we baptized lil' wayne

Wayne was baptized! He's Wayne Jr. so we can say we baptized Lil' Wayne. It was a good baptism too. A lot more support from the ward than we anticipated, and his family and some other non-members came. They all took something away from it. When he changed out of his baptism suit we watched a movie on the great apostasy and after Elder Adamson bore a solid testimony about the restored gospel and invited everyone to ask for a witness of the truth of the Book of Mormon, either again or for the first time. It was a really intense spiritual environment. We're starting to work with one of the non-members who was there. Wayne was confirmed yesterday in sacrament meeting and received the aaronic priesthood and was ordained a priest after church. he's the man. if you remember me talking about the christmas cookies we made for everybody, wayne's one of the guys who came to church the next day and picked up momentum. he's even been talking to some of his family about the church for a little bit now too.

some news that's less exciting is i gave a talk yesterday in sacrament meeting. i was asked to speak on President Monson's general conference address "Stand In Holy Places". really good talk, if you haven't watched it recently i'd recommend it. http://lds.org/general-conference/2011/10/stand-in-holy-places?lang=eng

we had a busy week and i ended up cranking out the talk sunday morning in personal study. it took me back to high school when i'd write papers the night before they were due, not a good feeling. i promise, i'm not a slacker. and i was a little nervous because president holmes came to our sacrament meeting to see wayne's confirmation. but i felt good about it in the end. but the moral of the story is don't procrastinate. but if you do, don't forget to pray at least.

we found some really cool people this week. we were on exchanges and i was in plymouth with the other missionary, he's actually from irvine and huntington. we knocked on a couple of doors and this one guy told us that he was "already saved by Jesus" and gave us a hug and said thanks anyways. we told him that's great and that's why this message would be so applicable to him, so he told us he's pretty busy doing his own bible study anyways. so we asked him if we could come in and study with him. and he let us in! the past two years he's been reading the bible online and following along with audio off of some website. and he only has a few chapters left in the book of revelation so his scripture project would be coming to a close. but we showed him lds.org and read and listened to a chapter out of the book of mormon. we also watched a general conference talk with him on lds.org and he loved it. he bookmarked all the pages and said we could come back and study with him some more.

elder adamson and i knocked on a different guy's door in the same apartment complex on a different night and he let us in right away. he opened the door and said "elders, come on in". turns out he met with missionaries 20 years ago, he wasn't really interested back then but is really receptive now. he's a guy who's been through some challenges and turned to the bible to overcome them. when we were explaining the restoration and the priesthood to him, he already knew about how it was divided into different groups like the melchizedek and aaronic. didn't know anything about the lds church but just understood things talked about in the bible. some more people we found this week are friends and family of members and it looks like we'll be picking things up with them.

saturday morning we helped out with a primary activity at the church. they did a missionary relay. the kids were in two lines, they had to pretend like they were asleep and then when the alarm went off they had to put on some big dress shoes, put a tie around their neck, run to a door and knock 10 times, open up to a scripture in the book of mormon and then run back and pretend to fall back asleep. it was the really young primary kids too, that was a blast. if only it were that easy.

today we're meeting up with the district to play some volleyball, maybe some basketball at the church. which will be good because this ward feeds us. i'm not complaining about that, but i should get some cardiovascular going on.

that's a long email, alright i gotta go. have a great week. love ya

elder lamb

motor city

hey family,

yesterday the library was closed for mlk day, but we actually wouldn't have been able to email anyways because we were down in detroit all day for the auto show. we went last year too, it's in downtown detroit at cobo hall, and it's a pretty big event. the major car companies put together presentations and displays to show off their cool new models and technology. don't worry i stopped to check out the infinities and they're as cool as ever. we're driving a ford fusion in this area and it's pretty nice, but the new 2013 model they had on display made ours look like a flinstone-mobile. and there was car technology they were showing off that was pretty insane. they were showing off cars that can monitor the driver's health, so if the driver has a heart attack the car will automatically drive itself to a hospital, and they can also shut off your house lights and lock the house's doors and windows as you drive away if you forget to lock up and shut down yourself. it's hard to beat the taco though.

as far as the week goes, it's had its ups and downs lately. i'm loving it all, but some people we're working with have been struggling. opposition is as real as anything else the gospel teaches us about. we are working with some sweet people too though. we're planning on a baptism this weekend for a guy named wayne. he's been a blessing for us, we walk out of every appointment smiling, he's the man. i'll tell you more about him next week. but we're working on building back up the teaching pool starting today. there are some elect people out there waiting for their door to be knocked on.

i had another exchange down in detroit this past week. it was in one of the spanish elders' areas. it was pretty neat, we were in a part of detroit called mexicantown. it's a spanish community. we had some lessons in all spanish so i sort of sat back and enjoyed the ride for those. there was a really neat experience though, there was a guy we had a lesson with who had become converted to the book of mormon. they met with him a few days earlier and went over the restoration and introduced the book of mormon, when he and i went back this time he was already in 2 nephi 19 and couldn't stop talking about how much he loved the book. the spirit was really strong too. i understood parts of what he was saying (it's been a while since spanish 4), but when i didn't understand what he was saying i could feel what the guy was feeling. it's hard to describe. it was the language of the spirit. elder davis invited him to be bapitzed in february and the guy said "i've been baptized catholic but if God is telling me to be baptized in this restored church then i will". our minds were blown. there's power in the book of mormon, it was written for people today, and those who are listening can recognize God's voice in it. we also got chased by a dog that day on our bikes. got away.

well i gotta go, people out there are waiting to be baptized. have a good week, love you

elder lamb

there's a snake in my boot

January 9, 2012

yo! how was everybody's week? still feels like fall here, hopefully the snow never comes :D this week was a good week. it was a difficult one though. lots of things were falling through and we were trying to patient. what was sweet was last night when we were collecting the zone totals, the zone hit all but one of our goals that we had set as a zone, they were pretty high too. so even though we had some tough days it was good to see overall cool things are happening. and we had some good things happen here in plymouth too.

hey i just got my x-ray cd to work! when i got that piece of metal taken out of my foot last year, i asked for an x-ray to keep. all they gave me was a disc with the pictures saved on it. i haven't gotten it to open up at any of the other libraries, but it worked here. let me see if i can send the pictures from it into the email. alright, i think that worked. that was in there for about a month, but the show goes on even if you get shanked in detroit.

we had a cool experience this week where we saw that new investigator i was talking about last week. another really good lesson. she still doesn't feel super comfortable coming to church yet, a large part is because she's been let down by so many other churches in her life that she's having a hard time exercising her faith now, but she let her son come yesterday which was really cool. he's 12. he seemed to really enjoy it. we also worked with the daughter of another investigator, we've been working with the mom for a while but the daughter is still really new in investigating. it was neat because the mom wasn't able to make it but the daughter was still wondering if we were able to meet her. so we met her at the library and brought another girl from the ward who's about the same age. it's cool being able to work with families, even if the lessons are scattered and the progress is at different levels. we find to teach, teach to baptize, baptize to seal. the gospel blesses individuals, but ultimately it's here to bless families.

i went on an exchange with a missionary this week down in detroit, back on bike. i haven't had a good bike day in a long time. my legs were sore the next day, but that's how you gauge a good bike day. and on that exchange, we started teaching a family and picked them all up as new investigators. a really prepared family, even the kids were really taking things away from it and giving good answers.

we had zone leader council meeting this week. that was cool, the four zone leader companionships and the assistants got together with pres and sis holmes at the mission home and talked about the mission all day. it's cool to see more of the work that goes on behind the scenes in the mission, and to be able to participate in that too. tomorrow is specialized training for two zones, those have always been fun because there's good food and you always get pumped up from the instructions. it's a little less exciting when you're the one doing some of the instructing though, so today for preparation day we'll be working on getting that ready. well, gotta go. have a good week! good luck with school!

love,

elder lamb

happy new year

January 3, 2012

hey, i don't have a ton of time. this week is really busy, i'm pretty sure that's going to be a pretty regular thing for a zone leader though. this morning we drove out to do some baptism interviews and some other things, and we're pretty much starting our proseltying once we leave the library. it's been a cool experience so far though, we had a meeting the other night just us and the high councilman over missionary work in the stake, tonight we're having a similar meeting but with the stake president and all of the ward mission leaders and pres holmes. and we'll be starting up the first of many exchanges tomorrow.

this week we stopped by a potential we felt like we should see and she let us in. she was willing to listen but she was pretty skeptical for most of the discussion. but it was a really intense discussion, it's like she wasn't even thinking about us and it was really just between her and God. she brought up a lot of concerns and questions, almost like this was too good to be true and she wanted to find out where our message was flawed. but she ended up setting something up for later this week and was looking forward to figuring out for herself what this is all really about. so we're excited to work with her and her family, she seems really elect and this could turn into a big thing for her personally if she really seeks it out. we actualy had a really good week this week in finding, we found 11 new investigators and 11 other potentials. a good way to start off the new year and the new transfer. things have kind of slowed down the past couple of days though, people have been canceling appointments. gotta love free agency.

i don't have a ton of time left, i think that's about it though. church starts at 1:00 this year for the plymouth ward. that's really nice, we had to wake up before 6:30 in burton to get to early morning church meetings so this is nice. alright i've gotta go, i hope everyone had a good new years. have a good week, talk to you next week!

love,
elder lamb

Long time no talk!

Dec. 27, 2011

Hey again, it was great talking to you guys the other night. It seems like the phone calls are always too short, but I guess duty calls. I hope you guys enjoyed the rest of your Christmas with the relatives and that you'll still have a good time on the rest of your break. It snowed this morning pretty good for the first time in a few weeks. The car is such a nice luxury.

Not a lot of new things to talk about since Sunday. But a couple of sweet things have happened. I told you that we switched our Preparation Day to Thursday so we can go to the temple, so yesterday we had a normal proselyting day. And it was a good day, a good first day to start off the transfer too. We tracted around with some extra time we had and found an awesome family. Before we even said anything the lady told us to come in. We talked for 5 min or so inside her door and then she ended up inviting us to sit down at their table with her and her daughter to share more of what we had to started to share. Two other guys in the family didn't sit down to join us but were listening in the other room the whole time and were just as friendly. We went over the Restoration and answered a lot of their questions. Both her and her daughter haven't been baptized in any church they said and really got excited that we could help them with that, and tying that in with the Restoration just intensified their desire. It was sweet. We're going back today to see them and are planning on bringing some members with us who live close by to them.

We had another lesson yesterday with a lady who has been meeting with the missionaries for a few months sort of off and on. She's a friend of a family in the ward and has come to church a couple times. We made contact with her for the first time in a while on Sunday night and on the phone she said "we might have to stop the lessons for a bit, I'm not sure about the whole prophet thing", but we set up for the lesson yesterday and went with the member family she's friends with. it went really well, we stressed the importance of being sensitive to the spirit to get her answers and putting in her effort with real intent. we discussed the word of wisdom with her and explained how giving up smoking will help her get her answers and come closer to christ. she was really receptive and wants to quit. the family invited her and us over later this week to watch the Joseph Smith Prophet of the Restoration movie. so that was a huge step for her.

i think i told you how we handed out cookies for christmas on saturday and sunday, and how we were able to contact one guy from it who ended up coming to church the next day. he's solid, he was really close to baptism a few months ago but a lot of things came up and he got knocked off the path a little. so it was a big deal to even see him again. but we met with him this morning and it went really well. he's overcome all the things that came up and is even more solid because of it. he said he wants to commit to baptism again and follow through this time. so he's on date and back on track.

this past week in plymouth has been a blast. lots of sweet people here. and elder adamson and i are working hard to baptize everybody. we're even doing P-90X in the mornings. ....so ya.

oh and transfers are today, guess who's training this transfer? elder clark in burton. he's a stud, it's not unheard of but it's pretty uncommon for a missionary to start training right after he's been trained.

well i think that's it. thanks again for the packages and cards, and thanks to anyone else reading this who sent me something for the holiday. have a good week and a happy new year!

love, elder lamb

new assignment

Dec. 19, 2011

so...i'm a zone leader now. surprise! the past couple of days have been pretty busy. elder clark and i were doing some planning on saturday night when we got a call from president holmes saying i was leaving monday morning. there's still one more week of this transfer to go, but some missionaries are going home early to get back in time for christmas. so president told me i'd be going to an area to serve as a zone leader and i'd be taking the place of an elder going home early. i had to give up some sleep the past couple of days so i'm a little tired, but it's not too bad. my high school sleeping schedule taught me i can stretch myself pretty hard when it comes to sleep. so elder clark is taking over burton next transfer with whoever his new companion is going to be, but he's going to be in a trio this week with the flint elders covering both areas. pretty crazy.

i'm in the westland zone, i haven't served in this zone before. and i'm in the Plymouth Area with Elder Adamson. He's cool, seems like a solid missionary. i won't be in the ghetto anymore either, it's weird being surrounded by nice neighborhoods and not having to worry about getting mugged. the ward is a couple hundred people i think which will be really different too. i don't really know what the zone leader part is going to be like but it should be fun. some missions only have one missionary in the zone who's the zone leader but in our mission there are two zone leaders who are companions. so it'll help having elder adamson who's been doing this for a few months already. here's my new address:

40305 Plymouth Rd, Apt #204

Plymouth, MI 48170

i just got to the area so i don't know what we're doing for christmas yet, i don't really know anything yet ha. but i'll be calling sometime and i'll pray that it will work out with your guys' schedule. i'm sure we'll make it work though. the weather has been good lately, it hasn't snowed very hard lately. well i've got to go, i'm almost out of time and my email to president didn't work, so i'll have to figure out what to do about that. but have a great week and a merry christmas and i'll talk to you soon :)

love,

elder lamb

egg nog + vernor's (a michigan soda) = merry christmas

December 12, 2011 

This week Sister McMann was baptized! It was the bees' knees. Just a little about her and how she got to the point of being baptized - she's married to a member in the ward, they've been married for a long time but she never was interested in the church. she was raised catholic and was actually pretty against the lds church. but she had a complete turn around when she read Alma 32, it's her favorite chapter now, and it's like a light went off where she started to see what this was all about. a few months ago she was feeling good about baptism but ended up having a surgery. so we lost some momentum for a little bit and slowly picked it up again. and that's basically where she's come from. she's awesome though, gung-ho about the book of mormon too and excited about relief society. the relief society has been a big support for her. and a lot of her non-member family came to the baptism, one of her friend's at the baptism said that her own baptism is next so the flint elders set up an appointment with her for this week. it'll be at the mcmann's house so we'll get to help out with that which will be sweet.

i got to go to the temple this week with my old mtc district which was a lot of fun. crazy how fast time flies out here. after the temple we all went to the mission home and had dinner and had a good discussion with everyone and pres and sis holmes. i felt charged for the next year.

pres came to our sacrament meeting yesterday to meet some of the people who've been baptized recently because he wasn't able to make it to their baptisms. he doesn't go to every baptism but tries to go to as many as he can. so that was a neat experience.

i think that's about it for updates this week. today for preparation day we're going to run some errands with the flint elders and maybe watch a church movie at our apartment. party. well gotta go, don't forget, the church is true. and the gospel makes everything so much more fulfilling. i finished the new testament a few days ago, the book of revelation was intense but it got me pumped for the good times ahead. every sacrifice the lord asks us to make is more than worth making. even the little ones, maybe even especially the little ones. love you guys.

elder lamb