Week 38...Transfer #7 and A "Taste" of Spring

 Elder Muir hanging and playing pool with Claude at the senior center

 Elder Muir on Zachary Dr. in Manheim, PA

Elder Muir, Elder B, Bro. F, Sis. F, Sis T & Sis D

The F family hosted the Elders & Sisters on Christmas day  

February 24, 2014

Howdy,

      I thought I would send you a quick email before I get to your questions.  Also, here are a few pictures. The first one is me with Claude playing pool at the senior center.  Another is our district with  F family.  We ate dinner with them yesterday.   The last one is me on Zachary Drive out in Manheim.  I figured I had to have a picture of my own Drive J  BTW, I did get the package you sent with the chocolate hearts, glad that all worked out.  

     Sounds like you all had a great week.  Glad Bro. & Sis. B were able to talk with Colleen and talk about their mission.  I am sure they missed them and I know all the missionaries out here miss them.  I wished I would have had more contact with them than just when I came out.  Elder M (AP) is awesome, he is so funny and a great missionary.  Well I guess onto answering your questions about transfers.

1. What happened with transfers?   Are you staying or going?  We both are staying.  I was quite surprised, I thought for sure that I would be leaving even though I have only been here 4 1/2 months (3 transfers).   This will be the longest I have been with a companion (Elder B and I are on our 3^rd transfer together) and the longest I’ve been in an area (I was in Camp Hill 3 transfers and this will be my 4^th transfer in Lititz).  So there you have it, we are both staying put. 
2. What's the scoop on your area for transfers?  Tell me what you know...  Well transfers is really taking a hit on our district.   Everyone but our companionship was affected in some way, shape or form.  Sis. T is leaving and she will be training someone.  So Sis. D will be getting a new comp (most likely it is someone from the Pittsburgh side of the mission).  They are both driving to Pittsburgh tonight.  The ZL's are in our district and we are getting a new ZL’s, so that is another change.  The other sisters that are in our district will be getting another companion which makes them a trio.  So that is the scoop on transfers.  So onto another 6 weeks here in wonderful Lititz.  I’m good with it and it means you may have some more Wilbur Buds coming your way soon. 
3. What are the highs/lows this week?  Well a big high was yesterday's sacrament meeting.  The YW were in charge of the sacrament meeting program.  Instead of doing New Beginnings as a Wednesday night activity they decided to do it as the sacrament program.  It was awesome and very cool to see all of the YW participate.  Basically they had all of the girls up on stand and they said the YW theme together and then they had each class president go over what it says about each class (Beehive, Mia Maid & Laurel) in the personal progress book.  It was cool to hear what each of them meant, I hadn’t ever read about that before.  After all of the YW sang the 2014 mutual theme song Come unto Christ.  They did a great job!  After the song they had some of the girls talk about each of the 8 values and what each of them meant.  It was amazing to hear about the program that the YW have to help them grow into divine daughters of God and I love seeing it in action.  I hope that I can one day find a wife who has completed her personal progress and lives her life according to those values.  So basically I thought it was cool the way they did it in sacrament meeting instead of as a normal Wednesday night activity.  So Megan, way to go on your personal progress…keep going at it, it will help you find an epic husband.  Another high was Zone training, I will explain more about that in the question below.  Also we were able to do a lot of finding this week.  We have a few potentials that we are trying to go back and see this week.  Hopefully we will see some success from some of our finding because are teaching pool is kind of tanking right now.  We have not been able to have a lot of lessons this week.  Another high was we took advantage of the warm weather this weekend and we and the sisters decided to sing in downtown Lititz again on Saturday. 
4. What are 5 positive things?  1) Well I was able to run again this morning.  2) We were able to place quite a few BOM's this week.  3) I am continuing to eat asparagus as people feed it to me.  4) I invited Danny to be baptized.  5) And…drum roll, you can actually start to see some of the lawn again. 
5. How's the weather been this week?  It has been pretty nice this week.  There have been a few cloudy days and a little bit of rain, but most of the week was in the 40's. 
6. How was your zone training?  It was awesome!!!  We learned how to do better role plays that would allow us develop better lesson plans.  President talked about how to be better at answering questions people have using the BOM. 
7. Did you learn anything new/interesting/exciting at the training?  Like I said, we learned a new and improved way to role play.
8. Did you see Elder J (current AP and Zach’s 1^st comp) at the training?  No, he only comes to zone conference.  He and Elder M  were busy dealing with transfers and getting that done.
9. When does Elder B go home?  Does he have 1 or 2 more transfers after this upcoming one?  He has 2 more, he goes home with Elder M and President at the beginning of July. 
10. How are things with the investigators?  Well if we could meet with them it would be wonderful, but this week we have not really met with many of them. 
1. A?  Well we had a lesson set with him for Tuesday but he was not there.  We keep trying to go back but we seem to not be able to catch him. 
2. Kenya couple (apartment complex)?  We have stopped over a couple of times but he is super busy with work and working lots of double shifts.  So he is never home, he said he would text us when he is available so we will see what happens. 
3. T?  We dropped him because he’s not really interested anymore. 
4. D & TP?  Boy this is a story.  We pretty much have dropped both of them for right now.  He is not really motivated to do much right now and not really reading at all.  He really has the winter blues and he is sort of depressed.  I was on exchange with a member of the ward and we had a decent lesson with him and tried to set him with a baptism date of March 29.  He would not give us a definitive answer so I told him to pray about.  Elder B and I were planning on giving him the drop talk this week but we stopped by yesterday just to see how he was doing.  He said he did not really have any motivation because of the winter, cold and snow so he said he would call us when he is ready to meet with us.  So right now we are putting our teaching with him on hold.  So this is where it gets sort of interesting.  Later after we left  D’s we got a text from Sister W saying to either call her or stop by.  So we called and she said she just got an angry call from TP (she and TP are decent friends).  Apparently TP doesn't really like it when we just randomly stop by to visit D.  Apparently it causes drama between the 2 of them.  She said she would rather we either text her or have an appointment already set with him.  The problem is she never responds to half of our stuff that we send her.  So dropping by is sometimes the only way to contact him.  Sister W agrees with us that maybe we need to give them a break and she also knows TP doesn't respond to most of our texts and is kind of flaky to begin with.  So we were quite surprised to hear about this and we’ve decided we’re just going to put those 2 on the back burner for a bit.  So that is our drama with them.  Pray for them that they’ll have the desire to continue to learn and that they’ll feel the spirit.   
5. J (11 yr old boy)?  We have talked to him a bit but we haven’t really had a formal lesson.  So hopefully this week we can meet with him. 
6. Any new leads/investigators?  Well like I said above we did a lot of street contacting last week and we were able to get a few people to say we could come back.  Our biggest lead is a media referral that was given to us from some Wisconsin missionaries.  It’s a guy they were teaching there and he has moved back with his parents in PA.  He was set with a baptism date and has been to church a few times in Wisconsin.  So hopefully we can get things moving with him and get him baptized. 
11. I family?  They have been out of town and busy for the past little while so we have not had a lesson with them for a while.  We have something set for tonight so we will see what happens. 
12. Any fun upcoming activities?  Stake conference is coming up next month.  The missionary couple that is overseeing the Philadelphia temple construction is coming to speak at stake conference.  That should be interesting.  We also have a ward talent show coming up. 
13. Can we help or pray for anything?  Pray that D Danny will want to be taught here again in the near future and things will pick back up again with him. 
14. Are you happy/OK with how things will be for transfers?  Yes, I am happy.   It would be nice to see more of PA but I can’t complain with the situation I have here in Lititz.  It’s an awesome place with great people that are willing to do member missionary work. 

I think this quote by Elder Scott goes along great with what you said about your RS lesson yesterday from Pres. Monson’s talk.   He says, "Just when all seems to be going right, challenges often come in multiple doses applied simultaneously. When those trials are not consequences of your disobedience, they are evidence that the Lord feels you are prepared to grow more (see Prov. 3:11–12). He therefore gives you experiences that stimulate growth, understanding, and compassion which polish you for your everlasting benefit. To get you from where you are to where He wants you to be requires a lot of stretching, and that generally entails discomfort and pain."  https://www.lds.org/general-conference/1995/10/trust-in-the-lord?lang=eng  I think that statement is very true, especially as a missionary.  You can be doing everything right and be exactly obedient and be doing everything good you could imagine, but there still has to be trials and hardships because God knows we can handle them and he needs us to grow and learn.  Those growth times are the times that I have grown the most on my mission.  Remember “there is no growth in the comfort zone and no comfort in the growth zone.”

Well I hope that made and brightened (2 for 1) your day.  So we’re onto another 6 weeks with the Lititz ward and continuing the Lord’s errand of missionary work. 

Love you,

Elder Muir