Biking vs. Driving

We started to bike around our area. We talked to as many people as we could while biking. I liked biking. It's a lot better than driving a car because you could talk to more people. We talked to quite a bit of people. We're doing this because we have not enough solid people to teach.

We've been teaching a lot of members also to push them to do missionary work. We also passed a referral box around during sacrament meeting. We received two referrals on Sunday, so we're going to contact them. I also found cool videos on lds.org under Media Library.

The members are cool here.

We have been doing a lot of finding. We met a random guy that we OTMed. He was nice and wanted to learn more. He goes to another church that looks like a gym where they have concerts.

Anyway, we have been talking to a lot of people. We discovered how much we sit in the car a week or two ago, and we want to be active and start finding people.

I read this recently. It's super cool. Ezek. 37:1-14

Finding, Teaching, Opposition, Success!

Everything is going great. However, I have been a little sad since I found out one of my friends died in one of my previous areas..



We've spent a lot of time finding. It's difficult to find out here We've been working on having the members do missionary work because it is easier for 50 missionaries to have a baptism than it is for two. Along with that, Elder Holland has said that there is no more time for there to be two more churches: a missionary church and a member church. So we're working on that, as well.

We're teaching a couple of cool people also. We have one family who is taking taking the discussions. They are keeping most of their commitments. They're a super cool family.

We've been having a lot of opposition later. However, because of that, we have been having a lot of success as well. It's interesting how those two work.

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.

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!

Mission Review...

So far on my mission...

• my favorite food has changed from chicken enchiladas to steak....I love steak. It's pretty expensive, though, so we don't usually get it.
• the hardest thing about serving a mission is talking. Talking to people I don't know is extremely difficult.
• the most enjoyable thing about serving a mission is seeing investigators get "more light" in their eyes as we teach them.  As they keep their commitments, and meet the challenges and goals that we help them set, we see a light come to their eyes.  It really makes a huge difference. It's always cool to see that!

Catching Up - News from September 8

Well, I'm getting transferred.  I already learned that one of us was being transferred while the other trained. My companion is training and I'm transferring out. I'm going to a dual area in Missouri, it is in the same zone as my first area...totally excited for that. I'm definitely going to miss this area. It's been a very wonderful place.

I found out that a family in our stake at home are moving to Arkansas, and they are going to be in our mission president's ward. It's awesome!

Well, what happened this week:

• We tried to contact Less Actives that we've already contacted...but we weren't able to set up appointments with them. Their schedules are crazy.
• We did, however, set up appointments with our few investigators.
• We notified an individual about the Addiction Recovery Program...she's in the process of quitting...very sad that I won't be able to see her or another one of our investigators baptized.  Oh, well. I already have a testimony of transfers, so I know that I'm supposed to leave.
• This Sunday, I told the young men and the leaders that I was leaving.
• We taught Gospel Principles for my last Sunday. It was amazing, and I was able to leave our investigators with my departing testimony. It was a really cool experience.

This next week will be spent packing, saying goodbye, picture-taking, etc. I'll send the pictures to y'all!