Holla, como estas mi familia?? Well, I've survived another week. Yesterday Elder Woodland and I had to give talks in sacrament meeting. Survived that. Haha in the middle of my talk I lost my train of thought and just stood there, with an awkward 10 seconds of silence-- no joke. I then said "Let me remind you, it's my first talk in the mission field". I got a chuckle from the congregation after that and with that pause I found my place in my notes again. Problem was I couldn't read my own handwriting. Haha it was funny. I made it through though. My talk was on President Dieter F. Uchtdorf's talk, "Of Regrets and Resolutions", and how he left us with three resolutions, 1.) To spend more time with those we love, 2.) Live up to our potential 3.) Let ourselves be happy. I focused most of my talk on the 2nd resolution, living up to our potential, and becoming the person that God knows that we can become. The way we do this is by applying the Doctrine of Christ (2 Nephi 31) Faith, Repentance, Baptism, the Holy Ghsot, and Endure to the End. PMG Chp 3 Lesson 3 talks about it alot. Anyways, by applying these 5 principles in our lives, we can change our nature, and become more like Christ. It's a continual process, and one that never should end. President Taylor says all that time, and tells us that we should be applying the doctrine of Christ in our lives, so that we can change, become consecrated missionaries, and by doing so we'll become more like the person we represent.
This week while tracting, we had some funny experiences. It was at night, 7 or 8 ish, I forget, but it was like 40 degrees out, no joke. Well maybe 50, but it was cold. When we knock on door then, these people feel so bad for us they let us in to warm up for a bit, and bam! We get to talk to them. Actually this only happened to 3 houses but those three houses we had 1 new investigator, got 10 bucks from another, and the third haven't gotten back to yet. The house we got money from, it was an older couple that let us in. The older lady went into the kitchen, came back after a few minutes, and tried to hand us 10 dollars. She said "Now I'm a baptist. I was raised baptist and I'm going to stay baptist. You'll not change my mind on that no matter what you say. But, we lived in Utah for a while, and there were Mormons there ( <----go figure) and we really like them. Plus you two are two handsome young men, and I've never seen an ugly pair or you. So you take this money and go buy yourselves a McDonald's. I'm still staying Baptist. Now get out." Haha it was really funny. We tried to resist the money, but she was adamant about everything she said, so we took the money and left! Hey, when the Lord wants to help his missionaries out in unexpected ways we'll take it!
Another funny experience, or I guess experiences, is when we knock on the doors that have Obama signs in their yards. We get one of two responses. 1.) “No thank you, I'm not interested, have a good day”, etc. or 2.) “I know who you are and no I do not support your candidate”. Haha one woman actually told us how she is exerting all her efforts to make sure that "our candidate" does not get into office. Even when we tell them that we're not political and we in no way endorse or support any candidate, they just don't seem to make the connection. In fact, we committed an investigator, D., to baptism last week? two weeks ago? And right after he said yes he asked if that meant he had to vote for Romney.
Oh! So listen to this. We went to teach A. this week, but when we went to teach him, we brought a member with us, Br. Hansen. A's wife had the day off, and she saw that Br. Hansen came with us. Turns out Bro. Hansen's wife and A's wife, Paula, are pretty good friends! Paula works at Walgreens and they see each other all the time. So Paula wanted to sit in on the lesson! We were teaching the Plan of Salvation and she's not really religious at all, so this was all new to her. In the middle of the lesson she actually stopped us and asked us if she could bring her daughter in! Soo that day we got two new investigators! At the beginning of the lesson she said "Now I'm not religious at all, and I don't like being pushed, so don't ask me to do anything. I'm just going to sit her. That's it." In the middle of the lesson she said "Wait! Can I bring my daughter in?" and by the end she said "K so when can you come back? I'm off Thursday's so that's when it would work best for me." It was really neat to see her change during one lesson! Now we tried to get both of them to come to church yesterday, but they didn't come. That's a universal struggle I'm finding out here. Getting investigators to church.
Ok, so a couple things I need to get off my mind then one last cool story. Also we get to watch mormon messages for 1 hour each week, while I'm still a "greenie", so here are some cool ones to check out. "Men's Hearts Shall Fail Them" and "Honesty". The Honesty one is one the Br. Burnham (MVT seminary teacher) made and entered into a contest and won! It's pretty cool. Also check out Larry Gelwix on mormon.org. It's so awesome.
K last story. Not sure if you're aware or not but Notre came to OU and played them this last Saturday. Notre Dame's band played the half time show. They had to practice somewhere before, so they did their halftime show for a crowd at the Noble High school in the afternoon before the game. Our ward mission leader took us, and it was so sick!! I forgot to bring my camera, and I wanted to shoot myself in the foot for it. Now don't worry, we met some investigators and less active's there, so we had good reason to go. Haha but it was awesome! Just had to share. K love you all. Like always I pray for you each night! Never forget, the church it true through and through!
Love, Elder Traasdahl
