WEEK 13 SPRINGFIELD (WEEK 70 OF MISSION)

Hello Everybody!!!!

 

So fun wonderful to see Mikey's face and hear his laugh!

Aubrey and I thought it would crack Mikey up if we were "twinning."

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!! I hope that your Christmas dreams came true!  I know that mine did!  Well I feel like I have told everything after getting the chance to call home yesterday but I do have one very cool story I will share. 

So our recent converts, Ann and Jeanie, that are so good to us and that are just awesome have been working to get their family involved in the church too.  So we have set it up to where they have a Family Home Evening and then we come and share a gospel message and teach the kids to pray and sing and it is always really fun and really good.  This past week we brought the DVD titled, "The Restoration" it is about 20 minutes long and the spirit was very strong as we shared our testimonies that what they just watched in the video is true and that the Book of Mormon is the word of God!  Well Sunday Ann's sister and nephew that were at Family Home Evening decided to come to church!  It was so awesome to see them there and to watch their whole family grow in the gospel together!!!

Well, there is so much to say but I don’t have much time today! We had 10 refugees come to church this Sunday!  They didn’t understand much of what was said but to see them there smiling and trying to sing the Christmas songs and to see all the members embrace them was amazing!  I am sure Heavenly Father was pleased to see his children in his house after they have been through so much tribulation.  I am reminded of one of my favorite scriptures from the 7th chapter of Revelations.  I will paraphrase but you should read this chapter some time. 

"These are they who came out of a great tribulation, who have washed their garments clean in the blood of the Lamb...and the Lamb of God is in the midst of them, and he shall wipe away all tears from their eyes."

I am so grateful for my Savior and I want to always keep him in the midst or middle of my life.  Like the potter's clay it is about keeping things central that need to be central.  Merry Christmas!  Thank you for everything you all do to reach out for me!

Mungu awabiriki

Elder Green! 

WEEK 12 SPRINGFIELD (WEEK 69 OF MISSION)

Chrismasi Njema!

Hello everybody!!!  I hope you all had a great week! 

So we have some pretty huge news!   Our mission will be losing all of the Oklahoma areas and stakes to the Oklahoma City Mission!  So no more Tulsa or Bartlesville or Tulsa East zones!  But as a result we won’t have to be covering any more double areas like we are right now!  So in two weeks I will most likely be going to a new apartment and only working in one ward!  I am excited because sometimes it is hard when you are spread so thin!

I love my new companion Elder Strobel!  He is from Idaho Falls, Idaho and we were in the MTC together and have been good friends since the beginning of our missions!!!

We had the best Tender Mercy this week!  Some awesome members, the Brazeals, snuck into our apartment while we were out and completely stocked our kitchen for us.  Due to a weird situation, I was already out of money for the month and this was such a huge blessing to me!!!

 

The Brazeal brothers helping get the groceries.

So much yummy food!

What a blessing a full frig is!

All the necessities!

They even left a treat on my pillow!

Elder Strobel's Pillow

So a couple cool stories from the week!  The first was that lately I have been praying and praying for a vision of how on earth we can teach these Congolese refugees and how we can display our message to them.  Well in my head I kept seeing these big pictures that we could hold up as we read Swahili off the back of them and explained the basic principles of the Restoration.  Well I told my companion this and he instantly walked to the library and showed me that the church has a ton of these big picture things haha, so we went back and started working on our translation and then taped them to the back of the pictures.  Well considering my Swahili is very, very basic and I am still learning and my companion had been studying it for 2 days and maybe a total of 1 hour in those 2 days I was a little nervous going in to teach our friends.  When, we walked into the Bolenge home we gave our message and it was choppy and sloppy but they understood exactly what they needed to do and accepted the invitation to read and pray about the Book of Mormon.  We walked out a little discouraged because we realized how hard it would be to really, really teach them even though they are very prepared by the Lord.  So our discouragement lead me to say well maybe we won’t share the message with the rest of the families tonight but I will just ask them how they are doing and what they need because that is about the extent of my Swahili at this time.  Well when we walked into Sebastian's home, the next house on our schedule, and before we could even really start talking he ran to his room and walked out with his Swahili translated Restoration Pamphlet that was wrinkled and that he had obviously been studying ever since we left it with him the first time we met with him 2 months ago.  He sat down and pointed at his pamphlet and said "teach me, teach me!"  His son, Pascal was there as well who is coming along very quickly with his English and could even basically translate for us!  But we gave our message in Swahili and it was very smooth and we could even start to understand what they were saying to us back and understand their questions.  My favorite part was reading from Sebastian's Swahili bible John 10:16 about Christ speaking of his other sheep.  In this moment it all clicked in Sebastian's head and he turned around and grabbed his Kitabu cha Mormoni and gripped it so tight and held it in the air!  He realized what we had brought him and the importance of it!  I love these people so much they help me realize how important of a message I truly have!  We continue to pray for the vision the Lord has of how to teach these amazing people from the Congo!

 

The Sibbett family from Mena, was in Springfield dropping Larry off at the airport and took Mikey to dinner.  He loves this family so much and they have helped him so much!

Well that was so long it is about time to go.  We had another miracle that I have to mention.  One night our mission president told us to just park our car and walk or go in for the night and call with the phone because the roads were too icy.  So we bundled up and set out on foot hoping to teach a couple more people before the night was over.  While walking to our investigators’ house we then realized the length it really was and started to worry a little bit because it was COLD!!!  The coldest I have ever felt in my life I think.  We prayed twice that somebody might pick us up.  The next few cars drove by.  It was dark outside, it was about 7:30 and I was freezing haha.  We saw another pair of headlights go past us and I made some sarcastic comment, when Elder Strobel was like, ”They stopped!” haha what a tender mercy it was that the Lord would answer our prayers with these two guys turning around picking us up and driving us to our next appointment!  

We got to sit down with the Moi family this week a part-member family from Samoa!!!  That was sweet.

Well that’s all folks!  Love you all hope your Christmas is truly wonderful!  I can’t wait to talk to all my family!!! 

I am in Alma in my Book of Mormon reading and I read about the Anti-Nephi-Lehis and thought of how my mom loves that story!  I don’t know why I remember her saying that but anyway here are some questions to ponder:

1. What "weapons" (habits, sins, etc.) do you need to bury?

2. How deep will you bury them?

3. Will you dig them up when trials arise? 

Love you all! =)

WEEK 11 SPRINGFIELD (WEEK 68 OF MISSION)

The dinner Mikey told us about last week at the famous Lambert's Restaurant 

Mikey is pretty excited about all those Tater Tots!

That is one huge hamburger!

This picture just warms my heart.

I will never get over the kindness of others.  Can't believe that for her birthday dinner Ann wanted to take out the missionaries.  So sweet!!!

So fun that Mikey got to eat at a restaurant he saw on the Food Network and dreamed of going to!!!  I had forgotten how much he loved that channel haha.

Missions bring you together with such wonderful people! 

Hey Family and Friends!!!  Well it has been a while since I have emailed and I feel like I have forgotten most of what has gone on haha.

Just this past Monday we got on a bus at 5 in the morning to head to Bentonville and got to listen to Elder Gay from the Quorum of the 70 and get instructed from him and it was so cool!!!  He was such a good speaker and it was an awesome time!  We also were told that our mission boundaries are changing and we are loosing all of Oklahoma from our mission haha.  So the area that I served in (Mingo Valley) is now in a completely different mission which was wild!!  So now nobody in our mission will be covering two or three wards like I am now, but every ward will have its own missionaries! 

 

Mikey and Elder Roberts and all the Sisters they are over!  It looks like they are all happy and amused with whatever Mikey and his comp had said except for the one second in from the left haha!

That's better.  Now you can see everyone.

TRANSFER NEWS: I will be staying!!!  Unfortunately Elder Roberts will be going though which is a huge bummer.  He is going to be the ZL of the West Plains, MO zone and I will be getting Elder Stroebel coming here!  Which is awesome he is such a good guy and it should be awesome!!!

 

All the Bois! Doman, Mikey, Hess, Roberts.

RIP Elder Gehring back home in SOJO.  Leaving tomorrow!

Mikey and His Bestie again!!!

We had our ward Christmas party which was so much fun haha we were actually in a skit about the Grinch finding Christmas and we tracted into the Grinch and taught him about Christ haha it was funny and a lot of fun! 

I still can’t remember what has been going on haha.  Our investigators are doing great and the ward is so awesome!  We are teaching a lady named Christel and she is so prepared by the Lord and then Kenny is doing great and Ann and Geanie's families are very interested and then all 60 or so of the refugees we are trying to take care of and teach are doing good!  I gave them all haircuts and bought them a pick to pick out their hair with just yesterday and man they are just some of my favorite people haha.  My closest friends are probably Gabriel and Je'taime who are these two 19 and 21 year old kids that just trash every American in soccer haha.  Yesterday Gabriel netted 5 goals in one game lolol.  I am sure every coach in Springfield is just drooling over them trying to get them on their squad.  Their English is coming along great and it has been so good!

Je'taime, Gabriel and Charles.

Gabriel's haircut.

Well thank you all so much for the love and support!!!  Have a great week and remember to #lighttheworld 

Elder Green!

WEEK 10 SPRINGFIELD (WEEK 67 OF MISSION)

Well well well hello everybody!!!

 

Merry Christmas...our neighbors went all out this year.

I got to see my #1, Sister Weiner.
(She is the Mission Secretary from Riverton that Mikey loves so much!)

We had another really good week out here!  The weather is starting to cool down and it is beginning to look a lot like Christmas! haha  Well let’s see where to begin!

We had a chance to teach this really cool woman named Krystell.  She is the friend of the King family in the Hickory Hills ward and teaching her was cool and I have some pretty high hopes for her.  She is really knowledgeable and just needs the spirit to witness to her that Joseph Smith is a prophet and she will be all set.  We started to teach the restoration and started with the basics (not knowing much about her) and her first comment was like about Oliver Cowdery hahaha.  So we just stopped and were like "how much do you know already?" haha kind of embarrassing but she has been doing a lot of personal study and is awesome!

Kenny also is so awesome.  He is actually Jewish.  He is married to an awesome member named Bailey.  They live in a cool apartment building downtown and it is fun teaching them!  Kenny is basically a member in the terms that he pays tithing and helps with the cub scouts haha but with his Jewish background he is looking for the witness that Jesus is the Christ and that is awesome to teach him!

So, a tender mercy from the Lord this week.  Many of you that are really close to me know that I love the Travel Channel on TV, especially the shows Man vs Food and Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern and one time they went to this restaurant and in the restaurant they were throwing rolls around and it looked so good and like a blast.  Well little did I know that it was in Springfield, Missouri and for Ann's (recently baptized) birthday she just wanted to take us there.  I had been so excited and when we walked in we ran into like a tour group from St. George, Utah and we were like celebrities with all of the members running up to us to meet us and Ann and Jeanie how cool is that?  The food was my favorite and the atmosphere is so fun and I can't wait to go back some day haha!  I forgot my camera but Ann took a lot of pics and she put them on FB I think. 

I was studying about God’s foreknowledge in relation to his will, because when people say "that’s just God's will for you" for some reason it bugged me especially when people would say that about trials and it confused me a lot in the scriptures like why would God ever predict pain on people or sadness etc. God being all-knowing couldn’t he stop it etc... Well I read the sweetest and most clarifying thing about this doctrine from Jesus The Christ.  I wish I had it with me to give you the direct quote but I will do my best! "God’s will and his foreknowledge come from his wisdom, and knowing us.  Thus, he can foresee the future as a thing that will surely come to pass, not something that has to happen because he has arbitrarily willed it to be."  Pretty cool huh? Let that sink in haha.

Oh yeah! The refugees are doing great too and their English is becoming a lot better!

I love you all thank you for all the support.

Elder Green 

WEEK 9 SPRINGFIELD (WEEK 66 OF MISSION)

Well, well, well, this is a very fat email I am sending this week after a whole lot of turkey etc... I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving!!! 

Our Thanksgiving was awesome!  We played in a really fun Turkey Bowl and Ann's son Demetrius came and he was playing quarterback and was actually dropping dimes left and right and he had a really good time and it was just all a lot of fun haha.

This is Mikey's first companion/trainer.  He sent Mikey this picture today of him on this Thanksgiving wearing the tie we sent him last year.  I noticed that his glasses looked just like Mikey's and asked Mikey if Hess has the same glasses or if Mikey gave him his.  Of course Mikey gave him his, haha.  Thankfully Mikey does have another pair of glasses with him but since when do we share prescription glasses?

We had a super fun day.  The Betlyons (recent converts) fed us the most Pinteresty and delicious Thanksgiving lunch!  And then after we went to the Harpers and we were so stuffed we couldn’t really eat another full meal but we did end up eating chitlins... It was the most disgusting thing I have ever eaten hahaha.  They all love them though!  I just could not stand them.  The taste is impossible to describe, it tastes like a pig’s guts!  That’s the only way to describe it because that’s what it is! :)  But shoot I have to leave right now but this week was super good!  We had I think 6 investigators come to church!  And the ward is helping us soo much!  All of you back home should check out the month of December and the Light the World Advent Calendar!  It should be an awesome Holiday season!

Love Elder Green!

WEEK 8 SPRINGFIELD (WEEK 65 OF MISSION)

Hello everybody!!! It was another great week out here in the land of Springfield!  Let me hit you with some highlights from this week.

 

Melanie and Shayla :)

Coolest experience was probably again with our friends from the Congo!  We taught an English class again on Saturday and there were no lie probably 60 refugees that showed up!  How cool huh?  It has been super hard on them because not only do they not speak the language but they have only ever lived in tents before coming here.  So they don’t know how to cook or how to clean a house or how to buy groceries or make a bed and I think a lot of times we don’t even realize how nice we have it and how grateful we need to be until you are with somebody who doesn’t.  However, despite being so confused in this new country and having to be torn from family in a war zone they still are some of the happiest, kindest, and most respectful people.  I have especially taken to this 19-year-old kid named Gabriel.  He is the oldest son in the Molenge family and he is a pretty cool kid and he loves talking about soccer so all my Fifa playing back home really pays off haha.  When I told him that Zlatan was better than Messi his face was priceless. But they have been teaching us a little Swahili which really has paid off because we keep meeting more and more of them and so to be able to speak their language always puts a huge smile on their face and makes them laugh.  Some of them were at church Sunday and President Loveland came and taught them this Wednesday because he can speak French and they also speak French!  The language barrier has made it tough to get our gospel message across, however it isn’t always about just shoving the gospel down peoples’ throats especially when they first need love!  We need to care for the temporal needs and spiritual needs of all people! 

We found a really cool girl too her name is Lacey and she lives just kind of down the street from us and we found her tracting and then we went back this week with one of our awesome members, Brother Delafuente, and when we got to her place there was already another member who she is friends with that is in the YSA ward in her house.  She had invited him over because she has been waiting a while to learn about Mormons and she was so excited to learn and it was such a good lesson and her sister wanted her own Book of Mormon after the lesson!  I was on an exchange this day with Elder Atkinson who hadn’t even been out a week yet and so that was all just a really cool experience! 

All of the recent converts are doing pretty good!  The Betlyons are just awesome and we love them and they are doing great!  They take awesome care of us and they are going to have us over for Thanksgiving Lunch. 

Then the Harpers (Ann and Jeanie) are going to have us over for dinner on Thanksgiving haha we are pretty excited!  Also they are trying to bring their whole big family into the church and that is all exciting!  Ann's son Demetrius is going to be coming to play in a turkey bowl with us on Thursday morning with the Hillcrest Ward, haha. 

Also the members out here have just been awesome and the King family brought their friend to church yesterday which was just awesome and she seems to have been really prepared to receive the gospel and so their are just a ton of good things happening right now!!!

Happy Thanksgiving this week everybody!! Thank you for everything!!!! :)  

WEEK 7 SPRINGFIELD (WEEK 64 OF MISSION)

Hello Everybody!!! 

Well this short week was a very good one and things are going really well!!!

The Betlyons (recent converts) are doing great and preparing to go to the temple soon!!! 

The Harpers are so awesome who were baptized last week and they are progressing so much, they are already referencing things in the D&C and the Pearl of Great Price and everything it is just so awesome to see them so converted and they just want to do what’s right!  We are going to be teaching the rest of their family the gospel for Family Home Evening.  They are so funny and always make jokes about how they are black etc. So they are always making us try their black foods (fried green tomatoes, grits, pig’s foot etc.) haha so this week they were like what kind of food culture do your people have? and Elder Roberts and I just start laughing because we don’t have like a culture so we told them that white people eat casseroles and funeral potatoes lol so this Thursday they are making a combined white person and black person dinner with funeral potatoes and fried chicken!! haha we are excited! 

On Saturday we were up to our normal tracting.  Since the baptisms have happened our teaching pool has fallen down a little bit but we had an awesome miracle while knocking doors one day.  We see these black kids riding their bikes and it was obvious that they were foreign because of the way they were dressed, and we have been searching a ton for some refugees to teach English and there are some refugees that have already converted in our ward.  So anyway we go walk over to where they are and we find like this family of I think 15 people that have only been in America for 2 months and they are struggling and we are going to teach them all English and also yesterday we had a man and woman that speak French from our church go over and teach them the Restoration (the speak Swahili and French) and so we taught them and the one man, Sebastian at the end of the lesson just says, "You come teach me every day about God." haha pretty cool so we are really excited to teach Sebastian and Gabriel's families both English and the gospel! 

Yesterday was Stake Conference and it was so awesome!  We sat with Ann and Jeannie and they just loved it and they got to meet President and Sister Loveland and man it was just a good day!

I am doing a lot better this week and just trying to act with faith. I think this is going to be as Elder Bednar would describe it, more of a rising sun spiritual experience than the flick of a light switch, but I am excited for the journey and thankful for all of you so much!!! 

Again happy b-days to all my fave people Jmatty, Wally, Aubrey you are all so old now haha also congrats to Parker and Jenna! <3 can’t wait to meet you some day Jenna :) Welcome to the fam.

Love you all, 

Elder Green!!!

WEEK 6 SPRINGFIELD (WEEK 63 OF MISSION)

Hello hello family and friends!!! 

It has been a long time since I have been able to email you and a lot has happened!!!

On Saturday Geanie and Anne got baptized and it was such an awesome baptism!!!  They are some of my favorite people in the world and they are some of the most genuine people I have ever met and it was just great! The next day they were confirmed in Sacrament Meeting and then Anne got up and she bore her testimony to the whole congregation!  They should be going to the temple soon and they both are reading 6 pages of the Book of Mormon a day!!!  How awesome are they huh?  They are such good examples to me and I am so lucky to be able to have met them!

I have now memorized a couple talks just from reading them so much and doing my best to have faith and press forward and I can testify that if we do as Dieter F. Uchtdorf said and "doubt our doubts before we doubt or faith" God will provide safety for our soul and I am so grateful to my Heavenly Father and for the forgiveness and relief He can provide! 

Lastly, one of my favorite times of the year is right now with the fall and football season and basketball all starting it is so awesome!!!  Also I would like to wish three of my favorite people Happy Birthday, Wallbeck, Aubs, and Jmatty!!!!!!!! 

I love you all thank you for the prayers and everything please continue :) 

Elder Green!