Another transfer down!

Family and Friends,

I can't believe my first full transfer after train is over, and I
trained the whole time! It's completely crazy! We got transfer calls
on Saturday instead of Sunday, which is pretty abnormal, because
transfers happened today instead of tomorrow due to Thanksgiving this
week. We both will be staying in Sundance and Moorcroft which means
Elder Bills will have me for his entire training period, so pray for
him haha! Just kidding, I think we're doing pretty good and we're
always improving. But prayers are always appreciated 😄😄😄

Last Monday not much happened, just a typical preparation day
with basketball and pod ball. The week got to a slow start on Tuesday
when I woke up and didn't feel too good. I had a headache and felt
super clogged so I fell back asleep and woke up fully rejuvenated and
ready to get on with the day! And it was a good day too. We were in
Moorcroft and found a new investigator, a new potential investigator
and contacted an investigator. The one we contacted was interested in
meeting again and we made an appointment, and they know some members
here and they'll be coming to the appointment hopefully! We've started
walking around a lot more instead of driving the car everywhere even
though it's getting super cold. We layer and then just head out and
rarely feel chilly. But anyways, the reason I mention that is because
it makes me feel like a real missionary! My whole life I've just
imagined missionaries walking around and now that we're doing it more
often I feel even more like a missionary! It just feels right to be
walking down dirt roads at night with a Book of Mormon in hand, it's a
good feeling.
Wednesday was our last district meeting of the transfer
😭😭😭😭😭 Transfer calls for the entire zone has left every single
missionary stay except Elder Hatton and Elder Kimball. So my district
is stain the same except Elder Hatton is leaving. It's going to be
really weird and sad to not have him around. He's the only district
leader I've known so far and he was my trainer for 3 months. After a
really great district meeting we made ELK BURGER SANDWICHES!!!! We had
a bunch of Elk Burger in our freezer in Sundance and Elder Perez has a
bunch of things he likes to mix into the burger so we brought the
burger and he made it taste magnificent! That night no one showed up
to the Moorcroft Family History Night so while we were waiting and
hoping for people to show up we talked with Brother Valdon and
President Jones about the Gospel and how important it is to belong to
God's true church and to be faithful in these days. We all shared
experiences of how we've seen the gospel bless lives and how we've
seen people struggle without the gospel. It strengthen my testimony of
how true this church is and how much it blesses my life and filled me
with fire and desire to share it with everyone.
On Thursday we had our first official investigator sit down
lesson of the transfer! It was with the new investigator we found on
Tuesday. The branch mission leader came with us and it was quite the
interesting experience. She didn't want to start out with a prayer and
has 3 very young rambunctious boys, so it was sometimes hard to listen
to the spirit and teach by it. But it still went well and she had lots
of questions and agreed to let us come back! We're super excited to
have a real investigator to teach!
Have you seen the Cokeville Miracle? If not, go watch it! The
Moorcroft branch had a movie night on Friday and watched it. We didn't
get to watch the movie but we went to the potluck before and the
fireside after. The Cokeville Miracle is a true story about a town in
Wyoming, Cokeville, with a population of less than 600. A mad man and
his wife took hostage the elementary school and brought all the
students and teachers into the smallest kindergarten room where he had
a large homemade bomb, ~160 people crammed in there I believe (don't
quote me on numbers haha). He demanded 2 million dollars ransom for
each child and wanted to start a new world. The kids and teachers
started to pray. The man left to use the restroom and unstrapped the
trigger from himself onto his wife. The lady accidentally jerked the
trigger and it went off. No one died except the mad and his wife. Many
of the kids, when interviewed later, told the same story of looking up
before it went off to see glowing men robed in white holding hands
around the bomb. When it went off they flew through the ceiling taking
the explosion with them. Years later as some many of the children
worked on family history work they found pictures of their ancestors
and identified them as the ones surrounding the bomb and the ones that
led or carried them out of the building. The Lead Bomb Investigator's
son is a member here in Moorcroft and he came here and talked with us
and bore testimony of the power of prayer and that angels exist. He
didn't hear anything about the angel stories until more than 3 years
after the event and had never been able to understand the evidence.
The bomb was large and had many things that were obviously tampered
with so that it wouldn't go off completely, and the explosion that did
go off should have leveled the building. When he learned about the
Angels he knew what he was missing. As they looked through evidence
photos again they found burned silhouettes of angels on the wall.
Hopefully you'll go watch it, I know that I will when I get home!
Also, I can't believe I forgot to mention this last week! After
praying about a place to go tracting last Sunday Elder Bills and I
both chose the same street. We went and knocked doors and found a less
active member, brother Glenn, that no one knew about. He joined the
church back in Vietnam and pretty much has never been to church ever
since. He agreed to have us come back again. We taught him and he
agreed to come to church. Sadly he didn't come even though we went by
on Saturday to remind him and he said he would.
Last thing I promise, sorry about the long letter. Last night we
had a perfect 'thy will, not mine be done' experience. We went to go
contact an investigator, parked on the block she lives on, and said a
prayer before we got out of the car. As we ended the prayer saying we
wanted God's will to happen and then looked up we saw her driving away
in her car! Immediately I was tempted to complain literally moments
after praying for God's will to happen. I realized I was being a
hypocrite and so we decided to contact people in the area and I
quickly realized that it was what we were supposed to do! We met
someone who wasn't interested but he was very nice and we now he had
felt something. He told us he has lots of Mormon friends. Hopefully in
the future that seed will be harvested by friends and family that will
be grateful for missionaries that sparked his interest. We also found
a less active we've been looking for and another less active couple
let us in! The husband really loves football and everyone has told us
it's impossible to get his attention during a game. He was watching
Sunday night football and turned it off to talk with us!!! The spirit
was definitely there and we even got a cupcake haha! So A+ for
everyone!

I love you all, pray for guidance and the spirit every day. It will happen.

Elder Tippetts

You know you're living in Wyoming when...

Family and friends,

I can't help but start out with this story first. So...you know
you're in Wyoming when you have dinner at a members house and it's
their child's birthday and they open up their presents and they get
camo bibbers, a camo vest, .22 ammo and a camo .22 rifle. The kid was
11. I love it here haha!

Really quick now I want to put in a plug for patriarchal
blessings. Get one if you haven't. I procrastinated getting mine until
about a month before my mission and it has benefited me so much on my
mission. It has held answers to almost every single question I've had
and if it hasn't directly held the answer it's told me exactly what I
need to do to get the answer. One of my biggest pre mission regrets
now is not getting mine sooner. As I look back on my life before my
mission I can see how much peace and guidance I would have had if I
had only received my blessing years before.

We had a super rad district meeting on Wednesday and I led a
discussion and the rest of the meeting was filled with other awesome
role plays and discussions as well. Wednesday night we went to the
Family History class in Moorcroft and had lots of fun. The members
here are really into it and all help each other do it. They also all
bring pizza and lots of dessert and lots of other foods too. So family
history nights are always good! On the way to the on ramp in Moorcroft
to get back to Sundance I got pulled over...but it was brother Skeens,
the branch mission leader from Sundance, so everything was alright. I
had forgotten to turn on my headlights because for some reason I had
turned them off earlier in the day. Before you judge my abilities to
drive remember that I got my license 1 month before my mission and
then for 3 months I didn't drive.

Friday was President Uchtdorf's birthday! I posted about it on
Friday. Y'all can go check it out on my page at
Facebook.com/ElderGarianTippetts if you'd like. He's an amazing man.
Over the past few years I've really grown to appreciate his talks so
much. We also got to talk to a less active lady and she seems very
willing to come back to church. She really just needs someone to
fellowship her successfully and everything will work out. Right after
we talked with her we had a dinner appointment with the couple that's
fellowshipping her! So we had a great discussion on how we can work
together to bring them back into the fold of Christ's church!

On Saturday we spent most of the morning building a deck for a
less active member that's pretty much reactivated! She's super cool
and it's amazing to see how much of a change has come over her since
we met her during my second transfer until now! We tore apart her
deck, tearing things apart is always fun. The we built a new one
because her old one was extremely sketchy and precarious. Saturday
night was the first night we stayed with the Campbell's as well.
They're a family in Moorcroft that has missionary approved housing so
we can stay there overnight instead of having to drive back to
Sundance every night. They're so kind and awesome and completely
missionary minded. When we got to their house they sat us down and
told us about every family they're working with and how we're going to
help them. Needless to say that was grand.

Sunday was a pretty average Sunday besides the fact that it was
Moorcroft's linger longer/after church potluck. There was so much good
food. So much. I definitely ate more than I should have but...eh..it
was good. Sunday night was where we had our birthday dinner with the
guns.

See ya later! Y'all are grand!

Elder Tippetts

Happy (late) Halloween!

Family and friends,

This was a pretty rad week! Everything from Mission conference to a
baptism to Halloween!

On Monday we had an awesome preparation day like previously
mentioned last week with intense basket ball and dodge ball! It was
quite the day ending with a long drive to Sheridan. We stayed there
overnight and then left the next morning for Worland. The drive was
pretty cool. Except then we were almost spirits for Halloween...we
went through the big horns and the road has lots of sharp curves.
There was a portion of the road that was randomly really snowy and as
we came around a corner so did another truck that spun out of control
and luckily it swerved off the road away from us instead of at us like
we first thought. But all is well! We were definitely protected and
the lady was too. She hit a tree pretty hard with the tail of her
truck but she's fine. Her truck just doesn't have a tail gate anymore
and we got to help her replace her tire! So everything was fine and we
made it to Worland for our Zone Conference safely!
Zone conference was super amazing! We had training from President
Wadsworth and the assistants! Lots of great discussions led to lots of
answers to lots of questions I've been having! I'm super excited to
continue applying the things I've learned and we've already seen
blessings as we've applied what we learned already.
Wednesday night we had the Sundance Branch Halloween party and it
was grand. Lots of non members and less actives showed up so we were
able to meet lots of people! Also the food was amazing. Sister
Schaeffer made probably some of the best soup I've ever had. She gave
us all the leftovers because I loved it so much haha! They also played
dress up the missionaries. We weren't expecting that. They had a
competition where they split up the little kids and gave them toilet
paper and outfits. They wrapped us up in toilet paper and then put
clothes on us. I was a construction worker and Elder Bills was a yoga
Barbie doll I think. Pictures will be included.
On Thursday we spent a good amount of time exploring family
search and figuring out how to do family history work. I really wish I
had done more of it with my dad before my mission, lots of people just
expect missionaries to know how to do it so now we're trying to figure
it out! We also got to meet with one of our investigators that's super
awesome. He reminds me of my TRC investigator from the MTC, Jonathan
Baker. He's very similar and really cool. We're working on figuring
out times to meet with him, he has a pretty intense schedule. We also
tracted into a guy in Sundance that Elder Hatton and I met a while ago
and he was a lot more accepting than when we first met him. He has
lots of questions that are very similar to the ones that Joseph Smith
had!

I don't remember if I told y'all about the lion we saw. The
really big dog that scared Elder Bills? It's scary. Well we knocking
on some doors again and there was a very intimidation dog not on a
chain that kept inching closer to us so we almost got to use our
pocket knives for first time. Just kidding, I probably wouldn't stab a
dog. But we were walking away and it barked again and Elder Bills
freaked out like he did with the other big dog. We left that area
pretty quickly haha!

Halloween was pretty bomb. We started off the day heading down to
Newcastle for Trent's baptism! When the Newcastle Elders were getting
everything ready for the baptism he kept asking them multiple times
'Elder Tippetts is going to be there, right?' And 'You got it approved
for Elder Tippetts to come, right?' I was so happy to be able to make
it to his baptism! He was so prepared and such an inspiration to me!
On the drive to Newcastle we drove through a herd of cows, it was
pretty cool! We just had to pull up behind a 4 wheeler and it led us
through. Then after the Baptism the city of Newcastle has a big trunk
or treat on Main Street. We stayed to help them out with that and it
was fun! I got to see a bunch of people from Newcastle that I haven't
seen since I left! Then we had the Moorcroft Halloween Party! It was
super fun and I got lots of candy and they had really good dinner! We
played basketball with the youth in the branch after because we
couldn't be out proselyting on Halloween.

Sunday was pretty typical. We went to church in Moorcroft this
week, which we haven't done before. It was awesome! I love the members
in both of our branches. Back in Sundance on of the less active
members came to church again! She's come to church for 4 weeks in a
row now and yesterday she bore her testimony in Fast and Testimony
meeting! I wish we could have been there but sadly we were not.

Anyways, I hope y'all have a great week! I love you all!

Elder Tippetts