Monday, June 30, 2014

June 30 Letter

Well... Here goes nothing, eh?

Ha, I really couldn't have asked for a better last week. Monday night
we spent with Dan. Tuesday we saw Barbie, and just happened across
three other people we hadn't seen in a while while walking around,
then we spent the evening with the Lonsberrys. Wednesday we saw Randy
and had the evening with the Larsons (quads included this time!).
Thursday we taught Trevor, Sis Schumaker, and the Walkers. Friday we
taught Ileana. Saturday we went tracting one last time and had quite
the experience--three doors, three people talked to, a full 30-40
minute lesson after being invited inside, and two new investigators!
Sunday we visited Michael in prison, Sally, and had dinner with the
Footes. It really was all perfect.

It is weird to think of a mission as ending. Elder Russon and I were
talking yesterday, and I decided that I disagree with the usual
sentiment that my mission "went fast." It's not so much that my
mission seemed to go by in a blink, but more like it's been 21 years
long--as though it's just been my whole life. And so it's not so much
that it is ending "already," but that it is ending at all. I don't
know what to really make of it.

But, what can you do? Haha I've compared it to leaving on a mission in
the first place, where the difference is that I had a choice whether
to go on a mission or not, as opposed to now. Originally, I didn't
like the current circumstances. But now, I think it is a good thing
that I don't have to deal with any stresses of what to do... It's
happening, so might as well roll with it haha.

Well, I know this is short, but I have stuff to do today, and I'll see
you soon, anyways!

I love you, but I don't miss you (quite yet),
Elder Allen

Friday, June 27, 2014

June 23 Letter

Hello!

Well.... Here goes nothing, eh? One more week.

Unfortunately (kind of), Ileana's baptism didn't happen this week. She is very ready, but I like the reasoning for waiting. Her uncle and aunt and cousins recently reactivated, right at the same time her mom did. So, she wants her uncle, Brother Torres, to baptize her. This was a little awkward at first, because we knew he was still smoking, but deciding if he is able to perform priesthood ordinances is under bishop's discretion, not ours. However, when she asked him, he was the one to bring up that he didn't feel like he would be worthy for it. So, not only did it save any potential awkwardness, it was neat to see him acknowledge the importance of both the ordinance and the word of wisdom. So, he set the goal to be off cigarettes in two weeks and do the baptism then! I realllly hope it works out, since that'll be the time when you guys are out here. Any later than that, and I don't get to see it! Haha. But, either way, she is doing great!

Hmm... really, compared to the past two weeks, this one was pretty tame. We had zone conference on Tuesday. It was all right, nothing too fancy. What was really weird, though, was at the end saying a farewell testimony... Haha it's one of those things that you know is coming for about two and a half years, but when it gets there, it's pretty strange. I remember back in the weeks leading up to my mission, people would always ask how I felt, and I never really had an answer for them. My whole life had been not a missionary, so I had no idea what to even expect. In Matt Call's words, "Pretty much your whole life up to this point ends once you get to the MTC." Ha, I recognize that reading that, it could sound dismal, but he didn't say it dismally, and it ends up being pretty accurate and not dismal in the least. Now, two years later, I feel like I'm right back in the same boat. I don't really know what to expect with the real world after two years of this being my world.

But this week is turning into a number of "goodbyes." We have a dinner appointment scheduled every night (I'm going to be lumpy...), and that is after a number of people intentionally did a goodbye dinner last week. Blech... I hate goodbyes haha. Transfers are hard enough for me, let alone getting transferred to Wyoming/Utah.

I am glad, though, that you are all coming out, because it makes it so that this whole week doesn't just turn into nothing but goodbyes. That will help, for sure.

Anyways, I am running lowish on time, so I will give a quick recap of the week! Haha besides... I can just tell you anything else in person.

We still met with Ileana a lot. She has been sick, so slightly less enthusiastic, but still pretty legit. Haha she was upset when she found out I was going home, saying, "But.... you're my favorite elder!" Ha then she complained to her mom. That made me laugh a good bit.

We also taught Jim again. I believe I told you about him last week. Anyways, we happened upon him a couple weeks back, longtime teacher and football coach, has lung cancer, really great guy. Well, we left him a Book of Mormon the first time we talked with him. By the second time, he'd finished 1 Nephi. By the third, he'd finished 2 Nephi. He loves what we have to say, but it is quite frustrating, because he keeps saying, essentially, "Yeah, that's a lot like what we believe in the Catholic Church." This is even things like premortal life and the kingdoms of glory. I really wanted to tell him that Origen got posthumously excommunicated from the Catholic Church, largely because of his belief in premortal life. But, Elder Moulton made a good point that he probably had some pretty far-fetched views of Mormonism beforehand, so it is catching him off guard that we are very much Christian. "Eventually," Elder Moulton said, "he will start looking for the important differences instead of the similarities." Unfortunately, he somewhat dropped us at the end of this last lesson. Yet, as we were leaving, he got the Book of Mormon right back out and started reading again! Haha, so they are planning on swinging back over in another two weeks or so. Giving him enough time to not be pushy, but still making sure he has the opportunity.

We also met with Randy! He is a frustrating case. He wants to do good... but is in a rough spot since he is on probation, doesn't have a driver's license, and has a less-than-supportive wife. But, what REALLY makes it frustrating is now he is even stalling on his scripture reading. He was soooo gung-ho at reading the Bible and Book of Mormon, but now he's completely tapered off of reading either. But, we are meeting regularly, again. So that is a good thing.

I also went on another exchange to Warsaw this week. We did a lot of the same things as last time, but this time around, Patti from Freedom drove out to take us out to dinner! To make it even better, she brought Debbie Jones with her! It was great to see both of them!

Buuuut, like I said, I'm running low on time. 

I love you, but I don't miss you!
Elder Allen

Wednesday, June 18, 2014

June 16 Letter

Hiiii.

This whole two areas thing makes stuff pretty cool! We now have a baptism scheduled forSunday! Iliana committed to be baptized and should be good to go. We are pretty excited for her!

Really, his whole week has been eventful. On Wednesday, the ward did a "strawberry social," which is essentially just a potluck dinner with ice cream and strawberries afterwards. The point is, the ward did an activity! It is the first one since I have been here. Really, it's the first of anything out on by the ward that wasn't the usual meetings on Sunday or mutual on Wednesday. So, we missionaries jumped on it, and had five or six investigators there! The most exciting of these were Mallard and Diane, who have developed a good friendship with the Moons, but haven't met anyone else or came to anything. But they were there and seemed to really enjoy themselves.

Then yesterday, Dan came to church!! That probably made my whole week. So, he's been in the hospital for about 12 days with a ruptured hernia. Since he has a bad liver and a tumor on his pituitary gland, surgery was really risky. So they were trying to find alternatives. Pretty much every day was spent crossing one more alternative off the list. The Moons went and visited him a couple of times, and actually last Monday I spent half my pday going to visit him with the Moons. (I'll tell you more about that pday in a second haha.) Well, on Friday he was finally released from the hospital, and on Saturday we went with him to rearrange his antique/refinishing store. While there, he mentioned that he had officially resigned his position as pastor (Well... kinda. The church apparently rejected his resignation haha. So instead he is on "indefinite leave." But, they've hired an interim pastor, and Dan says he has no intention of going back haha.), and was excited to be able to go around and visit other churches now. "Wait a minute," he then said, "What time is your service at?" So we told him, and the next day he was there! It was a kind of goofy sacrament meeting, being Father's Day and all, but overall I think he quite enjoyed it. The goofiness might have even helped, because it included two youth speakers (he has always loved that we have non-clergy speak regularly, and I imagine youth only make that better for him) and the primary sang (and we have a HUGE primary). Regardless, I was stoked to seem him there!

Trevor also came to church, which was great to see. He lives in what used to be Nunda's area. And for a while was doing remarkably well. He was at church weekly, was reading the scriptures a ton, and was getting more and more vocal in Sunday school. It was great! But then he went to drug rehab, which naturally did wonders for his word of wisdom issues but also really slowed down his progression. We made it over there for the first time in quite a few weeks, and I think it was beneficial that I was there because even though I had never been the missionary teaching him, neither of the other two missionaries had been here when he was at the top of his game. So, we had a good conversation about doing the little things that bring in the spirit, and while it went fairly well, I was unconvinced that he was convinced. But, when we texted him Saturday, we learned that he'd already contacted a ward member and had his ride all arranged!

Oh, and Jim! He didn't come to church, but that's ok. We met Jim a little over a week ago when we were walking home. He's a retired teacher, who spent 42 years at Geneseo High School teaching government and economics. He's a super nice Catholic guy, but is going through a fairly rough time by being in his third year with lung cancer while his wife is also battling cancer of her own. Anyways, when we first met him, after talking about economics for a while and about football a little while after that and his dog a little while after that, we finally got into talking about the Book of Mormon. We asked him if he'd read any of it, and after he said no, he explained that it was mostly because he's never had one to read. Well, we changed that real quick! Then this week, we went back. We started talking a little with him, and eventually he apologized for not reading a whole bunch... He'd "only" read all of 1 Nephi. Haha we were blown away! And not only had he read the whole first book, he remembered the story and was able to draw his own applications out of it. It was phenomenal. So, after sharing the Restoration with him, we encouraged him to just keep reading from where he was at so we could come back over (hopefully today) and talk about the Plan of Salvation. Hopefully he has read, because 2 Nephi 2, 4, and 9 are all awesome Plan of Salvation introductions! 

And I think the last good story about visiting people is Michael. He is in prison out here for the next year or so. His mom is an active member down in Virginia, and contacted Bishop to see if anyone could go visit him. Elder Russon has actually been twice already, but this was my first time. Michael'd been inactive for quite some time, but has been working on changing things around while in prison. He reads the Book of Mormon every day and has read The Miracle of Forgiveness a handful of times, too. Right now he is in the Alma war chapters, so we talked about two different stories that apply to him pretty well. The first is when the Nephites take the city of Mulek by luring the Lamanites out with their small army, only to have Moroni then lead a big army into the now undefended city. We talked about how easy it is for us to be like the Lamanites and get caught up in small distractions while missing the big army about to take over our safeplaces. However, if we just stay in our strongholds--he said his stronghold is his mom--then we will be perfectly safe. The second story we went to is earlier on, when the Lamanites try to attack the cities of Noah and Lehi, because those had always been the weakest cities of the Nephites. This time, though, when they got there, they found out Moroni had built up a big fortification around each one. We talked with Michael about how he needs to pinpoint where he is weakest so that he can fortify it now, before he goes back into the real world again. Overall, it was a neat lesson and he's a very cool guy!

Buuuuut, that's all I can really think of to talk about. So, I'll leave it at that!

I love you, but I don't miss you!
Elder Allen

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

June 9 Letter

Hallo!

Having two areas to cover is busy. We definitely didn't have a down moment all week, which is nice. It is definitely taking some adjusting, though. People are notoriously bad at setting and keeping appointments, so we usually spend a huge chunk of our time more or less driving in circles until someone answers the door. We might knock the same door two or three times on Tuesday, then try again on Friday if they weren't home. Now that we have two areas and a finite number of miles and a finite amount of time, that can't happen. In all reality, it might be a good way of weeding out those who aren't progressing, but it is definitely an interesting shift.

It's hard, too, because I think naturally etched into all of our minds (or at least in Elder Russon's and mine, since we've been in our respective areas a while) is a "my area, your area" mentality. I think especially for him, he's under the impression that the areas are going to go right back to where they were in a few weeks, which is looking less and less likely to be the case. It just makes things a little difficult that way.

But still, there are some people inherited into our area who have me pretty excited! Iliana in particular. She's the unbaptized 14-year-old daughter of a lady who just reactivated about a month ago. The Nunda elders have met her and talked with her on numerous occasions, but we had our first real lesson with her on Saturday, and it was excellent! We were talking about the Restoration, which was interesting because she has somewhat of an understanding of basic Christianity but not a fully congruent understanding. All that aside, though, she and her friend Maiya (who is a member, and was at the lesson) have some brilliant questions and insights. My absolute favorite line from Iliana that has really got me thinking came after we watched the Restoration movie, and we just asked what stood out to her. Iliana responded, "Well, he was trying to understand what he needed to do to be saved, and so he kept asking people and studying. Then the Holy Ghost came to him and explained what he needed to do." We'd talked about the Holy Ghost at the start of the lesson, so I was just pleased that she understood the Spirit's role. I figured we would just correct her a little bit and explain that it was more than the Holy Ghost hath at came, but Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. But then she totally caught me off guard and continued, "... the Holy Ghost came to him and explained what he needed to do. And so he went into the woods to pray, and God and Jesus came to him." I thought that was a pretty interesting insight! We often talk about all the searching and studying that Joseph did that lead him to the grove, but it's interesting to think about the Holy Ghost teaching him to go into the grove SO the First Vision could occur. I've pondered a lot on that over the weekend. She also said she would pray about when she wanted to get baptized, so we are all pretty excited about her.

We also got in with Randy again! It had been a month without getting any texts, calls, or anything from him. We would try to get ahold of him, but nothing. So on Thursday, we decided we were just going to stop over there. I'd definitely never done that with Randy before, so I wasn't sure how it would go. But not only was he home and let us in, he was really happy that we did stop by. He said for the past week or so he kept thinking about getting ahold of us, but could never get himself to do it. He said for the past few weeks, he'd been struggling to maintain his spirituality at all, and had been praying that God would give him the drive or a boost of some sort to read the scriptures or go to church or anything. He took our stopping by as the answer to those prayers! Hopefully we will get back on track with meeting every week, now.

Those were definitely our two more exciting lessons of the week. I also had a fun time on Wednesday, on exchanges in Warsaw. It's really weird, because that area is the one that I stayed the shortest time in, yet where I seem to have maintained the closest relationships. We mostly just bounced around to all sorts of people who I had worked with. The best of all, though, is that Grant told his aunt that I am his best friend, not her! Haha that made me pretty happy. Haha he remembered me right off the bat! Funny kid... Hahaha the funniest thing he said was when I asked him if he wanted to come live in Utah with me. He said, "Ummm.... Is it far away?" When I told him yes, it was pretty far, he said, "Ummm.... Well... Maybe we could go a different day? Then you could talk to your mom and I'll talk to my mom!" Hahaha he did a solid job of completely avoiding having to give a real answer haha.

I gave a talk in sacrament meeting yesterday! It's the first talk I've given in probably about a year. It was on helping people gain faith. I kind of based it around the First Vision, and lessons we can learn about helping people gain faith from that story. I narrowed it down to five major points:

1) Teach the basics first. In two accounts of the First Vision, Joseph writes that the first thing Jesus told him was that his sins were forgiven. Ultimately, that was why Joseph really went to the grove. God clearly had bigger things in mind, but He didn't jump to those. He started with the basics.
2) Don't judge someone's capability to grow. God trusted a 14-year-old illiterate farm boy.
3) Let the Spirit do the teaching. I explained Iliana's story from above, the gave this quote from Brigham Young: "I had only traveled a short time to testify to the people, before I learned this one fact, that you might prove doctrine from the Bible till doomsday, and it would merely convince a people, but would not convert them. You might read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, and prove every iota that you advance, and that alone would have no converting influence upon the people. Nothing short of a testimony by the power of the Holy Ghost would bring light and knowledge to them--bring them in their hearts to repentance. Nothing short of that would ever do. You have frequently heard me say that I would rather hear an Elder, either here or in the world, speak only five words accompanied by the power of God, and they would do more good than to hear long sermons without the Spirit. That is true, and we know it."
4) Our spiritual experiences don't convert; theirs do. Joseph could recount his vision to all sorts of people, and it didn't do a world of difference until the hearer felt the Spirit witness of its truthfulness. The same can be said of the Apostles on the day of Pentecost; it wasn't until the people were "pricked in their hearts" that they did anything about the Apostle's testimony. Our spiritual experiences fortify our own testimony, but we have to help others have their own experiences.
5) No efforts are wasted. James bore his testimony of personal revelation in the first chapter, fifth verse of his epistle almost 1800 years before Joseph read it. In that time, the church fell apart, and apostasy reigned for centuries. And yet, that testimony still changed the world.

Overall, it was pretty fun!

Oh, I think I have our schedule more or less worked out for when you guys are out here! I need to verify with a few more people that the days I planned on will work for them... but I think it'll work! Any last requests of things to do while here? Aside from visiting people, I figured the sites, Niagara, Letchworth, one of the Finger Lakes, touring downtown Buffalo a little bit, Lake Erie, lots of New York food.... anything else? Let me know!

And well... I do believe that's the bulk of my week! 

I love you, but if don't miss you!
Elder Allen

Monday, June 2, 2014

June 2 Letter

Hello!

Well, the week was fairly tame until yesterday morning! We got a call
from President at about 7:45 saying that an elder up in Palmyra had to
go home for health reasons, and so Elder Hales, who serves in the
other half the ward, was being transferred up there. As such, his
companion, Elder Russon, is now in a trio with us and we are covering
both areas. Haha luckily, neither of our areas were fully busy... But
now, combined, we will be VERY busy! It'll be cool though. They have a
handful of really solid investigators right now, including two
daughters of a recently reactivated lady who both want to get baptized
soon, so I'm stoked about that! Ultimately, I think the biggest strain
this will put on us is on miles for the car...but hopefully we'll be
able to wing a few rides here and there and possibly round up a bike
or two, and then things should be good.

It will have interesting implications for our district as well, since
it only consisted of our two areas. Now we are going to be put with
Warsaw and Batavia, in a district that will now have seven elders and
two separate senior couples. Thankfully, I'm not going to be district
leader. Haha while I love giving the trainings at district meeting and
whatnot, I hate exchanges. And with seven elders... That's a lot of
exchanges.

 It's also fun because, at least temporarily, we have two apartments!
So last night we slept in Nunda's apartment, and tonight we will be
back in ours. Fun!

Really though, it should be a good thing. Most of the more gung-ho
members live down in Nunda so it will be nice to have them in our
area. Then, with their investigators, we will be quite busy.

As far as the rest of the week, let me see if I can wrangle up a few
good stories here and there.

We met up with Mallard and Diane early on in the week. They are some
of the nicest people, but sometimes I want to shake them! Haha they go
on and on and on about how whenever they need help or think about us,
we just show up or give them a call. As such, Diane now calls us her
angels haha. But yet they keep saying "God must be sending you!"
without really listening to what we are saying as though we were sent
from God. Haha we will talk for a while, and then Mallard will go on
some sort of a born-again rant for thirty minutes. What is funny about
it is that he isn't doing it in argumentation, but almost in
agreement... even if he is saying isn't really agreeing with what we
are teaching. But, eventually, he does start adopting things we have
taught into his rants. For instance, when he tried to explain the
trinity this time, he ended up comparing it to a husband and wife -
one, but very separate. Ha, so we hope that if we teach truth over and
over for long enough, it will eventually sink in and just become his
beliefs.

Oh yeah! We had our lesson with Shane! It went very well again! It was
interesting to see the difference in our focus, though. Last time,
he'd been coming to church weekly for two or three months, so we
focused primarily on baptism. This time, he hadn't been to church for
a good two months, and so a lot of our focus was on coming to church.
He has quite legitimately been swamped with work, working at least 40
hours a week in two separate jobs. He says he pretty much wakes up,
goes to work, comes home, goes on a bike ride with his daughter, eats
a little dinner, and goes to bed, every day. But, he says he would
like to start meeting up at least every other week now, so that's
exciting! Hopefully we'll get him back to church soon, too!

I also got ahold of Jimmy. So a little while after his baptism, he
baptized his girlfriend and her kids. Well, since then, they broke up
and apparently things are pretty awkward between the two of them,
hence why he hasn't been making it to church. The proposed solution by
Warsaw's branch president is for him to just attend church in the next
closest unit: Geneseo! He wasn't there this week, but is planning on
coming next week!

Well, I officially am done one month from today. Haha all I can think
about is a little "loading" bar on a computer that says "96%
complete." Haha the odd part about that, is depending on the download,
the last 5-10% either zooms through after a slow as crap middle 70%,
OR it zooms up this this point, and then the last 5% takes an extra
half hour. I'm hoping for the latter. I've thought a lot about trying
to find a 3 Nephites loophole, where I can just stay out here forever.
Unfortunately, I haven't found it in the white handbook yet... but I'm
gonna keep looking! Haha

Yesterday, I taught the gospel doctrine class. The lesson was about he
Book of Ruth. To be honest, I have read it once, but got nothing out
of it... But this time I went through and it was so cool! So in Ruth
1:16-17 it is clear that Ruth is a convert. Still, she stays very
dedicated, not just to her mother-in-law, but also to Jehovah. When
her husband dies and her mother-in-law starts to head back to
Jerusalem, she is very adamant that she is not going to go back to her
old lifestyle. She then does really crappy work out in the fields,
essentially living off of a Jewish form of welfare services. When the
owner of the field, Boaz, asks her about herself, she seems really
just stunned that anyone even noticed what she was doing. Boaz assures
her that not only has he noticed, but the Lord has as well and He will
pay her back for all her efforts. Later down the line, she marries
Boaz, to the joy of her mother-in-law, and together they have a child
who is the grandfather to King David and therefore an ancestor of the
Savior's. To make it even more interesting, Boaz is referred to as her
"kinsman" which is a translation from the word go'el.
A go'el in Jewish law was the next of kin to a woman's husband who
would marry her and help her stay on her feet and protect her if she
was widowed. It was a way of restoring her back to her former status
and helping her have seed. What makes this SUPER interesting though is
that later on, the messianic prophets used go'el to refer to Jesus,
and the King James translators translated the word to Redeemer. See,
the Redeemer restores us back to our former status with god, and
allows us to carry on eternal "seed." So, in the end, who was it that
noticed Ruth's diligence in serving and keeping her covenants? Her own
go'el, or Redeemer! Pretty neat, eh?

Well, that's all for now, folks!

I love you, but I don't miss you!
Elder Allen