Will keep riding the momentum forward 

15 September 2014

Wow so this last week was pretty nuts like just crazy all around.  So Monday evening started off fantastic.  We taught a lesson and grabbed a young man to help us with it and taught a lady who has recently started coming back to church and her non-member 14 year old daughter.   We did our strategy of reading a chapter of the Book of Mormon together out loud and where each person reads two verses each and explains what those verses are saying.  This strategy works well for people that are shy and forces them to speak up. So we did that with them and read Alma 32:17 to the end of the chapter.  The mom is doing way good and is on spiritual fire.  The daughter is also doing well but lacks confidence and so we helped her be able to figure it out for herself instead of just simply explaining it for her.

The young man we brought is around 17 and I had a really good conversation with him solo on splits night about his plans for life and if he's going on a mission and he said that when he was younger he always knew he would go on a mission but now he says he isn't sure and he doesn't seem to be the most spiritually confident.  So anyways I invited him to keep praying about it as he still has his senior year to go.  We took him with us and he also had low confidence but towards the end his comments were very insightful so we will keep working with those three hopefully every week. We are meeting them again this evening.  

Tuesday went well we had some good appointments with people.  Then Wednesday was way strange.  We helped Sister Garlow stain her deck but that ended taking a lot longer then we realized but it looks way good. And then in the evening both of our appointments fell through back to back so that was rough. But we have since yesterday been able to reschedule them both. Actually Rodger was supposed to be for Wednesday but he wasn't there and his wife ignored us even though she is usually way nice.  I think they are struggling way hard with life right now. Thursday me and my companion were calling a few people on the directory again and there are several households with last name Wielke two of which live in our area one in the other elders area. We were warned by President Jones that they might be hostile and the other guys tried the one in their area and he was way rude and not interested and wouldn't listen.  So we gave one of the Wielke's in our area a call.  She wasn't too interested and was actually pretty mad so we have a bunch of people like that on the directory.  I'm glad I'm not the branch president and that I don't have to deal with that mess.  Friday we went to a funeral for a person who had died In the branch.  My first LDS funeral that I've gone to.  The speakers did a way good job and the spirit was felt. Saturday was exchanges and I got to go again to the other guys area.  Their area a few months ago was baptizing like crazy but now it's kind of going through a depression with their recent converts going inactive and moving.  So we tried one of them and he told us he wasn't interested. It was almost like tracting he was that closed off. Way weird. He was such a good guy but I think he's been getting antied hardcore. But then what's weird is that he actually called for a ride for church. Way strange.  But yea I’d say the other elders’s area is struggling because the guy that's been there for 9 months refuses to do real finding so their pool of people they are working with is stagnating. But me and Elder Bennett are making us read to try to do at least 10 contacts a day so we are tracting it up and we are actually getting a lot more people to work with through that and other means.  We’re also working more and more with members in their missionary duties.   And then Sunday we were able to finally meet with this one less active part member family who are way nice.  They actually live deep in our area but are on the Orchard Park directory for some reason so through the LDS tools app I was able to find them!  They have a lot of potential and we were able to teach the restoration to them.  But yea this week all in all was awesome.  We will keep riding the momentum forward.

Transfers are next week my last one before I go home.

Never enough time ........

8 September 2014

I can't believe it's my birthday again it feels like just yesterday that I was celebrating it.  This week went really well.  We taught a lot of people.  The most we've taught for a while and we finally had some great contacts with people who before just never seemed to be home.  I believe that the schools are starting up now and so people's schedules are becoming more normalized and so things are going way good.  We are doing a lot more tracting as well and

President last Thursday really emphasized that we make sure we do our ten contacts daily which we are exceeding.  We also had a fireside that we did this past Sunday and we taught the members how to do missionary work and how preach my gospel applies to them.  Strangely though yesterday we had none of our investigators come to church which is quite strange as we had 3 go last week but yea missionary work is often quite random.  

We had a way good meeting with our investigator Rodger Cook.  He is struggling way hard core with the anniversary of the death of his daughter and so he asked where in the Book of Mormon he could gain some comfort.  We directed him to 2 Nephi 4 where that chapter talks about the death of Lehi from Nephi's prospective.

Saturday was just all around an awesome day.  Made contact with a lot of people that we've been trying for months to get home.  Thursday was my last zone conference so me and Elder Wood  (a missionary who was in my MTC district and who also served in Cattaragus but is currently in Orchard Park the ward straight north of me)  got to give our final testimonies as that was our last zone conference we would be going to. 

Wednesday was a strange day.  We had the directory clean up meeting at 7:00 and so at around 4:00 we started to go through some people on it like through calling them to make sure that the numbers didn't work for the people that no longer lived at the addresses on it and some ladies actually worked but she got way mad at me but oh well her loss.  But with this whole directory thing I see how important the calling of ward/branch clerk really is and also the importance of home and visiting teaching to get ahold of these people before they move and their records are lost forever.   But through the power of white pages and Facebook we have found a few members.  

I love this time of year in the fall where it's nice and cool but not cold and depressing and the leaves start to change and there's loads of beautiful blue sky days.  This time last year was my favorite time of my mission and this area is quickly doing a repeat of that now so we will keep pushing on and never stop.   This next week we have so many appointments it's crazy.  We will be struggling for time.

Things going well in the Catt Branch

1 September 2014

Let's see.  This week was actually pretty good.  We had 3 investigators at sacrament meeting which is pretty good.  We also had a way solid lesson with our investigator Rodger and he said he would come to church (although he failed to show yesterday which I'm kind of glad because the topics weren't the most friendly to investigators).  But a thing that this area does which is really awesome are these cottage meetings which are held once a month at a member’s home where we teach a lesson and everyone invites their friends and less active friends to come to.  We did one last Wednesday at a lesser active member’s house.  This branch is actually interesting in than that there are a lot of border line people meaning people that are neither active or technically less active In which they come 1-2 a month and don't really participate in a calling so we are working a lot with these members to get them more active.  They are all super friendly to us though and always are willing to talk but usually have some kind of offense or something that they're holding on to. But anyways we had some other solid lessons with other investigators too and they are opening up and trusting us a lot more too.

Saturday was an interesting day.  I got pulled over and given a fix-it ticket because the right rear brake light was out which was pretty bad timing on my part due to the fact that it was working that same morning.   We have an RM who's really excited and enthusiastic to come out with us who got back from his mission in Brazil this past week as well.  He was actually an Elder Jones on his mission and he also has the same birthday as me so it's kind of weird.  We also finished power washing the deck for a widow on Wednesday as well. 

Things are going pretty well down here in the Catt Branch!  

18 August 2014

A  lot of those appointments that were supposed to happen this week didn't seem to happen but we had a whole lot of other interesting things happen.  On Tuesday we had an interesting day.  We were out tracting and we came across this one guy who let us in and he wasn't interested but he was nice and we had a pretty good conversation on religion with him.  He was also a policeman and it's always good to have the police on good terms with you!   Let's see also on Tuesday this really big old storm came crashing in.  It was pretty nuts and rained pretty hard so we just sat tight in the car working on some more records until it passed us by.   On Wednesday we helped this older couple in the ward stack some wood and it took a good few hours we also made contact with a few people as well.  We also had this one lady who was no longer a member talk to us in Angola. She was nice but not all the way there but we will go and try seeing her.   The one thing I've noticed in this area is how many excommunicated people there are specifically on the reservation.  We have also been digging into some pretty shady past history in this branch too so we're being careful to not bring up to many past wounds.   This one lady we dropped by (The one that gives us free groceries) was telling us a lot about some of the crap that she and the branch has gone through.  We encouraged her to keep going to the Orchard Park Ward and testified of the atonement and gave her a blessing.  Also on Wednesday evening my companion Elder Bennet got sick and Elder Goates got sick as well so I went with Elder Neil and worked in the other Elders area.   On Saturday we also saw a referral that we got from headquarters and she is way awesome.  She's watched the Hill Cumorah pageant multiple times and knows it pretty well so we will start teaching her and helping her with some moving that she needs help with.  That's mostly it for this week! 

Elders Neil, Jones, Goates, Bennett with Brother Bueno-Cabrera

Excited to stay in the Cattaraugus Branch

11 August 2014

Transfer calls came and went and things stayed exactly the same for this transfer again in this district.  So weird to think I only have 12 weeks left.  As for this week they finally released a new fixed up version of the area book planner app on our Ipads so it runs a lot faster and better. We also met up with one of the recent converts in our area and we found out why she hasn't been coming to church for the last month and helped resolve some of her concerns she's been having and she went to church yesterday so that's always good.  We had a big meeting with members of the branch council yesterday evening and have begun efforts to clean up the directory too.  A lot of the good appointments we had this week kind of strangely moved to this upcoming week.  Yea people are kind of weird in their keeping of appointments but let’s keep our fingers crossed that they work out. 

Excited to stay in Cabbaraugus Branch with 
dinner with the Cabrera family

Elders Wyatt Bennett, David Neil, and Jon Goates!

Over and done and put to rest!

4 August 2014

I guess the big thing for this week is the court case decision and it went really well!   Apart from that this week was kind of a little slow. We found this one guy who says he wants to change his life so hopefully we will keep meeting with him and help with that.  We also went on a hike with this one investigator we have. He's really interesting and I'm not sure if he's all the way there but he's definitely searching and we'll see what we can do with him.  This next week is packed with a lot of solid appointments with some really promising people so pray that all goes well for us!