June 25, 2012

Hello everyone,

Ok, so this week we have had some interesting changes.

One big change we had was with our car situation. Last week I wrote that we had a new truck that was super nice, big and fun to drive. Well, we had that truck for about 20 hours.... ha-ha. Sad news, we had to give it up.  We only had 11 seats to transport 16 Elders so that was not going to work! So they decided to give us the Van!! Now we drive a minivan! Yep!  A 2011 Dodge caravan! And the best part is......WE LOVE IT!! It is so roomy! It has a great sound system (yes in a minivan)! And it really is the fastest vehicle in the mission! It is actually really cool and we really enjoy it! Although we feel super gay whenever we have to back it up in a crowded parking lot or when we get in, just the two of us! Ha-ha. But such is mission life!

The biggest change this week has to do with our responsibilities though. Now....in addition to our normal missionary work, and running the branch, and being a gopher for the other missionaries in the zone, we are also taking over about half of the YSA (Young Single Adult) ward on this side of Tucson!!! There are about 250 members of that YSA ward, so now we are going to be part of that as well! It will be so much extra work but we are super excited! It is going to be a nice change to talk with people our own ages (or closer than 65-80 that we are used to ha-ha)!  Elder Christiansen (one of the AP's) talked to us about this on Tuesday during transfers and we were excited.  After that we spoke with President Killpack for awhile about it on Wednesday and Thursday and we were even more excited! So at first our job was going to be to work with some of the members, and mostly the less active members, and then pass on any referrals to the other missionaries.  But then, when we were meeting with the other missionaries on Saturday, to decide what our area would be, Elder Stringer informed us that he spoke to President Kilpack that morning and he had decided to do something a little different! So now Elder Bradley and I will get some of that ward and we will be completely in charge of it! If we get a referral we get to teach them! I am so excited! Teaching in English is now sooooo easy! Hopefully we can get some good work done here!

It is such a blessing that we are able to do this! We were very quickly running out of things to do (and the motivation to do them) with the ASL recently! Summer is a hard time for everyone but especially for the branch! Most of the branch goes out of town on vacations and work for the summer so our already tiny little numbers shrink even more! On Sunday we had 12 people (14 including us)! It was crazy! Our Branch President is still on vacation in Utah so once again I was presiding and conducting the sacrament meeting! And due to the fact that we don't have many members to call on right now, me and Elder Bradley spoke in Sacrament....again! Ha-ha. Sundays are no longer a day of rest for us! Ha-ha. By the end of the day on Sunday I about collapse when we walk in the door! And with it being as hot as it is, it doesn't lesson that tiredness any! Ha-ha

Well that is short, but it is what I have for this week!

Elder Banner

June 18th,2012

Alright, one more transfer down! We are still trying our best to get stuff done but so far it is being really hard!

They always say that a mission is the best two years ever and some of the experiences you have on your mission are the best you will ever have in your life! I think one reason for this is the contrast with the hard times on the mission! Sometimes our pain is almost as exceeding as our joy, and this has been one of those weeks. It has not been any specific thing but everything has just gone wrong this week! It has been the hardest week since I have been out here in the field! This is fine, because we read in the Doctrine and Covenants, many times, that only after we are called to endure much tribulation can we receive the blessings and the power of heaven. So that is what Elder Bradley and I are banking on! Ha-ha

Because of the week we have had I don't have too much to talk about today. Although last Wednesday we had Zone Training......it was from 10 am to 2 pm and then from 7 pm to 9:30 pm! Oh my long meeting! It was good and we learned a lot but that was a long meeting in one room with hard chairs! I felt like I was back in the MTC! Ha-ha.  One funny thing that happened during the break happened while we were having dinner at the Kerastas'.  The Kerastas’ are an older couple with tons of health problems. They are really nice and we enjoy being around them and having dinner with them. Well, apparently, somehow, William heard that I have read a lot of books and know a lot about different kinds of books. So right at the start of the dinner, he started shooting off questions about Harry Potter, and that was our topic for the remainder of dinner! Ha-ha, it was so funny to talk to both of them about Harry Potter.  I basically explained the entire series! Ha-ha Of course we shared our message at the end, but other than that it was all Harry Potter! Ha-ha

Also this weekend we took another road trip to Safford in the Gila Valley and stayed two days up there. It was great and we met three deaf people! None are really interested, most never are, but we talked to them for a few hours and when we were leaving they invited us to a deaf convention in a month, so apparently it went really good! Ha-ha. I think all of our work is really just planting these little seeds!

Another interesting thing that happened this weekend was at church! Our Branch President is out of town so it was up to me and Elder Bradley to run the branch. This is my month to conduct and Elder Bradley had to help pass the Sacrament, so it ended up that I was presiding as well. Also, we had our Zone Leaders as the speakers for that meeting, so we needed to interpret for them! It was a busy sacrament meeting for me and it was weird to see that I am at that point where I was really running the entire meeting! It was crazy! The best part was that a lot of the deaf members told me after the meeting that I am getting better at my signing and they were happy with how I interpreted! It was pretty good! 

Other than that there is not much to report for this week! It has been hard but hopefully we have some good things around the corner! We did get a new truck today, so that was really exciting! I will send pictures of that later! But I hope all is well for all of you! 

Elder Banner

Signing off......for now.....

6/11/2012

I have now officially been out for more than 6 months!! I am no longer considered a greeny!!

It has been an interesting week! We are still working our tails off and every night I collapse when we get home but we are seeing a lot of success come out of it! We found another new investigator this week! His name is Joe, he is an amazing guy that really loves helping people and just a really good guy! He has a friend that he has been taking care of for the last 40 years!! This friend has terrible health and Joe has been doing everything for him for such a long time! It is crazy! Joe seems like a very good investigator, he doesn't work on Sundays which is awesome but being he has to take care of his friend sometimes he gets busy on Sundays. Hopefully we can teach him everything ASAP!  That is a miracle for us, one of many that keep popping up!  

Since we have been working our tails off and we really didn't have a P-day last week (I was an idiot and I scheduled an appointment on the other side of Tucson right in the middle of our P-day) we have been running on empty this week. We needed a break, and one showed up!

Thursday was my 6th month mark and the Agardy family threw me a party! I love them! They are so good to us! Since I am no longer a greeny she wanted to do something “green”. She said that we couldn't do an Irish thing because missionaries can't drink! haha Anyways she decided on a “green card” party (we are in Tucson).  We all put on mustaches, ate a bunch of nachos and enchiladas and had a great time! It was us, the Agardy's, and they invited the Zone Leaders Elder Scoratto and Elder Rusk. Fun side note, we are actually super close with the zone leaders now! They are Spanish Elders and they don't get fed every night like a lot of the English Elders so when they don't have a dinner they call us and we meet for some missionary home cooking. We've gone teaching a few times with them and we are going to go mountain biking with them sometime soon! Anyways the party was so much fun! It felt good to be normal again and just have some fun! They do so much for us and all of the stress and the exhaustion just melted away while we were sitting there with all of them talking! Of course that only lasted about an hour and a half but that is what made it possible for us to make it to today! haha 

It has been interesting doing all that we are doing now! This week I did 4 door approaches using the Spanish I remember from seventh grade! haha That is always an interesting experience! I am actually starting to understand what they are saying if they talk super slow!  Three referrals came out of that and.......the other missionaries called me and said that they went over to one of the referrals and are now teaching the entire family of 5!!! I was so happy about that!! I was very surprised that those people understood what I was saying and that they were interested enough to actually talk to the other missionaries! We have been planting lots of seeds lately! We have been tracting a lot and though we haven't been finding many deaf people we have found 8 good referrals for other missionaries! We are getting some good experiences and stories! haha I wish I had more time to write about things but we have to run and get some stuff done before sports so I will end this letter by saying I love you all and I hope things are going as good for you as they are for us down here!

Elder Banner

June 4, 2012

You know you are on the right track when everything that possibly can go wrong goes wrong.......and then your truck decides to “throw up” and die leaving you stranded in the middle of a parking lot at the hottest part of the day. 

Before I start on my weeks adventure I want to share something funny I found out yesterday, I was looking around our apartment and decided to count the number of Book of Mormons we have in the apartment. The final count is 35 Book of Mormons in 4 Languages!! There is a reason why missionary apartments have a great spirit! How can you not with all that goodness in them?! Ha-ha

It has been one crazy week! It has been so bad but it has also been amazing.  I have seen some of the greatest miracles of my mission so far this week!  I will start with where everything went bad….we decided to be good! Everything was so easy when we weren't following the rules perfectly but last week when we decided to change, everything got harder. On Wednesday, Elder Barrot gave his district training on making covenants with the Lord to help with missionary work.  The mission right now not at its potential so President K has been looking for something he can do to turn it around. Elder Barrot gave a great training about how if we covenant with the Lord we could greatly improve our success and we would draw nearer to our Heavenly Father as we do it! It was a good training and he told us how to covenant and all that good stuff and then we split off and did our role plays to practice. President actually came with me and Elder Bradley and the three of us did the practice and spoke for a while which was great! I love my mission President. This whole covenanting thing has the potential to really change the whole mission; my district is the test group to see if it works. We realized that we are the perfect district because we have a Trainer and his greeny, English Elders, Spanish Sisters, and the two of us. We have one of everything there is in the mission and frankly, if I and Elder Bradley can do it with the deaf people…..anyone can do it! So we might be the group to change this if it works!!

We do know that we are on the right track with this covenanting thing because of the opposition we have faced the last week as a district. Three Elders have had their bikes break, one Elder sprained his ankle real bad, one Elder threw out his back by stepping in a hole, the sisters have had a real hard time with everything and have had to ask for blessings multiple times, our district leader was hit by a car, and our truck (Dusty) decided to “throw up” and die on Friday! One of the hoses just broke in half while it was parked so as we tried to start it, all the coolant shot everywhere and the truck instantly overheated, smoked and died! (It has been fixed and we were only hurt emotionally in the process) It has basically been Hell this past week, not to mention the temperature has been 108 degrees! Satan is doing all in his power to stop us from doing this.....because it works!!!

Friday night, Elder Bradley and I decided to give the program a try. We told the Lord what we were willing to do and set up everything. We then broke up everything into both weekly and monthly goals. This week our goal was to get a new investigator and to have one member come out with us. Part of what we are willing to do is we covenanted to go tracting at least one hour every day until we found a new investigator for us or a referral for some other missionaries. Saturday afternoon we decided to start tracting!

In companion study that morning we prayed and found out where to go.  When we got there, we prayed which door to start at! Then we headed for the door and realized that we had been there before about 5 months ago because someone had said they thought there was a deaf person there. Not a good referral.  Elder Bradley and I were joking that because we said we would track till we found someone the Lord was going to test us and make us tract for hours! Ha-ha  When we walked up to the door I was thinking “We have tried this door 3 times and no one ever answers, no one will answer now.”  Oh me of little faith! When we knocked, the door opened and a man signed “what’s up” to us!  We were both so shocked that someone answered, and especially because that person was deaf that neither of us said anything for probably 5 seconds. We just stared at him! Ha-ha Then I finally “came to” and started talking to him. Long story short, he turned out to be a very cool guy who is interested in what we have to say.  He promised to read the Book of Mormon, and agreed to meet with us on Tuesday!! Me and Elder Bradley could only contain our excitement until we walked around the corner after saying goodbye then we both jumped up and down and fist bumped for joy!! Ya we're pretty cool! 

It was one of the coooooolest experiences ever and a straight-up miracle! That is only the tip of the iceberg of the blessings and miracles I've seen since! We are on to something here as most of the district is having similar success! It is times like these when all the crap and all the hard times we go through as missionaries pays off! I love being out here and I am excited for the future as we continue in the process!  I hope we can follow through on our end because the Lord will accomplish His end, of that there is no doubt!  I could use all of your prayers that I will be able to do what I need to do to accomplish my end of the deal!

That is an amazing experience and we have had many more…. from me actually giving a good lesson yesterday in priesthood, and not looking like an idiot (too much) while conducting sacrament meeting, and being directed twenty minutes out of our way and then arriving at a potential investigators house right as they pull in the driveway so we didn't miss them! God is amazing and if what you are doing matches what He wants done, anything can happen! My testimony has grown so much this week that I can't even explain it! Make sure that what you are doing matches what the Lord would have you do and I promise you will find more happiness and joy then you ever knew existed! It is far beyond anything else that brings you happiness!

Until next time,

Elder Banner