Samuel Leary?

Transfer calls were this week. We are both staying another in Sanford, making this my third transfer with Elder DeMoux.

This week was a good week. We had a lesson with a guy named John and will probably set a baptismal date with him tomorrow. We also had a great Thanksgiving and I got to go on exchanges with Elder Harris this week. You also may be asking yourself why my name is Samuel Leary now. The answer is I have no clue and I can't fix it.

So, John. John is pretty cool. He met with missionaries five years ago and had like one lesson, then they stopped teaching him. We decided to stop by and see if he still lived there and if he wanted to meet again. He said he remembered the missionaries and wanted to meet again, he also loves the Book of Mormon. We went by for our return appointment and he said he was busy and to try again the next week. This is super common and usually it means they aren't interested. Anyway, we try by the next week and he is there and tells us to come in and share the word with him.

We ended up teaching the entire restoration lesson to him right then. He agreed with all of it and said the reason he was nondenominational was because he sees bits of truth in all religion, but he has always been searching for the fulness. We told him that God has given us a way to test if this is the truth through the Book of Mormon. He has when he comes to know it is true he would love to be baptized. He already pretty much knows it is true though. So we finna give him a baptismal date this week.

On Thanksgiving we got to go to a turkey bowl with the whole stake. There were 11 missionaries and about 30 other guys from the wards. It was so much fun. We also had an amazing dinner, naturally, and I got to call home. It was a really good Thanksgiving considering I wasn't with my family.

I also got to go on a really fun exchange on Saturday. Elder Harris is just finishing his training. It is fun being with new missionaries and helping them learn new ways to do missionary work and talking about things that have changed since I left home.

That's about it for my week. We have been sharing the new christ child video with everyone from the ward, and it is amazing. I encourage all of you to watch it, share it, and sign up to do Light The World. Light The World makes it super easy to do missionary work. They provide a lot of simple, natural ways to share part of the gospel with others. Also, when you get another email from me on Friday, don't think that I'm being disobedient. Our P-day for next week has been pushed forward to this Friday. 

Lots of service

One of my favorite parts of being a missionary is doing service. Believe it or not, wearing a white shirt and a tie every day eventually gets pretty old. It is super nice to be able to put on some jeans and a t-shirt and do some work. That's what this week was. We also had some really good lessons that I'll talk about.

We did service for five different people this week. It was fantastic. On Thursday we did yard work for a member of the ward and his wife fed us breakfast and mango smoothies. It was great. We also did service at the Rescue Outreach Mission, a homeless shelter we volunteer at every week. Then Friday we helped move a family out of the ward, which took a few hours because it was a very sudden move that wasn't very organized. It went well though, the ward helped a lot and it was pretty fun working with all the guys from the ward. Then Saturday we mowed one of our investigator's lawns, and afterward did some yard work for another nonmember.

It was a nice break from all the normal missionary things. We still did have some cool missionary things though.

The first is that we had a great lesson with Amber, the smart senior in high school that we're working with. We had a lesson at Bishop's house with his daughter and Amber. It went really well because we didn't have all the distractions that come with Amber's house. We were able to answer a lot of her questions and teach a lot. She also has been coming to church every week. We may bring up baptism at our next lesson. Wish us luck!

Cameron is also scheduled to get baptized this Saturday. He passed his interview this week, which is great and shows he's made a lot of progress, because he did not pass his last one. He is super ready. The problem is that the parents told us yesterday that they aren't sure he is ready and they want to move it back. He wants to be baptized and is totally ready by the church's standards, so we will see if we can work it out with the parents this week. Again, wish us luck. I may have a baptism this weekend.

Here's some other things that happened this week. We got to go to the funeral of one of our friends here who passed away suddenly, which was very sad, but the family is doing well. I also had to eat some food that had a cockroach on it. I brushed it off and kept eating because I'm not scared of a little cockroach. It was gross though.

I think that's it for my week. I hope I didn't gross you out too much there at the end. Happy Thanksgiving! Sorry, no pictures this week. 

Double Date

So that title was kind of clickbait. Gotcha! What I meant was that we have two people with a baptismal date. Mark accepted a date this week, Cameron is progressing toward his baptism, and we have some others that are possibilities to be baptized soon. Good stuff goin' on here. This week we also had the craziest experience with a service project. It was a nightmare. And by popular request I will also be doing another spiritual spiel at the end.

So Mark Andrews accepted a date to be baptized on the 14th of December. He wanted to be baptized, but didn't fully understand what baptism is, what it means, or why it's necessary, so we taught a whole lesson about it. It went really well and he still wanted to be baptized even after telling him what he is committing to do. 

He is totally socially converted. He has come to church six weeks straight and always tries to meet new people. He loves all the members and has 3ven had dinner with many of them. He also has built a great relationship with us. He took us to a nice restaurant this week for lunch and it was amazing. We just got to get him converted to the gospel, but he's doing great overall.

*WARNING* *Long Story Ahead* *It's also kind of a meaningless rant*

So last week we got a call from someone who had heard we do service. She said she needed some stuff moved out of a storage unit so she could bring it with her in her move north somewhere. She said it should be pretty quick, especially if we got four guys to help. We show up on the day we scheduled with two other missionaries, and we were really hoping to be in and out quick because we had a dinner to get to. So we get there at four, thinking we'll knock it out in an hour. 
     She had rented a mini van and we were going to put everything from her storage unit in that, then she would drive the mini van to her new place in another state. "Alright, I guess there isn't that much stuff since she only brought a mini van," I thought. We walk in and she opens the unit and it is filled to the brim, there is enough stuff to fill five mini vans easy. And she wants it all crammed into one. 

So we start going and fit maybe 30 percent of the stuff in when we run out of space. And we are behind schedule, so we told her we had to go, and she knew our time constraints from the beginning. We said we could help put the other stuff somewhere else tomorrow if she can figure something out.

So Friday comes and she decides to buy a pod in Deland, 25 minutes away, and that we will put the stuff from the van in there and then refill the van. So we got the Elders up there to help her. They unloaded it, she brought it back, and we start filling the van again. Again, we ran out of room. So we put all the other stuff in a Carolla she was leaving behind, just so it was out of the storage unit, because that day was the deadline to have it emptied. We still had more stuff that couldn't fit in either vehicle. Like big stuff. And we ran out of time again, so we said we had to leave and wished her luck. 

So we left and she ended up getting the Deland sisters to help put the van stuff in the pod. This meant she had to leave a bunch of stuff that didn't fit just left outside because it couldn't stay in the storage unit any longer. So the sisters helped her unload it again up in Deland, we finished putting the extra stuff in the van on Saturday after waiting a half hour for her to show up, and then she got the sisters to unload the van one last time and got the pod shipped.

It all kind of worked out in the end, but this was the biggest nightmare ever. What made it worse was this lady kept telling us we weren't packing it tight enough and we weren't doing enough for her, after we had spent over eight hours total helping her instead of one. I think God was trying to teach me the biggest lesson in being patient and staying calm and polite. I think I barely passed the test. 

Sorry for the rant. That was just my interesting mission story for the week. Now that I ranted about my problems how about a little spiritual spiel? 

Spiritual Spiel
As many of you know, Christmas is coming. I'm so excited, mostly for the Light the World initiative. I want to talk specifically about the new nativity video coming out, called The Christ Child. It should be out to the public by now, I'm not sure, but it is an 18 minute nativity video made by the church that is as accurate as they could make it. The people speak Aramaic, Christ was a toddler when the wise men came, things like that. It is super well done. I have shown it to about 10 members, and I can feel the spirit each time I watch it. I feel so much peace and joy, like for reals, as I watch it and ponder it. You should all watch it to see what I mean. 

I share this because this is an amazing opportunity for each of us. We each have people that could use a good Christmas message, who would love to watch a video about the birth of Christ. I invite each of you to think and pray about who you could invite to your home and watch this video with. It's only November, which gives you plenty of time to think. I know that as you share goodness and serve others, including by sharing this video, you will be uplifted and helped also. 

That's it for this week. This may be a new record for my longest email, sorry about that, I hope you made it this far. I hope you guys have cool experiences as you share this video with your friends and neighbors. Have a great week! 

Successful Week

A lot happened this week, but again, not too much that's exciting or interesting. A lot of really good things happened though.

The best thing from this week was we were able to set a new baptismal date for Cameron. We had a great lesson with him and we were able to help him realize that he is more than ready for his baptism. We set a date for the 30th. He may also get baptized with his younger brother, who turns eight on the 23rd. We shall see.

We also had five investigators come to church yesterday. Three were from the same family though. The family that came is a part-member family that recently moved in and we finally got in contact with them and they want to get involved with the church here. The mom actually was trying to get ahold of someone from the ward but didn't know how so she sent herself as a referral. It worked haha, we showed up just a few hours later. So we are going to work with that family now. 

Some other little highlights from the week: we got to play ball with some guys from the ward on Saturday and we also saw three black bears. So there's a group of like eight guys that play basketball every Saturday early in the morning, and Bishop invited us to it. So we are going now. Yay! Also, yesterday we were driving to a dinner appointment and a momma bear and her 2 cubs ran right in front of us. I was a little slow with the camera, but still got a picture. It was pretty cool.

Not a lot of stuff to report other than that. Most weeks are filled with the same stuff. But who knows, maybe something really crazy will happen this week. I don't know.

Ash has joined the tennis bandwagon

Ash joined the tennis team this year because when you have older siblings who excel at the sport and a favorite friends whose dad is the coach, it's just what you do.

She did well playing JV this year. With a little determination and practice, she'll continue to progress.

At the end of year banquet she was awarded the Energizer Bunny award. It was pretty fitting.

She brought such energy and enthusiasm to the team. Some of her close friends have been the senior girls on the team as in she hangs out with them outside of tennis.

Weird. . . . She can be weird sometimes.

My kids are so different than when I was that age. Those upperclassmen terrified me. They were soooooooo mature and cool and I was just nerdy and awkward. These kids of mine just seem to ooze confidence and are so comfortable in their own skin.

Can't wait for next season. Tennis continues on.

The work is moving forward

This week was pretty hectic. We had exchanges, zone conference, service and plenty of miracles. Busy is great though. Everything this week went perfect and I was able to learn a lot. 

    

So Tuesday and Wednesday we had lots of lessons. Some notable ones were with Cameron and with Lynn. Cameron is a 9 year old who is probably going to get baptized in the next couple weeks. He just needed a better understanding of repentance, so we did an object lesson where we drew something with erasable ink and then we used a lighter to heat it, which erases it. The heat represented repentance, and how repentance can remove our sins. It went really well and he understands it now. 

     

We also had a long lesson with Lynn. She is working towards getting rebaptized but needs more faith that it will actually happen. She could use some prayers. 

    

Thursday was zone conference. We had a lot of great trainings and thoughts. They talked about light the world coming up, they introduced Facebook to the rest of the mission, which means I'm no longer special, and they taught us how to plan better. Plus I got a flu shot. Yay. 

   

That same day, right after zone conference, we did exchanges with the Spanish elders. I got to go with Elder Orantes. We had a great time. I got to practice a lot of my Spanish with him and we got some great food from the Spanish members. I love mexican food. More importantly, though, I think we both learned a lot about planning during our exchange. We had a huge planning session for each of their investigators. Even without any prior knowledge of any of their situations, I was able to help him plan out all the steps each of their investigators need to take to progress, along with when and how we will help them take those steps. It was super effective using the new planning guidelines they have given us which are more people focused than schedule focused. Hopefully they will be able to make those steps and get closer to baptism and conversion. 

    

On Saturday we got to spend almost a whole day working on a ranch. I didn't even have to put on a white shirt that day! We got to help with a lot of cleanup, organizing, and taking care of the animals. I got some cool pics of the animals, which I'll throw in at the bottom. Service ended with a big pot roast dinner and brownies. I am blessed, wow. 

The last miracle for the week was yesterday. We had 4 investigators show up to church, and 2 of them were new. We had an 18 year old girl named Amber come. She really enjoyed it and is starting to progress. We are really excited for her. 

Mark also came again. He has been coming every week since we found him a little over a month ago. He loves coming, but doesn't really care much for the doctrine. He just needs a good church. We didn't really picture him progressing until this week. While I was gone on exchanges, the elders here decided to send him the conference talk from Elder Vincent about being fair dinkum. He responded an hour later with a huge message where he really opened up to us about his life and his struggles. Long story short he is fair dinkum now and wants to be baptized. He said he knew that man was called by God and that he was ready to be baptized. Huge miracle for us. 

  

Anyway, I think this has been one of my longer emails. Hopefully you made it to here. I hope all of your weeks go well. Please pray for my investigators. They are all going through trials and could use some help. Let me know how I can help you. Thank you all for all your support. I'll talk to you next week.

State champ!!

Nate's goal this senior year was to race with the varsity team at state. His region win qualified him to do that.

He not only got to participate as part of the elite seven-member team, but he and his team also took state in the 4A division this year.

It was such an exhilarating day as he accomplished a goal he's been working towards. The entire race was so exciting to watch as three of our runners made it into the top 10. They are off to nationals in Phoenix in a couple of weeks.

And the other exciting news for Nate is he got awarded a presidential scholarship to USU which will pay for all tuition and fees for 4 years. His hard work and determination has paid off there as well. I love to watch my kids work hard and succeed.

Now he just needs to figure out what he wants to be when he grows up.