august 3, 2015 letter

8-3-2015

Dear Family:

This week I had some pretty cool experiences. I spent a lot of this week in other people's areas trying to help them on splits and exchanges. The first place that I went to was Tillamook, which is about an hour drive out to the coast and is probably one of the prettiest drives through their canyon in Oregon! It reminds me a lot of when i went to japan when i was younger and had never before seen trees that engulfed the mountains!  But I went on an exchange up their with elder Allridge. We got to their apartment before they got home, around 8 pm, so we had a little extra time and i got out of the car and began to speak with their neighbor who is Hispanic and probably talked to him for about 25 minutes about his life and his family and the gospel. At the end i asked him if we could stop by some other time to share our message with him and he said that we could! 

The next morning, we got the awesome opportunity of working at a food bank. it was a lot of fun to help people and get to know all of them. At the end we had to move a ton of food onto the stage of the school to store away, and we ended up moving around 2 tons of food. It was fun but a lot of work and it got really hot! That whole day, our goal was to talk to everyone and to find as many new investigators as we could.  We were walking past a house with a lady painting it and offered to help her. She kindly declined. We were about to keep walking, when i got the distinct impression to stay and keep talking to her about the gospel. She ended up warming up to us and we talked for about a half hour about religion and her life. Her husband also came out and started talking to us. He said that he was really interested in family history, so we gave him the time and address of when and where the church was open to do family history. They were both amazing people, and Elder Allridge and Vincent will now be teaching them over there. That night we went to a mans home for dinner who is not a member, but his wife is.  We ended up having a really really good lesson with him and committed him to read the book of Mormon and pray to know if it is true. it was a very spirit-led meeting and we were very bold and straight up with him.

 

On Thursday, one of the Spanish elders was sick and the healthy elder called and asked if i could go teach a family with him because they hadn't seen them in a week and they wanted to be baptized. So elder Adams and i drove down there and I went with the healthy elder, and elder Adams stayed and took care of the sick one! When we got to the house to teach the family, they weren't there. We were pretty sad because we had taken a member with us to teach, so we walked down the street and started talking to a Hispanic man working on his yard.  While they were talking to him, I noticed an older lady walking by, so I stuck my hand out to pet the dog to get her to stop so i could talk to her. The dog was nice and stopped to let me pet her. I left the conversation with the Hispanic man, and began to teach the lady with the dog. I bore a strong testimony of the book of Mormon and that she could know these things are true if she reads it and prays about it. She seemed really touched and began to cry and told me that her husband had just been sent to jail, and that she might be sent to jail as well. I read from Mosiah 24 about God strengthening us to endure trials. She accepted the book of Mormon and asked me to come back the next day. I'm so glad i followed the impression to talk to her.  So the next night, Friday, the English elder who covers that area and his "Mini Missionary" and I went to go and teach her. We have a companionship in our zone that has a "Mini Missionary" which basically means that the person is still in high school, but wants to see what it is like on a mission and if he wants to serve, so they stay with the missionaries for a week and do and live like missionaries do. So I took this missionary and his mini missionary to the lesson with the lady I met so i could hand her off to them, while elder Adams and his real companion went and taught another lesson. It was such an amazing lesson that we taught. We taught about the restoration of the gospel, and she was like "well of course that makes sense that God would call another prophet today"! Towards the end of the lesson I was about to ask her to be baptized, but in the middle of saying the first word, i get the impression to let the mini missionary ask her. So i stop, and look at him and kind of give him a look. He looks at me with his eyes big and obviously a little nervous. I give him a reassuring look, like, you've got this. He looked at her and asked her to be baptized. She accepted and said that it all just made sense. It was cool to teach with a younger guy in high school. When we got in the car, he couldn't stop talking about how good he felt and how much he couldn't wait to be a missionary.  I gave him my email to let me know how things go back at home with school and when he gets his call. This is the letter i received from him this morning.

"Dear Elder Romney,

      I wanted to thank you for being such a great example to me this week! You are definitely a powerhouse when it comes to teaching the gospel, as you seem to be in sports too. Thank you for finding her and then giving me the opportunity to come teach her with you and Elder Hair. I also thought it was really nice that you let me invite her to be baptized! Elder Romney, you are an incredible missionary, and even just in that one lesson with her, I just could tell how in tune with the spirit you were. Everything that you said just came out so sincerely, and you were definitely able to teach her the things that she needed to hear.

 Also, thank you for sleeping in on Saturday morning for basketball (even though I wanted to see you ball it up) because I realized a blessing that came from it. I'm sure you heard about the graffiti on the other church building that we had to go to instead of yours, because we had that key, and because we went to that one instead, we were able to call someone and get the graffiti taken care of before church the next day. Had we not gone there, everyone at church the next day would have come to church and seen all of that gay/ lesbian/ transgender stuff and that would not have been good! So it may sound weird, but it was definitely a blessing that you didn't come to B-ball that morning :). But anyways, thanks for being such a great zone leader, and fun guy to be around. Keep up your incredible work and service!

Sincerely, Brother L

P.S. Tell Elder Adams that I said "hi" and that he is super awesome as well :)"

I enjoyed being with Brother L and hope that he will continue to grow in the gospel. I also had a lot of fun with a senior couple this week. I went up to interview one of the people who was going to be baptized and afterwards they took us out to lunch. They really are a lot of fun to be around and i enjoy talking to them. Even though they are older than I am, i feel like i can talk to them like any other missionary. She said that she was going to give me a paper that would be a guide to helping me finish all of the old testament, new testament, book of Mormon, doctrine and covenants, and pearl of great price in a year. so i am super excited about that (: The senior couples we have here are the BEST!! haha. 

We were also able to find a new investigator who is 18 and is the granddaughter of a member in the ward that we often work with. She has grown up atheist, but told us that she can't deny the feelings that she has felt before about a God. We invited her to read the book of Mormon and she accepted. We will be teaching her again this Tuesday. 

This week was really good, with some rough patches, but i know those rough patches are to help me grow! Thanks for all that you guys do for me (: I know this church is true and i know that Joseph Smith really did see God the Father and Jesus Christ. I know the Book of Mormon to be the word of God and that we can grow in our faith and knowledge of Jesus Christ as we diligently study from it every day. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Love, Elder Romney.

Golfing on Pday with the Bishop.  The first time in a long time, and it was a lot of fun!

How i feel when we do paper work. It was paper work that we needed to present to the stake president about each ward.

You know those little popper things from the fourth of july? Yeah, Elder Allridge says it doesn't hurt to pop it in his mouth! haha (:

our investigator gave us a ton of these, so i am going around and putting these on missionary apartment fridges!! It's awesome (: