The Gift of the Atonement (03/31/2014)

The big event of the week was our zone conference this past Thursday, the 27th. We had a discussion about the Atonement. The prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 53: 3-9) foretold of the Savior's atonement long before His birth, and he describes the event as such:

3. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

4. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.

5. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him;and with his stripes we are healed.

6. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.

7. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.

8. He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken.

9. And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth.

The importance of coming unto Christ and inviting others to do so is so clearly demonstrated in these written words. We have so much to live up to in order for us to become like our Savior. Because life can never be perfect, it sometimes causes us to fall short of that perfection for which we so persistently strive. A valuable lesson I learned from this zone conference came from the gift of prayer: During a time of trial, our task should be to pray to overcome our circumstances rather than pray for different and better circumstances. Pray to the Lord for deliverance according to your faith. Rejection of the Atonement is rejection of everything you can become. Why settle for less when the Lord's allowing us to be all we can be?                                                                       

We prayed for miracles this week due to our severe lack of investigators being in town. We were blessed with twelve inactive members attending church this past Sunday, our biggest miracle. Another miracle occurred when we were walking down the dirt road of an unfinished section of a neighborhood. We saw a guy dirt biking towards us, and eventually he stopped us, introduced himself as TJ, and started asking us a bunch of questions about the church and about the gospel! We had an awesome discussion with him, and he was a lot of fun to talk to. We are praying for success with him as with our other investigators. 

That mostly sums up our week. Our weather radio is telling us of severe storms coming soon, so watch Oklahoma weather when you have spare minute :) 


Elder Garner    

The Turn of the Decade (03/24/2014)

My first birthday in a foreign land... Birthday #20 was about as American as it gets. We had district meeting that day, so after our meetings we ate at the stake patriarch's house and had sliced brisket! It wasn't like Smoking Joe's in Davis, but it was still delicious. Then we pigged out on brownies. Elder Bolan and I spent most of the day walking around and meeting even more people in the ward. Six weeks later and that project's about 95% finished. We've kept it on the back burner for the past few weeks, but since it's been difficult meeting with our investigators, we've spent a lot of time meeting members and inactive members we both haven't met yet. Oklahoma schools had Spring Break this past week. For dinner we had a member family, the Ridley family, take us out to Interurban in Yukon (NOT found in Utah!...I think). The Ridleys bought us dessert, and I got an awesome fudge brownie with vanilla ice cream. Luckily, the servers didn't come by and sing "Happy Birthday" to me. It was an excellent evening. I remember a year ago turning 19 and going on a marathon to the Draper, Oquirrh Mountain, and Jordan River temples and for the great spirit that was felt that day as I realized that my 19th year would be a life changing year. I'm excited to see how this birth year goes. I have a lot to do before I turn 21!

And really...that just about sums up our week. We did get to meet with Mauricio, one of our investigators. We had a good lesson on the ten commandments, prayer, keeping the sabbath day holy, and studying the scriptures. He is definitely hungry for new information about the gospel. We're thinking the Word of Wisdom should spice up his gospel knowledge. I don't know when Utah's spring break was, but whenever it happens/happened, I hope it's/was awesome. Missionary work lives on 24/7 all day everyday! 

Elder Garner

Early Birthday Presents (03/17/2014)

Out of all the weeks I've been here in Mustang, this week was by far the best! Elder Bolan and I had so many amazing miracles happen in our missionary work! We at last finished up organizing our area, and this past week we taught a lot of Restoration lessons with new investigators and met a lot of people in the ward we hadn't met yet. We had several inactive members come to church this week, which was a plus.

 

Earlier this week we helped move in a new family from Utah! We're throwing them into the world of member missionary work, and they seem to really enjoy it. They're feeding the four of us on Thursday, so we're pretty excited about that. We met some pretty awesome inactive families, and we're looking forward to working with them and hopefully seeing them at church! Our part member family work is going really well! We got to teach an autistic 10-year old boy named Matthew the Restoration. My first time teaching someone that young! Earlier that day we get to teach a man named Greg who had some questions about the Book of Mormon and about Joseph Smith. We had some great spiritual experiences as we testified to him about the restored gospel!

 

We taught another guy named Alex, 19, who Elder Bolan happened to meet at Burger King while he was on exchanges with Elder Woodward. Too bad I wasn't there for that . . . but Alex is an awesome kid. He's basically a 19-year old version of Joseph Smith! He had a religious crisis in high school, and he's looking for answers. We had a powerful lesson with him and set a baptismal date with him for the end of April. Being close to the same age as him, we were able to relate with him really well. We're excited to teach him more.

 

On Saturday night we had an awesome dinner with an inactive member, and we got to spend time with her whole clan. But then the 1st counselor in the bishopric called me and dropped a bomb on me by asking me to speak in sacrament the next day. Happy birthday to me! With an hour or so to prepare that Sunday morning, I ended up spending 15 minutes on my talk the next morning in sacrament. I spoke on repentance and the atonement of Jesus Christ. I was very much guided by the spirit throughout that talk, so I had a lot of gratitude for the Lord by the end of the talk! And then later on that night we got our transfer news. Elder Bolan and I, as expected, are staying together for another transfer here in Mustang, which both of us are happy about. One of the elders in my district is getting reassigned languages, and he's going to be speaking Marshallese! Elder Davis, one of my roommates, is going to the very bottom of the mission in Seymour, Texas. Elder Zeyer, my previous companion, is the new zone leader in my zone, so I'll get to spend more time with him as one of his underlings. Ha. Elder Bolan and I are excited to be here for another transfer and to get some work done! With our area up to par with organization and a good group of investigators, we're going to have some progress made this next transfer! Stay tuned for more miracles in Mustang!

 

Elder Garner

03/10/2014

Our week went a lot better than last week! It's kinda funny and frustrating how a lot of our week depends on the weather. We've had mostly sunny days this past week, allowing us to get a lot more done! We met with Mauricio this week and taught him the Gospel of Jesus Christ. When we talked about faith he goes, "I already have faith, I just need faith in the Mormon religion!" So faith wasn't a difficult concept for him to grasp. We're finally going to be meeting with some potentials and other investigators this week, at last. The members in this work sure are great to work with, but you can only work with them when people are available! So that's been the hang up for us.

Funny story of the week. . . the funniest stories always come from tracting it seems like. We spent three good hours tracting one road in Yukon. A lot of neighborhoods have "No Soliciting" signs, and missionaries generally knock on these houses simply because we aren't selling anything. The gospel's free, last I checked! So according to Google, soliciting means "to ask for or try to obtain (something) from someone." As such we take that to mean selling something to someone on their doorstep. I recognize the definition says "to ask for" and we ask people to say prayers. But wait, doesn't anyone that knocks on your door generally....ask...for something? To talk to you? To request to be inside your house? So does soliciting mean that no one can come to your door...ever? Anyway, this update isn't about splitting hairs on definitions of English words. The point is, a very disgruntled son of God had a conniption fit when we tried sharing the gospel. We asked a guy how he was doing, and immediately he gets in our faces and starts cussing us out for knocking on his door! He didn't even know why we knocked on his door. He threatened to call the cops on us! Oh goodness...it really smelled like idol threat up in there. But on the bright side, we found a few good potentials in that neighborhood. It was a fun day of tracting! 

On Friday we did part two of raking leaves at Nick and Stephanie's home. It was pretty frigid out there, and now I'm sick because of it. YAY! Again, on the bright side, we got to meet Stephanie, Nick's Italian wife. Now's my chance to put my Italian into practice! The moment I've been waiting for my whole mission career! Ha, just kidding, I forgot most of it when I had to learn Okie English. We met her and got to know them better. They seem really interested in the gospel, and Nick already knows quite a bit about the church. They've never been to an LDS church, so we're excited for them to come when they have the day free. We have several other potential investigators that just need to meet with us so we can teach them!

The recurring theme this week was member-missionary work. We had a meeting about it during church on Sunday, and we spent time earlier this week handing out Family Mission Plans to the ward members. A scripture that goes along with that comes from Alma 26:3 when Ammon recognizes the blessings he receives in the land of Zarahemla when he and his brothers spread the gospel to the Lamanites:

Behold, I answer for you; for our brethren, the Lamanites, were in darkness, yea, even in the darkest abyss, but behold, how many of them are brought to behold the marvelous light of God! And this is the blessing which hath been bestowed upon us, that we have been made instruments in the hands of God to bring about this great work."

It's pretty apparent that Ammon and his brothers felt the blessings of missionary work. So can you! I know how much of a blessing it is for medoing missionary work, so I know how much of a blessing it can be for you as well! I hope all of you have a great week. Share the gospel, learn something new, and receive blessings.

Elder Garner

P.S. Want CRAZY and VIVID dreams at night?? Eat and drink lots of chocolate just before you go to bed. You're on a diet? Eat chocolate anyway, it's worth it. Thanks to my companion/roommates, dreaming hasn't been the same. Living with three other missionaries sure gets interesting...

Our Edumacational Week (03/03/2014)

Our week got bombarded with tons of unexpected service activities. We also got bombarded by a blizzard on Saturday, which cancelled church the next day. Hooray for cancelled church... They are the bane of missionary work!

On Monday we went to Moore, and I finally learned how to play scatterball, which is basically free for all dodgeball. It's so nice to finally be back in a city-based zone where all the missionaries in your zone are in close proximity. We also got haircuts from a member named Sister Sellards. Her next door neighbor, an inactive member named Candice, was over there visiting with her. So a little background on Candice: she hasn't been to church in years (she's in her 60s and kinda looks like Dolly Parton). She converted when she was 15... because she fell in love with the elder who taught her. The elder broke her heart and told her that he didn't like her back. Oops! So then she went inactive. And she now "teaches" us missionaries about the follies of Mormonism. Here are a couple of things that she "edumacacted" us about:

-BYU is actually in New York, not Utah

-Joseph Smith's name is explicitly mentioned in the New Testament

-The order of the prophets (as if Primary didn't teach me that already!)

-The government shutdown happened because of the Mormons

-(On a random topic) the Japanese Constitution was written in English, not Japanese. And she wrote a 32 page paper about it 

-The book of 1st Nephi is actually about how Joseph Smith wrote the book

-Helaman is a man who helped assist Joseph Smith in writing the Book of Mormon

-If you ask your phone to look up something about Mormonism, the webpages that come up are 100% legit with no false information.

Oh Candice... I would love for someone to set the record for her. We'll have some interesting visits with her.

On Tuesday the four of us helped a member move a bunch of furniture around since she couldn't do it by herself. Later on that night Elder Bolan and I helped another member named Bro. Dezelle from the OKC 2nd ward move out of his home...from which he was evicted. His house was a shambles. It was saddening. He'd signed up to feed us...on the day he was supposed to move out. Poor guy... He moved into a trailer in the ghetto of Oklahoma City. The ward and the two of us have spent a lot of time trying to help him get back up on his feet.

On Wednesday we did some service at the library, and on Friday we helped the Sellards, the one that gave us haircuts, move out. Candice was there again. As we were hauling the heaviest piece of furniture (an entertainment center) down the stairs, she humored us by telling us how painful it was to lift the entertainment center up all by herself. Boy, Candice sure has some muscles....! Saturdaywas the Bro. Dezelle move part 2. Since it was literally impossible to move everything he owned into his trailer, we spent a lot of time moving little things into his home and mostly keeping him company. We ended up tarping up a lot of his furniture and leaving it outside... 

Good thing we got that done before the big storm hit. On Sunday morning we woke up to snow. And, of course, church was cancelled. We spent the whole day inside entertaining ourselves with Phase 10 (thanks, mom!) other card games. It's supposed to warm up this week, so hopefully that happens. Winter doesn't appear to be over yet! This next week, Elder Bolan and I will edumacate a lot of people in the gospel! 

Elder Garner