Dearest Mommy,
It's interesting that you mention how Katie going off to school will be the best thing for her at this point in her life, so that she can think and act for herself without being under you constant vigilance. If I read correctly, you said that it will allow her to become who she really is without you telling her what to do... As I read that, I couldn't help but think that Heavenly Father probably thought the EXACT same thing when he sent you and I down here to earth... we reached a point where we weren't going to grow any more until we were given the opportunity to act and do things of our own free will and choice... I don't wanna say that God is an empty-nester, but I'm sure he had similar feelings sending his kids out into the world knowing they could potentially make some big boo-boo's, but recognizing, like you and dad do, that this is her opportunity to make some major growth happen in her life that she otherwise wouldn't gain... anyway, kind of a cool thought that came to mind :-)
This week has been...well... semi-eventful. Like always, let's start with last Monday, shall we? We ended up spending quite a bit of our monthly stipend for kicks and giggles haha... Don't worry, I won't be dipping into the "mommy and daddy fund" anytime soon, but it was kinda fun to get some new clothes from Marshalls for pretty cheap. One interesting thing that night happened during dinner though. We ate with the Dahl family, and good grief their kids are smart! Almost the entire dinner, they were scheming the various ways they could make money when they were older... almost to the point of obsessing over it. One of the kids asked his mom that if she had as much money as Bill Gates if she'd give him a million dollars. She said no, and the kid seemed quite upset about it. This gave me an idea of what we could share for the spiritual thought, so we took them to the book of Mormon after we finished eating. In the first chapter of Alma, there's kind of a cool story that happens. As the story goes, this is where Nehor starts preaching false doctrine, gets owned by Gideon, kills him because he was so mad, and in turn is executed. This causes a stir in the church, where some people leave, and others become stronger. The cool part starts in verse 27:
"26 And when the priests left their labor to impart the word of God unto the people, the people also left their labors to hear the word of God. And when the priest had imparted unto them the word of God they all returned again diligently unto their labors; and the priest, not esteeming himself above his hearers, for the preacher was no better than the hearer, neither was the teacher any better than the learner; and thus they were all equal, and they did all labor, every man according to his strength.
"27 And they did impart of their substance, every man according to that which he had, to the poor, and the needy, and the sick, and the afflicted; and they did not wear costly apparel, yet they were neat and comely.
28 And thus they did establish the affairs of the church; and thus they began to have continual peace again, notwithstanding all their persecutions.
29 And now, because of the steadiness of the church they began to be exceedingly rich, having abundance of all things whatsoever they stood in need—an abundance of flocks and herds, and fatlings of every kind, and also abundance of grain, and of gold, and of silver, and of precious things, and abundance of silk and fine-twined linen, and all manner of good homely cloth.
30 And thus, in their prosperous circumstances, they did not send away any who were naked, or that were hungry, or that were athirst, or that were sick, or that had not been nourished; and they did not set their hearts upon riches; therefore they were liberal to all, both old and young, both bond and free, both male and female, whether out of the church or in the church, having no respect to persons as to those who stood in need.
31 And thus they did prosper and become far more wealthy than those who did not belong to their church.
32 For those who did not belong to their church did indulge themselves in sorceries, and in idolatry or idleness, and in babblings, and in envying and strife; wearing costly apparel; being lifted up in the pride of their own eyes; persecuting, lying, thieving, robbing, committing whoredoms, and murdering, and all manner of wickedness; nevertheless, the law was put in force upon all those who did transgress it, inasmuch as it was possible.
Never once does it say that having lots and lots of money is a bad thing in there... it's all a matter of what ya do with it. If you handle it the right way, the Lord will bless you with more, because he knows he can trust you with it. The words from D&C section four come to mind "...with an eye single to the glory of God" seems to fit pretty well. If you have the right intentions and desires with it, you'll get it. Like it talks about in Jacob 2:18-19, if you seek first the kingdom of God, you will seek for riches with the intent to do good with them... kinda cool... and probably words of advice for myself as well since I go through cash like water haha.
Okay, aside from that, one funny thing we did this week for the Steers since they're out of town is that we babysat their dog Belle... I used to hate that stupid dog because every time we go over to the house, they open the door, and that little miniature poodle comes running through the doorway, barking, and biting my pant leg. Anyway, we ended up babysitting the little mutt, and because of it, now the dang dog won't leave me alone... she loves me! It's okay though, I've come to like her too haha.
Anyway, moving on. Tuesday, we had a sweet district meeting. Seriously, it was probably the best one I've had in English... ever! We talked about obedience for the spiritual thought, and it was cool to see how some of the elders have had struggles with obedience, but have all overcome that and are desiring to do what's right as cool kids and not as sticklers so that they can be themselves and still serve and work hard. For the training, we discussed how to begin teaching various types of investigators and members to help the more effectively come unto Christ. It turned out to be a really good thing where we learned a lot and were able to apply it to the family we taught that night... we've re-established expectations and are starting the lessons with them from the beginning to help him learn the gospel...sweet! Oh, and it's the Allen family :-)
Wednesday wasn't too terribly exciting... we visited Nikki and decided to pull back on the baptismal date we'd extended her because it's gonna take time to get her ready. Aside from that, we had a good visit with Joe (the jeep kid) where we helped him weld some new shock mounts on his rear axle because they both snapped off... lemme tell ya, Jeeps are REALLY high quality... especially the 1995 Wrangler SE model :-)
Thursday was really kind of a sad day for me... The reason being that elder Cox went home. Let me rephrase that so it doesn't sound like he's a sinner haha. Elder Cox finished his mission and went back to start school this coming week. I really feel like I lost a brother out here in the mission with him going home, and elder Van Hook too. It's interesting to see how as you go along in the mission, at first you build up a lot of ties with a lot of different people (missionaries especially). the further you get into your mission, however, those ties start to break. Not because you don't care about the people, but because they start leaving--disappearing. As you near the end of your mission, you see all of your close friends and examples going home, and not that you want to leave the mission early, but you miss all of them and feel that there's a void because of it... it's not something you can simply fill with a new elder, because the new elders don't share the experiences that you did with your close friends who have departed. I know this is a downer paragraph, but gosh it's an interesting phase of missionary life that I think happens to everyone.
Friday, we had a day of tracting, and I was really frustrated. I felt we didn't have any real success, and I kept asking myself "am I really being effective right now?" That kinda put me in a glum state of mind for a bit until we went to dinner. The DeMaris' had us over and invited Allie so that we could start the new member lessons with her afterward. Dinner was sweet, and Clint still makes me want to be a chiropractor (and I'm gonna do it!) when I finish my undergrad haha. Anyway, after dinner was what made the day sweet. The lesson we had with Allie was about the temple, and it totally ROCKED! Seriously, the Spirit was super strong, and the discussion we had was just awesome talking about the different aspects and blessing associated with it. Allie is gonna love it when she can go. Speaking of which, she's locked and loaded for baptisms on the 23rd of this month :-) After having that lesson, though, looking back on the day, I knew that the Lord had made that lesson possible as a way of saying "yes, that crappy contacting you did in the park today was worth it... now quit whining!"
Saturday, we had our SPC breakfast in McMinnville, came back, mowed the Steers lawn (and I spelled out "Mooney" in the back... pretty sweet haha), and had a picnic for dinner! It was awesome! Nikki (not the one we're teaching... she's a ward member haha) Davis' husband was going to be gone, so we had either the option of dropping off the dinner or doing a picnic, so we took advantage to have an awesome picnic in the park... it rocked! She and my DCBFF put together some awesome wraps, an Asian chicken salad (no, not the kind with ramen noodles in it), and some killer peanut butter chocolate chip cookies (which we have in the car and are still enjoying, might I add).
The only thing more sweet was Sunday. We had some sweet spiritual guidance given.. interestingly enough, both sacrament meetings were about service (guess this bodes well for the homecoming talk, eh?), and the talks were awesome! There was one given (actually by Nikki's husband Ben) that compared being selfish vs. being selfless... it was kind of an interesting talk in that it helped me recognize that sometimes what we see as selfless sacrifice is truly something very self-centered. I don't know, I really liked it though... it was pretty sweet.
After that, we had a rip-roarin' time down at the temple because we started doing temple tours! In all honesty, it wasn't anything terribly exciting, but it was cool because Allie had the opportunity to go to the temple for the first time and really feel of the Spirit that is there on the grounds... now that they finished remodeling it anyway :-P
Well, that's about the excitement for the week here. I'm looking forward to a full transfer of hard work to finish out the mission and seeing you guys afterward... it's gonna be awesome! I love you guys so much, and I hope that everything goes well with Katie Jo heading off to school... you'll have to forward me her address so I can write her when she gets down there... although it'll only be for a month or so haha. Transfer calls are coming this next Saturday, so we'll see how things pan out... who knows? The most logical would be to let me finish in Sherwood, but there's always the possibility that they pull me to finish my training in Spanish... Guess only time will tell! Ooh! L. Tom Perry is gonna be speaking that day!
love you all,
-Elder Mooney
Monday, August 15, 2011
Monday, August 8, 2011
Hard work and service
Dearest Mommy,
Well, this week was pretty dang exciting in some ways... lemme tell ya about it! This past Monday, we had one heck of a p-day cause guess what... Kyle came over from Bend to visit! We took him bowling with the Steers and Allie, and it was a total blast! We had a good time as we talked and joked about life and how badly we suck at bowling... I really miss hanging out with that kid on a regular basis. One thing that's funny is that holy crap he is so dang skinny! He has seriously lost a lot of weight! He said that he's running every day now, so I guess that definitely helps. Anyway, it made for a good p-day, although we've still got to find a way to throw him into the baptismal font haha. Someday it'll happen I'm sure.
Tuesday we didn't have any district meetings (thank goodness!) because we had zone conference the following day, but we got called in for a sudden move of the Forkner family... we were a little confused because just a week before we had talked to them about him helping us out with splits the next week, but I guess they're taking off, so whatever. Anyway, it turned out to be a good time talking and laughing with brother Forkner along with the two guys he hired to help them get everything moved into the truck. I have to say, it makes life about a thousand times easier when people actually take the time to box up stuff before calling in the moving crew... we were able to get the entire house moved into the truck within three hours... awesome right? I thought so anyway. The guys he hired to move were non-members, so we had some good chats about the gospel as we packed things into the truck and talked about their lives. One of them was named Taylor Bacon, and he was a pretty cool guy... he seemed pretty dang interested in why we served missions, how we are called, etc... Anyway, we ended up leaving him with a card with our number on it, so hopefully down the road it'll help him move toward investigating :-)
Wednesday we had zone conference, and I don't mean to be negative, but it was kind of a let-down. I usually absolutely adore them because of the spiritual boost you receive and the energy you get from them to help you get motivated to hit the ground running afterward. This one was different because instead of getting that usual boost of inspiring messages and spiritually packed time, we found that president Morby simply wanted us to teach him what he needed to do, and he was recognizing to the entire group that he's a greenie and that he doesn't have any real missionary experience aside from what he had over 40 years ago... for me, it was kind of demoralizing. I'm not saying he's a bad guy by any stretch of the imagination, it was just kind of... I dunno... it didn't give me the boost I was looking forward to. Actually, we (elder Anderson and I) were picked to help President Morby with the training. I guess it's not necessarily his job to ensure that spiritual boost... maybe instead of expecting to just take things away from it, it's our job to contribute for the other missionaries now that we're old farts :-P
The rest of the day wasn't all bad because we had dinner with the Steers, so we were able to vent our frustrations to them over some tasty beef ribs with baked potatoes and then head to splits with the Cedar Creek ward. It turned out to be a pretty fun time :-) Brother DeMaris and I headed to the McHugh's (a recent move-in part member family) and just shot the breeze with them. It was actually pretty fun because we were able to work in the word of wisdom and how it related to brother DeMaris' witch-doctor practices of chiropractics :-P It was a fun time, and he makes me want to be a chiropractor for sure haha.
Thursday we decided to drop in on a companionship that's been having some...ahem... struggles with getting up on time, so as an incentive , we bought some sausage mcmuffins from mickey D's and took them over at around 8:00... Unfortunately, they didn't answer the door, so we ripped off the big "M" from the bag and stuck it through the door with a note on a mormon.org card about being up next time to enjoy the tasty artery-clogging goodness, then headed to the Hedges Creek elders' apartment. Luckily these two were awake and we enjoyed some nice breakfast and personal study with them :-P.
The rest of the day was quite a party... we had a picnic in the park, and afterward we helped Allie to clean out/paint her apartment because she's looking to leave it. Now, Allie is a pretty clean person, but Jared and Mia (no offense to them, of course) were absolute pigs! Oh my gosh! So since they took off at the drop of a hat, they basically took nothing but the clothes on their backs, and left everything else. Unfortunately, that meant that we were left to clean it up. Wrappers, a dirty diaper, kitty poop, spoiled milk, a half-eaten apple, clothes EVERYWHERE, papers, no sheets on the bed... ugh. I won't even mention the rest of the stuff we found in there... it'll make for a good post-mission story for sure haha. Anyway, we got all that cleaned up and started painting. The rest of the apartment was fine, but Jared and Mia got the wild idea of painting their room...a nice turquoise blue! Bleh! Not only that, but they decided to get that paint on a few parts of the ceiling, as well as on the door frame and ONE panel on the closet doors, so we had to paint the entire closet because of it... frustrating! We primed it, waited half an hour, then painted it. After that, we had to head out for dinner, etc, but it was all good.
Friday I went on exchange with elder Cox so that he could say goodbye to Ella Rose and a few other folks, and it was really kinda sad... He goes home this week for school! Depressing right? Hopefully he can come visit you guys, or if you take a trip down to St. George you can meet him, cause he's an absolute stud I love him. Things that day weren't too terribly exciting, just service for my DCBFF as well as for Cher (Cox had to say goodbye to her and have one last "sparkle with Jesus" haha) before going to lunch with Mark Cottle one last time. The one productive thing we were able to accomplish was stake reports... thank goodness they're done, cause I HATE doing them haha. They're time consuming, and they only get looked at one time, but if anything isn't accurate, it's a big deal.
Saturday we had our stake reports breakfast, which was a good time with President Campbell at his house pounding down the food and talking about how the stake is doing. They have a goal of 120 baptisms... and so far we're at 24 haha.. We got the 20, so now we just need "an hundred" more as sister DeLong would say :-) Aside from that, we had a sweet lesson with a lady named Nikki. She's the recently made friend of a less-active lady who we invited to learn, and she accepted... it turned out to be a good plan, cause in this lesson that we taught her on Saturday, she accepted a baptismal date for the 27th of August! Sweet Now we just gotta make sure we can get her prepped for that day... although we're gonna have to help her quit smoking to do it haha.
Sunday was a pretty cool day except I completely forgot that it was fast Sunday until I had already eaten and was in the shower... that's what happens when you're butt-tired in the mornings I guess haha. I was sitting there waking up in the hot water when I got thinking about it... it went something like this: "man I'm tired... Oh well at least it's a Sunday cause they're usually pretty relaxing days... hmm... Sunday... what day is it again? The seventh? Hmmm the seventh... first sunday of the month. Wait a second, FIRST Sunday of the month!? Crap! It's fast Sunday! I got out of the shower and burst into the living room where Anderson was sitting quietly in the recliner and I exclaimed "It's FAST SUNDAY!" he told me "yeah... I was gonna tell you not to eat, but I thought you were just washing dishes... did you have breakfast already?" Gosh I have a geezer memory early in the morning sometimes. It's comical, but kinda scary I think haha.
Anyway, aside from my "D'oh!" moment in the morning, the rest of the day was power packed... especially in the Cedar Creek ward. this past week has been absolutely crazy. There have been two deaths, two births, a suicide, a baby blessing, a convert baptism, a child of record baptism, lots of service performed, and a lot of priesthood blessings. I don't want to say that this ward is so spiritual because of all of these hard experiences, but I would argue that the missionary work is rolling forward so well because of them... When people turn to the Lord in times like these, it allows the Spirit to manifest itself so much more plainly in their lives to the point where other people that don't have the gospel in their lives can see it. I know that it's helped Allie in her coversion process, I know that it helps us find new people to teach, and I know that's why this ward is thriving. Christ-like love and service are the recipe for success in any ward and in any aspect of the gospel... we've definitely seen the fruits of that in the past couple of weeks, and we're hoping to be able to enjoy more of it as time moves along here.
The only other thing to report from this week is that we spent some good time with Scott and Heidi last night and did a sort of family home evening with them... they don't spend much time together as an entire family, so this was awesome to have all of them sit down and be able to talk and laugh instead of just having the tube on. Gosh I love the gospel and I love missionary work. I really am sad that the mission is winding down... I'm going to miss it a lot. Granted, I won't miss a few things, but in almost every aspect, the mission has come to mean everything to me... it's helped me become someone completely different from who I was, and I will forever be appreciative to the Lord for that. Don't worry, I'm not checked out yet.. there's too much to accomplish before that time comes to start slacking now. I love you guys, and I'll talk to ya next week.
All my love,
-Elder Kurt Mooney
Well, this week was pretty dang exciting in some ways... lemme tell ya about it! This past Monday, we had one heck of a p-day cause guess what... Kyle came over from Bend to visit! We took him bowling with the Steers and Allie, and it was a total blast! We had a good time as we talked and joked about life and how badly we suck at bowling... I really miss hanging out with that kid on a regular basis. One thing that's funny is that holy crap he is so dang skinny! He has seriously lost a lot of weight! He said that he's running every day now, so I guess that definitely helps. Anyway, it made for a good p-day, although we've still got to find a way to throw him into the baptismal font haha. Someday it'll happen I'm sure.
Tuesday we didn't have any district meetings (thank goodness!) because we had zone conference the following day, but we got called in for a sudden move of the Forkner family... we were a little confused because just a week before we had talked to them about him helping us out with splits the next week, but I guess they're taking off, so whatever. Anyway, it turned out to be a good time talking and laughing with brother Forkner along with the two guys he hired to help them get everything moved into the truck. I have to say, it makes life about a thousand times easier when people actually take the time to box up stuff before calling in the moving crew... we were able to get the entire house moved into the truck within three hours... awesome right? I thought so anyway. The guys he hired to move were non-members, so we had some good chats about the gospel as we packed things into the truck and talked about their lives. One of them was named Taylor Bacon, and he was a pretty cool guy... he seemed pretty dang interested in why we served missions, how we are called, etc... Anyway, we ended up leaving him with a card with our number on it, so hopefully down the road it'll help him move toward investigating :-)
Wednesday we had zone conference, and I don't mean to be negative, but it was kind of a let-down. I usually absolutely adore them because of the spiritual boost you receive and the energy you get from them to help you get motivated to hit the ground running afterward. This one was different because instead of getting that usual boost of inspiring messages and spiritually packed time, we found that president Morby simply wanted us to teach him what he needed to do, and he was recognizing to the entire group that he's a greenie and that he doesn't have any real missionary experience aside from what he had over 40 years ago... for me, it was kind of demoralizing. I'm not saying he's a bad guy by any stretch of the imagination, it was just kind of... I dunno... it didn't give me the boost I was looking forward to. Actually, we (elder Anderson and I) were picked to help President Morby with the training. I guess it's not necessarily his job to ensure that spiritual boost... maybe instead of expecting to just take things away from it, it's our job to contribute for the other missionaries now that we're old farts :-P
The rest of the day wasn't all bad because we had dinner with the Steers, so we were able to vent our frustrations to them over some tasty beef ribs with baked potatoes and then head to splits with the Cedar Creek ward. It turned out to be a pretty fun time :-) Brother DeMaris and I headed to the McHugh's (a recent move-in part member family) and just shot the breeze with them. It was actually pretty fun because we were able to work in the word of wisdom and how it related to brother DeMaris' witch-doctor practices of chiropractics :-P It was a fun time, and he makes me want to be a chiropractor for sure haha.
Thursday we decided to drop in on a companionship that's been having some...ahem... struggles with getting up on time, so as an incentive , we bought some sausage mcmuffins from mickey D's and took them over at around 8:00... Unfortunately, they didn't answer the door, so we ripped off the big "M" from the bag and stuck it through the door with a note on a mormon.org card about being up next time to enjoy the tasty artery-clogging goodness, then headed to the Hedges Creek elders' apartment. Luckily these two were awake and we enjoyed some nice breakfast and personal study with them :-P.
The rest of the day was quite a party... we had a picnic in the park, and afterward we helped Allie to clean out/paint her apartment because she's looking to leave it. Now, Allie is a pretty clean person, but Jared and Mia (no offense to them, of course) were absolute pigs! Oh my gosh! So since they took off at the drop of a hat, they basically took nothing but the clothes on their backs, and left everything else. Unfortunately, that meant that we were left to clean it up. Wrappers, a dirty diaper, kitty poop, spoiled milk, a half-eaten apple, clothes EVERYWHERE, papers, no sheets on the bed... ugh. I won't even mention the rest of the stuff we found in there... it'll make for a good post-mission story for sure haha. Anyway, we got all that cleaned up and started painting. The rest of the apartment was fine, but Jared and Mia got the wild idea of painting their room...a nice turquoise blue! Bleh! Not only that, but they decided to get that paint on a few parts of the ceiling, as well as on the door frame and ONE panel on the closet doors, so we had to paint the entire closet because of it... frustrating! We primed it, waited half an hour, then painted it. After that, we had to head out for dinner, etc, but it was all good.
Friday I went on exchange with elder Cox so that he could say goodbye to Ella Rose and a few other folks, and it was really kinda sad... He goes home this week for school! Depressing right? Hopefully he can come visit you guys, or if you take a trip down to St. George you can meet him, cause he's an absolute stud I love him. Things that day weren't too terribly exciting, just service for my DCBFF as well as for Cher (Cox had to say goodbye to her and have one last "sparkle with Jesus" haha) before going to lunch with Mark Cottle one last time. The one productive thing we were able to accomplish was stake reports... thank goodness they're done, cause I HATE doing them haha. They're time consuming, and they only get looked at one time, but if anything isn't accurate, it's a big deal.
Saturday we had our stake reports breakfast, which was a good time with President Campbell at his house pounding down the food and talking about how the stake is doing. They have a goal of 120 baptisms... and so far we're at 24 haha.. We got the 20, so now we just need "an hundred" more as sister DeLong would say :-) Aside from that, we had a sweet lesson with a lady named Nikki. She's the recently made friend of a less-active lady who we invited to learn, and she accepted... it turned out to be a good plan, cause in this lesson that we taught her on Saturday, she accepted a baptismal date for the 27th of August! Sweet Now we just gotta make sure we can get her prepped for that day... although we're gonna have to help her quit smoking to do it haha.
Sunday was a pretty cool day except I completely forgot that it was fast Sunday until I had already eaten and was in the shower... that's what happens when you're butt-tired in the mornings I guess haha. I was sitting there waking up in the hot water when I got thinking about it... it went something like this: "man I'm tired... Oh well at least it's a Sunday cause they're usually pretty relaxing days... hmm... Sunday... what day is it again? The seventh? Hmmm the seventh... first sunday of the month. Wait a second, FIRST Sunday of the month!? Crap! It's fast Sunday! I got out of the shower and burst into the living room where Anderson was sitting quietly in the recliner and I exclaimed "It's FAST SUNDAY!" he told me "yeah... I was gonna tell you not to eat, but I thought you were just washing dishes... did you have breakfast already?" Gosh I have a geezer memory early in the morning sometimes. It's comical, but kinda scary I think haha.
Anyway, aside from my "D'oh!" moment in the morning, the rest of the day was power packed... especially in the Cedar Creek ward. this past week has been absolutely crazy. There have been two deaths, two births, a suicide, a baby blessing, a convert baptism, a child of record baptism, lots of service performed, and a lot of priesthood blessings. I don't want to say that this ward is so spiritual because of all of these hard experiences, but I would argue that the missionary work is rolling forward so well because of them... When people turn to the Lord in times like these, it allows the Spirit to manifest itself so much more plainly in their lives to the point where other people that don't have the gospel in their lives can see it. I know that it's helped Allie in her coversion process, I know that it helps us find new people to teach, and I know that's why this ward is thriving. Christ-like love and service are the recipe for success in any ward and in any aspect of the gospel... we've definitely seen the fruits of that in the past couple of weeks, and we're hoping to be able to enjoy more of it as time moves along here.
The only other thing to report from this week is that we spent some good time with Scott and Heidi last night and did a sort of family home evening with them... they don't spend much time together as an entire family, so this was awesome to have all of them sit down and be able to talk and laugh instead of just having the tube on. Gosh I love the gospel and I love missionary work. I really am sad that the mission is winding down... I'm going to miss it a lot. Granted, I won't miss a few things, but in almost every aspect, the mission has come to mean everything to me... it's helped me become someone completely different from who I was, and I will forever be appreciative to the Lord for that. Don't worry, I'm not checked out yet.. there's too much to accomplish before that time comes to start slacking now. I love you guys, and I'll talk to ya next week.
All my love,
-Elder Kurt Mooney
Monday, August 1, 2011
Busy week + baptism
2011 August 1
Dearest Mommy,
Well, if your week was eventful, that makes two of us, cause this week has been pretty nuts! Like always, we'll start with last Monday after emails... In all honesty, it wasn't anything too terribly exciting during the day, but that night was freakin' sweet! We had another family home evening at the house with sister DeLong, and it was a super awesome spiritual experience because this time, instead of just getting to know Allie, she was able to tell her a little about the modern day prophets that she knows... it was the best "follow the prophet" lesson EVER. We also went over the baptismal interview questions with her, and she totally aced it... it was awesome. Seriously, this girl has the brightest burning testimony of any person I know right now-- life-long member or recent-convert. The funny thing was that we ended up chatting with sister DeLong and the Steers+Allie family 'til... well... maybe I shouldn't say so we don't incriminate ourselves haha. Anyway, suffice to say we were up late as usual. :-)
Now, for the next couple days, I'll apologize in advance, because I'm going to be ranting and raving about how missionaries are sometimes quite retarded and also quite pharasaic. I won't name any names, but yeah... the stories speak for themselves.
Tuesday we had district meeting in Tualatin, and it was quite comical. In that district, the district leader always sends out a text the night before letting everyone know the subject of the spiritual thought for the next day so that everyone can prepare something because somebody is always called at random to give their thought. Anyway, the subject was diligence, and this elder was called on to give the thought. He said "I knew this was gonna happen to me today!" and I asked if it was because he hadn't prepared like he was supposed to. He retorted by saying "no, it's because I've been studying it a lot and my head is full of scriptures about it!" The funny thing is that he ended up pulling out Galatians 5:22-23. For those of you that don't know, those are the "fruits of the spirit", and they have nothing to do with diligence basically... he said, "well, longsuffering and goodness are kind of related in this scripture... but I really like what it says about diligence in the bible dictionary." So he flipped... and flipped... and flipped... and flipped... and then muttered "huh... I guess it isn't in here." Quite comical. The best part was that his companion, the district leader, got up afterward to continue on the agenda, and said "make sure that you're really putting some thought into your preparation with these, because they're not just for you. You're here to help the whole group feel the Spirit, and if your spiritual thought sucks, nobody is going to be edified or get anything out of it." Kind of a gentle smack-down :-P
Later that day, the same district leader (who is a total champ and whose name is elder Avey) conducted Allie's baptismal interview, which went wonderfully. She came out locked and loaded (and excited) for baptism.
Wednesday, there was another derty-der moment with a missionary unfortunately. We had our Wednesday district meeting in McMinnville, and when we got there, we found out that there was a companionship that didn't show up because one of the elders was "sick." I put it in quotations, because when we went to go see how he was doing, we found him asleep, and not sick at all haha. His companion had a look of "oh crap" on his face when he answered the door at 11:00, and his companion (the sick one) had an even bigger look of "oh crap" when I took about 50 very, very unapproved CD's away from him along with a pair of headphones. I didn't do it to be a friggin' Nazi, but this is the same kid who caught with an iPod touch and a Nintendo DS away from! Some people just never learn... ya know? I love the kid to death, but man he needs to stop being dumb as a box of rocks! In all honesty, I don't even mind if the elders aren't the most obedient as long as they're getting the work done that they're supposed to, but when they're disobedient AND don't get any work done, there's a major problem. Anyway, I'll have to tell you guys some fun stories about this whole situation when I get home haha... it's more fun that way :-P
Another thing that happened that day was with our investigator Nick. We went over to a member's home for our scheduled lesson with him, and we saw him walking past the driveway from the porch, and wondered why he wasn't coming up the driveway. We called to him, and again, we saw this look of "oh crap" on his face (we kinda seem to get a lot of that lately). He came over and said we were ready to start the lesson, and he said "oh yeah! Sorry I was spacin' man." He didn't have his book of Mormon with him, so we sent him to retrieve it from his house which is a whopping 300 feet from this member. He went to get it, and NEVER CAME BACK! We just kinda sat there and laughed about it with the Hamm's... unfortunately, we might have to drop him soon because of it. Oh well haha it was kinda comical.
That night we had splits with the Cedar Creek ward and taught Allie how to pay her tithing and about the law of the fast... it went pretty well.
Thursday, we did some epic service for Scott & Heidi again, and had a sweet talk with Sam. We got talking about her family and how her dad's opinion of the church has turned a complete 180 because of the example of the Steers family as well as from having us around... he's an awesome guy... I just wish we could teach him more often haha. One satisfying thing about all that dang service for them is that the house is looking way, way better too. :-)
Friday we had zone leader council, and it was another one of those "stupid missionaries!" moments. We spent more than 45 minutes talking about how the music policy had NOT CHANGED! It was friggin' ridiculous. When I talk about missionaries being pharisaic, this is where that came from, because it was a total joke. We had a missionary saying "well it doesn't say hymns as part of the approved music list. Does that mean that we can't listen to them? The Singles Ward soundtrack is all hymns, does that still qualify as approved?" Another person asked "what exactly is considered classical music? If I have a remastered rock album that is re-done by an orchestra, does that count as approved?" When we went to ZLC, I didn't know we were going to be re-writing the law of Moses... bunch of dang Pharisees. I know my attitude about all of this is super, super negative, but it's just so frustrating to have people so wrapped around the axle with this nit-picky nonsense instead of focusing on their purpose as a missionary... it's idiotic. Okay, I'm done venting, I promise!
After the Pharisee fest, we had dinner with the Rey family in the Woodhaven ward. I love that family because they give me an excuse to speak Spanish for an hour or so :-) Oh and yes mom, I do have time to speak it still... actually like every day, so I'm not losing it... thank goodness haha. Anyway it was fun because they invited a non-member family from Tacoma (dangit) that we talked to and became friends with. We were able to sneak the gospel in a little bit by talking about piercings and tattoos (their sons had quite a few) and relate it to the plan of salvation. It went pretty well... I just wish they didn't live far away so we could continue talking to them... too bad Anderson was sitting in the corner unable to understand... I felt bad! Luckily the kids spoke English though, so it was cool.
After dinner, we went and visited with Joe for a little bit. Gosh that kid is freakin' funny, and so is his member friend Kyle! We found them outside Joe's house trying to pick the lock on a "project car" they had just purchased for $300.00. I would have to say, it's worth about that. No keys, no title, no intake, swapped motor, and no exhaust. Awesome. Oh and it's a lowered Honda CRX. Pretty nice rice- I mean, ride for sure haha. Anyway, we talked with them for about an hour, and we're hoping for a lesson this coming week cause he's busy for the weekend working.
Saturday, we had an epic fail of a service extravaganza we were hoping for haha. We started with service for my DCBFF Christy Barker, where we tried to fix (and might I emphasize TRIED) her lawnmower. No offense to it, but it's kind of a P.O.S. haha. It's been sitting outside for quite some time, so trying to get it cranked up, I snapped off the crank rope... twice haha. Anyway, we got that all jimmied up, then went to work on the clutch assembly and got everything taken care of. Actually, it worked like a charm for a while and I was able to mow the front lawn! However, after killing it to roll it to the back yard, As I cranked it up and mowed for a good two or three minutes, all of a sudden it decided to quit. No explosions, no fires, no dramatic finishes, it just plain quit. Another project for another day, cause we had to leave for our next service haha.
The second one was to clear out weeds at the Steers in their backyard, but as we were doing that for about five minutes, we got a call from Classy herself (Ella Rose DeLong) asking if we could do her a huge favor and get her some salad because she'd run out. We bailed and got her the salad just in time to go to a barbecue with a part-member family that the stake was hosting... unfortunately, they weren't even there by the time we had to leave for our next service appointment... dangit! haha. We bailed out and headed to that one, which consisted of helping out the Ross family to move into their home again. Unfortunately, they weren't there when we showed up, so we called them. They told us to sit tight and play with the puppies for about 20 minutes so and they'd be there. Well, we did as we were told and played with some puppies... and some baby goats... and some duckies haha. Their house sits on quite a bit of property, and they have a bunch of animals, so it was a blastie playing with all of them... especially when the ducks and the dogs got into a turf war over the shade under some fruit trees. Comical, but we had to leave before they got there. Murphy's law though, they showed up just as we got in the car to leave haha. We talked to them for about five minutes, then took off to prep for the most exciting part of this whole long friggin' email... Allie's baptism!!!!!!
We showered, changed, and high-tailed it to the stake center. Once there, we set everything up, and had the best baptism of our entire missions. Seriously, it went so well, and the spirit was so strong. The coolest part of all of it was that instead of testimonies or some dorky movie during the time that she and elder Anderson were changing, we had everyone who showed up to the baptism write some words of love and support to Allie on a 3x5 note card to put into a photo album that she can keep with her... pretty cool right? That was sister DeLong's idea. We call her a prophetess for a reason haha.
Sunday was awesome and nerve racking... I was asked to confirm Allie, and the blessings promised in it made me kinda think "I said WHAT!?" Super cool though... she's going to end up being a leader in the church, her example is going to influence many and bring a lot of people into the gospel, and she's going to serve a mission with her hubby someday... pretty freaking awesome. Right after that, we blessed her little baby Carly. Adorable right?
Aside from that, I don't really know what else to write... I'm feeling frazzled and super pumped at the same time... it's been a really awesome week. Crazy, busy, stressful, boring, exciting, frustrating, joyful. I love being a missionary.
I'm so stoked that you got to have Ivan at the house... he's a sweet kid. He reminds me a lot of myself at that age, and it sounds like you guys had a huge impact on him for the good... way to be missionaries! :-)
My list of scriptures that I want you all to look at are as follows:
Mosiah 27:32-37 (come to Jesus, be a tool :-))
Alma 1:27-32 (Come to Jesus, you'll make more money :-))
Alma 3 (the curse is not on the skin)
Alma 4: 8-11 (your example as a member can help or hurt)
Alma 6:6 (how to help the missionaries from home :-))
I love you guys so much, and I hope that things are going really, really well at home now that you're getting all geared up for fish lake after having the whirlwind gang come through haha. I'll talk to ya next week!
Con carino,
Elder Kurt Mooney
Dearest Mommy,
Well, if your week was eventful, that makes two of us, cause this week has been pretty nuts! Like always, we'll start with last Monday after emails... In all honesty, it wasn't anything too terribly exciting during the day, but that night was freakin' sweet! We had another family home evening at the house with sister DeLong, and it was a super awesome spiritual experience because this time, instead of just getting to know Allie, she was able to tell her a little about the modern day prophets that she knows... it was the best "follow the prophet" lesson EVER. We also went over the baptismal interview questions with her, and she totally aced it... it was awesome. Seriously, this girl has the brightest burning testimony of any person I know right now-- life-long member or recent-convert. The funny thing was that we ended up chatting with sister DeLong and the Steers+Allie family 'til... well... maybe I shouldn't say so we don't incriminate ourselves haha. Anyway, suffice to say we were up late as usual. :-)
Now, for the next couple days, I'll apologize in advance, because I'm going to be ranting and raving about how missionaries are sometimes quite retarded and also quite pharasaic. I won't name any names, but yeah... the stories speak for themselves.
Tuesday we had district meeting in Tualatin, and it was quite comical. In that district, the district leader always sends out a text the night before letting everyone know the subject of the spiritual thought for the next day so that everyone can prepare something because somebody is always called at random to give their thought. Anyway, the subject was diligence, and this elder was called on to give the thought. He said "I knew this was gonna happen to me today!" and I asked if it was because he hadn't prepared like he was supposed to. He retorted by saying "no, it's because I've been studying it a lot and my head is full of scriptures about it!" The funny thing is that he ended up pulling out Galatians 5:22-23. For those of you that don't know, those are the "fruits of the spirit", and they have nothing to do with diligence basically... he said, "well, longsuffering and goodness are kind of related in this scripture... but I really like what it says about diligence in the bible dictionary." So he flipped... and flipped... and flipped... and flipped... and then muttered "huh... I guess it isn't in here." Quite comical. The best part was that his companion, the district leader, got up afterward to continue on the agenda, and said "make sure that you're really putting some thought into your preparation with these, because they're not just for you. You're here to help the whole group feel the Spirit, and if your spiritual thought sucks, nobody is going to be edified or get anything out of it." Kind of a gentle smack-down :-P
Later that day, the same district leader (who is a total champ and whose name is elder Avey) conducted Allie's baptismal interview, which went wonderfully. She came out locked and loaded (and excited) for baptism.
Wednesday, there was another derty-der moment with a missionary unfortunately. We had our Wednesday district meeting in McMinnville, and when we got there, we found out that there was a companionship that didn't show up because one of the elders was "sick." I put it in quotations, because when we went to go see how he was doing, we found him asleep, and not sick at all haha. His companion had a look of "oh crap" on his face when he answered the door at 11:00, and his companion (the sick one) had an even bigger look of "oh crap" when I took about 50 very, very unapproved CD's away from him along with a pair of headphones. I didn't do it to be a friggin' Nazi, but this is the same kid who caught with an iPod touch and a Nintendo DS away from! Some people just never learn... ya know? I love the kid to death, but man he needs to stop being dumb as a box of rocks! In all honesty, I don't even mind if the elders aren't the most obedient as long as they're getting the work done that they're supposed to, but when they're disobedient AND don't get any work done, there's a major problem. Anyway, I'll have to tell you guys some fun stories about this whole situation when I get home haha... it's more fun that way :-P
Another thing that happened that day was with our investigator Nick. We went over to a member's home for our scheduled lesson with him, and we saw him walking past the driveway from the porch, and wondered why he wasn't coming up the driveway. We called to him, and again, we saw this look of "oh crap" on his face (we kinda seem to get a lot of that lately). He came over and said we were ready to start the lesson, and he said "oh yeah! Sorry I was spacin' man." He didn't have his book of Mormon with him, so we sent him to retrieve it from his house which is a whopping 300 feet from this member. He went to get it, and NEVER CAME BACK! We just kinda sat there and laughed about it with the Hamm's... unfortunately, we might have to drop him soon because of it. Oh well haha it was kinda comical.
That night we had splits with the Cedar Creek ward and taught Allie how to pay her tithing and about the law of the fast... it went pretty well.
Thursday, we did some epic service for Scott & Heidi again, and had a sweet talk with Sam. We got talking about her family and how her dad's opinion of the church has turned a complete 180 because of the example of the Steers family as well as from having us around... he's an awesome guy... I just wish we could teach him more often haha. One satisfying thing about all that dang service for them is that the house is looking way, way better too. :-)
Friday we had zone leader council, and it was another one of those "stupid missionaries!" moments. We spent more than 45 minutes talking about how the music policy had NOT CHANGED! It was friggin' ridiculous. When I talk about missionaries being pharisaic, this is where that came from, because it was a total joke. We had a missionary saying "well it doesn't say hymns as part of the approved music list. Does that mean that we can't listen to them? The Singles Ward soundtrack is all hymns, does that still qualify as approved?" Another person asked "what exactly is considered classical music? If I have a remastered rock album that is re-done by an orchestra, does that count as approved?" When we went to ZLC, I didn't know we were going to be re-writing the law of Moses... bunch of dang Pharisees. I know my attitude about all of this is super, super negative, but it's just so frustrating to have people so wrapped around the axle with this nit-picky nonsense instead of focusing on their purpose as a missionary... it's idiotic. Okay, I'm done venting, I promise!
After the Pharisee fest, we had dinner with the Rey family in the Woodhaven ward. I love that family because they give me an excuse to speak Spanish for an hour or so :-) Oh and yes mom, I do have time to speak it still... actually like every day, so I'm not losing it... thank goodness haha. Anyway it was fun because they invited a non-member family from Tacoma (dangit) that we talked to and became friends with. We were able to sneak the gospel in a little bit by talking about piercings and tattoos (their sons had quite a few) and relate it to the plan of salvation. It went pretty well... I just wish they didn't live far away so we could continue talking to them... too bad Anderson was sitting in the corner unable to understand... I felt bad! Luckily the kids spoke English though, so it was cool.
After dinner, we went and visited with Joe for a little bit. Gosh that kid is freakin' funny, and so is his member friend Kyle! We found them outside Joe's house trying to pick the lock on a "project car" they had just purchased for $300.00. I would have to say, it's worth about that. No keys, no title, no intake, swapped motor, and no exhaust. Awesome. Oh and it's a lowered Honda CRX. Pretty nice rice- I mean, ride for sure haha. Anyway, we talked with them for about an hour, and we're hoping for a lesson this coming week cause he's busy for the weekend working.
Saturday, we had an epic fail of a service extravaganza we were hoping for haha. We started with service for my DCBFF Christy Barker, where we tried to fix (and might I emphasize TRIED) her lawnmower. No offense to it, but it's kind of a P.O.S. haha. It's been sitting outside for quite some time, so trying to get it cranked up, I snapped off the crank rope... twice haha. Anyway, we got that all jimmied up, then went to work on the clutch assembly and got everything taken care of. Actually, it worked like a charm for a while and I was able to mow the front lawn! However, after killing it to roll it to the back yard, As I cranked it up and mowed for a good two or three minutes, all of a sudden it decided to quit. No explosions, no fires, no dramatic finishes, it just plain quit. Another project for another day, cause we had to leave for our next service haha.
The second one was to clear out weeds at the Steers in their backyard, but as we were doing that for about five minutes, we got a call from Classy herself (Ella Rose DeLong) asking if we could do her a huge favor and get her some salad because she'd run out. We bailed and got her the salad just in time to go to a barbecue with a part-member family that the stake was hosting... unfortunately, they weren't even there by the time we had to leave for our next service appointment... dangit! haha. We bailed out and headed to that one, which consisted of helping out the Ross family to move into their home again. Unfortunately, they weren't there when we showed up, so we called them. They told us to sit tight and play with the puppies for about 20 minutes so and they'd be there. Well, we did as we were told and played with some puppies... and some baby goats... and some duckies haha. Their house sits on quite a bit of property, and they have a bunch of animals, so it was a blastie playing with all of them... especially when the ducks and the dogs got into a turf war over the shade under some fruit trees. Comical, but we had to leave before they got there. Murphy's law though, they showed up just as we got in the car to leave haha. We talked to them for about five minutes, then took off to prep for the most exciting part of this whole long friggin' email... Allie's baptism!!!!!!
We showered, changed, and high-tailed it to the stake center. Once there, we set everything up, and had the best baptism of our entire missions. Seriously, it went so well, and the spirit was so strong. The coolest part of all of it was that instead of testimonies or some dorky movie during the time that she and elder Anderson were changing, we had everyone who showed up to the baptism write some words of love and support to Allie on a 3x5 note card to put into a photo album that she can keep with her... pretty cool right? That was sister DeLong's idea. We call her a prophetess for a reason haha.
Sunday was awesome and nerve racking... I was asked to confirm Allie, and the blessings promised in it made me kinda think "I said WHAT!?" Super cool though... she's going to end up being a leader in the church, her example is going to influence many and bring a lot of people into the gospel, and she's going to serve a mission with her hubby someday... pretty freaking awesome. Right after that, we blessed her little baby Carly. Adorable right?
Aside from that, I don't really know what else to write... I'm feeling frazzled and super pumped at the same time... it's been a really awesome week. Crazy, busy, stressful, boring, exciting, frustrating, joyful. I love being a missionary.
I'm so stoked that you got to have Ivan at the house... he's a sweet kid. He reminds me a lot of myself at that age, and it sounds like you guys had a huge impact on him for the good... way to be missionaries! :-)
My list of scriptures that I want you all to look at are as follows:
Mosiah 27:32-37 (come to Jesus, be a tool :-))
Alma 1:27-32 (Come to Jesus, you'll make more money :-))
Alma 3 (the curse is not on the skin)
Alma 4: 8-11 (your example as a member can help or hurt)
Alma 6:6 (how to help the missionaries from home :-))
I love you guys so much, and I hope that things are going really, really well at home now that you're getting all geared up for fish lake after having the whirlwind gang come through haha. I'll talk to ya next week!
Con carino,
Elder Kurt Mooney
Monday, July 25, 2011
abbrev.
So, I came to the conclusion that in the LDS (Latter-day Saints) church, we have WAY too many abbreviations... speaking of which, why is the word abbreviate so dang long... shouldn't they make it a little more simple to de-complexify a word that means to make shorter? Anyway, here's what happened that was exciting this week:
Monday's abbreviation will be FHE (Family Home Evening). We had an oh so wonderful p-day doing some babysitting and mediating for a companionship that is near (a little too near in my opinion) and dear to my heart. It kinda put a bullet in any of the original plans we had of relaxing, so yeah... it was kind of a bummer. Luckily, the FHE that we had that night made it all worth it. Allie came over to sister DeLong's house, and we did an FHE on the gospel of Jesus Christ after she got to know the classiest lady on the planet for a little while.
-
Tuesday's abbreviations will be DM (District Meeting), BWW (Buffalo Wild Wings), and Pumpkin (Pumpkin Ridge). So, it was planned out to be the most epic day EVER to make up for our super sucky lack of a p-day the day before, but it turned out to be a total bust... well, for the most part anyway. We had our usual district meeting with Tualatin, which was totally fine, and we even went to Buffalo Wild Wings afterward for lunch. Unfortunately, it ran long because they were slow getting food to us, and slower getting the checks out, so we lost some time there that should have been used for what we had planned afterward. We had blocked out some time (with the approval of the AP's of course) to take them out for elder Gardner's birthday (because he's one of the AP's) and treat him to some golf at Pumpkin Ridge golf course courtesy of Mark Schloo :-). Unfortunately, we got a phone call that morning from him informing us that he wasn't going to be able to make it because some idiot elder ran away on the coast, so he was going to have to do some babysitting... sounds like a familiar situation eh? haha I thought it was comical at least. Anyway, Gardner, being the champ that he is, told us to go have twice as much fun to make up for he and elder Blanchard not being able to make it, so we tried. We arrived around 3:00 hoping to get directly onto the course with Mark, but unfortunately we ended up waiting around for an hour and a half before we could get on... that kinda threw a wrench in the works because we were left with only 30 minutes to try to golf in... we got in two holes then turned for home haha. It was sunny this time at least! Hopefully next time we can get it worked out to go when it's sunny AND stay for the full 18 holes haha.
Wednesday's abbreviations are related with what we talked about with a kid named Joe. The abbreviations if put into a sentence would be "CJ's, YJ's, and FJ's leading to a lesson with a LA (less-active) MP (member-present)." haha because talking about Jeeps is what led us to picking him up as one of our best investigators so far. We went to contact a referral that wasn't home, and we saw his Jeep in the driveway, so we knocked the door and talked to him for a while. After about 15 minutes, his buddy Kyle pulls up, and it turns out that he's a member from a neighboring ward in Tigard! He's a super sweet kid, and contemplating a mission at age 19, so hopefully we can help him get there as well as baptize his friend before he goes. Seriously, super uncanny the resemblance between this Joe kid and myself. Has a Jeep (a 1994 white wrangler with a 4-banger just like mine), total pile of junk, loves working on it and crawling with it, he graduated 2008, loves reggae music, and yeah... to make a long story short, we're totally gonna baptize him. We talked shop for quite a while, but then he invited us in, and while there, we were able to start talking about religion, and eventually taught him about the restoration, and it was awesome! It really touched him, and he's stoked to meet with us again this week, so I'll keep ya posted on what happens there.
Thursday's abbreviations would be... ah forget it there really aren't any for this day haha. We did some intense service for Scott and Heidi by tearing out all the weeds along the side of their house, uncovering the few stepping stones that were there, and then replacing the dirt around them with river rocks... it looks pretty flippin' sweet if I do say so myself. Other than that, we had an awesome lesson that night with Nick Larsen where we taught him the gospel of Jesus Christ as relating to the restoration, and he liked it. He said that he felt the Spirit as he read the book of Mormon, so I invited him to be baptized on the 20th of August, and he accepted it... awesome, right? We've just gotta make sure we help him to get locked and loaded for it now so that he can be ready when the day comes.
Friday, the abbreviation would be, again, DCBFF (Diet Coke Best Friend Forever) SVC (service) with some B-fast (breakfast...der...) afterward. It was a pretty good time, and it's fun to have the interaction with the kids. One funny thing about doing that was when it came time to eat. Mom, I tried to copy that apple spice syrup that you always make for those pumpkin pancakes, and it turned out looking WAY different haha. It was still tasty, but what sister Barker's kids said about it was hilarious. We brought it out to pour over our apple-cinnamon french toast, and Kylie said "what is that!? It looks like throw-up!" I started laughing because she was totally right, it kinda did, but then the thought came to me that it looked more like poop than vomit, and just as I was thinking that, sister Barker chimed in and said "no, it doesn't really look like vomit... if anything, it looks like baby poop." haha I was about dying I was laughing so hard. It really was good in spite of how it looked haha... you'll have to send me the recipe or something so I don't screw it up next time haha.
Anyway, other than that on Friday, we had a lesson with Allie where we reviewed a few things from the gospel of Jesus Christ and talked about the sacrament, then I gave her brother a haircut... I have to say, I'm getting pretty pro at hacking hair with a pair of buzzers... I even do it to myself haha. It probably looks terrible, but such is life as a missionary... $12 bucks sounds like a lot of money, ya know? haha.
Saturday doesn't really have any abbreviations aside from MSH (Mosiah), cause that's all I really wanted to talk about. That book freakin' rocks! To be brief because I have three minutes left, chapter 20 is a good one to study as relating to passing quick judgment and acting when you're angry. 23 is sweet because it talks about being caught up in wickedness and changing. How to do it, and how to maintain it more importantly. The coolest part talks about trials and the big reason we have them. Check it out sometime... it'll change the way you look at your life. Note the attitude of the people who are experiencing those trials and how they reacted during as well as afterward toward God.
Sunday, we were in church for eight hours. Blah. That was a long day. Other than that, we had a sweet lesson with Allie where we set up her baptismal program and taught her the ten commandments... she's so set for her baptism. Her testimony is growing, and seriously, she's gonna be a relief society president someday.
I'm outta time, but I love you guys!
-Elder Mooney
Monday's abbreviation will be FHE (Family Home Evening). We had an oh so wonderful p-day doing some babysitting and mediating for a companionship that is near (a little too near in my opinion) and dear to my heart. It kinda put a bullet in any of the original plans we had of relaxing, so yeah... it was kind of a bummer. Luckily, the FHE that we had that night made it all worth it. Allie came over to sister DeLong's house, and we did an FHE on the gospel of Jesus Christ after she got to know the classiest lady on the planet for a little while.
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Tuesday's abbreviations will be DM (District Meeting), BWW (Buffalo Wild Wings), and Pumpkin (Pumpkin Ridge). So, it was planned out to be the most epic day EVER to make up for our super sucky lack of a p-day the day before, but it turned out to be a total bust... well, for the most part anyway. We had our usual district meeting with Tualatin, which was totally fine, and we even went to Buffalo Wild Wings afterward for lunch. Unfortunately, it ran long because they were slow getting food to us, and slower getting the checks out, so we lost some time there that should have been used for what we had planned afterward. We had blocked out some time (with the approval of the AP's of course) to take them out for elder Gardner's birthday (because he's one of the AP's) and treat him to some golf at Pumpkin Ridge golf course courtesy of Mark Schloo :-). Unfortunately, we got a phone call that morning from him informing us that he wasn't going to be able to make it because some idiot elder ran away on the coast, so he was going to have to do some babysitting... sounds like a familiar situation eh? haha I thought it was comical at least. Anyway, Gardner, being the champ that he is, told us to go have twice as much fun to make up for he and elder Blanchard not being able to make it, so we tried. We arrived around 3:00 hoping to get directly onto the course with Mark, but unfortunately we ended up waiting around for an hour and a half before we could get on... that kinda threw a wrench in the works because we were left with only 30 minutes to try to golf in... we got in two holes then turned for home haha. It was sunny this time at least! Hopefully next time we can get it worked out to go when it's sunny AND stay for the full 18 holes haha.
Wednesday's abbreviations are related with what we talked about with a kid named Joe. The abbreviations if put into a sentence would be "CJ's, YJ's, and FJ's leading to a lesson with a LA (less-active) MP (member-present)." haha because talking about Jeeps is what led us to picking him up as one of our best investigators so far. We went to contact a referral that wasn't home, and we saw his Jeep in the driveway, so we knocked the door and talked to him for a while. After about 15 minutes, his buddy Kyle pulls up, and it turns out that he's a member from a neighboring ward in Tigard! He's a super sweet kid, and contemplating a mission at age 19, so hopefully we can help him get there as well as baptize his friend before he goes. Seriously, super uncanny the resemblance between this Joe kid and myself. Has a Jeep (a 1994 white wrangler with a 4-banger just like mine), total pile of junk, loves working on it and crawling with it, he graduated 2008, loves reggae music, and yeah... to make a long story short, we're totally gonna baptize him. We talked shop for quite a while, but then he invited us in, and while there, we were able to start talking about religion, and eventually taught him about the restoration, and it was awesome! It really touched him, and he's stoked to meet with us again this week, so I'll keep ya posted on what happens there.
Thursday's abbreviations would be... ah forget it there really aren't any for this day haha. We did some intense service for Scott and Heidi by tearing out all the weeds along the side of their house, uncovering the few stepping stones that were there, and then replacing the dirt around them with river rocks... it looks pretty flippin' sweet if I do say so myself. Other than that, we had an awesome lesson that night with Nick Larsen where we taught him the gospel of Jesus Christ as relating to the restoration, and he liked it. He said that he felt the Spirit as he read the book of Mormon, so I invited him to be baptized on the 20th of August, and he accepted it... awesome, right? We've just gotta make sure we help him to get locked and loaded for it now so that he can be ready when the day comes.
Friday, the abbreviation would be, again, DCBFF (Diet Coke Best Friend Forever) SVC (service) with some B-fast (breakfast...der...) afterward. It was a pretty good time, and it's fun to have the interaction with the kids. One funny thing about doing that was when it came time to eat. Mom, I tried to copy that apple spice syrup that you always make for those pumpkin pancakes, and it turned out looking WAY different haha. It was still tasty, but what sister Barker's kids said about it was hilarious. We brought it out to pour over our apple-cinnamon french toast, and Kylie said "what is that!? It looks like throw-up!" I started laughing because she was totally right, it kinda did, but then the thought came to me that it looked more like poop than vomit, and just as I was thinking that, sister Barker chimed in and said "no, it doesn't really look like vomit... if anything, it looks like baby poop." haha I was about dying I was laughing so hard. It really was good in spite of how it looked haha... you'll have to send me the recipe or something so I don't screw it up next time haha.
Anyway, other than that on Friday, we had a lesson with Allie where we reviewed a few things from the gospel of Jesus Christ and talked about the sacrament, then I gave her brother a haircut... I have to say, I'm getting pretty pro at hacking hair with a pair of buzzers... I even do it to myself haha. It probably looks terrible, but such is life as a missionary... $12 bucks sounds like a lot of money, ya know? haha.
Saturday doesn't really have any abbreviations aside from MSH (Mosiah), cause that's all I really wanted to talk about. That book freakin' rocks! To be brief because I have three minutes left, chapter 20 is a good one to study as relating to passing quick judgment and acting when you're angry. 23 is sweet because it talks about being caught up in wickedness and changing. How to do it, and how to maintain it more importantly. The coolest part talks about trials and the big reason we have them. Check it out sometime... it'll change the way you look at your life. Note the attitude of the people who are experiencing those trials and how they reacted during as well as afterward toward God.
Sunday, we were in church for eight hours. Blah. That was a long day. Other than that, we had a sweet lesson with Allie where we set up her baptismal program and taught her the ten commandments... she's so set for her baptism. Her testimony is growing, and seriously, she's gonna be a relief society president someday.
I'm outta time, but I love you guys!
-Elder Mooney
Monday, July 18, 2011
Busy!
Dearest Mommy,
This week has been pretty dang eventful. I already told you about transfers and all that, but here's what happened from Tuesday on. We started off the day with double-duty district meetings where we got to know all of the elders in the Tualatin and Tigard districts. It was fun, and it's looking like we're gonna be kicking trash... especially now that we have two more sets of elders packed into our zone. That night, we didn't have too many exciting things happen... we went to a lesson with some active members and basically sang praises to Ella Rose the whole time because she's a prophetess, she's kind, almost like another intercessory because she's so righteous, and is down to earth enough to talk to anyone albeit a sinner or another fellow saint... pretty cool haha.
Later that night, we went and visited Allie over at the Steers' home and she asked if we could copy the files from her work laptop onto a different computer so that she can use it when she prosecutes her boss... it's a long story. I don't wanna get into it haha. Anyway, so we took this laptop hard drive over to sister DeLong's house feeling like we were secret agents, and tried to figure out how to do the transfer, cause we most definitely didn't have anything to hook it up to wire-wise into sister DeLong's computer. We end up taking apart her tower and hooking up the hard drive into the secondary hard drive cables and trying to transfer the info over, but unfortunately, it didn't recognize the computer and totally shut down. It locked us out of opening the files and denied all copying or transferring... epic fail. Guess I don't have computer hacking skills huh? It made for an adventurous late night though, that's for sure haha.
Wednesday was nothing special. We had district meeting in Mac, then shot the rest of the day getting the oil changed and the tires rotated... bleh. That night was sweet though because it was my turn to go teach Allie on splits, and it went really well! I was assigned to go with Colin Hales, a guy in the ward who I'm finally getting to know. Good thing I am, cause he's a freakin' stud! He grew up in SLC and was recently reactivated up here a couple years back. He's super laid back, but has an awesome testimony and seems to be able to talk to anyone. Fun fact for the day about Colin: we have three things in common: (do you like how there was a colon inside another colon in this sentence?) 1: (okay that was just for kicks and giggles) we drink diet Coke. 2: we love Jeeps. 3: we both spent a lot of time in Daybreak back in Utah... turns out that one of the sweet colonial style houses that I used to drive by every day working up there was his! Kind of a small world amongst the Mormons eh? He's a way sweet guy and his family matches him perfectly... he's one of those people I wanna keep friends with after the mission for sure.
Anyway, jumping into what happened that night, we ended up teaching Allie a little bit about the plan of salvation and just talking about how she was feeling about her baptismal date, etc., and she decided that she wants to move it up to the 30th so that the Steers can be there for the baptism as well as the confirmation (they're headed out of town the following Sunday morning). On top of that, she wants to get her baby blessed after her confirmation... kinda cool, huh? This girl is making all the right decisions, and the Lord is definitely preparing the way to help her get there... it's awesome!
Thursday... it was an interesting day. We had our normal service over at Scott and Heidi's, although they weren't there, so we just did what we usually do. We mowed the lawn and bought some weed-n-feed for it, and it laid down quite nicely. After that, we got back to the house and did some cleaning in the garage. It was kinda therapeutic in a way, considering the stress load that was tacked on. It's funny how things change in your life... I used to hate washing dishes, organizing/cleaning and doing yard work, but now that's how I keep my sanity.
That night, we had another lesson with Allie where she made us some dessert and we taught her the rest of the plan of salvation by drawing on a whiteboard... it was pretty dang fun. The coolest part of it was that her kid brother was there, and he liked it as well... unfortunately, he lives kinda far away, so we're not sure how we can swing it without handing him over... driving to Eugene to teach him might be a stretch haha.
Friday, we did some service for my DCBFF, and it rocked! We took some time to clear out her garage that was full of Tupperware bins and schtuff that needed to be junked, and we made it look nice and pretty. In all honesty, we were just the brawn and she did most of the "braining" to figure out where she wanted it put and how she wanted it organized... I have to say though... it looks pretty dang good :-) The sweetest part about it is that she was so sweet and cooked us an amazing brunch complete with breakfast burritos and sticky buns... she even topped it all off with some good ol' diet Coke with lime :-) All bribes and favors aside, she's one of the people that I wanna stay in close contact with after the mission... she's a way awesome person. Convert to the church, spiritual giant, and still finds room to drink diet Coke haha.
Anyway, that night, we had another good lesson with Allie at the Steers where we were talking about her group of friends and what her role is with them. It's kinda funny cause everyone calls her "mommy" because she takes care of them and gives them advice on life... she realized that with the influence that she has with them, she could majorly bless their lives by showing them the way that she herself was able to change... I just hope it works and we can help out her friends as well!
Saturday, we decided to JW it by doing some door knocking, and it kinda paid off... well, on two doors at least. Most of the people didn't want to answer the door, but the ones who did were pretty cool. Well, minus one guy who was a Presbyterian minister anyway. We bumped into a lady who has been less active for like ten years, but said she'd be cool with us coming over to talk with her and teach her, so hopefully we can get her records transferred into the ward and we can get her going to church again... as the saying goes: we'll see what happens. One other person we knocked into was a lady who's actually the mom of a kid who plays soccer with Nathan Steers (momma steers' boy), and it sparked a great conversation with her... she doesn't really know anything about the church, but after talking to her there, she seemed pretty stoked about talking to momma steers and setting up a time to come over for dinner with her. We kinda had to finagle it that way because her husband is a big time Delta-Bravo. It's funny because I had already talked to his wife about knowing Spanish, and he was talking smack in Spanish behind the door while we talked to his wife, and obviously didn't know that I speak it... the look on his wife's face was pretty priceless. Anyway, it was a good conversation.
Aside from that, on Sunday we had a couple of people to church, which was sweet. Allie was there and so was the Steers' neighbor friend named Sage. We need more Steers families in our wards! They're totally rockin' it right now! Church was good, we didn't have anything too eventful happen... oh except for during the last hour of church (we were there for eight hours on Sunday haha) we got a text from Mia (the girl who was Allie's roommate) asking if it was normal to have scary experiences before you get baptized. I was a little sketched out by that, so I stepped out and talked to her. Turns out that the day she announced her baptism, that night she went to bed and had a scary, scary dream where she woke up terrified and wondered if maybe it was a sign. We talked and I explained that it's normal for people who are trying to change their lives for the better to have Satan try to step in and muddle things up, then showed her Alma 37:37 that talks about the Lord watching over you as you sleep if you pray to him to do so... she'll be okay though, and she's super excited for her baptism... she says that one of us should be allowed to perform her baptism and the other could do Allie's... sounds like a good excuse for a trip to Colorado right? haha
Anyway, that was the excitement for Sunday aside from one more lesson with Allie to cover the word of wisdom.
The only other fun thing that happened was that this morning we got a text from momma Steers asking if we could help her with her garage. When we got there, we found out why... somehow, the opener had totally trashed the top section of the door... the first row on it has glass panes, and the force of the door had shattered ALL of them somehow, so we spent some time fixing it with some deck screws and carpenter nails after cleaning up all the glass... it seriously bent the top panel in half it had so much force behind it! Anyway, it's fixed now, and at least it'll open and close without doing what it did before haha.
Well, I'm off to enjoy a nice relaxing p-day, so I hope all is well on the home front and that you're all doing what you're supposed to. I love you all and will talk to ya later!
Loves,
Elder Kurt Mooney
This week has been pretty dang eventful. I already told you about transfers and all that, but here's what happened from Tuesday on. We started off the day with double-duty district meetings where we got to know all of the elders in the Tualatin and Tigard districts. It was fun, and it's looking like we're gonna be kicking trash... especially now that we have two more sets of elders packed into our zone. That night, we didn't have too many exciting things happen... we went to a lesson with some active members and basically sang praises to Ella Rose the whole time because she's a prophetess, she's kind, almost like another intercessory because she's so righteous, and is down to earth enough to talk to anyone albeit a sinner or another fellow saint... pretty cool haha.
Later that night, we went and visited Allie over at the Steers' home and she asked if we could copy the files from her work laptop onto a different computer so that she can use it when she prosecutes her boss... it's a long story. I don't wanna get into it haha. Anyway, so we took this laptop hard drive over to sister DeLong's house feeling like we were secret agents, and tried to figure out how to do the transfer, cause we most definitely didn't have anything to hook it up to wire-wise into sister DeLong's computer. We end up taking apart her tower and hooking up the hard drive into the secondary hard drive cables and trying to transfer the info over, but unfortunately, it didn't recognize the computer and totally shut down. It locked us out of opening the files and denied all copying or transferring... epic fail. Guess I don't have computer hacking skills huh? It made for an adventurous late night though, that's for sure haha.
Wednesday was nothing special. We had district meeting in Mac, then shot the rest of the day getting the oil changed and the tires rotated... bleh. That night was sweet though because it was my turn to go teach Allie on splits, and it went really well! I was assigned to go with Colin Hales, a guy in the ward who I'm finally getting to know. Good thing I am, cause he's a freakin' stud! He grew up in SLC and was recently reactivated up here a couple years back. He's super laid back, but has an awesome testimony and seems to be able to talk to anyone. Fun fact for the day about Colin: we have three things in common: (do you like how there was a colon inside another colon in this sentence?) 1: (okay that was just for kicks and giggles) we drink diet Coke. 2: we love Jeeps. 3: we both spent a lot of time in Daybreak back in Utah... turns out that one of the sweet colonial style houses that I used to drive by every day working up there was his! Kind of a small world amongst the Mormons eh? He's a way sweet guy and his family matches him perfectly... he's one of those people I wanna keep friends with after the mission for sure.
Anyway, jumping into what happened that night, we ended up teaching Allie a little bit about the plan of salvation and just talking about how she was feeling about her baptismal date, etc., and she decided that she wants to move it up to the 30th so that the Steers can be there for the baptism as well as the confirmation (they're headed out of town the following Sunday morning). On top of that, she wants to get her baby blessed after her confirmation... kinda cool, huh? This girl is making all the right decisions, and the Lord is definitely preparing the way to help her get there... it's awesome!
Thursday... it was an interesting day. We had our normal service over at Scott and Heidi's, although they weren't there, so we just did what we usually do. We mowed the lawn and bought some weed-n-feed for it, and it laid down quite nicely. After that, we got back to the house and did some cleaning in the garage. It was kinda therapeutic in a way, considering the stress load that was tacked on. It's funny how things change in your life... I used to hate washing dishes, organizing/cleaning and doing yard work, but now that's how I keep my sanity.
That night, we had another lesson with Allie where she made us some dessert and we taught her the rest of the plan of salvation by drawing on a whiteboard... it was pretty dang fun. The coolest part of it was that her kid brother was there, and he liked it as well... unfortunately, he lives kinda far away, so we're not sure how we can swing it without handing him over... driving to Eugene to teach him might be a stretch haha.
Friday, we did some service for my DCBFF, and it rocked! We took some time to clear out her garage that was full of Tupperware bins and schtuff that needed to be junked, and we made it look nice and pretty. In all honesty, we were just the brawn and she did most of the "braining" to figure out where she wanted it put and how she wanted it organized... I have to say though... it looks pretty dang good :-) The sweetest part about it is that she was so sweet and cooked us an amazing brunch complete with breakfast burritos and sticky buns... she even topped it all off with some good ol' diet Coke with lime :-) All bribes and favors aside, she's one of the people that I wanna stay in close contact with after the mission... she's a way awesome person. Convert to the church, spiritual giant, and still finds room to drink diet Coke haha.
Anyway, that night, we had another good lesson with Allie at the Steers where we were talking about her group of friends and what her role is with them. It's kinda funny cause everyone calls her "mommy" because she takes care of them and gives them advice on life... she realized that with the influence that she has with them, she could majorly bless their lives by showing them the way that she herself was able to change... I just hope it works and we can help out her friends as well!
Saturday, we decided to JW it by doing some door knocking, and it kinda paid off... well, on two doors at least. Most of the people didn't want to answer the door, but the ones who did were pretty cool. Well, minus one guy who was a Presbyterian minister anyway. We bumped into a lady who has been less active for like ten years, but said she'd be cool with us coming over to talk with her and teach her, so hopefully we can get her records transferred into the ward and we can get her going to church again... as the saying goes: we'll see what happens. One other person we knocked into was a lady who's actually the mom of a kid who plays soccer with Nathan Steers (momma steers' boy), and it sparked a great conversation with her... she doesn't really know anything about the church, but after talking to her there, she seemed pretty stoked about talking to momma steers and setting up a time to come over for dinner with her. We kinda had to finagle it that way because her husband is a big time Delta-Bravo. It's funny because I had already talked to his wife about knowing Spanish, and he was talking smack in Spanish behind the door while we talked to his wife, and obviously didn't know that I speak it... the look on his wife's face was pretty priceless. Anyway, it was a good conversation.
Aside from that, on Sunday we had a couple of people to church, which was sweet. Allie was there and so was the Steers' neighbor friend named Sage. We need more Steers families in our wards! They're totally rockin' it right now! Church was good, we didn't have anything too eventful happen... oh except for during the last hour of church (we were there for eight hours on Sunday haha) we got a text from Mia (the girl who was Allie's roommate) asking if it was normal to have scary experiences before you get baptized. I was a little sketched out by that, so I stepped out and talked to her. Turns out that the day she announced her baptism, that night she went to bed and had a scary, scary dream where she woke up terrified and wondered if maybe it was a sign. We talked and I explained that it's normal for people who are trying to change their lives for the better to have Satan try to step in and muddle things up, then showed her Alma 37:37 that talks about the Lord watching over you as you sleep if you pray to him to do so... she'll be okay though, and she's super excited for her baptism... she says that one of us should be allowed to perform her baptism and the other could do Allie's... sounds like a good excuse for a trip to Colorado right? haha
Anyway, that was the excitement for Sunday aside from one more lesson with Allie to cover the word of wisdom.
The only other fun thing that happened was that this morning we got a text from momma Steers asking if we could help her with her garage. When we got there, we found out why... somehow, the opener had totally trashed the top section of the door... the first row on it has glass panes, and the force of the door had shattered ALL of them somehow, so we spent some time fixing it with some deck screws and carpenter nails after cleaning up all the glass... it seriously bent the top panel in half it had so much force behind it! Anyway, it's fixed now, and at least it'll open and close without doing what it did before haha.
Well, I'm off to enjoy a nice relaxing p-day, so I hope all is well on the home front and that you're all doing what you're supposed to. I love you all and will talk to ya later!
Loves,
Elder Kurt Mooney
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Praise the Lord - I'm dyin' in Sherwood!
2011 July 11
Dearest Mommy,
Holy cow this has been an eventful week, so brace yourself, okay?
So, to start off this whole shebang, let's begin with last Tuesday after we finished emails. Just as we were about to finish up and log off, we got an email from the mission office saying that they needed stake reports info emailed in for both the tualatin and mcminnville stakes by 5:00, so we were sent scrambling trying to find the numbers, get them punched in, and get them off in time... holy stressful mess! It wouldn't have been so bad, but we found out that there's a limit to how much time you can spend on the computers in the library, so we ended up not being able to use those, frantically searching for a key, and running to the clerk's office in the church to get them done on time. Luckily, we got it done under the gun with like 20 minutes to spare haha.
Wednesday was the day for zone conference with our new mission president Morby so that he could go through and interview every single missionary... basically it ended up being the AP's and ourselves (elder Anderson and I) babysitting four zones by giving them extensive training on how to use the new DVD players and focus on the fundamentals of preach my gospel. It really wasn't too bad, but I'm a little disappointed that we forgot to bring the DVD player that president Dyches had assigned to us, because we had a perfect plan of how we were going to do a "demonstration." We were planning on having one of us fake watching an unapproved movie on it and have the other companion come in with a hammer to smash it to pieces, and then tell the rest of the missionaries that's what we'll do if they watch unapproved material on them. We didn't, however, so we gave a more grown-up training where we showed them "how to use the pause button effectively during companionship study to improve teaching skills".... sounds idiotic, but hey, it's what they asked us to do for the training. We made sure to make pauses to point out how one dude had really short arms in proportion to his body, the funny faces some of the people made, and to hear some comments from the peanut gallery about their teaching techniques... it was actually kinda fun :-)
That night, we had the most crazy awesome splits ever. So you remember how we talked about Jared, Mia, and Allie right? Well, I think that fateful fourth of July night after we left put that awesome trio into some deep thinking after we'd shared our experiences of life before the mission and how we were able to change to come out. To make a long story short, elder Anderson went to the lesson on splits Wednesday night with Clint Demaris (WML) and I went to some visit some other people, and it turns out that during the lesson, Jared said that he was going to separate from Mia and move back to Texas to prepare for his mission while she moves back to Colorado to live with her family and continue learning from the missionaries there to get ready for baptism! Boom! At the drop of a hat! It's amazing how if someone is willing to act they can have that much spiritual influence exercised in their life. Allie decided to stay and continue going to church here and keep learning about the gospel. Pretty sweet, eh? We're continuing to teach Allie who already has such a solid testimony it's awesome, and we're planning on keeping in close contact with the other two so that we can make sure that they stay strong and don't get lost in the process... they're all such freakin' awesome kids I love them! There's more to the story with these three as the week goes along, and it's a lot more in-depth than I'm describing it, you guys at least have to hear this part of it.
On Thursday, we did some service for Scott and Heidi at the house where we seriously tore the crap out of their lawn by digging out all the weeds growing in it and trying to make it look really good. We're planning on coming back next week to weed-n-feed the whole thing and fill in the holes with some potting soil and grass seed so it'll grow in nice and thick... it's a major project, but Scott deserves it along with his two daughters... they're sweet. Actually, one of the cool things that happened this last time is we had the opportunity to talk with Scott's oldest daughter Sam while she was out picking cherries out of the tree and we were digging weeds. She's been super distanced the whole time I've known her because I think her church talks a little smack on the Mormons, but she warmed up and was chatting it up about her job, the truck she drives, and just life in general... we even convinced her to come out to Keltapalooza (a party for Kelton, the former elder Wilde... I'm getting there don't worry) at the Steers on Sunday night. Anyway, hopefully we can start teaching her and get her going to church or something, cause she's a super sweet kid... has the exact same personality as her dad, it's way cool.
After doing that, we headed back to the house and got changed so we could go say goodbye to Jared and Mia before they took off for their respective homes (like I said, at the drop of a hat!) and talk for a little bit... it just blows my mind the amount of faith that these three have shown to be willing to act just like that. We made sure to jot down their numbers and email addresses, and get Mia's address so the missionaries could visit her... I think they even got us added on facebook I'm not sure haha. Anyway, that was way cool.
Friday, we were on exchange, so elder Anderson took a trip to Tigard to work with elder Shupe, and I was here in Sherwood with his companion elder Bowthorpe. It's funny how you have a predetermined mindset about a person before you get to know them... I thought the kid was a jerk to be honest when I first met him, but now I realize that he's way sweet and just super shy and humble. We spent the morning doing some service for my DCBFF (diet coke best friend forever) in the cedar creek ward, sister Barker. It was pretty funny how much coke she has in her food storage... like she probably has more of that than any other commodity haha. I think it's because in all reality, you can survive off of just diet coke for quite a while :-)
Anyway, we did about the same thing with sister Barker as we did with Scott's lawn, but to a more extreme level. We were digging out entire patches of lawn where moss had killed off the grass and re-planting with grass seed mix... hopefully with some watering, weed-n-feed, and time, we can get it in working order again.... gosh maybe I should be a landscaping major or something, cause I'm seriously loving yard work right now haha. I have another story about it on Saturday for sister DeLong that I'll tell ya.
Oh, one more funny thing about Friday was that we helped Mark and Alex move out of their townhouse to be closer to Mark's work. While cleaning out their freezer, we found another gallon zip-loc baggie chock-full of weed haha. His wifey said when I showed it to her "uh.. it's just green beans" but it was pretty funny... goodness she was very adamant about keeping a hold of those green beans after I pulled them out of the freezer :-P
So Saturday morning we were supposed to get to McMinnville's SPC breakfast, and we got totally lost and didn't find it till the last 20 minutes of it haha. It's a terrible thing when your GPS dies and you have no phone signal on the back roads of Mac... goodness it made for some good rallying in that Malibu though :-)
After the breakfast, we did another exchange with Cox and Wohlleben to keep them from killing each other, and because we found out that Kelton (elder Wilde) was up visiting. Before seeing him, we did some work in sister DeLong's yard, and holy moses we found out something interesting. Where we thought there was a bush in the front right by the walkway turned out to be a tree that should have covered a patio! We hacked the crap out of the bush and were able to make enough space to park two nice patio chairs underneath it and have room to stand up straight... pretty ridiculous, but it looks awesome. I'll take pictures for ya.
After that, we went to a dinner at the park, which was a barbecue put on for elder Wilde, and it was pretty sweet... he brought his girlfriend Erica with him as well as his mommy Kim. They're a pretty cute couple together... I don't really have much else to say about that haha. Other than that, his mom is absolutely awesome. Seriously, I talked with her more than with Kelton because he was...ahem... occupied with his girly haha. Kim and I are gonna be good friends after the mission though cause we both get along really, really well. Kinda funny eh? Maybe a little strange, but whatevs. You'll have to meet her... she's only like 20 min away in Draper.
Sunday, Allie came to church with the Steers, and it's so adorable. She might be horribly embarrassed if she read this, but it's been so cool to see the change that has come over her even in the last three weeks. The first time she came to church with Jared and Mia, both of the girls were dressed...well, not overly modest we'll put it that way haha. However, in the following two weeks, their dress became more and more modest (and not just on Sundays!) and it's so cool to see how their countenances have changed, especially Allie's. She's a kid who definitely has her head screwed on straight and is looking to do what her Heavenly Father has planned for her. The gospel changes lives as long as the people living them are willing to follow it. She's one of those people.
That night was the big Keltapalooza over at the Steers home where we ate a boatload, talked a ton, and laughed even more. It was really so much fun to be with those guys for the night. Kelton, gf, and mommy were there, the Steers minus her hubby who's working in California, and even Scott's crew and Allie were there! Holy mess it was fun!
Now for the fun part of this whole week-long experience that I forgot to tell you until now: We got transfer calls on Saturday night, and it turns out that I'm staying here in Sherwood till the end of the mish! Gardner called and said "elder Mooney, I'm so sorry... I tried. I was really pullin hard for ya. I fought tooth and nail, and well... YOU'RE STAYING IN SHERWOOD!!!!" Ah man I was so mad at him for like five seconds haha.. I was so scared of leaving this place, and it just makes me really happy to know that I'll be here to finish the mission, so I can not have to worry about getting the boot or seeing another area... just me, Anderson, and Sherwood... with Ella Rose DeLong, of course :-)
Now for the funny part. Transfers were yesterday, right? So as I'm doing my studies in the morning before we headed over, I got a call from some random area in the mission, and it turns out it's Rivera, and guess what... I'm a grandpa! A friggin' grandpa! Rivera is training a kid in English, so it's official: My posterity continues onward, thank goodness haha. Kinda funny though, right? The poor kid is training on a bike in Gresham... I gave him a knife as a father's day present so he can fight off the hobos out there where he's at haha.
After transfer meeting, we did some shopping, dropped off elder Cox and his companion the Nazi, and headed to dinner at the house. Turned out that our dinner canceled on us, but sister DeLong's granddaughter was nice enough to make us a super killer dinner complete with steak, green beans, baked potatoes, and even angel food cake (Twinkies haha) with homemade whipped cream and strawberries over the top... delicious!
Anyway, after the super sweet & thoughtful dinner, we had a lesson over at the Steers house with Allie, and it went really well. Actually, we didn't even end up talking about what we wanted to... most of the time was honestly spent hearing about how Kelton's girlfriend was like the Yoko Ono for his Beatles and how he should do better, blah, blah, blah until we were able to change the subject. To make a long story much, much shorter, we got talking about the church, her reading, and how her prayers have been going. She had a confirmation this last Sunday that this is the true church through a cool experience that she had where the Spirit kinda spoke to her, so we asked if she wanted to be baptized. She's set up to have her baptism on the 5th of August :-) the crazy thing about it? five is her lucky number and it's also her half-birthday mark... cool eh? I freakin' love being a missionary!
Okay, I apologize that this letter is so dang long, but I just want you to know that I love you so much Mom and I appreciate so much the sacrifices you guys are willing to make to let me be out here and serve the Lord... it truly has and continues to change me as a person every day... I just hope that you guys see the blessings of it as much as I do.... even if the only blessing is that it makes being around me a little more bearable haha. Have a great week and I'll talk to ya later, okay?
All my love,
-Elder Kurt Mooney
Dearest Mommy,
Holy cow this has been an eventful week, so brace yourself, okay?
So, to start off this whole shebang, let's begin with last Tuesday after we finished emails. Just as we were about to finish up and log off, we got an email from the mission office saying that they needed stake reports info emailed in for both the tualatin and mcminnville stakes by 5:00, so we were sent scrambling trying to find the numbers, get them punched in, and get them off in time... holy stressful mess! It wouldn't have been so bad, but we found out that there's a limit to how much time you can spend on the computers in the library, so we ended up not being able to use those, frantically searching for a key, and running to the clerk's office in the church to get them done on time. Luckily, we got it done under the gun with like 20 minutes to spare haha.
Wednesday was the day for zone conference with our new mission president Morby so that he could go through and interview every single missionary... basically it ended up being the AP's and ourselves (elder Anderson and I) babysitting four zones by giving them extensive training on how to use the new DVD players and focus on the fundamentals of preach my gospel. It really wasn't too bad, but I'm a little disappointed that we forgot to bring the DVD player that president Dyches had assigned to us, because we had a perfect plan of how we were going to do a "demonstration." We were planning on having one of us fake watching an unapproved movie on it and have the other companion come in with a hammer to smash it to pieces, and then tell the rest of the missionaries that's what we'll do if they watch unapproved material on them. We didn't, however, so we gave a more grown-up training where we showed them "how to use the pause button effectively during companionship study to improve teaching skills".... sounds idiotic, but hey, it's what they asked us to do for the training. We made sure to make pauses to point out how one dude had really short arms in proportion to his body, the funny faces some of the people made, and to hear some comments from the peanut gallery about their teaching techniques... it was actually kinda fun :-)
That night, we had the most crazy awesome splits ever. So you remember how we talked about Jared, Mia, and Allie right? Well, I think that fateful fourth of July night after we left put that awesome trio into some deep thinking after we'd shared our experiences of life before the mission and how we were able to change to come out. To make a long story short, elder Anderson went to the lesson on splits Wednesday night with Clint Demaris (WML) and I went to some visit some other people, and it turns out that during the lesson, Jared said that he was going to separate from Mia and move back to Texas to prepare for his mission while she moves back to Colorado to live with her family and continue learning from the missionaries there to get ready for baptism! Boom! At the drop of a hat! It's amazing how if someone is willing to act they can have that much spiritual influence exercised in their life. Allie decided to stay and continue going to church here and keep learning about the gospel. Pretty sweet, eh? We're continuing to teach Allie who already has such a solid testimony it's awesome, and we're planning on keeping in close contact with the other two so that we can make sure that they stay strong and don't get lost in the process... they're all such freakin' awesome kids I love them! There's more to the story with these three as the week goes along, and it's a lot more in-depth than I'm describing it, you guys at least have to hear this part of it.
On Thursday, we did some service for Scott and Heidi at the house where we seriously tore the crap out of their lawn by digging out all the weeds growing in it and trying to make it look really good. We're planning on coming back next week to weed-n-feed the whole thing and fill in the holes with some potting soil and grass seed so it'll grow in nice and thick... it's a major project, but Scott deserves it along with his two daughters... they're sweet. Actually, one of the cool things that happened this last time is we had the opportunity to talk with Scott's oldest daughter Sam while she was out picking cherries out of the tree and we were digging weeds. She's been super distanced the whole time I've known her because I think her church talks a little smack on the Mormons, but she warmed up and was chatting it up about her job, the truck she drives, and just life in general... we even convinced her to come out to Keltapalooza (a party for Kelton, the former elder Wilde... I'm getting there don't worry) at the Steers on Sunday night. Anyway, hopefully we can start teaching her and get her going to church or something, cause she's a super sweet kid... has the exact same personality as her dad, it's way cool.
After doing that, we headed back to the house and got changed so we could go say goodbye to Jared and Mia before they took off for their respective homes (like I said, at the drop of a hat!) and talk for a little bit... it just blows my mind the amount of faith that these three have shown to be willing to act just like that. We made sure to jot down their numbers and email addresses, and get Mia's address so the missionaries could visit her... I think they even got us added on facebook I'm not sure haha. Anyway, that was way cool.
Friday, we were on exchange, so elder Anderson took a trip to Tigard to work with elder Shupe, and I was here in Sherwood with his companion elder Bowthorpe. It's funny how you have a predetermined mindset about a person before you get to know them... I thought the kid was a jerk to be honest when I first met him, but now I realize that he's way sweet and just super shy and humble. We spent the morning doing some service for my DCBFF (diet coke best friend forever) in the cedar creek ward, sister Barker. It was pretty funny how much coke she has in her food storage... like she probably has more of that than any other commodity haha. I think it's because in all reality, you can survive off of just diet coke for quite a while :-)
Anyway, we did about the same thing with sister Barker as we did with Scott's lawn, but to a more extreme level. We were digging out entire patches of lawn where moss had killed off the grass and re-planting with grass seed mix... hopefully with some watering, weed-n-feed, and time, we can get it in working order again.... gosh maybe I should be a landscaping major or something, cause I'm seriously loving yard work right now haha. I have another story about it on Saturday for sister DeLong that I'll tell ya.
Oh, one more funny thing about Friday was that we helped Mark and Alex move out of their townhouse to be closer to Mark's work. While cleaning out their freezer, we found another gallon zip-loc baggie chock-full of weed haha. His wifey said when I showed it to her "uh.. it's just green beans" but it was pretty funny... goodness she was very adamant about keeping a hold of those green beans after I pulled them out of the freezer :-P
So Saturday morning we were supposed to get to McMinnville's SPC breakfast, and we got totally lost and didn't find it till the last 20 minutes of it haha. It's a terrible thing when your GPS dies and you have no phone signal on the back roads of Mac... goodness it made for some good rallying in that Malibu though :-)
After the breakfast, we did another exchange with Cox and Wohlleben to keep them from killing each other, and because we found out that Kelton (elder Wilde) was up visiting. Before seeing him, we did some work in sister DeLong's yard, and holy moses we found out something interesting. Where we thought there was a bush in the front right by the walkway turned out to be a tree that should have covered a patio! We hacked the crap out of the bush and were able to make enough space to park two nice patio chairs underneath it and have room to stand up straight... pretty ridiculous, but it looks awesome. I'll take pictures for ya.
After that, we went to a dinner at the park, which was a barbecue put on for elder Wilde, and it was pretty sweet... he brought his girlfriend Erica with him as well as his mommy Kim. They're a pretty cute couple together... I don't really have much else to say about that haha. Other than that, his mom is absolutely awesome. Seriously, I talked with her more than with Kelton because he was...ahem... occupied with his girly haha. Kim and I are gonna be good friends after the mission though cause we both get along really, really well. Kinda funny eh? Maybe a little strange, but whatevs. You'll have to meet her... she's only like 20 min away in Draper.
Sunday, Allie came to church with the Steers, and it's so adorable. She might be horribly embarrassed if she read this, but it's been so cool to see the change that has come over her even in the last three weeks. The first time she came to church with Jared and Mia, both of the girls were dressed...well, not overly modest we'll put it that way haha. However, in the following two weeks, their dress became more and more modest (and not just on Sundays!) and it's so cool to see how their countenances have changed, especially Allie's. She's a kid who definitely has her head screwed on straight and is looking to do what her Heavenly Father has planned for her. The gospel changes lives as long as the people living them are willing to follow it. She's one of those people.
That night was the big Keltapalooza over at the Steers home where we ate a boatload, talked a ton, and laughed even more. It was really so much fun to be with those guys for the night. Kelton, gf, and mommy were there, the Steers minus her hubby who's working in California, and even Scott's crew and Allie were there! Holy mess it was fun!
Now for the fun part of this whole week-long experience that I forgot to tell you until now: We got transfer calls on Saturday night, and it turns out that I'm staying here in Sherwood till the end of the mish! Gardner called and said "elder Mooney, I'm so sorry... I tried. I was really pullin hard for ya. I fought tooth and nail, and well... YOU'RE STAYING IN SHERWOOD!!!!" Ah man I was so mad at him for like five seconds haha.. I was so scared of leaving this place, and it just makes me really happy to know that I'll be here to finish the mission, so I can not have to worry about getting the boot or seeing another area... just me, Anderson, and Sherwood... with Ella Rose DeLong, of course :-)
Now for the funny part. Transfers were yesterday, right? So as I'm doing my studies in the morning before we headed over, I got a call from some random area in the mission, and it turns out it's Rivera, and guess what... I'm a grandpa! A friggin' grandpa! Rivera is training a kid in English, so it's official: My posterity continues onward, thank goodness haha. Kinda funny though, right? The poor kid is training on a bike in Gresham... I gave him a knife as a father's day present so he can fight off the hobos out there where he's at haha.
After transfer meeting, we did some shopping, dropped off elder Cox and his companion the Nazi, and headed to dinner at the house. Turned out that our dinner canceled on us, but sister DeLong's granddaughter was nice enough to make us a super killer dinner complete with steak, green beans, baked potatoes, and even angel food cake (Twinkies haha) with homemade whipped cream and strawberries over the top... delicious!
Anyway, after the super sweet & thoughtful dinner, we had a lesson over at the Steers house with Allie, and it went really well. Actually, we didn't even end up talking about what we wanted to... most of the time was honestly spent hearing about how Kelton's girlfriend was like the Yoko Ono for his Beatles and how he should do better, blah, blah, blah until we were able to change the subject. To make a long story much, much shorter, we got talking about the church, her reading, and how her prayers have been going. She had a confirmation this last Sunday that this is the true church through a cool experience that she had where the Spirit kinda spoke to her, so we asked if she wanted to be baptized. She's set up to have her baptism on the 5th of August :-) the crazy thing about it? five is her lucky number and it's also her half-birthday mark... cool eh? I freakin' love being a missionary!
Okay, I apologize that this letter is so dang long, but I just want you to know that I love you so much Mom and I appreciate so much the sacrifices you guys are willing to make to let me be out here and serve the Lord... it truly has and continues to change me as a person every day... I just hope that you guys see the blessings of it as much as I do.... even if the only blessing is that it makes being around me a little more bearable haha. Have a great week and I'll talk to ya later, okay?
All my love,
-Elder Kurt Mooney
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