Easter

Family and Friends,
I hope you all had a great Easter! And I hope you were able to
remember what the season's real meaning is. Hint: it's not about
bunnies and eggs and chocolate ;)
Anyways, I'll start out with some of the fun stuff we did this
week. We had dinner with Brother Rosendahl, he's such a cool guy. Less
active for decades and then 3ish years ago he decided he wanted to
come back and then the next day the missionaries knocked on his door
and he's come ever since! He took us to a Barbecue place and I had
some of the best Barbecue chicken I've had in a while, except it was
pretty pink in some places and the next day my stomach felt pretty
messed up. But besides that it was good! We were looking through the
menu and I started laughing when I saw they had Rocky Mountain Oysters
for an appetizer and Brother Rosendahl couldn't believe I'd never had
any, he cut me some slack though because I'm a city kid. The waitress
came back and got our orders then asked if there was anything else we
wanted, Bro R and Elder Lankford looked at me and the waitress started
laughing and said "just get them," so I ordered some and.....THEY WERE
SUPER GOOD!!! So check that of my bucket list ;)
Then on Saturday Brother Cozzens fed us. He's been off his
mission for less than 5 or 6 years. He's one of the funniest people
I've met on my mission and he's always there to help us out when we
need a member to go with us or when missionary work isn't going how we
want it to. His wife couldn't come with us because of the Women's
session of conference, so he drove us a couple miles out of town to
start a fire in the middle of nowhere and roast hot dogs! It was super
simple but it was so nice. He was just telling us funny stories from
his mission the whole time and we were laughing hard. Then we drove
back through a rougher part of the country and climbed up some pretty
steep, bumpy hills in his truck. He brought his .22 rifle just in case
there were any coyotes around or big crows. He pulled over a couple of
times and got it out but didn't feel good about the shot. Don't worry,
we didn't touch or handle (as the missionary handbook says) any form
of firearm at all, it was all him! Needless to say, it was a great
dinner and a breath of fresh air.
This last week I went on an exchange with Elder Nuffer, he's the
biggest stud out there. He came up to Powell with me and Elder
Lankford went down to Cody with Elder Loehr. We had such a great time
together and got a lot of good things done. Sadly all of our set
appointments fell through with some of our more promising
investigators, but we still taught some! We also visited some less
active families that he knows because he used to serve in Powell. He
was so happy to see how some of them have progressed and some are
preparing to go to the temple to be sealed! So as for investigators we
found he helped us with Joe and Jessica. Joe was starting to dodge out
on us because of some medical problems but Elder Nuffer is so bold and
wouldn't let him back out. He helped Joe see that when problems come
up in our lives we need to turn to the Savior rather than turn away
from Him. We also talked to Jessica, the potential we finally got into
contact with last week! After talking with her for a little bit,
here's how the conversation went:
Elder Nuffer: "So are you actually interested in talking with us? Are
you really looking to change your life?"
Jessica: "Yes!"
Elder Nuffer: "Okay, so what do you know about baptism?"
Jessica: "Nor much."
Elder Nuffer: "When you see the things we teach you bless your life,
will you be baptized?"
Jessica: "Um, of course!"
Elder Nuffer: "We'll be having a baptismal service on the 30th of
April, will you meet with us regularly to prepare yourself to be
baptized on that day?"
Jessica: "Ya!"

And that's how we got our first person on date since I've been here!
Last story. On Saturday we were walking around on the south side
of town and we got an unexpected phone call from a member that lives
in Cowley. She told us that her grandmother has been in the Powell
Nursing home for a while, that ye were driving there right then and
that they wanted us to come give her a blessing before she passed
away. We got there and she was definitely in bad shape. The lady that
called us and her daughter were the only members there and the rest of
the people there couldn't stop thanking us for coming. They'd tried
getting their pastor to come, her pastor to come and any other pastor
they could find to come but none of them would. They were impressed
and thankful that our church can respond so quickly to any body that
asks for help, even people who aren't members of our church. So we
anointed and then blessed her. In the spirit of Easter, while our
hands were on her head I felt the spirit tell me so strongly that she
would live again. It was completely unmistakable. Then on Sunday
morning we got a text from the lady that asked us to come bless her
grandma letting us know that she had just passed away. I again felt
that spirit of comfort and this Easter, Christ's sacrifice took on a
whole new meaning to me. I know that we'll all live again and we all
have the opportunity to repent and change so we may live in God's
presence again. According to preach my gospel, "the purpose of the
gospel is to cleanse people of their sins so they can receive Savior's
mercy at the day of judgment." (Pg. 6) That's the glorious message
that accompanies he Easter season, that we can access mercy and be
saved by grace. I hope you were all able to feel your Savior's love
this week. Make sure you find someone to share that with this week!

Until next week! I love you all!


Elder Tippetts

Couple good lessons!

Family and Friends,

Not much happened this week. More lessons cancelled and plenty of
tracting. But we did have a couple of really good lessons this week!
So I'll tell y'all about those.
We finally talked with Travis, he's a less active member that the
bishop doesn't know. We tracted into him a couple weeks ago and kept
getting appointment after appointment cancel. We kept trying back
though because he has a non member wife and a couple of young kids, so
there was going to hopefully be some good part member family work to
do there. He let us in for about 15 minutes to talk with him and it
turns out his wife isn't really that interested. He says that he knows
he needs to come to church and that he knows it would help his wife be
interested, he just has a hard time coming alone. He says she always
has lots of questions about the church and he never knows how to
answer them, but she doesn't want to talk to us even though they both
recognize that we have those answers. It was a little frustrating,
obviously, but we were able to give him some materials and other
resources so he can start learning about the gospel again and then
hopefully be able to answer some of his wife's questions. He said
he'll think about coming to church and he was glad that we kept trying
to talk with him.
Saturday afternoon we took our ward mission leader, Bro Gilliatt
(who looks like Chris from The Strike by the way...), to a lesson with
a potential investigator we finally got a hold of. She wasn't there
when we got there for the appointment. A guy pulled up to the
neighbor's house to help them move, so we talked to him. They were
just finishing moving, so they didn't need help, but we talked with
him about prophets and it was really good! He was 17ish and had
graduated early and definitely has faith in Jesus Christ. He wasn't
against anything we taught, he actually really liked it all. We shared
with him the Easter video and gave him our number. I don't know if
he'll call back, that's usually the way things work. But while we were
talking with him I really pictured him in a year going through the
temple and then going on a mission. He was such a cool guy and easy to
talk to and I could see that he can make a big difference in a lot of
people's lives.
Last cool lesson was with Marva. She's an older lady and has
investigated the church for nearly 15 years. She comes to church most
weeks but hasn't been baptized because she doesn't agree with some of
the doctrine, but she feels like she's benefitted a lot personally
from learning about our church and attending it. She also has a couple
of mental problems that make it hard for her to comprehend what she
reads. So we started to just read the Book of Mormon with her from the
beginning this week. It was neat because she focuses a lot on
historical facts like how many sons Lehi had, what year they left
Jerusalem and what sea they sailed on to get to the Americas. We've
been trying to help her understand that those facts are less important
and at she needs to focus on principles instead, and it finally
clicked this time. So we helped her see principles in the first 2
chapters and the spirit was super strong. It really helps me learn the
gospel better talking with her because we need to teach so simply.

Elder Tippetts

Too many canceled appointments!

Family and friends,

Sometimes life is just tough and you have 2 days during the week
that are completely packed with scheduled lessons from after lunch
until it's time to turn in for the night and then one of those days
completely falls through and half of the other one does. It's tough,
but you deal with it. That's something I love that I've learned from
my mission, that faith is usually shown by how you react when things
don't go the way you planned. Even though that happened we used the
open time to get a lot of good accomplished. We got some good tracting
done and made lots of phone calls. We're trying to meet with more less
actives and part member families so we've been finding them and just
giving them phone calls. It seems a little scary because you've never
met them but when it comes down to it, what can they do to you over
the phone? Luckily we haven't had any of them be too hostile to us
yet! And we've found some good stuff to start working with!
We had a really cool appointment this week with Rebekah. She's 19
and graduated the same year as Elder Lankford and I, 2015. She's been
less active for a while and is going to the college here in town. Her
family used to live here and they all just moved away pretty much so
she's been feeling lonely and she's felt the need to turn towards the
church. She said she doesn't know that the church is true but she does
know the church, meaning that it's familiar to her. That it feels like
home. We were able to help her with a bunch of her concerns! She went
to institute the next day! She'll be out of town this weekend but
we'll get her to church next week. It really strengthened my testimony
of faith as well and I definitely felt some personal revelation that
comforted me. I realized that even though God doesn't always give us a
specific answer to all of our questions, He'll often tell us that
there is an answer and expect us to trust Him. There are so many
people I've met that through away precious doctrinal certainties for a
couple of unexplained curiosities. Doubt your doubts before you doubt
your faith.
Elder Nuffer and Elder Loehr (the Cody elders) are going to kill
us! They're the ones that I did the baptismal interview for last week,
then I did another one for them yesterday, they have another one
scheduled next week and I'm pretty sure there are a few more lined up
after that. Just kidding on the killing us part, it's definitely a
blessing and a privilege to do the interviews! It strengthens my
testimony on the importance of baptism and it inspires me to meet
these people that are making changes in their lives.
This last week was the first district meeting I've conducted and
it was pretty nerve racking, but I got through it! The spirit was
really strong there and many of the missionaries told me how great it
was. I'm pretty sure they were somewhat trying to make me feel better,
but I think it did go a lot better than I thought it did at first. We
have a zone conference tomorrow so I'm free of planning a district
meeting for this week! But I'm really excited to do another next week!

Elder Tippetts