Noah on a Mission

Dear friends and family, I don't have much time this week because I have to spend time figuring out college stuff. Heh. Yeah... But I'm here in Mansfield with Elder Cox and things are pretty good. I don't really have much to comment on yet other than we had someone at church who is on date for baptism, so that's good! His name is John so you can pray for him. It's pretty off-putting going to a new area after having been in the last one for so long. I wish I had more time to write something inspiring... one thing I've been thinking about is how we need to develop a "hunger" for the gospel. Before my mission it wasn't something I did much or put much thought into. Kind of like vegetables. I knew it was good for me but wasn't head over heels about it. But now I've actually developed a hunger where I truly want to learn more about the gospel truths, the doctrines, and how I can be a better person and everything. I know ever...

Hello everyone, This week we had an epic exchange on the campus of Youngstown State University with our district leader and his companion. That was fun. Kinda weird being on a campus. It's a whole different world being swarmed by students and trying to talk to them. Thankfully the elder I was with, Elder Johnson, is amazing and talking to everybody. The campus isn't very big either, but there were plenty of people to talk to. That was fun. Now you may recall that Elder Johnson is the super tall dude from the pictures I've sent. And he plays basketball. Well, he actually found a finding opportunity through basketball--a guy on campus invited him to play with them. I didn't have basketball clothes and I certainly am not very good at basketball so I decided to just sit out and finish a poem I had been writing. But I watched the game too--he's REALLY good. Like, he already has a scholarship to attend college in Oregon and play for the Ducks. So ke...

Dear friends and family, Wasn't Conference great? Perhaps it was just me but the tone felt slightly different than most previous ones. Several apostles gave talks with tones they don't usually give. And I'm excited for whatever will happen next year during the bicentennial. I really liked a lot of talks, but off the top of my head I really liked Hans T. Boom's and L. Todd Budge's talks. Definitely excited to re-listen to/read them all over again. So there's a fellow who is the son of some recent converts, named Jon-Mike. He isn't baptized, though he was the one who first let the missionaries in the door. Though he heard the first lesson, his parents ended up taking to the gospel while he ended up getting busy with work and dealing with addiction issues. We've always seen him around but scarcely talked to him and never taught him though we had come close to actually setting something up once. Well... we finally taught him two days ...

Dear friends and family, You may recall last week I said this: • Vicki is awesome While on an exchange with Elder Johnson, we tracted into an old Greek lady named Vicki. She had a heavy Greek accent and was really sweet. I also said that we had a lesson with her that night. Well, turns out she wasn't home. It was pretty disappointing and I was ready to tell all of y'all that it didn't actually pan out and there aren't miracles anymore, apparently. But then...we stopped by a few days later--and met her husband Eugene. Well, he said she wasn't available and proceeded to spout his own opinion on religion (which we told him we agreed with). He wasn't that interested, though he was nice. Didn't really give us a time to come back or anything. So we were still disappointed. THEN last night we were working around her area and decided to stop by, really not expecting much. We knocked on her home and after a few minutes a you...

Dear friends and family, Firstly, someone I taught was baptized! Not by me though. It was Alberta, who I did not find but started teaching pretty early on here in Warren. We weren't really getting anywhere with her however and though I can't remember all the reasoning behind it as this point, we made the decision to hand her off to the sisters in the ward. From there Alberta seemed to take off, so I guess it was a good match-up. I also got asked to give a talk this week in church. I got asked on Friday. I spent most of my spare time writing it. I got the inspiration to actually tell a personal story, which I almost never am prone to do because I don't consider any of my life experiences very inspiring. This one wasn't particularly either--the talk was about "love one another" and I felt inspired to tell the story of when I trained a new missionary and failed to demonstrate love. It seemed to work out okay. The microphone has been broke...

Dear friends and family, Another week where we're plodding along, trying to do our best, but waiting for stuff to really get moving. Learning more and more...about how hard it is to improve. I feel like I understand, cognitively, what I ought to do to be a better man but I don't understand how to actually DO it. Feels like God hasn't told me that. Maybe He won't tell me that... Hoping I'll figure it out eventually. So we are teaching (or attempting to) a guy named Billy. Billy is an interesting fellow. He's extremely devoted to one thing at a time, pretty much, and what he's devoted to at the moment is remodeling a house. It's a personal project so it's just him and maybe a couple of friends or something and he's making crazy progress. He put in some new kitchen counters where previously there was nothing and they're super slick, like, better than our kitchen haha. His work ethic is amazing, only problem is he seems t...

Dear friends and family, We've settled in for the transfer. Things are going decently well. Some things keep getting delayed, like the next lesson with our golden girl, Kelly, or our main guy on date, Bruce, to beat his smoking habit and find work. Just being patient. Kind of just thinking about how I can continue improving. I've feared that what I've really been doing rather than improving is stand still. Kinda feel like I've just been in a state of stasis. I wish I better knew how to be in a state of constant improvement. Is that even possible? Perhaps not. But life is fine. I try to let things just slide off of me. I feel too enclosed in myself. People don't really ask me to share, and I don't really know how to share very well, and when I do it doesn't seem to accomplish very much anyway. People on the outside of mission life are pretty busy. I feel like we're all turned to our own endeavors. Cool things like school ...