supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

First- I took so many pictures to finaly catch lightning. Completely worth it though :-)

Second- The breakfast I made for Elder Thatcher last week on his B-day

Third- My desk right now. Not bad for a missionary huh

 Us having some fun in front of our truck on Pday :-) Today actualy

Hey,


I know, I know, technically supercalifragilisticexpialidocious is not really a word but it sounded like it fit this week pretty well. This is one of the most enjoyable weeks of my mission, and I wish I had a much longer amount of time to tell you all that happened, but I don't so I will go ahead and cheat with my tabs instead of paragraphs. Here it goes :-)

- The ward is incredible here! So far anytime we have needed someone to accompany us to an appointment there have been several people available. Plus they are actually willing to work on the missionary work in the ward, which is great relief after leaving my last area. After we reported on our progress for the week in P.E.C, which is a meeting for much of the leadership in the ward, they were excited and were willing to help in ANY ways we will need it this coming week. It is such a great feeling to be working in a ward that enjoys missionary work, is proactive, and shows love for their missionaries, probably more then we deserve. Yesterday a member of the bishopric came up to Elder Thatcher and I and told us how happy he is that we are in the ward, that we are showing him what should be expected of missionaries in the future, and then put his arm around an 8 year old boy and told him that he needs to be missionaries like us someday. That is one of the greatest compliments I have received on my mission so far!

- The work is progressing at a good rate, at least for our first full week here. We have a massive list of less-active members, part-member families, and former investigators that we are trying to get in contact with, and this week we only reached a small portion of that list. From this weeks work we were able to clean up a part of this list quite a bit, and we have several more people who are willing to meet with us to build there faith and work towards re-activity, and a couple new investigators to the church. I don't feel we are doing anything special in our work, but the Lord is very richly blessing us for the work we are doing. There is still a lot to be done before this area is booming with success, but I feel very blessed with the success we have already seen.

- We were able to attend the temple last Monday and received some great blessings as a result of the spirit that exists there. There were two people who I had been praying about a lot concerning how to help them progress towards baptism, and felt I was hitting a brick wall so I asked in prayer that I would receive the answers while going through the temple. I left the temple having received revelation of what we needed to do :-) Because of that revelation one of the investigators has made it her goal to be worthy of entering the temple herself after a very powerful lesson about temples accompanied by the testimonies and teachings of a couple in the ward. We will see the result of the other one this coming week, which both my companion are extremely excited about. It is great to see the miracles the Lord expects of us happening.

- We came up with the idea of bringing dog treats around with us so that we can get to more doors without being attacked. I tried it on a tiny chiwawa yesterday and its worked perfect, so we will see what happens with a doberman, lol.

Well I really have to get going because we still need to bring our truck into the shop to get our brakes worked on, and then finishing cleaning our house and organizing the names we need to visit.

I love you all,

Elder Inman

Hmmmmmmmmmm

Hola,


I have hardly any time, so I will make this really short and sweet. I love my area, my companion is awesome, and I know completely that this is where I am supposed to be at this time. I have felt so happy the past couple days that its getting close to ridiculous, lol. Belen is a small town of cowboys basically, but we cover quite a few small towns right now. Our area is about 20x35 miles, which is quite a change from the little 2x2 that I am used to in the city. It throws me back to memories of growing up in Rye all the time, and I am meshing really well with the people here. One of the families we are working with told me that the other missionaries didn't know who I was but they thought I would be a little city boy that couldn't help at all on the Ranch for service, but when they saw me they got excited and said they think I could out lift both of the missionaries combined and that I will fit right in. Good thing I have a strong handshake because around here that is how a lot of people measure us :-) Its a good change to be around good, honest country people who tend to be a little more hospitable at the doors, that is after we chase off the goats to even reach the door. The hard part is turning down going to rodeos or riding there horses around the ranges of hills.

The work here is pretty dead right now, but I am convinced that's just because it hasn't been worked right. There is so much potential here with the ward as well as with tracting. This coming week is going to be incredible for mission work in this area. We have one investigator, Barbara, who has progressed farther in the past week then for months before then, and we found someone else tracting who is showing good potential for moving forward. Even just this morning someone came up asking for money so we started talking to him about his situation and said that we don't have extra cash but would love to teach him how the restored gospel could help ease the burdens of his difficult life. He gave us his address and we are going to take some time out of our pday to go over and teach him.

Well I have to get going... But I love you all and am praying for you!

Elder Inman

PS, while cleaning our duplex we found a lizard and a tarantula, lol. I love it out here!

Stupefaction

Hey everyone,


I am pretty proud of my word for this week :-) The reason I used it is because we got transfer news a couple days ago and I was really surprised by it. Elder McCarroll and I were completely sure that he was getting transferred out and I was going to stay for a couple more transfers, but it turned out being the opposite. This is what we call a six week bullet in the mission. When I was receiving my transfer news the Elder telling me started off by saying that the area I'm being sent to is in need of good elders and that I will just have to work really hard and pray. Whenever they have to start with an explanation about the area it usually means its not a good thing. He told me that I am being double transferred into Belin because the missionaries who were there had severe disobedience problems and we needed to go in and regain the trust of the members and do our best to get the area up and running. When I told Elder McCarroll where I was going he started laughing out loud and said that it is one of the few areas that is more slow then where I am now. Since that time every other missionary I have told has given me about the same response.

The companion I will be getting is Elder Thatcher... Weird huh? It turns out when we took in some of the Arizona mission during our split we got an Elder Thatcher who happens to be a cousin the the Elder Thatcher I was companions with last transfer. No one knows anything about him, or even how long he has been out so I am excited to meet him. The great thing is that even though the area is considered horrible by most elders, I don't know my companion, and I am going to miss this area I am actually really excited for it. I know all transfers are inspired, but this is one that I feel comfort in the inspiration received and excitement about the work I am about to take part in. It is so incredible to see the hand of the Lord in this work, and the more I notice it the more I love being a part of it, no matter what part it is.

I love you guys,

Elder Inman

PS, from what I hear it is a truck area. That should be kinda cool.

Abasing

Hey everyone,

I thought I would go ahead and use a word typically found in the scriptures because when I think of my week that is a word that fits perfectly. I have been abased, and am so thankful for it. I was blessed with great success in Ventana Ranch, and I knew that it was a blessing and not solely my own hard work or obedience. However I still attributed some of the success and blessings to myself and how dedicated I thought I was, and I didn't even realize I was thinking that way until this past week when the Lord showed me that he does not need me for any of this work. It is a great blessing to be a part of it, and to be worked through, but if I wasn't here it would still be done. He has called me out here, partially, to learn and grow as a disciple but if there were no missionaries out here he could of course get the work done on his own.

My companion's foot finally healed enough to walk on it last Tuesday so we joyfully went out to work on our bikes. It seemed so fast compared to me pushing him in a wheelchair. The whole day went pretty well and we were able to get a lot accomplished and visit people we haven't been able to reach for some time now. One of the families we visited were pretty sick so we were able to comfort them and give a short lesson. Then later that night Elder McCarroll told me he was feeling a little ill and needed to go to bed early. Now it is a week later and he is still very ill and we have not been able to leave our apartment for more then a couple hours a day. As soon as he was healed from one thing something else happens and now we are going on three weeks of hardly being able to work at all.

This experience has taught me something amazing though. We have not been able to work much and yet the area is still picking up and we can see some success looming in the horizon. I don't know why we have gone through these series of unfortunate events, but I feel one of the reasons was to further teach me that this is the Lords work and not my own. If He wanted to he could do the missionary work here by himself but he is blessing me with the opportunity to be a part of it, and realizing this has helped me grow with great strides as a missionary. I love this work, and look forward to being able to spend all day out doing it. My companion is seeing a doctor soon so hopefully we will be healthy, strong, and ready to work soon.

Love,

Elder Inman