iBueno!
Great letter! Sounds like you all had a great week!
Yes, this week was transfer week. Transfer weeks always go SO slow! Kennington was transferred to the Glendale North Stake and is now serving in the Arrowhead Ranch Ward (one of the wealthiest in the mission) and the Union Hills YSA. Apparently the Arrowhead Ranch ward has had straight "0's" on the 5 Key Indicators for the past six months. That's quite bad. So he is going there to bring it all back up! My new companion is Elder Tom Hanks. Just kidding but he sounds EXACTLY like Tom Hanks. His name is Elder Kevin Birch from Meridian, ID. He has been out 17 months and a crazy thing was that he wasn't even a district leader before he was called to be a zone leader. He was pretty shocked when he got called. He hasn't really grasped the mentality yet and it may hit him when we get put in a situation where we have to report to the Stake Presidency or the mission in Zone Leader Council. He's great though and we have a great time teaching. It is very hard to take over a ward after a missionary gets transferred that they loved so much, especially when he was in this area for nearly 20 months. The people here absolutely adore Elder Kennington so that has been rough trying to fit back in. Elder Buttars and I each got new companions, so that brought two new ones into the apartment. Elder Campbell is with Buttars and Campbell is probably the most hilarious elder I've ever met. He reminds me of the chicken from the movie "Surf's Up." He doesn't act as stoned, but he's just as funny. We have good times. Elder Halligan was made a zone leader up in Prescott so it'll be fun to see him more frequently.
Ken Law was baptized on Saturday and it was great! It is literally a miracle that he has gotten to this point. I've witnessed an entire change of personality and attitude from him since the first time I met him. I straight up told him that too. I said, "Ken when I first met you I won't lie, I was terrified! Now that I've witnessed this 180 degree change the fear has all left." haha He laughed at that and always gives me grief because of it. He's a major dirt bike racer and wanted to go ride during the day before his baptism. He's nuts on a bike though and jumps like 80-100 foot gaps. He's snapped his wrist twice and his leg once and actually has metal rods in each of them. We thought it might not be a good idea for him to go riding right before his baptism. Satan would just have too much of an opportunity to halt his baptism. He got kinda freaked out by that comment and said that he ended up just getting everything all set up so that he could leave straight from the baptism. We assured him that the baptism of water has no meaning without the baptism of the spirit. He was freaked out by that too but that didn't stop him from riding all night. He said that he just felt like he was invincible because the Lord wouldn't let him die without having the second half of his baptism. Good attitude I guess... What was neat though, is the night before his baptism, he helped out a bunch of friends with some things and they offered him some free cigarettes, free drinks at the bar, his ex-girlfriend called wanting to hook up with him again, a buddy offered him weed, and then someone asked if he would get coffee with them. Now that's not that neat, but he recognized each of these experiences as temptations from the adversary to try to get him to stop from making such an important step in his life. He remembered that we had warned him that bells go off in hell when someone sets a date to be baptized and he found that to be true. I think this is true for everyone. Sometimes we think things are going so bad for us and we even want to give up at times but what we don't often realize is that Satan is trying to stop us from doing something possibly life changing. This was proven with the first vision. Joseph went in to the woods with a question, and obviously Satan knew just how miraculous the event that transpired was going to be. He tried to seize upon him and stop Joseph from having the experience. Our experiences today probably won't be so miraculous as seeing our Heavenly Father and His son Jesus Christ, but still amazing on our own personal levels. I guess what I'm getting at is at certain times when things seem to be going all wrong in my life, I tell myself that Satan is trying to hinder me from an experience I have yet to enjoy. Ken saw this in his life, but he also saw what Satan was trying to stop him from doing. Be baptized. We often times don't see what the end result is that he is trying to stop us from accomplishing but it takes faith to make it through to receive the experience!
We found some pretty solid investigators this week, including a guy by the name of Roy Kelleners. He's from the Netherlands and is going into computer programming at the Art Institute of Arizona. We knocked on his door and he was very earnest to learn more about our religion. As we taught him last night he agreed to everything we talked about and even had questions written down that he had from visiting mormon.org. It is amazing how the Lord guides us to those who will receive us. His questions couldn't be more elect. "What do mormons believe? What do mormons do? What would I have to do to become mormon? What does mormon mean?" It was sweet!
Saturday night was pretty eventful. We got a call from a missionary that there was a fire in our complex. So, of course, we all got our cameras and went running to find it! It turns out that somebody had gone through the complex and lit several dumpsters on fire and it was huge! I took some pictures and some video but it didn't do it justice. They just happened to be the dumpsters surrounding our complex as well... Hmmm... haha It was cool though. The fire department came and sprayed them out with their huge fire hoses. Haven't seen that before... Man, I tell ya, Phoenix is a crazy place.
I hope that all is going well for you! Love you lots! Don't forget to send some inspirational/motivational stories! I love them!
Have a good week!
Love,
Elder Mouritsen
Great letter! Sounds like you all had a great week!
Yes, this week was transfer week. Transfer weeks always go SO slow! Kennington was transferred to the Glendale North Stake and is now serving in the Arrowhead Ranch Ward (one of the wealthiest in the mission) and the Union Hills YSA. Apparently the Arrowhead Ranch ward has had straight "0's" on the 5 Key Indicators for the past six months. That's quite bad. So he is going there to bring it all back up! My new companion is Elder Tom Hanks. Just kidding but he sounds EXACTLY like Tom Hanks. His name is Elder Kevin Birch from Meridian, ID. He has been out 17 months and a crazy thing was that he wasn't even a district leader before he was called to be a zone leader. He was pretty shocked when he got called. He hasn't really grasped the mentality yet and it may hit him when we get put in a situation where we have to report to the Stake Presidency or the mission in Zone Leader Council. He's great though and we have a great time teaching. It is very hard to take over a ward after a missionary gets transferred that they loved so much, especially when he was in this area for nearly 20 months. The people here absolutely adore Elder Kennington so that has been rough trying to fit back in. Elder Buttars and I each got new companions, so that brought two new ones into the apartment. Elder Campbell is with Buttars and Campbell is probably the most hilarious elder I've ever met. He reminds me of the chicken from the movie "Surf's Up." He doesn't act as stoned, but he's just as funny. We have good times. Elder Halligan was made a zone leader up in Prescott so it'll be fun to see him more frequently.
Ken Law was baptized on Saturday and it was great! It is literally a miracle that he has gotten to this point. I've witnessed an entire change of personality and attitude from him since the first time I met him. I straight up told him that too. I said, "Ken when I first met you I won't lie, I was terrified! Now that I've witnessed this 180 degree change the fear has all left." haha He laughed at that and always gives me grief because of it. He's a major dirt bike racer and wanted to go ride during the day before his baptism. He's nuts on a bike though and jumps like 80-100 foot gaps. He's snapped his wrist twice and his leg once and actually has metal rods in each of them. We thought it might not be a good idea for him to go riding right before his baptism. Satan would just have too much of an opportunity to halt his baptism. He got kinda freaked out by that comment and said that he ended up just getting everything all set up so that he could leave straight from the baptism. We assured him that the baptism of water has no meaning without the baptism of the spirit. He was freaked out by that too but that didn't stop him from riding all night. He said that he just felt like he was invincible because the Lord wouldn't let him die without having the second half of his baptism. Good attitude I guess... What was neat though, is the night before his baptism, he helped out a bunch of friends with some things and they offered him some free cigarettes, free drinks at the bar, his ex-girlfriend called wanting to hook up with him again, a buddy offered him weed, and then someone asked if he would get coffee with them. Now that's not that neat, but he recognized each of these experiences as temptations from the adversary to try to get him to stop from making such an important step in his life. He remembered that we had warned him that bells go off in hell when someone sets a date to be baptized and he found that to be true. I think this is true for everyone. Sometimes we think things are going so bad for us and we even want to give up at times but what we don't often realize is that Satan is trying to stop us from doing something possibly life changing. This was proven with the first vision. Joseph went in to the woods with a question, and obviously Satan knew just how miraculous the event that transpired was going to be. He tried to seize upon him and stop Joseph from having the experience. Our experiences today probably won't be so miraculous as seeing our Heavenly Father and His son Jesus Christ, but still amazing on our own personal levels. I guess what I'm getting at is at certain times when things seem to be going all wrong in my life, I tell myself that Satan is trying to hinder me from an experience I have yet to enjoy. Ken saw this in his life, but he also saw what Satan was trying to stop him from doing. Be baptized. We often times don't see what the end result is that he is trying to stop us from accomplishing but it takes faith to make it through to receive the experience!
We found some pretty solid investigators this week, including a guy by the name of Roy Kelleners. He's from the Netherlands and is going into computer programming at the Art Institute of Arizona. We knocked on his door and he was very earnest to learn more about our religion. As we taught him last night he agreed to everything we talked about and even had questions written down that he had from visiting mormon.org. It is amazing how the Lord guides us to those who will receive us. His questions couldn't be more elect. "What do mormons believe? What do mormons do? What would I have to do to become mormon? What does mormon mean?" It was sweet!
Saturday night was pretty eventful. We got a call from a missionary that there was a fire in our complex. So, of course, we all got our cameras and went running to find it! It turns out that somebody had gone through the complex and lit several dumpsters on fire and it was huge! I took some pictures and some video but it didn't do it justice. They just happened to be the dumpsters surrounding our complex as well... Hmmm... haha It was cool though. The fire department came and sprayed them out with their huge fire hoses. Haven't seen that before... Man, I tell ya, Phoenix is a crazy place.
I hope that all is going well for you! Love you lots! Don't forget to send some inspirational/motivational stories! I love them!
Have a good week!
Love,
Elder Mouritsen
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