There Is a Disturbance In the Force

Week 23

Tuesday 

We played pool with a member of our ward.

Wednesday 

Service at sister Shannon’s cleaning out the garden area.

Quote of the day “if any man be worth to pick up this hammer let him possess the power of Thor”.

We got workout equipment from a member during service.

I promise I am a good cook!

We caught 13 Crappie. 

Thursday 

Exchanges because of MLC

Elder McCoy and I fished with the casting net for exercise time. We caught two fish and had them for lunch. We had some great service that we got to do with different people. Then we had 2 dinners that night because it was kind of a last-minute thing having exchanges.

Friday 

Elder Webb and I got pulled over it was elder Webb’s first time ever being pulled over we were told we have to get a Texas driver’s license if we are living here more than thirty days.

Saturday

We watched conference with the Ratliff’s and then with the Richards along with Linda she really enjoyed it too.

Sunday

We watched conference with the Richards and then we played the Oregon trail they are the sweetest we really feel like they are our family sister Richards said she would adopt us and keep us there forever if she could, she told us we could call her grandma.

Our PDay also got moved to Wednesday.

Notes from Jaden:

We will find out Wednesday if we are transferred, and the transfer is Thursday.

We got a truck this week, it is a silver Frontier Nissan.

We got pulled over for going 10 over. We got out of the ticket, he said I would imagine the church would be mad if you got a ticket, he said to go the speed limit and he walked away hahahah.

Here are some recipes that Jaden sent home, he said “y’all need to try these.

 

 

Miracles ( San Antonio, Texas Week 16 )

Week 13

Monday January 16, 2017

Well today for PDay we went and did our shopping then we went and emailed then we went fishing 🎣. But we didn’t catch any thing it was close though we decided we wanted to have a camp fire 🔥 in the fire pit out front of our house 🏡 so we did and we did our daily planning around the fire.

Tuesday January 17, 2017

We finished our planning on the way home stopped at a store to buy marshmallows and an elderly gentleman need to borrow a phone to call. So, we let him borrow the phone to make a call. Then we went on our way then we went home we had a camp fire 🔥 and roasted marshmallows and elder Jacobs made an amazing African chocolate sauce.

Wednesday January 18, 2017

Today was great we went and found a new investigator. He seems great so far. We were actually trying to talk to his neighbors because they were in our area book. So, we knocked on their door but they didn’t answer. So, we knocked on their neighbor’s door because they were in a duplex, we figured they would know each other. He opened the door we asked about the neighbors and said the went to prison hahaha. So, then we got to know him and we taught him about the Book of Mormon he was super receptive, we may try to set something up with him on Friday.

Thursday January 19, 2017

So, we did service today. Painting a wall at our family history center hahaha. They told us one thing and that was to not get paint on the carpet. Well we painted the whole wall. When we were done, we were asked to take off the rollers. So, elder Jacobs was trying to pull them off. Well he was having trouble and we told him it will just slide off, and to try harder hahaha. Well he tried harder and it did slide off, then it flew on to the carpet and rolled across the floor and it painted a large white paint streak on the dark carpet hahahahah. We got the paint out eventually. Then later that day we are at a member’s house and they have like 12 little dogs and they don’t go outside ever not even for the bathroom they have those indoor potty pads. Now this house smelled so bad because of these dogs and makes me want to pass out it is so strong. But I learned it can smell much worse when Elder Webb steps on a pile of dog poop that was in the middle of the room. It wasn’t even on the potty pad. As we taught the member he didn’t even notice the smell at all.

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Friday January 20, 2017

We took Elder Jacobs to San Antonio because he is headed home today. On the way, back we got lost and we ended up at the San Antonio Temple haha.

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Saturday January 21, 2017

So today was so great we have some audio recordings.   I was unable to attach the audio so I have transcribed what Elder Thompson and Elder Webb sent in the audio’s.

Elder Thompson

Alright so today was the family history event and it was great. We get there hoping for a good turnout and it was a full house in the class, it was fantastic. We had a couple investigators come up and we had a good time. After the family history event, Elder Webb and I decided, let’s go teach some people who are up here in Buchanan. So, we were looking for the Oddy family, and I pick a dot on the map and I say this is where they live and we get there and the person who opens the door says I don’t know who that is. So, we start teaching them.

Elder Webb

Her name is Lynette, come to find out her brother is lds, we gave her book of Mormon and a pamphlet, and we got her phone number to come back. We contacted so many people in Buchanan. We didn’t know there were that many people there. We knocked on the door of the Oddy family, they were gone on a trip. But there was a 20-year-old girl there taking care of the dogs and we talked to her and gave her a Book of Mormon and we set up a return appointment for tomorrow. She is interested and religious. We are seeing so many miracles.

Elder Thompson

Then we were almost out of gas, we thought we weren’t going to make it to a gas station. We turned the corner and we were like there is a gas station, it was a tender mercy. We hadn’t eaten and there was also a café in the gas station, it had like the best food ever.

Elder Webb

Sister Richens and some other sisters all went to the gas station, and we got to talk to them about how it went at the family history event.

Elder Thompson

I learned today that they don’t have fry sauce in Texas, they don’t even know what it is.

We drive home and we go do studies, then we are like ok we need to go to our appointment with Destiny. We head to the appointment, she had forgotten and she was asleep. We set a return appointment for after church tomorrow. We also had an appointment with her neighbors. I think they are going to be Elder Webbs favorite investigators at this point.

Elder Webb

She is the wife of a Spanish guy we talked to yesterday. She is literally on of the nicest people I have ever met, we found out she has 8 kids. She was so enthusiastic and the nicest lady ever. We gave her a Spanish pamphlet and Spanish Book of Mormon, and an English pamphlet and English Book of Mormon. We set up a return appointment. Man, I love missionary work.

Elder Thompson

After those appointments were like let’s pick a random street and go walk around. We are walking down the street and these guys have their music blaring. Elder Webb and I thought we were going to get mugged or something because they had weed out they got cigarettes, they got beer they are just partying on their drive way. These two guys make eye contact and say hey. We just kept kind of walking by. They then turned their music down and then asked hey do you guys have any of those pamphlets.

Elder Webb

Heck ya we have some pamphlets, we gave them the one English one we had, and we went to the car to get more English ones.

Elder Thompson

We were walking down the street and we are trying to go to this person who is in our area book as Ben’s mom. I know we are going down the right street, Elder Webb asks if it’s the right street, I say yes. I see a Volkswagen Beach Buggy sitting on these people driveway that they are standing around, I want to go and talk to them. I lean over to Elder Webb and I’m like let’s go talk to them. We are going to talk cars to get their attention, he says you take the lead.  So, we go up to them and start talking about the Beach Buggy, they got like 12 other cars on their driveway. Kind of reminded me of my family when we had 6 cars on our driveway and only one of them worked. It was great though because we started talking to them they didn’t sound that interested but when we started talking about cars they got more and more interested, it was sweet.

Elder Webb

The older two brothers walked away and started working on a car, but Nick started talking to us a little bit. He was our age or a little older. But we just started talking to him and sharing our message. We believe in a modern-day prophet and we have more teachings and the fullness of the gospel. We invited him to read the introduction of the Book of Mormon. As soon as we gave it to him he started reading, he said it was interesting and that he would read it. I couldn’t stop thinking that we are missionaries with a sacred calling we are 18-year-old kids that are doing this, it is all possible through Jesus Christ and through our Heavenly Father, we are just normal guys who believe in something extraordinary. To be able to talk to this fellow peer who is around our age, we are normal guys who believe in this, it was so cool. Heavenly Father wants us to be us when we talk to others, to let our personality shine. It is so cool that Heavenly Father is so involved in this work. We handed out 6 Book of Mormons today. We got 4 new investigators today. I know this work is true, in the name of Jesus Christ Amen.

My New Area (San Antonio, Texas Week 15)

Week 12

Thursday January 12, 2017

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Jaden’s new companions Elder Webb and Elder Jacobs       

So today we got to our new area and we are in the area that is the farthest north in the mission. We have the biggest house in the mission; it’s a three bedroom two bathrooms and we are walking distance from a lake that the elders go fishing at sometimes. Today was a good day we taught some new people and they were great. The people up here are really funny hahahaha.

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Jaden’s new home

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Jaden’s home overlooking the  Colorado River.

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The dock by Jaden’s house.

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Friday January 13, 2017
Well today was interesting we did service and that was great. We raked leaves
🍃 for a member, they even fed us lunch it was great 👍🏼. Then we went and visited some nice old people. The husband was on hospice he wasn’t supposed to make it through last night, so he doesn’t have much time. After that we went to dinner and well we got lost. None of our maps were working  hahaha. We had to call the member and ask for directions hahaha. Then after dinner they pulled out a bass and guitar 🎸 and played us music hahaha. It was great, they were super old and sweet. They gave us eggs and a toaster oven. Then we started to drive to our next appointment, but we got lost and ended up 40 miles in the wrong direction. We were an hour late to our appointment but they were still grateful to have us.

Saturday January 14, 2017
Today we did service and we helped an man in our ward that’s less active make sausage hahaha, like the whole process. it was really interesting to learn hahaha. He thought I knew what I was doing hahaha. I guess I’m just really good at guessing and lookin like I know what I’m doing hahaha.  They gave us sausages to take home as well as 18 eggs.

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Notes from Jaden:

At the airport I was stopped because of my tin of colored pencils haha, but they let me keep them.

The area is super cool, we are in the middle of nowhere.

We have a car, and 1625 miles that we can go.

We are hoping to go fishing for pday today.

Thanks I love y’all I’ll talk to you next week
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A church that our church rents for the Branch.
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I’m Coming Home (San Antonio, Texas Week 14)

Week eleven in Texas 

Monday October 3rd

Today we started by going to the doctors. Then off to the store. I was in charge of looking up times for the bus. While we were at the store I found one on google maps we had 40minutes till we had to be at the stop, so we hurried home and cleaned the whole house in like 10 minutes. We ran and got in the truck and drove down the street to the stop. We made it there parked, ran to the bus stop, called the number to see if we had missed the bus. It said the next bus wouldn’t be there for an hour, but as we started to walk we saw the bus it was late hahaha. We got on and I think the bus driver knew we were lost from the beginning, as we sat down we continued driving down the road we noticed every one paid when they got on but we never paid. When we asked him when we were about to get off he gave us bus passes for our next bus for free and told us to hurry over to the other side of the bus depot to get on the next bus that would take us to the market. We almost got lost a few times today but we somehow found our way. At the end of our PDay we had to figure out how to get home, we were walking we saw the bus we had just missed it. I look at it, I’m like there is a stop on the other side of the market. So we ran to the bus stop thinking we had missed it. We start looking up busses but a bus came and we got on it and hoped it was going where we needed to go, luckily it did we made it home in time.

Tuesday October 4th 

I got two ties to day for some other elder that was on exchanges. One of them he made from women’s yoga pants he got at a Good Will, so I have a spandex tie hahaha. I also got a penguin tie it’s a brand of tie.

Wednesday October 5th

Well today I crashed my bike, I was wearing my suit haha. I rolled across my bike and tumbled and I killed my front wheel. My bike wheel is bent it wobbles so bad we are getting it replaced tomorrow.

Thursday October 6th

Today was good we had dinner with a member and we brought an investigator with us that was their neighbor. He also is one of the people with a baptismal date.

Friday October 7th 

Well today we found out I am going home on Monday. We also didn’t have anyone for dinner between the four of us elders. So since no members signed up, I said dinner was on me kinda joking but not really because I would be home before PDay so I couldn’t help with the groceries so I paid for us to go to a sushi restaurant. Well we bought 5 rolls of sushi and we got free miso and salad I also bought mochi ice cream for the four of us hahaha. Well in the end our dinner was kinda expensive, but it was really good hahaha it was 73$.

Saturday October 8th

Well today I had two flat tires on my bike I got them fixed though.

Sunday October 9th

Well today was my first day wearing my leg brace at church. People were all asking questions hahah. But only 3 found out I was going home tomorrow hahaha. If they didn’t ask if I was leaving soon I didn’t tell them hahaha. My companion is now companions with the zone leaders. I got pictures with all of them tonight at dinner. We had it with the Yenchik’s they are super nice. Sister Yenchik really reminds me of someone I know but haven’t figured out who yet. Well they found out I was going home and they called dinner the last supper hahaha.  On our way, back to our apartment I of course crashed my bike hahaha. Then after I got up and started riding I almost got hit by a car again.

This makes a total of almost being hit by a car 5 times and crashing 13 times