It's Been 6 Months!

Hello Everyone!

This last week was pretty good, transfers happened so now there are a few new Missionaries in the District. It's always exciting when transfers happen because you get to meet new people and see new faces.

Monday night we had dinner with the Relief Society President and the High Priest Group Leader and they are so ready to get the work moving forward, we were there for quite a bit discussing how they could help us and how we can help them. It was really good. On Tuesday we did a lot of stop by's and were able to drop a good number of people from our potential pool, although we still have a lot. Almost everyone's home we went to had someone there but it was never the person we were looking for, that seems to be a recurring theme here in Rockford.

After lunch we had a meeting with the other Elders to discuss what we are going to teach next Sunday. Next Sunday is a fifth Sunday and the Ward Auxiliaries asked us, the Missionaries, to teach the entire day.

Yippee. They almost made some of us us give talks as well but we thought the members would get sick of us if we talked that much. So now we're only teaching second and third hour. We really want to prepare for this because we think that this Sunday could really change the Ward and the Members and boost member involvement in the work.

That night we ended up stopping by a referral but it turned out that she moved but we offered the Bible to the woman who answered the door and she gladly took it and accepted a Book of Mormon as well, she even asked us if we could come back and teach her more. So that's pretty cool I guess.

On Wednesday we had a Missionary World-Wide Broadcast, the first one in a decade. It was soooo good, the focus was "Teach repentance and baptize converts." So our already simple purpose was just made even simpler, sounds good to me! The broadcast was two hours long but it felt like I was sitting there for maybe 20 minutes, that's how good it was. All they did was just give us a ton of ideas on how to be better teachers and how to work with Gods children to get referrals. And if I could say, if you're a member of the Church, give the Missionaries referrals! I don't think members realize how much easier it makes our lives when we have someone brought to us who already has a member friend. Best thing ever! Now that that's over. After the broadcast we had a lesson with a less active couple, that went really well. We've been visiting the husband for quite a while but had never met the wife until then. They are awesome and do everything right except for come to church, funny how that works sometimes.

On Thursday we did a lot of stop by's again, same story as Tuesday.

After lunch we had a lesson with a home bound Sister. She is so awesome. She's been around long enough that she can tell us stories of when she was helping to build the Rockford building, so she's been a member of this Ward for a long time. She's always trying to help other people as well. After our lesson with her she asked for some advice on how to help her daughter's ex-husband back to activation. The best part is that he lives in Montana and we can't really do much for him but we can still help through her so we are praying about how to help her help him.

On Friday we had three lesson lined up but two of them fell though....such is the Missionary life. Luckily we can still meet with them later. Because those two lessons fell through we decided to go help the Houser's again. And btw I'm not a plaid shirt lumberjack, I'm an updated modern lumberjack. (Just to clarify.) Still a lumberjack though because cutting down trees just keeps getting more and more fun, especially when you give your winter head gear to someone else and your ears feel like they're going to fall off, thrill of the cut right? Afterwards we had a lesson with Anna at the Roby's house, long story short, we told Sister Roby the wrong time so we ended up coming almost an hour late to the time we told her, luckily it gave them time to eat lunch but I still feel bad. That lesson went fairly well, the other Elders stayed and I feel like there were just too many people there but the lesson wasn't bad by any means. We did find out that Anna is actually moving out of our area...she's moving into the Rockford 2nd Ward, the Zone Leaders area, I'm not really too worried about not teaching her. As long as she's being taught I don't care which area she's in, I will miss teaching her though. That night we went on exchanges. Elder McDonald came here with me and I'd say it was a pretty good exchange.

On Saturday I was still with Elder McDonald and we helped Anna move into her new place, it was pretty fun. Afterwards we went out with a member to stop by two referrals, long story short again. One of those stop by's we thought was going to be a lesson because we misunderstood what he had said and thought he was going to set up a time for us and he thought we were going to set up a time or that it was just going to be a stop by, confusing, but we figured it out. Neither of the referrals were home but we knocked on one ladies door to see if she knew the guy we were looking for and she didn't. We did our little Missionary spiel and she wasn't really interested and then Brother Eschmeyer came in clutch and just started a normal conversation with her and we got to know her and offer to help her with some service and now she's more open to us, she then said we could stop by again. This week Brother Eschmeyer is the real MVP. That hour or so was a lot of fun. After he dropped us off we did some Weekly Planning and then exchanged back. That exchange was a lot of fun, Elder McDonald is awesome.

On Sunday Anna came to the 1st Ward for the last time. I taught Elders Quorum on Faith last minute and that was pretty interesting, I did well according to Elder Williford but he's paid to say that.

Afterwards we went to our Ward Mission Leaders house to visit him because he just got out of the hospital. While there we helped his wife make dinner and then he started having problems again and had to go back to the Hospital. Before he left we gave him a blessing and when he showed up to the Hospital he was fine, power of the Priesthood!

That was pretty much my week! The Work is so much fun and I couldn't imagine doing anything else!

Have a great week everyone.

-Elder Eddenfield
Choose the Right