WEEK 8 IN BAY CITY

Another great week here in Bay City!!

So a few things that I haven't been able to talk about cuz I havent had time in previous emails. Like 2 weeks ago they had this thing here in the Bay called "Tall Ships." So apparently like every 3 years, all these GIANT tall ships sail into the Saginaw River and dock in Bay City. So everyone goes down there and you can pay to walk on them and stuff. which we didnt do. but it was just cool to see them all and i got an ok picture of one of them, which i will send home. Also, 2 weeks ago when we didnt have the car and it was SO hot, there was also this MASSIVE storm. the storms here can get pretty huge!! like the wind and rain was basically a tornado. huge trees were ripped out of the ground and tons of electrical lines were down for a week! luckily we saw it coming and made it back to our apt literally JUST AS IT STARTED. so i have a few pics of that as well. also the clouds here in michigan are always amazing so i take a lot of pictures of those haha.

this week we moved joseph's baptism date up a week to this saturday cuz he is so ready. so we reviewed the baptismal interview questions with him, and he started going off about how he quit smoking, but the one thing he wont ever quit is drinking cappuccino. so we asked our district leader if that was a problem and he said yes. so the next day we went to josephs and told him that he cant drink that anymore if he wants to be baptized. and he said ok no problem! and he hasnt had it since and said he never will cuz we told him it wasnt good for him. he is an awesome man! he is very excited for his baptism.

this week we also had to tell chanielle that she cant be baptized till her and justin either seperate or get married, neither of which can happen right now because of financial reasons and things. so that was probably the worst thing i have had to do. she was ok with it though and said she understood. we will still be visiting with them. she said she will get baptized as soon as the situation changes.

last week we met a ton of awesome, prepared people while we were door knocking, so its just a matter of setting up appointments with them and things. like seriously, these people are so ready. its crazy how the Lord works. so i am really looking forward to seeing them again this week.

another thing that is crazy out here is how often people relate drug usage to a spirtitual experience haha. it probably happens almost once a day. like people saying yeah this one time i was on dope, and i didnt know what i was doing, and i rode my bike right into an oncoming car, and nothing happened to me! that is an actual quote from a guy this week haha minus the expletives.

also this week, one guy we are teaching joe parkinson, he is about 20, started to progress a lot. the first time we met him he was asking us questions just out of curiousity and was kinda laughing at some stuff we belived, but not in a rude way. he just was wanting to know more but didnt care about any of it. we have since started teaching him and the other night he offered the prayer and afterwards told us that he knows its true. he said it has been cool to see the change in his own attitude. so we are gonna keep working with him! the Lord is always trying to bring people back to Him.

I love you all and hope you have a good week!

WEEK 7 IN BAY CITY

no time!! im so sorry!! quick run down of the week though!!

we didnt have the car this week, so we biked and walked. and it was the hottest week of the year!! haha it was horrible. luckily brother schindler and the members helped us out with some rides! but seriously, it was SO HOT. had to bring a rag to dry my face off otherwise when we went into appointments people would think we just swam there.

but this week we had 5 investigators at church and joseph was one of them. he is looking solid and is always telling us how much he loves it all! its soo good to hear. he is always telling us we turned him around and stuff, but i hope that he realizes its the gospel and things ya know? but after church last sunday, he just quit smoking. cold turkey! hasnt smoked since! cool huh? that was awesome to hear!

justin and chanielle are doing pretty good. we saw them a lot this week and they both are smoke free so that was awesome! but justin is still struggling other than that. chanielle came to church and should be able to get baptized, except she probably cant get baptized while her and justin are living together, even though they are just friends. so hopefully it works out, otherwise it will be very sad indeed.

yeah, it’s the two-month mark of my mission! in some ways it feels like its flown by, and other ways it feels like it hasnt! haha mama you nailed it!

yeah mom that’s a good idea to keep some candy in my pocket for the children when i have to be the circus master but i barely have enough money for my own food! haha i could give them mints and pieces of bread? ;) haha yeah i think the kids would enjoy it. it basically is third world out here so candy for the kids would be a nice touch.

quick story. the other night i started having a football distance throwing contest with this 6 foot 4 tatted up guy and it was way cool. i won haha but just barely. he was way cool and we had a good time. we will see if we can teach him. also, people out here cannot say doctrine and covenants. people always say doctrines and covenant or something weird. anthony always calls it documents and covenants. and no joke the other day he said he just got the new documents and covenants and pearl of harbor. no joke! haha funny huh? we had to gently tell him its not called the pearl of harbor haha. anyway, things are going so well! really looking forward to getting the car back! haha love you all! have a good week! sorry i was short on time again! no pics cuz not enough time. gotta get a haircut at kimmy cuts! kimmy is legit and totally listens to how you want it.

Brother Schindler, the Ward Mission Leader, stopped by our house for a visit!

WEEK 6 BAY CITY

Wow! i really have no time today! haha but i will try and get it all out!

so this week we had another baptism! his name is Anthony Orvis. He was a referral from Tina and Dennis (Dennis the investigator). He has been coming to church for about a year and a half and had a baptismal date about a year ago, and didn’t show up to the baptism cuz he got cold feet. so we re-taught him all the lessons and now he is baptized! he was super solid!!! knows the bible very well and asks good questions! i got to baptize him, so that was awesome! definitely a very cool feeling!

Joseph made it to church this week! He struggles with remembering things, so its always nerve racking to see if he will remember, but he did! he even had shaved! it was awesome to have him there! so quote of the week also came from joseph. he has really bad back pains cuz he got electrocuted (in the summer of '71. it threw him about 30 feet. he tells us the story every time we go to visit him so i got it down haha.) so he can’t sit for long periods of time. but he said he was enjoying church so much, he just tried to not pay attention to the pain. then he says, "yeah i was married to a woman that i didn’t pay any attention to, so i am sorta used to it!" HAHAHA!! but yeah, he really enjoyed church and that’s going well!

a few other things. people’s houses are hotter than outside. so when we go to appointments, I’m literally dripping in sweat. It’s horrible. i don’t understand why people live their lives like that! that happened when we went to check up on justin and chanielle with their stop smoking program. they were both holding up ok, justin a little worse than chanielle. but i think our visit helped take their minds off of it! so that was good. sadly, with the second group of elders that just got put into saginaw, we have to go on a car rotation, so we won’t always have the car and justin and chanielle live far away! so we gotta find rides out there, unless we wanna bike to 'nam (Vietnam) and back. which wouldn’t be a problem for stevenson since he used to be a cycler back home... chanielle has a baptism date for august 3 and is looking pretty solid for that day so we are excited! still working with justin. we have a lot of other solid investigators that i sadly don’t have time to talk about. i got some nice pics of me with the car this week cuz i started driving this week haha i will send those next week.

one other investigator is named nicole and at first she was very upset we were at her house haha but we have started teaching her and she is loving it. but she has 5 daughters and the oldest one is like... 10 so they are impossible to teach with her. so when we go over there, i turn into the circus master and play with them all for like an hour haha.  we play duck duck goose and things and everyone has to cry at least 4 times cuz they wanted to be it or for various other reasons. anyways, thought that made for some interesting literature.

have a good week! love you all!

elder green




WEEK 5 BAY CITY

Hey everybody!

another killer week out here. thank you all so much for the letters and support!

so this week had a few crazy things that happened. on tuesday i was on a trade off with elder derricott (my companion in the MTC)! cool huh? we had a lot of fun! except neither of us has driving priveledges so we were on bikes all day.... haha i do not know how missionaries used to get anything done! it is sooo hard to get places with bikes! we just had to keep leaving them by trees when we would go door knock and things. and there are hardly any sidewalks in bay city so we were biking on the side of some huge roads! not fun at all.

we picked up some new investigators through one of our recent converts, Eloisa. That was awesome! we will be teaching these new pickups this week. Things in Eloisa's life have not been easy. they have some MAJOR issues in her house. like.... MAJOR. haha i dont wanna go into too much detail, but her children and grandchildren get into a lot of trouble, including with the law, so whenever we are over there it is drama central.

wednesday we went and taught some more lessons and things and had another good day. dennis (mentioned before, one of our ivestigators) has been an eternigator (someone who investigates for eternity). So we sort of threw down in our lesson with him about the importance of baptism and things. then guess what? he came up to us at church yesterday and said he made the decision to get baptized!! how awesome is that? but there are A TON of moving parts there and he needs to get married first so it might be a while haha. then we visited justin and chanielle and that went well. they were both progressing so well months ago, but have since stopped. but they are starting to move along a little better now. we are going to start our stop smoking program with them asap so elder stevenson and i have been studying that a lot.

thursday we randomly decided to visit joseph’s old house to see if his sister knew where he went. and guess who answered the door? joseph! so we talked with him and he just kept saying how he was praying we would come back and things! he is such a sweet old guy. so that was a miracle that he was still around. he also said he had been cutting back on his smoking! without us even asking him to! so we have gone back a few times to teach him and things, and he was so excited for church and we got him a razor and cream to shave and everything. but he has a problem with his memory... so when we went to get him for church he had forgotten which was so sad cuz he is one of our top investigators. hopefully things will go better next sunday.

we were able to get in contact with the moskals this week and teach them a few times. they LOVE looking at the pictures in our scriputres and things. they do that forever! haha and they are all SO EXCITED to get baptized, but they haven’t come to church except that one time. so that has been a struggle. we will continue to work there. but last night we went there and started playing some street ball with parell when a bunch of black guys from the moskals house came out so we all started playing! it was soo sick. we didn’t play a game, just shot around and stuff. it was really cool. check that off my mission bucket list haha.

2 more things. so last week we knocked into Connie, super prepared looking for a church and things. we wet back to visit her cuz she didnt come to church this week. and she came out gunz-a-blazin and was like i read the BoM and it seems like it is just a personal record of stuff that happened and this isnt for me. she kept rolling like that forever saying some pretty unintelligent stuff. everything she said elder stevenson and i could have refuted soooo hard and shown bible scriptures to back it all up, but we didnt. she was just saying some of the most ridiculous stuff, and would barely let us talk. so we just bounced. we are pretty sure she got anti-mormon preached to on sunday cuz the stuff she was saying was not true at all. claiming she read the whole BoM and stuff when she clearly didnt. satan knows how to deceive even the elect, so be wary!!

saturday night we had permission to stay out late and see the fireworks which were ok, not as good as everyone says. but i felt like i was in a zombie appocalypse movie because there were cars parked EVERYWHERE and there were soo many people just wandering the streets. it was nuts! we met a tent-full of catholics who were selling hot dogs and they were very nice. they bought us hot dogs and things and that was so awesome.  then we started talking to a lady named gloria in her driveway. she was super educated on the bible and was hostile about the bom at first, but we were able to talk to her about it and clarify some things. then she started talking about how hard her life has been because of her husband (they just separated) and things. it was extremely sad. we talked with her forever! she was definitely prepared to meet us, so we will go back and visit her soon.

im runnin out of time! so thats it for this week! oh except dad, it is sooooo humid and hot here and guess what? no one here believes in air conditioning!~ i dont get it!!! we go into houses and they are barely cooler than outside! people just live their lives in sweat and it is miserable! i HATE IT! haha thought you would appreciate that.

love you all!! have a good week!

WEEK 4 BAY CITY

It was another great week in Bay City!

The first half of the week was good. We taught a lot of lessons and started to meet our goal of picking up more investigators. We grabbed 4 new investigators this week! that is a ton for michigan haha. we were lucky enough to find a lot of prepared people!

then on thursday we had half-mission training in mt. pleasant. half the mission goes and is trained and things by President Hess, his wife, and the AP's. they really stressed using the BoM in conversion and in inviting people to be baptized NO LATER than the second lesson. Elder stevenson and i realized we had work to do in both these areas, so thats what we decided to do.

that night we went to check up on a potential who we door knocked into named alex. we met him a few weeks ago, but everytime we have gone to talk with him, he has been gone and someone different has opened the door haha that has happened like 6 times! but anyways, he was finally there and so he invited us in. he is probably like... 22 and is a nice guy. he works repairing rental properties and things so he is super busy. but he brought us in and we played pool and taught him the restoration. he was claiming to be atheist when we first met him, but he definitely isnt! haha we really stressed the bom and at the end we invited him to be baptized! in the first lesson, just what training had told us to do. and he said he would have to read the bom first, but that he liked everything and yeah! so he has a date for august 10! that was great to see.

the next day we met with mr hollerback haha he is like 60 and is a very nice guy, but a staunch catholic. we have just finished teaching him all the lessons and he has been softening more and more towards the church and is feeling the truth of it all. we read 2 Ne 31 with him, and asked him to be baptized. he resisted by saying that he was baptized already. this is a very difficult thing to overcome when teaching investigators. we showed him that it needs to be done by the proper authority of God, and asked him again and he said he will think about it. so he is temporarily set for july 20th. that was really awesome as well.

at dinner that night we extended invitations to be baptized to Dennis (60 year old who has been taught everything for a LONG time, like over a year) and his brother (probably about 50 something) and they both said probably! haha but we listened to elder hollands talk, "Safety for the Soul," with them. what a powerful witness of the bom! i suggest using that if people have a disbelief of the bom.

we also taught a 67 year old who is missing an arm named joseph. he is such a sweet guy and is sooo humble. he has had a tough life. but as we talked with him, he seemed so happy. we asked him to be baptized and he said he wants to, but he didnt have any clothes other than the ones he was wearing and wanted to go to church first and things. so we told him we would get him some clothes from salvation army and things. he just told us so many kind things. just that we are his best friends, and he trusts us and can feel our love and that when we are with him he feels like things make sense and he prays we will come back. it was very touching. then we went back yesterday only to find his nephew is evicting him from his sister's house.... joe started telling us all those nice things again and promised he'd call us as soon as he could. that was heartbreaking.

i am running out of time but last night we had a powerful lesson with jusin and chanielle, the people we taught the first night i was here. we committed chanielle to a baptismal date, and justin said maybe. he struggles a little. but we will try to help them both!

specific prayers get specific answers everyone!

we also met a few interesting people this week. one guy says everyone calls him cowboy and asked if we could give him a ride to his AA meeting haha. then a guy started telling us he was going to convert us to christianity and started slandering joseph smith and things. so i tried to testify to him, and he looked like he softened, then he invited us inside. so we went in and he started going off again, so we were trying to show him what he was missing and he wasnt really listening at all. so i just told him we were gonna leave. it was a frustrating and difficult situation.

umm so apparently the fourth here is a huge deal. like you cant drive anywhere cuz people immigrate from ALL over to watch the firework show on the bridge. its apparently a huge show and stuff and goes on for 3 days. haha so idk what we are goonna do really? there is a giant bbq at the martinezs though, which over a thousand people attend, so we will go contact at that all day haha but thats on the 6th. so idk.

i dont know if the humidity is helping my eyes and contacts be less dry. i will try to open my eyes wider outside to get more moisture in ;) haha

anyways, love you all! i am going to send a few pics as well. but just a few! haha