My bad I forgot to put in the letter haha. A Korean Elder I knew would always say, "you are crazy monkey"..so cute.
Hey everyone I love you and I miss you! I hope that each of you have had a great week and been able to see the blessings that Heavenly Father pours out to each one of us. My week went by fast and it was good.
Monday was of course preperation day...p-day...play day and it was great! We had a zone activity outside and we played ultimate frisbee, kickball, and a little football. We exhorted a lot of energy. We had two lessons set up and we had two lessons fall through. Tough break.
Tuesday was not district meeting instead it was zone confrence! Three zones got together with President and Sister Chambers and it was great. The first hour President Chambers talked about change and getting a new Mission President on July first and that they should feel loved and supported. We talked about a scripture in the Book of Mormon saying "...and there should be no manner of 'ites'..." Haha no Chamberites or Lancingites. President Lancing will be our new Mission President and he is from West Virginia. The rest of the meeting was great too! At the end, as they always do, the missionaries going home shared there testimonies with everyone. 😔sadness. Next zone conference myself and several of the other Elders I came out with will share our testimonies. Half of our district will be going home in the next three months. Enough about that.
Wednesday we had district meeting. It was good as usual. Last district meeting we had an hour training on how to teach the restoration lesson from preach my gospel in four minutes. We have something called "60 seconds of power" so its really 5 minutes for us. After district meeting and lunch we went on exchanges. The district leader came with me in my area. It was a wierd day because, as usual, we talked to everyone we saw but everyone was saying that they didn't even believe in God. That's difficult because you can't just teach many principles from the gospel. They all are based on the fact that we have a loving Heavenly Father. If they "dont believe" in Him there
isn't much point in teaching His gospel to them..so instead we invited a lot of people to pray. Teaching first of coarse the feeling of the Holy Ghost and its role. Something I love saying to people, and I got this from my companion, a saying "praying takes a couple minutes." If you don't receive an answer it was only a couple of minutes out of your day...but if you do recieve an answer, a feeling from the Holy Ghost, it could change your life. So we did alot of that on exchanges. In the middle of the day we got a call from one of the ward mission leader's wife. She said someone had called about her son who lives in the apartments who had talked to the missionaries a couple days previously who had recently gone through a divorce. The mission leader's wife
asked if I remembered talking to someone in the apartments and I kind of laughed because I was thinking if we've seen them weve talked to them so I had no idea which one she was talking about. The crazy thing
was she didn't know how the lady got her phone number. She gave me the man's address and phone number and said maybe call him today or tomorrow if you have time and set up an appointment and let me know what
happens. I said ok and goodbye...but come on your not just going to call someone who is struggling and is in a perfect part of their life to accept the gospel and its blessings and just set up an appointment for another time. So 5 minutes later (because we saw someone and talked to them, it was in Spanish though) we knocked and he opened the door and without saying anything he said come in. I did recognize him. And I'm thankfull we stopped and talked to him that day and even though at the time he wouldn't recieve us. I was able to witness what happens when we always share the message of the joy the gospel can bring to our lives. He heard and rejected but then he pondered and recognized that now more than ever he needed this in his life and our night was crazy busy. We went on splits with two members of the church (ward mission leaders) and Elder Jimenez had to go do a baptismal interview for someone preparing to be baptized so he had to leave at 6 and I had a lesson to go teach...😵 surprisingly not very stressful. Maybe that's because I used to cover 3 stakes, 22 wards. I don't know? But not much makes you too stressed out anymore you know. While Elder Jimenez was out doing his district leader stuff i was at a home with Brother Mackay (a ward mission leader). We were in the home of two ladies who had the same grandchild. Crazy story but but thier kids got married and later in life they already knew each other even they lived in different places they somehow found each other in a trailor park in Utah. They are no longer married but they get along great and as Linda put it, its easier to pay rent with two people sooo yea. While we were there Linda who is a nonmember was talking...alot...pretty much the whole time. I enjoyed many of the stories she told and different events of her life. At the beggining she brought up Joseph Smith. She said
she heard A lot of Mormons talking about him and she thought they worshipped him. So she said she didn't really understand why Joseph Smith was important. But she continued with one of her stories too fast for me to interject and explain 😮🤐. In the middle of the conversation she brought up things she believed about where we were before birth and where were going. She believes in most of the plan of salvation (just so you know, if you speak plan of salvation into an iPad it comes out as pedestal vacation...because that makes sence). She continued to talk after that. At some point Brother Mackay miraculously found a space to bring up the restoration as taught in "preach my gospel" and went very briefly over each bullet point. I was very impressed. Recently we have been having a meeting every other week with the ward mission leaders to help train them so they are caught up with all the "new stuff" missionaries do. We role-played with them teaching a principle of church, prayer, or reading and then extended a "will you" invitation. Last training we invited them all to study chapter 3 lesson 1&2 the restoration and plan of salvation. He obviously did. He was trying to get a lead on for me to be able to start teaching but she once again began talking haha 😄 😔 then at the very end 15 minutes before we had to get going Brother Mackay said we have to get going soon and he turned to me and said Elder Kremer I
don't know if you had anything specific you wanted to talk about or if you have time to quickly go over anything?...yay Brother Mackay! I wanted to teach the whole restoration but I had to teach brief, clear, and simply the principles of God reveals his gospel in every dispensation (to explain why we have prophets and the importance of priesthood authority and that God always gives us another prophet), the Savior's earthly ministry and Atonement (to explain that Christ established His church while he was on the earth and gave the
priesthood to the 12 men He ordained as disciples and that eventually all of them were rejected leading into another time of apostasy or time with out the priesthood, a prophet, and the fullness of the gospel), the great apostasy (this one is important because the there was no one with the authority to teach the gospel and prophets are important because they keep the doctrines in line and so they can't get mixed up or messed up in anyway. It's really important to understand that God wasn't punishing his children exactly but more he was
patiently waiting for their hearts to be soften so they would accept the gospel and when they would that they would be ready to make changes which is really what repenting is) this lead into why Joseph Smith is important. Since he was in that time period were so many people were searching for the truth this was the ideal time for God to have the fullness of his gospel restored. Joseph who was taught in his family to turn to the Bible when they had questions did that and he read that if he lacked wisdom he needed to pray and ask god. We know
that he did pray and when Joseph prayed he prayed with a desire to know and that desire would lead him to act on whatever answer he was given. For me personally, being told this church was right or that church that was already there was right would have been a heck of a lot easier that being told you would have to be the one who is going to have to restore the church. He had a lot of faith to keep pressing forward. Anyway so thats what I taught her and she actually completely understood the importance of Joseph Smith. Long and amazing day.
Thursday we ended exchanges and continued to work. And we also got a less active man who we've been trying to work with forever make it to the Bishop's office. He has a pretty big drinking problem and he smokes a bit too. Everytime we visited him in the past he was drunk but could remember mostly what we said. Something always stuck out to him and we said very similar things everytime. Finally it hit him that through the Atonement he can be free from the burdens of his past that bring him to drink. That so far was the most fruitful experience of my
transfer here. He is beginning to change 😂
Friday we planned for the week then had lunch (as we always do) with our m.l.s couple (the older missionaries) they are awesome! She always asks us what we want to eat and usually its just us Elders but their are Spanish speaking Sister Missionaries in the Spanish Ward that is in our Stake and I suggested to Sister Block to make biscuits and gravy (MMMMMMMmmmm 😋) for the Sisters because one is from Memphis Tennessee so obviously she loves biscuits and gravy haha but Sister Block (m.l.s couple) asked the Sisters if they wanted to have lunch with all of us and have biscuits and gravy! My companion wasn't super happy that we were having lunch with the Sisters but it was fun. I always say that memphis is like the Currens of Tennesse. 😉
Saturday we had the most effective morning I've ever had ever on my mission. We taught the restoration in an o.y.m and set up I think four lessons with non members WOW!
Sunday was decent not many people came to church that we have been working with but two did come and one is going to be baptized this Saturday!
I would love to tell you how each of our lesson went but then you'd have way too much to read and I wouldn't finish very soon. We had 17 lessons and were very busy! Badadadadum I'm lovin' it🙃
Have a great week I love you all!
Elder Kremer
(\(^~^)/)
No comments:
Post a Comment