June 23, 2014

Good morning family and friends, this is Elder Moss. Reporting from Modesto California, so ya. Just a couple of items that liked happened this week. It has been a really good week, um we have had a couple of struggling days but for the most part it has been a really good week. Um well to start off last Monday we played basketball against another stake and it was a lot of fun, like really good basketball and it was a lot of fun. If you remember Sarah, Sarah Vine, her parents freaked out about her getting baptized so she is postponing it for right now. We had her do a fast to soften the hearts of her parents and so that was yesterday and so we are still waiting to hear back and everything from like how her parents are taking it and the directions in which she should go. We are also still working with Kevin who is still praying to know if Jesus Christ is his Savior and about his baptism this Sunday. We are trying to work with him more and be able to help him along. We are also, um helping Marissa. Marissa has been facing a lot from Satin, like she has a baptismal date for the 5^th, but she texted us if she could get baptized this coming Saturday. We were like Wow – Ya - Sure – totally, she said she was just facing a lot right now and Satin has been attacking her and pounding her and so we will have to be working so close with her and be able to help her get baptized on the 28^th, so that was a cool miracle. I also went on an exchange with the Zone leader and it was a really fun exchange. We did a lot and taught a lot and we also caught a black widow. I don’t know what it has been lately but we have been catching all of these spiders and feeding them to this black widow that we have. It is kind of like our “pet” that we have. It is kind of weird, but it is something fun that we did.

Okay so in the morning I was cooking breakfast and you know those little pancake sausage things that we have had that look like corn dogs , so ya I was cooking one of those and put it in the oven and then I went to do my studies, I was studying my scriptures and different things. We went out to work and were working really hard we came home and there was smoke everywhere in the house, it was so bad and I said, “WHAT THE HECK!” It was kind of foggy and I wondered what this was and so I was tracing it and following my nose sent, like my nose can smell really good and came to the oven. I had left on the oven with the corn dog in it all day. Oh my gosh! My corn dog was completely black! Ya a I didn’t eat it, but I was so lucky that I didn’t burn down my apartment, so ya um I won’t be doing that anymore. (ha ha) We are still working with those people who are progressing towards baptism – we are really trying to set more dates and find more solid people. We went to go visit a member and we shared an inspired message with her and all of the sudden the mom got a phone call and we all of the sudden stopped and went over to her neighbor’s house and gave her a blessing; it was a really cool spiritual experience! She definitely said she felt the spirit. She is a non-member, but she acts just like a Mormon. She would definitely go to the family ward, but it was a really cool experience and a blessing to exercise my priesthood and be able to see a miracle be performed. That was a really cool experience. Um I was able to interview a guy named Paul he is getting baptized this morning at 10 o’clock, we have some investigators coming. Paul is really cool he is a Native American and he faced a lot of adversity, but he is awesome really ready for the gospel. I interviewed him and he passed and so he will get baptized this morning. And I will finish my last voice recording on the next one.

So I will close up with this last voice recording. On Friday, um which was yesterday, we had a Zone conference. Oh and I will send another one if something happened today or Sunday. So we had a Zone conference it was President Gelwix last Zone conference with the missionaries and it was really awesome Zone Conference! We went over a lot of stuff, umm so that was really good. I had some really cool moments with President. He called me into – after the conference he said he wanted to talk to me for a minute. We had some really cool like personal time together in which um feelings of love and um it was really awesome! I just love President Gelwix so much! We have a really strong relationship and it will be hard to see it go but I know that President Clark is inspired man and he has been called to be here at this time. So it was funny President got asked by one of the missionaries, “President since you are going home what is one dating advise for post mission?” And President was like, “Do you want me to be straight up with you?” and they were like, “Yay, yay.” He said, “DON’T MAKE OUT!” He went into the whole doctrine behind it and everything, but then he said, “You do NEVER do that! It will not bring the spirit and you will lose the spirit, it is only for feeling of when you are married.” That is SO true! Um so that is my advice for you… Chase & Brayden (ha ha) and anyone else who is listening to this… um that isn’t married. That was really cool, um what else… so yah it was a supper Zone Conference. We watched President Gelwix’s Documentary; I guess someone made a documentary on him and of his rugby career and everything. It was his last rugby season right before he went to be a mission president and so… it was really cool. The only piece of advice that I would say that I learned the most, well I learned a whole lot so I really can’t say I have only learned a piece, but make sure you are saying more than two prayers a day. Not just you’re Morning Prayer and your night prayer, but make sure you pray always. Pray before every single meal, pray before every time you read your scriptures before and after, Prayer is so powerful and don’t lose the habit and create that environment to be able to receive more revelation. I love you all so much! I am so grateful for you for keeping me in your prayers. Love you and have a great day, bye bye.

All right family and friends, today is Sunday evening. A little update – we had Stake Conference. Marissa of course is getting baptized this Saturday, she is solid for it, and she is awesome! She is going to have our Branch President baptize her.  We had Stake conference Saturday evening and it was super good super powerful. We actually it was kind of a surprised for us we had some investigators go so we were able to attend and it was really fun. Um President Gelwix came up and he spoke in it, he spoke at it. He gave some great stuff, in which he talks about how the members can invite the missionaries to their home to have an inspired message, pray for the missionaries by name, pray for their investigators, and pray for missionary experiences, and then the faith to act. They also talked about hastening the work and everything. It was really cool President called out Elder Salomon and I during his talk, he asked us to stand up. Um he got pretty emotional he was talking about how our families are praying for us and we were standing and then told them how everyone needs to be doing missionary work, because our families are praying for us to have success and how they need to be able to help us and it was a lot more than that, but it was very touching.  After the conference President we had a good time, president took some of the missionaries out to McDonalds and so we had a great time afterwards. I will be sending a picture home of that, but that was a lot of fun. It was a good time we spent with President and just being able to see him and everything, so ya that was pretty much everything. Stake conference was awesome and it was a real blast! I’ll tell you more tomorrow, talk to you tomorrow.

Good afternoon family and friends, this is Elder Moss and Elder Salomon. How are ya? So my last voice recording for this week, it has been crazy. Like yesterday I had to go on an emergency exchange with someone in our district because um they were just like not getting along at all and like one of them was ready to fight the other and so I had to go on an exchange with them and help out in any way that I could. It was a really cool experience in which I was able to receive some inspiration for them and some direction for them and so um it was pretty cool. So while we were on the exchange we were parked outside plugging in an address and this car just rolled up by us and it was this Christian guy and he gave us some of this anti-Mormon stuff and all of this junk that he thought he knew. He was saying how he had all of these books and everything and it wasn’t true at all and he was being dumb. So that was kind of a fun thing, I was able to testify to ah the guy and I was able to talk with him in a very non-threating but a very direct way. Yah so it was pretty cool! Today as a zone we got permission to watch the Saratop Approach, it was a missionary movie that two Russia missionaries got kidnapped. We are really excited to watch that! Um kind of a cool story only our zone out of the whole mission was approved to watch it, so that was pretty cool. So yah that will be today, so that is all that has been happening this week. Love you all so much and have a great week and see many miracles!