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Monday, March 24, 2014

Elder Inman Letter March 24, 2014

I just finished my second Journal!

I have written a full two journals now. Never would have predicted that! I have 2 more that haven't been written in :P This week I was on exchanges with the Elders in Cody. As a Zone Leader, we go team up with other companionships to help train, uplift, and inspire. You're probably wondering why I got the job haha.
 
I wasn't with the Cody Elders until Tuesday afternoon. So after seeing all those animals near yellowstone, we had a lesson with the youngs. They are doing SO good! We taught the law of Fasting and Tithing and they both committed to it. Tracy Young's date was originally this Saturday but we are moving it back so that Brother Young can be ready to baptize both her and the son :) It will be such an awesome experience!  That evening we visited an active home and a two year old boy started eating my shoe...while it was on my foot haha.
 
Tuesday I was on exchanges with Elder Eddington and Williams. Elder Eddington is from Las Vegas and Elder Williams is from Maryland and is brand new to the mission.. We had some pretty hilarious and 'disturbing' experiences there that I won't go into detail on lol. We also did some service at a daycare (which I didn't realize till yesterday that that is specifically mentioned as something you shouldn't do). We just cleaned the yard because one of the dogs tore apart a dog bed. She fed 7 missionaries enchiladas and I had 5! Dinner fell through, so someone paid for us at China buffet right afterward. I was beyond full.
 
I nearly fell asleep in every lesson on Wednesday. I was exhausted. We did some service at the Senior Center thrift store with the Sisters, just bagging clothes that were being sent to Africa. Elder Chelson found some overalls that he wears now haha. I switched to the other Cody Elders (Elder Chelson my MTC comp and Elder Jackson). We blessed a 5 year old boy with autism, and then I did a baptismal interview for Cody 3rd's investigator named Sara. I LOVE doing baptismal interviews! The spirit is always so strong and you get to hear everyones conversion story. This was Elder Chelson and Jackson's first baptism of the mission, so we were rally excited for them.
 
Thursday I was on a FaceTime call (like skype) with Elder Rasmusson and Nessen because I was still in Cody. We had a long tri-panionship inventory. It's basically where you get everything out on the table, resolve it, and then strengthen each other. On a happier note, I actually got to see the WORLD RECORD Elk ever killed by a bow and arrow. It is judged by the horns, and these horns were ENORMOUS. What's cooler, is it was killed by a super pretty girl in her 20's haha. This was at a part-members home and the wife who shot it is actually the member!
 
Coming back to Powell was a relief on Friday. I got to release some stress as we split wood for a little over an hour. I seriously love doing that! OH! And for dinner we went to El Tapatio (a mexican restaurant) which reminded me that on exchanges, I was somehow convinced to try Ghost Pepper....the world's natural hottest pepper without being modified. For whatever reason, Elder Jackson convinced me to put a dab on my finger of Ghost Pepper sauce...First of all, it wasn't even good tasting. Second, it actually will burn your skin before it even gets to your mouth. Third, your tongue just shuts down. You can't even speak! I drank probably half a gallon of milk and a 1/4 loaf of bread to get my taste back. It was that hot lol.
 
We had dinner with Chris Pelletiaer. This is the Less-Active man who's store flooded and we were the demolition crew. Both he and his wife are members and he actually served a mission. Afterward we shared the message of the Restoration. Brother Pelletier was somber and reflective. You could tell he was in deep thought and remembering the Spirit. The wife however mocked it and chose to ignore the Spirit which is sad.  Our last lesson Saturday evening was with Brayden Acton again who is the one currently under-going the trans-gender process. He actually has a girlfriend. We taught them both and the girlfriend named Dakota, actually was pretty interested and committed to read the BOM as well as pray about it's truthfullness! Goes to show that anyone can come back from anything.
 
Yesterday we had EIGHT investigators at church! That is almost unheard of. Tracy Young actually brought her non-member daughter with her. A missionary already! Elder Rasmusson and I gave talks. My topic was how to have the Spirit daily and Elder Rasmusson's was being an example or a light to all. It was pretty good. The Davis couple came who haven't been to church in decades! We are so excited for them. Then we went on Splits. Elder Rasmusson and I visited the Pedersons (who have the 1 year old son). We taught the Plan of Salvation and answered their questions about "Limbo" meaning the Spirit world. Our funny story for that day would probably be that we gave a less-active family a box of fresh oranges about a week ago. And we thought we were doing the right thing by giving them the "fresh box" that we had been keeping in the freezer. Turns out you aren't supposed to freeze fruit. We confirmed that when we visited them yesterday. Embarrassing haha oh well! Have a great week!
 
Check out this tire, Elder Rasmusson and Elder Nessen! Can you tell who's who? x) Love ya!
 


 

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Elder Inman Letter March 17, 2014

Road Trips Rock

Hello family. How are you, FANTASTIC. Look at your weather. Now look at mine. Now back to your weather, now BACK to mine. Sadly...it's not like mine (Old Spice). Haha things have been pretty crazy up here in the Big Horn Basin. Monday we travelled to Billings for Mission Leadership Council. We got there pretty late and didn't get to bed till about 1:30AM, only to get up to leave at 3:30AM. It was so fun though because Elder Organ (who I came out with) and ELDER SCHRAMM were there at the mission home! We all travelled together to Helena. There was a huge snow storm that caused a detour. Pretty awesome.
 
We got to MLC late because of the storm, so they started without us. It was a super spiritual meeting though. I heard probably the best live version of "Abide with me, Tis Eventide" I've ever heard. It was a sister who was called out on the spot to sing it by President Mecham. He said he felt prompted to ask her too. Although she was hesitant, she did and I really needed that. So cool. Some fun things as a result of that meeting, every area has texting now which is sweet! Originally it was just Zone Leaders, Assistants, and Sister Training Leaders that had it because we are the only mission in the world that uses Verizon. So everyone has texting (huge blessing). But what I am most excited about is President said he wants to make the Temple more available as missionaries. From now on, if we have  a Recent Convert doing baptisms, Reactivated Member attending, or Endowment of those we have baptized, we are permitted to attend!!!!! I was SO stoked! If we can get a ride with members, we are allowed to attend just not frequently.
 
After the meeting in Helena, it was back to Billings. We got home at about 8:30PM (long day) and the Wyoming South Zone Leaders wanted to go to "Steak-n'-Shake." It's similar to an In-N-Out but with a waiter. Had a crazy cool experience. A worker (not our waiter) came by our table and started asking us about Melchizidek and the 12 tribes. We were really skeptical at first thinking this was either going to be a bash, or an RM messing with us because he was beyond golden lol. He was extremely genuine. We were about to leave, and being the only ones in there, he ran up to us and asked if we could DEDICATE the Restaurant... He said because we have "Priestcraft" although he meant the Priesthood haha. We all looked at each other and wondered if that was even allowed! We told him to ask the manager. So he did and said, "Yeah, he's actually pretty happy about it!" WHAT?!?! This guy was probably only 30. We stepped outside the building (to leave the loud music), stood in a circle, and he asked ME to dedicate it because I was the INMAN. Haha. I literally dedicated Steak-n'-Shake, the Restaurant. That building will forever be in business! Haha. Pretty strange but cool experience...his name was "Al America." I'm convinced he's a nephite pahahaha
 
President gave us permission to attend the Temple Wednesday morning :) We saw the even newer Endowment Presentation!!! My mind was blown and I had all kinds of Revelation. We drove back to Powell afterwards and picked up Elder Nessen again.
 
Thursday we literally planned all day. It is tough to balance zone things as well as our own area. However, we had a very uplifting experience with one of our Less-Active families, the Davis'! This family has been inactive for decades, and both of them have very little Gospel Knowledge. So we taught the Restoration. Both were in tears. Brother Davis bore his testimony to us. He knows three things: God Lives. Jesus Christ is His Son. And Joseph Smith is a Prophet. I just wanted to hug this man. If those three things are true, the rest is true. His wife asked us to share the discussions with them weekly. AND they came to Sacrament meeting!!!!!!! After probably 30 years.
 
Friday we taught LOTS of lessons. We visited Brother Wyckoff who is a widower. We taught him the Plan of Salvation (again) and committed him to come to church after years of inactivity. We then found Mike Lindsey who has been gone for weeks. He was building clocks in his garage, and we just had some small talk. Next was the Pederson family (with the 1 year old). The whole family was there! Turns out they are active baptists but have visited with the missionaries for years. For whatever reason, the missionaries could never answer the mother's question concerning the 3 degrees of Glory...are you kidding me?! That's so essential and fundamental! So we are going to start teaching them :) We then stopped by the See's. this is the family with the twin Niece and Nephew. We taught the Restoration, and it was probably one of the funniest lessons I've ever taught xD Armann (I called him Herman in past letters) just got his tonsils out and has an extremely high scratchy voice. We were talking about Prophets and he raises his hand. We called on him and he says, "Abraham Lincoln was the first assassinated Prophet." Haha! We were crying. Abraham was a Prophet, and was almost assassinated, so he was close! Such a cute kid. We afterwards gave him a blessing of health. He hasn't been recovering well from his tonsils.
 
Torie's Birthday sounds like fun! I forgot all about Jump Street! I still cannot comprehend her being a legal adult (I don't mean that rudely haha). It just hasn't hit me yet. I hope you got my gift in the mail Torie! Sorry I didn't have a letter with it, I have had no time at all this week to write one! But I do love you and think you are awesome! I was painting on Torie's Birthday (Saturday), and actually broke a lamp. It happens I guess. Chris wasn't mad (this is the guy who's hearing aid place flooded).
 
Yesterday was really weird haha. But the Young's came to church!! Seeing some real progress with them; they are supposed to be baptized in two weeks so we will see! Please be praying for them. We later had a lesson with Shirley Dillon who is struggling with some Word of Wisdom issues. Afterwards we visited a half-drunk guy who said to come back Tuesday. We are hoping he forgets because we have District Meeting Tuesday haha.
 
I was going to save this for next week but I'm too excited about it. I'm emailing so late because Brother Yates (who we live with), took us to North Fork today which is about 2 miles from the entrance to Yellowstone!!!!!!! It is so beautiful up there. We saw Big Horn Sheep, Buffalo, Elk, and lots of deer. It was snowing pretty good. There is too much snow in the actual park (and it is outside our boundaries anyways). Here's some pictures! The weird structure is actually a house.. Love ya!
 
that weird structure is a house.
 
 
 

Gate to Yellowstone Park






 

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Elder Inman Letter March 10, 2014

It's Hot!!!!!


It's like 45 degrees out and I feel the need for shorts! It will be terrible coming back to Arizona weather hahaha. Well it was quite a week as always. We had spontaneous teaching opportunities and let's just say the adversary hated it lol. Means we are doing something right!

On Monday we went to the Library to email as usual. But in the middle of emailing, the Ward mission leader for the sisters came up to us and introduced him to one of his non-member friends. Right there in the middle of the public college library we taught the first discussion. Pretty sure that's illegal but we were on official church business! Later that evening we taught a FHE lesson with a part-member family. The kids aren't members and the mom was baptized in January. So we brought lots of ice cream to make the kids listen :D We talked about how to develop faith in Christ. Something interesting happened...Sister Chionnard turned off the TV when we arrived. While testifying of Christ it turned on and disrupted the Spirit. That didn't surprise me until the following visits. We went to visit the Youngs. Again, in the middle of our discussion, the laptop on the table that no one was near, starts blasting a youtube video...Elder Rasmusson and I just stared at each other in amazement and almost laughing.

The next day was even better. We went to contact a referral. The lady we were looking for was not home but her less-active husband was. He had paused his movie and had his back turned to the tv as he was talking to us. We were facing the TV behind him. The TV literally turned off, back on, the menu pops up, turns off, turns on, menu pops up again and the channels started navigating through the menu!!!! A channel was chosen and it happened to be a highly inappropriate movie. We were just looking at each other wide-eyed. Satan had legitimately navigated the TV menu to display a horrible movie in the middle of our lesson. No one was near the remote at all. It gets better...

It was about 8:15PM. I had remembered we were out of milk and planned to go get some. On our way there, I felt prompted that I needed to stay out and proselyte till 9 and then I could get my milk. This will sound strange, but I can tell you that Satan would have loved for me to get milk and not proselyte haha. BECAUSE we found another referral we were looking for. This "man" we contacted was about 40% through the transvestite process. Pretty disgusting. Either way, he is still a child of God and we were asked to go see him. He let us in, we sat down, and immediately the cell phone starts ringing and plays a horrible song for a ringtone. He sits down. Probably 10 seconds later, the phone IN THE OTHER ROOM goes off. Elder Rassmusson looks at me and says, "We need to pray. Now." So we did with this man and had no further interruptions. It actually was a very spiritual lesson. We testified that through Christ, there is nothing we can do that can make our  Heavenly Father stop loving us. It is never too late. As a blessing, we went to the store to buy milk. Lo and behold, someone paid for our milk. Now that's a miracle.

We picked up our new companion Wednesday. His name is Elder Nessen. This is his 10th area and he's been out a year. He is actually a visa waiter for Brazil, so he has been waiting a long time. But he got his visa and will leave here in about 2 weeks.

Thursday we helped brother Green move, followed by Pizza Hut Buffet. We then got a call from one of our less-actives who told us his entire hearing aid clinic had flooded and needed help. The snow melted to fast that it caused a ton of problems. We tore out his carpet, floor boards, and bottom foot of his sheetrock. We will be re-doing it this week. He came to church because we came to help him though!

Steve Rackness is back! After three weeks in North Dakota working on the oil rigs, we found him at home with his family, hanging a chandelier. His wife has been on the ball, getting him a sweet CTR ring, a Greg Olsen painting for their house, and a plaque with a carved scripture in it :) Spent the rest of the day contacting referrals. One of them was in the sisters area and we had previously set up an appointment with them a few days previous. The sisters can't teach him because he is a registered sex offender. After knocking on his door for 10 minutes (because we could see him in front of the door), he opened it and said he wasn't interested...interesting. 

Saturday I had the worst headache of my life. First ever Migraine. Friday night I was up till 130AM because of the pain. In fact, it hurt so bad that I woke Elder Rassmusson up for a blessing. Not even a healing blessing, but of comfort, and the pain was cut in half. Took some medicine and slept the whole night haha. Built my faith in the Priesthood quite a bit. While doing splits with a ward missionary, his car got stuck because of how fast the snow melted and made mud lakes. I had to get out in my suit and push his car. My shoes were so caked in mud that we went to his house and I scrubbed my shoes off with a brush and a bucket of water haha. I love this place! 

Wow this is a long email. Last thing. Yesterday while out finding people with Brother George, we found a less-active man whose cows had broken down the gate and were scattered everywhere. So, in a shirt and tie, we chased this whole herd of cows back to the corral. Keep in mind it's a marsh full of water mud and poop, so my shoes looked quite brown again haha. I'm becoming a cowboy! We had dinner with a temple sealer and then were given 120 oranges from a members.

Glad to hear Jesse loved his volunteer work! He needs stuff like that. And HAPPY BIRTHDAY TORIE!! It blows me away that you are 18 because I was at BYU at that age! That will be so fun for you and Lacey to room together! You are an amazing sister and I miss you a ton. Keep up the great work and have a great birthday! What do you plan on doing? Love you all!

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Elder Inman Letter March 3, 2014

Coldest I've Ever Been in my Life

Greetings from the ice bowl. We've had a blizzard for the past few days. The people who have lived here for millennia say it's the most snow and coldest it's been in decades. God does have a sense of humor, "let's send the Arizona kid to the coldest mission we have..." haha.
 
 
It was a great week though! Monday we played dodgeball with the zone. The only difference was they were yoga balls hahahaha. That night we did something probably pretty stupid... We washed the car. It was 5 degrees out. And it was a "do-it-yourself" car wash. I had the opportunity of using the power hose. Naturally my hand was frozen in a gripping position and the car glazed over with ice so we couldn't even open the doors haha they were iced shut! It was awesome.
 
 
The good thing about all this snow is tons of service opportunities! We've been going to less-active and investigator homes to shovel their driveways and sidewalks. Which I guess is a law here. One of them we did for a widow at 8:00 PM. She had 8" of built up snow. Oh and a side note, it was -2 out and there was wind, so our faces were a little crusty! Shoveling is quite a good work out though.
 

 
Wednesday I got all 4 cavities filled! Not once in my life has a dentist been able to get my face numb...for the first time ever, Dr. Hull was able to numb exactly half my face! I was speaking pretty funny in the following lessons. We were on exchanges (Elder Rasmusson was with a companionship in Cody for a few days), so we drove to Cody and I switched spots with him. The purpose of exchanges is to assist other missionaries in the zone with their missionary work. So I was with Elder Chelson (my MTC companion!) and Elder Jackson who is one of my favorite Elders in this mission (from Kalispell zone).
 
We had a sweet lesson with Beau Brown Friday. He had a question prepared about Revelation. He shared a personal experience that had just taken place recently wit his family, causing him to wonder whether it was revelation or if it just the result of a dedicated will. I thought it was an excellent question. While it is true that you can see the result of something you are putting all your effort into, some things (many things) are independent of your trying. There are so many things that you can point to and say you know it happened by someone or something other than yourself. Beau (being both hilarious and extremely sarcastic) gave our companionship individual nicknames. He stands up to shake our hands after the lesson and says to me, "My abuser, (the to Elder Ashcroft) silent man, (then to Elder Rasmusson) and the Front Man. Haha I thought that was pretty funny. He calls me the abuser because I'm pretty blunt with him and he loves it lol. Later Friday night we had agreat discussion with one of our relatively recent converts, Sister Ackley. She grew up Pentecostal and knows her Bible extremely well. She has full faith that the LDS church is the correct church, but she has developed some deeper questions that she didn't ask in the originally discussions. I LOVE gospel conversations, especially with someone who is very knowledgeable in the Bible. She even had a question, not even deep doctrinal, actually pretty fundamental, that stumped us regarding the Priesthood and healing. We searched the scriptures for hours and couldn't find it. We actually ended up asking a member of the Mission Presidency but he did not have a direct answer either. It isn't a question that would sway your faith, but it was interesting.
 
Saturday. I never thought I would be going to a 1 year old's birthday party at a Baptist church on my mission lol. Quite the experience. A few weeks ago, we gavea blessing to a young mom and her baby who was sick. They are not members. The Mom (Alexis) invited us to Joshua's (baby) 1st birthday party which was held at the Baptist church. We got him a 3 foot long mickey mouse puzzle (only 42 really big pieces). We even played games...one of them involving fast CRAWLING on a hard floor in our suits as part of a relay race (they were baby oriented games). Still not sure that was the greatest idea.
 
 
It got to -31 this week with a wind chill. For the first time in my life my eye actually froze shut! Water got onto my eyelashes and it literally froze my eye shut! It was AWESOME. This was while shoveling more snow. Service gets you all kinds of free stuff. We are not allowed to accept money, so people justify giving us food. We got fresh banana chocolate-chip bread, a meal, and I forget what else. Dinner was with Brother George (ward mission leader) yesterday. His family has 2000 acres of farmland. Their big thing is dairy cows. I got to have straight cow milk. Raw, with no purification, just filtered. It was SO good. And I didn't even get sick!
 
Well that was our week. We did mainly service all week but we taught 19 lessons still which is still good for our area. Transfer calls came! Elder Rasmusson and I are remaining the Zone Leaders in Powell (so excited!), and Elder Ashcroft is going to Stevensville, MT to be a ZL there. We are inheriting another third companion, Elder Nessen who has been out longer than I have and is still waiting for his visa to Brazil...so we'll see how this goes!
 
I am so jealous you got to go to the Temple dedication and the Prophet was there. Thanks for all the sweet info on the Hosanna shout dad! I love you all and hope you have a great week!
 
oh! Check out the Simpson's snow men! They want a return appointment with us :) doh!

 
 

Saturday, March 1, 2014

Elder Inman Letter February 24, 2014

This wind is going to tear my face off.

Hello family and friends! It's a blistering cold day in Powell, Wyoming! And I'm loving it! The wind is mainly the worst part. The snow literally hurts when it hits your face...partly because it's ice.
 
We had a decent week. Monday we found a new Less-active member. She actually asked to have her name taken off the records years ago but it never was...so that's how we found her! She smokes hardcore, is probably about 60 but looks 80, and doesn't come to church because she got offended years ago. Funny story about this visit...so she has this dog that was standing upright and then just went limp, fell sideways, hit its head on the glass table, and started having a seizure. We thought it was going to die and were freaking out and she just says, "Oh, No he does that. That's the third time today within the last three hours."....WHAT?!?!?! Poor dog. She said she would take it to the vet. I sure hope so.
 
Tuesday was long and exhausting. We went to Lovell's District Meeting which started at 9. President Mecham was interviewing our whole zone,. So most of the District Meeting, me and Elder Rasmusson were doing pre-interviews with missionaries. Then we went to the Cody District and did the same thing. I interviewed the Elders in Lovell, and then the Sisters in Cody. We didn't finish interviews till 5:20PM. 8 hours of interviewing...but it was good to meet with President!
 
I was privileged to give one of the Sisters in our zone a blessing prior to surgery. She has been sick for several weeks and is a brand new missionary. The surgery went very well and she has a renewed testimony of the power of the Priesthood which is awesome :) She understood that we can provide the Priesthood power, but the healing comes from her faith. That had a profound effect on her. Later that evening we met with the Young's and taught Lucus (the son) the Restoration. Our highlight of that evening was probably at about 8:30PM. We stopped by an inactive members home. He was recently married to a non-member. We told him at the door we don't have a lot of time but asked if it would be okay to share a quick video with him and his wife and he said, "If it's quick." So we showed a Mormon Message called, "Moments that Matter Most" by President Uchtdorf (mom you should watch it). We brought it back to eternal families and the wife loved it!
 
Thursday we found a potential investigator with the name of Braden. We were actually looking for his inactive grandma, but he answered the door and said she was asleep. So Elder Rasmusson asked, "Well, can we talk to you?!" and he said sure haha. This kid is 17 but I could have sworn he was about to graduate college. Full beard and thick black hair to his shoulders. We taught the full restoration outside on his doorstep at 8:30 at night. It went pretty well!
 
Friday Elder Rasmusson went to Byron on exchanges. So it was just me and Elder Ashcroft here in Powell. We had a really good discussion with Beau Brown about receiving a witness to his prayers to know if the church is true. He is a less-active. We mainly focused on finding less-actives and had some success. However the majority of them don't have legitimate excuses for not attending church. For example, one of them said they didn't have church clothes to wear (hasn't been coming for decades). We explained that it is ok for him to come to church in whatever he has and we can help him get the clothes he needs. Later Saturday night we met up with Elder Rasmusson at the Baptism the Lovell sisters were having. Pretty good turn out, but the Young's didn't come because the roads were really icy. However, they came to church and stayed ALL THREE HOURS! It was awesome because the topics discussed in Gospel Principles was exactly what they needed. They are doing awesome :)
 
Sunday we did splits. I stayed with Elder Rasmusson and Elder Ashcroft went with one of our ward missionaries. Something interesting...we found a relatively new recent convert who has been hiding at his girlfriends house. So Elder Ashcroft stopped by with the ward missionary and shared a message with him. The girlfriend called us that night with a nasty voicemail telling us that we are never allowed to come back and that we were ruining their family by talking with the boyfriend about church...meanwhile her ex-husband is incarcerated and she was in trouble wit with the police for other things. She apparently is Jewish and is angry because her boyfriend (who is a recent convert) won't marry a non-member. It's quite the situation.
 
Aside from that we had a great week! Our mission has had 103 baptisms and 131 reactivations since the year started, so things are rolling forward. Transfers are next week so that will be interesting. Happy birthday Mom! I sent a letter out Saturday, I hope it gets to you on time. I am jealous you got to go to the shooting range and I'm surprised that 1894 Winchester 30-30 even works still! Who would have thought that mom loves shooting guns? Haha have a great week!
 
Pictures are of Powell, WY :) Nearly every morning.