Elder Bednar!

Hey everybody!

So this week was another slow week for us because we had lots of other things going on, BUT! We got to hear inspired counsel from a prophet, seer, and revelator, Elder Bednar of the quorum of the twelve! Seriously he was so cool. I may someday forget what he said, but I will never forget how he taught and how I felt. He mostly just asked us questions and let us ask questions, which sometimes he would answer with more questions. It was an awesome experience, and I hope to be able to teach even a little bit like him.

He also told us that iPads don't matter. Pssh.

Otherwise, Elder Egbers was sick so we didn't get to do too much this week. Pretty sure I'm just cursed, because every companion I have gets sick. But hey, I'm already used to it.

Patty brought a friend to church! A friend we'd taught before, actually! And who watched general conference! Which means she's been to church twice! So I guess we do actually have an investigator who is doing well! Thank goodness she actually lives in our area.

Have a great week!

Elder Adams


Oh yeah forgot some stuff.

So the Lancaster elders are getting scattered as chaff before the wind, I mean emergency transferred to replace some other elders. So now Elder Egbers is a relief society president. And I'm just kinda... here.
(what Hayden means is that his companion is the district leader and now the two of them are the only elders in the district.  The rest are sister missionaries.)

Short email!

Sorry it's been a slow week so I don't have much to say!

I will say though, that I learned something cool about miracles this week. When we're giving it all we can and get discouraged, get tired, don't want to keep going- we need to keep going. When we do that in faith, God will start opening doors we didn't know were there. Miracles will start happening. Even if they're small miracles.

We did have some fun exchanges this week though! Elder Jones and I went to a italian ice place on main street and a guy there was telling us about how you can see angels and demons on youtube. like okay dude. We also met a guy who was like "hey check out these scriptures, don't they seem contrary to what you guys focus on?" He just didn't understand them, but I realized that even if I didn't understand them too, I still wouldn't be shaken because my testimony is based on a couple things, including that this church is the true church, has been for the entire time it has been on earth, and will continue to be forever. Which is nice to know.

Thanks for supporting your local and faraway missionaries!

Elder Adams

Sommerset and a Baptism

I could just leave it at that really. Yeah, Elder Egburs and I are staying in Somerset this transfer! I'm glad, I really like the ward here. We might switch up our boundaries a little bit with the sisters though.

It rained twice this week, which was super neat.

Patty got baptized! It was so incredible and spiritual. She practically jumped out of the water, she was so excited. There were a ton of members from the ward there too, it was so cool. She said afterwards that she understood why things kept happening that made it take longer to get baptized- God wanted to make sure she really knew. It was so great. Patty has seriously changed my mission so much, it was so good to see someone who is so excited to learn. She was so sad that we'd have to stop visiting, I told her that we still had to do the recent convert lessons and she can feed the missionaries whenever!

Otherwise this week has been pretty slow. Not much teaching or finding new people. It's okay though. We're working on it, and had a lot going on. On the bright side, ya'll get pictures this week!

(the first three photos he sent were of random crap he'd found in their apartment, so I didn't  put those up--Tonya)

Okay, so here are more pictures! Most of the district (my timer wasn't on), the somerset sisters, us, and Patty. AND the best invention ever. We found these little round lights that light up for 15 seconds when you touch them, so they're jaredite lights.

Patty in a picke

Sometimes, even when you feel like it's the Lord's timing, the things you want don't happen. Patty was stressed about baptism and her birthday and other stuff, so her body released too much of her blood thinner medication at once, making her blood way too thin, so she's been really busy with doctor's appointments and has spooky blood eyes and is bruising easily and bleeding randomly and has lots of kidney pain. So, needless to say, no baptism this past week. It's kinda hard, Elder Egburs and I gave her a blessing and honestly I've never felt so prepared to perform a miracle. I'm used to feeling like blessings will maybe help a little bit, but this time I really felt like it would fix this. But it didn't. Which is rough.

Anyway, otherwise the week was good. It was primary program Sunday, which is always cute. We found and taught a decent amount this week, but we've really been focusing on helping the investigators we have to progress and get more meetings set up. I'm not sure what we've been doing that's working, but God seems to be blessing us for it. Things are going okay here.

A cool experience from this last week: We were out walking because we had an appointment fall through. Elder Egburs had just gone to the bathroom right before we left the apartment, but needed to go again, so we stopped at McDonald's. Then we took a different way home and saw a girl on the phone. I don't normally bug people on the phone, but Elder Egburs went for it, as he does. It turns out that she was walking home from work, but had run into a few friends and a girl who was just wandering around crying because her dad died. The girl we talked to was named Audrey, and she's awesome! We met with her again a few days later, and her 17-year old sister had borrowed her book of mormon to read too, which means she might also be interested! Finding miracles happen, at least.

There's an investigator here who has been taught since 2013, and just doesn't seem willing to progress, but we've been starting slow and from the bottom, and she's doing good. She's reading the Book of Mormon with her daughters, and even if they can't understand it, it's starting to help them get along better. I'm so glad my own experience is helping my investigators.

I really know that I'm here in this mission for a reason now. I keep meeting people who I connect with. It's so good to be able to tell people that I had the same concerns and how I was able to reconcile them. So many people here just have a hard time with religion because there's so much bad in the world, so I'm glad we get to be here as lights that cannot be hid.

Also, it rained for like two minutes last night. Lit.

You're all the best!
Elder Adams

!!!

Heck yeah Patty is getting baptized! It's been stressful and tough to get her there, things keep going wrong, but she recognized on Sunday "dang, someone really doesn't want me to get baptized." Like yep that's the devil doing that. But it's happening on Saturday! Aaaaaah, it's so exciting. She was telling us how much we changed her life and I was so surprised because I feel like meeting her changed mine tons too. Not to say I had no hope for my mission before, but I'm a lot more confident that miracles happen all the time and we really can find people who are prepared.

It's been a busy week here! On Thursday we had zone conference with Elder Cook of the seventy. He was super cool and I learned so much about how to plan and teach. I especially liked a venn diagram he made of what people "Know", "Feel", and "Do". The people we are supposed to baptize are the ones who fall in the center of all three, who know the doctrine, feel that it's true, and act on that. I'm trying to make sure I'm in that category too, haha. We also learned that if we want to teach progressing investigators, we should be progressing missionaries. I think that'll probably be my mantra for the whole rest of the mission.

On Friday Elder Egburs had a meeting in Bakersfield with all the other leaders, so I spent the day with Elder Bankhead! He came out with me and is a great guy. We didn't find anyone besides a lady for the spanish elders, but we taught a couple lessons! Although the one in my area just consisted of the member talking the whole time and the investigator telling us he didn't want to get baptized into a church, just baptized. Also that God can't influence people inside of buildings. Okay then.

We found a ton of people this week! Talking to everyone is hard sometimes, but it's working really well! We keep being late to things because we're teaching the Restoration to people on the street. It's cool sometimes. This one lady we taught who seemed super solid called us up and canceled her next appointment with us because she met with the JWs and apparently they filled her head with nonsense about us?? Oh well. "Please be respectful and don't knock on my door anymore." Yeah okay ma'am. We won't.

Anyway, we really do talk to a lot of cool people. It's hard to find really solid investigators who will keep commitments, but it's so satisfying when they do and we get to see the changes they make in their lives. Missionary work is so great.

Thank you for your support everyone!
Elder Adams

Miracle Weekend

Hey everybody!

This week was kinda interesting. We had exchanges both with the elders in our district and the zone leaders. It was really busy and planning was hard and we spent a lot of time cleaning and sorting things out, so we got almost nothing done. We found a new investigator on Monday, but every time we went by to see him again, he wasn't there. It was stressful to have our schedule so messed up and to not have much in the way of numbers.

On Thursday, we had an appointment fall through when we had a member with us. Elder Egburs was like "let's go visit Mike." Mike isn't living at his home for right now because he's taking care of his mom, but he's there at around 3 every day to take care of the house. We stopped by at 7 and he was there! We talked to him and read from the Book of Mormon, and he was all "normally I'm pretty drunk at this time of night, but I didn't feel like drinking today." So that's why we had to stop by. Seriously, so satisfying to follow the Spirit.

On Saturday I had a rough morning. I was stressed and felt sick and didn't want to work, but we went out and it was like everyone we talked to wanted to hear our message. We had an incredible morning. Then there was an Elders Quorum Pool Party, which we went to eat tacos at, but there were actually a lot of less-active members there AND some former investigators! We also went by a former investigator to say hey, but we only ended up talking to his wife and granddaughter. We were just going to share a short message, but she invited us in to tell her about our church and loved it. The poor lady had awful valley fever that destroyed her lungs and spine, but she's survived much longer and at a higher standard of living than any of her doctors expected. She also showed us her giant masonic bible. That was fun. She has 7 kids and 15 grandkids, and wants to see if they'll listen to us too! What a cool old lady.

Then on Sunday Patty called us to set up an appointment because she had some friends she wanted to invite to talk to us! So we answered some of her questions about 2 Nephi and the history of the church, and taught the restoration to a couple of awesome young people who are coming to church with her and us next week! One of them was looking for a church that was firm on its beliefs, but not preaching fire and brimstone all the time, and well- that's us!

I just finished up 3 Nephi this morning. I love the Book of Mormon, but the books after this are just so hard to read, because the people descend into wickedness. It's hard, but it's also rewarding to think of the joy that Mormon, Moroni, the brother of Jared, and Ether must have over all the people who enjoy their writings and have been converted because they followed the Lord's counsel in what to write. Mormon was an incredible historian and writer, and he was given those talents to help build God's kingdom. We're all given talents like that, that we can use to help serve others. Even Elder Egburs's motivational raps, haha.

I hope you all have a good week!
Elder Adams

The Field Is White

Such a great week.

Okay, so our awesome investigator who is progressing super great, Patty? We got her a larger print Book of Mormon (but a fancy special edition one with paintings from some members, not the normal one), and she's loving it. We mean to read the Book of Mormon with her, but ended up teaching the restoration to her two more times because she keeps inviting her co-workers and friends along! What a cool lady. She and a girl who works for her both watched all of conference on Saturday with us!

We are also teaching a guy who lives outside our stake... but everyone we've talked to has basically told us "screw the rules, his salvation matters and he has fellowship in your ward," so that's a thing. He watched some conference with us too, but had to leave because his neck was hurting. He had a tumor that got so bad it cracked some of his vertebrae. Ouch.

Still haven't met some of the other investigators, but have picked up so many new ones that it doesn't seem to matter. Most of them were total surprises to us! We're trying our best and we're experiencing some success for it! How blessed we are for the chance to serve God.

Conference was awesome. I really liked the Presidents Eyering and Uchtdorf's talks during priesthood session, but Elder Oaks's talk on missionary work was cool. Conference is different when you're a missionary, I've never been left wanting more of the Word of God so much. I'm like "six months away for another one??"

We talked to a lot of less-active members this week. Most of them have been really awesome! But one was not a productive person to talk to. We finally figured out why he wasn't coming: he's all "the church has changed." I asked for an example and he told me that when he was a kid, they had to pick up the toys in nursery, unlike in President Eyering's talk, where he mentioned offhand that he picked them up. Like dude, that's not even church policy changing, that's just you finding reasons to complain. But whatever. Thank goodness times change some- back in the days of Sinai, he would be stoned for not keeping the sabbath day holy.

I've been thinking about what "A remission of sins" means. Because remission is used in a medical way to describe when a disease is getting better and not spreading, I think it's an applicable way to think of how we can apply the atonement. As we repent of bigger stuff, we can focus on smaller stuff, just like how when you get rid of a big tumor you can focus on getting rid of the smaller spots so that they don't get really bad later. It's helpful to know how we can keep our sin in remission too, by reading what the scriptures say, like King Benjamin's address.

The mission is awesome! I love being out here, even when people are mean to us. Christ truly does help us turn the other cheek.

Sincerely,
Elder Adams