January 20

So we had a couple of awesome finding miracles.

Finding miracle #1: on trade offs, the Elders knocked into this lady, & they introduced themselves and she said "Come on in." As it turns out she's a less active member who a few weeks ago prayed that if missionaries came to her door she would start coming back to church. We were able to help her daughter move in with her, who's also a member, and we've had dinner at their house now a couple of times. They definitely show that they're willing to make some changes in their lives and they love the missionaries.

 

Finding miracle #2: This was also on trade offs, Elder White & I were contacting a potential investigator, who lives in a duplex. We knocked on his door and there was no answer. Not realizing it was a duplex I knocked on the other door and someone actually answered it. She was a young mother who lives in not the best of conditions. And she told us on the door that she wants to make some changes in her life and wants to understand her purpose some more. We were able to step inside and talk to her some more about what we teach and set a time we could come back and teach her. As we drove up to the house I had some impressions, and I felt that God had directed us to her.

This week was also Elder Whites Birthday so I made him a garbanzo bean cookie pie. He loved it, as well as the members we visited that evening.

We went finding in a nice neighborhood. It was kinda like a private neighborhood. Elder Palmer & I knocked on some big houses. One of the houses had the Jetson's doorbell! Elder Palmer got so excited.

We also had Zone meeting this week. I got to see Elder Older & Elder Louis, my Ithica companions. We were happy to see each other.

A couple in the ward gave us groceries after we had dinner at there place. Right afterward we met a member at Kroger who bought us groceries for breakfast. Us & the Saginaw2 Elder got TONS of groceries. We are so grateful for the members of this ward & all they do to help us. Now we don't have to go grocery shopping today!

 

 

 We met another crazy guy while we're out knocking on a narrow road. He was a drunkard. He had a bad case of the jabber-jaws. He asked us both "How old are you? How old are you? Me, I'm 53 years old." 3 minutes later he asked us the same question! We saw a car coming so Elder Palmer & I stepped out of the way. The guy said "Watch this, not gonna move. Not even scared." The person driving gave him the finger and barreled past him. After awhile we told him we needed to get going. Another car stopped in front of him, he gestured the lady to keep going. As we left he told us he was going to die tomorrow. Last time we saw him was the next day, he was walking through a playground :)

 

2 other little things I thought I would mention. A trash can rolled out on the road while we were driving, so I drove around it. I looked in my rear-view mirror & noticed the car behind us had to stop. Elder Palmer and I thought that was funny.

 

And as we walked up to a door we heard this audio player saying "You are trespassing." over & over. So we walked off the poor man's porch before he told us to get off himself.

Hermana Shaini Candland It's good to hear you're getting along with your district. The Elders in our district were goofballs too :) I like that you gave your toppings to your companion, that's a great way to show her you care about her. Elder Badnar I always thought gave great talks on missionary work, I'm jealous that you got to hear him speak to all the current missionaries at the MTC, I think that's pretty cool :)

 

An abandoned factory in the hood...

Our sweet ride...

I hope you guys have a great week and enjoy the slightly longer days.

Love,

Elder Candland

 

 

  

  

  

  

  

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January 13

This week Elder Palmer and I were walking on the sidewalk which wasn't cleared, plus it was next to the road which was paved. We were trudging through snow that went up to our knees. So we eventually called a member and asked him to give us a ride, because it would've taken us a couple hours to get to our next appointment.

We finally got rain! It's been a while. That means the snow is slowly going away, but that also means there's going to be a lot of Ice.

I'm teaching another excommunicated member who wants to be rebabtised. Investigators like that are always the easiest people to teach, because they already know how important baptism is and most everything in lessons is a reminder of things they've already been taught.

This was Elder Rhodes first week of teaching district meeting. I was impressed, he's done a great job teaching us and checking in on Elder Palmer & me to see how we're doing.

Also, this week during trade offs I got to spend a day with him. It was a good experience. The highlight of our day though was when we taught this guy who was referred to us by a recent convert. His name is Basie, we briefly taught him the restoration, but I'm not sure how much he got out of that lesson. He's one of the most confused people I've ever taught. He asked us why he never herd of this Joseph Smith guy from the bible, and we explained that he wasn't alive the time the bible was written. We told him multiple times that Joseph Smith was born in the early 1800's. Then he asked us why he's not in any scripture, so we showed him the scripture in 2Nephi 3 that prophesies of Joseph Smith, and said "Well it only says his first name, it doesn't say Smith." Elder Rhodes was smiling but he was getting frustrated. Basie also kept bringing up Rev1:4 which talks about the seven churches, and he tried to use that as a way of arguing that there isn't just one church, and we explained that it just mentions seven churches and nowhere does it say that they belong to Christ. Before we left he told us he'd do some research on Joseph Smith on Mormon.org. Elder Rhodes and I still joke about that visit. :)

Elder Palmer & I visited a couple that we've met multiple times, but haven't been able to set up an appointment with yet. Both of them were pretty hammered. Besides that we had a good visit with them, we finally set up to meet with them Wednesday! We said a prayer with them, and before we left they gave us the game Life, a 'build it yourself' antique ship, and corn chips. Those two are fun to visit. :)

This sunday a speaker wasn't going to be able to make it, so the bishop asked the 4 Elders to bear their testimonies during sacrament meeting. It was cool to have a chance for us 4 to do that for that for the ward.

It's good to hear from everyone. I hope you all have another great week.

Love,

Elder Candland

January 6

I'll just say that new years day wasn't any different from any other day. (Nothing exciting happened) But I've excepted that holidays on my mission will be different from the ones at home, so I'm not disappointed. 

We have a new district leader, who's actually now serving in Saginaw2, so I get to see him more frequently. He was also in my district in the MTC, his name is Elder Rhodes (He's in 7/22/13 email, he's the one to the far left in the background.) He's a pretty cool guy. I can tell that he's still new to the calling, but once he settles in he's be a great district leader.

We need more people to teach! Right now we have only 2 investigators who have kept commitments we left with them. So this week we did lots of finding. In the past 3 days we went finding since we left the apartment, to when the sun went down. We got 130 'invitations to learn' this week, which is the record for me.

Friday was the coldest day I've ever bared. My breath got my scarf wet... then my scarf froze. I think it was between -2° & -9°. I feel tougher now |:)

This week we also got to visit one of the members, who I haven't met yet. He served his mission in California & was Cambodian seeking, which from the sounds of it is one of the most challenging languages. He's pretty awesome.

I'm glad to hear the MTC has been an awesome experience for you Hermana Candland, & hang in there with the language. President Hess told me that the opposite of faith is discouragement, so don't get discouraged, just keep moving forward.

I hope you all have a great week and happy hunger games :)

Love,

Elder Candland

December 30

Congradulations Hermana Shaini Candland! I hope you've settled into the MTC schedule and that you're enjoying you're expirience there.

Christmas eve: That evening we went to a ward christmas party at a members home. It's was great, the food was great, we had white elephant gift exchange & we had a fun time.

Christmas Day: We opened our presents, and went to some members homes and got to play board games with them & play with their toys. Yep, that's pretty much it; we all got to talk to our families. Oh yeah, one more thing. that night we left our apt. without our keys. So after annoying our neighbors by ringing their doorbells & them ignoring us multiple times, we called our district leader, who called the zone leaders, then we got a call from the assistants, who said they'd give the Saginaw2 Elders & ask them to card the door to our apt. So we were able to sleep in our beds that night.

Preston got 2 new members in his ward both are between age 8-11. He also got to see Jacob Hill & Mercedes Thompson in Mesa.

...So one of the other Elders was just now on the computer here in the family history center, & someone just remotely moved the mouse & log him off. Most likely someone from the church needed something. It was still pretty weird though.

The investigator who's driveway we shoveled dropped us this week, because she felt that the Church doesn't appreciate women. If had thought about it then, I would've told her to look up the talk given by D. Todd Christofferson. But I sure there was a reason for why she dropped us.

On the bright side we picked up 2 new investigators. One we invited to look up the talk by Holland on depression. We're excited for both of them. They're not any of the finest investigators, but they're ones who if they receive a witness will be baptized for sure.

Sorry, I guess I didn't spend enough time writing about this week, and the Elders are all waiting on me to get lunch.

I hope this next week goes well for everyone!

Love,

Elder Candalnd

December 16

There's a lot going on it sounds like. It's cool that Adam can teach people Portuguese.

I guess I hadn't mentioned, It's snowing. We got a foot of it the other day, but it's different. It's what believe it's what snowboarders refer to as champagne snow. It's super powdery. This morning I took a cup of piping hot water, and tossed the water in the air and saw it turn to snow. That was cool :)

So I've noticed that there tend to be a lot of older lady's that like to do a lot of talking. We had dinner with one this week, but she didn't just let her mouth run, said some profound things. She talked about how the Prophets aren't perfect so we shouldn't expect them to be. She also talked about the analogy of the red ball in 'Shaken Faith Syndrome'. She pretty much taught us the lesson that night.

It's good to hear an experienced Elder teach. We went on trade offs this week, and I got paired with our district leader. We had a lesson with an investigator who is atheist/agnostic and from our visits before I knew he was going to ask some challenging questions. I took a lot of mental notes on how Elder Bass responded to the questions he had. He had so many, we practically taught the Plan of Salvation.

Our ward has a Christmas party this Friday. They had robes, and stuff where people could dress like they were in Bethlehem. In the gym they had stands set up where it looked like you were in the market, and People brought dried fruits, dates, bread, cactus, papaya, and some other fun stuff to try out. Then Elder Bell took part in the children's nativity, he was Samuel the Lamanite. Instead of shooting arrows, the kids threw crumpled us pieces of paper at him, but they were actually hitting him.

Right now we're teaching a guy who's dating a less active member, so we're giving him the discussions. Right now his main problem is our claim that we are the only true complete church to him sounds like we're telling other church'es that they are wrong. Which I thought was kinda funny because the church he goes to doesn't claim to be the true church, so I guess for some people that would make it true & that our church isn't true because we say that it is. We're sure he'll come around eventually.

I hope you guys enjoy the Holiday season, and that you aren't getting too stressed. Also that Adam does well with his History final.

Love you guys,
Elder Candland

December 9

Yes we're getting snow. And it's only getting colder It got to 11degrees one day. And it's not like Washington where the air is dry. It's still kinda humid, which means we get cold the instant we walk outside.

Elder Palmer and I had a finding miracle this past week. It was one of the coldest day's we've had finding. We knocked into a home where the owner would've invited us in, but his wife was sleeping, so he told us to come back in 30-60 minutes. So we went knocking it little longer and came back, and the owner had us come in. It turns out he had actually had a thought come into his mind that morning that we'd be coming, and his wife has a brother that is serving a mission in Vegas. From our conversation with them we could tell they didn't know much about the church, but the husband had been thinking that he needs to make some changes in his life. We're planning to see them this Wednesday at dinner. I'm hoping all goes well with that.

We had trade offs this week. I got paired with a fresh new Elder from Canada. He doesn't have an accent. But what's funny is his companion, during the pledge he'll tell him "Put your hand over heart!" "Good, now say the Pledge of Allegiance!" Then he'll say "I don't know the words."

K, my companion & the Other Elders are telling me to hurry up. We're still trying to make time today to go to Brawners (Bronners?) It's apparently the worlds largest Christmas store. I'm excited :) I'll take pictures.

Also we got haircuts this morning

Love,
Elder Candland

December 2

It's going to take time for sure to get to know all the members. There are still family's in the ward I haven't had appointments yet. But the more I get to know the people, the more welcome I feel.

A couple days ago we door-knocked into some crazy liberal. When we told him who we were, he affiliated us with some guy in Texas who apparently committed rape or something, Warren Jeff. We told him that he's not affiliated with us, that he's from the FLDS church. He wouldn't have it, he told us it's still part of your religion. Then he got into a big thing with telling us how much he know about politics, and was convinced he knew more about our religion than we did. Then he told us we are very closed minded. But saying that all religion is the same and is bad, we figured he was more close minded than anything. After about a half hour we walked off and told him "Have a nice day."

Wednesday we went on Blitz with the Zone Leaders. They're both awesome, Elder Mc.Graw especially. He's the most genuinely loving Elder I've met, and is always willing to put forth his best work. There's a lot I could learn from serving with him, and there was some things I did learn from the few hours we worked together.

SO Thanksgiving. Our Mission President told us that we should proselyte that day. In our minds we thought, everyone we meet is going to hate the Missionaries for disturbing them when they're trying to prepare for their Thanksgiving, or watching to turkey-bowl. The roads were Icy so we couldn't ride bikes. (We're supposed to get a call from one of the Mission Leaders to tell us to stop, but it hasn't come yet.) So we walked in the snow to get to some streets. And to our surprise just about everyone was happy talking to us. And we actually had a couple people interested in having us come back.
For the 1st course [2:00] we went to a Mexican family who fed us a pretty good thanksgiving. Not everything was homemade but I enjoyed it. For the 2nd course [4:00] we went to a family that loves to feed the missionaries. I had a hard time eating much, so they sent us home with plenty of leftovers, which I'm grateful for, means I can spend less money grocery shopping. And we enjoyed our time there, the couple is fun when you get a chance to talk with them.

Sorry I didn't get a picture yet. But we are getting haircuts today, and I'm planning to use my companions camera to take the picture. For a christmas tree here, we have a felt Christmas tree we have on our wall, Elder Palmer got. Also I noticed a tiny Christmas tree in our laundry/microwave room.

Love you guys, enjoy the holiday season.
Elder Candland