August 5, 2013

(My parents went to Paris last week and sent Austin a shirt)

Dear Family,

 

Thank you for all your love, support, letters, and prayers. I appreciate it immensely.

 

This week was, well a rollercoaster. But that's ok! I LOVE ROLLERCOASTERS! As I said before, we were fasting for new investigators. Thank you for fasting and praying for me (and them) too. (If you did, if you didn't that's ok :) ). On Monday night then this investigator texted us and wanted to start meeting with us again. He had taken all the lessons, but stopped, because of some family problems. But he asked if we would go to institute with him (ISU is on the other side of the city), so we did! It was an awesome lesson, and I got to know him a lot better. He wanted to meet with us Tuesday, so we scheduled a lesson and freaked out after he left. Haha. Even though it's not the first time he's heard the lessons, he didn't want to meet with us anymore, so we dropped him. So now, technically he is still a "New Investigator"!! So the Lord answers prayers. There's your evidence. We didn't really have to do anything, the Lord had been working on him for a few months, and answered our prayers!

 

On Tuesday, we met with this mom. She's been having bible study with missionaries for a long time, and she LOVES religious discussions. She reads her bible, and asks us questions. And we answer them all. She does not have the King James version of the bible, so... honestly it's really weird. I feel really bad, cause if she had the Kind James version, she would be way less confused. THE APOSTASY IS REAL. She asked us interesting questions and we taught as much as we could about the plan of salvation, but it was general. We're going back next week for another crack at it.

 

We met with [the first guy we went to institute with], and the lesson went way good. Because the spirit had been working on him, and he had been reading the Book of Mormon, AND studying and everything, he already knew it was all true. He has a very strong testimony bout the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith, and the restored church. He has already told his family he will be converting and removing himself from the church committees he was participating in back in his old church. He wants to be baptized in September. WOO HOO!! SICK! Right after his lesson, the sister missionaries texted us with a referral! PROGRESS IN IOWA. FINALLY.

Wednesday we cleaned our apartment, met with a recent convert, cleaned, and contacted. NOT A SOUL WAS OUTSIDE. We just had a nice little walk around, and couldn't find anyone.

Thursday morning the 2nd ward sisters were moving into a new apartment so we went to go help them with that, but by the time we got to their new apartment, the other Elders had moved everything.. so we drove back home. Then we started our move! We moved from one building's basement to the next door buildings top floor! Elder Claridge and I, being the smart kids we are, decided it was best to move the heaviest, most difficult and awkward items first. So we took the super old armchair that felt like a car was in the cushions up 3 flights of stairs. Then we took the ancient couch, which felt like it had a full sized blue whale on it, up the stairs. The turns in the stairwell were too narrow to turn it around at the top of each flight, so we had to get creative. I was on the bottom, and we would make the couch almost vertical and push it up over the railing. IT WAS AWFUL. It took like 30 minutes to get it in our apartment. By the time we were done moving that, we were both literally dripping in sweat. But what can you do? The job had to be done. Almost 5 minutes after we moved ALL the ridiculously heavy stuff upstairs, the Elders and Sisters called to offer help! CONVENIENT TIMING! They came, and helped a lot. Elder Claridge and I were exhausted, but we kept moving stuff. We had a District meeting in Story City, (about 20 minutes away) we had to go to, so we didn't get everything moved before then.

 

During the meeting, the phone was going CRAZY. I finally checked it (I was trying to be reverent) and realized that I should've heeded it's call. We had a ton of missed calls from people, mostly about the move. Our apartment complex is owned by members in our ward, but they needed to know if we were out so they could start cleaning and getting it ready for the next people. We weren't done, and the apartment definitely wasn't anywhere near being clean. So we SPRINTED out of that meeting and moved everything as fast as we could. We didn't finish until like 9. Needless to say one of the longest days of my life. There is so much crap in missionary apartments you didn't even know existed until you pull them out of old, dusty closets. I don't know if I've ever slept better in my life.

 

Friday, we met with a less active family, it was really hard to teach a lesson because they just loved to talk talk talk about random stuff! Then we called some of the potentials we had last week while we were contacting. One kind of blew us off with the feeling that she was just really polite the first time. We had a lesson with some of our potentials planned, we showed up, and she was about to put her kids down for a nap, so she told us to come back later. We came back later, and no one answered the door. While sitting in the car trying to figure out what we were gonna do, we saw the husband come out of the complex. GREAT.

 

3 more things, I'm almost out of time. GO READ 2 Nephi 4. It is so legit can change your life.

Be spiritually minded.

Watch the video "Mountains to Climb" and try not to cry. I CRIED. I'll admit it! I cried in a public library! IT'S AWESOME.

 

The church is true, the Book is blue. Thank you for all your support. My new address is 3500 N Grand Ave. #44, Ames, Iowa

 

I love you all, and love this work.

 

-Elder Hollan