Week # 48 ~UGG!

Hello family and friends,

Here is my quote from Pres.

"Your criticism may be worse than the conduct you are trying to correct" (Unknown)

This week has been weird and different,

I have been having some trouble with my companion, but we are working it out.  This has helped me grow because, I have seen and experienced some weird and patience testing things.  Things are getting better now because we are working out the kinks of our companionship and it is going way better. 

The weird.  I saw a man walking his dog while riding a ride on lawnmower.  That through me a little bit.  I had to look twice.

I also now have my shoe print permanently in the middle of a road because I stepped in some tar that was very squishy because of the intense heat.  It sunk about 3 inches down.  Then while we were walking on the sidewalk, I saw some birds squawking at us in the trees and sure enough a white poop came flying down at us and landed right on my shoe and made a splat noise.  Gross!

I have also been riding my bike a ton and it has been kicking my butt. The bike rides that we do everyday is super exhausting but it is keeping me in shape.  I cant wait to go biking in Moab again with all of my biking training that I am doing.  It will be awesome.

Thank you for those cd’s you sent.  Those talks that you sent me were awesome and if you could send me some other ones that would be nice.

The H’s, they are great, they have been coming to church every week.  They had some bad experiences with other churches and this ward has been super for them and their kids love it.  We are teaching them the first five lessons and answering all of her questions that they have.  They are planning to get baptized on labor day weekend by her nephew.  My cloths are holding up great, sister H got me a couple of new pants that are around my size and she gave them to me for free.  They are a variety of colors like dark brown, grey, black. 

This is a picture of a rain storm.  This is pretty much the normal rain that we get all the time here. 

and that was my week.

Well I have to go, love you all.

Love Elder Vance

Normal rain storm in Nebraska

Week # 47 ~Ups & Downs

Hello Family,

Start off any good day with an uplifting  Pres. quote.

"Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit... we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts." (Aristotle). And may I add, "Christ-like, by doing Christ-like acts!!"

So this week was kind of a downer.  A guy that we used to teach died this week.   I don't know how he died, but we are in contact with his wife if she needs any gospel in her life.  Also someone from my school died on his mission in Madagascar from internal bleeding from the brain. That really threw me around the corner and back so that was kind of sad.

But on a strange note, I found out that my comp. loves to eat paper, literal paper, like notebook paper, tissue paper, the paper that hamburgers come wrapped in, that stuff and it really grosses me out.

On a GREAT note….we are getting closer and closer to a baptism with the H family and I’m really excited about that.  They are a great family and are growing in the Gospel. 

That is pretty much what happened this week.

I am doing well and am keeping on.  I am not in need of money or clothing, just letters from home. Thank you all who are sending love from home!  I really enjoy hearing how everyone is doing.

Love,

Elder Vance

Week # 46~ Hot.Hot.Hot.

Hello All,

Quote from pres.

"Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact." (William James)

So about this week.

It is so freak’in hot!   The tar on the streets and parking lots have melted and it squish around with my shoe. What a mess.

The Hamm's, the family of four that we have been teaching are going great.  They have a little boy who is 6 and little girl is 10.   The wife works during the day and husband works at night.  They have a ton of questions about everything and we have most of the answers.   To answer your question, do we know what we are going to teach ahead of time…Yes we do plan specific topics that we are going to teach them ahead of time.  It changes a lot and evolves as we go. 

The forth of July we ate with some members home.  A potluck kind of thing and then went home at 9 and it took me forever to fall asleep after that.   All of the legal and illegal fireworks that people were setting off all night. 

While riding my bide on friday I hit the curb and fell off and rolled off of my bike.   I didn't even get hurt or tear my pants.   Later we were visiting a less active and their dog jumped on me and tore a little bit of my pants :( but she offered to sew them back together for me.

I have been doing a lot of research on my heritage the Tribe of Manasseh in the bible.  It has been really interesting and I have a little challenge for you when you have time.  See what you can find out about your tribe.

My new companion is fine. Yes, he is nice to me.  He has re-arranged our entire apartment and can rebuke me really good.   He follows the rules to the extreme.  I will be fine, we are working on things!

My money is great, I have plenty and I don't think that I need anything else. 

That is my week and I love you all,

Love Elder Vance

Week # 45 ~ Blessings

Hello family,

I am feeling good and fine!

This week was an unofficial P-week. That is what some of the missionary's call the week of transfers.  It was full of making sure that Elder Bailey didn't forget anything (which he did) and saying goodbye to everyone that he knew.   He is now in Omaha and I have a new elder and his name is Elder Millett from St. George Utah. 

I have not figured him out yet..???   When we are just talking to each other he randomly switches from a Russian accent to a regular voice a lot and is very random at times.   The good thing is, that he is a clean freak.  He is cleaning everything he can touch, so I don't know what to think yet.  Today we went on a tour of Hornady and I took some pictures and I will email them to you.

I have been reading my patriarchal blessing a lot lately.  I actually read it all the time.  I am still finding things out that are meant to help me. I just read it this morning and found something in it about my mission. What I’m supposed to do with the people that I am teaching and my companions both junior and senior.  I learned that I am to never destroy their faith in me.   I am to let them know that I am here to help put their life's course back on track.  Pretty Awesome!!! I will work hard at making it be.

I am recently reading in Genesis about my heritage in tribe of Manasseh and it is very interesting.  I learned that Manasseh is a sort of bad kid and got his younger brother put first ahead of him so that he got the bigger blessing.  I will read more and fill you in. 

I recently got my bike tires filled with foam so I will never get a flat ever again.  It cost quite a bit but should even out in the end in years from now when I still do not need to change a flat tire. 

I did not get your package yet, I think that it will come soon.   We are going to a members house for the 4th to watch fireworks at 5pm for dinner and firework fun. 

We are still teaching the family of four and are in hopes that we will get them all baptized before I leave this area. 

I love you all and know I am doing great.  Take care and read your scriptures.

I have to go…

Love Elder Vance

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