Week 63...Happy Birthday Elder

August 18, 2014

 Birthday surprise delivered to Elder Muir this morning

 Birthday banner for Elder Muir

 The "district" before transfers last week

 Love the green & corn fields behind  the church parking lot

Elder Muir & Elder B at dinner with the branch president & wife

Howdy Family,

Hey, sounds like you’ve had quite the week.  It has been good here.  Glad all is well at home.  I’m excited to see the “surprise” you have planned for my birthday.  Yes, I will be home for 9:30 am on Wednesday morning J   I am sure whatever it is it will be awesome and we’ll have fun with it.  Yes, I have heard the song, Bless My Son.  I have it on a flash drive.  We’re able to listen to the group that sings it. I think the lady that sings it is the person who plays Emma Smith in the Joseph Smith movie.   

1. How was your week?  What were the highs & lows?  This week has been a pretty good week.  We have been somewhat slow with our teaching, especially with the investigators that have been progressing.  They seem to have slowed down and we have focused our attention on some other new leads we’ve found.  Kane seems to be where all of our work is right now.  On Saturday we had a cool thing happen in Kane. We were just walking around and one of the ice cream vans stopped and gave us free ice cream.  Come to find out she was baptized about 15 years ago but hasn’t really been to church ever since.  She gave us her phone number and birthday so we can track down her records.  However, the clerk cannot find them so we are not sure what the deal is with that.  Hopefully we are going to meet with her sometime this week.  Ironically, yesterday we saw her again in Ridgway.  She told us that when we saw her on Saturday she was doing a new route and could not find the street that she was supposed to be on.  She saw us and then realized that was street she needed to be on.   She called it divine intervention.  We’re hoping to meet with her and help her come back to church.  After we were done talking with her we were walking down the road and we ran into some other people and we were able to talk with them too.  One of them was a member that had not been to church in a while.  Her brother is on our records, but they have no idea where he is at.  We are going to try and see her again and get her records.  A low has been slow progress of our potential baptisms. It has been hard contacting them this past week. The biggest low is our miles again.  We have to go all over the area so it makes things sort of difficult.  A big high was yesterday at church.  Sis. B  knew my birthday was coming up and after sacrament she asked us to come to primary for a minute.  It was awesome, the primary kids sang me a primary Happy Birthday song and then gave us cupcakes.  It was pretty cute and very thoughtful.   Another big high was Bro. B  was finally able to make it to church yesterday.  He has said he was going to come for a long time but never has  but finally yesterday he came.  We went to the S family’s  farm and helped clean the barn and split logs.  I will get pictures of it next time I am up there. 
2. What's your schedule like for the week with the GA coming on Tuesday?  Other than the conference our week is pretty normal.  We need to be in State College by 8:30 am tomorrow morning.  It’s about 75 miles away and takes about an hour to get there.  The Dubois elders are going to pick us up at about 7 am.  We will be talking about the Doctrine of Christ.  I really like 3 Nephi 11. Jesus Christ descends from heaven and teaches the people about the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. He invites them to repent and be baptized, receive the Holy Ghost and endure to the end.  This is the doctrine of Christ.  It talks about voices they heard that they didn’t recognize.  Sometimes we have that same problem, we have short spiritual memories. How quickly we forget the messages and promptings that come to us, and begin to evaluate our mortal experiences base on our secular understanding.  Elder Packer taught, “ As an Apostle I listen now to the same inspiration, coming from the same source, in the same way, that I listened to as a boy. However, the signal is much clearer now.”  I find it interesting how it all ties together and how baptism and temple covenants all relate to that. 
3. How is the new calling going?  Good so far, nothing terrible yet.  The biggest thing was trying to get a lesson ready for district meeting.  I had my first lesson on Wednesday and it went pretty well. 
4. What duties do you now have as DL?  What does the DL do?  Basically I have to teach district meeting and collect the numbers at the end of each week and then report them to the ZL's.  I’m in charge of the district making sure things are running smoothly, let’s hope they go smoothly. 
5. How many people are in your district?  6
6. Do you teach at district meetings?  Yes How was your first meeting?  It went very well.  I was sort of nervous but it turned out good.  I taught about the role of the Holy Ghost in conversion.  We had some great ideas and discussion on how we can help our investigators recognize the spirit.  When do you have them?  Wednesday mornings. 
7. How's the weather?  Did you get a lot of rain at the beginning of last week?  It rained quite a bit on Tuesday last week but other than that it has been super nice.  It has been like mid 70's with a nice breeze and not too humid. 
8. What are 5 positive things from the week?  We got 2 media referrals that are actually going somewhere.  We have a member referral that took a BOM.  Also the weather has been pretty nice. 
9. How are things with your investigators? (do I dare ask after last week's news)
1.  S, J, G, P & L? (BTW, where did  L come from, never heard about her before last week).  Give me some background on these people.  Are they related?  Do they live together?  How old are they etc?  Are any of them members?  They are doing well.  They are the people that have been kind of regressing.  We have not seen them in a while but we have been texting back and forth.  G was at church yesterday.  So here’s the scoop…all of them live under the same roof.  Now I will explain who is who…L (20, I think) is a cousin that moved in with them a while ago.  I thought I had mentioned her before, but I guess not.  She is a cousin to P & S.  She is one of our investigators.  G is also an investigator.  He is 41 and used to be S’s  boyfriend but they broke up and she is back with her old boyfriend in Johnsonburg.  That is kind of a saga and long story.   G is moving out soon.  So we are not really teaching S anymore.  S is a less active along with P and they are sisters.  J is P’s boyfriend.  He is 31 and is an investigator also.     
2.  S and her brother? (any news about E or other members of the family)  How old is S?  S is doing good.  We had a great lesson with her last week in a member’s home with a recap of the restoration.  She wanted to come to church but they were out of town and her mom does not really want her to go.  Her mom is kind of anti about all of it.  So we will see where it goes.  She says her “prayer dreams” have been answered but she told us that through a text.  We have another lesson with tomorrow in a member’s home so I think it will be explained more tomorrow night in the lesson.  She is 18.  We don’t have any new news on E. 
3. The G family?  They are doing well.  We have not really talked to them much because they have been busy.  We are having dinner with them on Thursday. 
4. Any new leads or anything else going on?  Well we have a media referral that requested a bible and BOM that we taught a little but we have not been able to contact since.  Also some members told us to go visit their neighbor and hopefully we can sit down and teach her. 
   
   
10. How are the members?  They are doing great and continue to hasten the work and are a big help to us.  Really without the members’ help we don’t progress much.  Members and missionaries working together is really the key. 
11. Any service opportunities?  We have some people moving out and some are moving in. So we are helping with that this weekend. 
12. Do you do anything fun on pdays?  Not really because we never have extra miles to do anything.  Also everything exciting is outside of our area.  So we just hang at the apartment after we shop and email.  We’re not too exciting.  Hopefully my next area will have things to do on pday. 
13. How are things with you and Elder B?  They are going well.  We continue to have our ups and downs, but really overall things are good. 
14. Who's the new missionary in your district that replaced Elder H?  Elder T, he came out the transfer before i did. 
15. Are you happy and healthy?  Yes  

Well things are going well here and i can't wait for the packages and surprise om Wednesday morning. 

Attached are some pictures of the district before the tansfer and then some of the church and its surroundings. 

Love you :)

Elder Muir