Bigfoot sighting

August 1, 2011

Hey family,

We had an alright week. We found some new people again. Which is always what we want. I would love to have too many investigators to handle than not enough. We found a lady whose son is a convert in Ohio. She went and visited him not too long ago and she met with missionaries there. They referred her to us and said that they had a strong feeling that she would be baptized. We've only had one lesson with her and she had a lot to say. A very sweet lady though. We haven't been able to get a hold of her since but it looks like she will be very receptive. We also had a lesson with an investigator that went really great. We watched the Restoration DVD and afterwards he was pretty excited. He was talking about how God really will lead us to the right church if we ask Him, but we need to make sure we do our part to show Him we really want that answer. It was perfect, he really seemed to come alive. The struggle is doesn't have a way to come to church and he doesn't live by any members. Sort of a reoccurring situation we've been having. But miracles happen!

I got nun-chucked. not sure if that's the right way to spell it. We were doing some service for a lady in our ward. her backyard had grown pretty tall so we were trimming and edging and mowing. well there wasn't a catcher on the side of the mower so the grass and debris was just shooting out. I was cutting through a taller section of grass and i ran over something that caught in the mower. it spun around a couple of times and then shot out right onto my foot. it turned out to be a little hand-held nut cracker... well, it got me. it hit my foot hard enough that it broke skin and gave me a little cut. not a big deal. but the foot kept hurting and started swelling pretty bad. i showed it to a member in the ward last night who's a podiatrist (foot doc) he said it's prob infected. so i'm getting some antibiotics soon. it's a big foot right now though, it's bulging out of my shoe at the top. it hurts pretty good but it's not unbearable.

man i'm out of time. mom i gave a talk yesterday too. it was on service. i put it off till the night before, some things haven't changed completely i guess. i'm sure you did a great job though.

sorry for the short email, i saw everyone else's emails and i'll get back to you next week hopefully.

love ya guys,

elder lamb




July 25, 2011

Subject: hot

hey there. thanks for the package! ha that was pretty awesome how bishop jensen and his family were able to come down and visit the stidhams and bring back a nice surprise. i asked his wife if they were able to meet you guys too, she said no but that she thinks bishop might have talked to mom on the phone for a few minutes? she wasn't sure though. did that happen? i'm trying to imagine what you guys would talk about. ha thanks a lot, that was a highlight of the week. the luggage tags are awesome, thanks a lot. dad has some like it right? kenzie thanks for the ties. they're stylin' fo sho. i still need to write you guys back, that will happen. i'm hoping today. we have to head to belle tire and get our car looked at so that might take a chunk out of the day....nothing crazy, but all i'm saying is i'm not the driver.

this week was HOT. if roseville actually had some roses they probably would have caught fire. it got into the hundreds, but the humidity took it to a new level. the mission office said the heat index was 110, but we heard from other people it was even higher than that. poor bike elders. to be honest i didn't mind it all that much. i just tuned it out somehow, i mean it still seemed like i just pulled my head out of the pool, but it bother me too much. it's cooling off this week though.

we had an awesome miracle happen this week. it may not seem that miraculous, but to me, i'd without a doubt count it. i think i've mentioned a little before that we and the hunsakers aren't invited to the ward council. which is fine, it's up to the ward. but it has been a slight bummer, only because it's felt like we've sort of been in our own world and that we haven't been as unified with the ward because of that. i mean ward unity is ideal, not always the case, so it's all good. but we did get a call from bishop inviting us this week. it was a great meeting too. we got more on the same page and we feel like we have a better idea of what the ward's up to. a lot great things were discussed in the meeting, and the spirit was present. to be completely honest, this area's been sort of tough but i really am grateful to have spent all of this time here. i've learned a ton.

side note, i saw a police team (i think) pull up in front of a d-town house with a bunch of cars and some k-9s run up to the front door and bust it down with a ram. they ran inside. we were driving by and didn't get to see the outcome. another day in the d.

well i gotta go but i love ya guys lots. thanks again for the package and for being as awesome as you are.

love,

elder lamb

July 25, 2011

whoa delaney is grown up. i haven't even been out a year yet and she's a completely different person.

thanks for the email, i really love hearing from you guys too. oh and i noticed in my last email it says "dear president". ha sorry. i was short on time that day so i had to copy and paste the letter i wrote to president and just resend it to you guys after making some changes. i guess i missed a spot.

it's good to know sean likes my clothes. as long as he knows i'm coming back one day to collect :)

July 18, 2011

Dear President,
We set goals for our area for this week that would have stretched us a little but still seemed realistic. Like having 4 member presents and 2 investigators on date and 3 attend sacrament meeting. We seem to be going through this cycle of finding new people who seem solid, but then we lose contact with them or they don't have cars. We've decided to fix part of this problem by doing our finding outside of Detroit for a little while. We even tracted on a street next to the church building so there wouldn't be room for any excuses.


So with this new transfer I think we'll have to really take a step back and see what we need to do with our investigators to help them progress. Our GPS actually reset last week but this could be an opportunity to perform an investigator triage and refresh our teaching pool a little bit. We still don't want to give up on our investigators who have potential spiritually even though they lack the temporal means to progress because they don't have cars, so even though we're struggling to solve the problems we'll keep some focus on them and continue to try to build their faith and make way for any miracles that can occur.


We had some good experiences with a few less-actives we have been trying to get in touch with. We met with a guy who is an inactive member who had his testimony shaken a while back. He now questions whether the church is in tact and can't move past the possibility that the church authorities could be "wolves in sheeps' clothing". Elder Kitchen and I met with him once or twice but had lost touch with him. Elder Ploeger and I finally got in touch with him yesterday and talked to him for a little over an hour on his porch. He had a lot of ideas that were fair enough, but they were a sorta biased. And we addressed that his view of things either is God's way of telling him that this church isn't the right place (which he really considers) or this is exactly the right place and the adversary knows it to and doesn't want him there. 


Thankfully he was willing to admit the possibility of both sides. In the lesson we tried to address his concerns and help him see that he could be looking at things in the wrong light and that this is a trial that can be overcome, and we tried to focus mainly on testifying of the church and the Book of Mormon. It's a little more difficult to argue with a sincere testimony. We told him that we want to do whatever we can to help him get whatever answer God will give him, but that he needs to make sure he's doing all that he is able to show God that he sincerely wants that answer. He admitted that he's probably not doing all that he needs to do. He seemed to lower his defenses at this point a little bit. He even said that we're welcome to come back any time or give him a call to set something up. He's in a difficult situation but he can really turn around if he's sincere and willing and if we're understanding and encouraging. That's probably something I should be working on in general I think.

A lady in our ward came up to us yesterday at church and said she has a 12 year old daughter who wants to be baptized. We told her we'd love to help her out with that. Apparently her daughter lives with her ex-husband in a different city during the school year but lives with her during the summer. The dad doesn't take the kids to church though, so for whatever reason her baptism just hasn't ever worked out. Well that might turn into an interesting situation if the dad doesn't want her to be baptized or something crazy like that, and on top of that the summer's coming to a close so she won't be here much longer, but we're going to see what we can do to get her baptized. We're seeing her this week and the Hunsakers will be helping out for fellowship and because there isn't a male home.

Thanks for the letters, this might turn into another Prepartion Day where I don't get a chance to write letters.

Elder Lamb

July 11, 2011

Hey family,

Today's the first day of the new transfer. I'm still in Roseville with Elder Ploeger. Roseville's really picking up. The Lord has been pooring down His blessings here and I hope we can keep building the momentum. Well this morning we got a call from President and it looks like I'm the new district leader. Not completely sure how I feel about that or how things will work out, but feel free to pray for the rest of the district. I don't want to sink the ship. I am excited though, it'll be a good experience I think. I just need to work harder and trust in the Lord more. We'll see what happens.

But as far as the week went, we saw some awesome things. We've been meeting with a sister in the ward for the past few months. She was less-active when we started meeting with her and had things she was struggling with but has recently returned to activity. We've been having great lessons with her and she had even talked to the bishop about working towards the temple. We had a lesson a few weeks ago on Temple Work and Family History and it seemed like a really great lesson. But after that we weren't seeing her at church and she didn't come to the door whenever we'd show up for our usual standing appointment. We were leaving messages on her phone but couldn't get a hold of her. Well to make a long story short, we ran into her daughter last night by chance and were able to ask her about her mom. She said we could catch her if we went over to the house then. So we did and we finally made contact with her after about 4 weeks. We went in and tried to assess the situation and we were able to find out that the last lesson we had really got her thinking about her relationship with her mother. She couldn't forgive her for the way she treated her and her family when they were growing up and she said she didn't love her. She said she didn't want to seal her parents together and didn't want her mother to be able to embrace the blessings of the gospel. And this all was really eating her up for the past weeks. We talked to her tried to give her words of comfort and encouragement, she appreciated what we were doing but she wasn't taking in any of what we were saying. She even said she knew she could ask God what He wanted her to do but she didn't want to ask Him because she was worried what His answer would be. It was great we contacted her but it wasn't really going anywhere. But we decided to share the short message from the Ensign we had planned to share, and she was completely changed afterward. She asked us why we shared that with her and she knew that it was exactly what the Lord wanted her to hear. She said she'll be able to forgive her mom and move past the pain she was feeling. It was a complete change. I could feel the spirit so strong at that point. That was an amazing miracle.

Well the second part of that story is just as great. A little over a month ago she had given us a few referrals of her family members in the area. And earlier last week we were able to contact one finally. We walked on her door and she just let us in and let us sit on their couch without us even saying very much. It seemed a little strange how easy we were able to get inside and start a lesson. We ended up having a great lesson on the restoration. We talked about the Spirit and she was grateful for that because she had never identified a lot of things in her life as being influenced by the spirit, but was able to at that point. She said she's excited to start coming to church and she'd start picking up her aunt (the member i was talking about). At that point we still hadn't made contact with her aunt though, but things have fallen back into place because of that lesson we had last night with the member. The member is planning on coming to our next appointment with her neice too.

That was a long story, but hopefully you considered it to be worth the read.


This week Elder Ploeger and I are going to be focusing on working more getting members invovled with investigator lessons and getting these people to church. We haven't had a ton of success with these specific things so far, but I think we can put a little more focus on it and hopefully see good results.

Elder Ploeger and I rearranged the apartment. We had to get rid of an old air hockey table that was in there. We didn't really play it, but new mission rules for apartments. So we got rid of that and brought up an old weight set that was in our basement. It's looking good over here in Roseville I'll tell you what. Well gotta go, thanks for being awesome. Have a great week.

love,

elder lamb

July 5, 2011

hey family! thanks for the email forward from elder eliason. he sounds like he's doing great. he's by the detroit lakes? that sounds like it could be close to where i'm at, where is he serving again? and thanks a bunch for the letters :) i got them this past week. i didn't get a chance to write all of you guys back yesterday but i will soon. but it was great hearing from everyone. even michael rex! and jimmy woods! both were nice bonuses. thanks a ton.

happy 4th! did you guys do anything exciting? i was missing the days of going down to the beach and to watch them shoot off the pier. good times. we saw some fireworks for a few minutes through our window while we were planning and we had been hearing them go off every day and every night for the past week or so. we went to a ward family's house for a bbq. it was fun, a couple of families from the ward were there and the next door neighbors came over too. they're not members so that even was a good experience for them. even simple things like fellowship can be missionary work.

we had some pretty great things happen this week. we found new investigators to start working with. some of them seem really solid too. We found this lady in the area book who met with the missionaries for a little bit a while ago. She met with missionaries at least 2 years ago, maybe even longer. We were looking through the formers and felt like we should try and find her. We stopped by probably 3 or 4 times and never got a hold of her but her kids kept telling us that she still lives there and to try and catch her another time. Well we finally got a hold of her earlier last week and set up a time to come back for a lesson. She remembered meeting with the missionaries but she didn't remember anything about the Restoration or Joseph Smith, so we taught her about the core message and she was really interested and was looking forward to the lesson. So were we. We even brought our ward mission leader to the appointment with them when we went back, which was great in of itself because that was the first time we had ever taken him out actually. But the lesson went really well. The spirit was really there and everyone was feeling it. She had kids running around the house the whole time but her nephew and one of her daughters sat in too. They shared spiritual experiences and accepted a soft baptismal commitment. She said at the very end that she had been feeling the spirit the entire lesson and even felt this way when we talked to her for just a minute on her porch a few days before. She goes to a church but she said she needs more for her and her family and we told her this is exactly what she's been looking for. It was an awesome lesson.

We had another lesson with a young kid named who was a media referral for a Book of Mormon. He said he has a friend who told him about the Book of Mormon and encouraged him to check it out. We weren't able to teach anyone else in his family when we were over (sort of a bummer after an awesome zone conference focus on teaching families), but he really loved the lesson. He's probably 16 or so, but he's really sharp. He surprised us with how much he knew about the Bible. But he wasn't flaunting his knowledge or trying to teach us like a lot of people do out here who have a solid understanding of the Bible. He was more making connections with things we were going over and relating what was being discussed with certain principles he had found in his own studies of the Bible. He was really excited about the Book of Mormon though. He compared us to angels delivering him a message from God and referred to the Book of Mormon as the "missing piece" in him coming to understand God. The only let down was when we invited him to be baptized he said "yeah, i'll probably be baptized into the church but it will probably be when i'm closer to 25". we have to address that some more with him. but we feel like he has a lot of potential. getting his family involved, or at the very least someone who could take him to church and fellowship him, will be essential. but things are going in the right direction in the ward and the area and with the people we're working with so we're grateful. well those were some of the highlights, there are definitely miracles happening here.

oh and the mission got small 7" DVD players for each companionship. we can watch church dvds and the preach my gospel dvds for studys and during breaks. they can't leave the apartment which is too bad, would be great for lessons. also i saw a 26" rim hood car. stylin.

oh and happy anniversary mom and dad. sorry out of time. love you guys have a great week

elder lamb