A Pretty Good Week

Well this week was a pretty good week. On Monday we went bowling as a zone. I got the second highest score with a 136 haha. That's not very good but at least I broke 100 right? That was a pretty good P-day. We bowled 3 games and had a good time. On Tuesday we were supposed to have a lesson with Shawn, but when we called her house to make sure the lesson was still on, her daughter told us she was in the hospital. One of the members called her in the hospital and she said she would like a blessing so we went over to the hospital right away. She had some problems with her blood sugar. We gave her a blessing, which went well, and then after we ran into a member from another ward that wanted us to give her husband a blessing, so we did that while we were there too. He had some pretty awesome Vietnam war stories he told us. So we didn't get to have a lesson with Shawn this week, but I'm glad we were able to help her out at the hospital. She said she has never been comfortable around elders, but she is comfortable around me and Elder Vailea because we are gangsta like that.

On Wednesday we had a lesson with another investigator, and it was probably my worst teaching experience so far. It was an unplanned visit, and was kind of awkward to begin with, but we just didn't teach well. She was only giving us one word answers to all our questions, and then Elder Vailea forgot her name and called her Noel when her name was Angelica, so that was funny, but we just didn't teach well. It's a good thing the Spirit teaches better than we do. This week we received two new investigators! We met our goal for the week so we were pretty excited. Our prayers were answered that's for sure. It's interesting, because I haven't felt like I have been working hard enough, so the past few days we've been trying harder and working harder, and that's when we started having success. We spent a lot more time tracting the past few days, and from being more focused and working harder, I can tell it makes a big difference. On Saturday we had a lesson with a guy named Chris we ran into tracting. The lesson went pretty good, and he already had a Book of Mormon and new a little bit about the church. On Sunday we brought up in PEC that he had a lot of wood to split for the winter, and some home projects to do, and immediately the ward council volunteered ideas and time to go over and fellowship him and help him with the work. One of the Young Men's leaders went to his house and talked with Chris that night and set up the priest mutual activity on Wednesday night to go over and split all the wood. That is pretty awesome. Chris has 3 kids and twins on the way so he needs all the help he can get. I really appreciated the fact that the ward council was so willing to get involved first hand and help out. Well, that pretty much sums up my week. I'm really focusing on what I can do to be a better missionary. Have a good week! Love You!

Love Mat

Splitting Logs

Hey! Well it's been a pretty good week. We did a lot of service this week, and I love doing service because it makes the time go by fast and it's good to get out of church clothes and do physical work. On Monday it was kind of a quiet P-day. We emailed and then went shopping, and then went back to our apartment and played some games with other missionaries. that night we had dinner with the MacDonald's, and after we had a lesson with Jason about obedience and the Word of Wisdom. It was a really good lesson, and we committed him to live the Word of Wisdom. He said it will be a slow process but he is working on it. After we committed that I felt really impressed to commit him to be baptized, and so I did, but he said he didn't know yet. It was good that I asked because he told us all his concerns and what was holding him back. We told him that the closer he gets to living the Word of Wisdom, the more in tune he will become with the Spirit so he can receive his answer. I hope it will be sooner than later, but it's on the Lord's time and not mine.

On Tuesday we raked leaves for Jason for about an hour and a half, and then on Tuesday we raked leaves for Shawn, our other investigator, for a couple of hours. We do a lot of leaf raking here. There are tons of leaves. It was cool because she told us she had already read what we left her to read, and then we set up a time to see her again and have a lesson, so tomorrow we're doing that. On Thursday we raked leaves again for Jason (He has a really big yard). After we finished the raking, we loaded the leaves into trash cans and hauled them on a four-wheeler into the trees to dump them. It took most of the day to do that. Earlier that day we had stopped by Bro. Best's house. He is 81 years old and had a ton of guns and navy stories. His wife was in Germany during World War II and has crazy stories about being forced to be in the Hitler youth and stuff like that. Anyways, Bro. Best was out with a chain saw cutting up logs from trees he had cut down, and hauling them back to be split. We were in our church clothes, but there were logs that weighed probably 80 pounds, and he is really old, and we didn't want him to hurt himself, so we helped load the wood and haul it up to be stacked, and then helped him stack wood that was already split. He started throwing his hatchet at a pile of wood, so we had a hatchet throwing contest and I'm pretty good at sticking it. I'm a born warrior. On Friday we went back to Bro. Best's house and helped him split all the wood we had hauled up the day before. I really like doing that kind of work. I like working with the big trees and logs. I had never split wood before either so that was cool. He had a splitter that we used, which pushes a wedge into the wood and spilts it, but I did some by hand too with an axe. I'm pretty good with weapons of war. Anyways, enough about that. It's good to serve the members and those you are teaching. The past two days have been pretty normal days I guess. I'm getting excited for all the snow, but not for the cold. I have a good coat though so I will be ok. Oh ya, and 5 months tomorrow!!! I love you guys!! Love Mat

Book of Mormon Experience

Hi! I'm glad you all had fun at Valerie's and Tyler's with the little Ty guy. It sounds like everyone had a good week. My week was pretty good. It was a slow week because it was the last week of transfers. We got our transfer calls on Saturday, and both Elder Vailea and I are staying in the Knik Fairview area. We might be moving apartments though. We live in the Settler's Bay area and the sister's live in our area, so we might move into the sister's apartment, and the sister's are getting a new apartment. They don't really enforce the "stay in your area" rule too harshly because we don't even live in our area, and the church is in a different area. Everything in Wasilla is really spread out so we put a lot of miles on our truck, especially because we live in a different area. Well, it was supposed to snow last week, and then it got warm (in the 50's) and just rained all the time, and most of the snow in the mountains is gone. It was supposed to snow today, but it's really sunny outside, so that's not going to happen.

Well, some good things and some not so good things happened this week. We finally had a lesson with Shawn. We were having a hard time getting a lesson set up with her, but she seems like she could be pretty solid so we are hoping for the best. We had to drop one of our investigator, Amanda. She was the one that was Jehovah's Witness. Her husband is really against religion, and when we went back for our second lesson, he told us that we shouldn't ever come back. It was a bummer, but it happens. I always wonder why the Lord doesn't soften the hearts of certain people so that more people can hear the gospel. I don't always understand it, but people have their agency, and the Lord knows more than I do so I just need to keep working. I can definitely tell that the Lord prepares certain people to hear and accept the gospel, but it's findng those people that is the hard part.

Something really cool happened on Tuesday. Elder Vailea and I were kinda bummed because our appointments had fallen through, and we decided to do some tracting. I parked the truck in a park parking lot in front of some aprtments so we could tract, and there was a black guy standing in the parking lot talking on the phone. He got off the phone and we went over and talked to him. He was from the Carribbean, and was a way cool guy. He said he had talked to missionaries before, and so we talked to him about the Book of Mormon. We had him read from the introduction in the Book of Mormon, and he started to cry when he was reading. We asked him what he understood from what he read, and he told us he didn't understand very much because it takes hima couple of times reading something to understand it. So we asked him how he felt when he was reading, and he said, "It's true." It was awesome to see that evern though he didn't understand what he was reading, he could feel the influence of the Spirit bearing witness to him that the Book of Mormon was true. We talked with him a little more, and gave him the Book of Mormon and our number, and got his number. It was a pretty awesome experience, except for the fact that he said he was moving to the lower 48 this week. Haha it seems like I do a lot of sowing but not much reaping. That's fine though. As long as I give them the opportunity to hear it, it doesn't matter who sees the results. I'll wrap up for this week. I love you guys! Love Mat