August 17, 2015
Hi everyone,
Hi everyone,
I'm in Indiana now. I missed a week because of P-day changing from the MTC to the mission field.
Last Monday we flew out here to Indiana and it was fun to meet with the other missionaries going to Indiana - 27 of us total. President Cleveland is awesome and his speeches are really inspirational. It was really cool to stay in the mission home Monday night because the spirit was always there because of how awesome President Cleveland and his counselors are.
On Tuesday we got our new companions, my companion is elder Naiier. He's from Ukraine and he's been out in the mission for about a year. One thing that's awesome is that he loves to play soccer and he's pretty good so we go and kick a soccer ball around for a half hour each morning, which is pretty fun. He has a bit of an accent but I can understand him pretty good. He's pretty friendly and knows the gospel pretty good.
We only had one progressing investigator named Brenda at the beginning of the week. I haven't met her yet but everyone says she's a perfect Mormon except she smokes and hasn't been able to quit yet so she can't be baptized yet. I'm excited to get to know her.
There have already been two people that the Lord has put in our path. One of them is Mike. Elder Naiier had tracted him out a month ago, and tried calling and texting him many times and he never responded. On Wednesday we were in the area and an appointment with a less active fell through so we decided to stop by Mike and see what's happening. He was excited to see us and we found out that he hadn't gotten any of the calls because we had the wrong number. He's lived a rough life and is looking for a change in his life and he seems open to the gospel.
The other person the Lord put in our path was Stephanie. We were tracting without any success and she came out of her house across the street. Without saying anything to each other me and elder Naiier both went over to talk to her. This was definitely a prompting from the spirit as she was very interested in our message and wants to find out more about the church.
I've really seen how big a part the spirit plays in missionary work. If we'd followed our plans we'd never have talked to Stephanie or Mike, but the spirit prompted us to change those plans and it was a great blessing.
We've met several members and they're pretty awesome. One of them is Calvin who was baptized about a year ago. He had been in prison several times, drunk, smoked, etc... and completely turned his life around after meeting missionaries. He's super funny and as a joke Elder Naiier told Calvin to mess with me when we met him. But, Elder Naiier told me beforehand that Calvin was gonna do this. He had thought I'd be a greenie who needed to be humbled but he said I didn't need it like he thought. Calvin had set up his house like it was before he'd ever met missionaries, with a pack of cigarettes on the table and beer in front of him. He kept letting people in and being super distracted for 5 minutes, then passed my companion a bottle of whisky that was filled with pop. Then he just busted up laughing and told me it was all a joke. I had already known this so I had just played along, but he's an awesome, hilarious guy. He's also found over 3000 family history names, and can trace his direct line back to 1805 BC, and he's done all of this in the last year, so he is truly amazing.
Its an exciting time in Indiana right now, and on Sunday we get to watch the temple dedication, which should be an awesome experience. Everyone here is super excited for the temple.
Elder Rasmussen and Elder Naiier standing by a church sign (not LDS) right by their apartment.
Elder Naiier drinking pop out of a whiskey bottle at Calvin's house to play a joke on the "greenie."
