The Axe Was Laid At The Root of the Tree!

Hey y'all!!

Tuesday started off great. We started out by cleaning out the area book. We stopped by quite a few people, just on the fact that their number wasn't the right number. That took us until about noon I would say. Then we went out to talk to several of those people who did give us their number but gave us their address, plus a few other people we felt like we needed to see. 

The first lady we saw was Heidi. She has been through a lot these past few weeks and hasn't been able to return any calls lately. We talked on her porch for a good hour about what has been going on, and how  Christ is coming again, in reference to the hurricane, and earthquakes, and the fires. After we spent all of our time at her place we went to the salvation army and helped serve food there. 

After that, we had dinner at Brother Dick's house. Such an amazing man, if all church members could be like him we would be better off for it. We then had a lesson with Caitlyn, and she had a friend over, who, over the course of events, we were able to teach her the about the restoration, and she said she would like to learn more!  By the end off the lesson all five of us had said a prayer one less formal than the others, but we all talked to God in that lesson.  Me, my comp, Matt, Caityln, and her friend. 

Wednesday was uneventful until we spent the night with the Lewisburg Elders. They have a bat problem so we went on a bat hunt and saw nothing. It was disappointing. One of the Elders had a sword and we were dressed for war and we saw nothing!!

Thursday was zone conference. Elder Nelson from the 70s came and spoke to us about the gospel of Jesus Christ and, part of that was an announcement!  Our mission is getting Facebook, Messenger, Google Hangouts, and... smart phones!! Thats right each missionary will be able to have a smart phone of some kind.  We will also be given the opportunity to respond to those that ask questions on Mormon.org. everyone is pretty stoked for this. 

Friday was a long day of weekly planning with appointments scattered through it. I don't even think we actually finished it !  We ran back into brook, and she is interested. We set up a returned appointment with her to teach her more. Our last visit of the night was back with Caitlyn and she had another friend over and we taught her the message of the restoration. 

Saturday started out with a lesson at 7:45 at the church and our investigator, Lukas, wanted to meet the bishop. We went over to the James' and we had our district leader interview them for baptism. They passed and so we are in baptism mode trying to get everything ready for them! I still have to make up a special musical number for them. It's going to be loads of fun!

 That evening we ran into a Jehovah Witness family. Really nice. The missionaries have been over there before. They take really good care of us. They were surprised to find out that I knew bible stories! They have a bible called the "New World Translation." It's basically a modernized wording, and they replace the word LORD with Jehovah. My companion has one and I was reading through it with my bible and there are so many plain and precious truths that are lost in that version. 

Sunday we had church again, but we also got a referral from church headquarters saying that someone had requested a bible, so we went to drop it off and this little southern lady came out and talked to us. She believes in Christ and loves the gospel and was very surprised that we were getting that to her the same day she ordered it!! We gave her a bible AND a Book of Mormon and set up a return appointment!!  We then had a lesson with Edward and he accepted the invitation to be baptized!! We now have six people with a date!! It's been a crazy week. All I can say is God is good all the time!! 

-Elder Griffin

Week Four in Berwick!

Hey y'all, 

To start things off we had another round of exchanges, and guess who was in charge of the Berwick area? This Elder right here!!  I'm surprised that Berwick hasn't burned to the ground because of it!!  It was great!!  However, everyone we were going to go see.... was not home. We had two lessons that day, but the rest of the day we were tracting in the rain all day long. 

It was great! 

Thursday, we had interviews with the President because zone conferences are coming up!!  There are two weeks left of this transfer.  The time has flown by!  We then went to the Salvation Army and helped out there.  We got talking to a guy, and we just talked about how just because you live a certain lifestyle doesn't mean you aren't going to heaven.  Everyone goes to heaven, we just choose which of the three degrees of glory we feel the most comfortable in.  God is not going to force the Celestial Kingdom on someone who doesn't feel comfortable in His presence.  The guy then offered us a cigarette to calm the nerves. We politely declined!  

We then got to go visit Ruthy. She is such a sweet lady. She was showing us some of her Cherokee Indian plates, and I told her how pretty they were and she gave me one of her plates!! I about died with joy. This woman has so much love in her I will never be able to fathom it all. 

On the way out, we were stopped by a man whose wife was a Mormon and they didn't know where the church was. He told us we could come over!  His wife doesn't speak English very well so we would get the chance to learn Spanish!!  We then went to the Quicks and they fed us dinner and we shared a short message with them. 

Friday was another long day of weekly planning. We went to go see someone we had met while tracting, but she wasn't there, however,  we then ran into Edward!  We were able to teach to him the restoration that night, and he believes in it!  He said we could come back on Saturday!

As for Saturday,  we had a lesson with the James family that is going to be baptized soon. We had a great lesson with them. Then we had our lesson with Edward and invited him to think about being baptized. After we met with him, we went and had our lesson with Caitlyn and Matt. We were able to teach them about tithing and Caitlyn said that she had a friend who wants to hear what we are teaching to Caitlyn!!

Sunday was more of a relaxed day.  We had it planned out, but most of what we were going to do cancelled on us so we headed over to the James family after we did our personal/companion studying.  There they fed us dinner and we had their last lesson before they got baptized.  They were the only people that we saw that day!

This past week has flown faster than a rocket ship to Mars. Y'all take care now

-Elder Griffin 

To the Family:

Hey guys. Things are going well out here. The temperature is dropping and the leaves are changing. When it rains it doesn't stop until mother nature wants it to be done!! It's great though. I like it out here but I don't think I would ever want to live out here. It's just too green... almost like a moldy green!

My comp is from west Jordan Utah

His name is a German name, and we are getting along just great!!

The members feed us most of the times, and yes I am very grateful for the skill to cook.

The humidity is fine as long as it isn't hot. The coat fits just fine and thank you!!!

The Bible is great but our biggest "sickle" is the Book of Mormon.

Out here, you just need to know your basic church doctrine, 

and be able to teach it to a 5 year old!!

We have a hand full of investigators, and yes the couple that just got married is still progressing. We have a baptism date set for sometime in October!

The woods just have an old creepy feeling in them, and when it gets dark 

it is REALLY dark in those woods.

We have 8 missionaries in our district. Two sets of elders, two sets of sisters.  I have not had to speak in church....yet!!

Love you guys 

Pretty impressive sized leaf!  They don't usually grow that big back home!

Hard at work??? or hardly working!!!!  :)

Ummmm..... I could go for some fried chicken right about now!!

Take a book.... Leave a book.... Yes, they put a Book of Mormon in there!!

Showing off his cooking skills.... Homemade biscuits and gravy!!

I am glad that one of them is working!!  :)

Who Preordered Fall?

To start things of we did some exchanges. So I got to go with my district leader Elder Walker. We had an appointment where we were going to invite this gal to be baptized, but she canceled on us. So we went tracking and the third house we came to we ran into Joan. We gave her a Book of Mormon and a restoration pamphlet. We taught her most of the restoration, and she was crying at the end. 

We then we ran into a pastor who told us that Joseph Smith took everything from the Masons, and that at the root of Masonic teachings is satanic.  He also said that we couldn't believe in the atonement because we don't believe in the Trinity.  For future references, Masonic teachings come from people who are trying to follow the teachings of Christ. For those of you who study it, you'll find that a lot of their ceremonies are close to the temple ceremonies. There is nothing satanic about them. Joseph Smith was a mason, as well as George Washington. This pastor then proceeded to tell us that we can't believe in the atonement because we don't believe in the trinity. This pastor does not know his bible. You can't win over bible bashers. Their hearts are so set in stone that you can't move them.   

Wednesday I was back in my area. We had gotten five new investigators while I was gone. And they set someone with a baptism date! With this we went out hoping that all is well.... but it all fell apart, except for one appointment!  Our first appointment never showed up. He called and said he was coming but his ten minuets is a mix of a "lady's ten minuets," and a "Mormon's ten minuets." 

With dinner the father called us and told us that he was not going to make it... well, we Elders can not be in someone's house without another adult male being there, PLUS, the sister missionaries were already there, and the president doesn't want two sets of missionaries having dinner together with a member.  The White Handbook says that dinner should be done by six p.m.  So, we just about turned around when they called us and told us that we could come by and pick up dinner, and take it home. We get there and found out that dinner won't be ready for another 20 to 30 minutes! So we went out proselyting. It wasn't our area but we figured we might as well try. We found nothing!  So we came back and grabbed our dinner, and somehow didn't spill it getting to our next appointment!  

This family is usually on the wild side but the Lord blessed us and they were calm tonight. We came  back and went out finding again. We talked to a lady who asked us why we were out so late. She then asked us questions like if we were going to get another wife. We told her no and then taught her some of the reasons why the LDS church adopted the standard of polygamy. We had some good laughs with her, and all is well.

 I have come to find out that everyone for the most part loves the Mormon missionaries, but for the most part they think that we are the Jehovah Witnesses, and no one likes the JW missionaries because they try to slam the gospel down your throat. 

Thursday was another eventful day. I woke up to my companion telling me that we needed to bless our apartment. He told me of this creepy dream that he had, and then about a creepy experience he had. Let's just say that for the past few nights I've been feeling a spirit here that I don't want here. It's such a blessing to hold the priesthood. To be able to bring light I to the dark places, and to completely cast out darkness. 

He had a good lesson with Caitlyn where she opened up to us about her past, and that she could really feel a difference with the church and that it made her happy. Then we had dinner with the Bishop. He is a great guy. He and his wife go around to the prisons and they get to change the lives of some of the inmates as well as some of those that are in solitary confinement. They were telling us about how these people want to change, and how they can really see that they are truly sorry for what they have done. They even adopted one of the the inmates that got freed because he had no family. 

Later we went to teach a Anna, who is a recent convert, about the ten commandments. She is like nine or ten and she is one of the sweetest kids you'll ever meet. She was singing us songs, and she was coming to us with questions on scriptures from the Isaiah chapters in the Book of Mormon!! 

Me and my companion started our journey home and we turned down a dirt road that seamed to take us into the deep of the woods. We found a spot and quickly turned around and booked it out of there. We came back and we blessed the apartment. It feels better here. Not like the temple, but it is better. 

Friday was another long day of weekly planning. In my opinion this should not take four hours, but President wants us to take three to four hours... all I can say is that he knows better than I do. Afterwards, we then got to go to Caitlyn and Matt's wedding. That had to be the funniest ceremony that I've ever seen/heard. He said things like till "Zombie do you part," just to give you an idea of what it was like. They were both supper happy. 

Later, we went to go teach a Kid named Julian. He talked mostly about the priesthood. It's so weird around here. The local school and little league's have games on Sundays and so it's supper hard to get people to church because they have got ballgames. Even some of the local non members think that it's weird to have all of these games on a Sunday.  It's not like it's major leagues or anything. 

We explained the difference between the Aaronic and Melchezidec Priesthood. It took a while but with some TLC he got it. 

Saturday was a day of rain. Not like Texas right now, but a light drizzle. Just all day. We played basketball. Brother Decker has too much football in him. It's a good thing I'm a big guy!   Afterwards we went to see the James family. We taught them the law of chastity...teaching young kids about the law of chastity...they fed us lunch, which was great.  We then came back and talked to Joshua. He has been baptized for almost a year and they are trying to get him to the temple. He talked about how he has been able to recognize the blessings in his life that have come from him being baptized. We then came back and had dinner and we went off to see Ruthy. She falls victim to the PA ramble. She was talking on and on about how she feels that the Bible is incomplete. "Well, if you let us talk, we have a book of Mormon for you!" She's great though. We downloaded the Gospel Library App onto her phone.

Anyways... all is good in the east. Love you guys!