February 19, 2009

Weekly Update

First off, transfers and my companion. Yes, transfers happened last Wednesday and I received a new companion, Elder Nelson, while staying in my same area - Tigard. I was very sad to see Elder Jensen leave. I love him and he is an awesome guy. Though, now that a week has passed I can see that it's for the good. 

So, my new companion - Elder Nelson. He's a pretty cool guy. Of course, I don't have the same kind of relationship with him as I did with Elder Nelson, I've only been working with him for one week. But so far it's been good. It's definitely different trying to adjust to a new companion and everything after having adjusted for 3 months to my previous companion. But it's good experience in learning what is important and what isn't important, what "conflicts" to bring up and try and resolve and which ones just to learn to deal with and move on, and probably a good source of learning humility and trying to not be prideful. Anyway, we're doing pretty well. The teaching is going great and we're working hard!

So, what's up with those we are teaching, you ask? Alot and also a little. We had a lesson last night with a couple and that was awesome! The Spirit was really strong and it was super cool. I love recognizing when the Spirit is prompting me and then acting on those promptings! It's also really sweet to feel the Spirit confirm what I'm saying when I bear my testimony of something...and it seems that every time I feel I should testify that the Spirit confirms that and it's just another reminder that I do, indeed, know the things I say I know. Also, while we were there we gave him a white shirt, a tie, and a suit. The shirt was one that Elder Jensen no longer wanted and didn't take with him, the tie was one that Elder Nelson wasn't all that crazy for, and the suit came from a member in the ward who no longer wore it and just hadn't gotten rid of it yet for some reason. To see the reaction of John's face was so cool! For just a few seconds he seemed to be as giddy as boy opening his presents on Christmas morning! That was such a cool experience! As for when they'll come to church, we're still not sure - but they are much closer than they have been for some time. As for our other investigators, one sister seems to be coming along! She's always excited and eager to learn and our lessons with her also feel very uplifting and nice. We're hoping the progress continues with her and that she keeps making the steps to come back and closer to Christ. Things with another woman are at an interesting point...right now it seems like there is still progress happening, but we'll see if that continues - we hope it does. Another one of our investigators always shows a tiny bit of progress with him each time we meet him, but the hardest thing with him seems at the moment that he's not fully open to Joseph Smith being a prophet or seeing the need for the Book of Mormon. He bring alot of things out from the Bible and we're trying to think of ways we can help steer him toward the Book of Mormon and help him to have the desire to read it in FAITH - with a desire to know if it's true, and to then PRAY about it! Hopefully progress will continue there and we can continue to invite the Spirit into his home and hopefully the Spirit will touch him at some point. So, a new investigator this week! Brother Jensen basically taught the first lesson to one of his co-workers after she brought up church and asked him some questions. So, he invited her over for dinner on Sunday and invited us as well. She's pretty cool! She baked a really good coconut cake and we had a great discussion. We taught her the first half of the Plan of Salvation and she seemed interested. Our main focus, though, is mostly on Christ being the Savior of the world, because for the past 5 or 10 years or something like that she's been studying Islam...but she's very open and the lesson went well! We have another one for this Sunday, and from what Brother Jensen has told us from their conversations at work, she's pretty excited for it! Now, as for our investigators - mainly the younger kids - progress seems to have slowed some. What seems to be the biggest issue for the moment is reactivating them and trying to get the parents back into activity before we really go any further with the kids. What I think is going to help them the most is for the kids to come to Primary and learn in that environment. That's what Elder Jensen and I felt and Elder Nelson hasn't met them yet. But hopefully soon! As for other things going on, the work is progressing! We've been out seeing people and doing some tracting. Always funny times when tracting, but they're good learning experiences too! Trying to put a Gospel principle into a couple of sentances and getting people interested is always a trick, but fun experience!

Allright, that's all for now.  I love y'all and I hope that all is going well for the family and for...everyone else! I love y'all!

January 29, 2009

January 29, 2009

We have 6 or 8 lessons scheduled for this week (I'm not exactly sure how many we have remaining, 2 or 3 I think...maybe a few more). We had exchanges with our Zone Leaders yesterday, so I wasn't at 3 of the lessons (there were 3 yesterday) but they supposedly went well for the most part. Elder Jensen and Elder Henry were able to meet with one of our investigators and it is apparent that he is seriously seeking peace in his life. So, hopefully he will allow the Spirit into his life and he will be able to find some (if not all) of the peace he is seeking in his life. Pray for him! The other lessons went well, from what I was told. 

Oh! On Tuesday we met with a less-active lady who wants to come back to church. She is so awesome!  She took the lessons and was baptized in like 1998 or something. Anyway, long story short, fell away, divorced, and now she wants to come back to church and have her children there as well. She seems so ready for the Gospel to be fully in her life.  We're teaching her the lessons because she want's to have things refreshed and questions answered.

Okay, so, other work that's going on? Well, on exchanges with the Zone Leaders, Elder Ferguson (he and Elder Henry are the Zone Leaders) and I got some pretty awesome work done. We were even let into the home of a guy that is a Jehovah's Witness after we knocked on his door while tracting. That was a pretty cool conversation and he said that we had given him some things to think about and to read up on. We even made a return appointment for the Zone Leaders with him next Wednesday. Cool! I hope they might be able to make progress with him and his family, and that it won't just be a Bible bash or anything. It was pretty cool to go tracting with Elder Ferguson, but that's alot of what the Zone Leaders do in their area, because they don't have a whole lot of people to teach, and their potential investigator pool and former investigator pool is relatively small. Anyway, exchanges were good.

There is progress with another investigator.  We had a lesson with him last Saturday and have another one scheduled for this Saturday. There hasn't been alot of progress, but there has been some. He doesn't seem as antagonistic as we first thought, though it still seems like it could lead that way if the Spirit was not present. But he's awesome too! 

All of our investigators are really cool people and I love them all. That's one of the things I wrote about in my journal the other day. I'd been praying since the MTC that I'd be able to love the people, because I surely felt that I loved the people back home (family, Kaycee, friends, etc.) far more than the people here. But I've seen Him working with me somehow and I really do love the people!  I definitely don't love all their decisions or choices, but I do love them and I want the best for them. I want them to be happy and I want them to be more happy than they presently are. And I know the best way to have more happiness is through the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It's weird, because I haven't quite felt that as strongly as I have since being out here, but I feel it! I love the Lord and his tender mercies! He has so many of them and He is always ready to help us. It's also been cool to see that adversity somehow really does make us stronger and helps us to grow more than just about anything else. We gain so much through the trials we go through, and it's never very fun or easy, but so worth it when looking back. I could go on and on, but I do need to get going soon.

I love y'all, take care, and keep praying. Y'all are in my prayers!

-Elder Michael Starks

January 15, 2009

NOTE FROM MOM:  I will try to copy and paste most of the emails Michael sends to us and publish to his blog but will try to remove the individual's names though for their privacy.....so most of the posts will be verbatim from Michael except where I need to make some adjustments.

On Tuesday night we got a call from a 14 year-old recent convert in the Tigard 1st ward and she told us that she had set up a lesson with one of her friends for the next morning at 7:00 before school started! Crazy! So, Wednesday morning we went with a brother from the ward (he teaches seminary at the Seminary Building across from the high school) to the Seminary building and met with him at about 7:30. We only had about 10 minutes to actually talk with him, so we got to know him a little and find out how he got interested in the church (it was seeing the 14 year old recent convert change her life as she joined the church) and we set up another appointment for Friday (tomorrow) morning to meet with him again and have a lesson. He even has a copy of The Book of Mormon! The 14 year old member gave it to him and we committed her to read with him Joseph Smith's explanation of how the Book of Mormon came about before our appointment. She's an awesome girl! Anyway, we attended Seminary right after that, which was pretty cool and fun (they have release time, so we just attended the "first period" class).

We got home and then were picked up by the missionaries in the area right next to ours (who have a car) and went to our District Meeting. That went well and then we got ready and went to contact a few referrals, but none of them were home, so we then went to eat lunch at Davidson's for a little less than an hour (Davidson's, btw, is AWESOME! It was talked up a lot to me, but I was not dissappointed, the burger I had was fantastic!).   NOTE FROM MOM:  Michael always loves a good burger!! :)  

We then went around to try and contact a few potential investigators that we were given by the Spanish Elders that they tracted in to (the people weren't Spanish, though, so they handed them over to us) but no one was home. We also tried to contact a few less-active people but again, no one answered the door. By that time we had to bike back to our apartment so we could get picked up by two Priests in the Tigard 1st ward who were our exchanges for two appointments at 5:00 PM. That's right, we had two appointments, both set for 5:00 PM. They were also people the Spanish Elders had tracted into and set up appointments for us. So, we split up and taught both lessons. That was pretty cool! We got return appointments with both of them. I went with one of the Priests and we taught one investigator. That was a crazy experience for me. She didn't know anything about the church and had only heard that we worshipped Joseph Smith. We were able to correct that misunderstanding and then we taught the first lesson. It was rough for me, just because it was the first time I'd ever taught a lesson where I was really the only one there who knew what we were teaching and how the lesson is supposed to flow. It was a little rough, but Pearl seemed interested and she said we just needed to call on Saturday to set up a return appointment after she gets her schedule for next week's work. Awesome! It was definitely intimidating, I didn't quite know what to say at many times. I would have been just fine if I'd been asked questions, but having to just present everything was definitely a learning and humbling experience. It taught me that I really need to go over the lessons in my own personal study more than I thought I did. 

So, after those, we went home and were picked up for our dinner appointment at 6:00. It was with an awesome family! And the sister is the RS President.  That was a good dinner and they even said they'd invite us over for breakfast either this or next Saturday for some German pancakes (she said they're like baked pancakes they fill with cinnamon and apples and stuff...almost like a breakfast apple pie) and that we should invite the 14-year old convert's friend and her over as well, because apparently he lives in their neighborhood just a few streets away and they know who he is! Crazy! It was mainly just an awesome day. After dinner we went home and then retired for the night. We hadn't done our personal or companionship studies because of the appointment at 7:00 so we tried to do those and then we were both just exhausted. It was a really good day, though!

Anyway, as for our other investigators. We had another appointment with the 10 year old girl we've been teaching. She was a little under the weather, so I'm not quite sure how much she got out of the lesson, but I hope some! We taught about keeping the Sabbath day holy...and we were nervous because as I had said before she's really big time into Soccer...they weren't at church last Sunday and we found out that night (that's when the lesson was) that it was because she had had 3 soccer games that morning. Hopefully her parents felt the Spirit (as well as her) as we talked and in the end, she did commit to keep the Sabbath day holy, so we're hoping that that will happen! 

The last appointment that we had with another couple fell through, so we're hopefully going to be able to set up another one and work more and more with them.

It's amazing how much I love them and all of our investigators and want the absolute best for them, even the blessings of the Temple! That has been one of the most remarkable things to me, that almost without my even knowing it, I'm beginning to love the people! That still doesn't conquer my fears about telling them what they need to do to have happiness in their lives, and "calling them unto repentance" but it certainly does help! 

We also finally were able to have an appointment with another lady and her roommate.  I've only met her roommate once.  They also have another roommate who seems to have the most potential - an inactive member of the church who has gone on a mission! Hopefully if we don't make any progress with the first two roommates, we'll at least be able to help reactivate the member. 

We have another lesson with another investigator on Saturday, and we would certainly like your prayers with us! We hope things will go well and that we will be able to invite the Spirit and have it present strongly during the lesson.

Alright, aside from that I'm doing well. Things are going pretty cool and I'm just trying to hang in there and let myself get caught up in the work of the Lord.

Love,

Elder Starks

December 31, 2008

So, on Sunday night (the 28th) I realized that the next day (Monday, the 29th) would be my 2 month mark. I cannot believe that I have been serving a mission for 2 months. I feel like I only left the MTC about 2 days ago and it's crazy to think that I've actually been through one whole transfer. I've been in the mission field now for 6 whole weeks. Crazy. However, on the other side of things, it feels like it's been forever since I was at home. Kind of interesting how our perception of time works. Anyway, moving on.

It's been a little rough the past couple weeks with the crazy snow-fall and Christmas and everything. But we have taught a few lessons to our investigators (despite many being canceled or postponed or rescheduled). I think the saddest thing has been trying to set up another appointment with John and Joelene Tommer. We'd been trying for awhile and just couldn't get ahold of them. We finally did last Friday (or maybe Saturday) as we were on our way walking home and we caught them right as they pulled in. They said to come back after the first of the year and we would set up an appointment with them that could be on a regular basis. So that was good news! Aside from that, we've taught Emily at least one more time since my last email (and I think maybe twice, but I wasn't here as we were on exchanges with our District Leader) and she seems so close to being ready. We just need to get them to come to Church on a regular basis and stay for the duration of the meetings. They were at Church on Sunday and that was awesome, but they left right after Sacrament Meeting. Hopefully we'll be able to help them with any concerns they have and finish teaching Emily the 4th Lesson (which covers various commandments...we've already covered almost all of them). Aside from that we're trying to get better at tracting and the like, as well as going through our area books to see if there are any former investigators we might be able to hit up or any potential investigators that never were followed up on. We've actually got two that Elder Henry (one of our Zone Leader's) and I found when we were on exchanges that we need to go see. Hopefully as we do our part to find and invite others to learn about the gospel then Emily, the Tommers, Thomas, Leah and others will possibly progress even more! That's our hope anyway. We're really hoping that this transfer we'll be able to commit Emily to be baptized and possibly to have her baptized...and to have her dad do it would be even better! 

The snow has finally melted and gone...though I do miss the snow to some degree. I don't miss the compacted and icy snow, though. The shoes I have are NOT meant to be used in walking on ice. I definitely felt like the Lord was supporting me many times while walking because otherwise I think I should have been slipping around a lot more than I did.