March 15, 2006

I've been in Ohio for almost a week now. It's a crazy place. The weather along with everything else. I'm not gonna say it's not cold, and incredibly windy. But, two days ago it was 65 degrees. No coats required, but then it snowed yesterday.

Everyone here is obsessed with St. Patricks Day so every door we go to has some kind of decoration. I never really knew it was celebrated, but everyone here's Catholic. I guess there's some correlation. For those of you who haven't heard the beginning of my Ohio experience here's some back up. We flew in last Wednesday afternoon and spent that night at the mission home. Then the next morning we drove over to Kirtland and got a special tour of the Kirtland Temple. especially with special privileges. We got to go up to the top floor of the Temple where Joseph received a lot of the revelations, like Alvin and the Celestial Kingdom. The guide from the Community of Christ would give us a few minutes for our guide
to talk about it and we read the sections while we were up there that he received. Then we went down again and got to sing Spirit of God and play it on the piano while we were sitting there. We then went to the N. K. Whitney Store and all of the missionaries got to kneel in the room of the School of the Prophets and dedicate our missions to the Lord. That's an amazing room and an amazing experience. Cleveland's Temple.

The more you're here the more you realize how special this mission is. Shortly after this mission was opened Ezra Taft Benson lifted the scourge that was placed on this area when the saints originally left Kirtland. We're now the ones fulfilling the prophesy that Kirtland will once again be built up.

On our way back from Kirtland they dropped us all off at the bus station. I met my trainer Sister Clove and went from there. A lot of the missionaries have to take the Greyhound to their area so we sent a few people off and then tried to work out luggage, lunch, and transportation with everyone else. Apparently a lot of stuff was crazy and they say it won't usually be like that. I'll have to see. We were waiting for a bunch of missionaries that missed their bus or something so we all walked over to a mall to get lunch and street contacted on the way. It took us over an hour to get there
because we were talking to so many people. In downtown Cleveland there are lots of people running all over and it was really easy to get to talk to people. The people are nicer too there I've found, but they say Sisters won't be allowed to serve there.

That night we got home at about 5:00. I quickly "unpacked" if you could call it that, we got some Wendy's drive-thru and were on the way to my first appointment. We were co-teaching someone the Elders found so they did a lot of the talking. It was a Bible study group and there's usually up to 15 people there so we didn't really know what to expect. There ended up being only 5 others, and we got to give a pretty good 1st lesson and they all listened. One of them was a pretty big Bible guy and travels around and teaches about it. Then they fired away and a few of them kept trying to
prove us wrong with their Bibles la dee dah. Two of them though we think understood and believed what we taught. We were out of time so we left, and might try to talk to the two sometime. But that was it-my first teaching experience.

But there's a few people that we're already teaching, but I've only met one of them. We've been visiting a new convert James who's 85 and having a few health problems. We're working on getting his family history and temple work done for his deceased wife and his parents etc. That's been rewarding already.

We do a lot of tracting too, or I guess what I think is a lot. The goal is 15 hours per week, but it seems like more, probably because I still nervous myself-up and forget to just talk by the spirit and then feel like I'm wasting people's chance to hear the message. I just want them to KNOW what I know, and it seems like you only have 10 seconds to prove that. Sister Clove helps a lot and I know logically I'm being dumb for being nervous, but it still happens so I'm starting to grasp the vision. I read a really good talk this morning called "A Testifying and Challenging Missionary" (or something similar) that's helped a lot.

The members here are great. We get fed pretty much every night, dessert and all. We're close to the Mission Office so we do service there and help out once a week. And I can just go there to pick up any mail that comes, or to raid the supply closet. We're pretty much the favorites with all the senior couples :) We also volunteer at an assisted living center and do exercises with them. That was crazy fun.

Anyway, I love it so far and I'm gaining the vision of what I'll be able to accomplish while I'm here. I love being able to dedicate every day to serving others and learning and sharing the gospel. I'm learning so much about that, and about myself. I can already tell this is going to be the best 18 months ever.