May 15, 2017

Friends and family!

Well here we are, the final week of my mission! It's been a good run and this last week will be a sprint to the finish! Last week we had a good amount of success! We met a man on the street and talked for a half hour. He accepted our invitation to tour the church tomorrow. So that night we met a lady and invited her and she said yes! So we invited yet another man that night and he said yes! 3 people I'd never met before (my companion had last transfer, but we hadn't been able to meet with them since then). One of them he'd only met for 2 minutes, the other had had a couple lessons. It was awesome though to have 3 people agree to tour the church the very next day! Unfortunately only one came. But we had a good tour!

This week's challenge is to be your best self! Live with no regrets! And have a great week!

-Elder Moon

May 8, 2017

Friends and Family!

This will be short this week because not much has changed in this last week. Same tracting for hours and same not very exciting results. Unfortunately we haven't tracted into any more miraculous church tours but I hope you all had an opportunity to participate in one. 

This week we will continue trying and looking toward optimistic results. We'll strive to see with an eye of faith what is possible in this area and invite as many people as we can to learn more. 

This week's challenge comes from a story we heard yesterday in a regional broadcast. A woman said as an 11 year old girl Elder L Tom Perry (an apostle) came to their house to spend the night. I assume they were visiting the stake or something and her dad was the stake president. She said Elder Perry offered to help her feed the chickens which was her chore. She went skipping down the trail to the barn with her flashlight. Elder Perry, who didn't have a light of his own, tried to follow. She went skipping along and hopped over a small creek. Elder Perry didn't recognize the difference between skipping and hopping over a creek, and without a light of his own, he couldn't see the difference between the ground and the creek either. Unfortunately, he stepped into the creek and got his foot soaking wet (potentially tripping too, but no injuries were acquired). On their way back he declared in his distinct voice "I need my own light!" How profound that is! We all need our own lights. 

I extend my challenge this week, my penultimate challenge, to each of us. That is to find our own light. Use borrowed light as needed, but daily strive to find our own light. Christ is The Light of the world, but He invited each of us in Matthew 5:14 to BE a light to the world. We must find our own testimony, our own conversion, our own channel to The Light. May we do so with as much haste and humility as we can summon! 

Have an awesome lighted week!  :)

-Elder Moon

P.S. As a special treat, Elder Moon sent a link to a recording of a version of Homeward Bound (music) and Oh How Lovely was the Morning (lyrics).  He is playing the piano and another elder is singing.  They will be performing the song in church on Elder Moon's last Sunday--an appropriate time to play Homeward Bound!!   

Oh How Lovely was the Homeward Bound

May 1, 2017

Friends and Family!

We actually had an amazing miracle this last week! We went to knock on this door and asked the guy if we could share a message about Jesus Christ and he let us right in! That's a miracle in and of itself, but we proceeded to talk and ask about his religious background and he said he grew up in a church. But right now that isn't working well for him and he'd fallen away from it and is currently in spiritual turmoil. He asked about what it would be like if he came to our church so we said "the church is like 2 minutes down the road, we could give you a tour right now if you want" and he said "I'll meet you there in 10 minutes" so we gave him a tour of the church on the spot! Never happened to me on my entire mission! Never heard of it ever happening like that in this entire mission! It was amazing! We talked about baptism as we got to the font and he said he wants to investigate more before committing to that, but he likes the idea of a fresh new start and all that. Unfortunately, he didn't come to church yesterday and we stopped by to chat with him. He's going to read more and pray and get back to us. The spirit was so strong in the tour and I feel absolutely confident he will read from the Book of Mormon and get back to us soon! He had such good questions during the tour and is truly searching for the truth!

Other than that, it's been much of the same knocking on doors and trying to share our message. We have a few people who are willing to have us back, so things are starting to pick up, but not all that fast. Hopefully lots of the people who allowed us to come back will start to progress in the coming weeks!

In light of our miracle, this week's challenge is to tour an LDS church building if you aren't a member. If you're a member but haven't been in a while, attend this Sunday. If you're a member and actively attend church each week, invite someone on a tour who isn't a member! If you don't know how to go about organizing a church tour or if you'd like to go on one, check out LDS.org and go to the Meetinghouse locator and call the bishop. He'll connect you with the missionaries and they'd love to show you around! :)

Love you all and have an awesome church filled week!

-Elder Moon

April 24, 2017

Friends and Family,

This week was much like the last one. T is busy getting an application in for this weekend so he wasn't able to meet. But he should be free this coming weekend after he submits his stuff. Then we'll try to see if he can come to church and meet with us. We've also been doing lots of tracting trying to find more people. 

Since there's not much different in the life of the V

missionaries, I'll tell you a part of a homecoming talk I heard yesterday. A missionary came home from their mission and had served in Brazil where they eat lots of beans and rice. The reason is there's so much hiking around through the mountains and the beans and rice give you the strength and energy to do that. If you don't eat them, you'll be weak. They compared it to spiritual beans and rice. The three spiritual beans and rice are daily scripture study, prayer, and church attendance. It was a really good talk!

So my challenge to each of you is to eat your spiritual beans and rice this week! Make sure you study the scriptures every day, pray many times every day, and go to church this Sunday!

Have an awesome week! Love you all!

-Elder Moon

April 17, 2017

Friends and Family!

This week was a good one. We had to get things going because not much has happened here for a year ;) missionaries have worked hard but it's just a difficult area. Wonderful members and people, just not super interested. But we did find two promising new investigators this week, one is a family! And several people I taught before while I was here are willing to meet again! It's nice to be back. I kind of felt like a movie star coming back to the ward where everyone was surprised to see me! 

If you want to pray for someone, pray for Tommy. He investigated before and wasn't interested in continuing as far as converting. Just curious mostly. But he said it might be a sign that I'm back telling him he needs to be baptized. So prayers for his heart to take courage on that thought would be awesome! 

For the challenge, be you this week. Be obedient to the commandments, be good, be righteous, be better that you've been before, be your best self... but be you! You are each children of God and have unique qualities and strengths, so bring them out! This is more of an abstract challenge, but do your best (and be your best!) 

Have an awesome week after Holy Week! Love you!

-Elder Moon

April 10, 2017

Family and Friends!

This week was good. We had some success contacting people. We didn't get through all the people but did get some people. We had 3 new investigators which was better than any week this transfer if I remember correctly. We also had 2 investigators at church, one showed up totally randomly! That was nice! Some people have been progressing relatively well but no grand success yet. I'll be sure Elder G has the list of people we haven't gotten to yet. Because he'll be staying here and I'll be going.

So take your guesses as to where I'm going! Not that you know any of the areas here. But this one will sound familiar. I'll be going back to an area I served in before. It's one I liked a lot! Probably my favorite area in the mission, at least for the members. Remember how I wasn't able to go out to V when the ASL people went to teach the deaf man, and how I wasn't able to see the M's? Well, maybe God said "you know, you missed out on that and were bummed, so I'll send you back to that area!" I'm shocked, but I'll be going back to Victor to end the last 6 weeks of my mission! 

This week' challenge is to foster friendships and relationships with those you knew long ago but haven't seen in a while. Reach out and contact them, set up a time to go get lunch, do something to rebuild those relationships. That's what I'll be doing this week with the members there, seeing them again and encouraging them to invite their friends to learn about the gospel. If they want to see their friends forever, they'll need this gospel! So I'll invite them to share the gospel and you all can decide what you'd like to do with those old long lost friends :)

Love you all (long lost friends ;) Have a great week! 

-Elder Moon

April 3, 2017

Family and Friends!

This week was great. Conference was awesome! Lots of good talks, and they are all online (or will be this week) so if you missed them you can watch them and listen to them as much as you want forever! I strongly recommend them, they're good talks! 

As for contacting all those people, this week was slower because Elder Gardner got sick for two days. We weren't allowed to leave our apartment since he threw up so I read the Book of Mormon. I was in Helaman 9 when he woke up sick Tuesday morning and I finished Moroni 10 Wednesday evening (about 150 pages or so, and these pages have tiny words, so it was lots of reading and I was all readed out). I'm currently on page 56 of the Doctrine and Covenants and would love to finish that this month. We did call several of the people whose phone numbers we had while he was sick. Not much came of it. I'm going to try and get all the people on the list contacted this week. Then I won't leave anything undone if I leave the area for my last transfer, and if I stay I'll have things cleaned up for a fresh start for my last transfer!

This week's challenge, I encourage each of us to make our prayers more meaningful. A big focus of the face to face event in Palmyra a few weeks ago and another theme of conference was about the spirit and prayer. In making our prayers more meaningful we will access heaven more fully. We can do this by visualizing ourselves at the throne of God and treating the prayer as not a conversation but us speaking to God The Father. He loves us, but we need to be reverent and not treat it as a casual conversation. Pray for the spirit and follow what inspiration you receive! 

Have an awesome week everyone!

-Elder Moon