Mama Rika's Missionary...Cool Barns and Handstands

Monday:

good pday. taught some people. Missionary life is great!

Tuesday:

Birthday number 21! Hung out at a few bars, went to a couple parties, and smoked a pack of cigarettes. Not bad for a week night!

Naw, just kidding. Aside from opening a few presents in the morning before studies, the day went about like any other missionary day. Most of the people we taught didn't even know it was my birthday, which I was perfectly content with. We had some investigators feed us, and they were mad at me when they found out it was my birthday and I didn't tell them. One of them ran to the store and bought an apple pie for me (I told him I'd rather have a pie than a cake).

Later that evening I was given permission to call my previous companion, E. Brandon and wish him a happy birthday as well. It just happens that we are exactly the same age. June 11th, 1992. That was kind of fun.

Wednesday:

Taught some people, I don't remember too  many details and I didn't write much in my journal about it.

Thursday:

It rained a lot on Thursday. It seems to do that a lot here. We had planned on walking around and finding people to talk to, but that didn't work out too well. we were able to take a member to a see an investigator we talked to on Wednesday. it was kind of funny, we couldn't find a member's home so we stopped and asked her for directions. Turns out she seemed really interested in the Book of Mormon.

We met our investigator at a cafe, a couple of the workers there were curious as to why we were meeting. We told them that we were missionaries teaching about the gospel of Jesus Christ and that they were more than welcome to sit in on the discussion. They declined at first, but later a couple of them came and sat down with all of us. It was a cool lesson.

Since the rain had ruined most of our plans, we decided to stop by some member's in the area. It turns out that we just happened to be an answer to one of the member's prayers. She'd been praying for missionary opportunities, but was scared about it, knowing that if she did pray, God would provide those opportunities. She didn't know if she had the courage or missionary skills to follow through with her end of sharing the gospel.

In our conversation, we were able to help her see how an upcoming family history, relief society activity could be a great way to do missionary work. It was good.

Later that evening we taught an Investigator with whom we were really struggling to understand her concerns. We did a mini-fast, just through dinner that day to help us out, and I know it paid off. the spirit was really strong and she did most of the talking. And she ended up saying the prayer at the end of the lesson!

Friday:

Had exchanges with the Oakhill elders. twas a good exchange. We taught the plan of salvation to a couple at the church in the evening. It's the greatest! I love teaching the Plan of Salvation.

Saturday:

 Had a district meeting and then lunch at Chick-fil-a. What do I like about Chick-fil-a? Hmmm.... EVERYTHING!

We exchanged back after lunch. We were able to see one of our Spanish speaking investigators. The rest of our amigos moved down to North Carolina for work.

Our lesson with him was a combination of broken English, broken Spanish, gestures and signs, and reading passages of The Book of Mormon next to El Libro De Mormon. It was pretty fun. As he read through his Spanish version, we would follow along in English. Occasionally he would point to a specific word and ask what it meant. We would then guestimate the English word and then try to explain through or limited communication skills.

Example: "Iniquity" -- E. Connole says something along the lines of "Hombres do no bueno" (I'm sure it's terrible grammar, but it got the point across.

Example #2 "Forbid" --E. Connole makes shooing noises and pretends to walk away.

It was an interesting twist on Charades.

Sunday:

We had some investigators at church! yay! and a couple less active members too! Yay!

that was the good stuff of this week

Love ya!

Mama Rika Appreciates Creativity

I placed a large stack of books on a step of the stairs so that I could take them upstairs when I was ready to go up.   When I returned, prepared to grab and go, this is what I found...

Mama Rika Missionary Update with Funny Pictures

June 5, 2013

Monday:

Good day, not too much to report. Pday was done at a member's house because of the holiday. They make fun of me now because I call it a "disc" rather than a "Frisbee", but such is the life of an ultimate player.

Tuesday:

Tuesday was a pretty busy day. We went to our landlord's office, and we were able to have a good long discussion about Grace vs. Works. This topic has to be one of my least favorite to debate about. I don't want you to get the wrong impression about our landlord, he's a very good christian, and he seems to want to meet with us sincerely for the salvation of our souls and the search of truth. It's been interesting the past few times we've met with him.

Anyway, back to Grace and works. The reasons this is one of my least favorite things to debate about area few things. First, most all the time when you start talking about grace and works, it often ends up in a lively debate/bash and the spirit usually leaves. Not good for a missionary. Secondly, I've come to the conclusion that both grace and works are essential parts, (whether one is the result of the other or not is beside the point) and therefore both must be in place. Whatever specific blend you'd prefer to believe in doesn't really change the fact that the result Is that we must accept Jesus Christ and we must do good works.

The way I look at it is that Jesus Christ has already done his part, the grace, and after we accept that, there really is only one thing left in the equation, works. Whether you believe that works area natural result of the state of being "saved"  or whether you prefer to believe any other way, the bottom line is that we, as a people of Christ, do works. Simple as that. So we might as well do as many good works as often as we can. 

 Wednesday:

Wednesday was pretty cool. We were able to invite several people to baptism and set 3 of them on date ( meaning they now have a goal day to work towards for baptism). We helped an older sister in the ward with her garden, boy does she know her flowers! She told us she stayed awake at night worrying about whether or not her flowers would make it. She has cancer and isn't able to get nearly so many things done in the garden that she used to.

Thursday:

We helped Sis. S with her flowers again, finishing up planting and weeding as she directed.

Later in the day we had a fun little experience. We were looking for a less-active member, and we found the address, parked the car and got out. The neighbors were out on the porch, so we started talking to them first. One of them had a keyboard, and started playing (he was also pretty drunk, and seemed to get more and more drunk as we talked with him) After we introduced ourselves he played a rather rousing rendition of "How Great Thou Art" with lots of extra gospel soul added in. (aka extra "hallelujahs" and "Praise the Lord" with kind of a jazzy/Soul/R&B sound to the keyboarding)

He got kind of excited when I told him I played piano and guitar back home. He told me to sing along, so for the next 40 min or so B and I (B was the drunk guy) sang and re-sang "How Great Thou Art" alternating lead and back up singing. It was hilarious. E. Warner said I was really getting into it.

Finally he stopped and said with somewhat slurred words "Alright I'm done, what do you have to teach me". We gave him and a few of his friends copies of the Book of Mormon and taught them a little about it. We got a return appointment, but it ended up falling through. I twas pretty fun though while it lasted. I love our mission.

Friday:

We helped the M's move on Friday to their home 20 min away. It was good. She's a member, and he's not. He actually runs a multi-million dollar boy scout place where the national scout jamboree will be held this summer. It's a pretty big deal here in WV and especially here in Beckley.

Saturday:

 We found a house full of Spanish speakers. Some from Mexico, one from Cuba, and one from one other place. It was kinda cool. We could hardly understand them, but we were able to get them a Spanish Book of Mormon. They seemed fairly excited about it. We told them if we found a Spanish speaking member that we'd bring them the next day.

Sunday:

We found out that one of the members of the bishopric served in a Spanish speaking mission, somewhere stateside. and we took him to their house with us. They were really excited to talk with him. We were able to use him as our translator and teach about the book of Mormon and answer some of their questions. A lot of it, Bro. M just answered and we just prayed that the spirit would give him the words to say. We offered to help them learn English better and we'll be back on Saturday to help with that.

Monday:

Slow day, not a ton went on.

Tuesday:

Super busy, we taught a guy from Africa. He's cool. We had a bunch of appointments one after another. a less active member and his non-member ex-wife (don't ask, kinda complicated) rushed to an investigator lesson, taught our landlord, had dinner with another investigator and watch and E. Holland talk in a member's home with another investigator.

It was a pretty cool day overall.

Love ya! Bye!

Cool barn

Gonna walk on down Electric Avenue

Check out the entrance to the house!

June 10, 2013

Wednesday:

We had Pday since it was transfers. Neither E. Warner nor I were transferred. (kinda what we expected anyway) We asked E. Boughan where he wanted to go for lunch since he was getting transferred down to Roanoke. We went to this hole in the wall little place that used to be a gas station. Man they had some good Philly Cheese Steak!

Thursday:

Had some cool experiences today. The night before we had planned on finding a former investigator. We knew that he lived somewhere on stover fork road. To conserve miles and to meet more people, we had decided to walk down to his house. But in our hast to plan the previous night, we didn't realize that the previous missionaries had neglected to put an address on the old teaching record.

Both E. Warner and I felt like we should still try to find him, so we started walking up the road. We walked and walked and walked some more. The road turned to gravel, and then to dirt, and the houses became more and more sparse. Eventually the road became nigh impassable before we popped out somewhere in a run down trailer park on the other side.

We talked to a few people, got our bearings and headed back the way we came. We knew how many houses were on the street so we decided to knock them all. Toward the end we found a house that was very interesting. I'll see if I can send a picture later today. Basically it was a trailer stacked on top of cinder block walls. It only had a ladder leading up to the front door.

We didn't think anyone would live there, but sure enough, the man we were looking for was there. He let us right in an we were able to teach him.

he brought up an interesting concern. He didn't believe that anyone could see god, and therefore Joseph Smith must have seen an angel or something instead of God. So we turned to Exodus 33:11

And the Lord ^aspake unto Moses ^bface to face, as a man ^cspeaketh unto his ^dfriend. And he turned again into the camp: but his servant ^eJoshua, the son of ^fNun, a young man, departed not out of the tabernacle.

 After we read it to him, He was so excited to hear that Moses saw God, and that meant Joseph Smith could see God. It was cool to see the light turn on in his brain. It was "Light Bulb" moment for him. He said he felt chills down his back as we read that to him.

Awesome!

Friday:

Got a birthday package from the family on Friday. They had a note in there specifically telling me not to open it, but to give it to E. Warner instead. He told me that I had to go into some very secluded spot and somehow convinced me that the shower was the only place I could go without me knowing what he was doing.

The letter to E. Warner told him to hide clues in certain spots in the house. Each clue had a scripture reference which lead to another clue. The final clue was the treasure packet which had two talks in it, "Missionaries are a Treasure of the Church" and "In Search of Treasure" The latter of which was really really good. It was fun.

Saturday:

You know the guy we found on Thursday? He gave us a call on Saturday and we found out he wasn't feeling too good. We offered him a blessing which he accepted. It was the coolest thing. I was able to anoint and E. Warner sealed the blessing. He gave a simple yet powerful blessing. As soon as we finished, he told us that his headache subsided, and he didn't really feel it anymore. I felt an immediate sense of gratitude to our heavenly father for the power of the priesthood and that our loving Heavenly father allowed us to participate in a small miracle to relieve the suffering of one of his children.

Sunday:

Sunday was a pretty slow day compared to the rest of the week. none of our investigators made it out to church. It was really too bad. We were really excited for a couple of them to be there. 

Love ya!

Elder Connole

Mama Rika Missionary Update

Awesome Barn

Companions

All from AZ

Grandview Park

Well this week I was terrible at writing in my journal. I was sick for some of it, and did most of my catching up on Sunday. Hopefully I'll be able to reconstruct the week fairly well.

Monday:

I don't remember too much about Monday, So I don't think anything overly exciting happened. It was Pday, that was fun! Oh wait, I do remember, our land lord came over to fix our burner on our stove, and we started teaching him. We have an appointment with him on Tuesday of this upcoming week.

Tuesday:

Tuesday we had a couple of good appointments work out. We were walking and talking (street contacting) a lot throughout the day. We were able to teach a few new people. We also had an appointment with a lady who was trying to juggle her two crazy 3 year old twins while listening to us. I'm not sure if she got much out of the lesson. Toward the end of the day I started feeling a little sick, and it just got worse as the days progressed.

Wednesday:

I wasn't feeling well still, but we had exchanges with our district leader. Interestingly enough, his companion wasn't feeling too good either, so me and E. Stechnij (pronounced steck-nee) had a little sick day to ourselves. We were able to meet with some less active members in the little flatwoods branch.

Thursday:

Thursday we had Zone Meetings. The Zone Leaders the day before had asked Elder Warner and I to give a 15 min presentation on the "How to Begin Teaching" section of PMG. However since we were on exchanges, we weren't able to plan for it at all. So we had about 5min prep before the meeting and just "winged it" and it worked out ok. 

Friday:

I was pretty out of it all day. :( I'm feeling better now. It was a pretty short bug it looks like.  To end the monotony of the day, E. Warner and I would play a few rounds of Go Fish. That little bugger beat six times in a row! 

Saturday:

Friday wasn't too bad. However we weren't able to get too many appointments in.

Sunday:

We had our ward conference on Sunday. Which was really good. Of course the lunch afterwards was great. We sat by a couple in the ward. He's deaf and had all of us busting a gut with his Hellen Keller jokes.

We went out that evening and found a couple more people to teach.

Sorry it was so short. Love ya! 

Mama Rika Missionary Update...Tracting Dogs and Beauty

These dogs went tracting with the elders for a while.

He titled these as "There is Beauty All Around in WV."

Monday:

We had dinner with a member at a place called Grandview. The place was appropriately named.

Tuesday:

Had a great day on Tuesday. We drove out to Cool ridge to teach M and G. They're getting married on June 1st. He's a member, but less active, and she is a nonmember. It was a really good lesson, and although we weren't able to get much to of the lesson content that we had prepared, we were able to answer a lot of their questions through the Book of Mormon. She was pretty intrigued by the book. We have high hopes for them. They ended up both coming to church on Sunday.

We also had dinner and a lesson with the H's. After which, we introduced two young men from the ward to their sons. One of the sons came out to church for the first time this week!

After that lesson we had another in a member's home with O, and she came to church too! yea! It was a great church week.

Wednesday:

We didn't have a lot pre-scheduled, so we ended up doing a lot of street contacting. It's E. Warner and My favorite way to find new people to teach. It's also been our most effective. We'll just walk around town teaching everyone and everything that moves. It's been a blast! E. Warner and I were just commenting on how much we love being missionaries. There really is nothing I would rather be doing right now.

Thursday:

We must have had a busy day or something because I don't remember skipping a day of journal writing, but somehow Thursday got missed.... Lemme check and see my planner...

I guess we had a few appointments. One of them was pretty funny with a young couple. They weren't married yet, but they had several kids together, and throughout our discussion one of the questions she asked led me to give her a Family Proclamation which answered her question. She kept reading the proclamation, and started jabbing at her fiance at how many times it mentioned "matrimony" or "marriage" in there. It was pretty funny.

I know we got caught in the rain a little on Thursday. It seems to rain a lot here.

Friday:

Lol apparently I've been really tired writing in my journal. I put down the date for my journal entry as Thursday the 15th.Thursday was the 16th, and I was really writing about Friday the 17th.

Anyway we had a zone conference up in Charleston. It was pretty great. We had a special musical number "If You Could Hie To Kolob" which went really well. It was kind of scary when we first got there because none of the number was planned out, and I had been misinformed about which part I would be singing. I thought I was supposed to sing the tenor, but they wanted me on the Alto part (an octave down). But i didn't know the part at all. We ended up improvising by grabbing a couple more participants and having two elders sing melody, two elders sing tenor and two sing bass. That turned out well, and I didn't have to sing Alto. :)

Saturday:

Did some more street contacting and had a lot of success. We took a lot of ideas from zone conference about using the Book of Mormon more effectively. We were able to find a couple of new families to teach because of it. You've got to love the Book of Mormon.

A funny story: We were walking down the street., and some random guy grabs his old "Obama/Biden" campaign sign out of his garage and proudly places it his yard. Then he blabbed off some string of insults about Mitt Romney. I guess he also figured that every missionary was pretty tight with Mitt, so he told us that the next time we saw him to tell him just how bad he would be for the country. As we walked away, he grabbed his trusty sign and retired back to his garage. Oh people these days.

We also had a great lesson. E. Warner is the best greenie ever! It was a really powerful lesson that we had with this lady, and the spirit was really strong, and E. Warner just invites her to baptism right there outside on the street with cars whizzing by and everything. She said yes, and she's working toward June 15th! Woot!

Sunday:

Sunday was great, we had 3 investigators and 2 less actives at church. We filled the whole back row up. It was really cool to see. It is such a blessing from the Lord to see so many coming out. We only expect it to increase from here. We're way excited!

Love Ya!

Elder Brayden Connole 

Mama Rika First Ever Whole Family Picture & Missionary Update

Modern technology allowed us to snag a picture of our whole family together in one live shot from three different locations!  Silly but fun first family picture.

Missionary Update

It's been a good week this week. A little rainy all throughout, but with enough sun to keep us going. And of course the week ended on a high with calling the family for mothers day.

Monday:

 Pretty basic pday, except there was a lot of rain which we didn't expect. It kind of ruined our plans to mow our lawn. It's starting to turn into a jungle now. It's hard to keep up on stuff like that when your always on the go.

Tuesday:

Not the greatest day, we didn't stick to our plans as much as we should've, so things didn't go quite as well as we wanted. I guess you live some you learn some, right?

Wednesday:

It was a good day. We found out on Wednesday that we would be able to use skype to call home this time! YEA! The only catch was that President Pitt didn't want us to burden the members, so we weren't allowed to directly ask the members to use their skype. We could bring it up, but they had to offer to let us use it. It was very frustrating. Toward the end of the week I was seriously contemplating standing on the side of the road holding a cardboard sign that read "will proselyte for skype". Who knows, it may have worked. Thankfully, our ward mission leader was kind enough to let us use his computer. I was extremely grateful

We were blessed with many new people to teach this week. We were able to start teaching a couple who had been dropped last summer. The previous missionaries just weren't able to keep in contact with them. They were still very open to us coming over and meeting with them, and it sounds like they may start  coming out to church soon.

Thursday:

We've been trying to meet with a guy named C for the longest time. He's the overseer of about 10 congregations, and the previous missionaries had been coming by before E. Warner and I stopped in. We felt like we needed to stop by, and we were finally were able to meet with him.

Cool Experience:  We were trying to find a different investigator's house. Her name is I, we had taught her outside last week, and we didn't really know which apartment was hers, nor how to get into the complex the right way. We wandered around, checked in doors, went into a lawyer's office, and ended up accidentally in someones messy home (don't ask, it was weird). Finally we were around back and we asked a lady who was sitting on her porch where the apartment was. We ended up giving her and her husband a Book of Mormon, and they invited us back that weekend. If we had never been lost, we would've never contacted those people.

Friday;

We got a media referral a few days ago, and we were finally able to contact them. He's a less active member, who wants to return to activity, and she's his non-member fiance. They're both interested in taking/retaking the missionary lessons so that She can make a decision as to whether or not she wants to join the church. We'll see how it goes. It's a really good situation, and I'm excited for it.

Saturday:

We did a lot of walking again. There were these two cute dogs that just started following us around downtown Beckley. We called them our tracting dogs. They followed us for a couple blocks before the latched themselves onto a family walking the other direction. It was pretty fun.

We were able to have dinner with our Bishop. His wife did a good job and made it a several course meal. E. Warner wasn't expecting this and thought that the salad  and rolls were the main course. Lol we were wondering why he ate so many rolls. It was pretty funny.

Later that evening we were able to take a member out with us to see a less active member. The visit seemed rather unproductive as far as teaching goes, but she was able to make it out to church the next day. Sometimes people just need an invite I guess.

Sunday:

Highlight of the day was definitely calling home. I was able to skype home, E. Warner chose to just use the phone. I caught a few clips and phrases from his side of the conversation that just made me chuckle

"No, we don't eat that here, people are pretty normal"

"Missionary work is the greatest, you just talk to awesome people all day about the gospel"

"Everyone smokes here"

"You can park on the grass and nobody cares!"

I wonder if I said similar things on my first call home. :) Probably.

Talking to the family was great. I was able to see how big the my younger siblings are getting. Of course one of the first things I did was have Dad, D and S stand next to each other to see how big they were. They've turned into monsters now they're huge! It was a cool setup that we had, P and A skyped in on one computer from Provo, the rest of the family from home, and I came in from Beckley. We took our very first family photo together, and it reminded me a little bit of the scene from Flubber where the professor finally gets married. He was on the screen and back at home, while she was at the chapel.   We had most of the family all bunched together on the couch, My face on one screen, and P and A on another. It was a great moment.

That was my last phone call home before I get back. crazy right? 

love ya!

Mama Rika Missionary Update + Pictures

Monday:

We had a good pday. We were able to have some extra time to check out the New River Gorge Bridge. They call it the "Grand Canyon of the East" It's not nearly as big as the grand canyon, but it sure is pretty. We thought we were just going to take some pictures and leave, but it turned out that we ended up going for a little hike up in the woods. We must have looked pretty strange to the other hikers as we still had our full proselyting gear on...

We had an unexpected lesson with an investigator that evening. We were just planning to contact some members of the ward, and our investigator also showed up. We taught him about scripture study, and set up on his phone so that he could listen to the Book of Mormon as he drove to work. I love technology.

Tuesday:

First thing in the morning, we totally busted a drug deal.... well sorta. We went to go visit a less active member, and when we walked up to his place, there were a bunch of people outside (thankfully they weren't affiliated with our member). As we walked up, one of them said something about "the christian boys". It looked kinda sketchy, and they got really quiet when we started asking questions.

We also tracted into a lesson with an older gentleman. He was so chill about everything. I don't know if he understood half of what we taught about, but he was ok with it all.

Wednesday:

We went back to S's house again, this time his wife was there as well. E. Warner got his first taste of good ol' southern baptist.  Now don't get me wrong, they were very nice, and friendly.

Thursday:

We had zone meetings up in Charleston. It was cool to be with the other missionaries. President Pitt was actually there as well. He talked to me a little about how Beckley was doing and then made the comment, "It's kinda nice to be back in the trenches, isn't it?" Yes president it kinda is. :) It's a lot less stressful than being in leadership.

Also, when we finished up with the meetings, we got a call from the assistants. They informed us that we would be getting a new car today. So we traded our '09 chevy malibu with almost 60,000 miles on it for '13 chevy cruze with only 36 miles on it. (not 36,000. just 36 total)  That's been really nice. The church puts a lot of money into the mission field

Later that evening we gave one of our investigators a blessing before his surgery the next day. It was the first blessing E. Warner gave, so it was a pretty cool experience for us.

Friday:

 A goodly portion of the day was spent looking for a map. The maps when we got to Beckley were just not adequate for our purposes. We needed to make things more organized, and a good map would help out with that. We tried everywhere. Would you believe that people actually use things like computers and GPS's instead? Crazy! It's like the world uses technology or something. It's really hard to find a good map anymore. We did end up finding a good one at a Go-Mart gas station.

We were able to go to the Tamarack (the main West Virginian tourist center), and although we didn't get a map there, we were able to give a Book of Mormon to a really cool guy there. He actually had been drafted to the Falcons football team and played with them for a while. You meet all sorts out here.

Saturday:

 We had a good walk n' talk day. We were able to talk to tons of people. We picked up a new investigator.  At first, I have to say I was pretty judgemental. She was dirty and down looking, she was smoking, and lived in a very poor part of town. Even when we first started talking to her, I was just thinking about all the problems and ways she wouldn't be able to be baptized.

Well, the spirit smacked me upside the head and said, "listen up bud. I sent you walking down this way so you could help this lady, so quit complaining and shape up. She's a daughter of God, every bit as much as you are a son of God.". 

When I started looking at her from God's perspective, I realized that maybe the only reason she was where she is now is because nobody ever told her how great she really is. I think too often we judge people and appearances, but never truly look at a person the way God does.

Later that day we listened to a talk with another investigator. The name of the talk was "Charity Never Faileth" from Pres. Monson. The whole talk is great, but I thought I'd share the part that hit me hardest:

A classic account of judging by appearance was printed in a national magazine many years ago. It is a true account—one which you may have heard but which bears repeating.
A woman by the name of Mary Bartels had a home directly across the street from the entrance to a hospital clinic. Her family lived on the main floor and rented the upstairs rooms to outpatients at the clinic.
One evening a truly awful-looking old man came to the door asking if there was room for him to stay the night. He was stooped and shriveled, and his face was lopsided from swelling—red and raw. He said he’d been hunting for a room since noon but with no success. “I guess it’s my face,” he said. “I know it looks terrible, but my doctor says it could possibly improve after more treatments.” He indicated he’d be happy to sleep in the rocking chair on the porch. As she talked with him, Mary realized this little old man had an oversized heart crowded into that tiny body. Although her rooms were filled, she told him to wait in the chair and she’d find him a place to sleep.
At bedtime Mary’s husband set up a camp cot for the man. When she checked in the morning, the bed linens were neatly folded and he was out on the porch. He refused breakfast, but just before he left for his bus, he asked if he could return the next time he had a treatment. “I won’t put you out a bit,” he promised. “I can sleep fine in a chair.” Mary assured him he was welcome to come again.
In the several years he went for treatments and stayed in Mary’s home, the old man, who was a fisherman by trade, always had gifts of seafood or vegetables from his garden. Other times he sent packages in the mail.
When Mary received these thoughtful gifts, she often thought of a comment her next-door neighbor made after the disfigured, stooped old man had left Mary’s home that first morning. “Did you keep that awful-looking man last night? I turned him away. You can lose customers by putting up such people.”
Mary knew that maybe they had lost customers once or twice, but she thought, “Oh, if only they could have known him, perhaps their illnesses would have been easier to bear.”
After the man passed away, Mary was visiting with a friend who had a greenhouse. As she looked at her friend’s flowers, she noticed a beautiful golden chrysanthemum but was puzzled that it was growing in a dented, old, rusty bucket. Her friend explained, “I ran short of pots, and knowing how beautiful this one would be, I thought it wouldn’t mind starting in this old pail. It’s just for a little while, until I can put it out in the garden.”
Mary smiled as she imagined just such a scene in heaven. “Here’s an especially beautiful one,” God might have said when He came to the soul of the little old man. “He won’t mind starting in this small, misshapen body.” But that was long ago, and in God’s garden how tall this lovely soul must stand! ³
Appearances can be so deceiving, such a poor measure of a person. Admonished the Savior, “Judge not according to the appearance.” ⁴
It was a good lesson learned.

Sunday:
Sunday was great! We had a Stake Conference broadcast from salt lake. It was for 64 stakes and 1 district. Elder Robert C. Gay, Sister Rosemary Wixom, Elder Robert D. Hales, and President Dieter F. Uchtdorf all spoke to us. It was a wonderful conference. I greatly enjoyed it.

Mama Rika Missionary Update and Makiavelli's New Creation

New Creation:

Some of my time has been spent putting together our new website.  You can have a sneak preview if you would like by going here:  [http://completeleefamily.com/]  More will be added as soon as I am able, but you can get a bit of an idea.  Here's a mini screen shot.  (We got our new CompleteLee logo, but are also excited for when we get our new "family circle" cartoon logo.)

Missionary Update:

This'll be a short one today since it's a transfer week.

Wednesday:

Busy pday since I had to pack and say all the goodbyes and such. I really don't like goodbyes. Hellos are much easier

Thursday:

Got up early for transfers, and drove down to the Stake Center. It was a long ride up to Charleston. I got to ride up with Bro. S in the cab of the luggage truck. When we got to the Charleston chapel, we had a little meeting before we met our new companions. My new companion is E. Warner from Gilbert AZ. (no his name didn't have any connection with the road by the same name.) He's pretty excited to be out here, and has a ton of energy for the work. I always love "greenie fire".

We were dropped off in Beckley and were met by the Oak Hill missionaries, E. Boughan and E. Robbins. They share a ward with us. I actually served with E. Boughan in Fairmont WV, so it's fun to be around him again. E. Robbins was just recently trained in Vinton, which was right next to my previous area in Roanoke. It's always great to have some familiar faces.

It was kind of a crazy day, I know we had dinner with some members, and did some unpacking/ cleaning. We also met with one of our investigators named Bo.

Friday:

Friday consisted of a lot of planning, and figuring out where we were in our area. Being doubled into the area, neither E. Warner, nor I knew anything about it. We didn't know (still don't) hardly any of our investigators, nor even where the church building was. Frankly we were probably like a couple of chickens running around with our heads cut off.  We were able to meet all of our neighbors. Funny thing, out of our 4 immediate neighbors, 3 of them have the same first name.  It must be contagious or something.  Watch out or I might come home with a new name too...

 We also met alot of the ward members at the ward Dinner and Desert Auction. It seems like a very tight knit ward. Very loving, and very accepting

 Saturday:

Saturday Morning we helped a family move in. They drove all the way from California to here! With a 3 year old nonetheless! I was impressed with the turn out of members to help with the move. We finished everything in less than an hour.

We had a couple of appointments, and we had dinner with the Y's.

Sunday:

Well, I didn't know it'd be fast Sunday this week. I guess they're having stake conference next week, so they switched fast Sunday to this week. Unfortunately they didn't tell any of us new guys about it. However the testimony meeting was really good. Bishop asked us to go up and introduce ourselves and bear our testimonies, which we did.

 Later in the day we met with the bishop to get his feel of the ward. He suggested some names of people we should go see. On our way back, we drove by an man in a wheelchair who only had one leg. E. Warner suggested that we stop and give him a Book of Mormon. We turned around and pulled over

We asked him where he was going and offered to push him there. He gladly accepted, I learned why pretty quick. We pushed him up a hill, down a hill, up a hill, down a hill. I don't know how the poor guy would've made it up there himself with only one leg, some of the hills were hard on foot.

It was a pretty good start to the week.

Mama Rika Missionary Update

Monday:

Good ol' Pday. It was pretty relaxing during the day. The evening didn't go quite as planned. However, because of some appointments falling through, we had time to stop by a less active family. They weren't too overly surprised to see us, which was a little odd. They then explained, "well the missionaries only show up for two reasons. One, someone asked them to stop by. Or two, they stop by when we have just recently started talking about coming out to church." It's amazing how the Lord works. He just sent us by their house within a few days of them wanted to return to activity.

Tuesday:

We went on exchanges with the Salem Elders. It was pretty Crazy. E. Fehlberg and I were walking, or on bikes all day. It was the first time I was in a biking area all day. Some of those hills are pretty tough! We witnessed a car wreck right in front of us, and we slept in a photography studio. (their apartment was getting renovated, so the members that  they rent from put them up in their studio. It was pretty cool)

Wednesday:

Went to some district meetings today. We had a lunch beforehand at a little place that makes sack lunches for under $4 depending on what you get. Then we had our district meeting outside. It was good for the first 15 minutes, then the heat and humidity started getting to me. Suit Coats are just not designed for comfortable outdoor wear.

Thursday:

We had a couple of appointments in the morning that we took a member to go see with us. What do you know? They both cancelled. The one lady we were trying to see told us to hold on a minute after we knocked on the door. 30 minutes of waiting and a few more knocks on the door later, we decided to move on.

The good news was that the member took us to lunch at this awesome Mexican restaurant, and his less active wife joined us.

Friday:

More Exchanges, this time with the cave spring elders.The exchange went well, we were able to work well with the members. The member that we had dinner with is actually a really good friend of Mitt Romney. In fact, sometime this week he'll be picking up Mitt from the airport to take him to Buena Vista to give a speech at the SVU. (a church owned school sometimes called "B.Y. Ya'll". A play on words for the acronym of "B.Y.U.")

Saturday:

President gave me a call on Saturday to inform me that I would be getting transferred to Beckley West Virginia, and that he'd like me to train a new missionary there. I'm pretty excited about it. It'll be a nice change from all the stresses of leadership. I'm going to definitely miss Roanoke. I've learned many things here that I couldn't have learned elsewhere. It's been a good few transfers here. 

We've got 24 or 25 new missionaries coming in this transfer, and next transfer should be bigger. This is getting ridiculous!

Sunday:

Had a great little miracle on Sunday. We have been working hard this month to get what we call a "Resurrection Sunday" It's a new key indicator that includes 4 things in a given week. 

1. Having an obedient morning schedule every morning. Including getting up on time, working out, getting to studies on time, and getting out the door right at 10am.

2. Every day praying at 1pm for the resurrection Sunday

3. One act of service

4. Having a meal with a member with an investigator there also, and then teaching a lesson to that investigator in the member's home.

We had already completed requirements 1, 2, and 3 for this week, but #4 was proving to be a struggle.

We went to dinner with the P family (pronounced poo-wee-zee... he's Italian, don't ask) and there we had a wonderful dinner, but we weren't able to get an investigator there with us. It was really a downer, since we had everything else finished for the week. 

We had an appointment to finish off the evening with a member. We were planning on teaching them the Plan of Salvation lesson. When we got there, they had invited one of their friends to sit in on the lesson, and before the lesson, they offered us a plate of spaghetti. So, in the end we ended up taking a second dinner with a member, and taught their friend right afterwards. How great is that? Little miracles are great.

Monday:

This was probably one of the busiest, and most successful, and smoothest running Mondays I've ever had on my mission. We started off the morning with a few paperwork things, then we had lunch with a member and started teaching their 9 year old daughter.We then talked to a less active member, J, and set up an appointment to come by later that day.We drove off to a wonderful lesson with an investigator of ours, after which we went back to see J. 

When we got to J's, her non-member daughter was also there and we began teaching both of them. We had dinner with our Bishop and his wife, immediately after which, we taught another investigator and his son, then we visited a less active member to end our evening off.

It was one of the very few days that no appointments fell through, and all potential appointments worked out just as planned. It was amazing. One thing just flowed right into the next.

Tuesday:

Had lunch with a member again. In fact, it was the same family that fed us the day before, they heard it was transfer week, and wanted to see us one more time before one of us left. Then we blitzed the North Roanoke elder's area. (meaning we did an exchange, but instead of one set of elders in each area, we both went to the north area) They're in the same ward as us, and we thought an exchange could really help them to figure out how to work more effectively. It was a really great exchange.  We were able to teach an Albanian lady named G B. The lesson went well, and even though we had a few communication issues, things worked out in the end.

That's it for this week!

See ya next week!

Elder Brayden Connole

Mama Rika Missionary Update Again...

Here's what he had to say for this week...

Monday: APRIL FOOLS!

Not too many April fools jokes... My little brother tried to convince me that the family was moving again... He had me going for a second. I think I figured it out when he said they were moving to "April fools lane". Doh! 

We didn't have a ton of things going on. We did stay the night at the Christiansburg apartment since then next day would be our monthly Zone Leader Council down in Charleston. That was fun.

Tuesday:

ZLC was great. It ran later than we expected, so we had to cancel some appointments. However we were able to finally introduce some home teachers to one of our recent converts that evening. I've come to realize how important home and visiting teaching is to the growth and strength of a ward/branch. The Wards that do HT and VT have more active members, and more convert baptism retention, more Less active members rescued, and the list goes on and on. It really makes me want to be a great home teacher when I get back.

Wednesday:

It was a pretty packed day. 

We had a district meeting in the morning which we attended. Overall it was a pretty good meeting. Afterwards, we went to contact a referral from a member, in which the member to us to the referral's home, and introduced them to us. Then he invited them to begin taking the discussions and meeting with the missionaries. It was pretty great.

We took a member to go see a new investigator named D. She was so excited to hear about prophets! She went on about how important it was to have prophets on the earth and how most churches don't even stress the importance. 

Thursday:

Taught a great lesson on Fasting to an investigator. It was great to see him connect the dots on how fasting could really help him in the trials he was currently facing. Those "aha!" moments are always great to be a part of. In the end, he said that since he had diabetes, he couldn't fast from food very well. Instead he said he would fast from cigarettes. How great is that?

Also, that morning, E. Brandon and I ran 3 miles.... boy am I out of running shape! Man I'm sure glad I discovered this before I went home, I'd never stop hearing the teasing from my brothers if I ran like I did on Thursday. I'll have to run some more before I get home. 

Friday:

We went on exchanges with the Cave Spring Elders. E. Folkman and I worked hard here. He's only been out about a month, so it was a really great experience to teach some members with him. 

Saturday:

General Conference! 

As I've always explained it, General Conference to a missionary is like the Super Bowl to a die-hard football fan. It really is that exciting! These men, whom we've been quoting, explaining about, and studying on, for the past 6 month, now speak to us again. Their words bring enlightenment and encouragement and fill our souls with that desire to do what is right. General Conference was not as great back home as it is now. And I think that is the case with a lot of things. As we fully invest ourselves in the gospel, it becomes more and more delicious to us. I wish Conference could last longer.

Another interesting fact. Since the time zones are different here than in Utah. The Priesthood session doesn't actually start until 8pm. Which means it ends at 10pm. You don't know how weird it is to be out past 9pm as a missionary. You feel so rebellious when you get home at 10:15. It was a funny little reminder for me at how much I've changed since being home. At college it was pretty abnormal for one to be in bed by 10:30 pm and up at 6:30 am for any reason at all.

Sunday:

More General Conference!

the first part of the day was spent on a few visits and invitations to listen to a prophet's voice. The rest of the day kind of coasted from there. We just had the time to eat, do a little planning and drive back to the next session. 

Good week overall.

Love ya!