Weekly Update May 21, 2012

Well, I can't think of a whole lot to report on this week.  It was a good week, but we weren't really able to teach any of our investigators this week.  First of all I would like to say that we had zone conference last week and I really enjoyed it.  It was such a spiritual event for me and I was able to take so much from it and apply it to teaching our investigators.  One such example was a direction that we were taking for teaching one particular investigator.  She doesn't really like to talk much, so we had really no idea what might be keeping her from being baptized.  It occurred to me that the reason why is because we never really asked her questions to see really what she thought or how she felt.  We kind of just talked at her.  This conference was a huge eye opener for that and when we meet with her this week, we are going to take a step back and let the spirit teach.  The Johnsons (the senior couple who serve in Troy)  referred to us a lady in the Libby care center who has wanted to take the discussions.  We met with her a couple weeks ago and it has been a lot of fun working with the Johnsons to talk to and teach this woman.  We are hoping to have 2 maybe even three baptisms this next month.  Jennifer Roark has expressed to us that being baptized is something she would like to work towards.  We will hopefully be setting a baptismal date for her to work toward next time we meet with her.  Also Linda Dabel.  We are now pretty sure that her name is no longer on the records of the church.  So we will be working with Bishop Werner to see about helping her prepare for baptism.  She is doing great.  Her husband stayed for all three hours of church this week for the first time, which was good.  Linda, however, slipped and fell down the stairs outside the church and hurt her arm pretty bad,  which was not so good, but she's doing fine.  We're working with another man named Rick Hook who is very, I guess you could say wishy-washy.  He keeps telling us that he wants to start coming to church and taking the lessons with us, but every time church comes up he makes a really random excuse-not why he doesn't want to come to church, but why he doesn't want to join the church.  His latest one was, "I don't want to join your church because there are not veterans of foreign wars in your church."  Obviously that is not a real reason not to join.  There is definitely something deeper and when we meet with him we are hoping to find out what his real concern/struggle is.  Things are going great here.  We have met a couple great people here this week.  When Elder Scherwinski and I were on splits the other day I met this guy who was moving to Oregon the next day.  We were able to talk to him for some time and teach him about the Book of Mormon, the Restoration of the gospel, and about Christ.  We gave him a Book of Mormon and invited him to come to church before he left for Oregon.  He didn't end up showing up to church, but us being able to talk to him at all and explain these things was a good experience for him.  In talking to him you could tell he was one of those people who are "kept from the truth only because they know not where to find it."  I may never see him again, but I have faith that he'll eventually be able to find the truth and accept it as well.  That's about it for me to update this week.  Have a great week Everybody.  Love you.

Elder Stacey

Calling Home :) May 14, 2012

     We had a great week last week with a highlight end of being able to call home=).  We have been working with a member of the ward here to try and clean up the ward roster a little.  There are quite a few people who nobody even knows in the ward, so we've been spending time grouping people into certain areas so we will hopefully be able to find them easier.  We were also able to meet with Jennifer Roark this week.  She cancelled our appointment last week and we were fearing that she was becoming a little apprehensive about meeting with us.  Our lesson went great though.  We talked about the Plan of Salvation and The spirit was definitely there.  She told us that she did want to make a goal of being baptized if she were to gain a testimony of the Book of Mormon.  We will be working with her hopefully a  lot more in the next couple of weeks.  Now the big challenge for her is Jack DeShazer.  He always seems to have something important to do on Sundays that prevents him from being able to come to church.  He definitely wants to help Jennifer out, so we are planning on meeting with just him and having a lesson on the Sabbath with him, because at this point there is nothing he could do that would help her out more than setting an example and coming to church with her.  We both picked up and lost an investigator within a week.  Rick Hook has had missionaries over on and off for about 2 years now.  When we started teaching him again, he really seemed excited to begin learning again.  He knows our elders quorum president pretty well so we took him with us.  Bro Street had a real heart to heart with Rick letting him know how get an answer to a prayer.  He talked a lot about needing to have true desire and also true willingness to act on an answer.  I have never seen a person who can be so influenced by the extremes of both spirits so rapidly.  When we're there, he feels the spirit so well and you can tell he loves it and wants it for himself.  But almost the moment after we leave the spirit of Satan gets a hold of him and the worries of life take over, and he loses it almost as instantly as he gained it.  So he called us up and told us he didn't really want to keep taking discussions from us.  We have another appointment with him however this week so we are praying that we will be able to do anything to help him overcome some of his concerns.  One of the youth in our ward has invited pretty much his whole circle of friends on a church tour this week and they have all aggreed to come.  We're really anticipating that church tour and hope that it will help at least some, if not all of them.  One of his friends, he said is on "contract" to come to church as well for three weeks in a row.  In addition to that, we have been receiving a lot of referrals from ward members out of nowhere it seems sometimes.  We'll just be walking on the street or on our way to an appointment when a member calls telling us of somebody we need to go meet and invite on a church tour.  Missionary work is so much more effective and efficient when we include the members, and luckily for us members are starting to include themselves.  Anyway thats about is from me.  Looking forward to a great week.  Love you all, and hope everybody has a good week as well.

Good To Hear From You Monday, May 7, 2012

     Hey everybody, it's good to hear from everyone this week and I guess last week as well since I didn't get to read any emails last week(btw mom I did appreciate that you send your letter to me.  It was nice to get something in the middle of the week.).  Sounds like a lot of great things are going on at home right now.  RYAN IS MARRIED!!! oh my goodness that's weird for me to think about.  I have only met his wife once, but she seemed like a really good girl and I am so happy for them.  Make sure they know I love them and I'm thinking about them.  Does Ryan have a new address now that I would need to write him at?  It's nice to hear how well Michelle and Mike are doing as well, if not a little stressful it sounds like.  Some exciting things have been going on in Libby as well.  I got a new companion as I said last week and we've been spending a lot of time last week getting to know the ward and going through the ward list and finding less active members.  The second task is easier said than done since a few years ago Libby changed all the addresses for the whole town to make it easier for emergency workers.  And since less active people either rarely or never go to church, we don't have updated addresses for them, so it gets kind of frustrating.  Not to mention that the address change has made it harder for the emergency workers as well since homes have more than one address now, so the point of doing that, it seems, was really only to create mass confusion and to make it harder to find the hermits.  We have kind of hit a snag with Linda Dabel as well.  Nothing too serious, but it just occurred to us that since she was once a member we'll have to go through the bishop in order to make any decisions regarding baptism and he's been out of town for about a week and a half now.  Also we are double checking to make sure her records have actually been removed before we try to make any plans on setting a date for her to be baptized.  She is doing great though, as well as her husband, and the Caldwells.  It really was a miracle that the Caldwells found a place when they did and practically the next day Bro Caldwell found a job as well.  Linda new that was an answer to her prayer and it increased her faith so much about putting trust in the lord.  We tracted into a lady a couple weeks ago whos father was baptized a member of the church later in his life, married a member, and was sealed in the temple.  She had never really investigated the church before, but was open to learn more because of how it changed her father.   We took her, her boyfriend, and one of her children on a church tour and it went very well.  The spirit was there and they want to learn more.  We have another lesson scheduled with them later this week.  Sharon Goodenough has not been doing so well.  I don't know if I have talked about them much recently but Sharon is the grandmother, Nick is the father, and Alisha is the step-mother.  Well things have not been going well with Nick.  He has relapsed quite a bit since he said he would sober up and it is wearing down on the family.  The family is going to find out this week if Nick will have to leave the house and custody of the children will be given to the grandma.  I really hope that is what will happen because Alisha and Sharon don't need that negative influence right now.  It would benefit Nick as well because it's obvious that he will not change his ways the way things are going right now.  something drastic needs to happen to him and this could be the thing that gets him to realize he needs to change.  I think thats about all I have to share right now.  I love it here and the weather is beautiful.  The people are wonderful and I am looking forward to another great week.  Love you all