June 23, 2014 50 Weeks

Halfway Done!

Wow it is crazy that this day came!  I didn't think that is ever would! haha But it is also at the same time weird because a year is a long time and it is weird to think that I am only half way done! Mission time is crazy I don't even know how it works!  

We had  a good week this past week!  I am still getting used to the doubled in size area!  Elder Cluff (my godson in the mission) is letting me use his gps to help us get around!  I exchanged my old iPod for it.  So that will help us in digging out all of the less actives who live in the sticks.  We really organized our area and we have 60 households of members in our area 13 of them are active and the other ones are less actives!!  

We did have a miracle happen this week! So a new family moved into Purcell from Texas and they are probably in their 40s and have 1 kid... well the parents both served missions... and not just any missions...Spanish missions!!  And their last callings in their old ward…. Ward missionaries!!!!  So we are going to get some serious work done this summer in Purcell!  We have made quite the list of potential and former investigators that we are going to start using this week!  And with the bridge being open members can now help us out a lot more.  

We had  a cool experience with the Hoffman family!  They are so close to getting baptized they just need help quitting smoking! So we went in going to teach the word of wisdom...  well they had already called the doctor earlier that day to start on some drugs that will help them quit!!  so they are really close!!!!!!!  they know it is true, they are already doing missionary work and they have a perfect Mormon family!!!!

Questions from Mom

What is it that helps you get up everyday and do the work of a missionary?-- 

That is a really good question!  Just take it one day at a time is the key!  I believe there is a reason why we plan for the next day at 9:00 the night before, every night.  If we plan with the spirit then we know that we are needed in the places that we plan for each night and it makes it more exciting.  

What helps you keep going?  

The never ending knowledge that I am receiving!!  There was a quote that I like from Marion G. Romney it says (not exactly) you know you are talking with the spirit,  when you learn something that applies to your life.  Every day even though we teach the same lessons they are different every time!   

You have been at this strong for almost a year now. What keeps you focused on the work?  

Every day seeing the change in others!  Missionary work is the best thing in the world.  If you don't believe in miracles be a missionary for a couple of days!!

Well I hope that you all have a good week!!  Look for those missionary opportunites!

  

HASTA EN UN ANO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ELDER FINLINSON

(Elder Finlinson's release date is June 23, 2015!)

June 16, 2014 Week 49

Half of June!

Well this was a pretty cool week.  I had my first kid of the mission.  His name is elder Taggart he is from bountiful!  We have had a lot of ton so far!  We can relate in a lot of different ways!  But it has been awesome, we started doing some serious work in Spanish!!  It sure is a brain cooker though trying to switch back and forth so often, it is really hard.  It isn't uncommon for us to use some Spanish when we are talking to English people!!  

But the big news of the week is that the bridge is open!!!!  It is like a new area! no missionary works has happened in Lexington since February and no missionary work in Spanish has ever really happened in this area!  We have been trying to find all of the Hispanics around and we have been fairly successful at it!  there are a ton of Hispanics here that are definitely prepared to hear the gospel!

One experience we had this week is-- we were driving to an appointment and Elder Taggart said that he saw a sign in front of a house in Spanish so we decided to go and knock the door!  Well they were Hispanics and we asked if we could pray with them and they agreed the man let us into the house and told us to pray for his wife who was sick! Elder taggart gave an amazing prayer in Spanish and the spirit was definitely there, it was very cool.  They said that we could come back and share a message with them!  Another is that we talked to a Testigo de Jeovah this week (Jehovah witness).  i think that my Spanish is really going to improve the next couple of months,  It is really good practice to have to teach it to someone and to be the one who does most of the talking in lessons.  I have been saying some really stupid stuff in English. haha the worst one is saying for example --family Hoffman( i did this with one of our investigators)  GOT TO LOVE SPEAKING SPANISH AND ENGLISH 

But we have been having a good time here!  Brother fishburn was a champ and drove us to the far east part of our area.  We have one member that lives way out there… Macome, Oklahoma... ever hear about it? didnt think so it is extremely small!  but once we got back we of course had to finish off the day with a big chicken fried stake!!  The Fishburns are great!  But everyone pray that the bridge stays open!! 

I love ya'll and have an awesome week!  and yes i am glad that the wedding went well! 

LOVE YAH

ELDER FINLINSON 

June 9 2014, Week 48‏

Hey y'all

Bueno thanks for all of the birthday goods!!  How can you have a better day when you are doing missionary work?!!  haha no we had an awesome week this week!  We had a ton of fun!  So last p-day we did a shaving cream slip n slide...since we aren't allowed to do water sports(don't worry president said that we could do it so we are ok)!  We had a ton of fun with that but definitely water works better haha some missionaries started getting stuck in the middle of the slide!  And we were actually able to find a hill big enough that made it somewhat fun!  I can't wait to show y'all the go-pro videos that we have, they are pretty cool!  I may want you to send out my go-pro and put it on the bike!!

But we had some awesome missionary work done this week too! haha I have been scoping around in the area looking for hispanics so that my baby will be able to get some door approaches in Spanish!  But we had an awesome lesson with the Hoffman family this week and they are getting baptized!!! We taught them the 5 whys to baptism and they loved it and we asked if they would be baptized and they said yes!! So they are going to get baptized on the 28th!  

Sorry we dont have a ton of time, the p- days before transfers are always crazy!  But it was very cool!  We had two lesson with them and on the second we took the Fishburns over and had another cool lesson with them!  They testified to their kids why they are getting baptized and it was perfect!! Brother Hoffman also had a missionary experience this week and explained the Book of Mormon.... yeah it is about time that they get baptized!!!

WELLL TIME TO LEAVE BUT WE WILL SEE YALL LATER GOOD LUCK WITH THE WEDDING sorry for the short letter..

ELDER FINLINSON

June 2, 2014 Week 47‏

I am going to have a baby!

Yeah so I got a call from the assistants this past week saying that I will be training this next transfer!  yep and I won't be training a guero! 

Well I guess I could be training a guero but I am training a Spanish Elder!!! woooo!  There are only 3 elders coming out this transfer and they are all Spanish!  So it looks like it is a go to get some Hispanic work done in Purcell!!  President wrote me today saying to start teaching them and get them to church!!! I am pretty excited to do both Spanish and English work!  In this coming week I am going to try and find a few Spanish potentials so we can start teaching them once the Greenie comes!  I am excited to be a trainer and get somewhat in the Spanish groove!

Well this week was alright we had some good fun!  Yesterday we talked to two crazy people one of them was a disciple-- I think he thought that he was John... we were just riding our bikes and stopped to go visit a investigator and this guy walked up from behind us and said "LADR DY SAINTS" yeah he was drunk... I think he put booze into a root beer can so then NO ONE WILL KNOW THAT HE IS DRINKING haha it doesn't matter that he is walking in zig zags down the street! ahh this is what we have to deal with every day!  but hey it isn't every day that you get to talk to John!  The first question he asked us is what we thought of Jehovah Witnesses... haha that question is in the top 5 MOST FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS and I don't know why!  But after talking to "JOHN"  we went and tried a less active family.  They didn't answer but when we were walking back to our bikes we saw this man walking down the street with a massive parrot on his arm that was screaming..... well of course we are going to go talk to him!  This is missionary entertainment!  Well it turns out the quy is crazy (we weren't expecting him to be all there but hey you have to talk to everyone!) After introducing ourselves to the bird and receiving a wave from it we talked to the guy.  We gave him a mormon.org card and told him to go to the website if he is ever curious... he then told us that he only watches parrots talk on YouTube if he ever is in on the internet... so we left... we visited a less active after that and he said that he knows the parrot man too... I think that he would be compared to Bryan! (Bryan rides his bike around our community collecting mens shirts/shoelaces--from the garbage cans etc--our community would not be the same with out Bryan)

....OOOOOOKLAHOMA

luckily not everyone is crazy here!

We visited with a ton of less actives this week!!  We found one in Purcell and on her records it said that she was dead...  well she isn't dead!  But she was able to go to church for the first time in more then 20 years!!!  I don't know what is better to see! Less actives going back to church or investigators!!? they are both very cool to see but are very different!  But I love working with less actives!  They can never think of a good excuse on why they stopped coming to church and all of them will never deny the book of mormon!!  We backed one up to the wall this week he said that he has lots of questions about the church so we asked him," do you deny or accept the book of mormon?" BOOM they cant do it!!  the power of The Book of Mormon is crazy!!! I can only imagine how missionaries of other religions feel!!! haha 

WELL HAVE TO GO but love y'all and have a good week

May 26, 2014 Week 46

Ah man this year mark is getting closer it is crazy!  I figured that memorial day was my last double holiday!  I now only have one of all of them left!  

I will just get started in what happened this past week!

Last Tuesday all of our appointments fell through in the afternoon... so instead of tracting we tried some formal investigators.  It started off kinda slow but it didn't take time to get heated up!  We knocked into 3 houses and we got 4 potentials from it! it was crazy it was just one right after another!  The last one this kid came up to us and asked if we were going to go over to his house.  This kinda took us by surprise but he said that missionaries used to go to his house and he wants them to come back.  Well we are fine with that! 

We have not been able to catch them at home yet but it is probably because they are Hispanic and are always working!  I just emailed President asking if we could start teaching the Hispanics here in Purcell because all of the referrals that we give to the hermanas in Norman they never visit because of the distance!  While yes it isn't ideal to have one missionary teaching I believe it is better to teach the people that are interested! So I hope President likes the idea too!

But 10 seconds after talking to the kid... another person walks up to us and he said that he is a preacher and would like to go out to dinner with us... Well the first reaction was to start preparation for war-aka bible bash haha but we decided to go in with love.  Well he turned out being a really cool guy and most of his extended family are Mormons and he had 3 nephews on missions.  So we had a nice discussion about the church and the purpose of missionaries!  He was a preacher at one of those TV life churches idk so we could of slammed him with some good questions but we decided to restrain!  It is amazing what some people believe these days...  A NON NONDENOMINATIONAL CHURCH??!!!  It is very entertaining to hear people try to explain what that means haha

We were able to have a meeting with our Bishop last week re- establishing the plan for missionary work in the ward---A WARD MISSION PLAN.  It went very well and it was brought up in ward council this past week!  Now we have to work with our ward mission leader and get him ready to do some missionary work here in the ward... he is a little old and lives 30 minutes away! but that is ok We gave him a good confidence boost and he is ready to go!

We had dinner at a members house this week in Lexington-50 minutes away.  The Fishburns were invited so we hitched a ride with them.  On the way back they drove right past our apartment and said that we were going to go to Brahms and get some ice cream!  haha we had just eaten carrot cake and ice cream at dinner but i guess they wanted more!  well after that they needed to go to Walmart and we forced Brother Fishburn to give out a pass-along card to the cashier..  he then said that he could pass out a 500 pack of cards in a week... Bro Fishburn is the best!

On Saturday we were able to go through the temple because we had a recent convert receive his endowments!  It was very cool--even though it was the old old video because we had someone speaking a different language!  I was able to stop by hermano Garcia's house on the way back and he was very happy to see me!  My picture is still on his phone for the missionaries there!!! both the missionaries there right now are Hispanics… I think that they like having gueros as missionaries!  I was mad I had to tell them to slow down in their talking... but by the end of the conversation I was understanding them!

But that is about what happened last week it was a very good week.  HOPE YALL HAVE A GOOD WEEK THIS WEEK>

ELDER FINLINSON