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Well this week has been pretty slow.  Have had a lot of good dinners with members.  Got Pizza 3 days in a row  haha   it's a curse. 

Besides that we have pretty much just been biking around tracting and visiting people that bishop gave us to see.  Everyone here for the most part is really nice they just don't want to talk to us.  Elder Sullivan is doing pretty awesome.  Really enjoying training.  We ride our bikes a lot so we have tricked them out a bit.  I taped my portable speakers to mine. Elder Sullivan has a rope and a stretchy band so he can do curls while we bike.  I can now also ride my bike with to handle bars...no handbars

There are a couple of members that live in our apartment complex, here doing summer sales, that we played volleyball with this morning so that was a lot of fun. I dove to hit a ball and then elder Sullivan tripped over me and pushed my head in the sand.   fun times!

Here are a few pics   I

realized that the rest of my pictures are all just of our map for while we are biking haha

Hope you all have a great week

Biking and Training

Hey everyone,  Hope you all have had a great week.

I have had a pretty interesting last few days. 

Thursday we had transfers and that is always a crazy day. I spent most of my day in the parking lot of Sams club in Joplin Mo  waiting for a van to come pick up missionaries.  Cool thing though was that my new companion was supposed to stay in Bentonville but ended up getting on the first loop through, so I got to spend the whole day with him getting to know each other.  When we got back to Bentonville it took a while to get to our area. We had to find our keys and phone and then wait for about another hour for someone to give us a ride to our place.  Then had a couple of appointments that evening that our Ward mission leader took us to.

Friday and Saturday we mostly just biked around (it was way hot) trying to meet members, People the sisters were teaching, and doing some of our own door knocking.  I accidentally burnt a hole in one of my shoes while biking and on Saturday and  I showered 4 times. haha the joys of biking!

Sunday was great we got to meet the ward, they asked us to bear our testimonies in sacrament meeting and introduce ourselves. We got to meet with a few other Ward members and investigators that evening and had some good visits.

Today we had to get a ride with a member to go shopping and we just biked 8 miles to the stake center to email and play basketball. 

Recently I have been reading in the ward chapters in Alma and it talks a lot about how Moroni made preparations and fortifications for war. I love how that can apply to us doing little things, like praying and reading scriptures, so that we are fortified against the adversary.  Also, there are times when the Nephites have some inner conflict and that is when they are weakened against enemy attacks. I just love reading the Book of Mormon every day.  Just do it ;)

Love y'all and hope you have a great week   Should have some pictures by next week.

20!?!?

I am now 20 years old everybody

that's weird!

And we also got transfer calls and I will be leaving Monett. It has been a great 6 months here and I have really started to feel like this is home.  Met some great people and had a lot of good work going on. I'm looking forward to seeing how the area continues to grow.

Tomorrow morning I will be leaving for the Elm Tree ward in Bentonville Arkansas. I will be training a new missionary and shotgunning out sisters.  So it will be an exciting transition. (also a bike area)

We have had a pretty exciting week here in Monett. Our new investigator Tara is doing great. She reads and studies a lot and knows that this is what she needs in her life.   She told us a few experiences where we had basically been an answer to prayer.  She even defends the church to people that try to talk her out of it.  She has 3 kids 3,5 and 7  and the youngest two girls are pretty adorable.  Went to the park with them today.     We also had a district going away bbq at the church today.  Got to make some burgers and had some fun.

Hope y'all have a great rest of your week.

Love ya bunches

USA vs Canada

Happy Monday everyone!

Hope your week went as well as ours did (or Better)

Tuesday was a pretty busy day for us: we had 5 Meals planned and a lot of driving, the weather was pretty raining so that killed a lot of the fun but we still saw a lot of people and had a great time. That night we got to play some street hockey (elder Dick enjoyed that) with a bunch of members. Then we watched the city fire works from out apartment. Wednesday we had district meeting and did some tracting.  We met with our recent convert Robin Barnard. He blessed the sacrament last week and this week he got a calling and a temple recommend.  It is so great to see him progress in the gospel. Hopefully we will be able to go to the temple with him this week. Then went to dinner with a family, they made some good home food on request. Then we played basketball with the youth.

Thursday we had Planning and in the evening we met with Ashley, a members girlfriend that wants to get baptized.  It went really well, she wants to get baptized next month on her birthday.  Friday we went to Lamar for Exchanges. I went with Elder Henderson, who i served around in Fayetteville, and hada great time. Lamar is really a pretty small town but they love football and have won a lot of state titles.  And they have a good amount of missionary work going on. We also rode bikes in the 95* weather. i got really wet and have a good blue Book of Mormon stain on the back of my shirt (always tuck an extra BoM under the belt). I gave a hair cut in the morning and then Saturday we drove back. Got ready and then saw a Pentecostal guy and read Ezekiel 3:7 with him, Showed him why what he thought was wrong because it was 500 years off; don't think he quite got it though. Then we met with Ashley again and had dinner with the family.  Met with Tara that night and didn't really teach much but she really opened up about her life and what she wants for her future, was pretty neat. Sunday we had our people at church and then had some good discussion with members about how they can see more success in their missionary efforts.

Thats about it for the week  Today we are planning on playing street hockey again  should be a good day.

Love y'all,  have a day

99 Bottles of Pop

Hello everyone!  It is now July: surprise! 

This was one of those weird weeks that took forever but went by really fast. Weeks feel like days and the days feel like weeks.

Tuesday we had MLC in Bentonville and then dinner with Bishops family. Made a pitstop on the way home at an ice cream place :)

Wednesday we had a last minute zone meeting I had to run. It ended up going really well We talked about the correlation between Love and Expectations. If both are high we will experience miracles. We also applied it to helping members raise their vision of missionary work. We had dinner with the Yorks our EQP. We had some free time after so we went to the park to do some planning. While we were there we saw a family fishing. We were talking to them and realized that they were a part member family. We started teaching the Restoration and when we got to the Joseph Praying i asked if they have ever had a question like that. Their mom had died not to long ago from cancer and the dad was pretty bitter about that. They asked why bad things happened in life, a question we had talked about at MLC, so we were able to teach them the Plan of Salvation. It was a super powerful experience.

Thursday we had weekly planning and then a few exchanges with ward members. Got to spend some time teaching with President Leavitt, always learn a lot from him.

Friday all of our appointments canceled, even dinner, so we spent most of the day tracting. Also spent a bit in the park pondering what to do with ourselves. And we had a member show up with a non member friend and we ended up playing tennis with them. Was pretty fun even tough it was blazing hot.

Saturday was basically the same as Friday just less things to do haha. While we were tracting an old couple let us in because they "wanted to discuss what they had studied about our beliefs" as soon as she opened the door I know what was going to happen. So we came and sat down on a really nice couch in their interrogation room and listened while they proceeded to tell us a bunch of ridiculous things that we "believe"...but actually don't. They had this paper all printed up(pretty sure I've seen the same one before) and the wife seemed so excited to practice bashing Mormons. We were polite, crushed all their arguments told them to read the Book of Mormon and then left. Anti-   it makes me laugh

Sunday we spent most of the day with members. We had a family at church that brought a friend and say "Elders when can you come by and teach the lessons?"  That made me happy

Also  the stake Presidents wife called and asked if we had a dinner-we didn't.  Love when that happens.  Today we are going golfing and then it looks like tomorrow is going to be the busiest day of the week. Think we have about 4 member meals planned.

Hope y'all have a great week and Happy 4th!