May 19, 2014

May 19, 2014

 

What a busy week! Following transfer calls on Wednesday, we weren't sure if we had a good reason to go to the transfer meeting on Thursday, but we eventually decided to go and it's a good thing that we did! When the transfer was announced, no new missionaries were put into the Big Walnut Creek 2 elders' area. They were doubled out and no one was doubled in. In other words, we found out that their area is now closed. So, we went to their apartment and took all the good food that was left, along with a few other items they left behind. We divded their area with the sisters in our ward, so now we cover about twice as much geography as we did before. This new area included several great investigators. There is a 9 year old girl named N. who is from a part-member family. She is being baptized on the 7th. We also are now teaching a nice guy named T. and a lady named S., who are also both from part-member families.

We visited C. twice and she gave us the last of her cigarettes twice. I don't think she will buy any more now. She also gave us all her coffee the first time and we gave her a substitute called Choffy (made with cocoa beans instead of coffee beans) so she shouldn't have any more problems there either. We have made a plan with her for baptism on June 7th, and she is excited!

We have also been visiting with a lady named P.. She is in the pictures from the social media split, though her name isn't on the for privacy. She came to church yesterday and seemed to enjoy it pretty well. It is different from what she is used to (she is Lutheran) but she certainly has potential.

Now, the trick is going to be keeping all of this going!

I'm glad things went well with the move and everything. I love you all.

Have a blessed week!

Love,

Elder Schow

May 6, 2014

May 6, 2014
It has been a very busy week. We had interviews with President and Sister Nilsen on Tuesday and some training from the assistants. Recently, we each companionship was given a DVD with some Mormon messages on it to use during lessons. Each companionship also had a portable DVD player in our apartments. During the training on Tuesday, one of the assistants told about using the DVD player as a tracting approach. We took it to heart and spent the rest of the week knocking on doors and offering the share a brief video about Jesus Christ. People were SO much more receptive to a video than they ever have been to a "message." The best part is, we got so share our message anyway after the video was over. We found 20 new investigators, which was almost a mission record. Our whole mission broke our investigator record again and found 505 investigators last week, which was pretty cool. We've been pretty busy going to the appointments we have set up as a result of all these contacts. Sometimes the people are there and sometimes they are not, but I guess that's how it works.

A man named K. and two of his children came to church with us on Sunday. He seemed to enjoy it and he plans to bring his wife and the rest of his family next week.

Yesterday we played baseball with our whole zone. It was rainy part of the time, but it was really fun anyway. After the activity, we and the other Elders in our ward had to help a less active lady named Whitney move out, so that took up the whole afternoon. I really think it left a lasting impression on her and we hope she will eventually come back to church. She may try to find you on Facebook.

Since you guys asked, 2-2-5ing basically is tracting around the home of a member or an investigator or someone like that. We knock 2 doors on either side, and 5 across the street. I guess it just makes it more likely that the people we talk to will have some sort of connection to the Church. It often leads us to prepared people.

Mom, thank you for the quote on perserverance.

They haven't given us any details for Mother's day, so I'm assuming I'll be calling. Our church goes from 1 to 4 our time or 11 to 2 your time. I'm thinking maybe I'll call around 5 or 5:30 my time, but I'm not sure. Once we figure things out a little better. We can probably come back to the library and send a short email telling you exactly what is going on.

For the social media split (explained in that other email) you might want to friend Tammy Lee and Mike (Michael?) Winslow on Facebook with both my account and yours.

I hope you are all doing well. Thank you for your love and support.

Have a blessed week,

Love,

Elder Schow

April 28, 2014

April 28, 2014

We had a few good lessons and visits this week, as usual, but there were a few more exciting things that happened. We didn't do any actual tracting last week, but focused more on "2-2-5ing" people that we know. This yielded some good results. On Wednesday, all the missionaries in our stake had a specialized training. President and Sister Nilsen called it an "intervention." There has been some complacency in our mission lately, so they decided to do something about it. There was a lot of talk about accountability and not wasting time. It is really easy to use all our time traveling from place to place and doing the same ineffective finding approaches and visiting the same people who don't make progress. We were all committed to do better with those things and President challenged us to find at least one new investigator every day from now on, or 7 each week. Later that day we had an exchange with our zone leaders and their companion and between the five of us, we found five new investigators. We have found one a day since Thursday. Some of them are really neat people, and they all need the gospel in their lives. Hopefully this new focus will help us get things rolling around here. Carol has fallen off the face of the earth this past week. We think she went to visit her son and forgot to tell us. Hopefully we will hear from her soon. We had stake conference on Saturday and Sunday. It was good but a little dry. As always, we are working to help our current investigators progress. It can be a struggle to coordinate member present lessons and rides to church and things like that, but we'll keep trying.

I hope everyone is doing well at home! Have a blessed week!

Love,

Elder Schow

Happy Easter

 

April 21, 2014

I hope everyone had a happy Easter. Ours was very nice here. We took a challenge from our zone leaders to not tract this week so that we could try some more creative and hopefully more effective finding methods. As a result we have done some 2-2-5ing (knocking doors directly around members, former investigators, etc.) and have tried to follow up with potential investigators that we have found. This has brought us some success. We are still working with some of the same people, though progress is slow. C. may or may not be moving soon and is continuing to try to kick her smoking habit. She has made so much progress. We had another exchange this week. Elder Bowler the district leader came into our area with me. We had a pretty good time. Elder Blalock and I each were sick at different times during the second half of the week which slowed us down a bit, but were able to do some things. We even had a surprise member-present lesson when a less-active man came over while we were teaching his neighbor on her porch. He gave some good input. It's funny because he and his family lived in Marble Cliff while I was there and moved here shortly before I was transferred. Easter was good. We had dinner with the Mizers and visited Sister G. in the retirement community. This morning we played baseball with our district, which was pretty fun. I'm almost out of time, but I hope you all have a good week!

Love,

Elder Schow

April 14, 2014

April 14, 2014

      This week was a pretty good one. Besides a couple of rainy days, we are starting to get some really nice spring weather. The daffodils are coming up and we hear the trees will be blooming soon. We had some good lessons with our investigators this week and were able to contact a few less-active people. We took some heart-softening cookies to some of them. No one told us that one man was blind, then his cat got outside and the whole thing was very awkward. Oh well. One lady was very comforted that we showed up when we did- her brother's death was imminent and I think she knew that it was no coincidence that we were there. We went on exchanges this week with the other Elders from our ward. The elder I was with and I taught a really spiritual Restoration lesson to a man from Africa. He was really receptive and said that he believes you should never reject someone who is sharing a message about God. The elder I was with is a nice guy.   One of our investigators, Leron, came to play basketball with some of the guys from the ward on Thursday and had a lot of fun, so that was good. On Saturday we and the other elders had dinner with a lady in the ward who hasn't come to church in years. She surprised us and came on Sunday. She even stood up and bore a testimony of gratitude. She's moving to Texas soon, but she says she may look up the Church when she gets there. Overall it was a pretty good week and hopefully this one will be, too! I hope you all have a good one! Happy Easter.

Love,

Elder Schow

April 7 2014

 

April 7 2014

It has been a pretty good few days since I last wrote. On Thursday, we went to the transfer meeting to say goodbye to Elder Loosli before he went home. It was nice to see him and I'll miss having him around. Presdient called two new assistants, so that was kind of exciting. We had a few good lessons and found a couple of new investigators. General Conference was kind of the highlight of the week. There were some really good talks and I enjoyed listening. I even stayed awake the whole time! I especially enjoyed the Saturday afternoon session and the priesthood session. We drove with an investigator couple and their nephew to the Sat. afternoon one and gave them a tour of the church, too. I think they really enjoyed the experience. Carol hasn't quite moved yet, so she was able to come to a session as well. The weather is much warmer lately, but we have had a lot of rain, so hopefully things will mellow out a bit more. That is super exciting news about the baby. It is still weird to think that I am going to be an uncle. I hope everyone there had a good week!

Love,

Elder Schow

April 2, 2014

 

April 2, 2014

Nothing too exciting is happening with transfers. Elder Blalock and I are both staying in Big Walnut Creek and I am glad. We get along well and there are good things happening in this ward. Elder Loosli is finishing his mission and goes home tomorrow, which is super crazy! I will miss having him around. We are probably going to sneak over to the transfer meeting to tell him goodbye, even though neither of us is getting transferred. It has been a long week, but a pretty good one. We have had some good lessons. Many of the people we find drop off the face of the earth, but we have been able to meet with A. and A. and B. and a guy named L. and had good lessons with them. Q. (short for Quenten) has come out teaching with us a couple more times. He wears the pajama pants and flip flops every day except Sunday, when he wears a suit. He's a good kid. It turns out that C. is moving very soon to live with her son's family in London, Ohio. We will be sad to see her go, but we have gotten in touch with the missionaries down there and they are going to help her work towards baptism. We've tried so many things to help her quit smoking, including fasting, but nothing has been the key so far. She is getting some nicotine patches soon, though, which have helped her in the past. We haven't really been able to meet again with E., the British lady, yet, but we hope to soon. I'm looking forward to conference this weekend. It is always nice to have a couple of hours to sit and be edified. Plus, we don't have to wear suits during the months between the April and October conferences. That will be nice because it is starting to get pretty hot around here. Nothing too outrageous happened on April Fools day, but our zone leaders did trick everyone pretty good by saying that Elder Montgomery had got his visa and was leaving and that we were getting a new zone leader. They managed to engineer a special voicemail message that they forwarded to everyone which made it sound pretty legitimate. We were pretty surprised when Elder Montgomery popped out of the trunk of their car today at our zone fun day. It was funny. Thank you to everyone for the emails. Letters, especially paper ones are always welcome. I hope you all have a blessed week!

Love,

Elder Schow