04/28/2014

Just a heads up, I am incredibly sick... again.... It's getting very frustrating being sick almost once a month. This is the second or third time I've gotten sick here. I'm starting to worry more and more about my health... It's the same sickness as before, achy everywhere, sore throat, fever symptoms... I've taken medicine but it doesn't seem to making a difference. A priesthood blessing might be in order. So if this email seems super unenthusiastic, just know that it's because my battery is at about 5%! 

We had a 'storm' early Saturday morning and Wednesday, but nothing severe. We just got a little rain and some lightning. There were some tornadoes--we think--and they mostly hit rural areas out in western Oklahoma. All the storms seem to pass Mustang for some reason. That's so fun you got to talk to the Fairbourn's! I sure miss having a senior couple around. The Fairbourns were mentioning the VINEYARDS :) haha. Unfortunately they've kind of fallen off since Elder Zeyer, Elder Linam and I left... It's just not their time I guess. 

I sure wonder about the youth in the 7th ward. We have a severe lack of youth in the Mustang 1st ward--Mustang 2nd took all of them! >:(  Fun updates from Mustang 1st: The other set of elders baptized an 80-year old lady named Lois! She works at the laundromat with a member in the ward, and after four years of seeing missionaries come and go she finally decided she wanted to join the church! She was so excited for her baptism, and watching her get baptized was so so neat! There were lots of missionaries there from all over the mission, so that was a nice little reunion! Let's see... TRANSFERS. All four of us are staying the same. One elder in Mustang 2nd (who was there for 7 and a half months!) is getting transferred to Norman 4th ward. Elder Bolan and I are stoked to be together for another transfer! This makes him my longest companion together! And breaking news--we get to SKYPE for Mother's Day!!!!! I get to see all your lovely faces for the first time in a YEAR! Let everyone know!

I really am not in terrible need of a package. The more stuff I can get rid of, the better... I might send a bunch of stuff home when May 15th comes around. Elder Kahawaii goes home this Thursday. I'm sure he's incredibly homesick. You know what, I think I'll just give you an update right here. My aches are killing me. Next week I'll probably do a double update or something...

So on Monday we had dinner at the Payton's home. They have a ginormous RV! Elder Bolan and I got pictures in the RV in the driver's seat :) On Tuesday we helped some members shovel some dirt into their garden area. Later on that day we FINALLY met with Mike Hulsey--the non-member husband in the part-member Hulsey family. We tried starting a gospel conversation with him about the Restoration, but he got argumentative very quickly, so we kinda changed subjects. Interestingly enough, when he gave us a ride home, he opened up to us about how he's felt towards the gospel. He's actually more open-minded than we thought, he just doesn't want to talk religion around his member wife. So bishop Ketcher offered to have him over at his house and have a lesson there. We'll see how that goes. Mike wants to take us to Bricktown and the Science Museum in OKC. So that's gonna be exciting.

Wednesday was interesting. We visited Candice. We found out some interesting things about her. She lives with her ex-husband. They're more like roommates though. We got to visiting with her, and we SLYLY asked for her birthday and her last name! And on Saturday bishop Ketcher found her records! Later on that day we picked up a new investigator named Harold! We had a great discussion with him, taught him the Restoration, and set a baptismal date with him! Very powerful lesson... Thursday was obnoxious. We were on bikes that day. The wind was even worse than last week! AND, we forgot our phone! The other elders needed us to come with them to teach Lois her last lesson because they couldn't get a third male. But we were three miles from our apartment with no phone! So we frantically went to peoples' homes and asked them if we could use their phone. About an hour later we finally got to a members' house and got access to a phone...but the other elders didn't pick up. So irritating. Elder Bolan and I were quite pooped and upset. The wild goose chase for a phone took us over an hour to find...and we even started knocking on random peoples' doors...which didn't work. We were in Krista's neighborhood, and we haven't been able to get in with them this past week... :( 

Friday was a bust, but the day slowly get better. We went out to Union City for the first time--no members were to be found there. Later that night we had our ward game night. We had an investigator there, which was neat. OH! And did I tell you I got CLUE last week?! The patriarch in our ward/stake bought it for me at a yard sale! That was nice of him. Anyway, the game night was spectacular. Saturday was Lois' baptism, which of course was exciting. And on Sunday we got our transfer calls! We have lots of sister missionaries coming out, so one of the Mustang areas (we aren't sure which) is getting replaced with sisters! Could be me and Elder Bolan's area! We'll see later on in the summer. 

Anyway, hope your week was fantastic. Pray that I will make a quick recovery and figure out what's wrong with my immune system... Love you guys. 

Elder Garner

Mormons in Disguise (04/21/2014)

The hymn of the week award goes to: Master the Tempest is Raging. Want to know why? Because the "big bad wolf" disguised as the "clouds over Mustang" almost blew me and Elder Bolan right off our bikes! We had some major wind over in Mustang this past week. 

Elder Bolan and I have a street map of our area. We decided that whenever we go tracting we would mark in highlighter the streets we tracted. We have a goal of tracting for two hours a day, so at the end of each day we get to color in a little portion of our map. One day that entire map will be colored. Earlier this week we decided to tract in a neighborhood that wasn't particularly fruitful. The last house we knocked on belonged to a United Pentecostal pastor. That turned out to be interesting. He was very friendly—he invited us in and we got to talking about our beliefs. He gave us an entire lecture on being overtaken by the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues. He even asked us if we wanted to be baptized "in the name of Jesus Christ" rather then by the names of the Godhead. His explanation behind all of it seemed almost... salesman-like. We felt like we were being sold religion. It didn't feel right to us. He invited us to his building. Too bad it's out of our area... He does have a friend that pastors for a United Pentecostal Church in Mustang though, so we might go visit that one if we feel so inclined. It was interesting experience, for sure.

On Wednesday we felt the wind the worst. It was blowing at 45 MPH! Or so we heard... We were on bikes that day, so when we biked north we got to our destination in only 15 minutes! After doing some tracting, we biked back against the wind, and it took us half on hour to get back! Then when we got home we had to wipe our faces with wet wipes (thanks mom!) to get all the dirt and sand out of our faces. The wipes came out brown. Gross... We certainly tried opening our mouths to share the gospel, but whenever we did we get sand in our teeth. Gag...

We had a couple child or record baptisms this Saturday, and those were awesome. After the baptisms we had a church tour with Alex, one of our investigators. The tour was very spiritual and enlightening for him. Afterwards we had a lesson with him with a member. After the lesson with Alex we went to go try a lady named Becky that I tracted into with Elder Faulkner on exchanges. Becky asked us to pray for her granddaughter, Beth, who was sick. When we tried Becky's house, we instead get Krista. We got to know her and found out she's Becky's daughter and Beth's mother. She was incredibly friendly. After getting to know us she invited us to an Easter get-together that she was having with her family. Her husband, Glen, invited an LDS member from the OKC 5th ward named Mark, who happened to be childhood best friends with Glen. 

So on Sunday after church we headed off to this Easter get-together. We had no idea how it was going to turn out. When we got there we got a lot of strange looks! Whenever we looked and made eye contact with people in the room they'd kind of just look down or avert their eyes. It almost felt like we were playing Whack-a-mole with our eyes. But we introduced ourselves and they were friendly towards us. We met Mark, the member that's childhood friends with Glen. We had a good conversation with him. Later on we were approached by a lady named Debbie, the wife of Mark, who is the brother of Glen. Turns out Debbie is an inactive member! Coincidence? Definitely not. Inspiration? For sure. We visited with Debbie for quite a while and got to know her and her feelings towards the church. She felt that our presence at the get-together was a sign from God and a hint that she needed to start getting back into church. We got her contact information and found out she's in the Quail Creek ward up in Oklahoma City. Time to sick missionaries on her! Anyway, Elder Bolan and I definitely knew the get-together was inspired. We made some great connections with the guests at the get-together. Krista and Glen and their family were incredibly nice to us, and they invited us back! Mark told us they are now starting to ask questions, so Elder Bolan and I are praying that this whole experience goes somewhere. 

Our Easter was certainly a great time of remembrance and peace. We felt it all throughout the day. We know the Lord's watching over us each and everyday as we bring souls to this gospel. I hope your Easter was likewise. 

Elder Garner 

That's All It Takes (04/14/2014)

We had a fantastic week here in Mustang! I some great spiritual experiences with Elder Bolan this past week doing missionary work here. We finally got some good lessons in with some of our investigators this past week. 

Last week I told you guys about TJ, the guy that stopped us while he was dirt biking in an unfinished section of a neighborhood. We met with at a coffee shop--of all places--and had a discussion about the Restoration with him. He is a very spiritual and knowledgeable man. He doesn't affiliate with any church around here, but he wholeheartedly believes in the Bible and in God. As we delved deeper into the discussion, Elder Bolan and I found out that TJ and his son have some very...unique spiritual gifts, I guess you could say. TJ's son (who's about 8-years old) has made some prophesies about the world, about people, about whatever, and TJ told us all his sons' prophesies came true. TJ told us he's healed broken bones on the spot and restored blindness to peoples' eyes. 

Sound crazy to you?

Needless to say after the lesson Elder Bolan and I came out scratching our heads. We had a very powerful lesson with him, but we were left with a lot of questions. TJ had no problem accepting a modern-day prophet, Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, and even a baptismal date. We definitely questioned his faith--and our faith! TJ lives a pretty decent life--nice house, nice kids, nice cars, all that stuff. We definitely feel that he's pretty levelheaded if he lives the way he does. Is he joking with us? We hope to explore the validity of his statements as we meet with him more, so stay tuned on TJ. 

We also met with Alex earlier this week. We had a great lesson on the Plan of Salvation. Alex is trying so hard to because more extroverted and be more involved socially. He doesn't know if he's ready for church and being around lots of people. He accepted a church tour. 

So hot story of the week: This story is about how someone pushed my buttons--someone that performed the perfect mix of actions and used the perfect balance of words--and caused me to be quite bold to them. Elder Bolan and I went to go try people on our ward roster. One day we attempted to see a less active member named Jeff--a guy we'd tried a couple times but to no success. The first time someone answered the door, it was a lady who said "sorry guys, I'm busy right now" and slammed the door without even letting us speak. "Okay, so you're busy. We'll just try back later," we thought to ourselves. Earlier this week we tried them. It was very obvious that they were home. We could see their silhouettes through their window, and one of their cars in the driveway was running. We knocked on their door twice. After waiting a few minutes the same lady, who we assumed to be Jeff's wife, answered with the following tirade,

"Guys I really don't want you coming back here anymore," she said rather rudely to us. Oh! That's funny...you never told us that the first time we ran into you!

"Fine, all we want is to ask you a question," I said before she had the chance to shut her door.

"What??" she said as she impatiently fluttered her eyelashes.

"Is there a Jeff [their last name] that lives here?" I asked.

"Yes, but he's not interested so please leave us alone," she grouched at us.

"Okay, thank you! Ma'am, that's all it takes. If you had answered the door the first time we could have figured that out much sooner," I stated very forwardly to her.

Was it rude of me to say that? Some might say yes, some might say it was necessary. Did it sink in? I sure hope it did. For the sake of her sanity and our time, I hope she learned that missionaries would have stopped trying her if she had just been honest with us and told us from the beginning. It seems that people like that who choose to shun the truth and shun what's right become very resentful and even hateful towards what's good. It really does to show that wickedness never was happiness. 

I hope you guys learned something today. Just don't treat good people with good intentions with disrespect... No matter how good it makes you feel, no matter what you're trying to accomplish, it's going to turn around and bite back. So please...just don't. Have an awesome week, and be a good Samaritan for someone.

Elder Garner

I Crye, Just a Little (04/07/2014)

Oh goodness, more song references. To start out the week, on Monday we helped an inactive member in the other elders' area, Sister Crye, do some service for her. She had us rake up dog poop... YAY! You know how they have before-and-after pictures of people on diets or people that get plastic surgery and whatnot? We definitely should have taken a before-and-after picture of her yard. The difference between the before and after was incredible, and we all felt proud of our work. We met her daughter, whom the other elders are teaching, and we had an excellent dinner with them. We also discovered that Mauricio, our most solid investigator, moved down to Texas. Elder Bolan and I wanted to cry. 

Then I came down with the sickness on Tuesday... I was in an incredible amount of pain, and I had a very hard time sleeping. Not fun. Another reason I wanted to cry. On Wednesday we helped yet another person from the ward move. Guess who is was this time? The infamous Candice. Remember her? She wrote the 32-page paper on the Japanese Constituation? That's her! She literally moved apartment complexes across the street. We had to haul all her stuff down a floor and then up two floors. She moved from the second floor to the third floor... The humidity set in on Wednesday. All of us thought tornadoes were coming, but none came! All of us were incredibly sweaty after the move. But we felt good about helping her move, no matter what her thought process was behind the move. We felt flattered that she would come to us for help. She asked us to help her out again on Friday! Oh, Candice...

The rest of the week we met with everyone we could to get the word out about General Conference. Who else thought it was super mind-blowing that April 6th, Christ's birth, and General Conference would coincide on the same day? But wow, what a good General Conference! I was so satisfied by the theme of this conference. Elder Holland kicked it off by sharing the story of the sister missionaries who had FOOD thrown at them! I have some pretty deep respect for them. It takes some guts to talk to strangers, and even more guts to walk away from an incident like that gracefully. But the big theme I caught? The world's standards may be deteriorating, but the church's standards remain undeviating. My favorite quote: "Sometimes 'what would Jesus do?' may not always yield the most popular answer." I know living in Utah it wasn't much of a challenge to stand up for the church--the real challenge came from standing up to other members of the church for what's right. Such good talks... I also enjoyed Elder Rasband's talk about Oklahoma. I was only in Oklahoma less than two weeks when all that went down. Hearing his talk brought back some great memories of tornado cleanup and shaking Elder Rasband's hand. My only qualm is that they didn't announce any new temples... Come on, now! But nonetheless, a fantastic General Conference. Have an awesome week!

Elder Garner