Week # 44 ~"OH HAIL NO!"

Hello Friends & Family,

Quote from Pres.

"Happiness always looks small while you hold it in your hands, but let it go, and you learn at once how big and precious it is." (Aleksei Peshkov)

I think that we will get a whole family of 4 baptized!!  We are working hard teaching them.  I will let you know.  This week with teaching lessons was very slow, we only got 3 lessons in.

So the rest of the week was interesting, the temperatures were up and down the whole week.   Every day was a tornado warning or severe storm warning with hail.  There were 30 to 70 mph winds with the storms traveling at about 5 to 30 mph.  So all in all it keeps us on our toes.

We had planned a softball & potluck at the park event.  It was to get people to come together and share in some food and fun.   We wanted them to bring their friends and family that are active and not active. 

We finally got our first potluck/softball game started last Friday and it was a total mess.  It started to rain a little bit then to downpour and then to storm. If it was not bad enough, the tornado sirens then went off which freaked everyone out.   We took shelter in a nearby outdoor bathroom which I didn't dare go into because of the smell.  Our rubber bases that we bought at the dollar store blew away also.  After the sirens turned off we packed up and went home and there we found gigantic hail the size of golf balls. We were freaking out about how big they were. It was crazy!

Saturday, we wanted to try something crazy because it might by my comps last week here in this area, so I did the gallon challenge with another elder.  I didn't finish but the other elder threw up three times, we kept telling him to stop but he said he had to finish what he started, it was super funny. I was crying it was so funny.

I am pretty sure that I will stay here because I have not been in this area for 6 months yet. Could you send me some of Hank Smith cds please.

My time is up and I have to go…

I love you tons

Love, Elder Vance

My apartment Grand Island NE

Week # 43 ~ Diggity Dawg

 It is HOT here!!

oh the quote of the day by Pres. 

"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony" (Mahatma Gandhi)

So this week was exciting and a little scary,

Monday.  We did our usual, shopping, laundry, hanging out and that kind of stuff.

Tuesday.  We went on a tour of Hornady Guns and ammo factory and it was really cool and we got to see how everything was made including the led in the top of the bullet.  Dad would have liked the tour.

Wednesday.  We had a freak rain storm lasted all day.

Thursday.  Zone meeting and it was ok.

Friday.  We were walking to Men's Ware House that is brand new a few blocks from our house. When we were about to leave it started to rain and hail really bad. It started to storm and we both got our umbrellas and rain coats on and started to run. We made it to a near by McDonalds and we waited there for a ride.  By then our cloths were literally dripping my pants were soaked through and my shoes had water in them. It was like walking in mini puddles everywhere and it took a couple of days for everything to dry out.  I am going into it soon to get pants fixed soon, I will give Men’s Warehouse our info.  Thanks!

Saturday.   Another rain storm and we had a tornado warning for a little bit but nothing touched down in Grand Island.

Sunday.  Was church and we got an entire family to come to church that was investigators!!  The lady has two kids and a husband.  We gave the wife a BoM and she told us that she needs a few days to read and compare it with the Bible.   After a few days she told us that it was very interesting.   She thought that it supported the Bible and went along with it. Everything else that we had taught her about the BoM and the Bible she thought was correct.  She also told us that her last church kind of offended her and so they were looking for a new church to go to.   On Sunday she took her whole family to our church and they really like it.   We were so excited to see them all.  I think they really enjoyed it. 

Have to end now talk (write) to you soon,

I love you tons,

Love, Elder Vance

Week # 42 ~ Bath Tub Bed!

Hello All,

Start off with a quote from The NOM Pres.

 "Be who you are and say what you feel, (from the Spirit of course!) because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind."

                                                           ~Theodore Seuss Giesel--Dr. Seuss

Any Who.  This week was interesting.

The service project table that we removed the stain from, we later stained it again, the color that the lady wanted it to be this time and it is a dark red color. It’s almost crimson red and she keeps apologizing to us about having us do all of this work on the table. But it really wasn't hard at all.  We just got a brush and brushed it on, it was super easy, oh well.

Sunday.   I gave a talk about Preach my Gospel.  It was the second talk of that day and I took 25 minutes to talk about everything in it and what it does for us.  I was really nervous and my voice was shaking and stuttering and I felt really hot, but towards the end I was talking fluently. After sacrament a lady came up to me and asked me a lot of questions about PMG and I was able to answer all of them.   She even took my advice to pray about which topic she should study about.

Friday.  We decided to go tracting in a new neighborhood that was recently built (recently meaning about 3 years ago) and we got 13 contacts in about 35 minutes.  Contacts are someone that we talk to for a little bit about our church.  Then get their phone number and information for a come back visit.  One of the houses that we were going to knock on I felt really confident and I wanted to do this. I took charge and went and knocked on the house and said with confidence, “we are missionaries from the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.." and he said, “no” and slammed the door in our faces.  I was like dang!   Some people just don't want anything to do with us.  We just kept going like good little missionaries!

That was the exciting parts of my week. 

We also had a tornado warning in our area, so we took shelter in our bathroom.   Just before the warning went off we were playing catch with a football behind our house and here are some pictures.  We were there for a few hours until the alarms were clear.  It was exciting!  We are safe and sound and I am out of time.  Love you all,

Love Elder Vance

Week # 41 ~Words of the week...Flat & Humid

Hello family,

I am feeling great on the inside and on the outside I am good.

Quote of the week from Pres. Weston 

  "The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will."

                                                                                                ~Vincent Lombardi

So this week was super rainy & humid & some days were long & some days were short, but full of service. 

This week was not super exciting and not a lot of new people to teach. 

Some of the service that we did is that we got some paint/stain off of a member’s table.  It was really bad; she put some remover on that made her table feel almost like a rubber coating.   It was really black.  So she got some stain/paint remover for us to use to help taking off the remaining stain.   It was is the extra strength kind.  I accidentally got some on my finger, yes we were wearing gloves. It just ate through the gloves. 

Today for p-day we are trying to figure out something fun to do.  But… so everything here is flat and there are literally no such thing as a hill to hike here except one that is man made and it is full of chiggers. As for the sights we could see, we can go to the top floor of the hospital and look over all of the flatness of Nebraska.  That is it for excitement & sight seeing. 

My time is up and I need to go, love you tons

Love, Elder Vance