10 Month Mark! (Week 42 In The Field)

First off I would Like to thank everyone for the birthday wishes, I had a really nice birthday. It was kinda weird not being able to celebrate with my family, but at least I had friends to celebrate it with. :)

I know its been a while since I've sent an update out, so sorry about that. Well, Transfers are tomorrow and I am staying with my comp in the Cordera Ward! Elder McGhie wasn't to happy about staying, just because this is a super hard area to work in. But I'm glad I'm staying another transfer, 6 weeks isn't long enough to get to know everybody in the ward, and I really like this ward a lot. Even though it is a really hard area to work in.

So since its been a couple weeks since the last update let me inform you on the highlights of this past week. So Obviously the big highlight was my birthday! I am now 20 years old and 10 months out on my mission! For my birthday we went to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, which was really fun! It's like the highest zoo in the world, I forget the elevation. It's a really unique zoo, but oh man was it expensive haha. I'll Send pics out so you can see the good times I had.

After that I got to choose where we ate so obviously I chose Culvers! My favorite fast food restaurant in Wisconsin. It needs to come to Florida haha, glad its here in Colorado at least. :) After that went to email for like an hour and a half, I got so many emails I didn't have time to update you all.

Then we had dinner with the member I live with, they cooked hamburger and french fries for us. Classic haha. They Bought me a cookies and cream ice cream cake, sung to me, and then I opened my gifts. I think my favorite gift had to be the tan pants, thank you Mom and Dad! :)

At the end of the night we had our mission prep class that we hold for the youth. This class is going so well. We now have youth from 2 other wards come! They really love the class and they are on fire with missionary work. Yesterday We had our best class yet. We had them teach us on the importance of listening and asking questions when you're teaching somebody. And then we had the sisters role play the first vision to a couple of the youth while the rest of them had to examine the things the sisters did best, (as far as listening and asking questions go) and the things they did not so well. Next week we are going to have the youth role play the first vision to each other using the things we have learned in class. Because of this class the youth are getting super stoked about teaching their friends and serving missions.

So Yesterday was a really good day. We were able to meet with our investigator Lisa, and we sat on her doorstep reading Ether chapter 12 with her. We felt like she could really relate to that chapter because she's going through a divorce and a bunch of other things right now. We explained to her that trials happen for a reason and that if she puts her faith in Christ, she will be able to get through them. She has really opened up to us the past couple weeks. She's not really progressing too much though. We try to tell her that her burdens will be lighter if she takes the time to read from the Book of Mormon. I think we might have gotten through to her this time, so we will see what happens. She really enjoyed the chapter she read, and said it really does relate to what shes going through. It was a really good lesson we had with her, but oh man was it long. We were on her door step for an hour and a half. I was really sore afterwards but it was all worth it. :)

Well, those were the big highlights of the week. With the new mission president now, transfer calls will be different. If we are transferring, our zone leaders will call us on Saturday to let us know. So if you don't get a call, you aren't getting transferred. If you are, you find out Monday where you will go and who you will be with through email. It's kinda weird but I think I might like it this way.

I Love and miss you all, again, thank you for the birthday wishes, I really appreciated it. :) I hope you all have a good week! :)

Elder Greer

Hardest Area (Week 40 In The Field)

So I've come to the conclusion that this is probably my hardest area. It's super small, we only cover 2 neighborhoods, and they all are uber rich, so nobody is ever home because they all have jobs. It's really hard to find things to do, because there are only like 20 less actives in the ward, and a little over half want no contact. So all we can really do is tract, but we have almost tracted our entire area. 

We did have a zone training this past Friday and they talked about creative finding, and we all had to come up with a new way to find someone to teach. My companion and I came up with the idea of starting a mission prep class for the Laurels and Priests. So we are going to start that up Thursday. The youth here are rocking missionaries. The Priests come out with us every week. We had 4 come out with us last week, and one came out with us all day. Well he's not a Priest, he's an Elder, but he got his mission call to Nampa, Idaho so we took him out with us all day to show him what it's like. He had such a blast. His Mom told us that he told her he had more fun than he thought he would have. I think the youth in this ward are our best bet for finding people to teach in this area. 

On that note, we do have 3 new investigators, a single mom and 2 teenage daughters. They aren't super solid, but more so now then when we first tracted into them. Her name is Lisa and the 2 daughters names our Ally and Candice I think. Anyways, we had a good discussion with them, kinda answered her questions about what we believe and the importance of the Book of Mormon. We hope to go back and teach them the restoration. 

Even though its a tough area, I love it here. My companion is awesome, the members are awesome, it's just hard to find things to do haha. Oh so looks like things will be changing with our new President. Looks like we wont have 50 pages of extra rules now. He trusts us enough that we only need preach my gospel, and the missionary handbook. I'm super excited for these changes. He seems like he really cares for us. 

Anyways, I love you all and hope you have a wonderful week. Time is truly flying out here in the mission field but I love every second of it. :) Have a good week!

Elder Greer

4th of July! (Week 39 In The Field)

Hey, I hope everybody had a great 4th of July this past week! I had a super fun week!

We started off the week by going on exchanges with a couple other elders in the zone. I went to their area, and my companion stayed. The Elder that I was with that day is super musically gifted, so we sang a lot haha. But we had a ton of success on that exchange, we talked to a ton of people and invited almost everyone we talked to, to baptism. It was a lot of fun!

On Wednesday we got to meet our new mission president, who is awesome! I love him already. Looks like there are going to be a lot of changes happening soon! Nothing major yet, I do know that we are now allowed to wear cacky pants! So thats pretty exciting. I dont really know too much about President Rehm, but we will be having interviews with him soon, so I'll get to talk to him one on one for a while.

On Thursday we had a really good lesson with a potential investigator, we answered a lot of their questions on what we believe. The funny part is, they have a son that joined the church and is on a mission right now. But they still know pretty much nothing about what we believed. We asked if they would like to take the lesson and they said they would think about it so we will see what happens.

We had a super fun day on Friday. We marched in a huge parade and passed out so much candy, it was crazy. We were pretty tired after that but the fun still went on. We went to a members house and played a couple fun games. Water balloon vollyball! I have never played it before and it was so much fun. Needless to say I got really wet after all that. :) Unfortunately we couldnt launch fireworks because they are illegal in Colorado. Ironic that those are but weed isn't. Doesn't make any sense.

The rest of the week we did a lot of work. Went out with a couple of priests which is always fun. The priests really like coming out with us in this ward, its awesome!

On Sunday we got to teach the 16 and 17 year old sunday school class. That went pretty well for our last minute preparing. Oh and there is a sign language class that we go to after church and I really like it a lot! I got the alphabet down and a few words. Now my companion and I sign to each other a lot haha. I'm getting better and better at it each week! :)

Anyways, I got to go here soon! I hope you all have a good week! Love and miss you!

Elder Greer