February 27, 2012

Not to put salt on a sore wound or anything but shoot I wanted the boys to get to state. This is the first year in a long time we won't have a team up there. Bummer. Dylan and Matt you better work your tails off so you can play together next year and rock it! That's awesome that the Stokes are in the ward! I love those guys. That was sad to hear about Zero, but he is happy now. I had like 3 dreams this week about Gunner and Maverick...dang. haha Probably because New Mexico has a million dogs everywhere! Tons of coyotes too. I actually had an investigator call me and ask us if we wanted to go hunt coyotes with him. Sadly, I said no. There are a ton of big time hunters here. I can talk to anybody. I'm going to hook us all up don't you worry. That bald eagle is legit! I can see Cliffs truck (White Fury) in the background. That's awesome!

So this week was sorta a trying week I guess you could say. Not very many good things went our way. At one point driving home at night we rolled down the windows and yelled as loud as we could for as long as we could. I recommend it to everybody of all ages, because it felt great! So Dylan, just let out a good ole yell about all your frustrations, it helps. Most Evey single one of our appointments canceled on us this week, and both those awesome families said they need a little time to think.... We were able to teach a lady by the name of Angela though, I am not sure if I told you about her or not. She has cancer, and has been fighting it for a while, she has two sons Jay and Jared 19 and 16. She recently went through a nasty divorce. Anyway we've been able to teach her twice and she seems to be solid! She has a bap date for march 17. We're hoping to extend that invitation to her sons this week as well. They are awesome. Jay is going to try and walk on at a JC this fall and play basketball. We're actually going to play with him sometime. It's gonna be sweet. We taught a guy this week who just moved here from Nigeria! It's way cool. As of right now only Angela and her two boys are our investigators that are progressing, which really stinks! We are going to change that though you can count on it. We're going to make this next week rock! We have Zone conference this Friday which I am looking forward too. President Miller is so awesome, he's amazing!

Well nothing really too exciting happened this week. Which I guess is a lie because really everyday is exciting! Every day miracles happen in one way or another. Even though it was a slow week if you look back and really think about all that happened it was a lot. My companion did get a little trunky this week darn him. He goes home in two months. He snapped out of it fast though and I'm no too worried about it. Actually if he had it his way he wouldn't go home. You guys all have a great week! I love you all!

Elder Turnbow

Oh ya, we did have a crazy guy yell at us and tell us to run for our lives because he practices witchcraft and worships the devil. you could tell too. Don't mess with that stuff is all I have to say about that.

Ya'll be good now ya hear?! Peace!

February 22, 2012

Hi family,

So we got permission to come back today during lunch for a minute to email because we literally got two minutes. I was actually able to read your emails and I loved them all! Thanks for the emails. Sounds like things are fine and dandy in Idaho! My statement is still true about Soda, I was very angered and about stood up and kicked my chair when I read that, but I remembered my name tag... So what did I do? The obvious thing of course, I took it off, stood up, tossed the chair across the room, and then grabbed another chair and sat back down. How cool would that have been? Besides being an apostate missionary, pretty cool I think! Nah but I better hear they made it to state, they are too good a team ta not make it.

So like I said this last week was pretty slow, but it still had some way awesome experiences. We were able to give 6 blessings. I had never actually given a blessing before, and wow I didn't realize how incredible it was to give one. Way sweet! Now for that real cool experience. When I was with Elder Ballif and Elder Hunter (Spanish Elders) We were together because our comps were in ABQ at a meeting. So we are all fresh and new still. Well we were teaching a family, and it was in Spanish,( I contributed very little) but I could understand most all of it actually. Well we ( they) started teaching them the Plan of Salvation and even though I couldn' t quite understand everything it just didn't feel right, and then BAM, Elder hunter switched the lesson to baptism and it felt awesome! I felt the spirit in Spanish! It was pretty cool. I really wish I could speak Spanish. I am going to try and learn. English speaking is a ton harder than Spanish though we found out. EVERY SINGLE SPANISH PERSON LETS THE ELDERS IN! Which is awesome for them, but the white folk... haha no way! Elder Hunter actually got in an argument at a white Catholic's door step and ended up storming away very angry... I actually stepped in though and got us a return appointment. Oh it was funny though! Elder Hunter wasn't used to mean folk, and stubborn Catholics or Baptists or JW's who just wanna bible you to death. He was used to getting into every house and then getting cake or something! Which we did a lot that day.

Well we have an appointment here in a bit so we gotsta go. It was nice to read all the emails and thanks for the pics Ben and Court. That trip sounded pretty legit Ben, and fun! Well you all take care and have a great week! Good luck Dylan ya better win!

Elder Turnbow

PS. Rumor has it that the first round of the NCAA tourny is going to be here in NM? Way cool! And that New Mexico beat UNLV last week who was ranked 11th in the nation? Hmm. It's hard not to learn these things when it's a really good conversation starter :)

OH! One of the ladies I was able to give a blessing to is Mitt Romney's cousin! She's incredible. Some way rich people live here and she is one of them. She is writing a book, has a radio talk show, and founded that really big thing Womens Voices. Ever heard of it? I guess it's a really big thing. I wish I could tell you every little thing about the mission cause there is a TON of stuff! Guess I'll just have to bore you for days on end when I get home. haha Good stuff!

February 21, 2012

HEY!

What is up family? I have basically two minutes of time til the library closes so I will make this short. From your emails you wrote you know everything was closed yesterday because of Presidents Day.

I hate Soda.

This week was kinda slow. Elder Willden almost died... he decided to throw up 10 times in 6 hours. So I studied for about 10 hours or so. Good stuff. Then I went to ABQ and espanola and went on splits with Elder Hunter (Spanish elder) it was awesome. I can understand a ton of Spanish! Now I'm on splits with elder Espinosa.

I have to go. News for the week... you have not eaten a real navajo taco until you eat a navajo taco made by a navajo... SO GOOD! Have a great week!

Elder Turnbow

February 13, 2012

What's up ya'll? I know we are rebuked when we talk in lingo as missionaries but I feel I can do it in email. It feels good!

Biggest news of the week, me and elder Willden found ten new investigators! two are families! We tracted into them all too. Way good stuff. When leaving the Flahives house one night we realized that they have a family proclamation to the world on their wall.... yeah... when they turn around it says "ELECT" on their back. They are so awesome. He played college football and they are avid frisbee golf players. They offered to take us some P-day, gonna be sweet! They will actually be a lot of work though believe it or not, his mother and family are very strong catholic. His best friend growing up was Mormon though, so he knows all about us, but there is one thing that he needs that is going to prick his heart, we just have to find it!

The other family is the Herreras. Talk about right place right time, when they opened the door and let us in all's they could say was "wow you came at the right time" Over and over again. He is currently out of work, and him and his wife just recently were thinking about finding a religion for their family! (2 year old son) So uh ya, that was amazing. We taught them about families and the restoration and the spirit was so strong! Holy cow, I can't wait to see what happens with them. They said they would be baptized if they for sure knew it was true. He is catholic but the mom grew up without a religion. She seems to already have a small testimony about everything though. Way saweet.

One more investigator I will tell you about is Cindy. I challenged her to be baptized during the first lesson and she committed! March 3rd! I am worried about her though, because she didn't come to church yesterday and seems to have a WOW problem and chastity problem. We are seeing her tomorrow though so we will see what's up.

So this week Elder Willden challenged me to pray for a certain gift of the spirit, study it, and do everything possible to obtain that gift. I chose gift of discernment. To help us be in the right place at the right time and to help us discern investigators needs. One day we had an appointment flake on us (which happens ALL THE TIME!) and our back up plan was to tract a certain street, well we started tracting it and it just didn't feel right, I could tell Elder Willden was feeling it to and when I asked him about it he said he felt it too. So we weren't sure what we were supposed to do but we started walking and I read a street sign "Valentine Loop" it just jumped out at me, we both new that's where we needed to be knocking. Long story short, 2 new investigators came from the loop. (One being the Herrera family) Another being Victor. Who is an avid hunter! All big game. Way awesome. He wants to take me coyote hunting.... haha. I wish! We also had 5 new potentials from that street and even 2 non member referrals! DANG! It was the right place at the right time.

I wish it was all success though. It's amazing how high you can feel during the day and then bam, you feel lower than the dirt.The people here are way stuck in their ways and very stubborn. Mostly being catholic. I HATE PEEP HOLES!! You knock on a door, you see the peep hole go dark, then light again, and the door never gets opened. Grr. People all the time lock their door and then walk away, or turn on the light, look outside, shut the light off, and walk away... I want to yell inside... that wasn't obvious! I know you're in there!!! There are some very very strange people here in Santa Fe, all different kinds. It's awesome. We made friends with the pastor of a baptist church and he invited us to bible study. Cool experience! Way weird feeling though. You could tell the pastor had told everybody we were coming because they tried as hard as they could to fellowship us into their church, and you could tell the pastor made some remarks and looked at us to see if we would say anything... but as much as we wanted to we never did. Me and Elder Willden don't study, We Talmage! I can't believe how much my thirst for knowledge has increased!

Well it's time for the Valentine bowl! Gonna be an epic game of football with the whole zone. I'm pumped! Tell the whole BBALL team they better kick some major trash this week! I love you all and the church is true!

Elder Turnbow

PS Thank you all once again for the updates on everything. Keep em coming. I wish I could talk about every little thing you inform me of but there isn't time. Thanks though!

February 6, 2012

Wow, I don't even know where to start....

We flew into Albuquerque Monday morning, (Frank, the very first thing I saw when coming out of the clouds was a golf course, and people were playing. Thought you might like that.) went to the temple and took a few pictures, went to the mission home for lunch, had interviews with President Miller and then that afternoon we were out knocking on doors! The first guy I talked to I thought he was going to hit me with a bucket... good stuff. So my trainer is Elder Willden! From Pokey. He's the bomb. If there is a scripture he doesn't know, I haven't found it yet. He's been serving for 21 months though, so in the mission lingo, I will eventually kill my father. I have told him that if he gets trunky on me I will slap him silly. We are serving in Santa Fe West! it's a new area, so we are opening it. Which is super awesome and super frustrating at the same time. Yes the Rockwoods are in my area which I am sure that you know about. haha It's legit!

So Santa Fe is sweet, but there is SOOO much potential here it's not even funny. With all the people that are here there should be like 4 wards and a stake center, but no, there is one small ward. It's about to take off though, we know it! The ward list is almost 13 pages long, but still only maybe 200 people are at church. We have been going through the ward list one page at a time to see what is going on. We've found over 10 bad phone numbers, over 5 people/families that have moved, and a TON of less actives. We are only on page 6.... So we have been visiting less actives and what not. Between me, Elder Willden, Elder Espanosa, and Elder White, (Santa Fe East elders) our goal is to make it so they have to split the ward. It can be done! We are really trying to get the ward and everybody here excited about missionary work because this won't be possible without the members.

The first couple of days were kinda tough because we moved into a new apartment which was completely empty. So we have done our best to make it a place to live. I miss my hot showers though... BUT! Elder Willden is an amazing cook, our first meal was chiken alfredo! We've also had scone type things, omelets, and one morning we made cinnamon rolls from scratch and took some to our neighbors upstairs, and she started crying. (No not because they were that bad Courtney, Brittin and Frank!) We are pretty sure she is a single mom with two young kids. We haven't been able to contact her again though but it is on our to do list. We do have a few investigators that we have been teaching, and we have tracted into a few. I will report all about that next week, hopefully some great things happen. Speaking of tracting, we sure have run into some interesting people! One guy we talked to on the street pretty much yelled at us for about 10 min straight. So in case you didn't know, apparently our church is false. ha! It actually was a testimony builder for me as weird as it sounds. because everything that angry man was yelling at us and accusing us of we had studied that morning in comp. study. So we could reply to all his crazy things. Plus like I said earlier Elder Willden has the whole bible memorized pretty much, and we were trying so hard not to bible bash with him. It finally ended with him yelling. " I shake the dust off my feet at you!" I felt sorry for the man, I sure hope he has a change of heart sometime. We also tracted into a gay couple... haha I picked up on it as soon as he started talking but my poor companion didn't... The guy finally had to tell him he was gay and I was trying so hard not to laugh. Oh Elder Willden! It's so hard not to get frustrated when people won't talk to you, I want to grab them by the shirt and say LISTEN TO ME!!!! grrr. We did hand out a lot of copies of the Book of Mormon and cards and set up some return appointments! We even placed a Spanish BOM! Cool stuff.

Cool quick story, we were teaching a man named Leroy and boy is he a lot of work. He went to school for like 20 years and thinks he knows so much about the bible and everything. His biggest thing is he doesn't believe he needs to be baptized by water, just fire. He's one of those guys who says he prays and prays and prays and says he's so humble more humble than we are. (Like the story of the publican) Anyway, he would never let us talk and when we would try he would butt in with something out of the bible or something. Needless to say I was getting very frustrated. So finally I just flat out stopped him and bore my testimony to him and told him to put aside all that knowledge he has, and I told him no, you aren't humble, and you will never get an answer to your prayers if you aren't. Well the spirit came into the room and we both know he felt it. So we closed and left. We checked up on him last night and he was a lot more willing to listen to us. It'll be interesting to see what happens.

Thanks for the updates on everything ma and pa. I'm glad that Court's temple experience was amazing, I knew it would be! The pictures of Benson are way neat. He's a stud. Mitch wrote me about his call, I'm so pumped for him! Dylan better get that back feeling better dangit. Tell him to hit a 3 for me next game, and Matt too.

Well I know a ton more things happened this week but I just can't remember all that I was going to say. I am so dang excited to be serving here! The people are awesome, the members of the ward are awesome, and I know the work is about to take off!! Ya'll have a great week and be good! I love you all!!

Elder Turnbow