late

Hola,


Sorry I wasn't able to write yesterday. We went to our usual place to email and it was closed for the Holidays so we had to find another place to email. It was a fun preparation day though. The whole district got together and we played volleyball at the church and then we watched a home-made movie by Elder Krahenbuhl's family, which was hilarious! I have been so blessed to be in a district where all of the missionaries get along and we can do things like that together. The preparation day before that Brother Boliver, our Ward Mission Leader, took us out to hike a hill with a bunch of ancient writing on it, probably from just after Christ's Death. Guess who was on this continent about that time :-)

We are looking forward to another great week of missionary work. It was so great to call home, or Skype, and talk to our families and now we are even more motivated to be incredible missionaries. This may end up being a trying week as well though. It feels like because we have been blessed with so much success Satan is trying hard to slow us down and we are having some very unexpected let downs. But just like Joseph Smith said, the most tribulation will come when we are accomplishing the most good, and there is a lot of good happening in Belen right now. So I suppose I should take those trials to mean that we are doing what we are supposed to, and we should feel it a type of compliment.

Have an amazing New Years celebration, and remember all the hard working missionaries when you are thinking of your resolutions. We could always use the extra help finding those who are prepared to meet with us :-)

Love,

Elder Inman

Merry...

...Christmas!!


Christmas in Belen New Mexico is going to be great as a missionary :-) There are probably very few times that are better for sharing the gospel, we get lots of great food (which will not help with how out of shape I am), and I get to Skype with my parents and siblings. It will be fun for Elder Krahenbuhl and I to spend our first Christmas away from home in such great circumstances. Thank you to everyone that has sent me Christmas cards as well!

Roy and Creta were baptized on Saturday and then were confirmed yesterday! I wish you all could have been there, but it was great as it was. We showed up early with the ward mission leader, Brother Boliver, to fill the font and get the chairs set up and were surprised to find a musical production going on in the room. Turns out there was a scheduling conflict and they would finish right as the baptism was supposed to start. We were really stressed out but decided to just move the baptism talks into another room and then get up and move rooms for the actual ordinance. We were really blessed and everything came together perfectly for a beautiful baptism. Both Creta and Roy were happy and excited and despite their many physical problems they comfortably were submerged into the water without any problems. I wish pictures could convey how happy all of us were. And what added to it was that just a couple days before the baptism we had given Roy a priesthood blessing and healed him of his dreams caused by PTSD. Now we get to spend Christmas Eve with them :-)

One more fun thing to share before I sign off for today. It is a big focus in our mission, and I am pretty sure in every mission, to become better teachers. They have pointed out that most of us know the doctrine well but are not able to share it effectively. As they traveled the missions world wide they said that most missionaries rank a 2 (on a scale of 1-6) when it comes to teaching ability. They produced some amazing videos and study materials to train us and help us improve as a result. The videos are supposed to be used in each district meeting, but not to much outside of that. President Miller has felt inspired and received guidence to see what would happen if missionaries were exposed to the videos more often, and my district has been selected to be the first to test it out. We now each have a TV/DVD player in our apartment with the videos running every minute that we are home, and in 2-3 weeks he will see how much we have improved as teachers. From the sounds of it we are expected to become the best teachers in the mission. I will let you all know how it goes and what I learn. I am confident that his promise is inspired and feel very blessed to have such an amazing opportunity!

I love you all and am enjoying my mission completely,

Elder Inman

um...some catching up!

So between David's sparse letters and my inability to get them on his blog we are making up for a few weeks now...sorry!

The most recent is at the end...

From November 22

 

My old district, and burning the flag for our dying district leader ( He was going home)

 

From November 29th

These are just some fun pics :-)

My district and I went hiking on the Mesa last Preparation day. One of the missionaries, Elder Ehlen, was sick and when we got to the top said he couldn't walk anymore. I ended up having to carry him on my back for the mile hike down, and by the end I could barely walk myself, which is why I look so worn out in the pic by the truck. No one else could carry him. Great work out though :-)

Hey everyone,


Sorry I missed last week, I just didn't have the time I needed. This past week has been so eventful, and I still don't have the time to tell you everything that has been going on, but I will try to hit on a couple big ones.

K and A got baptized on Saturday( I don't want to put children's names on here...). If I remember I will try to put the pictures on here so you can see who they are. We have been working with K for a couple weeks now and he was completely ready for making that covenant. He said that he spent 2 hours shining his shoes the night before, even though they were brand new and had never been worn. His uncle came down and was able to baptize him, and a lot of family were able to attend. A is a 9 year old girl from Los Lunas who was also being baptized at the same time, so we combined the baptisms. I was actually the person who baptized her, which is why I am in white in the pictures. Something you may have noticed by now is that I have never baptized anyone on my mission. That is because my trainer taught me that it is far better for either family or someone from the ward to do that so they have that connection with someone who won't be transferred out, thus helping them remain active. It is selfish for a missionary to baptize their converts. Each time someone has asked me to perform the baptism I explain this to them and ask them to pray about someone in the ward to do it instead, and they have always done so and received an answer. With A I was the one who interviewed her for baptism, and afterwards she asked her grandparents and the missionaries in her area if I could perform her baptism. When I was asked I explained it to her as well and asked her to pray about someone else to do it, and then she came back and said she still felt that she wanted me to do it. I am not sure why I was supposed to perform it, but it was a wonderful experience and I will be sure to visit her when I travel back through the mission later on.

I get so confused about who I have told you about, but I hope I have mentioned Roy enough for you to know who I am talking about now. Roy had given up smoking to be baptized and lost all urges to smoke, just as we had promised. It was a miracle, and he and his mom (60 and 80 years old) were both nearing baptism. But even though all of the urges had left he started smoking again because his PTSD dreams got so bad when not smoking that he couldn't sleep. He went through some very horrible things in Vietnam and has never been able to heal from it. We have been fasting and praying for him and finally received the answer for what we needed to do with him, but it was such an amazing answer that it took further prayer to assure us it was really inspired. Yesterday after church we finally sat down with him and after a very powerful lesson we told him what he needed to do. We have asked him to stop smoking right away and to meet with us on a daily basis for the next two weeks. Each day for these two weeks we will be teaching him and giving him a priesthood blessing. We warned him that as he does this his dreams will grow dramatically worse and it will be a very trying period for him, one that he will not enjoy. We then promised him that at the end of the two weeks we will anoint him with oil and heal him of those dreams through the priesthood power. This is even more incredible when you realize that these have been plaguing him for the past 40 years. His mother, who was present, told him that she knows whatever we promise will happen and that the church is true (she has only had the first lesson and has already given up coffee and is very excited for baptism). Through tears he told us that he considers us his sons and trusts us with his life, and that he will do anything we ask of him. He then broke his cigarettes and handed them to us knowing it will be the last one he will ever hold. Please pray for him! I know the promise is real, but this will still be very difficult on him and I hate seeing him depressed after horrible violent dreams that chase any chance of sleep away. He is also threatened with a blood clot breaking loose and killing him very soon, so stress and fear are attacking him around every corner. I care about him so much, and am growing more and more thankful for the blessing of holding the authority of God and being able to command in His name, as well as the atonement that makes all of this possible.

I wish I could tell more, but I am already over on time and have to get going.

I love you,

Elder Inman
PS, we find out transfers this Saturday, and we are a little nervous about it. We both want to stay so badly!

This last week...

Hey everyone,

Transfer news came in and my companion and I are staying together in Belen! Most of my district is staying together too, which is great because we are doing really well together. This next transfer is going to be amazing, and I'm hoping it will even beat last transfer :-)

Roy is still not smoking and we are growing close to the time when he will be healed. He and his mom are both very excited for baptism and both love coming to church. Roy even went out and bought a new suit, shirts, and ties and beamed as he walked into church yesterday wearing them. I love seeing them so happy. We are going out to eat with them tonight and them we are going to go to Creta's house and watch the new Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration DVD. We just got it last week, and we watched it with another investigator and the spirit was almost over whelming. I am not a big fan of crying in front of people but its impossible for me to keep tears from falling during this movie.

Well I am going to go ahead and close this one for the day. Ill be back next week to update on the miracles of my mission!

Love,

Elder Inman