Week # 59 ~OMAHA!

Hello Family,

"If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading." (Lao Tzu)

Well this last Friday we had a little switch up.  Elder Neilson is a visa waiter and he got his visa and is now in Taiwon, My companion is Elder Sorenson and he is a district leader and he came out with me also.  He is great.  We are getting along great, and doing great things!

 Elder Hammond is in another area being a district leader.  All because Elder Neilson left early.  So there is just two elders living in the apartment and we are in a car share with Elder Millett and Elder Larson.  Other than that I has been a great week.

Our area is big and no one knows where anything is.  We are all new to the area.   My comp has a GPS and it helps us at least not get to lost.   

Life is good and I am feeling great.  Yes and we bike a lot! This Area is very hilly.  We have to go UP the hill BOTH WAYS, just like dad had to do, and it is tuff.

They had to close down Lakeview area again, the new area we were working.  There was not enough elders in the area to keep it going correctely since Elder N & Elder H left.  Now again I am in Millard with Elder Sorenson, same apartment.  7007 s. 145th st. Omaha Nebraska 61844.  It is an awesome apartment, new and nice.

I am now just trying to get the area down. I have to meet all new people in the area so it will take a little bit of time to get it memorized.  But it is exciting getting to know new people and new areas. 

Serving a mission is completely different from what I thought it would be like.  Not a lot of the people here are very interested in the church or leaning about our Hevenely Father.   Also, all missionaries have unique personalites, they all take getting use to and are sometimes hard to get along with. 

So we have been re-reading the BoM and I am learning a lot more about the stories that I heard in primary & Young Mens.   Like how the sons of Ishmael were just on the Band Wagon and did anything that their peers did.   It doesn't say anything about the wife's of Laman or Lemuel or Nephi or Sam.  I am sure it is because they are sacred and do not need to be talked about. 

I learned that I need to rely on my Heavenly Father more for things being on a mission. 

Words have come to my mouth when I needed them. He has helps me teach a lot of lessons that I did not know where to go with them.  But I was guided to say the things I needed to say.  I have had to rely on Him a ton with Millett.   He also with giving me strength while biking and walking and other physical things that I must complete.

I have sent a picture, we are the “A team” yes we have lots of fun together.  It is a nice change since the last companionship!

Have to go,

Love you lots!

Elder Vance

Week #58 ~Week one. Got it down!

This week’s quote from President Weston,

"It is good to act as if. It is better to grow to the point where it is no longer an act." 
(Charles Caleb Colton)

This week has been super; it has been full of miracles.  We are opening a new area, which is very exciting.  Lake view is a very hilly place and the up hill parts of biking are very hard but the down hill parts are nice.  This whole week up until Friday and Saturday was just us driving or walking or biking around trying to find someone to teach.  Opening a new area is harder than I thought it would be because no one wants to talk with us.  We have been going door to door contacting all the members we have records for.  We tried everyone that we have record of and our ward has about 250 to 300 people in it. 

Yesterday, we were trying to contact a less active guy.   We knocked two times and nothing happened.  So we were going to walk away and I thought, third times the charm and I knocked again.  Then the neighbor opened up his door.  And guess what, he is a member that we didn't know about.    We talked and now we are going to teach him!    This is only one among many other miracles that happened to us this week.  This work is great!  This area is super special and ready to get taught!  My comp Elder Hammond is super nice guy and really funny.  We get a long great!

My new, Elder Hammond, he is from Mont Pilliar Idaho.  Also in my apartment is Elder Sorenson he came out with me.  Then there is Elder Neilson, he is a greeny and they are all great!

My new apartment is it is in a giant apartment building.  It has all new things in it.  It is very nice.  For my Halloween costume we are going to be the Men in Black.  I have the glasses and the black tie, I just need the flash thing and I am done.  Can you have Preston build me a deneurolizer (the men in black think that they use to erase peoples minds) and send it to me for my Halloween costume?

My old companion has been moved to the same ward as the President.  So he could keep an eye on him.  I am very happy and have great new missionaries to hang out with!

That is my week so far, Love you!!

Love Elder Vance

Week # 57~Omaha Nebraska!

To start a thought from President Weston,

"My Calling: I am called of God. My Authority is above that of kings of the earth. By revelation I have been selected as a personal representative of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is my Master. He has chosen me to represent Him, to stand in His place, to say and do what He himself would say and do if He personally were ministering to the very people to whom He has sent me. My voice is His voice, my acts are His acts, my words are His words, and my doctrine is His doctrine. My commission is to do what He wants done. To say what He wants said. To be a living, modern witness in word and deed of the divinity of His great and marvelous latter-day work. 

 HOW GREAT IS MY CALLING." (Elder Bruce R. McConkie)

So this week has been super!  On Tuesday we went out and ate at Red Lobster and we had endless shrimp.  I ate a small breakfast the next day because I was still full!!  and it tasted really good!! 

Then on Wednesday Elder Saunders got a phone call from President Weston, he asked him what is up with Elder Millett and they discussed it in private. glad to be done with all that craziness!!!

On Friday I took a 4 hour trip in a 15 passenger van to go to Omaha and open up an area!  Opening an area is when a set of missionaries gets put into the area for the first time after a while with no missionaries in it. My new companion is Elder Hammond.  He and I came out at the same time.  He is really funny and cool.  We live in a brand new apartment with everything new in it and it still smell like new carpet.  We are also living with 2 other elders. So 4 elders in 1 apartment.  I am very excited to get to know these new elders.  They are great.  It will be a lot of fun and a adventure opening a new area and sharing the Gospel with them.

So that is my week so far.

Love Elder Vance

My new address:

7007 S. 148th st.  #12

Omaha,  Nebraska 68138

 My time is up and I need to go.

Love you,

Elder Vance

Week # 55 ~Three down...Who knows how many more to go.....

Quote form President Weston:

 "May I commend you faithful Saints who are striving to flood the earth and your lives with the Book of Mormon. Not only must we move forward in monumental manner more copies of the Book of Mormon, but we must move forward into our lives and throughout the earth more of its marvelous messages. This sacred volume was written for us-for our day. Its scriptures are to be likened unto ourselves" (1 Nephi 19:23)(President Ezra Taft Benson).

So this week was GREAT!

I was able to confirm three people that were baptized on Friday!  The H Family.   It was amazing, during the blessing I felt the spirit so strongly.  I was saying things that I had not previously planned on saying.  It was a great testimony builder for me about the Holy Ghost.  I was very nervous about doing the confirmation and I was stuttering and worried about forgetting the words.   Our bishop and others helped me remember and the blessing was fantastic, I could feel the spirit and the words came to me when I needed to say them.  Amazing experience!

There were two family members there, to baptize the family, but they asked me to confirm all of them  I was very touched. 

Transfers are in two week from now, I think that I will train but not sure.  I have been in Grand Island for seven months now. Crazy…. 

I will be sad to leave and I am very happy now!  The ward is great about helping us and feeding us. 

You have been asking for some pictures of me doing "Nebraska thing",  I will get you that picture if it is the last thing I do!!!   Promise!

I am reading in the B of M  in 2^nd Nephi.  Also in the Bible in Exodus about Moses and the people.  I am reading about the tabernacle and I calculated about how much gold and silver and brass that the people gave to the tabernacle.  The gold= about 2000+ pound,   Silver=3000+ pounds and brass= 1500+ pounds of metal.  Awesome, the scriptures can be as fun as you want to make them.  I enjoy reading and learning about the Gospel. 

On Tuesday we finally got to talk to the T family, they are some people that we have been trying to get in contact for a while.  Well, her little boy was really crazy.  We were in their front yard and he walked over to the driveway and made himself throw up a lot and then ran over to me and bit my tie, not just a regular bite but he held on even when I kind of smacked his head and told him to let go.  His mom pulled him off eventually.  We are teaching them and they seem to be receptive.  I love to teach the lessons and help people understand the Gospel. It is only hard if the person just doesn't get it at all. 

My mission sent home a package full of some books and things that I want to read when I am home but cant in my mission.  Please keep them safe for me for when I get home.

That is my week and my time is up and have to go.

Love you with all my heart.

Love Elder Vance

Week # 54 ~ Nebraska State Fair

Hello Family,

To start a quote from President Weston,

 "The intensity of our desire to share the gospel is a great indicator of the extent of our personal conversion."

(Elder Dallin H. Oaks)

This week has been blowing by super fast! Yet it feels like forever since I have been to the library to email.  So the Hamm fam is going to be baptized this Friday. I am going to confirm all of them except for their son because he is 7.  It is husband and wife and daughter age 10.  I am super excited and really nervous about it because it is my first time confirming anyone except in the temple. 

Thank you for the giant package to help me celebrate my ONE YEAR mark, I love the giant card it was really cool. 

My comp and I are getting along better.  Yesterday we went to the Nebraska state fair.  It was gigantic and really fun. Right as we entered the fair a couple of really cute girls came up to us and asked us for a picture,  so they did a selfie thing and we were off.  The fair was really fun! They had 18 inch long turkey legs and foot long corn dogs and a bunch of really interesting foods.  I bought a tie that lights up to sounds and It is legit!!  It is all black and the sound bars are green.  We also saw giant tractor races, pig races, a guy in a robot suit dancing while riding a Segway.  There was tons of these giant and weird fish.  We entered the photo scavenger hunt which made things more fun and entertaining for us.  We got to talk to a lot of people while experiencing the fair.  It was great!  Needless to say it was super cool and we should go there next year.  It comes every year to Grand Island.  That was my week.

Love you all,

 Elder Vance

Week # 53 ~ OWWW!! Get off me!

 Hello Family and friends,

A quote from my mission pres.

"I would like to urge (everyone) to again read the Book of Mormon...There is nothing we could do of greater importance than to have fortified in our individual lives an unshakable conviction that Jesus is the Christ, the living Son of the living God. And, my brothers and sisters, that is the purpose of the coming forth of this remarkable and wonderful book." President Gordon B. Hinckley

So this week was interesting and a little annoying.  This week I got bit by a spider on my arm, eaten by several mosquitos, attacked by a gardener snake in my apartment, and attacked by two sort of small rat-dogs (dogs a little bigger than a chuawa).  Also, my comp tried to kill me for the second time since we have been together.

So on Tuesday I woke up with a kind of lumpish slightly swollen (but really small) bump on my arm that itched and then later that night I got eaten by these freak’in giant mosquitos!! I am not exaggerating either.   I killed one on our 3rd comps head and it was at least the size of a nickel.

On Wednesday there was a kind of severe rain storm and our 3rd comp opened up the back door to see just how bad the rain was.   Suddenly, a gardener snake shot into our apartment. It was really confused and it curled up in the corner and opened its mouth and was trying to bite us and it was hissing at us. Elder Millett grabbed it and threw it outside.

Later that night he was praying on my blankets when I was trying to make my bed to go to sleep and I asked him to get off of my blankets so I could get to sleep.   When he wouldn't I pushed him to get off of my blanket and he got up and grabbed me by the shirt and pushed me onto by bed and I whacked my head on the cement wall.   He told me to never interrupt him praying again, and didn't talk to me for the rest of the night.  Later into the next day he said he was sorry for trying to kill me again.  He is on a lot of medication and has a problem with anger. I will survive!

Thursday.  We saw a lady by the name of sister Kister (pronounced kee-ster) and she had a little dog that was growling at us.   She smacked it a couple of times and the dog was quiet until we were going to leave and the dog attacked my calf.   It was trying to bite it but its mouth was too small. I was about to kick it when sister K pulled on the leach and smacked it a couple more times and it was quiet after that.

We have been challenged to read the BoM and finish reading it by December.  That means reading 5 pages a day.  It is going good so far.  Best news is the H’s are scheduled for baptism in a few weeks which is fantastic!!

and that is my week

Love Elder Vance

SISTER MISSIONARY WHO CAME OUT WITH ME

ELDER WHO CAME FROM MTC WITH ME

PLEASE SEND ME LETTERS!

Week # 52 ~COOL

Hello All,

Quote from President Weston.

 "Perseverance is a great element of success. If you knock long enough and loud enough at the gate, you are sure to wake up somebody." (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) "At least 30 times a day!!"

So about this week.

It was pretty much a lot of work.  We did a ton of service and one of the days we did service for about 7 to 8 hours moving some one our of their house.  We have been helping out with Habitat for Humanity and I think that some of the things about building houses are interesting. I love to watch and understand how they are built.  It is so interesting how exact they have to be in order to be put up right and stay that way.  So I think it was pretty good couple of hours of work. 

My companion is really crazy….but he knows a lot about the scriptures and that is good. I will keep trying to do my best!

Earlier this week we were trying to teach this guy from Sudan.   We gave him an Arabic Book of Mormon.   We were visiting him every now and again, he likes to watch this preacher on YouTube and this preacher doesn't sound like he actually knows what he is talking about. He just reads a scripture and then tells it back to the audience with a few words changed. People love it for some reason.  Anyway we tried to tell him that the BoM is not another Bible and he kept asking us where Mormon and Nephi and Alma were in the bible.  It ended up with him giving his Book of Mormon back to us and we are not going to see him ever again at least until he wants to be seen. 

With our investigator named B.  We are making a ton of progress with her and most of her family and now her one legged mom!! We are teaching everyone pretty much and it is great and they are really interested with everything that we teach them and tell them.  Our last visit we got taught their 6 year old daughter to pray and how to pray and it was awesome!!  I had to give her a little help with the prayer by telling her what to say but it was very sweet and a great prayer by her. 

So about some of your questions that you want me to answer.

How is the mission different that I thought?  It is different because I didn't know that it would be this hard and this rewarding for all of the efforts that we put in and get out.

What is the hardest thing so far?

It is all of the temptations that get thrown at us by most people.  There are some people who we visit that are like, “do you want to watch a movie?” “Want to play on my phone?”  and they are very tempting and no one will find out…. but I say NO, I cant do that. It is a great way to then tell them about why I am here.

What are my hopes and dreams for the future of my mission? 

Some of them are: to train a missionary, be a senior comp., baptize a family.

and that is my week…

Love, Elder Vance