Transfer Calls and Branch Christmas Party

Hello everybody!!

Thank you everyone that wrote this week. I really appreciate it.

So we got transfer calls last night. I will be staying Elder Smith will be going up north a little farther. My new companion's name is Elder Bergquist. He started his mission when I went to Hermiston, he was there as well. Our zone is getting a little more shaken up this transfer but thats alright.

This week we also had our Christmas zone conference which was really fun. We listened to some musical numbers and some talks from President and sister ware and the Assistants. We also got to watch Monsters University as a mission. It was a pretty funny movie and it was good to relax a little bit.

So to the spiritual side of this week. We didn't teach a lot of investigators this week but we did have some success working with some of the Less-actives. A couple of them came to the branch activity as well as church on sunday. Also a former investigator showed up to church with 4 of her children. We were shocked and amazed and they stayed for the whole time. Hopefully we will be able to start teaching them again.

The branch christmas activity went pretty well. We invited an investigator a couple hours before it started and she showed up with a couple of her kids (different family). We also had another investigator there that moved from the sister's area to our area and he has a baptismal date. He has a couple problems so hopefully he will make the date.

I just want to say how grateful I am for the Atonement of Christ. It encompasses so much that it is difficult to comprehend but I know that because of his sacrifice that we will all be able to return to live with our heavenly father together as a family, we just have to accept his help. We can't rely on our own strength but rather the strength of the Savior. Something that has been going around in my mind for a while is in the Book of Mormon, it talk a lot about remembering the captivity of our fathers. Something interesting that hit me was that it was talking about more than just physical captivity but spiritual as well. I love to think about Christ breaking us out of spiritual captivity in the ways that Alma and his people were freed, how Moroni freed the prisoners and countless other ways found in the Book of Mormon. Sometimes we are removed from situations and other times we are given weapons and tools to fight sin and temptation in our lives. The Atonement is one of the greatest things available to us to be relieved of the burdens and weight of sin. I love my Savior and so grateful for what he has done for each one of us.

Hope you all have a great week!

Elder Young

Praying for miracles

Hello everybody!

I hope you all have had a great week and have been seeing miracles.

This week was slow but fast at the same time. Time on the mission is really weird sometimes and this week was a prime example of that.

I did a couple of baptismal interviews for the sisters this week. It's amazing to see people that have been prepared to receive the gospel and they definitely were prepared for this time. Their baptism went well on saturday. Later on saturday afternoon a couple families from the branch went to the temple and were sealed. The branch is growing and things are happening here which is a miracle.

So we have been praying for new investigators and to have someone that is on-date and come to find out on sunday a miracle happened for us. One of the on-dates that the sisters had moved to our area and he came to church. He seems pretty solid so that was a prayer answered for sure. We also found a couple other investigators and hopefully they will start progressing. It just goes to show that praying with faith brings miracles.

It going to be a bit of a short letter this week. I don't have a lot to write about. I hope you all have a great week and see the miracles in your life.

Elder Young

Thanksgiving in Moses Lake!

Hello everybody!

This week was pretty good. Thanksgiving was really good for eating but for teaching it was pretty hard. None of our investigators wanted to talk with us and no one was really even home for most of the day. We ate lunch with a big family from the branch which pretty much consists of the whole branch and a lot of the less-actives that live in our area. It was fun to visit with a few of them but they were watching football and didn't really want to talk too much about the church. We also ate with another family for dinner a few hours later so we weren't too stuffed.

We did have a miracle lesson this week though. One of our investigators used to never want to talk about baptism and would kind of get defensive about it whenever it would get brought up when we were talking or reading in the scriptures. The last lesson we had was all about baptism and confirmation and instead of using analogies, we just taught simply and powerfully and we invited her to be baptized the 26th of december and she said she wanted to pray about it and see a baptism before she made a decision. Funny thing was that another set of missionaries was having a baptism a couple days later. Long story short, she went to the baptism and then to church for the whole time. Hopefully tonight she will accept the commitment to be baptized.

The work is still going good here in Moses Lake. We don't have very many close to baptism in our companionship but our district has 5 people on date for baptism and we have to do 2 interviews tomorrow which is awesome! Miracles are still happening with investigators and less-actives.

Hey everybody! Missionaries love mail! Just so you know. Hope you all have a great week!

Elder Young

Moses Lake

Hello everybody!

Hope you have all had a great week and have stayed warm! Its getting cold here in Washington as it gets dark at 4:00 pm and is just getting darker each day.

So this week was pretty good since we had the Branch Thanksgiving dinner. There were a ton of people there from active members to less actives to investigators to other people that members brought. There were some pretty funny games that they put on during the dinner that made everyone laugh.

So this week was also pretty good for teaching people as we had some pretty interesting experiences. This week as we were trying to visit some investigators. We knocked on this apartment to talk to an investigator and no one answers but their neighbor comes out to smoke and starts talking about the Holy Spirit or something along those lines and then he calls to us and wanted to talk with us. We talked outside with him for about an hour about a wide range of things and then set up another time to come back for the next day. We were a little hesitant to go back because he had talked so much and we were only able to say a few words in that whole hour but we went to the follow up visit anyway. He told us how he had been arguing with his wife and then said that the holy spirit would do something and then walked out of his house and then saw us standing next door. As we talked and listened to him, we found out that he is a member and has had a really rough life. I know the gospel will bless his life as he returns to church and lives the covenants that he has made. Something interesting that happened during that visit was that his daughter was sitting on his lap for about half of the visit and ended up falling asleep. Just before we left he told us that she has a hard time sleeping but we were leaving she was out. I know that was because the spirit was able to relax her and she was able to rest. The spirit works in interesting ways in all of our lives.

I hope you all have a very happy thanksgiving and eat lots of turkey and stuffing!

Elder Young

Elder Kent Richards

Hello everybody!

Hope you all had a great week!

Sorry about not emailing yesterday, our p-day got switched to today because we were visited by Elder Richards from the 70. It was an awesome time to be able to talk with him and get some training about what we need to do better as missionaries. He talked a lot about having true faith and that means that we act on that faith. He also taught us a lot about teaching truth simply instead of using analogies to teach a  principle. That hit all of us pretty hard because we all do it and we don't realize that it distracts them instead of helping them.

So last night when we got back into moses lake, we decided to put it to the test. We visited a couple of less actives and instead of just asking how their reading went, we listened and taught simply and they understood a lot better and also opened up to us as well. I know that instruction from Elder Richards was exactly what I needed to become a more effective missionary.

The work is going well here in the Moses Lake 9th branch. There are a few people ondate in our district which is awesome because we set a goal of 10 baptisms as a Zone for December. We have been working a lot with the less actives in the Branch to help them get reactivated again. We have been finding a couple of new investigators each week which also helps keep us busy. Hopefully as we apply the principles that we learned from Elder Richards that they will progress towards baptism.

I just want to say again that I know the church is true. Miracles happen everyday and thats because this is the Lords work and he is directing. It is just our decision to work with his will or against. I can testify that if we seek his will and ask his help to know what to do, he will guide us where we need to go, and what we need to say. I know the Book of Mormon is true and because its true we have a prophet on the Earth and he leads and guides us today. If we do the things that he asks of us then we won't go wrong

Have another great one everyone!

Elder Young

Moses Lake

Hey everybody

This week was pretty good. It took a long time to get from hermiston to moses lake on transfer day. We left at 12 and then had a meeting in kennewick for an hour and then went to yakima for about an hour and then quince and then to mose lake and each time we had to move our bags from trailer to trailer. It was pretty fun getting to know more missionaries. So on the way from quince to moses lake our zone leaders got a phone call from the assistants telling them who the new district leaders were and I got chosen. Our district is our companionship and 2 sets of sister missionaries. I'm a sistrict leader or relief society president, however you want to call it. We all attend the same branch as well.

Church was really interesting. It was about half english and half spanish which was really weird but it was nice not having to translate. The branch president is really excited about the work and is really supportive of the members doing member missionary work. It will be really awesome to be able to work with them some more.

Today was the first day that we have really seen any sun since I got here and we have spent most of the time inside. We went to a gymnastics gym and played around there for a couple of hours which was really fun but now I'm really sore and will be even more tomorrow. We live in an apartment with another set of Elders so we have to do our laundry at a laundromat which just brings back memories of living in Lawrence in the tiny apartments.

I like my area so far. I'm still unsure of which way is north so that makes it hard for me to know where anything is. There is a lot of work to do here, we just need to find it. We have a few investigators and hopefully we will be able to find more and the ward will find some as well. I'm sure I will have more to say as we go through this week.

Hope you all have a great week!

Elder Young

Transfer calls and miracles

Hello everyone!

I hope you all have had a great week and have seen many miracles.

This week we got transfer calls. I'm going to moses lake 9th spanish and my companion will be Elder Smith. I don't know a whole lot about the area but I'm excited. Elder Doman will be training a new missionary too which is pretty cool. He will do a good job, he's just a little nervous but that's understandable.

This week was really good we taught a bunch of lessons and found a couple of new investigators. We knocked on a door this week and we ended up having about an hour lesson on the doorstep with a couple of guys that don't really go to any church but still have a really good knowledge of the bible. Hopefully we can help them truly accept the gospel in their lives so they can feel the blessings of it. Also someone that we are teaching that we had a really good lesson with last night is named Lupe. We taught her the restoration and watch the video as well. When we introduced the Book of Mormon to her, she asked if we had a copy for her and when we said that it was her's, she got all excited. She also told us about when she first came to America, she had a teacher that is from the Church that really helped to learn english. The power of someone's example is amazing and should never be underestimated. It's amazing to see the Lord preparing people to receive the gospel and to be a part of it.

Something on a less spiritual note. We have had a little mouse running around our house for the last couple of weeks so last monday we set up a trap to get rid of it. We filled up a bucket of water and made a ramp and a shakey bridge as the trigger. When we got back from playing basketball on p-day,  we had a drowned mouse in the bucket. We were super surprised that it worked and we haven't had a problem since.

Hope you have a great week again and go out and look for opportunities to share the gospel.

Elder Young