Snow Service Softens Hearts

Las Venturas de Elder Rojo: Capitulo 47

Muy buenos dias a todos! Yo disfrute mucho la oportunidad de escuchar de ustedes, especialmente la carta de los Fixsen! siempre es un placer de recibir Cartas de mis sobrinos! Y tambien me encanta recibir cualquier cosa que esta escrita en espanol entonces la carta de Jeff era muy bien. Y para que sepas tambien me gusto mucho tu Carta Jaima. Tambien tengo muchos que agradecer de las semanas pasadas que no he agradecido. primeramente a la mente son Tia Colleen y Tia linda me escriben mucho yo casi no les agradezco. por favor me disculpas.

Wow it's been crazy up here lately! Not sure if you were able to get a good translation about what I said last week in my email, but between Sunday and Monday we got two feet of snow! The snow continued until Thursday so we had plenty of moisture. And then the temperature dropped on Thursday night freezing nearly everything! So needless to say our driving was limited last week. It was great though on Monday night when we couldn't drive at all, one of the members a certain Brother Cook gave us a ride and we visited less actives and shoveled a lot of snow. We also had a snow ball fight with Brother Cook. We spent much of the week serving, when we were able to drive we kept snow shovels in the trunk and were constantly looking for people to help.

It was great to see some amazing miracles happen here this week. I figured that the limited driving and so much time spent serving would make it a little harder for us to teach as much as we'd like to reach the standards of excellence and find as many people who were ready. (Lots of people appreciated the help but weren't ready to hear more, but we softened their heart at least a little so some day missionaries will reap the rewards.) But just the last two days of the week we were really blessed to find a great family to teach and teach so many lessons to help us meet our goals. One of the greatest miracles we saw this week was a less active family that had never let us in before, so I'd never met them. We went over and shoveled their driveway -all of it. And then they let us in for hot chocolate. We spoke for a few minutes and then they invited us for dinner a few days later. It was amazing -they'd never let us in but then we got dinner! We invited them to come to church but they didn't accept. Although they did say we could come back, so it's only a matter of time before they do come!

I love it up here, and I hope you all know how much I love my mission and serving the lord.

Con mucho amor,

Elder Rojo.

Snow Day!

 

Doesn't he look like a happy elder!

Las Venturas de Elder Rojo: Capitulo 46

Que Buenas Noticias! Yo encontre mi cable de camara! Entonces de esto hoy voy a mandar unas fotos! Espero que les gustan. Pues estoy muy feliz esta semana. por varias razones. Mi hijo me cae muy bien, y tuvimos una semana tan magnifico! hoy recibimos mucho mucho nieve, y casi no podemos manejar ibamos a viajar por Vail por la reunion de districto, y despues a Eagle para jugar los deportes pero nuestro carro no puede manejar en esta tormenta! Y por esto nos quedamos aqui y vamos a pasar tiempo en nuestro apartamento despues de esto.

Well, I hope you're all doing well wherever you do happen to be at this particular point in time! I am doing just fantastic! My email might be a little bubbly and excited today, please forgive me on that. It's because we had a great week up here in Frisco! So as I mentioned last week I'm training once again! His name is Elder Barfield, and he's from South Carolina. As such he has never seen anything near the amount of snow that we got today. In fact when we got stuck leaving our ward mission leaders house after doing laundry he didn't know what to do, so we dug the car out, and then we had to push. But it was a fun p-day experience. We also shoveled the walk for them... Twice. That tells you a little bit about how much it's snowing. Ironically yesterday was the closing day of most of the ski resorts up here. And between yesterday and up until right now, we've gotten over two feet here in town. So I imagine that they'll probably prolong the closing.

Anyways I'm very excited to be serving with him. I learned a lot of things training last time so I think I'm doing a much better job. We're both doing great and he's learning real quick. The weird thing is that he's eighteen, and I'm turning twenty in two weeks I'm gonna be old!

But this was kind of a sad transfer, the mission lost some really great missionaries, several of whom I knew from my last zone. My first zone leader and my first exchange Elder Trusty left. Not sure if I mentioned him before, but he's the kind of missionary that I want to be great role model. Him another of my old zone leaders Elder Hatch, both of them served in the Lakewood zone for several transfer both as zone leaders and then they got released and served in other areas there. Both incredible missionaries. I also had a lot of fun playing basketball with them both are great players. Elder Mori went home, he's the elder who I went on exchanges with in Vail, great missionary and he's a fun guy. Probably the saddest of all though was that we lost Elder Kalkbrenner. Elder Kalkbrenner is the kind of missionary that this world needs more of. He was amazing he served as an assistant for a while so pretty much everyone knew him. But he was just an amazing example. He was Germany and everyone loved his accent. So there are some big shoes to fill and my generation of missionaries are the ones to fill them. Yikes! Often I still feel like I've only been out a couple of months, but then I get a text from one of my good friends in the mission that says, "Happy ten months Rojo." I'm going crazy or I've stepped into a time vortex because I haven't been on my mission that long!

Well, several times now I've mentioned that we had a great week, so now I'll explain why. Driving down to Denver to pick Elder Barfield up, and then we had to wait a little while before the roads cleared up, so we went out for breakfast with Elder's Rollins, Havig and there companions.Then we came back up. That was when the zone leaders informed us that we would not be reimbursed fully for our miles. "Oh" I said. "So what are we supposed to do seeing as we used 33% of ours to go to Denver and back?" "Do everything you can to limit them, and we'll reimburse you what we can." So that limited our driving a lot. We couldn't go to Leadville, Fairplay, Keystone, or Breckenridge. Leaving our entire week of proselyting in Silvethorne, Dillon, and Frisco. So we went out and did some good hard work known as tracting and street contacting! We worked our butts off the whole week and we found six new investigators! The Lord really did bless us for our diligence and obedience. We found some great people who are ready to hear the gospel, and some of our other investigators have expressed the desire to progress more than they were before. I'm really excited to be serving up here in this area, I know that we are going to continue to see miracles and help the work progress.

Con Mucho Amor,

Elder Rojo 

Capitulo 45: The Return of Elder Rojo

Buenos dias! Hoy es un dia muy bonita aqui en Frisco. Y por primera vez en un tiempo puedo mandar un bien email! Espero que todos estan bien y tambien quiero escuchar de todos!

Translation: Good morning! Today is a very nice day here in Frisco. And for the first time in a while I can send an email either! I hope everyone is well and I also want to hear from everyone!

 

So today is the last day of my first transfer in Frisco. So tomorrow we'll be driving down to Denver for transfer meeting. This is good for a number of reasons: firstly I can pick up some stuff that i left in Denver 1st from Elder's Havig and Rollins, it will also just be great to see them, I love both of those guys. Secondly It's good because I'll be training again next transfer! I'm very excited to train again it's a lot of fun.

 

First off what an amazing conference (General Conference of the church) we had last weekend! I loved those talks and really received some great revelation about what to do in this area, and with my new companion (or in mission lingo my second son) I especially loved the talk by Elder Holland. I know there are lots of people that I have met on my mission that say they believe but they're not sure enough to get baptized. I really learned how to more effectively teach that belief is often enough and knowledge will follow action that we take in Faith. Their were so many great talks and regretably I don't have my notes with me to talk about all of them. One thing I really enjoyed was watching the World Report, and seeing the news on the Calgary temple. I loved seeing so many people I know there! good to know that they're going to the temple! It was pretty cool to see the shot of Tom and Cheryl Evans walking up!  

 

So this week we did some interesting things. I wish I could send you pictures, but regrettably I can't find my camera cord so I'll just tell you about it. We drove up to Loveland pass (the highest road over the continental divide) and took some pictures up there. Probably the coolest thing though was when we pulled up to dinner on Friday. Their teenage son was standing on the balcony and he started pointing out to the street. We thought he was telling us to park on the street. We disregarded that as his father had told us that we can park on the driveway we got out of the car and he continued pointing at the street. I looked over to see a Moose standing on the street about 20 feet away. How we hadn't seen in before I still don't know. But I took several pictures of the moose. Regrettably I cannot send them.

 

The other awesome story is about our Investigator J. He's an amzing man, so prepared for the gospel. He loves reading the Book of Mormon, and he underlines and studies it better than some missionaries. He was very excited about conference last weekend and he took some great notes! Teaching J has been an awesome experience seeing how the gospel fills in the missing parts of his life. Unfortunately we can't set a date for his baptism yet due to a few issues, but I know that he will get baptized. It's also been amazing to see the Lord help him. When we first started teaching him it looked like he wouldn't be able to be baptized for quite a while. But the Lord has really helped him, and now if things go well he could be ready in 3 months! I sure hope so. I would really like to be here for his baptism.

 

I love you all so much and hope to hear from you soon!

 

Con mucho amor,

 

Elder Rojo