May 18, 2011
Hey family,
so this is coming out a little bit later in the week than usual, sorry for the wait. this last week was pretty awesome. to start off, we had our district activity at Greenfield Village. It's another section of the Henry Ford Museum, it's a big recreation of famous homes and buildings. I got to see Henry Ford's house that he grew up in, the very first Ford Motor Company building, Thomas Edison's lab and library/office, The Wright Bros' Bicycle Shop, old barns and homes, and a bunch of other things. There were old Model T's driving around the village you could pay to ride around in, we passed on spending any more money on the trip, but still cool to look at. A lot of cool things to see and learn about. My respect for Thomas Edison and Henry Ford definitely went up after going to the village and the museum a few weeks ago. Cool fact, Thomas Edison set a goal to have one major invention every six months and one minor invention every 10 days. He came really close to achieving it too. So that was fun, Elder and Sister Hunsaker drove us again. It's been sweet having them in the district and in our ward.
I was on an exchange with one of our zone leaders in Hamtramck. His name's Elder Sisneros, and he's a champ. A really solid missionary, we had a really great exchange, we pretty much saw miracle after miracle the whole exchange. We were stopping by a lady's house for a scheduled appointment but she wasn't home, so we decided to talk to this guy who was outside instead. He was working on an old, run-down house across the street. (it still blows my mind how many abandoned houses and buildings are scattered all over Detroit). he's been working with some friends of his on demolitioning the place. But we told him we'd love to help him out with the house because we look for opportunities to help people and do service, he was pretty surprised. well we turned the conversation into a lesson right there in the street and explained/bore our testimonies about the restoration of the church and how families can be sealed together forever. he was really interested and asked if we could come over to teach his family later that week. it just shows how many people are prepared and ready for the gospel, but we won't ever find a lot of these people if we're not willing to take advantage of every opportunity we have. so that was just one of the cool experiences we had this week in finding new people to share the gospel with. but the bonus twist about this story was when elder sisneros and i went back the next day and helped his three buddies out with the demolition. it was sweet. they gave us goggles, gloves, and face masks and we went to work tearing down walls with crowbars and sledge hammers. don't worry we were really careful. but i felt like thor with that hammer, i think i'll be able to wait to see the movie now in a year and a half.
I was on an exchange with one of our zone leaders in Hamtramck. His name's Elder Sisneros, and he's a champ. A really solid missionary, we had a really great exchange, we pretty much saw miracle after miracle the whole exchange. We were stopping by a lady's house for a scheduled appointment but she wasn't home, so we decided to talk to this guy who was outside instead. He was working on an old, run-down house across the street. (it still blows my mind how many abandoned houses and buildings are scattered all over Detroit). he's been working with some friends of his on demolitioning the place. But we told him we'd love to help him out with the house because we look for opportunities to help people and do service, he was pretty surprised. well we turned the conversation into a lesson right there in the street and explained/bore our testimonies about the restoration of the church and how families can be sealed together forever. he was really interested and asked if we could come over to teach his family later that week. it just shows how many people are prepared and ready for the gospel, but we won't ever find a lot of these people if we're not willing to take advantage of every opportunity we have. so that was just one of the cool experiences we had this week in finding new people to share the gospel with. but the bonus twist about this story was when elder sisneros and i went back the next day and helped his three buddies out with the demolition. it was sweet. they gave us goggles, gloves, and face masks and we went to work tearing down walls with crowbars and sledge hammers. don't worry we were really careful. but i felt like thor with that hammer, i think i'll be able to wait to see the movie now in a year and a half.
This week we really had the Lord's help in getting Escalon and Zavonte to stake conference. The two of them are awesome, very sincere about the gospel in their own ways, and they both want have developed strong testimonies and have great desires to come to church and be baptized. The tricky part, I've talked about before, is the ride situation. We really need to start teaching the families, that would be ideal, and we're going to keep looking for opportunities to do so this week. But in a big crazy scramble, things eventually worked out that Escalon's sister was able to drive them up to the ward building in Roseville and then the Hunsakers were able to drive us all up to the stake center. It showed me that the Lord is blessing both of them for their desires to come and providing a way to keep the commandments they want to follow. It was definitely a 1 Nephi 3:7 moment. They enjoyed conference and Escalon did a good job of reassuring that normal church days are "more fun" (Zavonte hasn't come to church yet, and it was a little tough for them to follow the broadcast for two hours especially when the sound was off for a lot of it, it was a broadcast of talks from president eyring and elder ballard and two other general authorities and the first whole half of the broadcast didn't have audio in the back where we were sitting, sort of frustrating). But even still they both had good attitudes about it and are still excited to come this week. Progress is definitely being made in their preparation for baptism and miracles are slowly but surely unfolding for them as the Lord is providing ways for them to accomplish it all.
We found some awesome people this week. Some of them really stand out as solid too. One person we met was a referral from a member in the Warren ward. The member from Warren didn't really know the person he was referring to us, but he talked to him for a second at work about the church and that's where their conversation ended. And the member told us a few weeks ago that he just felt like he should give us the guy's information. The guy didn't actually know we were planning on coming over to meet him. Well we finally contacted him this week and he seemed like a really nice guy. He's 20. He said he's comfortable where he's at in church but that we're welcome to share a quick message with him if we're interested. So we went back for a lesson later in the week and he still was in that mind-set of being comfortable where he's at religiously but we're welcome to just share our message. Well we shared the message of the Restoration and he completely changed. He was pumped about Christ's one, true church being on the earth today directed by a living prophet. And he was pumped about getting started on the Book of Mormon and asked if we could come back to help him read from it. We were more than willing to oblige. He's awesome, we've only had one lesson but we're looking forward to see the progress he makes this week.
this is a long one, hopefully you've made it this far. we watched The Testaments movie at our ward mission leader's house this week with his family. I hadn't seen it before, and it was really sweet. I'm pretty sure you guys have it, so if you haven't had a chance to watch it yet definitely consider watching it together next family home evening. really good.
well i gotta go, but i love you guys. i love being out here too, it hasn't always been easy, but i couldn't imagine missing out on this whole experience. i remember the talk from general conference about the family wanting their son to stay out longer because of all of the blessings they were all getting back home, i know i've seen blessings come in my life from being out here so i hope the lord has been just as kind to you guys (not that we do things for the blessings, but still). crazy it's already been 6 months. well i gotta go, have a great week!
love,
elder lambps, i dig the new computer desk and backyard. i'd say a pretty huge step up from our apartment.
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