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