WEEK 9 MENA (WEEK 48 OF MISSION)

Hello fam and friends it is great to be with you once again!!!!!!

Well this week I do not have much time so I might have to be a little shorter than usual!

Me and Elder Doman had another awesome week and things are going super well! Webb will be interviewed for baptism tonight! He quit smoking cold turkey after his priesthood blessing!

I have been battling a little bit of a fever this week and Mena is one of the hottest places I guess it heats up a lot more than the rest of Arkansas and we had some heat index warnings this past week!

I would like to give a shoutout to my best friend JARED HOLMAN for hitting his year mark this week!!!! Thanks for the example my man congrats on the first one!

Also thank you Grandma and Grandpa for the letter this week it meant a whole bunch! Also mama and The shum thank you for the letters <3

It was Elder Hess' birthday this week too so shoutout to my trainer who took such excellent care of me!

I have been studying in D&C this past week combined with the Book of Mormon and Preach my Gospel. I love how connected everything truly is with the fullness of the Gospel! I truly do "Praise to the man who communed with Jehovah."

Love you all have an awesome week!!!!

Love Elder Green  

WEEK 8 MENA (WEEK 47 OF MISSION)

Mena Stays Up :)

HEY earthlings!!!!! Another great week!!!!

Man we had another great week!!! A whole bunch of stories to tell today!!!

First off what I am most stoked about is the progression of our dear friend Webb (Michael). He is doing so good he came to church and we had him all suited in our clothes so he had a shirt and tie and slacks and belt and shoes and everything haha. Nobody in the branch even knew he was an investigator and he loved church and it was so awesome to just see the smile on his face and everything! He and Jason are scheduled for baptism on July 30th and we could not be more excited about that!!!

Hmm this week we had the privilege of the Zone Leaders coming down to Mena which was super nice because it can get very lonely out here never seeing any missionaries or really members for that matter haha but that was awesome to have those guys down here! They are some of my really good friends too so I was loving that. The next day on Friday me and Elder Doman headed to Gore, Oklahoma to blitz the Gore area and that went really well and there was a talent show in their ward that night and so we did the classic fake cooking show with the people being your arms from behind you. AS MADE FAMOUS BY CAM SMITH AND PARKER ATKIN I would not ever want to steal any of their credit. I got it directly from them and it was hilarious when they did it and so shoutout to them for the awesome idea and I stole it and the Gore ward was loving it so thank you Cam and Big P’s army. 

We taught a whole bunch of people this week and it actually was a very eventful week. A lot of our investigators kind of fell off though this week. But Adam is doing well and Donny is still awesome and he drove us to Fort Smith haha. One of our investigators is such a nice guy he took us the hour and a half drive to our zone meeting!!!!

Well Lately I have been thinking a lot about loving the moment that I am in. I feel like a lot of times on my mission I catch myself thinking like, “oh if I can just get home then this or that will get better.” Or, “oh man this area just is no good and as soon as I am transferred things will be better,” and this and that and whatever. I feel like I am realizing that the grass will always be greener somewhere else. In the modern world I see this as almost a plague with social media and everything else it can almost seem as though everybody's lives are all better than ours. If we let ourselves get into that mindset the sad thing is is that everybody's lives will look better than ours and we will spend our whole lives endlessly chasing somebody else’s life or somebody else’s success or style when what Heavenly Father wants is for us to love the life we have! And love the people he gave you! I am grateful for the life that I have and the chances I have! I try to remember this quote when I get feeling sorry for myself "There’s no such thing as a life that’s better than yours." Anyway there is my two cents! 

I love you all hope everybody is doing well! Shoutout to one of my best friends and longest childhood friends, TJ on getting married to Stacy! Love you both and that is so awesome to hear TJ my man I love you thanks for being such a good role model and friend all my life! Also love you Mike and Dana and the whole crew!!!! 

Well this is pretty long haha love you guys!!! Later

Elder Green 

WEEK 7 MENA (WEEK 46 OF MSSION)

Oh How Great it is to be a Father!!!

Mikey in his special shirt from Walmart haha

HELLO!!! Man what a week to remember. So transfer calls came in and sadly Elder Durrant had to leave me and go to Bentonville... and Elder Green got his first greenie and is now training Elder Doman! In the mission field everybody jokes that when you train somebody they are your son and I am very grateful that I have my first son out here in the field haha and yes Elder Doman is related to the great Brandon Doman. Brandon is his uncle. I cordially thanked him for his uncle’s diving efforts in beating the filthy Utes back in the day! hahaha anyways things are good! 

 

Mikey's Son, Elder Doman, with "Hess Daddy" and Mikey

So Durrant left and I feel terrible for Durrant because right as he left it seems all of our grind started to pay off. As soon as Doman got in here things have just been rolling. We have been finding people to teach and people have been agreeing to baptism.  We have been busy and have been teaching a whole lot of lessons and it has just been great! Doman is an awesome missionary and he is adjusting very quickly and I am taking oh so excellent care of him.

 

Time to get serious!

Durrant and Mikey at good old Denny's

Saying goodbye to the District.

Missionary Selfies

A miracle from this week was when we were driving around trying to pick up investigators for church and they weren’t coming out we saw this nice looking girl just standing outside and we were with Rick (Brother Davis) and she waved to us haha so we scrrreeech to a stop and turn around to go say hi. We taught her later that day and turns out her dad is Mormon and there is a long line of LDS faith in her family and she has been looking for a church lately!!!!

 

A snake they killed!

Things are going great we are hopeful to have a lot of people enter into the covenant of baptism this transfer and we have been seeing a whole bunch of miracles!!! It has been awesome!!!

I have been studying the Book of Mormon lately and have been in Nephi and I have been thinking lately a lot about how Nephi was so faithful and why I can't be like him. I often wonder if Nephi is only writing the miracles though. I feel that way about missionary work like a lot of times I will only write home about the awesome things that happen but not about the trials of my faith that come before the miracles. I think the scriptures are that way too a lot of the times. Anyways I love you all and hope you have a great week!!! 

Love Elder Green!!!

WEEK 6 MENA (WEEK 45 OF MISSION)

Shout Out to the Forefathers!!!

Mikey and Elder Hess 4th of July

Super long alien worm that tried to make it's way into the crib to infect me and Durrant but we stopped that right in it's tracks!

Brotherly Love!  Hess, Durrant and Mikey on Pday.

More Haircuts by Mikey.
Doesn't this look like the WORST blanket to use as a cape, haha!!!

Well Well Well here we are again!!! haha another week in Mena!!!! 

Last week was a little rougher as you heard and this week we were on the grind!!! I think I learned a very valuable lesson last week and something that my main man Rick Davis was telling me was that missionary work is the absolute hardest work you will do in your life. You are trying to talk about a subject that nobody likes to talk about and have people change their lives. So if you aren’t involving the Lord of course you won’t be able to find people and of course you won’t see success. That is something I really have been trying to be better about is instead of just relying on myself and my own thinking of what we should be doing I need to pray more and ask our Father in Heaven. So Elder Durrant and I did that this week and things actually got better. Funny how that works.

This week we were knocking so many doors but making sure that we were praying first to know where we needed to be and we ended up finding something like 8 new people that wanted us to come back and that included one family as well! On Sunday we were set to have something like 12 investigators at church!

So we call and guess what? haha None of them want to come or they don’t pick up the phone etc. etc. haha So me and elder Durrant and Brother Davis all head out to the one person who actually did pick up and say that he might come and so we drive to this guy’s house and he had fallen back asleep since we called and woke him up haha. But he comes out and actually ends up coming to church haha. He woke up at 9:55 and was at chuch by 10 haha it was awesome but man Jason ended up loving church and we discussed baptism and he is going to work towards being baptized soon. He also told us to go see one of his friends and make sure that he comes to church.

While door knocking too we found this guy named Michael but he goes by Web hahaha which is a long story, but he told us that he wanted to come to church so we got his number and said we would call and then be there to pick him up on Sunday.  Well he didn’t pick up when we called but we swung by Web's house and he actually couldn’t come to church because he had to go to work at KFC and he actually just recently got out of prison and we had a good emotional talk with him. Later that day Web texted us and told us how he never expected us to actually come and try to pick him up for church and that nobody has ever cared enough to try to take him to church and it was just super cool to see how excited he was!

Tasha is doing pretty well and will be baptized, she just has a couple of steps to take before we can really get things moving for her and her daughter. 

We are still pushing hard haha I have started to keep track of the statistics of when I door knock because I want to record it so I can see myself improve in letting people feel the Savior’s love when I stand at their door. After praying about where we should go and who we should see this week was just a ton better and Elder Durrant is awesome at following the spirit and I am super lucky to have him as my comp!

I love you all happy 4th yesterday I had an awesome day!!! We got together as a zone and it was super fun!!! 

Congrats to Lori and Lee on the marriage love you guys and miss you! Also I realized I never shouted out Anna's birthday on here and can’t believe I spaced shouting her out! I miss all the Livingston/Messervy crew and Anna! 2nd family right there :)

Love you guys take care have a great week!

Love Elder GREEN