Hello from the Colorado, Colorado Springs Mission

Sunday, October 26, 2014

Week #12 - Awesome Experiences

Hello from the Colorado, Colorado Springs Mission!




I Love the Views of Pikes Peak
We started off this week by going to transfer meeting at the mission office, which is out of zone.  When we got to the transfer meeting, my whole district from the Missionary Training Center (MTC) was there.  We were reunited again hahaha!  We took a few pictures and said our goodbyes to the departing missionaries.  I was sad to see Elder Esumei and Sister Moss get transferred, but we have some pretty cool people coming into our district to replace them.  Our mission is going to be struggling soon.  We had 15 missionaries leave this transfer, and only 5 came in to replace them.  Our Mission President had to close a few areas because there wasn't enough of us.  My companion and I hoped that meant we could get a car, but we weren't so lucky. 
Our New District
 So our district has two new additions to it.  Our new District Leader is Elder Twitchell, he's really hilarious and is from the same ward that Uncle Bart and Aunt Shari go to in Henderson, NV!  He said Bart was one of his Young Men's leaders.  We also got Sister Orton, probably the coolest sister missionary I've met so far.  We met for district meeting on Friday and Sister Orton dropped a bomb on us.  She was being transferred to a different Mission.  She leaves tomorrow after only being in our district for less than a week! She's going to the Tennessee, Knoxville mission.  I'm sure she will have a lot of fun there.  

Fun on P Day
Elder Haskell and I have really been working on finding new people to teach.  It's been awesome because random experiences have been happening where we meet people who are familiar with the church and want to be taught, or want to refer us to a friend.  Just a few days ago we were crossing the street and a lady stopped us because her dad was in the hospital and he wanted a blessing.  She wasn't a member of the church and didn't know who to turn to for help; when she saw us.  After talking with her for a while she seemed pretty interested in learning what we had to share!  Again we were stopped by a guy in his late teens whose foster parent was a member and he never had much interest in religion, but knew how important it was for his dad.  He wanted to know more so he could understand why it was so important to him; and after talking for a while, he agreed to meet with us again and said he'd try to go to church with his dad this week!  It's just amazing to see how the Lord prepares people to be willing and receptive to listen to the missionaries before we even find them.  All we have to do is ask and we shall receive!

I love you all so much!  Happy late birthday Elder Gillingwater the younger!  You're the makings of a great missionary and will be amazed at what you can accomplish when you're serving the Lord.  Keep me updated on all of the things you guys are doing!

5 things that made me smile:

1. Being able to meet with my MTC district again was really cool.  Catching up on how we've all been doing was lots of fun!

Scary Clown On Doorstep
2. There was a house completely decked out for Halloween with really creepy things all over the front yard.  In the evening we went as a district to take pictures and and learned Sister Orton is afraid of clowns.  We dared her to take a picture of her hugging it and when she did; it started shaking and screaming with it's eyes glowing.  She just collapsed on the grass and screamed!  We were all dying of laughter!

3. Our ward has a web page where they post upcoming events, if they need anything.  It's like a personal Craigslist for the ward.  We had a member post that we needed service on Saturday and if anyone needed anything to give us a call.  No one called!  When we went and visited people, they all said "We figured you were probably booked already, so we didn't bother calling!"  Needless to say, we did not do any service on Saturday.

4. During Stake Conference, our Stake President asked Sister Orton to go up and bear her testimony, which was unplanned.  It freaked her out because she had only been in our Stake for 3 days, what were the odds of that?

5. We have an active family in our ward who is crazy awesome with doing missionary work.  They've had the discussions taught in their home 2 different times since the beginning of the summer.  They're just constantly finding people.  The wife got a really strong impression to ask her son's art teacher about taking the lessons and she really didn't want to because she wanted a break for a little while, but the feeling wouldn't leave.  So she went over to ask and expected a no as a response but shockingly the teacher said I'd love to add to what I know, and if we could try and start this as soon as possible, I'm really eager to learn.  The wife was happy it worked out and jokingly said "I guess the Lords work doesn't run on my time table".

God is Great!

Elder Gillingwater

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