The weather here isn't too bad. I apparently missed a
huge storm. They got over 20 inches of snow in 24 hours. It's generally not too
cold unless the sun is down and the wind is blowing. It's starting to warm up
and it feels great.
So, my companion's name is Elder Walz, he has been out
for almost a year. He's a cool guy and pretty funny. The craziest part is that
he is also from Mesa, but, check this, his name is also Connor! It's a crazy
coincidence haha. We live with two other missionaries, Elder Heintz(our
District Leader) and Elder Barnes. We live in a pretty nice house with plenty
of room in it.
Our area is in Syracuse. It is about a 2 sq. mile area
with 8 wards in it. It's a few miles away from our house though and we don't
have a car or bikes since our area is a walking area. We have to get a ride
from members to and from our house everyday. It's a good thing the members are
so nice.
There are a lot of members here which makes tracting hard
since members always want to talk to and/or feed you. Speaking of food, we are
fed very, very well. We have dinner appointments everyday except for Tuesday,
which is our P-day, unless we schedule it ourselves. A lot of our lessons are
with part member or less active households.
It's hard to find new investigators unless someone gives
us a referral. It's been quite a blast so far though. We had a baptism on my
first Saturday here. I never got a chance to really teach the kid(He was 9 yrs
old) but it was a really cool experience. Elder Walz and I got to be witnesses
for the baptism and I got to bear my testimony on baptism as DJ(the kid that
got baptized) was changing.
Everyone says I was lucky to come into a baptism that
soon on my mission.
We also gave talks on Sunday. They called us up Friday
night and asked if we could speak in sacrament. That gave us a whole 2 hours to
prepare because we get 1 hour of personal study time each day, which we used to
write the talks. I think it went fine though, I talked about Sacrament and
Elder Walz talked about Baptism. The youth speakers before us took up a whole 2
minutes so we were left with like
45 minutes between the two of us. It was a pain in the
butt.
We are teaching a couple kids that just recently got
baptized. They have twin step-sisters that just recently put in their mission
papers.
Their family is real cool and their step-mom is super
nice. She is always trying to feed us or buy us something that we don't have.
Her husband is not a member so we are trying to work with him. We play
basketball with him on P-day evenings. I hope that he will finally accept to
sit down and listen to us. He told his wife that he is learning by watching
their example. The family thought it was a lot of pressure but it's also a
great opportunity for them to help teach him.
He's a really nice guy and likes talking with us but he's
not quite ready for the discussion yet, I guess.
There are a couple more families we are teaching but I've
only met with them once so I don't know much about them yet. I am excited to
continue meeting with them. There are some that have committed to baptism in
April and it's super awesome to hear someone make that commitment.
I went on an exchange yesterday with an Elder
Connell(Who, believe it or not, used to live in Mesa, and is Elder Walz's
cousin) He has been out for just over a year and we went to teach an old lady
in an assisted living home. It was a cool experience because it was the first
time I've helped teach the first lesson. She seemed to be really interested and
receptive to what we were saying. She is getting married on April 6th to a man
who is a member. She has heard a lot of misconceptions about our church that we
got to clear up. For example, she though that we worship Joseph Smith like
other religions worship Jesus Christ. But the best one she said was that the
church went into our bank accounts and took out our tithing without our
permission. It look a lot not to bust out laughing but we quickly explained
what tithing was and how it worked.
That's about all I can think of at the moment. I can't
wait to keep working with people. It has been really fun, albeit VERY tiring,
so far.
Love,
Elder Connor Ervin
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