What a week! (another one) :)

Howdy All You Wonderful People!

 

This past week has been absolutely insane... WE HIT STANDARDS OF EXCELLENCE! That means that the Indianapolis Indiana mission has set a standard to shoot for, and if you reach it it means you are excellent I guess haha :) 

So the standard of excellence is as follows

20 total lessons taught

2 new investigators

1 investigator at church

6 member present lessons

2 lessons in a members home

 

and this is what we got by the end of the week:

22 total lessons taught

10 new investigators

1 investigator at church

7 member present lessons

2 lessons in a members home

 

This week has been jam-packed with miracles and we are still in awe by the power Heavenly Father has. We have realized that He and only He is in charge of this work and he can make an area boom or he can make it dead if He wants to. It is up to us to give our all and give it cheerfully and He will take care of the rest. 

I read a scripture today that illustrated that thought, it is in 2 Nephi 20:15 and it says "Shall the ax boast itself against him that hewneth therewith?" saying that it is God who does the work and we can either choose to be His tools and or sit in the shed and "rust" haha :) When we submit ourselves to the Lord and do all we can to do His will, then we can do great things through Him.

I love this work, I know this is the one and only true church. I know my Savior lives and loves each one of us. I know this life is the time to learn to become like our Father.

I love all of you so much and am so grateful for all the support you give to me.

Sincerely,

Elder Young

Wow, what a week!

Hello All You Wonderful People!

We have had a week of hard work and miracles. The Lord is truly hastening His work and wants His children home. 

This is the highlight of our (Elder Van Shaar and myself) week:

Last Saturday we needed to reach our weekly goal of other lessons taught and we had set the goal for four... and we had zero... So we set the goal and overplanned activities where we could reach those goals. We also needed two new investigators so we hoped that two of those other lessons would be new investigators. So as we were going out the first place we stopped was one of our new investigators. His name is Don Parrish and he is an older man who is legally blind and likes to chill outside shirtless (yucky!). He was out cleaning his car but was happy to have us teach him. We talked about the Book of Mormon and gave him his large print Book of Mormon and he was SO EXCITED! He told us he was expecting to feel the spirit as he read and after we read the last paragraph in the introduction the only thing he said was "woah! that's powerful!" So cool! 

After him, we went and worked the small town of Knox for a while and while we were tracting we ran into the kookiest man ever! His name was Paul and when we asked him if we could share our message with him he just shuffled over to the bench like a robot and said "ok, go!"(this man is 60 mind you). So we taught him and committed him to read the Book of Mormon and be baptized. He gladly accepted the Book and told us he would read it. We are set up to teach him this week. 

So the day went on and we had our planned lesson with our progressing investigator Trenzo Williams (he likes it when we call him Brother Williams). We taught him about the importance of daily prayer, study, and service. We then committed him to do all of those things daily. Trenzo used to be an atheist but now he is enthralled in the gospel and loves the Book of Mormon. He wrote down his committments and hung them on the fridge. He had a problem with praying infront of us but when we asked him to pray he said "actually I was just going to ask you guys if I could say it."...! It made us sooo happy and he has been coming to church as well. He is on a date for June 26th. 

In the evening at about 8:00 pm we still needed one more investigator and one other lesson so we pulled the car over and prayed for inspiration. Elder Van Shaar felt like we needed to continue contacting potentials like we were originally doing but to walk. So we got out of the car and started walking down the street. Not even 20 yards after walking we started talking to a lady on her front porch. We were having a good conversation about random stuff then out of the blue (inspiration) Elder Van Shaar said "so... can we share our message with you now?" and she accepted and we taught her right there! She really wanted to read the Book of Mormon and we gave her a copy.

So many miracles have happened since i have been out here and my conversion has grown more then I thought possible. I love being the Lord's servant and coming out here helping people get on the right path. The more we rely on the Lord and have faith in Him, the more miracles will be performed. I know this gospel is true and Joseph Smith is a prophet of God. Hope you all have a good week and I love you all!

Sincerely,

Elder Young

Yo, yo, yo!

Greetings Eternal Beings!

What a joyous week it has been! So many miracles and hard work and heat and investigators progressing and happy experiences! Even though I am already dying from the heat (yes I know, it's pathetic) the Lord is ever mindful of his servants and has poured out blessings upon me and Elder Van Shaar .

One of the great fundamentals we are fine tuning is goal setting and goal accomplishing. We have been doing better with setting effective goals to stretch us and then making effective plans to accomplish those goals. On Saturday we had goals set for 2 other lessons and 2 new investigators. We made plans to contact some potentials and referrals out in Knox and so as we were tracting one of the country roads where a potential lived we ran into Don Parrish. Don we sitting out in his front yard taking a break from yard work. He is an older gentleman who is legally blind. We shook his hand and struck up a conversation with him and when we invited him to hear our message he accepted and said "I am taking a break from yard work so why not!" We were able to have a powerful restoration lesson and during the first vision he said he had goose bumps. He committed to read the Book of Mormon (large print) and come to church. So by then we were thrilled to have taught a lesson already after knocking about 3 doors, but what happened next surprised us even more. 

We knocked one more door with no avail then we crossed the street to a nicer country home. My thought process was along the lines of "they seem pretty rich so there is probably going to be no point in knocking this house.." but I was wrong. We knocked on the door, a middle aged lady came to the door and pointed out my last name (her maiden name was Young) and we talked for a few minutes. When we told her about our message she claimed she believed there were prophets on the earth today and we told her "There is actually a prophet on the earth today and he leads Christ's church!" and she paused for a second then said "sit down." So we got to teach her the restoration too and it was just a wonderful experience!The work is going great up here in Plymouth and we are trying to be more effective in our missionary efforts.

I had a super cool experience this morning that made me want to jump to the moon and back, let me tell you guys about it. I call it "the faith fan story." So it is stinking hot up here and Elder Young needs his fans in his apartment or he dies. Anyways, we had a small fan that was meant to keep the moisture out of the bathroom and i set it on the edge of the bathtub while the shower was going (dumb I know) and while I was shaving the fan fell in the tub.. well it got wet and I turned if off and let it dry but it was broken. The blades barely turned and it was ruined... so we left it in the apartment for about 5 days and this morning I plugged it back in hoping it would be fine but it was still broken... So I began to pray and ask the Lord if He would fix the fan and that if it was His will I would have the faith for it to work. Well I kept praying for about 4 minutes and the fan started moving a little faster and I told him that I had the faith that it would work and I kept praying and it kept moving a little faster. Then in my prayer I asked him to help the fan work at full function and as soon as those words left my lips the fan went full speed ahead and I almost peed myself with joy! Isn't that so cool! I thank Heavenly Father for confirming my faith and strengthening it. (His mother promptly emailed him back about electricity and water. He got an email full!)

Anyways, I love you all and hope you have a great week this week!

Love,

Elder Young

Update and staying put this month.

This week has been a great week for continued learning and growing. We had "the purge" this week with our area and went from 6 investigators to 1 semi-not-really-solid investigator. We just had too many investigators who wouldn't keep commitments and were bailing on appointments. I was really bummed out about that cause even though we have continuously tried to find new people it was like all our progress went out the window... not to mention TWO buttons came off my suit just over the weekend (ugh, 1st world problems are just horrible, aren't they? :) 

Anyways, I was feeling some discouragement and it was great to recognize Heavenly Father reaching out to me through the talks I heard at stake conference (which was awesome by the way), through the scriptures I was reading, and other righteous sources. The lesson I had come to learn was that as long as I am keeping all of the Lord's commandments, always strive to improve, listen to the spirit, and continue to exert my best effort, I was doing all the Lord expected of me and even if my area is "suffering" in my eyes, it might just be where the Lord wants it to be. I loved the quote that President Jones stated at the Sunday session, "Hastening the work takes time." That hit me. I am of the attitude of conquering a task with great speed and effectiveness. I expect instant results. That is not how the Lord works. I am on His time and am commanded to do things His way. So I was able to pull myself out of my selfish slumber and get back to where I am suppose to be. 

Ironically, on Sunday I was still feeling a little bit down (just a tiny bit :) and we had a lesson with our next door neighbor and his mother (Trenda and Dionte) and it turned out to be one of the most powerful, smooth lessons I have experienced on my mission. They are so solid and Elder Van Shaar and myself both feel like they could be the baptisms we are praying for.


Thank you guys for being such a great support to me and being good examples for me to follow.
Sincerely,
Elder Young

P.S.-Just to give you a clue to how solid our new investigator Trenda is: When we were doing to Book of Mormon role play with her she asked us if Lehi was from the tribe of Israel. After we told her yes, she continued to blow our mind by asking what tribe he was from. We told her that Lehi was from the tribe of Joseph and she was like "Really! that cool!" SO SOLID!

Pictures...pictures....pictures

Update! Update! Read all about it!

Dear Everyone,

The work in Culver is continuing to move forward. We are increasing the teaching pool and are continuing to work with our investigators. Bonnie Samuelson and Sandra Furlong accepted a baptismal date this last week! They are scheduled to be baptised on June 1st. They are so wonderful and we are excited for them. In our last lesson with them, they expressed that they have noticed a big difference in their lives since they have started meeting with us. They claim they are losing their desire to swear (they didn't like that they had picked up that habit).

The area is going great but the one thing we are trying to work with is getting investigators to church. Everyone here works ALL THE TIME! So we have to get them to take off work or some other way so they can come.... Also stake conference which is in Mishawaka (an hour drive) is this sunday. So that is our challenge to overcome this week :)

Funny story this week: We recieved a text from a 15 year old girl up in Plymouth and she invited us over to come share a message with her family... so we went over and it turns out that it was some former investigators who were dropped a few months prior. It was really interesting cause there was a ton of people who lived there and they were all pretty interesting people (not really all there) and the 15 year old girl was definately not all there and after we left she texted us and told us we were hot.... we didn't respond and she continues to sends us texts asking if we are there about 4 times a day... Gotta love Northern Indiana! :D I love it here and we are meeting with her older brother who is 23 so that is a bonus.

Elder Van Shaar has been sick this week and so we have had to take it easy this week but the miracle is that the work was still moving forward non the less! He has been a real trooper in working as hard as he can without pushing himself too hard. What a stud!

We are very excited for stake conference this coming Sunday, we get the privilege of hearing from a General Authority (forgot who it is..). That is always a great blessing. We are excited to see the members be strengthened in their missionary efforts during this conference.

So in the branch I am in, our branch president runs our missionary correlation after church and because he is such a boss and loves missionary work.... we have correlation for THREE HOURS..  sometimes four..! Yesterday after chuch (which ended at 1) he had some buisness to take care of and so we didnt start coorilation till two... so we didnt get out of there till about 5:30. Our poor mission leader still has little kids a wife who really wants him home as soon as he can get there so he is pretty much a superstar for being such a good sport. Also President's wife stays at the church the whole time doing family history work while waiting for her husband. This branch is full of dedicated people, and I love it!

I love you all and hope all of you are doing well!

Sincerely,

Elder Young

Update!

Hey Guys :)

 

What a week of miracles! This week has given me so much perspective into how the Lord works with each of us and how much he really influences our lives. I have had so many spiritual experiences this week I could fill 5 pages! It is truly a week I won't forget.

Our area has been growing tremendously and we are having some amazing potential investigators come out of the wood works. Our key indicators are increasing and we have been getting more involved with the ward. Last week we taught Bonnie Samuelson and Sandra Furlong with our ward mission leader. It was a wonderful lesson and both Bonnie and Sandra committed to baptism. After the lesson, our ward mission leader (who is a convert of about 5 years) had a really powerful spiritual experience at the lesson. He said that he kept feeling really strongly that he knew them from somewhere and yet had never seen them before in his life. He asked us if we thought it could have been a spiritual experience where he knew them before this life. We told him it very well could have been. It was such a blessing to see him open up during the lesson and testify with great power.

Something else that was awesome to witness this week and a lesson I learned, is that there are often times certain people that the Lord wants in lessons with investigators. We had the privilege of experiencing this lesson TWICE. First was with the Canacci family. We were teaching Ron and Donna Canacci and Brother Richhart came with us. Ron Canacci was in the back room when we got there and he actually wasn't even going to be home that day and had informed us that he wasn't interested in hearing out message. Well Brother Richhart kept asking if Ron Canacci could come out and join us, well to our surprise he came in and because Brother Richhart was there, they connected amazingly well and it quite honestly saved the lesson. Later after the lesson Brother Richhart had told us that he kept feeling promptings that he needed to meet Ron Canacci. How cool is that!? The other experience was along the same lines and it was just so spiritual and awesome.

I am loving my mission; the good experiences and the bad. It is changing me in ways I didn't know were possible. Thank you all for your love and support. Hopefully we can get some baptisms here soon!

Sincerely,

Elder Young