Monday, July 25, 2016

♫Family History! Finally Mastered it!♫‏

I like my new companion loads! He is actually experienced as a missionary and I do not need to train him at all, but he observes me like a hawk and eats up everything and applies it quickly. it's sweet! He is so chill too, every night we sit and drink juice and talk untill we have to go to bed.
This week has been so humid!!!! Yesterday I could almost drink the air!
Hey Robby you better watch out! I have been doing P90X recently and if you think I am coming home a softy, thinking I will loose in any arm wrestling match you are mistaken. =p You better watch it dude, my flexing muscles in my arm move when I turn my hand the other direction =p ha ha

All I can think about is my goals. In fact I now have even more goals to think about too. It has become such a obsession that the only thing my companion thinks about is my goals, not even his own goals but he think about my goals all day every day!

WE have been seeing so many miracles!!!!! I swear I am not worthy enough to have all of these miracles happen, I mean yah I am obedient but I am never seeing anything but MIRACLES! I still suck at keeping some rules and yet I am still blessed beyond belief. But to be fair too my new companion E.A has been serving in BadAxe Michigan for the last 6 months a place that is very sad when it comes to missionary work, so he is probably cashing in all of his unused persecution points for miracles too. Keep Praying that I can accomplish my goals!

I think I did it! I think I mastered Family History! I have been giving those FH pass along cards faster than I do regular ones now because of how many people are receptive to it. I have been doing it in several diffrent ways but my finding through using questions of the soul and restored truth questions, and family history weave in and out now and are truly one finding tactic. 
 
I got a lady super interested in family history and followed it up (after I found out she was religious) with a " So what do you think happens to our ancestors who die with out a knowledge of the gospel?" and totally got her with restored truth too and we should be teaching her the plan of salvation in a few days. There is no way she would have been interested if I didn't go a family history route. I am planning on writing it out and sending it to all of the many missionaries who I have talked to about this to help them all be more effective.
The thing that is getting me now is I realized every missionary I know sucks at helping Atheists agree to meet with us. How do you do that? because what I learned how to do isn't effective and I have never seen success from it.

One of our top investigators who is on date has had some experiences this week.  At the end of our lesson last sunday I forgot to set up a return appointment, so we stopped by after correlation (miraculously we had time after that) meeting a few days later. We dropped by and he answered the door and said he was right about to call us, he let us in and he told us all about what happened at work with his coworkers. 
 
They saw him reading the book of Mormon during his break and they tore him to pieces about how we aren't Christians and other stupid not true beliefs about us. It really got to him and he was thinking about calling us and dropping us a few minutes before we arrived at his door. We resolved his concerns and prepared him for even more persecution and tribulation to be coming as he prepares to be baptized. It may seem odd but I rejoiced in the car that happened, because he is now having Tribulation and persecution  which is an essential thing for some one to go through to become converted to anything. It brought me alot of peace knowing that he isn't going to be baptized with only a testimony and not being converted. But we still have more time there.
We came by a few days later to hear that he was surrounded by 4 co workers at work again and they tried to bash him to pieces the next time they saw him read during his work break. But this time he was aware it was satan and he laughed at the stupid things they said about us. " those Mormons don't worship God, They worship Mohamed!....." he responded "Who the Hell is Mohamed! they teach me about God not him!". He later during the lesson asked us Who Mohamed was because he was still confused on who they were talking about.
Our other investigator almost dropped us, she was getting confused because the book of mormon sounds alot like the bible and she wasn't willing to make the commitment to be rebaptized. It was a pretty quick fix when I went back to mosiah 18 and had her read the verses where she felt the spirit and she humbled herself and changed her mind because she knew what she felt. She then at the end of the lesson gave us 10 bags of groceries!!!!!!!!!!!!! Dude the church is so true here! I havn't seen any thing but miracles and huge blessings since I got here. My companion told me that this week we did more missionary work than he did in one of his transfers in Bad Axe. This week is scheduled to be even better.  Our key indicators were amazing!
Well I gotta go
 Bye I love you have a good day!
Don't get shot!
--
- Elder Truman Rex Crockett

Tuesday, July 19, 2016

Transferrrrrs!

We got our transfer calls and I am staying and E.Kratz is leaving. No shock he was here for 6 months and I was going home. That was my last transfer call. I have 6 weeks left. E.Quintana the last missionary I trained Got a transfer call up to Alpena, the area where I was trained! he had a million questions and I spent most of my email time telling him people to hunt down. "son" is going to fix up his "father's" mistakes. 
I think I can accomplish my goal! It's still difficult and not secured but I think it can work out. Currently I have 6 people on date to be baptized and 6 progressing investigators. There is alot of work for these people but I think I can make it, But i am not going to be devastated if I don't make it because I would rather they be converted than only having a testimony and being baptized and going less active.
I love how in PMG under Gospel dispensations it talks about prophets learning things by revelation; I mean they use the scriptures to teach it but they learn it from revelation. I see that ALL THE TIME! All of the big truths I cling to I learned in that way and later found scriptures to back it up to teach to people. I had that happen a million and a half times. It happened with the Godly Sorrow thing, I read Repentance in True to the faith and it says in black and white super clear that it instills a desire. =p Before I could infer that from other things but that was undebateable. But it sure does help when you have the right resources that can straight up give you the answers to all of your questions!
We had so much success this week! I am way too blessed to be here! I don't know if it's I racked up so much Persecution points my whole mission that I now have to cash them all in before I end, so thats why I only see miracles or.... Church is true here! Especially when you drive a 2016 Ford Fusion! I honestly feel like I don't deserve this much success but Everything has been working in our favor! 
E. kratz door knocked into a guy months back and he gave him a pass along card. We got a call a month or so ago and he said he had to do a report on a religion in one of his college classes and so he wanted to interview us. We agreed. He interviewed us about our personal lives, our family lives, the Mormon lifestyles, and beliefs of our church, church organization, how it came to be... 

He had an LDS friend growing up, his friend never talked about the gospel and he decided to study us since we showed up. He is agnostic, But NEVER has any other religion ever made sense or had him feel like this before, and he used to go to school for religion major of a sort and tried many churches before he lost his beliefs. 

We went hard in our interviews, we had 2 of them, the first one we taught him the plan of salvation along with all of his questions about us, and we taught the restoration the second one. He went to church and was fascinated on how we actually respect communion (the sacrament), he learned about temples there, and everything made such sense.  =p.

He finished his report. Got a 97% on it because he was so fascinated by it he couldn't stop thinking about it. We shot him a text after his report was turned in and asked if he read the Book of Mormon that we gave him. He said he did and there was a thing that really meant alot to him from it. He wanted to ask us more about it not over text, so we went back to the church to meet with him yesterday. We picked him up as a investigator yesterday. 
We will have taught 13-14 lessons this week by the end of today, most with member present, 2 are less active lessons. and we still got like 11-12 hours of door knocking and 2 p-days in there! This week has been number 1! I think next week will be better too. Since we will have the car all week long, no p-days, and many appointments. 
pray that I can accomplish my goal of helping 20 people join the church before I end my mission. Because no matter how ridiculously good =p I am at missionary work, there is no way I can accomplish that feat but only by Gods power can I! 

 I should be getting my new companion Monday
I gotta go clean the apartment and do something fun
Bye I love you!
Have a good day!
Don't get shot!
- Elder Truman Rex Crockett

Monday, July 11, 2016

4 baptisms in 7 weeks. I can do this!

THis week has been pretty sweet! Full day p-day for the 4th of july, zone confrence (took a whole day basically), Maria's baptism (which I made it to miraculously) 

I heard from E.Quintana that Maria was getting baptized this saturday and that she wanted me there for it. I didn't really do anything about it right away because I figured it was best that I waited until correlation for ideas on who could give me a ride to Kalamazoo. We had 2 lessons scheduled though on accident right before correlation that would make us way late for the meeting. We went to the first one and we had to sprint on our bikes to be 5 minutes late to the second one. We had it planned to be at the public library and we walked all around the library and couldn't find him for once. And so we decided to head out to correlation. 

The second we stepped outside of the library The bus pulled right up. We ran and I waved it down and it stopped and gave us the time we needed to unlock our bikes and put them on the bus. If we didn't make that bus that would have probably caused me to not be able to go the baptism. It was a miracle in it's self that I was able to come to the baptism.
With Maria joining the church this week I am pretty sure I can accomplish my goal of helping 20 people join the church, but it is still gonna be pretty difficult, How many people do you know got 4 baptims in less than 12 weeks start to finish? (not all one miracle super prepared family either) I think about it so much! I pray about it like 30 times a day. But as of yesterday I now have 4 people on date, it's just a matter of getting them there.
Maria's baptism was awesome! I heard parts of the story that I had never heard before. She told us about before I knocked on her door. She saw us walking down the street and she kept telling her son to stay away from the door so she wouldn't have to answer it. SHe told him that several times. But I came and knocked on the door and he ran up and lifted the curtain up from behind the glass door and I waved at him (like I usually do when I see people peek from their windows and try and hide and be sneaky so I don't see them). Maria thought "great.... Now I have to talk to them...." 

she prepared a statement on how she is Catholic and not interested but when she opened the door we were glowing. We radiated something she wanted and we helped her see there was things that she didn't know so even though she prepared to shut us down it didn't work and she accepted =p. As she walked away the verse of scripture was brought to her mind from Heb 3:7,15 (or Psalms 95:8-10, or Jacob 6:6 as she later found out it was a combination of such). 
You have heard the rest of her story though. But to add more to what I said in the past... Before the baptism I talked to her and she told me that she posted on facebook that she was being baptized and invited others to it, all she got persecuted hard online for it. She got a email the night before she was baptized from a friend that was full of anti literature. It really got to her and she knelt down and prayed about it. She layed awake most of the night because of it. She decided she would pray about it in the morning. 

She woke up and all of her worries about the anti was gone, and she realized how stupid it all was and how not true it was, Maria thought of all of the changes and all of the love she felt from God as she followed our teachings and the power of God that did many miracles to help her get to where she is. She knew Satan had his one last struggles to try and derail her, but she didn't give in. I have never taught anyone who was persecuted more than her to try and stop her from joining. 

I arrived and saw that she was in a White dress, the very thing she wore in her dream and watched her walk into the font with E. Quintana (who she always told that he looked very familiar to her). I got to see her vision fulfilled, in the very font that she dreamed of. 

I gave my departing testimony at Zone Conference this last week. We get our transfer calls this week, it will be my last t-call, I have so much I need to do and learn still! We get 2 p-days this week =p I am pretty sure my companion will be transferred. 
Yesterday I took a RM who used to be the Assistant to President like 10 months back, he is back in the area until the week I go home, for work. So we took him out teaching and for a first in a long time actually learned from a "trade off" I haven't learned anything about missionary work from tradeoffs in the past few months, I tend to teach more than I learn (and I try hard to learn from them!!! I am not just prideful and unteachable), It was healthy =p. He had a mind like I do in finding truth from every one and he had some awesome insights!

I have a investigator who is dying to be baptized but we have to keep rescheduling his appointments... He would be baptized tomorrow if he could, but we haven't even hit a commandment yet. He came to church yesterday.
We have another lady who I door knocked into my first day here, we have been teaching her in her fellowshippers home, she loves her fellowshipper! She came to church yesterday too and should be coming to a "empty nesters"  event at the church where they feed me (=p) and share messages and have fun. SHe hasn't accepted a date yet but I am certain she will join before I leave.
Another couple are also doing well, I believe they can join before I leave too, they love us like family! The only problem there is our lessons have been WHAKO and I have been fighting 4 people trying to keep us on track and not speculating about other worlds and who lives on them and Jesus visiting them and...and... If we can get them to live the Word of WIsdom and truly repent they already have been taught these things are true and they both agreed to being baptized. I believe they can make it before I go, IF SATAN STOPS GETTING US TO WASTE TIME IN OUR LESSONS WITH THEM!! I am so fired up about that last lesson. 
And a lady From Kalamazoo should join this transfer, They are trying to get her husband to be worthy to baptize her and they are both working on the word of wisdom together, from the sounds of it they are really pumped about it too. 
 Sorry I am out of time and I realized I didn't write any good stories, but all I can think about is my goal and doing the Most good that I can before I can't do this full time. 

Well I gotta go, 
Bye I love you
Have a good day!
--Elder Truman Rex Crockett

Thursday, July 7, 2016

Too tired but still obedient

I found out this last week that one the investigators who I taught and put on date that joined the church, one of his kids join the church this last month, I only taught his son once because he was taught by another set of missionaries over at his moms house, but he always seemed to be around and was really goofy and gave some of my dance moves a run for it's money. =p

I forgot to mention to you as well that this area has Sr. missionaries here too. They are not assigned to my area but they live 3 buildings down and we see them at church when the spanish branch comes in. So this week on our p-day we went over and spent some time with them to get to know them better. They are only serving for 6 months and this is their last month.

Mom, no I havn't gotten my birthday present yet. you know 2 months later ha ha =p. There is a Zone conference this week and I will get it there though.

Maria my investigator from Kalamazoo is being baptized this week. I may or may not be able to get there for it.

There is like 6 members here who has approached me and said that they used to live in Mesa, all of them knew people who I know and was able to tell me about changes in our stake that even I didn't know.
It's crazy here, it is so much like home. The houses look nothing like mesa, but the city looks like gilbert with all the grass and trees and organization just not as nice as gilbert, alot of my area has houses that a new family would live in or old people. But there has been so many times where my heart would drop to the floor because where i was looked exactly like a place from back home and I was shocked thinking I was at home or in Arizona.
I asked every missionary I know in other missions about family history and none of them had answers on how to use it in door knocking...
We had to many things planned thursday morning so we weren't able to do weekly planning at it's usual time. It became a back up for our last appointment after dinner. The appointment fell through and we did weekly planning right before we did our planning for the next day. So while planning I got sick of my study chair that was stolen from relief society I believe and I layed on the couch. That day we rode like 10 miles on bikes and it was hot... So i fell asleep during weekly planning on accident. I opened my eyes 2 seconds later any my companion was talking to our district leader on the phone I asked what step of planning we were on and he said he finished weekly planning AND nightly planning. I thought I only had my eyes closed for a second but... nope it was like a hour later =p. So i was tired and planning was already done, and hey I was already comfy So i closed my eyes and was out in like a minute and just slept on the couch.
I woke up the next morning. I was in my bed though, wearing everything:shirt, tie, name tag, socks, tie clip, wallet, planner, pen... My companion informed me that when it hit 10:30ish pm I got off the couch and kneeled down by my bed (which I never do without changing) and slept until my watch beeped that it was 11 which is when I normally wrap up my long nightly prayers and I got in bed and slept. =p ha ha I don't remember it at all! Who knew you could get so trained in the missionary schedule that that could happen. Even when I sleep I am obedient! ha ha =p all i ever dream about is missionary work anyways...
We had a lesson with our investigator (the one who almost died in child birth) we have gotten her husband involved in the lessons now and he is interested, so this last lesson we taught him the plan of salvation. He doesn't like Christians or religions and hates what people think about God and hates mainstream Christianity. But His mind was blown when it came to the plan of salvation and it all was things that he inherently seemed to believe (minus the kingdoms of glory). 
 
There was times that he stood up to yell at and throw his dog in a room where he left us and his wife outside in their garden to talk. This was her second time going through the plan of salvation and she wouldn't stop talking about how much of a difference the plan of salvation makes to her, and how it has helped make her life make sense. At one point in the Lesson her husband went off on a rant on how is dog is stupid and dreams and rolls around and and does stuff while it dreams and then he turned and said that his new daughter does the same thing too. 
 
He talked about how his daughter doesn't open her eyes  or ever see anything and doesn't understand anything and or know anything, but when she sleeps she will smile and and find great joy in her sleep. It didn't make sense to him at all how could she find joy in her dreams if she has seen or experienced nothing except maybe a little light through her mommy's tummy. She then kicked in and explained like a tender loving mother would to a young kid "She lived with God before now and she dreams about life with him" The spirit touched my heart at that moment. I determined at that point she truly does have a testimony and probably would join before I finished my mission.

All I can think about is my goal of helping 20 people join the church before I finish my mission. Pray that I can accomplish it! It's in every prayer, fast, study, determining plans for my day....

I sat and realized how much I love Michigan, I watched fire works sunday night from my window and just thought about when I flew in to Michigan, when I flew over the grand canyon, when I saw endless water and trees from my window..... I had no clue any this could have happened  2 years! I am so grateful for it and for the hell I went through, and for the.......

ak! I am late!
Bye!
--
- Elder Truman Rex Crockett