Daniel vs Meetings

Date: Mon, 7 May 2012 11:01:07 -0700
From: eric.feller@myldsmail.net

This week was crazy... But not a good missionary crazy. Like, meetings and stuff crazy.

Monday we taught the Boccela family. They are doing great. We finished talking about the Plan of Salvation, but mostly talked about Prayer. At the end we were just finishing up and I was asking if they had any questions, and I specifically asked the daughter, Avery, and she started crying and talked about her friend who died. We talked about it, and she felt a lot better. It was really cool, and then we talked about praying for comfort, and asked her to say the closing prayer. She said she figured that was coming, and we knelt down, and then the funniest thing ever happened. The dad, Al, got a charlie horse while kneeling and freaked out and fell on the ground saying "Ow! ow! ow! ow! ow! ow!" and we all started laughing. Bro Smelser went to go help him stretch it out and he got one in the other leg too. It was funny. The spirit that was there was gone, and then Avery said the closing prayer. It was still good. But really funny...

Tuesday we taught Alex again. He's doing well, but his mom is still crazy. She's putting a stop to everything, and saying he needs to read the whole book of mormon and stuff... I dont know whats going on there, but the sisters tell us he has been at church, so thats a good sign... That night we had a crazy time trying to figure out what to do and where to go. It was fun though, we stopped by the singles ward FHE activity and saw Danielle. She's doing great. We also found a ride to transfer meeting.

Wednesday we went to transfers meeting, and took Elder Howard home with us. He was down from Show Low and came to our area for the day. It was fun. We got our long board we bought from Cole Warner, the fellowship for Carly. Its custom made! Picture below. But the rest of the day wasn't to productive. It was mostly people being happy to see Elder Howard time. It was a good day though.

I'm emailing from a High School Library its kind of weird.

Thursday was Zone Leader Council. It was mostly uneventful. The biggest thing we did was talk about the activity planned for Friday were we read from the Book of Mormon from 8:00AM to 8:30 PM. The purpose being to help us build faith and unity. It was no secret that I didnt agree with doing the activity at first, but after I heard Presdient and Elder Potts talk about it I felt better about it, and we had a good time on friday. But I seriously sit in that meeting sometimes and wonder how smart people actually are. Some of them always try so hard to "aspire" as we call it. They were asking about wearing suits the whole day while we did it and most people were like "heck no!" but one ZL was like "I like it! Then we can cary more pens in our pockets!" and I just said straight out loud "I have pockets on my pants..." and Elder Case laughed really hard at me. But, in the end, President wanted us to wear suits. So we went in on Friday and wore suits for like 20 mins, and then gave everyone permission to take off their coats. The meeting went well though. We also prepared for the training were going to do at the end of the month. That was pretty cool. And its always good to see my friends from all over.

Friday was the Zone read-a-thon. We got together at a church building and set up tables in the releif society room and read the Book of Mormon aaallllll day. It was actually really good for us. And surprisingly, everyone kept really good focus untill about 7:30. We started reading out loud as a group and did that for a long time and then switched to individual. It was cool to see themes that were common across the whole book, that you wouldnt normally catch in just a few chapters. At 8:00 I was on Mosiah 27, and I brought everyone back together and we read Moroni 10 as a group and then talked about what we learned untill 8:30.

Saturday was catch up day. We started off doing service on the Indian Reservation south of Chandler. One of the Elders in our Zone has been asked to start working out there. We went in and cleaned up the semetary that was across from the LDS chapel. It was cool. The Reservation is what I expected Arizona to look like when I came out here... dusty and shacks everywhere... It was like the Wild West! But service was good. They put a lot of stuff on the graves because they believe it belongs to the person. And of course, we were cleaning up this pile of garbage, and Elder Parrott was like "I think thats actually a grave..." and we told him it wasn't and cleaned it all up and then we looked at it again and realized it probably was... and we were stepping all over it and throwing away his stuff. We left it alone after that. It was really funny, because at the end the native guy incharge asked us to say a prayer for the people in the graves, and we took that as protection for us for taking his stuff... haha. Saturday afternoon we had a huge long meeting with our district leaders about all the problems in our zone...

And sunday was.... typical sunday. I had a huge headache from fasting, and we were still trying to catch up... Nothing to exciting.

We got mission T-Shirts! and also, someone in our district made district T-Shirts! Pictures below.

Love,
Elder Feller

My New Longboard

Me Riding my new Longboard in our front yard this morning... I'm still really bad at it... 

The Mission T-Shirt (and new logo)

District Shirt front and back. The back is "the Watering hole" with all of our "Spiritual Animals" drinking from it. I'm the big black bear. 

Elder Krueger got transfered! 

Daniel vs 30 Hours

Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2012 10:36:38 -0700
From: eric.feller@myldsmail.net

We had a pretty good week this week. On Tuesday we taught three teen aged girls at the Penrod's home. One of them was new, the other two we taught before. We're meeting with them again tomorrow. We taught them about the Holy Ghost, and receiving answers, because religion is a pretty new concept for them. It was awesome though. We actually taught that same lesson like 4 times this week. Its funny, a lot of the times all your investigators need the same thing at the same time.

I finished the New Testament in my studies. It took a while, but I really wanted to understand it. And I took some breaks to study other stuff, like Jesus The Christ and The Book of Mormon. It was pretty awesome. Speaking of, I got schooled by Joseph Feilding McConkie again. Remember him? Great grandson of Joseph Fielding Smith and Grandson of Bruce R. McConkie? He has a knowledge of the scriptures and a memory like Bruce R. McConkie too. We asked him about instances in church history of people being re-baptized and then I was asking him about the Sacrament. He taught me, through the scriptures, that we are forgiven of our sins through the cleansing of the Holy Ghost which we receive a new every time we take the Sacrament. Meaning, partaking of the Sacrament keeps us in perfect harmony with God. (from: Mormon Doctrine)

We had a pretty bad day on Friday. People kept yelling at us and our lesson cancelled. But we found three dollars on the ground and so we stopped by Sonic and got some ice cream cones on the way home.

Oh! Big story! Elder Howard and I are professional detectives. Two of the missionaries in our zone went on exchanges and went to walk around Mill Avenue (party street for ASU) and Phoenix for fun... Kinda a problem. So we had to deal with that. We found out from someone else they told and then we didn't tell the AP's until a few weeks later. They already knew too, but kinda chewed us out for not telling them. We kinda figured that getting in trouble wouldn't really do them much good... But that was wrong of us. President called us and told us that too and then gave us 30 hours to find out who took them there. It was like that show 24! The clock started! So we stopped by one of their houses to "drop something off" and I went into their closet to "look at their ties" (a common practice) and I called Elder Krueger in to ask him something. I asked him if he knew who is was. We did this twice. The only info we got from him was that he was in the other guys wards and that he was sent home from his mission in Chicago. Later on we found out this was false on both accounts, because we brought it up to Elder Kruegers companion after he had an interview with President and he told us he thought we caught him by seeing some pictures, and he showed us a picture of him and this other missionary and this guy that I recognized in front of the Diamondback's Stadium. So I knew who it was, he's in a different stake but he would give the Elders rides all the time. So I called the APs and I assume President has now handled it. whew. Some missionaries do stupid things. I wish they were smarter... But I am glad that going to Phoenix is the worst of our problems.

Better news, last night we taught Danielle again, at the McConkies home. We brought Matt, the Ward Mission Leader from the singles ward to help us get her coming to church. We were hoping young singles and some flirting would get her initially interested in coming to the ward. It worked! Haha, just kidding... kinda. Her and Matt hit it off pretty good, I think. We taught about the Holy Ghost again and everything went really well! The spirit was really strong and she felt it, she even cried. So we're making good progress there.

Also, last night late we got our transfer calls. I'm always super anxious on calls night. But it wasn't as bad this time because I thought I was staying, and I cant really get a new assignment. When we did recommendations we recommended that Elder Howard and I train a new missionary as a joke... And when Elder Gordon called he told us we were going to train and we got excited. But then he said just kidding and that Elder Howard was leaving... Lame. Not too much is changing in our zone. Just the things we really expected. Someone who's been here most of his mission is leaving. and also the two Elders that got in trouble for going to Phoenix.

Love,
Elder Feller