Tuesday, April 26, 2011

choosing the right

So transfer calls came yesterday and it is transfers this Wednesday!
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Stay in Killeen!!!
Haha, ok, so I forgot to grab my journal today, so I can't give the day by day play by play that I have been in the past.
But I can tell you the last couple days anyway.
So Friday Morning we did an exchange with Elder Rank (DL) and Elder Wood. Wood came to K2 with me and Warburton went to K1 with Rank. This made me Senior Companion for a day. First thing in the morning was a service project, finishing staining a fence that we started last week. We were there for a few hours, and then we had an appointment at 3. This appointment was a complete surprise to us actually. The day before we got a call from a lady asking about us. She said that we had knocked on her door a little while back and talked to someone there (a guy named ron) and that he was asking when we would be back. This was a total surprise to us. We both remembered ron very well. He was in his 60s or 70s, and disabled. He was in a couple wars as a tank mechanic, and the tank rolled on top of him, breaking his back. He has PTSD and memory issues. When we met him he didn't seem that interested, so we weren't really sure if we should go back, but now we knew we should have! So Elder wood and I went over there at 3 with Brother Clark from the ward. The lady that had called us answered the door. She said that ron had not slept well the night before and was asleep now. She was in her 60s or 70s too, and she is his fiance. We talked to her for a while, she seemed happy to have us around. We talked about the restoration and the book of mormon. She had actually been married to an LDS man before, but he was not active, and addicted to multiple substances, so since he was the only member she's ever really known we had the great opportunity to talk a little about agency. Brother Clark started talking about Christ's Baptism at one point, which took me and Wood by surprise, but then we saw why. He talked about how John had the priesthood authority and that's why christ went to him, and he explained that we had the Priesthood and could give Ron a blessing if he wanted it. It was awesome. We are meeting with Ron later this week.
The rest of Friday was pretty uneventful, and I don't want to think back to saturday, cause I'm exhausted, so let's jump to Easter Sunday!
Three weeks ago I was asked to give a talk on Living Righteously on the 24th. As it came up I realized it was easter. great, a full house, haha. It was good though. I enjoyed that topic because as a missionary I get to be bold and be not subtle in calling the general public to repentance over the pulpit and everyone still loves me!
I talked a lot about Agency, choosing the right, and living a good, honorable life. And then I said "Choosing the Right and Living a good honorable life is the best way to get to the terrestrial kingdom" I think I surprised some people with that one. So I talked about how in order to get to the Celestial Kingdom, we have to DO more than that. We must 1) Have Faith in Jesus Christ    2) Repent    3) Be baptized by immersion by the proper priesthood authority    4) Receive the gift of the Holy Ghost    5) Endure to the End ( which really includes the 4 previous steps, being done over and over again via the sacrament and living worthily to take it and renew your covenants) It was a fun talk to give.
Mitch had his baptismal interview on sunday as well! He is getting baptized on Tuesday! (tomorrow) He asked Elder Warburton to baptize him, and I am being a witness and giving the talk on baptism and the holy ghost. It will be excellent.

I was so blessed in my first area. Being put in a ward where I personally work with the Zone Leaders almost every day was huge. They are awesome guys and made a huge impact on me. Elder Nelson, who has been ZL in Killeen 2nd for 4 months now, got called up north, to be an Assisstant to the President (AP). He's such a great missionary and I'm glad I got to work with him. He'll spend the rest of his mission in that assignment. Because he got that transfer call, he left here yesterday to get trained by the current APs, since one of them goes home on thursday. So Elder Martinez has adopted Elder Warburton and myself as his companions until Wednesday when the new ZL gets here. It is going to be so weird having Elder Nelson gone, he was like a 2nd trainer for me, which sounds weird to anyone who hasn't served a mission, but seriously, I love the guy. He is going to be an awesome AP. I'm happy to still have Martinez around, that's for sure.
So last night we had to stay up late becase of Martinez's ZL duties he had to do with transfer calls and stuff, so we didn't get to bed until almost midnight, and we got up at 6:20 to go running this morning. As if I wasn't already sleep deprived enough! but it was great. P-day has been going great, but I haven't written letters yet. I guess that's what I get for playing Flag FOotball with the zone. (which was a blast by the way).
Anyway, I love you all!
3 Nephi 14 is this weeks chapter for you! (or ya'll i guess) (by the way, no I do not say ya'll, so i'm succeeding in my goal so far)

"Sometimes it's the little things that make the big difference" -Elder Martinez's Song that he wrote, and quotes a lot but only the missionaries know that he is quoting his song, so it's funny to us

-- --Elder Braxton C Foust--

Monday, April 18, 2011

Paradise

Ok, so the only parallel with the thought of "paradise" and Killeen Texas at this moment is sunny skies. But "paradise" would be on a beach or something, where heat and humidity don't make you miserable, haha.
    Monday we had our first apartment inspection. We passed with flying colors other than we didn't have a pad under our bikes to keep them from being right on the carpet, so we bought one when we went shopping. It was one of the sister's in the zone birthday, so we all went to the church and had treats and stuff, then went to the chapel and played Brody Ball and Chair Soccer. I do not remember if I have told you about broody ball yet. Same rules as ultimate Frisbee, but with a football, and to score you put it into the basketball hoop. It's way fun. Other than that it was a pretty uneventful night. We didn't make any appointments because we had a youth baptism in our ward and we were asked to attend.
    Tuesday morning we tried to visit some members that we haven't met before, but no one was home. We figure most of them are working, so we tracted around their neighborhoods with no success. We spent a lot of time tracting, and working on our area book. We barely got our area book because of the whole white washing thing, so it was not really put together at all. But after dinner was great. The sisters in the other ward met a guy a few days ago that was interested in learning. After they taught him, they found out he lives in our ward, so we had a transition lesson, and now Mitch is our golden investigator. He is getting baptized on the 26th of this month. He's very excited to keep learning and he's loving everything we teach. Of course there are a couple little issues that are being taken care of, but nobody is perfect. We are very excited for him.
     Wednesday morning we had District Meeting. Elder Rank, our District Leader, taught us about Revelation through Church Attendance. that includes both for us and for the investigator, as well as the importance of attending church (and it is important, so do it) After that we went to a taco place called Mission Taco for lunch. Russell would have loved it because they had all sorts of hot sauces. Including what is currently the world's hottest. It was great talking to the owner about the hot sauces he had, because he got really excited about them. Unfortunately the rest of the day was not too successful as all of our appointments punched, so we did a lot of tracting, which is really not effective.
Thursday was great. It is weekly planning so all morning was filled with that, and then we had Interviews with President Sagers. Our scheduled time was 2:15, and our ride was scheduled for 1:45, so they picked us up at 1:15 so we would be a little early, and no one was there. They were at lunch. So we played basketball while we waited for them, and the elders who were schedule for before lunch came walking in. They were so far behind schedule that they hadn't met with President yet. We didn't get out of the church until about 5:30. After that we had dinner pretty quickly, and then Bishop Gengler was our exchange tonight. We visited the Abrams and had a great lesson with them, which was really good to have the bishop there for. And then we visited Rebekah with the bishop. It was a great talk with her, we gave a watered down 1st lesson, and we will be giving her the full lessons starting later this week, because her mother-in-law who is a stellar LDS woman is moving in to help her out with the baby stuff. So it'll be great.
   Friday (1 month in Texas) morning we had a great personal study time. Elder Warburton had a huge headache, and fell asleep, and the white binder with the health info in it says that if you can't get rid of a headache to rest extra to help it, so I didn't wake him up right away. Instead, I finished the Book of Mormon! (it's true, by the way, in case you were wondering) It was so cool to be able to finish it then. I made the goal to have it finished before bed time Saturday night. The rest of the day was filled with stop-bys (one of them was to a less active family and we set up an appointment to come back and teach them on Sunday night, he told me he wanted me to teach him a lesson from conference) and tracting, until dinner. After dinner we got to go to a BYU-I Dance Alliance performance. They are touring Texas right now, and if we went with an investigator we could go. So we invited Mitch and we went. It was awesome. A lot of weird stuff, but they did a Big Band Swing dance that I loved, because a lot of it was stuff I knew how to do. The music was great. This is one of those Tender Mercies of the Lord, because we heard a lot of music that we should not choose to listen to on our own time :) I even enjoyed the dance they did to some Beatles songs. But that's probably because none of those songs were the Beatles songs that I hate, so it was all good.
    Saturday morning we went to a baptism for the Killeen first ward (we could go because we took Mitch). After the baptism we taught Mitch a lesson, and set up an appointment for that night too. After we finished that we prepared our notes for Ward Counsel and Ward Missionary Correlations the next morning, then hit up Wendy's for lunch. After that we changed into service clothes and stained a fence for a couple hours. Then we had dinner with the people whose fence we stained. The guy and his mother are from Bulgaria, and the wife served her mission in Bulgaria. The mother is 77, and does not speak English, but the ZLs are teaching her through translation but the wife. It is very cool. After that we taught Mitch again, and gave him a priesthood blessing to help him work towards baptism. Then we visited the Abrams, and made it in at 9:29 again.
     Sunday we got to get up very early for correlation and Ward Counsel. we got picked up at 6:30, so we got up pretty early to be ready. After church we had lunch, then did our regular tracting and stop-by thing. (Setting up an area is tough, but it's still great.) We had dinner, and then got to walk to our appointment because Elder Warburton's bike tire got a nasty hole and leaked out. This was the appointment with that less-active family. We taught them about Dieter F. Uchtdorf's talk about the Road to Damascus. It was great. (you should all read through it again).

The work is great. I do not really know what else to say at the end of an email.... Keep reading your scriptures and stuff!
Read Helaman 36 and 37 sometime this week.

"You see friends shaking hands saying 'How do you do?'
But they're really saying, I, I Love you!" - Wonderful World (Louis Armstrong) (or IZ the big Hawaiian guy named Israel Komokomo kaw o'ole  or something like that, that's the version I like)


--
--Elder Braxton C Foust--

Monday, April 11, 2011

Hey Everyone!!

Hey Everyone!
    So this week has been great. Monday night we had an exchange come out with us that we really could have done without, haha. He found out that E Warburton has only been out for four months and that I've been out for 1 1/2, so he decided that we must not know what we're doing and he took it upon himself to be the Senior Companion. That was very frustrating, because the Elders are the ones with the calling, we have the authority, but no, he knew better than us so he took it upon himself to talk for over an hour. yeah, that was bad. we're not supposed to stay more than 45 minutes in most situations, but we were there for about 90, because of him. We didn't even get to teach the lesson we had planned because he talked for so long about a completely different subject than was needed for the family. And to top it all off, when we left he chastised us for being there for an hour and a half, but we can't say anything negative to people because we want them to help the work along, and to be enthusiastic about us, so all we could do was thank him for that advice. Luckily in the middle of his sermon he did tell one story about the Atonement helping his wayward son come back to the gospel, which brought the spirit. So if anyone who reads this ever goes out on exchanges (splits) with the missionaries, remember, they are the ones with the calling.
     Luckily the week went better as it went along. Tuesday we had dinner with the Clark Family. Brother Clark is a music nerd, so we get a long great. he loves classical music and operas and stuff, so we talk about that a bit. He is apparently an amazing pianist, so I hope to get to hear him play sometime. It was great to get to know him, because when it comes to music, even though we have different likes and dislikes, we still have very similar ideas of what makes the music good.
    Wednesday was Zone Conference, and the 2 DLs in the zone, as well as the ZLs, taught us about what they had learned at the training from the week before. It was awesome. Other than that we didn't have much success in the day, our only appointment punched and we didn't really have any successful tracting. But that's ok, we are working hard and it will  come eventually. The last thing we did that night was visit a member who lives in our complex. He's a 21 yr old, going through a divorce, and he's awesome. His name is Brother Chai. He enjoyed our company, and told us that he would like to go on exchanges with us on Saturday nights. So that was great. He gave us some excess frozen meat he had that will go to waste now that he's single and he may be deployed soon. So now we have chicken and steak in our freezer for when we don't have a dinner appointment. While we were meeting him, we talked about the atonement, and forgiving others, and forgiving ourselves. E Warburton shared a poem he memorized. I think it's called Touch of the Master's Hand
    Thursday was weekly planning, so from 10 till 2 we are planning for the week. ( with an hour lunch in there somewhere). After that we contacted a referral. Her name is Rebekah, her husband is a member, and he is deployed. They have one kid and she is pregnant. They want to raise their kids in a single religion, and her husband refuses to step foot in any other religion than LDS, and she's fine with raising her kids LDS, so she wants to learn more about the doctrine and come to church to get to know the members. Hopefully she will be golden. She's a really cool lady. She made it clear that she wants to learn so that she knows what her kids are going to learn, not to be converted, but I think that will come too as we teach her. After dinner that night we went to the Abrams again. We had promised their son a snickers if the memorized the 10 commandments, and he passed. We decided to read 3 nephi 17. Josh asked Brother Abrams to join us, and he did (after a little bit of nagging from his son). This is the first time in about 20 years that Brother Abrams has sat down with the missionaries. It was awesome to have him. He really like the chapter we read. After we talked about it, he made a comment along the lines of "oh man, now you are going to have me reading this book again" He told us that he's never read the whole Book of Mormon, and that he didn't know there was anything cool in it, because he never got past the Isaiah Chapters in 2 Nephi. So we told him a little about some of the cool stories in it, like Ammon cutting off the arms, and the Stripling Warriors, and Teancum assassinating Amalikiah. He is actually interested in reading now. We actually made some ground with him! We got on the subject of angels protecting us because they were worried about us riding our bikes at night. So we read D&C 84:88, and 2 Kings 6:13-17. (look'm up yourself). He really liked those too.
    Friday we knocked a n area we hadn't been to yet, no success. So we headed south and knocked another area. We talked to a guy named George, and his 4 yr old Goddaughter, Neveah (heaven backwards). He is not interested in taking the discussions, but he told us to come back and talk about Christ anytime, so we'll use that opportunity to teach him. Friday night we did a missionary exchange. Our district leader, Elder Rank, came to our area to work with Warburton, and I went to his area (Killen 1st ward) and worked with Elder Wood. It was great. We taught one of their golden investigators. He is engaged to a member. Both he and his fiancé (we taught at her house) have had head injuries from their service in the Army, so they both have memory issues. They are both very talkative and it was difficult to keep them on subject, but we were able to get through the lesson.
    Saturday morning we taught them again, and she made us lunch. I managed to get jalapeno juice in my eye ( I would not suggest doing that) but we were able to flush it out. After tracting in Wood's area for a while we got our companions back and WB and I went to dinner at the Raey Family's house. sister Raey makes homemade cheesecake for the elders everytime they come over, it is so good. We taught the Abrams again, but Brother Abrams wouldn't come out for the lesson this time. But E Warburton went over and talked with him in the kitchen and gave a mini lesson to him after we were done, and I kept Sister Abrams busy talking so that she couldn't distract Brother Abrams, haha.
    Sunday was pretty uneventful. Church was great as always, but we didn't have the greatest time with tracting afterwards. That night Brother Clark (the music guy) came out on exchanges with us. We visited a Part member family that he is really close to and a recent convert that we haven't been able to contact was over there too, so we got to talk to him too. These three guys, and a couple other guys in the ward, are all involved with the Free Masons, like the stuff in National treasure, except the real life stuff. It's all kind of interesting, but it is definitely distracting them from understanding some of the basic principles they need to understand. Glacier punched his appointment with us, so I think at this point he is trying to avoid lessons on purpose. But we won't drop him yet. I think he'll come around soon.
Anyway, the work is great. It's hard and all, but I love it.
I'm just about out of time, I Love you all! Read the scripture blocks I referenced in the body paragraph as families!

"Some will say Eat or be Eaten, Some will say Live and let Live
But all will agree, as we Join the Stampeded,
You should never take more than you give!" - The Circle of Life (listen to Mo-Tab sing it, it's awesome.)

--
--Elder Braxton C Foust--

Monday, April 4, 2011

The rock of our Redeemer

This week has been a very interesting one.
Tuesday morning we started an exchange. There was a leadership training from Tuesday to Friday for the Zone Leaders, District Leaders, and Trainers. So I had to be put with some other missionaries. I joined Elders Duke and Clement in the Killeen 3rd ward for those 4 days while Elder Warburton was in Hurst and Colleyville. So bright and early Tuesday morning we got up and drove to the other side of Killeen to drop me off at the other apartment. And by bright and early, I mean we woke up the elders when we knocked on the door because it wasn't 6:30 yet.
Being with another set of missionaries who I didn't know very well was awesome. I got to see what things they did differently than we did, as well as what they did similarly. It was good to be in an area where they had a foundation already set for the work. Elder Clement has been here to 4 months working that ward, so they had appointments, and people to contact, and that kind of stuff. We didn't even tract until Thursday because we were working the rest of the time. We even got to go to "On-post off-post", the military housing that is technically on Ft. Hood. We even had to squeeze through a little hole to get past the giant metal gate blocking the road. But it is legal, they had talked to Military officials about it before. On base we have to remove our name tags, and we can't knock on any doors unless we either have an appointment, or a specific assignment from the bishop, otherwise we could be kicked off, or even put in jail for a little while. They might even refuse to allow any missionaries to go on base at all from that point, which is how it was about 6 months ago from what I hear.
They have 2 "eternal investigators" they are working with. That basically means that they are interested in the church, they enjoy the lessons, but they aren't willing to make any commitments to progress. But after a lesson with one of them she gave the closing prayer (after rock paper scissors and guessing a number between 1 and 10) but she was still willing to and did it. That was more than what they had done with her before, so it was good.
The other lady, is a 58 year old who is an alcoholic and smoker. she has been investigating the church for almost a year, and is now starting to progress. She told us that she would not quit both addictions at the same time, and that she wants to get off the alcohol first. So as we went over every day we taught her about how the gospel will help her do that, and we gave her some church dvds to watch to get her mind off her addictions. We watched "The Infinite Power of Hope" by Dieter F. Uchtdorf with her (not the Mormon messages version, the whole talk that the "messages" version is based on) She enjoyed that a lot. She wanted a picture of Christ, so we got the "Red Robe" picture for her and hung it up for her.

 I got to meet with her every day is was in that area. She is an awesome lady, and I know she will be able to overcome those addictions with the help of the Atonement. Working with her helped me understand the idea of Loving those you teach as Christ loves them, because it is sad that I won't get to teach her again.
There was so much more that happened in those four days, but I don't have time to describe them all. But I did get a lot of bike riding done!
Friday night at about 6 I was back with Elder Warburton, we took care of some business with the zone leaders, went to dinner with the whole group that was involved with the exchange, and then went back to our apartment at 8. We had one hour to work. So we jumped on our bikes and rode to our Less Active families houses to invite them to conference, since we didn't get a chance to all week. We rode about 9 miles, and talked to four of our families, all in one hour. It was crazy.
General Conference was amazing. There was so much great information for everyone. I am so glad I had my study journal out and ready, because as I read back on my notes I am reminded of things that I learned, as well as reading things that I honestly do not remember writing, but that are important. It was a great conference. We watched all 5 sessions at the stake center. If you didn't watch them, go to gc.lds.org and watch them!
last night after conference we had dinner with an awesome family. We had some kind of Russian soup that was really good. After dinner we got to hold their 7 foot boa constrictor. (pictures will come eventually)
after the dinner appointment we went to our lesson appointments, both of which punched. (cancelled). It was rather irritating, so we tried to contact literally everyone on our lists, everyone from part-member families to potential investigators, to street contacts. But we did get a return appointment with one of those, and were asked to call others in a couple days to set up appointments later on this week.

I want you all to read Helaman 5. See how building your faith in Christ can help you. verse 12 is one of my absolute favorite scriptures, so you had better read it. Visualize what it is saying, it is amazing. Verses 10-11 are awesome too. The whole chapter is awesome.

"Come, all ye scattered sheep, and listen to your Shepherd, While you the blessings read which long have been predicted. By prophets long it's been foretold: He'll gather you into his fold And bring you home to Zion to praise the Lamb." - Hymn 322 

--
--Elder Braxton C Foust--