WEEK 12 IN BAY CITY

Hi everyone!

so we got transfer calls this week and i get to stay in Bay City!! i am so happy about that haha. elder stevenson is going to williamston, and i am getting a new companion who will also be the district leader here. his name is elder bass and from what i have heard he is really cool! so we leave tomorrow morning to go drop of elder stevenson and pick up elder bass. i am excited! hopefully we will be able to keep the work rolling here! it’ll be cool to be the only person who knows about our investigators for a while and stuff. its weird watching elder stevenson say bye to people though.. its especially hard for our investigators. like justin and chanielle. everyone is giving us gifts and stuff. and tonight gabe and stephanie are holding a bbq dinner for us haha. thats way cool.

anyways, another great week!! jackie got anti'd (when investigators run into people who tell them not to listen to us for one fake reason or another) and said she needed to sort out her life alone right now. but we wont let someone so prepared get away that easy haha if missionaries are one thing, its persistent. so watch out. theres a storm of persistency coming haha.

have i talked about gabe and stephanie here yet? well, they are super cool. we are best friends with them and have been teaching them for a few weeks now. they are living together and have been dating for like.. a year or so? but they are so cool and have come to church the past two weeks. Gabe stayed for all 3 hours this week and i walked him out to his car and he was just loving church. it was super cool! they both have had some pretty impressive changes of heart and yeah! hopefully they will continue to progress. stephanie has two sons that are 12 and 8 and we played bball against them the other night and they had a blast. so things have been going well over there.

we have someone on date to be baptized in october, but we gotta find one for september. i just have a feeling its jackie. she is so prepared. i feel like she is just so submissive and will listen to whoever is talking at the moment. so if the baptists are talking, she will listen to them. we just need to continue to meet with her and things. we have picked up quite a few new investigators who are super solid! i am very excited about them! elder stevenson and i were left very short on miles with the car this month again by the sisters again, but thats ok. we have biked around 75-90 miles in the past 4 days! haha wayyy hard work!! but we got a ton done! that has been a miracle in itself! haha

cool talks were given in church this week about why, when we are doing everything we can, we still dont see the blessings we want. and really, what it comes down to, is learning patience and understanding that what the Lord has in store for you is better than what you want for yourself. I wish i could write a ton about this topic, but maybe another time. what i have written definitely does not suffice. but dallin h. oaks in last months ensign shared a cool experince. while he was at byu they were tying to get the president of the united states to go to byu and give a speech. the committee that was organizing the trip was trying to figure out what day would work best for byu and things. then elder oaks realized that if they wanted to enlist the largest power in the united states to come and speak at their school, they couldnt demand things from him. they needed to invite him, and then say whatever works for you president, and whenever it works for you, we will be happy to do. that should be our attitude when enlisting our Heavenly Father's help!

lastly, we door knocked into this guy last week who told us we had all been "interfered with" by aliens. he told us that he knew god was a 4 foot alien with big black eyes. he was just yelling passionately the whole time haha he wasnt angry with us, he just was nuts and was sharing his ideas haha the climax of the conversation was when he got real quiet and asked my why my body was 98.6 degrees. i told him i didnt know. he responded by saying, "theres no reason you're that temperature brother, other than we were interfered with!" haha it was super funny and super crazy!

have a good week! love you all!

elder green

WEEK 11 IN BAY CITY

Hey everyone!! another great week and also another week where i dont have a ton of time to email! so i will try and be short, but still include important stuff!

so Joseph is doing ok. we found him after he randomly moved out, which was a miracle in itself, and he is doing alright. he didnt make it to church sunday cuz he could only find one of his shoes and elder stevenson and i werent available to pick him up, so we sent a ward member, who left before he could find his other shoe. but next week he will be there!

we have had a hard time getting in contact with some of our investigators, which can be frustrating. but brother and sister martinez told us yesterday that they used to avoid the missionaries and things when they were first being taught, but now they are super solid members. so we will keep working!

we were crazy blessed this week to find some awesome people! this lady jackie had met with elder stevenson and his trainer before and really liked it. she was baptist and didnt have her kids baptized before they died, so her preacher said they were in hell. so she loved meeting with them. but then the day after she met with missionaries for the first time, her preacher set her against the church by  telling her we dont believe Jesus died on the cross and things. and that was the end of it. they couldnt contact her anymore. but we called her last week and she wanted to meet. so we met and taught her the restoration and it went way well!! she told us that every week the preacher at her church judges every body before they leave the building and that she always leaves feeling horrible! so we set baptismal dates with her and her granddaughter that she is raising! it was really cool and we are meeting with them again tonight.

we also met a girl straight form cameroon last week haha she barely speaks english! very fluent in french but she was so happy someone wanted to talk about Jesus with her! so we are going over there tuesday hahah that should be fun.

we had a lot of investigators at church yesterday which was awesome. we also fasted with justin and chanielle this week and they came to church. i promised them they would see the blessings they asked for in their lives if they did these things! this should be a great week for them!

anyways, things are awesome here! one funny story. we had a lesson with a guy who is pretty crazy. actually really crazy. and was just saying the most random stuff the whole time. at one point, i was explaining where the book of mormon comes from and that lehi left jerusalem as commanded by God, and right after that he says, "and now Israel is cutting 90% of the worlds diamonds." haha it is crazy out here sometimes.

love you all! have a good week!

WEEK 10 IN BAY CITY

Hey everyone! so this week was CRAZY!! haha i will try and describe it, but since most of it is indescribable (or i am too lazy to type the whole thing, for fear of wrist-cramps) it will be somewhat short.

so the first thing. horribly sad. we went over to josephs to check on him, and we saw he was smoking.... it broke our hearts. but he didnt think we saw him smoking. we talked to him for forever about how he can always tell us the truth and how we will never give up on him and things. then he told us that his sister (who he lives with and is his only living relative) got admitted to the hospital suddenly this week and how rough that has been on him. as we went back the next few days, his sister passed away. joseph was so sad! he wants to quit smoking again. he also got his van fixed and wants to move. it has been a struggle, but we will help him out! he will overcome this! his faith has not waivered at all, which has been amazing to see!

next up. i was in saginaw on a trade off when all of this went down. but apparently some things happened that made the sisters in bay city feel unsafe where they were living (on the east side of bay city). so two days later we switched apartments and now we are living on the east side! which is good cuz i love this apartment and we have been wanting to door knock the east side for a while! we switched proselytin areas as well, so now we are on the east side. our apartments were about 10 minutes apart, so it is not a big move. but anyways, there is that! haha the worst part is we were on bikes this week so we had to bike all our stuff to our new apartment! just kidding haha its just been tough cuz we cant get to the west side to visit our investigators over there very efficiently due to the biking. but the weather has been perfect and i am very happy in this new area!

leadership conference was great! president hess is an amazing man and is definitely very inspired! when he speaks i feel like we are listening to a prophet!

we have picked up a few new investigators recently. one man, named patrick, we door knocked into. he wants to quit smoking. he has overcome addictions to herione, cocaine, drinking, etc. but cant quit smoking. so we are going to do the program with him and he is very excited. he was really athletic in his hay day and was once clocked pitching at 94 miles an hour. he tried out for the tigers, but was hung over the whole time. he was so disappointed in his past, but he has made so many positive changes! he is a great guy!

we have also been playing basketball with one of the people we are teaching's sons. her name is becky and she used to be a member, and wants to be re-taught again. her sons are awesome, like 19 and 20 and we are playing with them on p days. it is going really well!

not a whole lot of updates outside of that. we are looking forward to getting back to missionary work this week now that we are settled in an apartment and things! hopefully the pictures i send home are getting up on this blog thing?

anyways,

love you all have a great week!

elder green 

WEEK 9 IN BAY CITY

Another great week here in Bay City!!

We had a baptism yesterday for Joseph! it was such a cool experience. after the baptism and stuff he just kept talking about how good he felt and how happy he was. he kept talking about how far he had come and things. his catch phrase is, "yeah, if it werent for these two young gentlemen." its so cool being able to see him change his life the way he has, and see how happy he has been since we started teaching him. he also thought we were never going to see him again now that he was baptized, so that was sad. but we fixed that! haha anwyays i will send pictures.

joseph lost his arm when he was struck by lightning

we have a few investigators who cant really progress because their spouse/fiance/boyfriend wont let them. it has been really frustrating. one of them was our top investigator, and she was trying to come to church this week. she texted us yesterday and said it probably isnt safe for us to meet with her anymore, which totally sucks. i couldnt believe that. but we picked up 3 new investigators last week and are on pace to pick up about 4 more this week. we have met some really awesome people lately. also, justin has been progressing again! he and chanielle have started reading and praying together. it has been amazing to see.

2 more things. first of all, you know how i love coming up with metaphors and things. whenever someone teaches something, i find myself trying to think of a better way to explain it. and something that people really struggle with here is thinking that living the gospel will make all their trials in life disappear, so when that doesnt happen they get frustrated. so here is something i have been thinking about a lot. this life is like a road. and before we start out on that road, it is already determined how bumpy the ride will be, and when the bumps will be. when we are going through life without the gospel, it is like riding along that tough road in a 40 year old station wagon. we can feel every bump and it is not a comfortable ride. the gospel is an upgrade to a brand new car. it doesnt change the road, but it sure makes the journey a lot smoother. we still hit the same bumps, but because of our new knowledge, we see things differently. i wish i had more time to describe the analogy more but i will leave that to you i guess haha

thought id send a pic for dad of me with my blue suit (todd made him get the blue suite cuz he felt it was very traditional) and "general authority" tie, haha
my mission president complimented me on my tie, haha

last thing. we had a crazy lady approach us the other day. she was saying THE most bonkers stuff. she talked for like 10 minutes without us saying a word. she came up and asked if we were christian, then said, "i used to be christian, but now im drunk." she told us that if we wanted to journey into hell, we had to drive down alvin street towards mcdonalds, with our flood lights on, and we would, "go right in." she was just going off and it was pretty strange! i wrote down the entire conversation and may share it at a later point haha. 

have a good week! love you all!