June 19
This week was also really slow in the finding, teaching, and testifying areas, but it ended really well...with a baptism! And it just keeps going on!So, last week I think I explained that I was one of the office missionaries, which was supposed to mean that we would only spend about 4 hours a week in office....well....... This last week we spent a lot of time trying to work out the FOM Messenger, which is a newsletter that the mission publishes to let the missionaries know what is going on in the mission, the baptisms that have taken place, and other such items. The office missionaries used to do the entire thing by themselves, but in order to let us go out and teach more the President decided to give it over to Sister Decker, the wife of our area physician (he covers 4 of the 5 Florida missions, but he lives here in Hunter's Creek). She is a really nice lady, but she hasn't really worked that much on projects of this size, so we ended up taking about 3 hours on Wednesday to finish it. This was all fine and dandy, but so far that week we had only taught 1 lesson (to a less-active woman who is living with her fiancee and doesn't really understand why Joseph Smith is talked about so much), and we had four appointments lined up for that night. We then got a call from Sister Darrington telling us to redo the template to make it better looking and to get a standard that Sister Decker could use, which President authorized us to spend at LEAST 4-6 hours on during our Thursday teaching time!
Because of this delay, I got to go on an exchange with Elder Short, one of the missionaries in our flat. One thing you might remember about Elders Short and Simon are that they are Spanish-speaking missionaries, so we ended up going to a Spanish appointment for 2 1/2 hours of our exchange bible bashing a Sunday School teacher from one of the Catholic churches on John Young Parkway (it's the main street that runs through our area, no relation to Brigham...). It was really awesome to listen to the Spirit in that meeting because, even though I didn't know either accent (Puerto Rican and Guatemalan) that the two men were speaking, I could understand exactly what they were saying in the conversation. We had a talk given to us on spiritual gifts, including the gift of tougues, on Sunday during Gospel Principles, and I can testify that it's true! The Lord really does give us the gifts that we need to understand the needs of our investigators and to testify of Him in all that we do.
So, I mentioned that we had had 4 appointments the night before that had all cancelled. One of these appointments was with the Jimenez family, who moved here from Tennessee and were taking the lessons there. They live a really long way away from us (about 15 miles away, on Nacoossee Road, which runs right into part of the Church cattle ranch), and we had driven there the day before (twice, once to meet Brother Scarborough, who we haven't been able to get in contact with ever since... so I don't have any new info on him, sorry!), so we haven't been able to get in contact with them for about 4 weeks because they are always busy when we try to go to that side of the area. Well, while Elders Barton and Simon are working on the Messenger, they get a call from this family to come visit them that day at 3:00. They go out and talk to the husband, O'Neal, for about an hour on the economy with the exchange they take, and O'Neal decides to hire the exchange and buy him a car (O'Neal works for a huge South American oil company fixing their machinery, and he showed Elder Barton a check they had written to him for $960,000 dollars! He is a generous guy, so he tries to give the money away to help people that really need it.). They finally get around to teaching the first lesson, and Elder Barton starts committing him to come to church. O'Neal cuts him off and says, "How many times do I have to come to church before I get baptized?" Elder Barton tells him he needs to come twice in this mission (apparently it was like 7 or 8 in the Tennessee mission), and so he begins to commit O'Neal and his wife for baptism. O'Neal cuts him off, turns to his wife, she nods, and he says "Give us two weeks, and we'll get baptized." !!!!! How awesome is that! There really are people that are preparing to hear the words of the Gospel and are striving to do the things that are right for them. You just have to be patient and work through the hard times!
This is really the big point in our week. All the rest of the week we have had very little success in teaching people (including members) because they have cancelled every appointment made after Wednesday (except for the dinner appointments, which we are really grateful for!). Tracting has also been uncharacteristically difficult this week. Even Elder Barton has said that he's never had as hard of a week talking to people as this one, but we will continue to work hard and trust that the Lord will bless us for our efforts!
Landon and Lisa Young are actually about Mom and Dad's age, with 5 children from both of their individual marriages to other people. One of their biggest struggles has been daily scripture reading, so we burned them a MP3 CD with some awesome Book of Mormon chapters (you can't get individual verses) on baptism and the Atonement, so they are doing much better at that. We got to meet with them yesterday, and they told us how much they appreciate us coming over and talking to them. Thier relationship with each other has really improved, and they came to sacrament meeting yesterday (the week before, Lisa was working at the hospital, and Landon didn't bring the kids). Lisa is really shy, and she still won't say prayers in front of us, but she has a really good understanding of why she should get baptized and what the gospel can do to help her in her life. She is still working for July 5th as a baptisimal date, and she's doing just fine! Since Landon is a member, his two kids (Chamberlain, 14 year old girl NOT named after Wilt Chamberlain, and Stockton, 13 year old boy named after John Stockton) are members of the Church, but Lisa's three children (who I have only met in passing) are not. The Young's have asked us not to teach them until after Lisa gets baptized, so there will be more about them in July.We didn't meet with Rusty yesterday because he had some other committment to fulfill, but I'll keep you posted on him.
my first baptism was on Saturday! We held the services for Chadd Spicer, who is a 20 year old that I had never met before until his interview with President Darrington on Friday (he's been out of town for the last few weeks). It was really interesting being the witness at a baptism, especially since the ordinance had to be repeated 4 times to get it right! I don't have time to talk about it now, but if you want more info make sure to leave a message in my inbox about it. Also, if you can believe it, I've been out in the mission field for a full month! It really goes by fast, but there is still plenty of time to learn from the Spirit!
I am playing the piano for tomorrow at Zone Conference. I've worked really hard learning this arrangement of "I Know that My Redeemer Lives."
Finally, I know that this is the Lord's church, that this is Christ's true, complete gospel that we share with others, and that the Atonement that Jesus Christ went through was not just for us, but for me individually and for you individually. I know that as we work to follow the commandments and develop the attributes of Christ that we will be blessed in our lives and that we can come closer to eternal life, the gift of being able to live with our Heavenly Father forever. It's awesome to be a missionary! I really want to know what's going on. Every letter counts! Have a great week!
Sunday, June 22, 2008
The First Week in Orlando!
June 9
My companion is Elder Barton, from Walnut Creek, CA (just outside of San Francisco). He was released as a Zone Leader before being called to be my trainer and my district leader, and he has 2 more transfers after this one before he goes home, so he's been out for almost 21 months. We serve in the Hunter's Creek zone (it's basically Southern Orlando, right between Orlando city and Kissimmee) in the Barton Creek area (or, as we call it, "Barton's District"). This is also where the main office is because, if you didn't know, we are the office missionaries! In this mission, we only spend about 2-4 hours per week in the office, but last week we were doing Stake Monthly Correlation Reports, so my first couple of days were spent in the Mission Office filling out paperwork (YUCK!).We have a van (2005 Dodge, really nice air conditioning!)Because we spent so much office time, there are only a few faith-promoting stories to tell about this week, although our zone leaders just told us we still outdid the other missionaries in our zone to win the "Most Savage Missionary Companionship" award for the week! One of the really interesting things about Orlando is that there are so many people moving in and out of here that come from so many different places in the world, so there are always new faces to talk to every day! So far, we have run into people that speak Spanish, Portugese, German, French, Italian, Creole, Haitian, and English, and most of them are from anywhere you could point to on a globe. With that many people coming and going, it can be really frustrating to try to set up appointments because people are so busy either looking for somewhere to live and work or are moving to different areas and places, so almost all of our appointments for this last week have cancelled.One of the bright points, though, has been the Landon and Lisa Young family. Landon is actually a former Church member from Orlando that fell away from the Church when his sealing to his wife and children was revoked when he got divorced from his first wife and he didn't know about it (this is his story, but we do know that this happened and that his ex-wife was the daughter of the bishop, so we think it's probably true), but has finally decided to give the Church another chance. His now third wife, Lisa, has never been a member, but has committed to be baptized on July 5th, and she is really trying to do everything she can to come to church on Sundays (she's a nurse), read the scriptures, and gain her own testimony of the Gospel. They have an awesome family, and this week has been spent mainly with them preparing Lisa for her baptism. We are expecting great things from them!Another one of our contacts is Rusty, who is a 22 year old college student at UCF (Central Florida) that is really into religious study and debate. We have had the chance to talk to him and his roommate about the Gospel, and they are very accepting and willing to learn, but they are very scholarly about their approach and are not really feeling the Spirit as much as we would like. We'll continue to teach them for a little while, but I am not really sure about these two...Before I came into this area, Elder Barton and his companion had already set up 4 baptisimal dates with investigators, so we will have a couple fairly soon that I haven't had a chance to talk to yet. One of the best of these is Randy Scarborough, who works out at the Deseret Ranch as a cowboy (Dad's type of guy, for other reasons as well!). He has accepted a committment to be baptized, and this last week his less-active wife took the challenge to get Sundays off of her job, and she got it! We're excited to continue to teach this family and help Brother Scarborough come to church with his wife and be baptized!
The most interesting contact for me and Elder Barton, though, has been Rafael Quinones. On Saturday, we were contacting some less-active members by cycling around a community (unlike in Centerville, the houses and streets are set up in "gated" communities, which look a lot like apartment complexes but have their own access roads with gates and some community recreation activites, including golf courses set up through the houses!) when we saw Rafael staring at the moon. We stopped and talked to him for about an hour teaching the first lesson, which he pretty much asked questions about as if he had been role playing the lesson with us. He said that he had been to our church parking lot before (if you want to know, it's on Wetherbee right next to the Central Florida Turnpike, just in case you've got an Orlando map displayed at home), but no one was there. He committed to come to church, and he showed up a half hour early! This Sunday he could only stay for sacrament meeting because he had taken his son's car and needed to give it back, but we set up a time to talk with him this week and he promised to come for the full 3 hour block next week. He's almost too golden to be true! We have great hopes for him.
Enjoy doing everything that you do, and don't forget to smile! It either makes people really happy or creeps them out tremendously!
PS
One thing I forgot to mention is that we live with a companionship of Spanish-speaking Elders, so I've had a chance to freshen up on the language a bit.
My companion is Elder Barton, from Walnut Creek, CA (just outside of San Francisco). He was released as a Zone Leader before being called to be my trainer and my district leader, and he has 2 more transfers after this one before he goes home, so he's been out for almost 21 months. We serve in the Hunter's Creek zone (it's basically Southern Orlando, right between Orlando city and Kissimmee) in the Barton Creek area (or, as we call it, "Barton's District"). This is also where the main office is because, if you didn't know, we are the office missionaries! In this mission, we only spend about 2-4 hours per week in the office, but last week we were doing Stake Monthly Correlation Reports, so my first couple of days were spent in the Mission Office filling out paperwork (YUCK!).We have a van (2005 Dodge, really nice air conditioning!)Because we spent so much office time, there are only a few faith-promoting stories to tell about this week, although our zone leaders just told us we still outdid the other missionaries in our zone to win the "Most Savage Missionary Companionship" award for the week! One of the really interesting things about Orlando is that there are so many people moving in and out of here that come from so many different places in the world, so there are always new faces to talk to every day! So far, we have run into people that speak Spanish, Portugese, German, French, Italian, Creole, Haitian, and English, and most of them are from anywhere you could point to on a globe. With that many people coming and going, it can be really frustrating to try to set up appointments because people are so busy either looking for somewhere to live and work or are moving to different areas and places, so almost all of our appointments for this last week have cancelled.One of the bright points, though, has been the Landon and Lisa Young family. Landon is actually a former Church member from Orlando that fell away from the Church when his sealing to his wife and children was revoked when he got divorced from his first wife and he didn't know about it (this is his story, but we do know that this happened and that his ex-wife was the daughter of the bishop, so we think it's probably true), but has finally decided to give the Church another chance. His now third wife, Lisa, has never been a member, but has committed to be baptized on July 5th, and she is really trying to do everything she can to come to church on Sundays (she's a nurse), read the scriptures, and gain her own testimony of the Gospel. They have an awesome family, and this week has been spent mainly with them preparing Lisa for her baptism. We are expecting great things from them!Another one of our contacts is Rusty, who is a 22 year old college student at UCF (Central Florida) that is really into religious study and debate. We have had the chance to talk to him and his roommate about the Gospel, and they are very accepting and willing to learn, but they are very scholarly about their approach and are not really feeling the Spirit as much as we would like. We'll continue to teach them for a little while, but I am not really sure about these two...Before I came into this area, Elder Barton and his companion had already set up 4 baptisimal dates with investigators, so we will have a couple fairly soon that I haven't had a chance to talk to yet. One of the best of these is Randy Scarborough, who works out at the Deseret Ranch as a cowboy (Dad's type of guy, for other reasons as well!). He has accepted a committment to be baptized, and this last week his less-active wife took the challenge to get Sundays off of her job, and she got it! We're excited to continue to teach this family and help Brother Scarborough come to church with his wife and be baptized!
The most interesting contact for me and Elder Barton, though, has been Rafael Quinones. On Saturday, we were contacting some less-active members by cycling around a community (unlike in Centerville, the houses and streets are set up in "gated" communities, which look a lot like apartment complexes but have their own access roads with gates and some community recreation activites, including golf courses set up through the houses!) when we saw Rafael staring at the moon. We stopped and talked to him for about an hour teaching the first lesson, which he pretty much asked questions about as if he had been role playing the lesson with us. He said that he had been to our church parking lot before (if you want to know, it's on Wetherbee right next to the Central Florida Turnpike, just in case you've got an Orlando map displayed at home), but no one was there. He committed to come to church, and he showed up a half hour early! This Sunday he could only stay for sacrament meeting because he had taken his son's car and needed to give it back, but we set up a time to talk with him this week and he promised to come for the full 3 hour block next week. He's almost too golden to be true! We have great hopes for him.
Enjoy doing everything that you do, and don't forget to smile! It either makes people really happy or creeps them out tremendously!
PS
One thing I forgot to mention is that we live with a companionship of Spanish-speaking Elders, so I've had a chance to freshen up on the language a bit.
Sunday, June 8, 2008
MTC Pictures
The District (L-R) Elder Eyestone, Elder Graff, Elder Ipson, ElderMcDonald,
Sister Lewis (Teacher #1), Elder Taylor, Elder Clayson, Elder Hunt and Elder Bills
As A Missionary
Elder Clayson and Companion Elder BillsThe MTC overview
Elder Clayson said the first four days were really rough because it was hard to adjust to the spiritual boot camp but says " It is a really humbling experience to work with eight different people with different ideas, problems and concerns, but as we have all worked together to teach and strengthen each other we gain so much more that we could have alone." Here is a little bit about the Elders in his District. His companion is Elder Bills who is from Murry. In his room were Elder Eyestone from Masa AZ, he is very simple and straight forward worker who rode bulls (His scriptures say Cowboy Up!). His companion is Elder Ipson also from Mesa. He is the funny guy who recives two boxes of candy a week so they are good in the candy department :D. Elder Eyestone and Ipson will be going to the Australia Adelaide Mission. In the other room are Elder Taylor, he is from California who makes everyone bust up laughing. His roommate is Elder Gruff, who reminds Elder Clayson of Cory. Both of these elders are going to the DE-trait Michigan Mission. Elder Bregonte was just added to their companionship for two extra weeks while waiting for his visa to clear. During his last visit to the MTC barber Elder Clayson buzzed his head. It's Super Cute! Elder Clayson made it to Florida on Monday. He was able to call from the airport and talk to his parents. In his first letter from Florida he says that it is a baptizing mission with every companionship expected to have at least one baptism every month. NO EXCEPTIONS! Awesome, huh? His P-days are on Mondays.
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