Monday, November 17, 2014

Week 24 in the Field: Bishop's Storehouse, Inspiration, and Great Lessons



1. Bishop's Storehouse volunteers photo: (Missionaries in the front row left to right: Sisters West, Tagilala, Squire, Cruz, Williams, Brown, Dansie, and Penrod. Second row missionaries from left to right: Elders Owens,Peery, Nimmer, Moeller, Hohneke, and Rivera. Third row missionaries from left to right: Elders Black, Colver, Alarcon, and Womack.)

Hello!

Things have been super busy here today with a lot of interesting things happening this week in general.

So on Tuesday we had a full day at the Bishop's storehouse. The storehouse is where people who are in need of food may come to receive it free of charge.  It is staffed by volunteers from our church, including missionaries.  

We had to fill about 42 orders plus at least 30 walk-ins. The amount of orders for people we needed to fill nearly made us run out of supplies, but it was awesome to see all the volunteers working together cheerfully to help those not as fortunate. It was also the last day of working in the storehouse for Elder Moeller, Elder Alarcon, and Hermana Cruz who are all going home this transfer.

It was a great day until Bro. Wolfertz who is one of the workers at the storehouse came in and said "Who rode the black bike?" I raised my hand. "Your back tire ISN'T flat!" Then everyone laughed as Elder Moeller loaded his bike onto the zone leaders bike rack.



2. District Funeral for Elder Moeller--this is because Elder Moeller is about ready to go home. Out here in the mission field, we say that he is being "killed off." Of course, it is all in good fun! Missionaries left to right: Elder Womack, Sister Squire, Sister Tagilala, Elder Owens (above being the speaker at the funeral), Elder Peery (the murderer--because I am Elder Moeller's companion), Elder Colver, and Elder Nimmer.

On Thursday we got to see our investigator who wanted to do an entire lesson on the Book of Daniel. If you have read ALL of Daniel, not just the stories, but his prophesies, too, then you'll understand why we were kind of cringing. But we are told to read the scriptures with the Spirit so we gave that a go. It was awesome. Elder Moeller and I felt totally guided by the spirit, coming up with all these great insights into the book and our investigator was agreeing with all of it 'cause it all made sense!

Afterwards we started talking about how these prophesies show that we need to be prepared when Christ comes and that's when he started talking about how he feels he needs to be baptized properly as the Bible dictates. We were more than happy to talk with him about that and will be hopefully doing so this week with my new companion, which I will get to later on.

3. Elder Moeller signing my laundry bag--a mission tradition--to have 
all your mission companions autograph it.

On Friday Elder Moeller practically finished packing and felt exhausted. But I felt prompted we needed to try this one family one more time. This family is a part member family with the husband and mother being members and the kids nonmembers but they want to be baptized. We have tried them many times but each time they were not available. As we were walking up to the door we saw the zone leaders trying to find one of their members whom I had actually happened to meet many weeks ago and remembered where they had moved. Their family happened to live right across from ours and in a miraculous event, both doors opened to two sets of elders at the same time.

Our family had loads of pets including a snake, at least one chihuahua, two big dogs, 7 fish, two birds, and a bearded dragon. It was a mini zoo! We had a great lesson and they said they'd be at church. Even though they didn't show up on Sunday, we still have a good time for when to try again.

4. Me holding a snake that likes to constrict.

Everything else is going really well. On Sunday I received word that my next companion was going to be Elder Hansen (Hanson? Hansan? No idea yet how his name is spelled) and I have no idea who he is. All I know is that I will be the senior companion in this companionship which is an awesome new thing, since my only other companions I've "killed off" (which means I was their last companion before their mission ended and they went home). Having someone younger than me in missionary age is a good and needed change. I will get to meet him tomorrow.

I hope you all are doing well. In my Bible Challenge I have reached the Book of Revelation which is way ahead of schedule--about a month ahead to be exact, so I will be doing a relatively in-depth study of it, and will still probably finish by the end of the month. Then my goal is to read the Doctrine and Covenants (a volume of revelation given to Joseph Smith by the power of God from 1820's to 1844 including other revelations to some other modern day prophets as well) before the end of the year, which is pretty doable.

6 months down!  It’s going by fast—only 18 months to go!

Elder Peery



5. Getting stuck behind a tractor!



6. It snowed about half an inch this morning--just enough to make people annoyed, 
because it still meant they had to go to work.

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