Family and friends,
Obviously this week was Transfers and I'm truly bummed to lose Elder
Schneider. These past two transfers have been a blast. I really grew a
lot and learned a lot about myself and my personal desires. Definitely
more maturing came. Now I'm with Elder Ison and I'm loving it! We're
getting along well which I guessed would happen. I've served around him
before and was excited for him to be here with me! Also over transfers I
got to see so many missionaries in a while. The one I was most excited
to see was without a doubt Elder Skouson. It's been 6 months since I've
seen him and in all likelihood I'll never see him again in the mission
because he got transferred to the far edge of the mission on the other
side of Montana. I legit almost cried it was so good to see him. He
pulled into the parking lot and I ran over and practically tackled him
as he got out of the car. Elder Schneider said it looked like a scene
from a romance movie. What can I say? I love that guy! Just not in that
way...anyways! It was just good to see him and catch up on how he's
been.
Elder Schneider's last night here was a grueling game of Ultimate
frisbee with the Ward for FHE and an awesome lesson with Petyr, an
investigator, afterwards. He is a SUPER deep thinker. SUPER. It's a
testimony to me of how God prepares His children, that the Holy Ghost
will give light and teach truth to anyone that tries to follow Christ.
He wants Prophets to exist and wonder why God seemed to stop speaking.
He wonders why we live the gospel and keep the commandments and has come
to the conclusion that it is to become pure and holy like God is, to
attain unto some form of Godhood. He has tried to figure out how God
saves those who don't know the true gospel in this life and figured that
there must be different degrees of salvation and a chance for His
children to accept it after this life if they didn't have the chance in
this life. Those are just his simple questions, it would take a while to
write out the rest of them. We're just turning all his questions
towards the basics of the gospel and the need to find out if our
teachings are true.
On Wednesday we were going to go meet with a girl, Destiny, that Elder Schneider and I had tracted into at 8:55
last week. We tried for days and all the day of to try to find a guy to
come with us because we couldn't be alone with her. It was to no avail.
We tried so many people, pretty much every active guy in the Ward and
were about to start asking inactive guys. Then I remembered there's a
kid in 2nd Ward that is about to graduate high school and he has his
mission call to Lima, Peru. We got his number from the 2nd Ward elders
and Braden was able to come with us! When we got to her house there was a
kind note on the door that expressed how here and her husband
(apparently she wasn't YSA...) were not interested at this point in
their lives. It was a bummer, but nothing we're not used to. I was
worried it would be a bad experience for Braden but when we turned
around and looked at him he just shrugged and said, "well, who's next?"
So we went and tried some former investigators and less active members
with him. He asked us what weird things people do when they see us and
we told him about the classic drive by "hail Satan," he didn't believe
that actually happens. We felt a prompting to knock on this random door
with him so we did and it turned out to be a frat (I don't know how we
didn't notice that, there were some weird statues out front and huge
Greek letters...). The second the door opened and they saw who we were a
guy way in the back of the room yelled, "hail Satan!" One of his
friends actually hit him in the head and told him to show us some
respect and we had a quality conversation with two of them that led to a
politely declined invitation to learn more about the restored gospel.
When we got back in his car we laughed hard. Making memories :)
Last cool thing I'll share this week is that on Tuesday
Milo drove all the way down to Salt Lake City to be interviewed by
Elder Kevin W. Pearson of the Seventy! Milo loved the experience! He
even saw President Uchtdorf in the halls! He didn't get to talk to him
but he said that when he saw President Uchtdorf the spirit just washed
over him and could feel a powerful presence. Pretty neat! So we're just
waiting on word from the first presidency now and then Milo will talk to
a President Wadsworth one more time and then he'll get baptized!
Please keep all these people and us in your prayers! Also, don't
forget to do as President Hinckley taught, to pray that you can act and
help the missionaries in your own area succeed!
Elder Garian Tippetts
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