May 9 - Letter

Monday - We e-mailed which is always a highlight of the week. We got lunch. After that we went back to Bremen and rested. We slept until 6 because that is when P-day ends. We got ready and went to go see Austin. We pulled up to his house right as he was walking away, he saw us in our car and gave us the biggest smile and we parked our car and walked with him to McDonalds. I'm glad I get to be his friend and teach him the Gospel. We talked to him and taught him and walked with him back to his house and then we went back to our apartment.

Tuesday - Tuesday we had a Conference call, got to hear from President Cleveland. President Kelly gave us a list of people on our Ward directory that are less active or In active so we spent some of the day on Tuesday doing that. We went out far in the country to find 1 person and that was a lot of fun. It was a bright blue sunny day and I love it when it's like that and we're in the country. We went down dirt roads and right as we pulled up to her house, our car said we had a flat tire haha but we checked and we didn't so we were good. She didn't answer so we left a note. After that we had lunch and then Elder Benson had to prepare some of his talk so we went to the Library for an hour. While he prepared his talk, I looked up talks by Apostles and read those. 1 of them was by Howard W. Hunter and he talked about making Member Missionary Classes. The Bishop would pick 6-8 members, almost make a team, and then a Full Time Missionary or Ward missionary would teach the class and talk about Doctrine from Preach my Gospel, Practice approaches and Role Plays and then set goals on how many non- members they could get in the church building altogether by inviting friends. After that we went and helped Brother Timm move some things. He's moving into a new house and has a bad back, he has like 30 rods in his back and so we helped him. He gave us his special recipe, Ham and Scallop potato sandwiches. After that we met Brother Harrington at Bruno's Pizza, with all 6 of the missionaries here and had dinner. It was a lot of fun and it was our farewell to him. We then went to the church and had a Bible study, hoping to get members and less actives and investigators there but no one came so it was just us missionaries.

 

Wednesday - Wednesday we woke up and cleaned :) Our garbage can was overflowing and we got our house cleaned up until lunch. We then went out finding and tracting and visiting stop by's. As we we're stopping by people, we were in Lake of the Woods and stopped by Lori, a miracle we found a little more then a month ago, it was the last door we knocked on and found her, gave her a Book of Mormon and taught Restoration, she missed an appointment the next week, so we hadn't talked to her, so we go on Wednesday, and her daughter answers, her daughter didn't really have a belief in anything and Lori wasn't home so we taught her daughter the Plan of Salvation, as we're standing on the doorstep, Lori comes driving home and invites us in. She was so happy to see us. We taught her more, and followed up and taught another Book of Mormon lesson to check for understanding. It was great. She is promising. She wants to come to church, she actually went and found it already and said "I will be there!" and she doesn't even want our phone number, and the reason is, is she doesn't want to be able to call and cancel. We set up an appointment for 2 days later on Friday. Wednesday was a very good day, we worked more and then went to the church and Brother Timm brought us dinner there. We then went and stayed the night at the Culver Elders apartment so we could wake up and do service the next day.

 

Thursday - Thursday was a lot of fun. We went to Dale Hartman's farm and worked all day in the sun. I had dirt all over me. He then took us to Subway. After Subway we went back to Culver and went on an Obedience walk. An Obedience walk is what you do if you don't have anyone to visit, or have any plans you need to do, so we walked and hoped to find someone walking and teach them. We call it PC or personal contacting. It was such a nice night and so we walked and I got some chocolate milk :)

 

Friday - Friday we had district meeting. We have a very good district. There are 2 baptisms coming up. The Sisters are teaching a lady who is 80 or so, named Anna Listenberger, she has came to church 6 times, knows our church is true, she has a lot of kids that thought the Sister Missionaries here and our church we're stealing her, and they were against our church but the Sisters have done a good job and now 4 out of the 9 kids are coming to her baptism. After District Meeting we went to lunch. Me and Elder Benson then went to Bremen because we had an appointment with a guy. We went and sat down in his house, he's the guy that had a notepad of Anti Questions and then showed us an Anti Video but we answered his questions and gave him a Book of Mormon and I dared him to find something wrong with the Book of Mormon and we testified to him. We then went to another appointment we had but they weren't there. We went back to Plymouth and had dinner with the Ogilvie's that night. We had enchiladas, after dinner Brother Ogilvie came with us to visit investigators so the first one we went to was Lori. We drove to Lake of the Woods and when we got there she said she didn't have time to talk, she had a loved one pass away and we had a Plan of Salvation lesson prepared for her. We taught her it and  had a great lesson. The next appointment we had was with Samuel. Samuel is from Ghana Africa and Elder Benson knows a little bit of the language so he talked to him in it, it was sweet and he knows this handshake they do in Africa. Samuel speaks good english though and we taught him about the Book of Mormon.

 

Saturday - Saturday we we're doing Area Book Work, writing records of people we're teaching and we get a call from the Branch President asking where we are, we were told the day before by Elder Morgan that we didn't have splits but it was a mis-communication and so we hustled and went to Plymouth and went on splits. I went with President Kelly and we went way far out and visited people and then for lunch he took me to this Lake House grille by Maxincuckee Lake. We finished around 4:30 and me and Elder Benson had to type a progress record so we hustled to Bremen to the library but it was closing in 15 minutes and then change of plans happened and we found out we had dinner in Plymouth so we had to drive back to Plymouth and we had pizza at the church :) It was all around a fun day. 

Sunday - WAS THE BEST DAY :) We had church, had some interesting deep doctrine taught in Sacrament meeting that usually doesn't always happen and then in Priesthood, their were 4 members in our class and we had another interesting lesson. Then we got to Skype :) while me and Elder Eschler we're waiting for the others to skype we went out and knocked doors, I ate some dark chocolate with peanut butter, it was like Reese's. It was a good week :) I love you guys!!!!!