November 14, 2011 Letter

Ingy Fam!!!!  Congrats Ash Pash AND Dru. Maddox is gonna be a baller I can already tell from the picture! YES! haha. Man Im anxious to meet all of these new family members!

Well, The baptism for Kara was great this weekend! The Coles due to smoking are moved to this Saturday. Carolyn got it down to one cigarette a day, but she just couldn't get over that hump with a week to spare before the baptism so we moved it back a week. She has completely quit for the past week though and is doing great. They are very excited for the baptism! The Tarvin family I told you about came to church! They are SOOO SOLID. All 5 of the family members came and absolutely loved it. Brooke being the baptist she is was a little hard headed about it all at first, but she has completely softened ever since we taught the plan of salvation and since she has been reading and they are completely on board. We are extending to the whole family for the 17th of December on Tuesday. They are all open about the fact that baptism is the main goal. They just want to ensure that everything is right. Which the spirit is telling them that it is and satan is just making them second guess themselves. It happens to everyone, but Im sure they will be baptized very soon. How awesome is that! An entire family getting baptized again! WOW. The Lord is on the move here and it truly is reminding me of a lot of stories you read about the Book of Mormon where the Lord has sent many angels to prepare the hearts on his children in a specific area, then he sends the missionaries he needs to be there and the work explodes. That's all that is happening I can't stress enough that it really has nothing to do with us. The Lord is at work and the faith of the members is making all the difference. This ward wants a new church building and they are gonna get it here very soon at this rate. I could never complain about serving in Hamilton! It's the best ward in the mission! I love it. So Ill tell you something that will really throw you for a loop! Transfers came and Elder Cannon and I are still together, but we got a called by president and because our area is doing so well he gave us a special assignment to serve with a 3rd companion for this transfer. Guess who that companion is????? Elder Pearson haha. My comp. from Northern Kentucky. It is so weird having 3 of us everywhere. Ill be honest Elder Pearson was a struggle to get him to want to do much work, but we got along great personality wise and it was a breath of fresh air, because cannon and my personality differences are starting to come out lately and there has been to much contention. He is just so numbers oriented, he makes a bigger deal about finding new investigators than he does about baptizing the ones we already have. We are clashing quite a bit, but im just praying for charity and trying to swallow my pride and be humble enough to let him be the senior zone leader even though i don't necessarily agree with alot of the things he does. He gets upset with me because i don't like to make robotic lesson plans for investigators, all i feel like we need to do is have a general direction and commitment that we are teaching towards and other than that i like to go in there and listen to what they are saying and follow the Spirit accordingly. Preach my gospel says it best when they say "TEACH PPL NOT LESSONS" "Think not what you should say beforehand" i believe is what it says in doctrine and covenants. He is very organized, structured, and has to be in control of every situation and leading every situation, not to mention adds rules to the white handbook because it's his own opinion .. well then theres me and Im not saying im right and he's wrong, but either way we are completely opposite and I don't care much for structure, struggle with organization, and don't care about how we do things so long as the end result is what the Lord would want it to be. It's taken every ounce of energy that i have to try my hardest to just follow the white handbook and I work at it every day and he thinks we need to be going above that. I just want to say listen Elder, there is already enough rules, you don't get brownie points in heaven for doing this, all it's doing is driving the Spirit away because of contention. Sorry as you can see Im getting extremely impatient right now and Im praying like crazy for the strength not to explode and so far i haven't thank goodness, but i gotta get this off my chest sometime so you get to hear it. Does anyone have any advice for me in this situation? If it's criticism so be it, I probably need to hear that so go for it, Im open to anything haha.  Alright I feel better now. It's crazy serving with Pearson though and it's nice to have someone to talk with about mountains, and fishing, and basketball. ha. Really everything all around is great though. Milton is still doing amazing. Progressing very quickly and already knows it's true, we are really just working to help him overcome his addiction. He is fun to teach because he has so much energy about him and just laughs about everything. It's great. Mike and Judy were out of town this week so we didn't see them. We tracted in to a new couple named Roger and Shiela Bailey that are very prepared, we go back to teach them this week as well. The first lesson went great with em and they ordered a Book of Mormon couple years back and no one ever delivered it so they are very open to reading it now obviously. That's really about all that's new here. Life still keeps on keepin on. Time is still flying for now. Hope everyone has a great. week. I love you all so much and even though it's been FOREVER it feels like since i've seen you guys I still love you more than ever and reflect on the blessing it is to be apart of this family every single day! Be safe, healthy and Happy!

Elder ingy

November 7, 2011 Letter

Hey Everyone!

It was a pretty decent week here in Hamilton. Too many darn meetings though haha. With Halloween we didn't get to work all day, Tuesday we had zone leader council up in Columbus and we were gone ALL Day and into the evening, then Wednesday we went to Oxford, oh (Miami University) the crazy place I told you about at the start of my mission and blitzed the area and went tracting there all day to try and find the sisters there some new investigators because they haven't been doing squat all transfer. We knocked on the about 100 houses right there by campus with all the college students. A couple of them were hilarious they all had names painted on each house. There was one named BOOS CLUES, also LIVE< LAUGH< CHUG<, then there was MENACE TO SOBRIETY, and some other ones that were too colorful to even mention haha. Elder Cannon and I were like, well who knows if we will find anyone, but atleast we will have some funny memories. We found one new person for them to teach and talked to alot of college students it was fun. Haha we could barely even open our eyes without seeing an attractive girl and Im pretty sure in the 5 hours we were tracting we said "LOCK YOUR HEART ELDER" to eachother over 50 times. It was unreal!. lol. It blows my mind how someone could ever go for a girl on their mission, we were talking about it while we were walking, just like "man how stupid could you be, of course it's a temptation, but NOTHING is worth throwing your enitre mission away for. You have to not have a brain to give in to that no matter how pretty a girl may be. That's just stupid. I kept saying to elder cannon "Man I didn't give 20 months of my life to the Lord to get excomunnicated today, it's not even an option." It's crazy the world we live in. It scares me to death. Out here is so different than back home. Don't get me wrong there is tons that goes on back home, but here people have no sense of what's right or wrong and ANYTHING GOES. There is no line that they draw, I guess BYU_Idaho is having it's line drawn a little further back, but there is still a line. Its just nuts! Phew. I'd never survive going to college out here. If I was stuck out here without being a missionary you could just chalk me up for the Telestial kingdom. lol. Thank goodness for the saints migrating west. 17 miracles saved my life as much as it did theirs.  So needless to say we didn't have quite as much get done this weekend, but we are still looking forward to the baptism for Kara Saturday, it's all good to go, and pending smoking Carolyn and Noah Cole are going to get baptized Saturday also. We should have 3 people getting baptized it's awesome! We are super excited miracles keep happening here! We are still working with Milton, still working with Mike and Judy, they came to church again sunday. Saturday night the ward did a movie night and watched 17 miracles in the gym on a projector. We got to go watch it! It's the best and I think Mike and Judy really softened a lot after it. It definitely had a huge impact on them! We are teaching Josh Stubbs still, they came to 17 miracles as well temporal circumstances are making it hard for them to commit to baptism though for now. We are teaching another family named the Tarvin family! They are solid! Husband, wife, a son and daughter both of age to be baptized and a couple of younger kids. It's David and Brooke Tarvin are the parents. We got refereed to them from mormon.org. They ordered a couple of Book of Mormons and are so prepared. He recognized after years of writing the church off that the Book of Mormon is still standing, the church is growing, and the hatred and opposition towards the church is stronger and stronger. He had a pastor who was constantly sending out emails about the Mormons being a cult and all sorts of other anti stuff and it intrigued him to give it a fair shot and find out for himself. We had the ultimate Tad R.Callister lesson with him about the Book of Mormon and how it's from either God or the devil. There is no middle ground. Joseph Smith didn't give us the option to say it teaches good things, but it's not scripture. It claims to be the word of God and it either is or its a complete fraud. We then read some scriptures with them from the Book of Mormon about coming unto Christ and being perfected in him and asked.. "Who does that sentence sound like it comes from?" We then read in 3 nephi 18 about praying always lest satan desireth to have you that he may sift you as wheat... we after that read a scriputre in matthew about how satan can't cast out satan or else he would be a kindgom divided against himself.... We asked the Tarvins do you think satan was capable of inspiring someone to write about prayer and coming closer to Christ? They were really excited to read more about it and take it to the Lord in prayer for a confirmation, but they want to meet with us 2 times a week and from the looks of it they are going to progress really quickly. There sincerity was through the roof. Everything in the work keeps going well. Elder Cannon and I really do work well together, we have alot of disagreements about how to go about doing the work but that is to be expected. The only complaint I could ever say is that reading 5 pages of the new testament every night at 1130 is supposed to build unity and all it is doing is putting a wedge between us because I'm getting up at 630 and exercising hard as a i can for 45 minutes lately and im too tired to be staying up that late. Oh well. Only 4 more months i can give it my all to finish off. What doesn't kill us only makes us stronger right? So ash, We will see if im right about this whole thing! I bet that it will happen. ha! Other than that Paycen sounds like a stud. I can't wait to see him soon. Ma I already told you I don't want Christmas presents. First off I have NO ROOM for anything and Id rather just buy a few clothes and things to have for school when i get home as far as a phone and all that i want to pick that out on my own when i get home too and same with everything else ya know? I haven't been around it for a long time so i have to be able to go to the store and assess what is my best option. I really don't need anything at all. The best thing i could possibly think of is just gift cards to nice restaurants. That''s my favorite thing to do in the world anyways is eat so i might as well eat at nice places. Don't worry about it though. We could just celebrate Christmas and my birthday after i get home. I can't use anything out here anything so it just sits around and rots. I have too many clothes out here already that i need to send home haha. Just have fun there and don't worry about me for Christmas! I'm doing the Lords work and he takes care of his missionaries. I love the work and get to feel the Spirit every day and that is the best present Ive ever been given.  I love you guys so much though and i hope everyone has a great week and know that i pray for you all and think about you often, not too often, but often enough to still remember everything about you all! Your the best!" I know that my Redeemer lives, what comfort this sweet sentence gives...." talk about the best more true song ever written! Love Elder Ingy!

October 31, 2011 Letter

Hey familia!

 

Well, sounds like little Paycen is just a stud. I saw the pics of him and he is really doing well. I don't check my hotmail anymore Linds so sorry I didn't get the pics or letter you sent last time. So you can send me pics to this one so I can see em that would be awesome! Im sorry to hear Avers isn't feeling to well and that Rob has been struggling too. I'll keep you all in my prayers as well as Ash as she is getting close to having the baby. Things need to settle down a bit there for the holidays, ha, but I'm sure that probably won't come until after Christmas time. Things are always crazy around this time of year, now top it off with two of our family members coming down to join us here in this crazy world is just adding to the excitement! Yesterday we had a great Sacrament meeting!!!! Mike and Judy came! YES! Think they had a good time. Carolyn, Jake, and Noah Cole also came for the second week in a row! Kara's isn't happening till the 12th now haha. Trivial little things about family members from Utah being able to come out and see it keep holding things up. Oh well. It'll happen soon enough. Now on the 12th we will have baptisms all day. First Kara, then Carolyn, Jake and Noah right after! We found an awesome new investgiator this week named Milton Blackmon. He is a BROTHA! YES! ha. I can tell you right now he's getting baptized in December. He loves the church already after just one time. He says he has a HUGE hole in his life. He feels empty. He has a great personality and you would never know that he is so depressed, but he openly told us that he struggles with an addiction to pornography and he used to pick up prostitutes and stuff, "fornicated with half of Hamilton" is how he put it, but he has AIDS so he gave that up and because he was so addcited to it, he picked up pornography and he said it's going to be a battle, but he has never tried to overcome it with Jesus Christ in his life like he will be doing this time. There is no doubt that he will be able to do it. Milton is just such a good guy. Really a pure heart and in just the first week we already met with him twice and had lessons and he came to the chili cookoff! How great is that! We met a man named David Turbin as well. He is a referall from mormon.org. He got on there and requested a Book of Mormon and a Bible. He struggles with faith in general. He knows the theology behind pretty much every releigion there is, but he says there is so much bull that is spread about the Mormons as well as opposition to us now as well as back in Joseph Smith's time that it must be the truth. So he said he is sincerely excited to look into the church and find the truth in his life once and for all! Halloween is no different for us than any other day because it's p day anyways. All we did is instead of going out and working this evening we come in at 7 and have our studies and instead of having studies this morning we went and did service for our bishop. Elder Cannon and I showed up on this doorstep and said Bishop we've got two hours.. How can we help? His garage was attrocious so we cleared all the junk out. Swept the entire thing and put the stuff back in that he wanted to keep as well as through the junk away. It looked like an entirely different place and I think it had a big impact on our relationship with him. The Bishop is the key to missionary work, so if you are close with him then you will most likely be successful. That is what I've learned. Things are truly going amazing. I could never complain. I pretty much agree with you dad I would love to just stay here the rest of my mission, but if I had to predict I would say the trend of my mission says that I'll leave the transfer right before Christmas and for my last 3 months I'll get released as a Zone Leader and go and train another greenie. That is what President Nilsen usually does. It will be a trial if he does do that, because that means I'll get whitewashed in to an area and have to transition from having a comp. that is extremely refined and skilled as a missionary who is exactly obedient and follows the Spirit in all that he does to someone who is brand stinkin new that has no idea to do anything hahaha. Looking back now I've realized that I've pretty much spent my whole mission with brand new Elders and the entire time I really had no idea what I was doing either. Now because the Lord is more involved in my life and I have more skills for him to use and my comp. is insanely amazing at the work it makes me feel like I've died and gone to heaven. We receive strong promptings everyday about where we need to be and without fail we walk right into a miracle! It's the best. I could be a missionary forever..(if i could watch ESPN at the same time and be with you guys too of course) but for real I hear about all the people at home doing this and that getting married, going to school and all of these things and more and more my desires for anything like that are just going away. Missionary work is becoming my drug hahaha. I feel down so I go out and work, if I feel tired I just work harder, if I lose the Spirit I instantly go to the Book of Mormon for comfort and plead for it back. That feeling of the fruits of the Spirit is what I thrive on now and the seeing the Atonement so active in the lives of these people I love there is honestly not a satisfactory substitute.  The Savior is exactly what his name indicates him to be. I can tell that I am your son dad, because the exact things that I know bother you about people in the church are the same things that get on my nerves as well. It's not the church of Joseph Smith of Latter-Day Saints. As much as we owe brother Joseph for what he did, I really wish that people in the church would not put so much emphasis on him. He had his flaws like the rest of us, you can never put your trust in a man, but you can put your trust in the Savior and if the Savior is guiding that man in every thing he does that is when he becomes trustworthy. We are so inadequate. We are less than the dust of the earth and I know that. I also know that to Jesus Christ we are everything. No matter how insignificant our lives seem to us, they mean everything to God as President Uchtdorf said in conference. I Love you all so very much! I hope you have the best Halloween ever and I can't wait to see the cute little girls in their costumes! It's gonna be great to get those pictures. Dad have you ever read the book called DAY OF DEFENSE??? I read a few pages of it the other day and it seemed like the coolest book ever, if you haven't read it you should and let me know how it is. Be safe everyone!

 

Elder Ingy