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Monday, October 20, 2014

Elder Inman Letter October 20, 2014

Spiritual Pay Day!

More like a spiritual pay week! It was honestly the most rewarding week spiritually than I have had my entire mission. I don't even know where to begin. And it sounds like it was a great week back home as well!

Monday was more fun than spiritual. We got together as a zone to practice singing "High on a Mountain Top" for Stake Conference and then had a pumpkin carving contest. I made a Liahona and totally won haha.

Monday and pretty much every day this week we have been tracting. Tracting in Shepherd is kind of a joke because we are out in the boonies and have to find small pockets of houses or trailers. Fortunately the people here are generally nice with a few exceptions. We handed out probably 7 copies of the Book of Mormon while tracting this week which is better than usual. Although tracting is not the most effective tool for finding we kind of had no other option and knew the Lord would bless us for being diligent in seeking his prepared children.

The next day (Tuesday) we received a sweet referral. There is a 13 year old who was baptized in the Spokane mission this past June and moved back here to live with her grandparents. We got a call to teach the new member discussions to this girl and came to find out that the grandparents are inactive members of the RLDS (Community of Christ) church! So we taught a lesson there Tuesday and had a member with us. The grandparents are 100% supportive of taking the granddaughter (Kailee) to every activity and even stay with her at church on Sundays! They don't realize it yet, but we are teaching them in the form of the new member discussions :) Usually you bank on someone reading the Book of Mormon to gain a testimony. It's awkward when they already believe everything you do but have the wrong authority. Their copy of the Book of Mormon is modernized and there are added sections of the Doctrine and Covenants. Cool to look at any way :) They came to stake conference yesterday and stayed the whole time! Please pray for them. Their names are Walt and Debby Reany.

So that was one solid experience. Wednesday started an exchange with the Elders in Hardin. Elder Griffith went down while I stayed in Shepherd with Elder Bond, our third companion. Elder Bond is getting mid-transfer adjusted today..to Powell! Other crazy experiences happened this week that I won't mention but it's been quite the fiasco trying to help with several of these people in our zone get baptized. They all have the most ridiculous circumstances. But it's fun to be involved :)

Friday was awesome. Elder Bond and I went to go see a part-member/less-active family. The husband wasn't home so we decided that we would knock the trailer next door. There was only 3 homes in this little area. I knocked and opened with an approach about eternal families and Christ's Atonement making it all possible. This elderly lady had her daughter and grandchildren over, yet she came outside and sat with us on her porch. We shared the message of the Restoration and she accepted a baptismal date of November 15th! Blessings! Afterward we went to the ghetto gas station to use the restroom and started talking to the cashier. Turns out her sister and niece got baptized in our ward a few months ago and she said she wanted to meet when mid-terms are over!

Saturday. BEST.DAY.EVER. I heard news earlier in the week that the Davis' and Sister Greenwald (from Powell) were getting sealed to their 95 year old mother with Brother Davis as proxy for the father. Elder Rasmusson is in Butte, MT (about 4 hours away from Billings) so we were trying to figure out how we could both be there. The DAY BEFORE we figured out rides and surprised everyone at the temple! Lots of tears and hugs. I have never witnessed a sealing tillSaturday and it was beautiful. Such a powerful sealing and the sealer was a family friend from Powell (who I also knew). Elder Bond didn't want to go so I brought Elder Partridge with me (our District Leader) and we decided to make it a day exchange. We found another person that day to teach and I was on cloud 9. Such a rewarding day. I'll have more pictures next week from them :)

Saturday night and Sunday morning were stake conference. The church is doing something new where Salt Lake broadcasts to several stakes in a region. We were part of 61 stakes within Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado. Speakers included Elder Craig C. Christiansen (Presidency of the Seventy), Cheryl A. Esplin (Presidency of the General Primary), Elder David A. Bednar (of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles), and Elder Richard G. Scott (of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles). It was SO good! There was lots of focus on prayer. I loved Elder Bednar's talk. Some quotes:

"More important than dying for the Gospel, is LIVING for the Gospel."
"Living the Gospel is not hard. NOT living the Gospel is hard."

"The Lord does the Hastening of the work. We do not. Will we keep pace with the Lord's hastening of the work? Is the hastening happening in us?"

"Consecration is developing and dedicating something to a sacred purpose."

"Sacrifice only exists in mortality. There is no sacrifice in eternity."

To name a few :) We also sang Saturday night and sat in the choir seats for stake conference. We had help of the angels to sound as good as we did. I also got to see Eliza Cannel (not Eliza Johnson) whom I helped over a year ago in the singles ward and is now married in the temple :) SUCH A GREAT WEEK! Glad to hear things went well at the Phoenix temple open house. Bummed I am not there for it. Have a fantastic week!

Thank you Grandpa for the uplifting letters! I have such a strong testimony of Priesthood power and it is neat to hear the miracles you experienced on your mission. We will have to share stories with each other when I come back! Love you Grandpa and Grandma!











Sunday, October 19, 2014

Elder Inman Letter October 13, 2014

Week 80 something I think ...

I'm so jealous that I am missing the Phoenix Temple open house! Especially after hearing about all the murals in it. I wasn't sure if new temples were going to have the murals or not. And you get to be such an active part of it! Tour guides and such. Way cool. That's a lot of people coming to attend! 1,100 an hour!

It was an ok week. Tuesday was MLC which I always love! It was in Helena and I got to see Elder Rasmusson, Elder Packham, and several others who I have served with or who were in my MTC group. What was new this time?...I drove the van starting at 4:30 in the morning! Really fun but super tiring. I'm getting pretty good at it though. :) We discussed a lot about how to manage our zone effectively, finding efforts, and focussing on activities that actually bring results. Not just time-wasting things to make it look like we're doing something. Lots to counsel on!

I was so tired from MLC Wednesday that I fell asleep for 40 minutes on my knees in preparation from personal study. We spent some of the day painting. Most of the time I was on a ladder or on the roof painting a non-members home. I enjoy painting and it was a good stress reliever. That night we tried hunting down Kevin (our AWOL baptismal date).

Meet the Mormons has been a huge success! We got enough people to request it and it got here to Billings as well as Helena. Our Ward Mission Leader is awesome. He got 7 radio stations to announce it in theaters and did all kinds of advertising. It sold out several showings here in Billings and was #10 in the box office nation wide! Pretty dang good for only showing in select theaters. Mormonnewsroom has more detail.

Lots of good things are happening with the church media. As a mission we are now approved to do #hashtags, pictures, and even videos in our online proselyting efforts! Friendly reminder though, that if I post something to facebook you can't "like" comment or message me! It will be fun to follow though :)

I've been struggling a bit. We had two potential investigators drop us and we have been trying to find people for weeks. Our third companion is draining all patience from me and honestly I feel less of the spirit when I am around him. But I need to exercise more faith. Yesterday we fasted for those on baptismal date in our zone and we currently have twenty! Not to shabby but I would like to contribute to that number you know? Hope to see some miracles this week.

Well that is all I got for this week. Glad to things are going pretty well. That was funny about Jesse's dream that Jimmy got drawn to hunt bread! hahahahaha so funny. Have a great week! Love you!

Pictures: I'm in the back row, Elder Packham to my left, Elder Griffith to his left, Elder Rasmusson in third 
row :)
 


 

Friday, October 10, 2014

Elder Inman Letter October 6, 2014

Fantastic General Conference

I LOVE general conference! I am sad that I slept through so many of them in years past haha. I think now that I truly understand what it means to have Prophets and Apostles alive here on the earth today, it changes the whole purpose of the conference. These men are called of God with the same authority as Moses or Abraham or Noah or any prophet of old! The same as Nephi, Lehi, Jacob, Mormon, or Alma! We see scripture unfold in real time with a current Prophet and the words said are specific to our day and time! Now we choose to respond as righteous saints or to reject their words as many of the Lamanites and the Nephites eventually did. Keep in mind the Nephite civilization gets destroyed for once being a righteous people and then rejected the Prophet :)

Of all the speakers I think I enjoyed Jorg Klebingat's and D. Todd Christofferson's. They were both super straight forward and not sugar coated at all. Their talks applied perfectly to those we are teaching and for me as well. Elder Godoy who spoke in Portuguese was the one who came to our mission!

This week has been a week of finding and frustration. It was transfer week and we received a third companion Elder Bond. He goes home in 5 weeks but has been ready to go home since his 6 month mark.

On a more exciting note, our mission got enough people to request "Meet the Mormons" and it is going to show here in Billings! I hope lots of people will go see it so that they can use it as a proselyting opportunity. It's easy to invite someone to the movies!

It sounds like things are going crazy for everyone! I cannot fully comprehend Torie being at college. She was a Junior in high school when I left! And Lacey is married...still hasn't quite registered with me yet. And Jesse is 16. Wow. And the 303 freeway is finished? Ahhh! The world didn't stop when I left!

The Davis' went to the temple this week! I was bummed I wasn't able to join them but they had an amazing experience! I hope to be able to join them soon. It has been so cool to see people I have help taught return to the temple or to go there for the first time. The church is true and I am so happy to be such an active part of it in this exciting time. Another message or theme I saw in conference was the need to establish our own testimony. The end is near and only more persecution and supposed "evidences" will come forth to destroy the Kingdom of God. "No unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing. Persecutions may rage, mobs may combine, armies may assemble, calumny may defame. But the truth of God will go forth boldly, nobly, and independent. Till it has penetrated every continent, visited every climb, swept every country, and sounded in every ear. Till the purposes of God shall be accomplished and the great Jehovah shall say, the work is done." - Joseph Smith

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Elder Inman Letter September 29, 2014

The Book of Mormon is SO true

I don't think I've had so many opportunities to testify and defend the Book of Mormon than I have this week. We are coming across more and more people who are so quick to claim the LDS church to be false, yet have either never read the Book of Mormon or have never prayed about it with sincerity and real intent.

We did an exchange this week with the Foryth Elders. I was here in Shepherd with Elder Manufekai who is Tongan. $ lessons in a row it came down to the Book of Mormon. We met a new Less-Active who let us in and said, "I don't mess around, what do you want with me." We explained he is a member of the church and the Lord checks on his people. He vented for about 20 minutes about how the church treats women like property and how we were decieved. He doesn't beleive the Bible is true or any book is true because it was written by man and not God. That is his reasoning as to why we have a patriarchal society and why women don't hold Priesthood offices. We tried to explain the seperate but equal roles and that it was a waste of time to try and tell God how to run his church. I cut him off in his rant and asked if he had read the Book of Mormon. He said he had not and that he doesn't need to read a book written by a con-man in New York to tell him there is a God. He told me I was living by blind faith. I flat out responded, "FALSE. You do not know what I have studied or what I know to be true. You can NEVER tell me this is not true until you ask God for yourself and you CANNOT tell me what I know and believe to be true. If the Book of Mormon is true, than this is the ONLY church on this planet with the ability to seal your family for eternity and you will lose that opportunity because you won't do something as simple as asking God." Elder Manufekai then bore his testimony and explained it was a waste of time for us to be there if he was not willing to take that invitation. He told us to come back in a week and he will have read some :)

We had two similar experiences after that but slightly more effective haha. All I know is the Book of Mormon is absolutely true. If we trust God enough to answer our prayers, he will answer us. Wednesday morning we got to see a pre-screening of "meetthemormon's" on a projector at the Stake Center. So sweet! Such a good film and the beginning is hilarious. It isn't playing in Montana yet, so President Mecham has all of us spending an hour a day asking people to request the film online. We have a goal to get 10,000 requests in before October 4th. We are nearing 4000 and it's only been 5 days!

I don't have a lot of time today so I'll skip to Saturday. We helped paint a house for an older couple who are not members of the church. Their house got destroyed by some crazy hail not to long ago. I love painting! That night we had dinner at a Recent Converts house who had a non-memeber there. At first he was super standoffish because he thought we were the Jehovah's witnesses. Upon teaching the Restoration, he decided we weren't and instead accepted a baptismal date! Woohoo the church is true!

Transfers start today. I am staying here in Billings with Elder Griffith as a Zone Leader and happy to be! Our whole zone seemed to have been transferred so we are starting fresh again but that's ok I guess. Thanks for the letter grandpa! Can I get Jensen and Shane's letters/emails? I have heard from those two in seriously 20 months!
 
LeeRoy's Baptism