Sad News From Home, Stake Conference, and a Traveling Visitor's Center...

My little baby cousin passed away. I am very sad. I found something cool earlier in my mission about such a thing. It's in the Joseph Smith, teachings of Prophets booklet Chapter 14, under the title "Parents who lose children in death will receive them in the resurrection just as they laid them down." Pretty cool stuff.

We had stake conference!!!! It was awesome. Our Mission President's wife shared a scripture that became my new favorite scripture on missionary work. She quoted Moses 6:63, then pointed out that we were created to bear record of Jesus Christ. It was awesome. We were with a member family, so they took us out to ice cream after. We also received some Fettuccine Alfredo from some other elders at that time. I was talking with a couple of other elders regarding another elder in our mission who had a little accident. He got his foot run over by a lawn mower. It was just a toe, but it was still crazy. Well, were also reminiscing about the MTC and talked about our missions after stake conference. It was cool.

An individual we know was involved in a car crash.. He crashed going at 65 mph into a dump truck piled with dirt. He broke his sternum, and I think he mangled his hand and foot. Miraculous that he didn't have more damage. We visited him at the hospital. He is doing good. The food in the hospital includes bacon, so he has to be good. :j We visited with his family. He needed it. We could tell. It was pretty good.

We are still working on finding some new investigators. Working super hard on that. We invited people to come to stake conference, to go to a scripture study class, to go to the Trunk-or-Treat, etc.

The Trunk-or-Treat was great. We put up a traveling Visitor's Center which included an 8'x12' Picture of Jesus, a smaller picture of temples and the Book of Mormon, a spinning wheel, a TV, and a Kindle. We gave out candy to a bunch of people. The members loved it. We gave it to some other elders for this Halloween during stake conference. We received a couple "potential referrals" at the Trunk-or-Treat. In short, we invited members to invite their friends to church, take the missionary discussions, etc. and they accepted the challenge.

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.

No Voice, Stake Conference, and "See You Later"...

I lost my voice this week the last week in October.. Losing my voice was fun. We tried to only have me whisper, but that didn't work, so I tried to talk...and that didn't work. I've found almost all of my voice now, but I have a cough now, which isn't going away for a little while based on the experiences I've had so far with laryngitis in my mission, But that's okay, I love cough drops.

We had stake conference, which was really fun. I finally met a General Authority in person! I've always missed them by a tiny bit. I was kinda scared about being transferred to another stake in our mission because this same General Authority went to their stake conference the week before...and I was giving a talk on that Sunday, and based on my previous schedule on talks on the week of transfers...I really thought I was giving my farewell talk in this area.

I was able to visit with a lot of other missionaries on transfer day while my companion and and I were waiting for our car. It's a really nice car. We love it. It has a back-up camera (we still have to back each other up, but it's a lot easier...we just stand and do nothing...well, a bit more difficult than that, but you get the picture. Two of my former companions went home this last transfer. It was a joyous reunion with both of them, right before we got the car. After visiting with them, we went back to our area, while they went to the mission home for their last dinner, and night in the mission. It was awesome to see them and visit with them.