Week 40 - May 15, 2017

Howdy y'all!!

So this email will probably be pretty small sorry :( But I have been having a great time out here in Louisiana!! This past week was pretty slow when it came to work. There was a lot of stuff that we had to do for prepping for this coming week! But some cool things did happen this week.

SO first off I got to go to Denham Springs for ZL exchanges. I was with Elder Stucki who goes home in 16 days! He is an awesome missionary and the best part is that he is from Idaho!! So he is automatically awesome! There was a crazy hour long storm while I was with him and we literally couldn't see 15 feet in front of us because of the rain!! I love the storms out here soooo much!! 

Next we got to go to a baptism for a young man named Soljah. He was an investigator for the Hammond Sisters. He is one of the nicest kids I have ever met and he is so ready for the gospel! He always wants to say the prayers and answer questions in class! It was such a cool experience to see him get baptized by his Grandfather!

Other than that the big event this week was talking to my family on Mother's Day!! That is always a good experience! It is weird to think that I have already done two of my four skypes home on my mission! The mission goes way too fast!!

Anyways I hope y'all had a great Mother's day weekend!! 

Hasta luego!!

Week 39 - May 8, 2017

Just Another Week on the Mission

 

Howdy y'all! Como estan?

So this week was a pretty basic week out here on the mission. Not too much exciting or crazy happened.

First of we did meet a really awesome former investigator that we are working with again. His name is Neil. He is an awesome guy but has some concerns about the church and some of our teachings. I think most of the concerns that he has come from some misunderstandings of what the other Elders had been teaching him so we are working to clear those up! It has been a good experience for Elder Barney and me.

We were also able to catch up with the Strausbaugh's again!! It has been a long time since we could get them nailed down on a time to visit. They are doing alright. They are coming out of a really tough financial time and things have been hard for them. We are trying to get it set up so that we can meet with them at a minimum of once a week.

The other cool experience for this week was going on exchanges. I went to Albany with Elder Jensen. Well I went with Elder Jensen, but we were mostly in Amite, which is a little out of our area, for service. We helped a family repair a deck and some stairs. It was actually a lot of fun and it was good to work with this family. They aren't members but the daughter lives in Albany and is an investigator. It was a good time!

Well that is about all for this week! I hope y'all are doing well! 

Hasta luego!!

 

 

Week 38 - May 1, 2017

Hola mis amigos!

So this week has been pretty interesting. It was the last week of the month and we had some extra miles so we went to the far reaches of our area to visit some less-actives and members that don't usually get visited! It was a good experience! Most of the people that we saw were super happy to see the missionaries again and a lot of them are wanting to come back to the church!! We are planning how we can visit all of these people regularly since they live so far out. It will be hard but the Lord always provides a way!

Also this week we got to meet with our new investigator Jimmy. He is an interesting man.... He is willing to learn about God but he isn't too familiar with gospel terms. We brought him a Book of Mormon and read through the introduction with him. 

The last paragraph says, "Those who gain this divine witness from the Holy Spirit will also come to know by the same power that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world, that Joseph Smith is His revelator and prophet in these last days, and that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the Lord’s kingdom once again established on the earth, preparatory to the Second Coming of the Messiah." 

So when we asked Jimmy what he thought about what we read his comment was "When I hear the word Messiah, I think about Donald Trump." It was all we could do not to laugh and we had no idea what to say back. He will be an interesting one to teach haha!

The other exciting thing this week was that Church was canceled because of horrible weather conditions. We had tornado warnings, rain and lightning like crazy. President called us and told us to just hunker down while it passed over. It was crazy to watch!

Anyways that was my week in a nutshell! I hope all y'all are seeing the blessings of the Lord in your lives! He loves you and knows you personally!! He will always be there for you!

Hasta luego!

Week 37 - April 24, 2017

The Hunt for Less-Actives

 Hola Y'all!!

It has been another awesome week out here in good ole Hammond Louisiana!! The weather had definitely started to warm up and I am not for sure that I like it haha! This summer will be interesting to say the least.

So this past week has been really good! A little disappointing at times but good none the less. So we spent a lot of this week trying to clean up our ward list and find some people that we can help return to the church. It was cool going to go and meet new people! One of the people that we met, Mike, is one of the most knowledgeable people I have ever met about the gospel, he just doesn't feel like coming to church. We also me a guy named Michael that has been living in Hammond for about 12 years and we are only the second set of missionaries to try and reach out to him. We hope to meet with both of them again because they are really nice people! 

Other than finding, hunting, less-actives, this week has been pretty regular. Elder Barney and I have come up with a tracting schedule. So far we have gotten in contact with some people but not many have an interest in what we have to teach. We have been able to pass out some pass-along cards and some Mormon.org cards but that is about it. It has been good though and we feel like this week the work will pick up a little bit.

SO I hope all y'alls weeks have been well! I love y'all and hope everything is going well!! 

Hasta Luego!

Week 36 - April 17, 2017

Hello again y'all!!
So it is another transfer here in Hammond Louisiana. Elder Israelsen and I are no longer together. He has moved on to Morgan City in the New Orleans Zone. He is now with my CCM comp Elder Porter. As far as I know they are doing well together! My new comp is Elder Barney. So the crazy thing about Elder Barney is that he is a English Elder.... So yeah I am in a salt and pepper companionship now. It has been an interesting week needless to say. Elder Barney is from Utah, go figure, and has been out for about 21 months. He and I get along pretty well together and I think some cool things will happen this transfer.

So this week wasn't too eventful other than getting a new companion. I have been taking him around to the people that we visit and introducing him to them and to the members of the ward. It has been good. 

So I am sorry for the short email y'all.... It has been a crazy week but mostly because of the new comp. Hopefully next week I will have more to report.

Love y'all!

Editors Note: Pictures are from last week. 

Week 35 - April 11, 2017*

Good Mornin y'all. So another transfer has passed for me out here on the mission. They seem to get shorter and shorter every time. Elder Israelsen tells me that it is probably because this transfer was only a five week transfer instead of a six week one but I'm still not convinced that is the reason :)

Still no news as to if Israelsen and I are being transferred, the calls wont come in until about 10 or 11 my time. I am hoping that Israelsen and I stay together one more but we will see what happens.

So this week was a little disappointing. We were supposed to have a baptism on the 15th of this month but on Saturday we were informed that we would have to postpone the baptism because of a few things that have come up. I won't go into detail but please keep the Strausbaugh family in your prayers!! 

The big thing this week was the Ponchatoula Strawberry Festival. It is one of the largest festivals here in Louisiana and it is all dedicated to strawberries. Who would have thought strawberries were cool enough to bring hundreds of thousands of people to a small town like Ponchatoula?? Not me that is for sure!! So we got to spend a lot of time at the festival by doing service for the local Kiwanis Club. They were selling non-alcoholic strawberry daiquiri's to earn money for this years projects. It was a lot of fun and when we weren't helping there we got to go around and see some of the booths and talk to people. Not many people there were from our area but we did get to speak some Spanish there so that was really cool!! 

Other than that this week was fairly slow. We got a few new potential investigators this week including a family but we have to follow up with them this week and see if they are interested in continuing meeting with us. I will keep y'all updated on that.

One last thing. If y'all haven't seen the Easter videos that the Church has put out this year, I would strongly encourage y'all to go to Mormon.org and watch all nine videos. They will bring a Spirit of Peace into your homes this Easter season. I have felt and seen in others the Spirit that these videos bring.

Have a great week!! I will keep y'all updated on transfers!!

Week 34 - April 3, 2017

Howdy y'all!! I feel way too Southern now haha!! Anyways I hope y'all have had a great week!!

This week was pretty slow for us as missionaries. I got my head cold again but stronger this week from about Sunday to Wednesday and then Elder Israelsen got it starting on about Wednesday through the weekend. SO this was a fairly hard week for us but we made it through.

This week, even though we were sick, we still ended up finding a lot of service to do for the Kiwanis Club here in Hammond. On Tuesday we went to the local Kiwanis meeting and got introduced to more of the people that are part of the club here. On Wednesday we went and helped with the Happy Packs again which is one of my favorite service that we do. After that we went to the Kiwanis meeting in Ponchatoula, another city that we cover, and met the Kiwanis members there. Then on Thursday we went with the Kiwanis to help get new supplies for the Happy Packs. It was a good week for service.

On Friday we had our Zone Training Meeting (ZTM). It was really good. The instructions were about learning to love our companion by compromise and service. It was a really good instruction and much needed for this Zone. We also had an instruction on how to make finding new people more fun. The last thing that we did in ZTM was discuss the Easter video and pass along cards. I am really excited for them because so many people down here have faith in Christ and I feel like this will open so many more doors to us. I can't wait to get out and start using them out tracting.

We also had interviews with President Hansen Friday after ZTM. Elder Israelsen and I have come to the realization that for some reason that we don't know, President loves us. Our past few interviews have been super short and all he really tells us is how great we are doing and how happy his is to have wonderful missionaries like us. It is kind of strange but as long as I am on his good side I am happy. I got to talk to Sister Hansen as well which is always really nice. She is probably my favorite person on the Earth. She is so nice and understanding to all the missionaries and she gets to know all of us by name. She is just an all around great lady.

So other than that this weekend was AWESOME! I love Conference out here on the mission. Everything seems to be related in some way to what I am doing out here on the mission and how I can become a better missionary. I love that we have the opportunity twice a year to hear from the Prophet, the Apostles, and other inspired Church Leaders. It is always such a strength and there is always some thing to learn.

Well I hope y'all are having a great Monday and that this week will be great for y'all!! Hasta Luego!!

 

 

Editors Note: I'll caption these pictures, "Missionaries love new cars"