Resting

Hi everyone,

Saturday evening we got a call from a set of elders living near us letting us know that their toilet was clogged and overflowing, which was even worse news considering their duplex is two story and the toilet is upstairs. We rushed over after our ward activity was finished and saw dirty water dripping from their ceiling out of air ducts in their kitchen and living room. We agreed to help clean it up, turned the toilet water off, and then went to walmart to get much needed supplies- gloves, masks, and some drinks. Its took a few hours to get it adequately clean and I may be scarred for life because of the smell... We were blessed that we got to it before permanent damage was done. To make things even more interesting we had to prepare for a Rio Ranch stake training the next morning, which involved all members of ward councils throughout the entire stake, as well as a meeting we were holding with the Santa Fe stake presidency and our mission presidency later in the day. The Lord strengthened us and we were some how able to clean everything up, take part in a powerful training, and make great progress in our other Sunday meetings in Santa Fe and Rio Rancho, all off of five hours of sleep.

There have been several other emergencies and circumstances that have taken from our sleep this week and Elder Willden and myself have felt completely drained. We have been part of three large scale trainings, one exchange, three separate and crucial stake meetings, several emergencies with other missionaries, attending a wonderful baptism, and of course our regular load of finding and teaching within our own ward boundaries, while both of us were fighting off illness. With so many late nights and early mornings with exhausting days one after another we were getting sleep deprived to the point of not being able to think clearly or function normally, which is dangerous when a single lesson could effect a persons happiness so dramatically. So today we decided to skip our trip to Santa Fe for a day of sight seeing and replace it with hours of sleeping. I feel so much better and am ready for another amazing week!

Our exchange this week took me to the UNM singles branch to work for a day, and I loved being back on campus talking to people. The elder I was working with does not have much experience on campus yet so I was able to take him and show him how to talk with college students without looking like a weirdo. I had so much fun connecting with college students again and we spent hours contacting people in the main lobby on campus. Later in the day we were able to set up a time to meet with someone who I have not been able to see since serving in Belen. I had become friends with her through a family I grew close to while serving there and a few months after I left she had an incredible experience that helped her gain a testimony that this church is true. She got baptized just weeks before coming up here for college and she is on spiritual fire right now, very excited for what comes next in the gospel of Christ. My testimony continues to grow as I look back and see how the Lord had a plan for her all along, and though my part in it was small I am still able to see that He places people in our path for very special reasons and I feel blessed to see His hand in our work.

Love,

Elder Inman

PS, I have been having a lot of fun with those goofy "nerd" glasses you sent me in the package. I wore them to dinner the first night I got them and had a great laugh as the mom kept telling her kids how rude it is to make fun of my new glasses. I kept it up for at least 20 minutes until I couldn't hold back my laughs anymore and told her that her kids were right about them being fake. Then the next day, or maybe the same(its all a blur), we were in the car of one of my favorite investigators when I pulled the glasses out, put them on casually, and told him they were my driving glasses, even though he was driving. I could tell he did not want to embarrass me because after a quick double take he turned and stared strait ahead trying not to stare. I quickly told him I was kidding because I felt bad that he was being so nice about it. Thanks for the package!!

Hecticity

Hey everyone,

Hecticity is a new word that we learned/made up this week and it means that life is moving way faster then we think it should and we are having a hard time keeping up with it. It will probably be showing up in the dictionary soon enough so keep your eyes open for it... Elder Willden and I are both blown away that we are already over half way through this transfer and even though we have accomplished a lot we still do not understand how time has run by so quickly. We had training in the stake center near my greenie, first, area today and as I walked to lunch during break there were so many flashbacks from when I was a brand new missionary, and it does not feel long ago at all. At the end of training Elder Yardley, an awesome former companion of mine, gave his departing testimony and I realized again how short my time is as a missionary. Two years feels way to short!

So now that I am done with my sad ranting Ill tell a fun story from our training that took place today and yesterday. The training is for all of the new missionary trainers, district leaders, and zone leaders in the north part of the mission, which comes out to about 30 missionaries in attendance. During the two days of training the focus was on "Revelation through the Book of Mormon", "We Invite, They Commit, We Follow Up", "Teach People, Not Lessons", and "How to Begin Teaching", all of which are lessons now used in the MTC and throughout the world to help missionaries learn Peach My Gospel principles better. Three companionships were asked to prepare a training segment, Elder Willden and myself included.

As the first set of Elders did their training we were shocked that somehow their training was almost the exact same as ours. How does that happen??? So we took a short lunch and then used the rest of our break to go over what we were going to train on and tweak it just a little so that we could look somewhat original and keep the missionaries attention, and then jumped into our training. At the end of our training I pointed out that we do not collaborate together about how we are training and that our training being so similar meant that it was something God really wanted us to learn. After we finished training President Miller got up and echoed what we had said and the rest of the two days followed that same theme. I love that the Lord's hand is so evidently in this, his work!

I wish I could continue to tell you all about the miracles of this last week, but we have more to go be a part of :-)

Love You,

Elder Inman

Windows of Heaven & Electric

1st- Before lightning

2nd-Lightning striking right behind our home

3rd- The timer going off right as lightning flashed all around us lit up the sky!

The Scorpion and the Pinons holding it :-) They said to mention their cabnets usualy have doors on them, they are just painting right now, lol.

(written Aug 22nd)

Hey everyone,

This was such a blessed week! Transfers went smoothly and Elder Willden and I are having a blast working together, and Elder Byrd is enjoying Las Cruces as well. One of our major focus's this week, and this coming transfer, is finding more people who are the elect and ready to receive the Gospel. All of last transfer we found six or seven new people who were willing to listen to our message, and last week alone we found seven incredible people who we have begun teaching, some of which felt the spirit so strongly our first visit that they are already preparing to be baptised next month. We had a very busy week with administrative duties including preparing for zone conference, transfers, and training our new district leaders, which limited the time we had to go out and work with people in our area. One day in particular we had weekly planning, teaching appointments, and preparation for other meetings so we were not able to go out and proselyte at all during the day. We had set high goals for the day and were not close to reaching them by dinner time, so afterwards we dedicated our time to going out and working. Miracles happened and we saw the Lords hand preparing our way. We knocked on six doors with all but two of them answering, and every single person that answered eventually agreed to sit down with us and take the lessons. That kind of success is almost unheard of in our mission and Elder Willden and I were ecstatic all night.

Another experience that showed me how much the Lord is in this work came as I was looking through our phone. I had forgotten the name of someone I needed to get ahold of and thought that if I saw it I would remember, which eventually I did. For some reason I started on the opposite end of the alphabet going through the contacts and noticed a name that I did not recognize as I scrolled through, and seconds after passing it I felt I needed to give him a call. As missionaries we have so many names that we do not know that it seemed very unusual for a name to stick out so much. I have had many experiences teach me to follow those kinds of promptings quickly so I did not second guess and called right away, a little nervous that this man was either a member already or not wanting to talk to missionaries any longer. He answered sounding a little confused at why I was calling but after a brief explanation he seemed excited and asked if we could come over this next week. There is no way coincidences happen so regularly and powerfully!

Then the week ended with some excitement as we went over to the Pinon's, one of my favorite families our here, so that Elder Willden could get a haircut. We were waiting downstairs as they got their kids ready for bed when all of a sudden we heard their kids screaming and yelling that there was a scorpion in the bathtub. The kids ran downstairs and started telling us all about their discovery as Bro. Pinon captured it in a little container and brought it down to show us. He looked it up on the Internet and found out that it was a bark scorpion, which happens to be the most venomous scorpion in North America... After that they challenged us to a competition that I think everyone reading this should try. We took a napkin and placed it on the ground peaked high in the middle, probably about three or four inches above the ground, and then had to stand on one leg and bend over and pick the napkin up with our mouth. You cant touch the ground with your other foot, leg, or any hands, and after the napkin is in your mouth you have to stand strait back up on your one leg. It was so much fun, and in the end I was the only one able to do it successfully, after many funny failures. I'm excited to hear how many of you can do it too :-)

Love,

Elder Inman

PS, we were also able to speak in church this last Sunday and we loved it!

(Written Aug. 29th)

Hola,

This was such an amazing week. Haha, I hope I don't start to many of my emails that way but its seems like about every week out here is amazing, so I guess you will just have to deal with the repetition. I hope the pictures came through of the lightning storm. Last night we got home at the end of the day and noticed lightning flashing in the distance so we took a seat on the curb, eventually laying down, and watched the light show for around 30 minutes. It was about time for us to get in and collect weekly numbers so we got up ready to go in, but as we did so the storm grew more intense and rain started pouring down in sheets while lightning struck so close that the ground felt like it was shaking at times from the thunder. For a split second we thought of running inside to avoid getting drenched, and so that we could make our calls, but instead we sat back down and I whipped out my camera (very thankful that it was water proof). Near the end of the storm, 15 minutes later, I sat the camera on the curd and turned the timer on hoping for some cool shots of us standing in the rain, and on the last picture I took the whole sky lit up as lightning danced from one horizon to the other. Figuring that was a good picture to end our adventure with we went inside dripping from head to toe, collected numbers, and went to sleep. Isnt it amazing what beautiful shows the Lord can put on for us.

This week we were also able to enjoy zone conference up in Santa Fe. I was asked to conduct and had a very blond moment that I am sure will take a little while to live down. I have conducted many meetings and trainings and given talks in every ward I have been in, so I don't often feel any amount of nervousness when I stand up in front of large groups of people, and this was no exception. But for some reason as I was announcing who would be playing the piano and conducting the music I blanked on what a piano was called and instead pointed at it and acted out playing it. Even though I would probably not do the same thing if I had the opportunity I think it was a good way to start because we all got a good laugh in and were more alert for when President Miller stood up to present. The rest of the day went great and I hope everyone left as uplifted as I felt I did. Many of the missionaries, including myself, had to get up before 5:30am so that we could make the drive to Santa Fe and show up in time for car inspections, but even with the lack of sleep there were no problems with bobbing heads (or as I heard in this week's sacrament talk "slow motion head banging").

We were also blessed again this week with finding incredible people to teach and I had a lot of fun doing so. One of the people we are working with needed help moving across the neighborhood so we went over and spent a little time getting him to his new place. One of his friends came and helped as well, so we got to know him and he ended up inviting us to his bible study this coming week. We were informed that his wife is very anti and believes that if we enter their home we will bring in evil spirits, but he says that he thinks it will be fine if we come anyway. Can't wait to see how that turns out :-) And in between all of our meetings, travel, and service we had some of the more powerful lessons of my mission. I love serving here! The ward is so strong and active with missionary work, the stake is supportive, and the investigators are some of the greatest people I know, and I am so happy with the changes taking place within myself.

One lesson in particular that I hope to never forget was with a father and son we started teaching last week who are preparing for baptism. We showed up to our scheduled appointment and sat down to teach the plan of salvation, but decided to change direction because the son was sick with a cold. Instead, we asked him if he would like a priesthood blessing and then taught what that meant. After teaching what a blessing was and reading examples of them from scripture we placed our hands on his head and administered one to him. After we ended he had a huge smile stretching across his face and said that he felt good. We explained to him that he was feeling the Spirit and it meant what we did was of God, and also told him that he will receive similar feelings as he reads and prays about the Book of Mormon. His father felt the Spirit powerfully as well and is now excited for the time when he can administer blessings himself, especially fathers blessings to his children. They are both doing so well and I can see the light growing in them as they get closer to becoming an eternal family.

Love,

Elder Inman

Wow

(Written Aug. 15th)

Hola!

This was such a fun and exciting week, so now the hard part is deciding what to talk about first. I'll start with the best part of it, that we held one of the most beautiful and powerful baptisms I have even been to. I feel the reason it was so powerful was because she was completely ready to make that covenant, and because those in attendance loved her so much. She did not want very many people in attendance so the room was not as packed as I am used to, but everyone there loved and was excited for her. I feel so blessed to have been here for such an incredible experience, and to know this absolutely amazing woman who chose to accept the gospel. I look forward to seeing what calling she gets because I'm sure she will love it and excel.

Now for our transfer news. I am staying here in Panorama Heights and Elder Byrd is being transferred back to Las Cruces to serve in the ward the I just left. Crazy huh? I loved serving with him and I think he will do a great job in the Universtity ward. When I was being transferred up here I had really wanted to serve with either him or Elder Willden because they were both in my zone in Las Cruces and I thought they were amazing elders and great friends. I have always been told that transfers tend to work the opposite of what we want, but so far in my mission I have seen the opposite. Elder Willden is my next companion and I am so excited for this coming transfer! Its amazing how it worked out.

I am running low on time already so I am having a hard time deciding what to write about because there is so much great things that happened this week. Elder Byrd and I had another great faith building experience on the way from a teaching appointment to our dinner. As we drove through a major intersection we noticed all the cars across from us driving around a SUV that had its hazard lights on. We needed to get to dinner and I figured there had to be at least one person driving by that would stop and help her, plus we would have to go way out of our way to get to her, so we just kept driving. After a few more seconds of driving guilt hit me so we whipped around and worked out way toward her through the heavy traffic. We hit out hazard lights and parked our car behind her and offered to push her to the other side where she could park and wait for help. When the light turned green we started pushing as hard and fast as we could because it would be really not fun being stuck in the middle with the light red. We started approaching a good sized hill so I prepared myself for a good struggle to get her over it and into the parking lot when all of a sudden the car began accelerating. The car was still off but it began moving so fast up hill that we both had to run to keep up with it, our hands barely touching the vehicle. I don't know physics that well but I am pretty sure that is not supposed to happen, lol. I am constantly amazed with the miracles the Lord blesses us with! After she parked she jumped out and gave us both big hugs and thanked us as people drove by giving us the thumbs up and telling us good job :-) I love being a missionary!

Love,

Elder David Inman

Exchanges written Aug. 8th

Hello,

This was a very busy week, and I spent very little of it in my actual area working. This was a big week for exchanges with other missionaries and it was my turn to go to their areas, so I spent some time in Santa Fe and then in the UNM University branch. They were fun though and I had some great experiences. The exchange in Santa Fe was with a missionary I came out with so it was a great opportunity to talk about our missions thus far and our goals for our last 6 months. This is the first time I have been in the same zone with another missionary who came out with me. There are actualy only four of us left because all the others ended up in the Farmington mission when it split. I have had incredible opportunities for learning and growth in my work with President and other leaders, as well as some of the strong companions who have taught me, and the exchange was a great time to pass on some of what was given me. We ended the exchange by going to the Plaza in town and contacting some really random people. If you want to meet some really strange people Santa Fe is a great place to go!

I am running really low on time so I better wrap this up. Sorry it is so short this time! My other exchange was with Elder Dunnington who is going home at the end of this transfer. This is another example of how small the world is within the church because he and I were in the same seminary class for a year before he left for study abroad, and I know his family in Muncie 2 ward. It was so crazy talking about all our friends from back home and how much both us of have changed on our missions and since we last saw eachother. We both came to a solid conclusion of how thankful we are for our amazing seminary teachers in Muncie Indiana, and the great effect they have had on our missions :-) So crazy!

Love,

Elder Inman

More Miracles

Hey everyone,

This was another week of miracles. Ill start backwards and tell you about this past Sunday, because it was amazing. The topic for sacrament meeting was the Restoration of Christ's Church, Sunday School was the Plan of Salvation, and then the last hour, which was combined, was the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Those are the first three lessons we teach as missionaries and I loved having them taught to me this time. What made it even better was that it was easy to tell those presenting and teaching had put many hours of preparation, which created a very powerful setting for everyone there. We also had a new Ward Mission Leader called during sacrament and he is a fire ball when it comes to missionary work. He actually served, just a couple years ago, in theIndianapolis Indiana mission and we have a lot of mutual friends. And to add to how crazy the situation is his sister just got back from her mission, days ago, and she was in the MTC with me and is really good friends with a sister who came out here with me. The Mormon world is so small!

Earlier in the week I got sick again for some reason and spent most of the morning throwing up way more then I thought was possible. I am not a fan of this recent trend of Elder Inman getting sick. I was on another exchange when this happened, just like last time, so I jokingly tried to tell our mission president's wife, Sister Miller, that I need a sick pass from doing exchanges. It almost worked, lol. So I had my temporary companion Elder Richardson give me a priesthood blessing that said, also just like last time, that I would be able to make our teaching appointments.

Our first appointment was at 2 so I drank some water and slept some more, and then had to run to the bathroom for a second wave of throwing up at 11. I was feeling horrible and had to remind myself that the blessing said I would make the appointments and not to cancel. I got up and started getting dressed to go at 1:30 and then as we were getting ready to walk out the door I had to run in and throw up AGAIN. I don't even know how that was possible since I had not eater anything all day, but regardless I threw up several times before I was able to lay against the wall and contemplate calling and rescheduling our appointments. The blessing popped into my head again though, so I got up, brushed my teach, and we left and had some amazing teaching experiences. After we finished teaching Sister Miller called and reminded me that we are not supposed to leave our house for 24 hours after throwing up, sounding a little worried and perturbed, but I told her about the blessing and she seemed fine with it. Then we exchanged back and I went to sleep for a really long time.

I hate being sick, but those two experiences have helped a lot to build my faith and help me develop into a stronger person. One of my thoughts as I started falling asleep that night was how impressed my mom would be that I didn't just complain and sleep all day, which was my normal routine during illness back home.

Well I gotta go. We are exploring Santa Fe today so it should be fun :-)

Love,
Elder Inman

Late again

(from bottom to top)

1st- Standing in front of the pecan orchards in Las Cruces. Such a beautiful place!

2nd- Blowing out birthday cake, before my birthday, with great friends in Las Cruces. It was her birthday too :-)

3rd- Elder Byrd and I acting cool in our first good rain of the year

4th- Getting drenched and loving it!

Hey everyone,

Sorry my email is a day late again. Yesterday Elder Byrd and I helped some missionaries get around and go to the doctors to have his stitches taken out so I only had a small amount of time on the computer yesterday to email President miller before we had to take off. It was a great week though and I am excited to tell you about it.

I have discovered that I have become an expert at getting in with people through them feeding us. It makes it harder to stay in shape, and I have to work out extra hard, but people love having us over and cooking for us. I have had some amazing meals throughout my mission, and have been the test subject to some fun ideas, but this last week I had some of the more interesting and good tasting food so far. We are working with a great couple found through tracting a few weeks ago who love having us over as many times as we want so they can cook for us. Before I tell you what they concocted for us I will go ahead and tell you a little background on who they are, because it should make more sense then.

There two people are some of the most unique people I have ever met, and I am sure I will never forget them. The first time we sat down with them we said almost nothing, just sat and listened to their story for almost two hours. The wife is about 20 years younger then the husband and I would say the husband is in his 30s, and they are completely in love and perfect for each other. At first they came across very hippie like with many of their ideas and how self sufficient they are, but then they showed us around. They live in the nicest trailer I have ever seen because they love working on it together and invest heavily into it. Their kitchen floor alone is a couple thousand dollars because it is bacteria resistant and good for joints, and much of their molding is solid oak. They also have one of the best theater rooms I have ever seen! Who knew I would ever be so impressed with a trailer? After looking around they showed us two very hidden compartments in their kitchen and bathroom that hold some really high end guns and ammo, just in case. They do not currently attend a church because their beliefs vary from all the churches they have looked into, which beliefs are very close to Christs doctrine that we teach. They love reading the bible and even compare it page by page to the Hebrew and Greek translation to get a more accurate understanding of it.

Then we walked into their back yard and he showed us all of the chilies (peppers) they are growing and I quickly realized he is the biggest chili enthusiast I have ever encountered. They are growing jalapenos, red hots, habaneros, and even ghost peppers (bhut jolokia) which are probably the hottest in the world, which they intend to have me eat at some point. They are such a funny couple, and I love going over and visiting with them, and almost every time we go over near lunch they have an amazing meal prepared. She loves cooking so much that for the first two years of marriage they never had the same meal twice, and they rarely go out to eat. The twist is that in everything they cook they add some type of chili, which to people outside of New Mexico is probably refereed to as pepper. Our last one was brauts (sp?) with caramelized onion and hebanero sauce with a side of potato salad with habanero and jalapeno powder. They also served us jalapeno poppers with their special blend of chili in the cream cheese. Then of course their chips had home made salsa with a variety of different chilies. After that they brought out mixed fruit with habanero powder sprinkled over it and a little whipped cream on top. Don't judge it before you have tried it :-) Every bit of the meal was incredible tasting!

Wow, I just spent a long time talking about them and their cooking so I will quickly wrap this email up. The ward here is amazing and I love serving in this area, although I still miss Las Cruces at times. We are teaching some amazing people and some of them are very close to entering into Christ's church right now. I just don't see how going back to a 'normal' life could compare, so I will have to be sure to take every member a missionary seriously so I don't completely lose this feeling in 6 months.

Love,

Elder Inman

Adventures & All settled now

Adventures (from July 19th)

Greetings :-)

This was a crazy and fun week of missionary work, and I hope all of yours was a great as mine!

On my birthday we were able to go over to the home of some recent converts and eat some cake they baked me. It was a lot of fun and I was able to get to know them and their family a lot better. Both of them are in high school right now and are the only members of their family to have joined the church. Their family is incredibly supportive and amazing people as well so I have high hopes that eventually they will all be ready to be sealed for eternity together, especially with how great of an example these two kids are. They had a family vacation this week and both of the kids left a day later so they would be able to go to church and keep the Sabbath day Holy. They are also very athletic and have already sacrificed certain sporting events to be able to fulfil the promises they made at baptism. If all the members of the church were as consecrated as these two are then missionary work would be so many times more successful!

There were some great things that happened throughout the week in our teaching and training, but I am going to wait on those for now to write about some unusual things that happened on Preparation day. There was an Elder who needed to go to a dental appointment in Santa Fe so we offered to give him and his companions a ride to the train station since they are on bikes. They were running a little behind so we ended up needing to drive them up to Santa Fe ourselves so we decided to spend the rest of the day up there. Since nothing opened until 10 am, and we left at 6am, we spent a good amount of time walking around a beautiful veteran's cemetery and reading the names and dates. It was even more fun when we began seeing headstones that had the AngelMoroni on the top instead of a cross, which I had never seen before. Then we spent some time walking though the Meyer Gallery to see my dads artwork. As we were walking we got stopped by a couple homeless guys who wanted to talk, so we spent a few minutes talking about their lives. One of them said he was from Muncie Indiana even before I said where I was from. How crazy is that?! As we were leaving he told me that he could tell I "will rise to the top in the world". Now I know I will be successful, lol :-)

After spending some time with them we went over to the church building to play some basketball with the rest of the zone. We played for about an hour when one of our elders took an elbow to the face and the skin on his cheek bone split open almost a full inch. We attempted to patch it up with our little first aid kids but eventually gave up and took him over to a doctor in the local ward who had to put 5 stitches in. On the way home from Santa Fe we realized that if we had not missed the train and drove up then he would have had no way to get over to the doctor, or to get back home since it would have made him miss the train going to Rio Rancho. It is so amazing to see how the Lord works in our lives!

Love,

Elder Inman

All Settled Now (from July 11th)

Hola,

Transfers are always such a crazy time and this one is no exception, but I am finally about settled in. Shortly after leaving Las Cruces I realized I had forgotten my water bottle, camera, Preach My Gospel, and scriptures. When I was packing I decided to leave those things out so that I could carry them onto the transfer van with me and use them on the long trip back to Albuquerque, but then I left them sitting on my desk with no way to go back and get them. I was told that the next time someone would be making the trip there and back was 2 weeks away so I got a new water bottle and started teaching and studying from the missionary Book of Mormons. The Lord blessed me though and a great friend from my old ward was able to bring them from Las Cruces to Rio Rancho to give them to me because she was traveling up to see family. I feel like I am beginning to have life long friends in every part of New Mexico and am so excited to travel back through and see them all again.

Much of this week was spent organizing our zone and area since both Elder Byrd and I are pretty new here, as well as going out and meeting ward members and investigators. In just a couple of days I have already fallen in love with the ward members and those we are teaching and am so excited to spend the next while here, however long that ends up being. I have had so much fun already and am growing close to people that I am sure the Lord has placed me here to serve. One of the families here has 5 hilarious kids ranging from 5 years to 18, and they have friends over all the time about the same age. Every time I am with them I cant help but think of how life was with my family and I just love it. Two of their friends were baptized recently and they seem incredibly solid (with very supportive and strong parents), and now we are teaching another one who is very sincere and fun to teach as well. We will be playing basketball with them today so I can remember just how out of shape I have gotten as a missionary. Each family I meet here just makes me more happy that I have been called to serve them. I have also been able to get to know the member we are living with better and he is a really cool guy as well, and was nice enough to give me an mp3 player loaded with approved music. It seems that with each passing month of my mission I am growing to love it more and more!

I will give more updates later :-) Take care!!

Love,

Elder Inman