I didn't shave for like 4 days...

January 29, 2013

So things only escalated with my companion's illness on Saturday. Apparently I had the flu and didn't know it and I gave it to him. Because I wasn't feeling well and I knew that I wasn't going out of the apartment I chose not to shave. I wasn't often waking up before noon even though I was going to bed at 10:30. But when Elder Roemmich got the flu it was bad news bears. Why? He has asthma. We were watching a church movie called The Mountain of the Lord when he turned to me and said, "I need to go to the hospital."

I turned and looked at him. He didn't look so hot. I called Brother Rauch, the guy that's always with us, to come immediately because I'm not allowed to drive for another like 3 weeks, and then the mission president's wife. Before B. Rauch could get to us, I gave him a blessing and I felt like my hands were burning just from touching his head. But it was a comforting blessing none the less.

We got to the hospital, and the Mission Pres and his wife showed up too. Elder Roemmich couldn't breathe, his heart rate wouldn't go below 140, his blood pressure was low, and he had a fever of 102.8. The Hospital gave him above 5 inhalers worth of medicine so that he could breathe and even ended up giving him cancer patient meds. 

The mission pres drove me back to pick up our car, and then told me to drive back to the hospital. I figured with his permission it was okay ;) When we got back to the ER we found out that Elder Roemmich was going to need to spend the night. Pres told me I had two options, one was to come with him to the mission home, but then I cut him off right there. I said, "He stuck it out with me when I was sick, I'm going to stick it out with him." So we spent the night in the hospital. It was cold, and I slept in my suit. again, didn't have the option to shave. That morning Elder Roemmich woke up just fine. He could breathe, his fever was down, he seemed pretty much healthy. We joked around, studied the scriptures, and mostly waited to get released. We got home at the exact minute that church ended, but we were told to stay home for a few days because he's still contagious. great!... not.

Out of the last 5 weeks I've spent 2 1/2 weeks stuck in my apartment. You can only watch every church movie ever made so many times. I honestly had stopped feeling like a missionary and more like a charity case. But then Yesterday I wrote a letter to Katie Cary. It was the first time that I had shared my testimony in a week and it brought it all back. I love it. We're still not officially up and running again. Elder Roemmich still feels woosey sometimes. But hey, if staying home one more day will allow us to go out and work and not kill the old and the people with asthma, and get everybody else sick, I'm willing to be bored for another day cleaning the apartment and writing the Apke's, from Mommy and daddy's ward, who wrote me a letter . 

So things I guess are settling down now, but I will say this, working out this morning was hard. I felt weak, really weak. I've seen a lot of flexibility loss, but it's okay, I've got a year and a half to get it all back. I only have 1-3 pounds to gain back from the tonsil surgery. The doc said yesterday that they looked fantastic and the nurses loved working with me. I hope that includes the one that I taught the first 3 lessons while doped up on surgery meds.

So I've got a question. Can I get the Germaid bread recipe? The St John's ward is having a chili cook off and they have a corn bread category. The YSA want to try it out. 

Other than that I read Alma 5 for the first time in what seemed my life. When I read it in college, it didn't sink in like it does now. I hope I can use that chapter to my advantage in teaching the gospel. It's a powerful one. Go read it! This email can wait. 

Mommy- don't worry. I'm a fight choreographer, I make sure that all my stunts are safe before I do them, including licking my machete knife. Why we have one, I'm not sure. It's just in the apartment. It's like one of 5 knives that we have that are actually sharp and one of 3 that aren't bent from missionaries abusing them. It's kinda funny.

Btw, it's really funny to point out to my companions on all the church videos, "oh I know him, he did this role in this other movie, oh and that guy's name is Moses in real life, oh and I know this, this, this, this and this guy in the back ground." It's ridiculous. I try not to point them out till after we've finished. Honestly when you point out that the guy who played Joseph Smith in the newest movie is also Willie in "17 miracles" and Peter in the Bible videos, it gets distracting for my companions while you're watching the videos. It pulls from the spirit, so I don't do it till after they've watched the videos all the way through.

It's hard to read, but it says "Wieden + Kennedy".  That's my dream job!!

My new companion

A frosted spider's web.

Alright, I love you guys, have fun out there!

Change... change is good

January 15, 2013

The work in St John's is progressing faster than I ever could've imagined. We picked up 4 investigators this last week and also set a dinner appointment and a lesson with a part member family with one of those families that I feel like I was sent here specifically for (the F's, the one whose brother Melissa catered the wedding for. Actually, if you still have Brent F's number he just moved to Portland, it would be cool to have him at our lessons). The first was picked up with 5 minutes of tracting before a lesson that we had with L. I knew what kind of buildings that I should be looking for from an answer to prayer that I received just before Elder Belo left. We said a prayer asking to be guided and knocked on 3 doors. On the 3rd door T. answered and told us to come back the next day at 3. We taught him the Plan of Salvation and committed him to be baptized. He came to church with us. Another was the part member family of our ward mission leader. He has an inactive daughter and a 9 year old non member granddaughter. We taught them the restoration and will be committing her to baptism this week. The next one is a little trickier Her name is J. She had the lessons with the missionaries about 3 years ago and is still friends with them on facebook. She had a lot of skepticism, but we determined after an hour of answering her questions from personal experience and the Book of Mormon we determined that if she felt the Holy Ghost and she knew it was the Holy Ghost, that she would believe. The only problem is that she's living with her ex boyfriend and his brother who are both Muslim and from Western Africa. I'm not sure how we should proceed on that front. She wants us to come back, but the others are always in the room while we are teaching. The last is a member referral that Elder Belo never wanted to go see because we had seen him at church once before and he didn't really seem to understand or like any of it. He stayed pretty closed off. We went over, and taught him two lessons in two days and gave him a soft invite to baptism. It was a little embarrassing. After the first lesson, he open WAY up to us, but we had already handed out the 4 BoMs that we had on us that day, and we never would have started to teach him if we hadn't trekked on in the absolutely freezing weather at 8:00 PM. Blessing come when you work and take notes of it all. I have a testimony of that. I love the fact that I've been able to do several things that my first companion never wanted to do and they all turned out fruitful.

We taught more lessons than Elder Belo and I ever taught in one week and we had two days taken out of our work week this week because of transfers and P-day. It was WAY exhausting. I took 2 naps yesterday during p-day. It was ridiculous.

So Elder Roemmich is SUPER easy to get along with. We never stop talking and laughing. He taught our district how to play Zombies. Essentially it's tag, but you play it in a building with windows with all the lights off. The one zombie has to tag all the humans before the humans make it to all 3 safe points. when the zombie tags a human, they become a zombie. It's WAY fun!

We taught E. about the word of wisdom and he said that just like the Sabbath day he's willing to try it out until he comes to a conclusion on it through scripture study and prayer. It came up because he heard that we couldn't drink coke from someone in church. Sometimes, I wish that everybody would just teach from the scriptures and not put their own opinions into the doctrine. It was an excellent teaching opportunity, but that's the second time that I've had to correct someone on that in this ward alone.

There's an experience I have to share with you. The Lord me direction very specifically that I find miraculous. On Saturday night I was told to eat sparingly at the dinner appointment the next night. So I told Elder Roemmich what I had been told. He said okay, then that's what we'll do. When we showed up at the dinner appointment, the family had the flu hard core and we excused ourselves and just had dinner at our apartment. The Lord is here with us and he is protecting us. I've never known that with such a surety before this and also the bike accident experience that I had that I told you guys about on Christmas. He's real. He cares. That's why he puts change in out life. Without change we could not progress. So it is with the mission. Without change in missionaries, companions, areas, etc, this work would cease to be as effective. When you become too familiar with an area, people get used to you, and as Christ said "a prophet (or a missionary in this case) hath no honour in his own country." I love you guys. I hope all of you are well, and I hope that the Lord is changing things in your life so that you can come closer to him. He gives us the scriptures, church, and prayer as tools to understand Him. My mission president told us something rather profound about prayer. He said the “...object of prayer is not to change the will of God, but to secure for ourselves the blessings that God has already willing to grant but are made conditional on asking for them.” I know that to be true. His blessings are sooooo much better than the blessings that we want for ourselves. It keeps you happy to pray. It also keeps you humble.

New year, new companion, and a whole ton of pasta.

January 8, 2013

So! Elder Belo is currently on a plane just about to land in New york before he goes home to Brazil. Me on the other hand, I have yet another companion. His name is Elder Roemmich. He's the new District leader so yet again I get to be DLB. This guy seems to take the role of Senior companion much more literally than Elder Belo did. With E. Belo I felt like we were co equals and that both of us would makes the plans together, but E. Roemmich just has a different way of doing things. He has a family that just moved to Provo Utah before his mission. He's 23 and he's studied math and science (physics) for a long time regardless of the fact that he still hasn't been to college yet. He's originally from Illnois, about an hour west of Chicago. He reminds me of the personality of Andre Belnap mixed with a much more intensified version of myself from when I came right out of the MTC and was kicking myself over about different things and was doing nothing but working, kinda like how I was with high school theater. Elder Belo probably would have gone crazy with this guy. Me- eh things with balance out. I know they will. You just have to be patient.

As for my recovery... it was a definite set back for me. I didn't get much study done except for watching a ton of the seminary videos and also the doctrine and covenants videos which include Legacy and Joseph Smith the Prophet of the Restoration, the Other side of Heaven and 17 Miracles among others. I lost 10 lbs. Yeah you read it right. I lost 10 pounds. People in the ward were telling me that I looked skinnier. I was wondering how they could tell since I was wearing a coat, but apparently is evident by just looking at my face. I look forward to gaining some weight back, cause I can feel it. I'm back in action though. I should be good to go on my own now, I'm just always starving. I have to eat every few hours because of how hungry I'm getting. It's a bit ridiculous,  but it's better than sitting on my butt all day. 

I got to see some of the guys from my MTC district in transfer meeting yesterday. It was the first time I saw them since we came out. It was so much fun. 

Wait New years was this last week? I don't remember it. I slept through it because of all the drugs. Not that it would have been special to watch our clock turn to midnight and then still have to get up at 6:15. I'm glad you guys had fun though. I look forward to celebrating it in a few years. That's one thing that has been amazing to me. How fast time goes. I'm a week shy of having been out for 5 months. It has flown by SO fast. I keep having thoughts of "it's not enough time. I'm going to need more time on a mission!" It makes the sacrifice of 2 years seem so minimal it's weird. I've never been more sure that I'm in the right place.

So about the pasta, Elder Roemmich (he's German in descent) pulled out ALL of the food from our cupboards this morning. We have like a 3 months supply of pasta in our apartment that's been sitting here for the last 1 1/2 years. It's a little crazy. Since Elder Belo didn't know how to cook anything, he never used the food in the cupboard. I would on occasion. All the food covers our kitchen table and stacks it about a foot high. It's crazy. We're gonna clean the apt today. 

I'd share a bit of what  I've learned this last week, but I'm out of time. 

I love you all so much, I hope the Lord is with you just as much as He is with us. 

Again, happy Birthday Steven

Love,

your Elder Lloyd

So I'm talking like Kartman from Southpark

January 3, 2012

Yup. removing my tonsils has effected my voice. I can sing just fine, but the shape of my words has changed because it still hurts to open my throat. Even when I try to talk normally there's still a little bit of a lisp. The good news is that I'm not done healing yet, so there's still a chance that I won't have to re teach myself how to talk. Everybody wants to go on splits with me just so they can hear me talk. the Zone leaders like to make fun of it too. It's good stuff. Try reciting all of section 4 with a swollen tongue and a closed off throat.

Better news is, my companion said that I've stopped snoring completely and totally. and I honestly feel like I'm getting better sleep, but whether or not that's the Loratab or not, I don't know.

Not much to say I guess. I slept nearly all of yesterday,

oooh wait!

Apparently during surgery I hit the doctor. I was flailing to get the mask off my face and ended up hitting him. ha ha So they told me that I wasn't going to feel much like talking after surgery. They made a huge hubbub about that and the fact that I'm not supposed to lift more than a newspaper while I'm recovering. As soon as I got out of surgery I taught the nurse the 2 half of the first lesson, and the 2nd half of the plan of salvation, and summarized the gospel of Jesus Christ. She even said that her dad had been investigating a bunch of churches and that she had seen the book of mormon in his house and that she would go home and read it. couldn't get her number though to follow up because I was a patient. It was pretty awesome. Hope she actually follows through.

The day after surgery we went on exchanges. Elder belo worked in St Johns while another elder stayed with me in the apartment. Elder Belo came back like 4 times to drop off his bike because the tire kept going flat. so the last time Elder Webb and I walked to Fred Meyers while he was out, bought a tube and then replaced the tire. Before we put it in though, we checked the tire for glass and lo and behold, the reason his tire kept going flat was because he has this piece of glass imbedded in the rubber tire poking into the tube. He was super frustrated that day, so he really appreciated the fact that elder Webb and I would go out of our way to do that.

The 3rd day of recovery was when it really hit me. I went to church, passed the sacrament, but half way through the meeting I started to get SUPER light headed and had to go home. I think the terrible pudding and applesauce diet I had been on mixed with the strong drugs finally got to me and I've never really walked much since. It's crazy.

Elder Belo's super trunky. He started packing his bags yesterday. He keeps asking me if we can do apostate things and he doesn't like it so much when I don't let him. oh well. Being a missionary isn't about you! It's about who you represent. And you ALWAYS need to represent Him the best that you can. He gets away with a lot of stuff though on the exchanges that we've been doing so that he can still be working while I recover. I hope I still have the strength to endure to the end when I get to his situation. I don't want to be known as that guy who just flaked out towards the end.

You wanted names for Rob's kid huh. how about some Book of Mormon names. Shiz. Nimrod. gidgidonihah! jk. Wesley. Jacob. Don. Howard. Tyler. Vinnie. Cameron. Any of those any good?

say what? you still get an email?

December 26, 2012

Well, I'll say this. Not working as a missionary has got to be the worst thing in the world. Christmas day took FOREVER!!!!

But it was good. 

It was fun talking to you guys. It was as if I had never even left. It felt kinda strange, but hey, life goes on. 

So Melissa, you referred to an email that you sent a while back during our phone call, but I only remember getting one email from you and it saying that you were still alive and watching the presidential election results. have you been writing me? cause if you have I haven't been getting them. :/ oh well

So Christmas was awesome and hectic. I loved playing with the sock monkey. Elder Belo and I flung mine around for a little while last night. They shoot far! and I love the fact that they scream! 

I also watched 17 Miracles for the first time last night. It was a wayyyyy good movie. I'm glad that it's on our approved watching list. I couldn't stop thinking about my bike accident the whole time that I was watching. The Holy Ghost was confirming to me of the truth of what happened to them and me the entire time. I know that God loves his children, and that he will protect them. I couldn't believe the strength that the pioneers had to have had to go through all of that. Their testimonies really were the reason for everything that they did in their lives. 

I've been reflecting on my own past on that thought for the last few weeks. Of how before my mission I would do what I did and my beliefs seemed to be separate from that. They seemed to be in two different categories. Of course I still believed in good morals and living a positive life, but there always seemed to be exceptions to the rule. Since coming on the mission I have seen many personal witnesses to the fact that God lives. I have lived through many different circumstances that witness to me that if we will make Him the reason why we act in any situation that we will not only reap the benefits thereof, but our actions are done with the power and authority of God. Being a missionary is not putting on an act. It is not limiting your conversation topics to the gospel for two years and never thinking about it again. Being a missionary is consecrating your time and efforts to being your brother's keeper. It's recognizing that God works through people to influence the lives of those in need. Being a missionary is being a friend; nobody likes being around a robot.

 

Honestly, I don't have too much more to say. Nothing has really changed in the last twenty four hours other than that I went to the doctor and he's recommending that I get my tonsils out, and Pres. Morby says that he'd prefer it if I can get my tonsils out by the end of the week instead of waiting until after the new year.

Hope ya'll had a very Merry Christmas. Please send me pictures of you guys and what you are doing. Those are the things that I value most being out here in the field. they help me feel connected. Happpy NEW YEAAAAAR! since I won't get to email till 2013. Do another snow Jenga for me and send me a photo of the results!

Christmas phone call

December 18, 2012

Christmas phone call.
I'm allowed to call each group of family members for a full 40 minutes or so. So if Josh and Diana aren't going to be with Melissa's family at Christmas let me know. I was going to be allowed to skype Russell, but since he's going to be in the US it has to be a phone call.

I got Mommy's package and also a surprise package from the Baker family full of goodies and presents.

As for this last week. K., the less active that we found last week, came to church and accepted for us to teach her the lessons. She's a fireball and really missionary minded. The best part is that her daughter is in the same class as one of our other less active's kids that has been coming to church for a few months now on and off, and they hit it off SUPER well. I thank the Lord for that one because they both needed a friend at Church.

So L. chickened out of his baptismal date for this last Saturday. He's been taught since June of this year. I fear that he'll be  turning into an eternal investigator if we don't address the iceberg of concerns that he has. We found out a big one on exchanges this last week. L. served in the Marine Corps back in Desert Storm. Essentially he's afraid that he's going to have to answer for the things that he did over there, and he doesn't feel like baptism is going to wash all of that away.  We're going to approach it cautiously and carefully, and we've asked our mission pres for his input on the situation. Any of you that have been on missions- have you encountered something like this before? How did you approach the situation? we're going to watch the Testaments with him sometime soon so that he can feel the Savior's perfect love for him at the end of the movie. At least, that's always what I feel at the end of it.

So Elder Belo is dying on Jan 7. He's going home to Brazil and then moving to Utah SLC area with his family. Apparently his dad lost his job over a year and a half ago and didn't tell him on purpose. I hope he can find his way in life. He's expressed that when he gets back he doesn't want to be a burden on his family, but that he wants to find a job and go to school while supporting himself. Only problem is Elder Belo has never worked in a job a day in his life. I'm sure it will be a struggle for him, but he'll learn quickly... hopefully. After that, I'll get a new companion and I'll still be in wonderful, unique, friendly St Johns. I love this ward. The new bishop is a superhero when it comes to getting down to business and trying to utilize the missionaries to the best of the ward's abilities.

Other than that, we've been working with a less active father and his family of all girls. They've accepted us coming over to have lessons, and the father really appreciates it when we challenge them to do things. The first time we challenged the whole family to read the scriptures together and then pray to know for themselves whether on not the Book of Mormon is true. They did really well at keeping the commitment the first week, but the second week they faltered a little bit because the kids were getting out of school for Christmas. The father is a daredevil. He goes cliff diving and small aircraft flying (it's a pedal glider that he uses to find VW buses and campers so that he can buy them off the owners and fix them up a little and then flip them) The whole family is way cool. We found out the last time we were there that the oldest daughter hasn't really seen the effects of the priesthood in her life. Elder Belo and I are going to try and help her find out it's always been in her life, but she's just used to it and has to actually look for it.

Other than that, miracles never cease. We have a new investigator with a lesson today because she thought we were Jehovah's Witnesses. She thought we couldn't give medicine to kids, and then when Elder Webb and I told her that we've always had medicine she told us to come back on Tuesday at four. It was awesome. Hopefully they clear up the whole JW and Mormon identification thing today. I won't be there. I'm on an exchange again with the Tongan elders today, so I might get some more HORSE!!!! soooo good, horse is!

Anyway, I love you. Thanks for the letters. Congrats Josh and Steven for getting through another semester of college. I hope all went well and that you're acing your classes.

Merry Christmas guys. I love you!