Working in the Lord's Vinyard

September 15, 2014

This week has started off with the best lesson I've ever had on my mission :) It really showed me that perseverance and hard work pays off. There was a woman called Sara who we've been stopping by and trying to set appointments with lately. The first time we stopped by her and her son came to the door and seemed interested, so we explained briefly about the restoration. The son piped up that he believed in Jesus Christ and Heavenly Father. So we gave the mother a restoration leaflet and the son a plan of salvation leaflet and set a time to come back. When we came back the Father (Scott) was the only one home. We chatted to him a bit and he mentioned that he loved Americans because of how happy we were. We eventually came to the subject of the Gospel and he told us about his late father and the confusion that stemmed from that. We taught him of the plan of salvation and set a time to come back. When we came back, no one was home, but we were about 5 minutes early so we decided to wait. When the time we had set up rolled around a car pulled up to the driveway and Sara stepped out. She rushed into her house and we had a brief conversation with her autistic son while we waited. When she came back out she said that she was in a rush and that she had no time to talk, but we set up a time for us to come back. The only time that we both had free was today (Monday) at 10:30 am. We decided that since we didn't have any investigators and since we really wanted to teach this family of four which all sounded like they had been prepared to receive the gospel, that we could sacrifice some Pday time to teach her. We went today to find them home and ready for our lesson! We went into their observatory and started talking a little bit about the family. We came to find out that the oldest son (nearly 17) had had some serious brain surgery when he was a newborn. Their other son (12 years old) was a pretty amazing kid. According to her, this son, Caleb, just simply radiated goodness. He was always looking out for others and could never stand to see others in pain or suffering. He would stand up for other kids at school, despite him not being the most impressive human being, and he would always help those in need. She said that he always seemed to have this feeling about him, whenever he was around she felt good and happy, a sort of warm feeling inside and that whenever he was in the room he seemed to emanate it. She also said he always came to his teachers with deep religious and philosophical questions about life and that he would think about these things a lot. She said that when we came to the door that day and left the materials that we did, they soaked up the information and that it answered a lot of questions and stirred a whole lot more questions within him. When he came to his teachers at school with these questions they had to eventually just say that they didn't have time to answer all of the questions he had and the teachers actually ended up talking to his mom (Sara) about it. We told her that we would love to come back when Caleb could be there and we could answer all of his questions. She committed to come to church with Caleb, to read and pray about the Book of Mormon and to a return appointment. The Spirit was present for the whole lesson and I can't wait to come back next Monday (again the only day she's free). I know that this family has been prepared to receive the gospel and I can't wait to teach Caleb as well.

ummm that's about the most exciting thing that happened. It's been cool to see this area pick up as I've worked in it. sadly I think I'll be leaving next week, but It's been cool to see it transform into a productive area. I think that's everything!! I love you guys tons and I'll let you know where I go when I find out next week!

Love

Elder Sorensen

Obedience

September 8, 2014

Yesss!! Well hopefully the next time you finish the BOM I can be there for it. It would be cool to have scripture study over Skype when I go back to university.

YUP! haha I'm no longer afraid to bare my testimony, I do it every day to people who don't want to hear it, so doing it in sacrament meeting is a breeze.

The shoes fit perfectly and they're awesome!! Thank you so much! I was actually thinking about getting some new shoes, but now there's no need! We are in a branch, but President Retallick is a counsellor in the stake presidency.

This past week was pretty awesome. I had a bit of revelation about obedience. I've never been seriously disobedient and I've never done anything too crazy, but I've also never been one to be completely stressed over the rules either. If it came to it I would usually let a lot of things slide. I think a lot of that attitude has come from having so many companions who are so disobedient, but I can't use that as an excuse. I've always had my free agency and every mistake I've made has been of my own free will and choice. This past week though I was listening to a talk ( actually an audio book I think) by John Bytheway while riding the bus out to an area. The talk was called "how to be an extra-ordinary missionary". Something he said about obedience really struck me deep in my soul. He said ordinary missionaries obey because they ought to and extra ordinary missionaries obey because they want to. I realized that all of my obedience in the past had been out of duty and a lot of the time almost grudgingly. Needless to say I did a lot of thinking and reflecting on how I had been acting and treating my calling. I offered a prayer of repentance and I felt amazing. I felt so happy and light and just incredible! And the feeling has stayed since! It is so amazing how a simple change in perspective on things has changed my entire outlook on the mission rules and it has truly affected me in such a positive way. It shows as well in how Heavenly Father is blessing us with more lessons and appointments now than I've ever had before in Evesham it's pretty awesome. Our investigators right now are Mike and Jenna. Mike is very much an analytical investigator and isn't really in it with any real intent. We're thinking about dropping him soon. We'll have two more lessons with him, but if he is still showing zero signs of softening his heart we'll have to drop him. As of right now he's really just in it for the debate rather than for really wanting to find out if it's true. Which, I'll debate all day, but it'll get us nowhere. Jenna, on the other hand is a lot more promising, we are hopefully going by her on Thursday and we're going to clear some things up about the plan of salvation for her. Please pray that we will know what to do about Mike and that we'll be able to help Jenna progress.

I'm in the process of sorting through about 35 gigs of talks right now that I got from Elder Allen and deciding which one to put on my ipod haha I'm also converting some bible videos to put on there. I'm really annoyed with boots pharmacy right now. I took my sleep med prescription in there and they still haven't let me know if it's in yet. I went in a couple of days ago and they said they were having issues getting it. it's starting to freak me out that I've probably only got 2 weeks left here in Evesham....Half of me really wants to stay and Half of me is ready to move on. Idk. Whatever happens happens.

Love you guys!!!!!

Elder Sorensen

Personal Growth - It Happens

August 26 – September 23

We’ve been sick for a few days now, all the prayers are welcomed. I've been really bored just sitting around the flat. I really really hate it. There's nothing worse than just sitting around all day. It also felt really wrong not being at church on Sunday. I'm going to be a lot happier when we can get back out of the flat again. Yeah, President Retallick gave me a blessing on Sunday, they also brought us some food and tissues, they are pretty awesome at taking care of us :)

We taught Fred on Thursday and had quite an interesting lesson with him. It was really annoying because he just basically kept refusing to feel the spirit. We're trying to decide whether or not to keep teaching him. He basically just see's our visits as philosophical discussions. We'll probably teach him a few more times and see how it goes. It's always difficult to know when to drop someone, especially because we don't have a whole lot else going on.

Things with my companion are good!

Rumors about me... It's just that I'm nasty in general. That I'm prideful and judgmental and rude and all this. Like I said it's just because the only things people hear about me come from past companions and since I haven't gotten along with them and quite frankly sometimes ended in big fights, they typically don't have anything nice to say about me. I can say though that it has taught me a lot of lessons in the effects spreading rumors and gossiping can have. Not to mention a lot of self-realizations and a lot of things I need to work on. I just wish that my companions would have told me all of these things instead of telling everyone else apart from me.

Yeah, I really loving singing and playing and all that jazz. It's really fun, but I get really critical of myself with it. I really want to take voice lessons when I get back.

We're feeling back to 100% now! ready to go out and work. Things are good with my companion, he is quite patient so that helps haha. YES I got the shoes and the Cheetos...... please don't ever spend 20 dollars on a bag of Cheetos again... ever. Thank you so much for the packages! you really don't need to buy me things to tell me you love me though. I know you guys do :)

I'm enjoying my time here, but I really am looking forward to a change in scenery. I don't have any more pictures right now, but I should have some soon enough. We're having a district Pday today and we're going BOWLING!!! YESSS! I love bowling. That's awesome that you are trying to be healthier. That's one of the big things that I've learned since being here. When you eat healthy and live healthy you have more energy and you're so much happier and confident. This week should be a good one. We've got a lot of stuff scheduled so we should be happy and back on our feet again starting tomorrow! There's not really much to say about last week, we were sick from Saturday 2 weeks ago until Friday last week. We made it out of the flat for a couple things that we needed from the store from time to time, but that was about it. We had a couple of members bring us food, which was really nice. This is definitely a ward that I'm going to want to come back and visit. Last week made me realize just how important studies really are. There were a couple of days when I just slept and sat around the whole day and completely forgot to study. I was feeling completely terrible and didn't have the heart to pick up anything to read, but when I finally did I noticed a HUGE difference in how I was feeling as well as my mindset. I really have grown to love my personal studies. I hope I can continue to study like this at home, but I'm afraid that life will get busy again and it'll move to the background of my priorities. I really don't want that to happen.

Well anyways I'm off to go bowling with the district!

Love you guys!!!!

Elder Sorensen