February 22 - Letter

"Live so that those who know you, but don't know him, want to know him, because they know you"

So on Monday after we e-mailed we went to and South Bend and played basketball at the Stake Center with all the other missionaries! Best basketball I've played on my mission! There was 6 of us that all played and a Polynesian family that came and we played 5 on 5. Me and Elder T. Larson
(his dad played at BYU) he played at American Fork, Elder Pittard played at Lehi, and other missionaries from Orem, Spanish Fork all played. One of the Poly kids reminds me exactly of Sam haha. He is built the same and looks the same. After we played basketball we went to Michael's as a District so the Sisters could get something. After that we drove back to Plymouth, it's about a 25 minute drive, they got Little Caesars and me and Elder Eschler got subway. We all went to the Sisters house and played a game called Liars dice. It's what they play in Pirates of the caribbean! I'll tell you how to play it in a second :) After that we headed back to Bremen and went to bed! One thing I forgot to tell you guys last week is we went to the hospital to give Sister Sherwood's dad a blessing because he has a tumor.

Tuesday - On tuesday we woke up, ate, studied and then we went and did Family History. I'm getting good at it! And it's fun. After that we went and tracted and tried to find some people, we met a Muslim lady, with the headset on and everything. I tried to shake her hand, I don't think they shake hands though? She almost gave me a Quran. She said she had to go say her prayer so we let her go. After we tracted a part of Eastwood Estates, we went to lunch at King's buffet. We have been there a few times before but now I know why our family doesn't eat at Chinese buffets. So I saw all this meat sitting next to this grill and they cook it up for you, all that was going through my mind was protein, so they cooked it for me and Sister Ellis, Sister Ben and Elder Scoville all look at me like i'm crazy for eating from this Mongolian grill and they say "Do you know how long that meat has been sitting out"? and I said oh ya but I still tried a bite and ya it was gross. After we had lunch we tried by some potential investigators, they didn't answer, so we tracted and worked some more and then we went back to Bremen and stayed there the rest of the night. Funny thing about Tuesday, the Sisters lost there phone on Friday and I asked them if they looked for it in the Richharts driveway because we had dinner with them Friday. The Sisters said No it's not there. On Tuesday Sister Ellis asked me if saying "Cinnamon twists are my eternal companion" asked me if that was sac-religious and I said "Ya maybe" and then she said as she was writing this letter "I sound like Holland in this letter" so I told her in a joking way she can't say Sac religious things and then say she sounds like Holland. So Sister Humes the lady who is over phones said they'll have a new phone in a week and I said "I'm gonna make a prophecy and say you're gonna find your phone" Not even 7 minuites later Brother Richhart calls them and says "We found you're phone in our driveway" The sisters we're so mad at this point and I said "I don't boast of my strength but of the strength of God" and that made them mad and then I said "As Elder Holland would say, I proved to be prophetic on all counts" and that made them mad, hahaha.

Wednesday - On Wednesday we woke up studied, I read some of the Book of Mormon and some of a Faith Study guide that President Cleveland gave us. It's very good. Around 10:30 we went and saw Brenda Montez. She is hispanic and lives in a little apartment at the top of this building. We met her once before and committed her to baptism and gave her a Book of Mormon is spanish. We went back today planning on teaching her Plan of Salvation, we did, and I spoke a little bit of Spanish to her, what I've learned on my mission and she laughed. We showed her a Mormon message that talks about the Restoration, by L. Tom Perry. There were 3 little kids and I gave them the Plan of Salvation puzzle that the Eastons gave me and the little girl wouldn't stop hugging me. We found out they live in this little apartment with Brenda, her mom, her sister and all their kids and we are going to get them on a church tour whenever they all can come and then we will get them to church :) I found out she likes to speak English better and so we're going to take her a Book of Mormon in English. After that we tried by Bill, a potential, he didn't answer so we went to Richards house. He couldn't talk at the time but told us to come back next week. He's a very nice guy, we placed a Book of Mormon with him. He lives alone I think, is pretty rough looking with a beard but very nice. Has a couple tattoos, we need to get him baptized. After that I was kind of thinking to tract another street but I decided and told Elder Scoville "Lets go tract N. Washington st" and it was right there ahead of us and i'm sure glad I did because this is what happened. 1st house we knock on, a hispanic man answers, he is catholic, his name is Jose, we talked to him, had a nice discussion and then he said he would accept a Book of Mormon so we are going to take him one. Knock the house next to it, they didn't answer, go on to the next house, we find Nikki. She lives in a little shack, maybe a little bigger then "The key" on a basketball court. She has a couple little kids and we committed her to baptism. We then go onto knock the next door and that's when we meet Sarai. Sarai let us in, she had a little 2 year old and she was very friendly to us. She is Catholic for the time being, but that will change soon. She told us how she just watched a show called "Spotlight" and wondered how to trust a priest. She said her faith in Catholic church hadn't changed but they didn't go to church as much. We taught her the whole restoration, committed her to baptism, showed her a Mormon message on the Restoration by L. Tom Perry, we told her we'd bring her a Book of Mormon, when we invited her to be baptized she said "Yes, and we're actually planning on baptizing our 8 month old" so we taught her about infant baptism and read her Moroni 8 and it all makes sense to her. I told her after I showed her the video of L. Tom Perry and how he came to my church and spoke and after he went around talking to everyone and asked me if I was going on a mission and I said Yes and here I am showing you a video of him while i'm on my mission. She thought that was neat. After that we went and had lunch. We tracted some more after lunch, and we went and saw Freeman and Janie. Janie is the lady that we helped shovel snow for, she told us how her husband has a hard time believing in God so this time when we went over there, Janie wasn't home, but we talked to Freeman outside. Janie had told us how she used to talk to LDS missionaries when she lived in a different house and we found her again, and Freeman told us he used to talk to Lds missionaries when he lived in Knox, which is about 35 minutes away from Bremen. So they are in our path for a reason and they need the gospel. We taught him the Plan of Salvation and committed him to read Alma 40. We talked about the importance of the Book of Mormon and how it came about. We tried seeing some more people, they didn't answer and then we went and had dinner. At 6 we headed up to South Bend to go to a Pentecostal Church. Boy are they flippin lost. They are nice people and we told Bob we'd go with him so we did. Hahaha.

Thursday - On Thursday we studied and then headed down to Plymouth to ride with the sisters down to Culver for the coloring class with the less active. No one was there so we did a little bit of family history and then we went to this cafe on main street in Culver and it was good. It was fun. After that we went back to Plymouth and started working. We tracted and tried seeing some people. As we were tracting, no one was answering. We were knocking a tucked away neighborhood in the forest and we said "There is no way this many people aren't home" and then we met this lady. She goes to the Plymouth Wesleyan church, she talked to us and was nice and when we asked to say a prayer she let us in. We got talking more and she told us she had just read something about Joseph Smith. We taught her about the Book of Mormon and gave her a restoration pamphlet and she was interested. After that we kept knocking and met a hispanic girl and taught her the restoration. The next house that answered was Lynetter, she has a couple little kids, she's catholic but we taught her the Restoration and now we just need to go follow up with these people. After that we tried to see some more people and headed back to Bremen.

Friday - On Friday we did our usually morning routine, ate, studied and then went to District meeting. We had a good district meeting and then we went and had lunch at the sisters. After that the 4 of us (the Elders) went to Borics the hair salon to see Tori, a less active. We talked to her and Sister Padilla who was getting her haircut and it was a good friendship builder. After that we went tracting for a little bit of time we had and found a man, his best friend is Mormon, he had questions that we answered and left him with a pamphlet with our contact info on it. We then kept knocking and we met and older guy who goes to another church, the Wesleyan church but we taught him the Restoration, he said he would accept a Book of Mormon and he asked us where our church was. After trying to see some more people, all 6 of us headed up to Bremen to go to the Reeds for dinner. We had pizza and it was fun. After that we went to our apartment, I showed the other missionaries grandpas letters because they wanted to see them. We then headed to Plymouth, switched our stuff into Culvers car and went to Culver. We listened to very good talks and slept there and it was fun.

On Saturday we woke up, studied, listened to talks, the Joseph Smith Lectures by Truman G. Madsen and Brother Timm picked us up and we went to the Temple. We did 21 initiatories and 5 Endowments. Sister Ben who is Indian gave me a name to take through the temple. The temple is a little more then 2 hours away from where we are but it's a beautiful drive. All 5 of us fasted for 5 people that need the gospel and that was good. Brother Timm packed us lunches and after the Temple we ate and headed back to Plymouth. It was a very fun day. Saturday night we went on a run and it was the perfect temperature outside.

Sunday we woke up, headed to church, had a good day at church. We had correlation meeting after church and then after that Brother Timm took us to his house to feed us. On the way we stopped by Andy and Charlotte Riale. Charlotte is a member, Andy is not but they're very nice, they live out in the country and we stopped to see how they're doing. We then went to Brother Timms and he fed us Chili cheese dogs and grilled cheese. After that he took us back to the church. He dropped us off at Culvers car and so Elder Morgan, Elder Eschler, Elder Scoville and I went tracting. Me and Elder Scoville talked to a Pentecostal Minister, and a couple more people, taught the Gospel and then it got dark and we all went back to Culver. We went back to the house and planned and wrote in our journal and then at 8:30 we got a call that Laken Alles needed a blessing. He has pneoumonia, he just got his mission papers finished yesterday, he got the Melchizedek Priesthood and he's the one that's from Brighton but he's going to Culver. We went the Culver academy, went to find him, he was in the Health department, there health department looks like an old English hospital it was neat. We gave him a blessing and Kyle Strain was in there too, the one from Bountiful and he has pneomonia too. It was a very good week. I love and miss you guys so much!!!