I prayed for a trial....

Area:  Independence, Missouri
Companion:  Elder Tu'akalau

Family!

Sounds like you had a great time at "Meet the Mormons," Mom!  I loved it as well and it was very interesting to see how such different people all around the world can be so similar, and that is because of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  What an amazing thing!  Looks like the cow milkin' was a good time.  I remember milkin a cow in my animal science class, I also got to do a rectal palpation.  Bet cha didn't get to do that? ;) haha!  

 

That's great that USU beat the Air Force Academy.  Good for them.   This city is blowing up with excitement because the KC Royals are only ONE game away from getting into the finals and that hasn't happened for 29 years!  Pretty cool and I now have my favorite football team and baseball team as well. KC PRIDE!  

 

Sounds like the pups are learning lots and will be nice and trained when I get home.  That's sweet that Josh got a new job.  Good for him, hopefully it will help you through school and such.  Josh, how's picking things up and putting them down?? I'm also excited to see what you are going to do to the house!  You will have to send pictures and stuff of when you start and finish. 

So most of the changes have already taken place in my mission and we will probably be getting iPads in December!  That is going to be awesome and all our numbers, emails, and stuff like that will be on them.  We are also allowed to go onto mormon.org for an hour each week to learn more about the website.  One other thing that is really cool about them is that we will probably be able to have all the mormon messages and gospel library and all that good stuff on them.  So that will make teaching so much easier and involving for investigators and kids.  I will have to purchase an iPad with my own money through the church because they load the iPads with all the church stuff for us.  So I'll probably just use my bank card for that.  I also will probably buy a GPS sometime soon unless you want to send me the one you have at home.  It makes getting around so much easier.  We have just been borrowing one from one of the missionaries in my district but he will be leaving on Thursday because it is transfers!

I won't be getting transferred and neither will my trainer.  We kinda got a solid hint from president that we won't be.  So I'm excited to be here another 6 weeks.  I just heard that this missions average weight gain is like 30-40 pounds because of all the Polly's so I've really been trying to watch myself. haha! 

 

The Putman family is doing great.  They are pretty solid and we are hoping to baptize Mariceo toward the beginning of November.  We were also able to find two new investigators this week through a family in the ward.  Their names are Carlos and Arely.  We took them to the Visitors Center (VC) and taught the first lesson and watched the restoration video.  Yeah, we got them both to cry.  They are very open minded and very receptive to the teachings so we are really excited.  We have another appointment with them on Wednesday so hope that goes well!  It will be really cool to teach someone from the very beginning, I haven't had that chance yet so I'm excited for that.   This last week I went on exchanges with the ZL's so that was fun.  I learned a ton about planning and not just scheduling to fill time.  We have to always be prayerful about that stuff.  It helps a lot with being an effective missionary. 

So we have been in a position where we haven't really moved much in the area with teaching, spiritually, and we haven't been too effective it seems like.  So I prayed for a trial...  I know, what was I thinking?!  Well, guess what?  I got one!  My companion and I for some reason had some contention and we weren't communicating very well and we were just on each other.  I know that trials were supposed to make you grow so I asked myself how this was going to make me grow?  I now realized that it taught me that I need to be more bold, but in a loving way just as Christ was.  I would just let things that bothered me slide all the time and it all just built up.  So, lesson learned!  :)

 

We had a great district meeting this week and after we went to lunch.  At lunch this guys came up to us and started talking to us about the church.  Through the conversation we figured out that he was RLDS and had some really weird beliefs.  He was getting supper sweaty and fidgety which was kinda weird.  Then he started testifying to us about some weird monster that the scriptures talked about and how it was just a computer controlled by Europe...  They he started yelling at us in the restaurant that Joseph Smith only had one wife.  He they proceeded to tell us that we were the great and abominable church and that his church would rise up at the last day and we were all going to burn.  It was pretty weird but a little comical and the same time!  I had to try and not to smile while it was all going on.  I think I'm starting to get better at not being to intimidated by people because if that would have happened back at home I probably would have just left, but here I wasn't even nervous and just bared testimony.  It works so well!  I look forward to many more of those experiences because I have heard they happen often.

That's about all I got!  Love you all!

Elder Shoemaker

My District!

I found this sign...and there really was a PIG!