. It was a struggle to stay awake in the meeting, but we learned so much from it. After the meeting, I drove three hours to meet/switch back companions. My companion drove the final 100 miles to our apartment while I slept.

We tried to apply the things that I learned at the conference to our area and the work we're doing. We received two new investigators through our efforts. One of them said he would study the Book of Mormon. It was great.

We had dinner with the bishop’s family. We had venison steak, homemade macaroni and cheese, and green beans. It suffices me to say it was delicious. We helped clean their yard after, and we saw bishop’s wife pick up a decaying dear head/neck....Smelled very interesting.

We had a zone conference in a city that is a distance of 300 mile round-trip, so we were officially out of miles. We couldn't do anything about it, though. The car had to go to the mission conference, then the zone conference, so that's already more than half of our allotted 1,250 miles!

We received four referrals from different individuals. We tried to contact them...but two of them are far away, and due to our crazy mile situation, it was difficult. We did our best. If they become investigators, we'll have up to nine promising investigators in four different towns that are at least 15 miles away from each other.

I spoke in sacrament meeting on Easter Sunday on the Atonement of Jesus Christ. I love talks. We spent the evening with a family in the ward. We played Clue, and I related Clue to the Book of Mormon through the murder mystery of the chief judge in Helaman 8-9. It was awesome. The family gave us some Easter Baskets with a journal and an address book. They put their address and their number in it. It was pretty amazing. It was a really awesome day!

My Easter gift from home - a Mormon Tabernacle Choir CD!

A good Easter scripture is: "If God be for us, who can be against us?...Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again. Who is at the right hand of God, Who makes intercession for us." - Romans 8:31, 33-34. (I got it off of Handel's Messiah.)

We saw a snake in attack position. I took a couple of pictures of it before it slithered away.  We were on exchanges in a town about an hour away.. We taught twelve lessons that day. In addition during that week, my companion and I were still able to teach twenty lessons in our area. It was great!

Our friend, the snake!

Exchanges are fun!

March was an awesome month!

Catching Up! The Rest of February...

One week, we only had an hour of church due to the weather. It snowed a lot for Missouri weather...for Utah, it would be just an ordinary day. We had only a third of the usual churchgoers come, and two out of three speakers show up for sacrament meeting. It was fun. We received treats for Valentine's day from some of the members.

Also, I found some music on my flash drive that I didn't realize was there!!! It was the Mormon Tabernacle Choir's album entitled, "Come thou Fount of Every Blessing"...I love it. It's amazing.

Transfer calls came! My companion and I are staying here. That means this area is going to be the longest time I've served in anywhere. I'm still district leader, and most of my district is staying the same. Two of the sisters and one elder are being replaced. I've been missing the elder who has been transferred and another elder who has returned home. 'Twas very sad. Later, I found out that some of the people who were previously in my district were going to the other district...I told them how much I would miss them, and also gave them this farewell scripture: Mormon 6:20...It's funny.

Our area is doing well. One investigator came to church for ward conference. We found another non-member at church who is interested in learning more. That was exciting.

This next transfer is going to be wonderful. We're going to go to the temple this transfer for Baptisms for the Dead, of which I am excited for. We're going to be working extremely hard to get the people we are teaching to quit smoking.

We did a ton of work in an adjoining town. Then, we drove to another town to be picked up by the zone leaders so we could all drive to a larger city in order to be picked up by a bus that drove us all the way to Tulsa, OK. On the way there, we watched "The Cokeville Miracle", a movie that is awesome. The first half of the movie I could not sleep because I was stressed out by the movie (If you have ever seen it, you should know why), I was glad I stayed up, though, because the movie turned out to be really good in the end. When we arrived in Tulsa, we listened to Elder D. Todd Christofferson. He's a really funny guy. I don't remember him ever being that funny in General Conference. Some missionaries asked him questions that appeared to be difficult, and things they were genuinely concerned about. Elder Christofferson gave answers in the form of very short phrases, ten words at most. They answered the missionaries' questions clearly. After that, he would then expound on why he gave that answer a little more. It was really cool. After that, we got on the buses, and started our journey back to our area, watching "Ephraim's Rescue" on the way. After making a few transfers from bus to other vehicles, we arrived back at our area in the evening. We taught two more lessons before we retired to our apartment.

We have also been helping a lot at the food pantry in our area. It was awesome. I love those guys. We were able to talk about what we do as missionaries to some of the people who served there. I love talking about why I'm here. Their eyes widen when we say we don't get paid while we're out here...especially when we tell them we have to pay our way here. It's always funny. When we were working one day, a man opened up a bunch of boxes and found some whole wheat flour in huge bags. He said, "Ah, the Mormons donated that." I looked and found the name "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" on the bags. It was a ton of flour. Most of the people who heard the man's statement were surprised at how much flour was donated. It was pretty awesome. The man then remarked how good the Mormons were. 'Twas awesome.

My companion dry cleaned his new suit. After he did so, he found that the suit he had bought (for $4.50) was too large for him....It looked so funny :j. He gave it to an investigator we had. It fit perfectly. Our investigator has been coming to church repeatedly. It is pretty cool. We have to recommit him every week, because he has a memory problem. We teach him the same lesson over and over until he remembers it. We taught him the Restoration, my favorite lesson, many times, teaching it differently every time. We showed him Joseph Smith: The Prophet of the Restoration, asked him questions, etc. We're now on Plan of Salvation and also teaching him small bits of Lesson 4, :j. 'Tis fun. We have also started teaching a less active family.

Another elder in our area met the daughter of the individuals who moved into our mission boundaries from my hometown. He was in their city for the last week of the transfer. The daughter asked him if he knew a "Brian Bettinson", and he said he did. She then told him to say Hi to me...He did that when the subject came up of friends moving. XD. It was pretty awesome.

We had a really amazing February!

Awesome Weeks!

The past few weeks have been awesome. I can't really use any other adjectives. We saw the Lord's hand many times, of which I will give a few examples :j.

1) My companion and I, after all we could have done, went to a local store to OTM people. While we were in the camera aisle, a woman OTMed us, wanting to know who we are, what we were doing, etc. We answered her questions, and told her snippets of what our church believes, etc. She wants to meet with us to learn more.

2) My companion and I encountered a young kid, who passed by us while we were attempting to make a visit to a less active. My companion had an impression we should talk to him, so he led the discussion we had with him. The kid lied a lot, but that's what you get when you OTM someone in the dark of the night. He talked about being Satanic (we could totally tell he was lying about most of this subject, so don't worry, we're safe), that discussion moved to him being Atheistic...and eventually he said he believed in a God. It was a good discussion.

3) While we were doing service at a food pantry, I started talking to this guy who was seeking assistance from the pantry. I talked with him, and a couple of people around him, and we discussed many things, including our church. A few days later at church, my companion nudged me, and asked who a certain guy was. I couldn't see him clearly, so I shrugged my shoulders. After sacrament meeting, a ward member came up to us, and asked us to talk to a guy in the foyer. We went to the foyer and I recognized this guy from the pantry. We talked with him and taught him a lesson. We answered some of his questions, and gave him a Book of Mormon and we're going to continue to meet with him...I am totally excited!

I loved this past week a lot. I'm excited. We're going to have an awesome week, this coming week, too. The best thing about this week, was that I really was not looking forward to anything. Every day, when I woke up, I didn't feel like doing missionary work at all. I was just not looking forward to the same old thing. Well, as I pressed forward through it...I received a ton of help for all of it, I saw a lot of cool stuff...It was wonderful.

December Review!

December was amazing!

I love my current area. It is an awesome place.

This month was great! Especially when we started handing out "A Savior Is Born" cards. We definitely received a ton of potential investigators during December through them, and even a couple of investigators. We OTMed more than we have done in the past. The ward members invited us to go carolin', to Christmas parties, etc. We have been trying to serve the members as best we could.

December was such a fun month!

Every Member a Missionary!

We're trying our best to help the members in our ward do missionary work. We're giving out Book of Mormons to a lot of members and trying our best to follow up with them. It's been fun. We have our dinner calendar very full, which is good. It'll help with our invitations to the members. We're sharing Mormon Messages.

Our area is doing great. We're trying to get in contact with three of our investigators...and we're finding others. We handed out a Book of Mormon to a lady, we met a "born-again Christian", etc.  We have done a lot of service, too. It's been really awesome.

I Had a Dream...

We contacted a referral...well, we're counting it as a contact because we contacted his wife. They requested a Bible on the media referrals, so we gave her a bible and asked if we could help her with anything. She said no, and while we were about to leave, she suddenly said, "Actually, there is something you could help me with." She then went onto saying that she has not been to her church in a while, and said that she gets into these cycles of losing faith due to scary movies (which she watches a lot). And then a day or two before we came, she had a dream that she should join another church.

It was pretty cool.

We're going to get in contact with her again to see if we could teach her some more.

The Work Is Progressing!

We have been VERY busy.

• We were able to get a couple of promising potentials and two new investigators.
• A less active member, who we haven't met until this week, wanted us to teach her husband and children and everyone else who were in the house. It was awesome. We had dinner with them, and were able to teach her husband and one of her daughters. They live close to another investigator we have. 
• We went home teaching with a member of our ward, and did a TON of service this week. 
• We met someone at the store who was interested in our church because some of her nieces/nephews went on missions!
• We visited someone in the hospital, too.

 

Service and Keeping Busy!

We do a lot of service in this area. Three days a week in between our study time and lunch, we do service at a Senior Center and at the Salvation Army. 

We also teach a mission preparation class to three youths on Sunday for an hour or two.

We're trying to keep as busy as possible. We go tracting almost every day. It is fun.

OTM Means Three Things!

OTM is the only thing we abbreviate in our missions, because it stands for the three things. Oklahoma Tulsa Mission, "Open Thy Mouth", and the "Only True Mission". All of these are extremely true.

My mission president and his wife are FANTASTIC! My companion is AMAZING! The ward members here are AWESOME! They really help in missionary work.

We did a service project recently that was cutting trees down! It was awesome! I almost got hit by a tree one of the times, but I didn't, so I'm okay :D. We have yet to use our bikes in the mission because of the weather and the place where we do go tracting is close by.