Letter 12.10.18 { week 12 }

Hey Mom! 

This week has been has been amazing! I don't have too much to report on this week, it's been hard finding new people but the people we are teaching have been progressing! I'll just start on with the mass email!

We met with Uttam again and he is insane! The first thing he told us was he did a lot of research about our church online. At first me and my companion just kinds looked at each other and said "uh oh" because usually when people do their own research, they find lots of anti material, but Uttam is definitely apart of the elect! Being a PhD student, we assume he knows which sources are reliable and only trusts those. He told us he thought the "conspiracy theories" were funny! Man hes such an awesome guy. 

Oh here's the best part about him: the sisters in our YSA Branch have seen him around since last semester, but he only started taking the discussions once we approached him a few weeks ago! Talk about a perfect example of Alma 32! His heart was finally prepared to hear the word and now the seed is growing!

We also had a branch Christmas party on Saturday! We couldn't stay for everything unfortunately, but we stayed long enough fir the white elephant gift exchange! 

Elder Hawes' mom gave us $10 sonic cards each, but unfortunately there aren't any sonic's around us so we re-gifted them. I decided to add salvation (the Book of Mormon) to my present as well. The gift cards actually went pretty quick!

I ended up getting a cutting board, summer sausage and a cracker spread! I was only in it for the cutting board really. We didn't have one and I was sooooo excited to get an actual cutting board. I'm taking that with me wherever I go for sure!

We also met with Yoon on Wednesday! We invited Arthur to our lesson as well who is a member of our branch and has taken it upon himself to really get to know Yoon. Arthur is from China and very self confident. Regardless though, he was a big help in our lesson with her! Since we were the ones who drove Arthur to the lesson, we figured we would drive him back, but after the lesson he asked Yoon to give him a tour of the place (buffalo state - the school she goes to) and Yoon said ok. Arthur was quick to make sure the missionaries were out of the picture and said "you guys can leave I'll get an uber." 

This is YSA for a reason right?! And THAT was definitely a first date if I ever saw one! 

Oh my goodness we heard from Kadeem yesterday!!!

Kadeem was someone we were teaching my first transfer here, about 9 weeks ago! Kadeem is now living in the Bronx with his mom so unfortunately hes not in our zone. But we are the only people he will respond to so we are still allowed to work with him for a few more lessons. We are video chatting him over Facebook and we plan to do so tonight! We are so excited to hear from him again!

I was also asked to give a talk in sacrament meeting about service! The talk was supposed to be 17 minutes long! It's easily the longest I've ever talked in front of people... not gonna lie I told a LOT of stories to help pass the time. But hey it was a great talk regardless and one of the members came up afterwards to thank me for talking about a few key points of service that aren't usually spoken of. By individual request I can email the talks to all of you if you'd like!

That's basically all I have for this week. Its been super hard to find people who will let you talk to them considering every college student has finals right now and throughout the rest of this week, but we haven't stopped trying!

Oh one last thing though: a chick-fil-a opened up in our mission! You betcha that my companion and I went there today and stood in line for 30 minutes! Man that was amazing. Unfortunately I'll probably never be able to make time to go there again!

Spiritual thought for the week:

This spiritual thought will actually be a story I used for my talk on service. This is from Spencer W. Kimball:

"A young mother on an overnight flight with a two-year-old daughter was stranded by bad weather in Chicago airport without food or clean clothing for the child and without money. She was … pregnant and threatened with miscarriage, so she was under doctor’s instructions not to carry the child unless it was essential. Hour after hour she stood in one line after another, trying to get a flight to Michigan. The terminal was noisy, full of tired, frustrated, grumpy passengers, and she heard critical references to her crying child and to her sliding her child along the floor with her foot as the line moved forward. No one offered to help with the soaked, hungry, exhausted child.

“Then, the woman later reported, ‘someone came towards us and with a kindly smile said, “Is there something I could do to help you?” With a grateful sigh I accepted his offer. He lifted my sobbing little daughter from the cold floor and lovingly held her to him while he patted her gently on the back. He asked if she could chew a piece of gum. When she was settled down, he carried her with him and said something kindly to the others in the line ahead of me, about how I needed their help. They seemed to agree and then he went up to the ticket counter [at the front of the line] and made arrangements with the clerk for me to be put on a flight leaving shortly. He walked with us to a bench, where we chatted a moment, until he was assured that I would be fine. He went on his way. About a week later I saw a picture of Apostle Spencer W. Kimball and recognized him as the stranger in the airport.’”

Several years later, President Kimball received a letter that read, in part:

“Dear President Kimball:
“I am a student at Brigham Young University. I have just returned from my mission in Munich, West Germany. I had a lovely mission and learned much. …
“I was sitting in priesthood meeting last week, when a story was told of a loving service which you performed some twenty-one years ago in the Chicago airport. The story told of how you met a young pregnant mother with a … screaming child, in … distress, waiting in a long line for her tickets. She was threatening miscarriage and therefore couldn’t lift her child to comfort her. She had experienced four previous miscarriages, which gave added reason for the doctor’s orders not to bend or lift.
“You comforted the crying child and explained the dilemma to the other passengers in line. This act of love took the strain and tension off my mother. I was born a few months later in Flint, Michigan.
“I just want to thank you for your love. Thank you for your example!”

Guys, seriously service is everything

When ye are in the service of others, ye are Only in the service of your God!

Elder Breshears

Elder Breshears address:

Elder Breshears
660 Cleveland Dr. unit 4
Cheektowaga, NY. 14225

Pictures:

1. My comp and I at a Christmas party during white elephant!

2. All the presents! 

3. A church we found called "church of the assumption" yeah... 

4. Me and my chic-fil-a!!!

Letter 12.03.18 { week 11 }

Hey everyone! 

I hope all of your weeks were absolutely fantastic! Our week wasnt super eventful over here. Unfortunately a lot of people are busy studying for finals so its harder to teach, but that will never stop us! 

Last Monday we taught a new person we found named Uttam! (Pronounced oo-tdum) hes a PhD student at UB from India studying Chemical engineering! Hes crazy smart. We met with him twice this week and extended the invitation for him to be baptized once the spirit confirmed to him that the Book of Mormon was true. He accepted it and even said he wanted to read the entire book of Mormon! Holy moly we were a bit blown away by his dedication, but we are excited for him!

On Wednesday we skipped most of our dinner hour to go see Patrick's art presentation! Patrick is the art grad student. He recently had his art project professionally moved into his friend's childhood bedroom. We were a bit late so we missed the presentation part, but we were there for the discussion afterwards. Art students are sooooo smart! They find symbolism in ways I cannot even begin to imagine. 

We also had our last Booth of the year! We thought 2 weeks was the last week... but it turns out this week was! We actually ended up using the Christmas tree (thanks mom!) And had people help put ornaments on it! We snagged a picture this time around too!

Wednesday we also had zone meeting - most missions have zone conference instead. The only difference is zone meeting goes for 2 hours less than conference. We are super big on "don't waste a single minute!" And we've cut down a lot of the excess meeting hours we don't need. 

We also met with a woman named Katiria! She was a former (a former is someone who used to be taught by the missionaries but was eventually dropped) and lives in Niagara. It's about a 30 minute drive from where we are so we use up a lot of miles to see her, so we always make the best of it! Shes going through some rough times right now, but we know that we can help her through it! 

Thursday we met with a guy named Taha! Taha met Elder Hawes (my companion) and Elder Edwards when we were on exchanges and this is the first time we have met him since. He is Muslim and is probably the nicest person I will ever meet! When we saw him he actually gave us Ferrero rochers! If you guys don't know, he probably spent $10 on that stuff. It's expensive candy!! 

Anyways we made a deal with him that he could educate/teach us about Islamic beliefs if we could teach him about Christianity/our faith's beliefs. He is the most respectful guy I have met out here. When he explained how Muslim's believe Christ to be a prophet and not the Son of God, he made sure to apologize for possibly sounding offensive multiple times. We noticed that whenever he mentioned Muhammad (the last Muslim prophet) he always added "peace be upon him" right after. We started saying the same after we said his name as a sign of respect and being courteous to his beliefs. 

Unfortunately, as amazing as a guy as he is, we probably wont see him again. Our purpose as missionaries is to meet with those who are prepared to make commitments to come closer to our savior. Having a first lesson with Taha was great, but unfortunately he was only looking to be educated about Christianity. That being said, Taha has restored what little faith in humanity I had!

On Friday, we went to Jorge's baptism! Jorge is someone who is being taught by the sister missionaries in our branch. Jorge had been taking lessons for a month and a half, dropped off the face of the earth for a few months, then came back out of no where and was baptized within 2 weeks! I was asked to give a talk on baptism and that was a little scary since I've never given a talk at a baptism... but hey it all worked out.

One of the best parts of Jorge's baptism, besides Jorge being baptized, is that Yoon came too! Yoon has been wanting to come to the church for weeks, but unfortunately she has meetings on Sunday from 9am-3pm. We are working with her to see if she can be excused early. We should have an update on that next week.

Anyways, one of our members, Arthur, started talking to her IMMEDIATELY. They talked basically the entire time. I think I can officially say that I am not only a full time missionary, but a part time matchmaker! 

On Sunday, we went to UB before church. We parked and as soon as we opened the car door, this bright orange car with a giant (giant, meaning like 5 feet tall) coffee mug strapped to the back rolls up next to us. It was a car advertising Dunkin donuts. A woman gets out of the passenger seat, says shes from Dunkin, and gives us gift cards for Dunkin donuts! They were $5 gift cards and at first we thought she was just gonna give us one each, but NOPE! SHE GAVE US $15 EACH WORTH OF FREE GIFT CARDS! Of course we knew where we were going on Monday to get lunch now! 

That was basically my week, here's a spiritual thought for you all:

"Our Heavenly Father’s goal in parenting is not to have His children DO what is right; it is to have His children CHOOSE to do what is right and ultimately become like Him. If He simply wanted us to be obedient, He would use immediate rewards and punishments to influence our behaviors." ~Elder Renlund Oct 2018

Elder Breshears

Pictures:

1. $30 worth of free donuts that we ate today

2. Elder Hawes and I at our booth with our Christmas tree 

3. The absolute feast we had after fast Sunday (Mom I really hope you're proud of me!)