Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Howdy

Howdy!

This week was pretty insane. We had a lot of cool things happen. On Monday,
after preparation day, I went on exchanges with elder Sorensen in Hamilton.
elder Sorensen is from Lyman, he knows almost all moms side of the family.
So we are pretty good friends. During the start of the exchange a HUGE wind
storm came into town and power lines
were torn down and trees were ripped out of the ground! The best part was
everyone was advised to be inside, but we were out in it. I didn't get to
witness trees falling down though, bummer... here are some newspaper
articles attached. The exchange ended the next day.

On thursday we met with an investigator. He is not progressing
very well but he has been reading the book of mormon and he is already in
Mosiah. as we were talking with him, He randomly said that he was thinking
really hard about getting baptized in September. The funny thing was that
we had never invited him to be baptized in the first place. So he might get
baptized in September sometime.

Later that evening we taught a new member lesson to one of our recent
converts. We were on the lesson about chastity. Teaching the law of
chastity can be really awkward sometimes. Especially teaching it to some
girls that are about the same age that we are (which is what happened in
this lesson) but we kept the lesson really light, and we were cracking
jokes while teaching the lesson to where it was not awkward. But it was
probably the easiest chastity lesson that I Have ever taught on my mission.

Saturday was a really interesting day. We got a random text from one of our
potential investgators which said, " hey fellas, we want to be taught, When
are you free to come and teach us?" So we told him Sunday. (the next day,
yesterday) he said, "sure, We would like to fee you as well" So we got our
elders quorum president to come with us. Because he lived in Pinesdale
where we have a worthy mechizedek priesthood holder with us. The
lesson with him the next day was really powerful. At the beginning of the
lesson,he told us, "Alright, teach us how to be mormon." their family is
now learning the gospel and about 7 of them will be baptized at some point.
but they need to be interviewed by a general authority since they are from
Pinesdale. A town thats calls itself   Apostilic United brotherhood group.

The last thing that was crazy this week was yesterday. It is almost the
same story as the Mc family in my last area. When church was over we could
have went home but I felt like we should take another walk through the
church before we head home for lunch. On the way through the church one of
our other recent converts stopped us in the hall and asked us if we had any
open time today to come over to their house because his wife wanted to have
a baptismal interview the same day. She had already taken all of the lesson
but she was dropped a couple months ago. So at this time she was a former
investigator. We then set up a time to come by and then we went home
stunned. We were saying to each other, "ummmm,....what just happened!!!!"
So we called the district leader in Hamilton and he was available to give
her an interview. He gave her the interview and she passed! So we then set
a date for the baptism on september 1st  (which
is the day before transfers on Tuesday.) it was pretty crazy because I
followed a prompting and we ended up getting somebody else that is going to
be baptized in two weekends!!!!

Anyways, this week was full of awesome things. have a good week!

Elder  Daniels

Friday, August 14, 2015

Lessons scheduled

Hey family,

this week was somewhat slower than the past few weeks. we has a lesson
with one of our recent converts Barbara. not much to say about her
except she is doing really well. one of the other lessons however on
Wednesday night was a pretty difficult one. one of our investigators
we finally met with after a while and she had some pretty interesting
questions like, "i thought that the gospel was not on the earth
anymore when Adam and eve were cast out of the garden?" anyways, they
were really interesting questions that took some time to answer, she
had absolutely no reason why there was a need for the restoration or
any restoration of any kind. It was a pretty tough lesson.

On Thursday, we had our weekly correlation meeting with the ward
mission leader and all of the ward missionaries. it was a pretty rough
correlation meeting because the ward mission leader asked the same
exact questions about the same people for the past few weeks. It was
kind of getting annoying this week. During the correlation meeting we
were having a text conversation with an investigator that we were
supposed to be having a lesson with at 8 o' clock that same night. But
he decided to cancel the lesson 15 minutes before it was supposed to
happen. Wegot pretty frustrated because we had a member planned to
come to that lesson and he was already halfway to the church when we
called to tell him that it cancelled. I dont like it when people
cancel right before the lesson.

Friday was a pretty cool day though. We didnt have much to do in the
morning so we went over to the church to do some facebook, and our
online investgator was on as well so we set up a skype lesson at 1.
The skype lesson was kind of weird. She is from Macedonia and she is
really interested in the church, the only problem is that the nearest
church for her is 4 hours away and so we teach her over skype. When we
taught here at 1, it was just past 9 PM where she lived. She has a
lesson scheduled with the missionaries in the next week or two though,
So we might not be teaching her anymore since she finally got in
contact with some missionaries.

We had a lot of lessons scheduled on Friday. We went and stopped by
this less active lady, her husband was investgating the church for a
while but suddenly stopped, she said that she sometimes gets bombarded
with questions from him about the church that she cant fully answer
because she does not know. So we simply answered the questions that
she had from him.  Then we had a lesson after dinner with an
investgator from a recent convert family from Pinesdale. she is ready
to be baptized but her only hangup is whether or not Thomas S. Monson
is the true prophet or not. So we taught to her needs and we showed
her portions of the video, "on the lords errand." at one point in the
lesson we stopped and asked her if she could feel the spirit in the
room. She replied yes. She felt the spirit for the rest of the lesson
and even prayed at the end as well. I think this lesson was really
influential for her conversion.

Well that was my week, it was slower than usual but we had some really
good lessons.


Elder McKade Daniels

teaching lessons

Hey everyone,

this week was really good. we had a lot of things going on. district
meeting on wednesday was super cool. all we did was have a few role
plays where we practiced teaching to their needs,(a role play is where
you practice teaching like you are in a real situation) even when we
had a lesson that we planned to teach. i was in both of them. the
first one, i was the investigator and its the first time meeting with
the missionaries. usually they would have taught the restoration first
but the catch was that my story gave them the opportunity to teach the
plan of salvation instead. my story went something like this (and i
had to act it out with as much expression and emotion as i could), "i
wanted you to come back to my house today because ive been going
through a hard time the past few weeks. i dont know how much longer i
can stand living with myself because i felt so bad." the sisters asked
why i felt so bad and i proceeded to tell them, "you know, a few weeks
ago i was at a party with my buddy, and we were partying pretty hard.
after the party, me and my friend left and i was pretty drunk. as we
were on the way home we were broadsided by a drowsy driver and i ended
up living, and my buddy passed on. i just feel like i was the one who
caused his death because i was the one driving. i want to know how i
can get ride of the guilt that i have."  then the sisters taught a
little bit about the plan of salvation and testified. then elder
Sorenson, (who told me that that was my situation) stopped the role
play and waited for a little bit and said, "can you feel the spirit in
this room?"  to be quite honest, the spirit in the room was so strong
that there was no denying it, and it almost literally felt like the
room was electrified. the second role play that i was in, i was
teaching this time. the situation was about the same as the last role
play. needless to say, it was the best district meeting by far.

we also had the baptism of the G family. there were six of them
that were able to be baptized it was awesome! the baptism took 2
hours. it was amazing to see everyone get baptized. we were able to be
the witnesses for the baptisms. there were two missionaries that drove
up from Bozeman that baptized some of them. and then there was another
missionary that got off his mission 6 months ago and he came up all
the way from utah to be at the baptism. it was cool to see a bunch of
people at the baptism. there was even an apostle at the baptism! BUT
the apostle was from the pinesdale FLDS group, so he was not really an
apostle. haha! that was just a title he held in their church.

we went hiking this morning at 5 am with the district to see the sun
rise. it was really cool. the sun was red because of the fires.


Elder McKade Daniels


ice cream

Hey guys,

This week was pretty good. We had a lot of stuff going on this week.
We had transfers on Wednesday and since I didn't have to go to Helena,
I just left with my companion when we got to the stake center. We got
to Corvallis and I unpacked and then we tried to go out and figure out
what to do because elder Parker did not know when I was going to get
there (even though I was in the same zone.) on Friday we had our
Pioneer Day celebration as a ward. (Yes, they do celebrate Pioneer Day
outside of Utah.) it was really fun. We made homemade rootbeer, which
was really good. We also made icecream with and old fashioned hand
cranked ice cream maker. That was super good, the only downside was
that we could only grab one scoop with a spoon because the second
scoop would be double dipping. So I came up with the idea that I would
use one spoon to scoop and then put it on the other spoon that I eat
off of. It was pretty smart. Then elder Parker grabbed plastic water
bottle and cut the top off so he had a makeshift cup to eat out of.
Once he figured it out, all of the kids started running over with
water bottles to have us cut the tops off so they could have a cup to
eat out of. It was a fun day.

Since I have been in Corvallis we have been riding our bikes a lot.
Corvallis is a pretty small town and so there is not a lot of places
to drive to, you can pretty much get anywhere on a bike. On Sunday we
met with the family who are getting baptized on the 1st. They
live almost in pinesdale but right outside. 6 of them are getting
baptized. We had all of their jumpsuits for them. We brought them and
had them try them on to see if they would all fit. They all did. Then
we had the district leader, elder ward, come up as well to fill out
the baptismal membership record sheets since they had already been
interviewed by a general authority. (People that are from pinesdale
that are coming into the LDS church have to be interviewed by a
general authority.) elder ward wanted to do a small interview for them
as well. He went around the room and asked if they were ready to be
baptized and then he asked why. When he got to the last two he asked
if they were ready to be baptized. They said yes. Then he was about to
ask them why, but he stopped and sat there for a few seconds and
looked as though he was pondering for a minute. He then turned to the
dad and asked if he could take both of the children outside for a
minute so that he could talk to them and interview them more. The dad
said sure. It was a really interesting situation. You could tell that
the spirit was there in the house because it was probably a revelation
from the spirit. But they all passed and we finished the paperwork for
each person and it took forever! Those papers take so long to fill out
because they have to be done perfectly. We ended up getting home way
late because of it, but it was worth the time because we would have
had to fill them out sometime.  I am so excited to see them get
baptized.

That was my week so far.


Elder McKade Daniels