Getting Hairy with Howard

The only reason I titled my email the way I did is because last Monday there was an investigator who had been dropped by the missionaries and he is good friends with Bro. Fowler. So last week Bro. Fowler asked him if he wanted a priesthood blessing because he wasn't doing too good so we went over on Monday and gave him a blessing and it was pretty good. Hopefully he will start progressing again and he came to our branch Christmas party so that was good. Anyways he has a big dog and two medium dogs and they got sooo much hair all over my suit and my coat and my suitcoat.

Speaking of coats, we were volunteering at the thrift shop like we always do on Tuesdays and while we were working (all we do is collect hangers and hang clothes up throughout the store for half an hour and then all the old ladies call for a break and we sit down and they feed us home-baked goods) a guy came in and dropped off some stuff. One of the things he dropped off was an old blue suit. Well the suit looked like it fit me so I took it (with permission of course). I tried it on and it fits me pretty nicely except the pants were made for somebody with a much larger girth than myself and there are no belt loops either :/ So it doesn't quite fit me sadly but I'm still gonna keep it. I have a picture of it but I left my adapter at the apartment so ya'll will have to wait til next week for some pictures.

Remember the guy from last week who wanted to quit smoking and his name was Tyler? Yeah now I call him Two-Timin-Tyler (I just now came up with that). He told us that he was related to a less active family here in town and we just took his word for it. Well it turns out that they have no idea who he is. O_O They've never seen him before and they've never heard of him before. They don't recognize his last name either. We haven't been able to get in contact with him so he's on the very back burner right now until we can ask him about his lies. What makes it more creepy is that he asked if they had room for him to move in with them because he really hates where he lives because the other people in the apartment complex (the apartment complex is like the size of my house, it's really small) are crazy drunks and druggies.

We had a really good zone training meeting on Wednesday. It was good. I don't remember much actually but I left uplifted and inspired. Our zone is pretty dope. We made two zone wide goals. We are going to hit all 4 standards and have 100% member present lessons. For the next TWO weeks. It's gonna be crazy.

So there's this lady who has investigated before and even had a baptismal date but she flaked out for a while. Then one day we went to her house and talked to her and set up an appointment (she flaked out on that too) She's been super busy but her son Deondre, has told us that he is pretty interested and he set up an appointment for today actually and we went over and he wasn't there... That's pretty much the norm here in Parsons. Nobody will set up appointments so we kinda just stop by people's houses and hope they're home. (most people live off of disability so they don't have much to do except watch TV) Yeah 100% member present... Haha it'll be fine. We're still gonna try to work with him though.

The other day we were just gonna go around and OTM people (Open thy mouth, it means basically that we just start talking to random strangers, smokers are really easy because they don't have anywhere to run to) So we used He is the Gift (which is something you should check out by the way it's really nice) and handed out a good amount of cards and got a two return appointments out of (one of them flaked out yesterday). While we were at Walmart we met a man named Lynn. He is going to the community college here and he originally thought we were Jehovah's Witnesses. But we talked to him and turns out he is kinda looking for a church so we set an appointment with him. He flaked out. But while he was flaking we set up an appointment for the next day which was yesterday and he was there! We taught him and he didn't realize that we were Mormons because we were talking about other faiths and he started talking about Mormons and how they ride horses and stuff. Turns out he thought Mormons were Amish. Sidenote: there is actually a big Amish community in our area. I have pictures of Amish people. Anyways we told him that we were Mormons and that we are actually pretty normal. Well normal as far as extremes go. I don't think he understood all of what we taught him. But when we told him that Jesus Christ came and visited the people in the Americas he was like "What I didn't know that, cool" Not in those exact words but you get the picture. We set up an appointment for next Sunday with him and he said he will probably come to church as long as he gets a ride because he only has a bike. Fortunately he lives right next door to the Knowles who coincidently give people rides to church. Like he literally lives right next door to them. It kinda blew our minds. So it just goes to show that the Church is true. Also while we were talking to him he asked something about hymns and so I showed him my little hymn book and he took it thinking I was giving it to him. I didn't really know what to say to him so I was just going to let him keep it. But don't worry I got it back. It was pretty scary though.

So we had a branch Christmas party and it was pretty delicious. We got a lot of Less actives there and that was good. Although like none of them showed up to church the next day... But they had a little Christmas devotional that ended with them showing the He is the Gift video and it was really good and spiritual until all the less actives started clapping and it ruined the spirit. We're still working on them. Sigh

Today we exchanged with Neosho again. I stayed in Parsons this time and Elder Merrywheather came here. He was the guy I replaced so he knows the area pretty well so it's not super sketchy. But the fun news is that we're not exchanging back until our district meeting (because of miles) which isn't til Wednesday. So me and Elder Merrywheather get to party it up til then and talk bad about our companions. Haha just kidding. It's going to be soo fun though. We've already had a grand old time doing things such as laundry and shopping and emailing. Ok missionary work isn't too big in the fun department but we do what we can. The Church is still true though.

Well those are all the important and less important things that happened last week. I hope you enjoyed them. We will need your prayers these next two weeks for our big goals that we've set so please help us there. Other than that my only advice is to keep it real and stay classy.

Love,

Elder Naegle

Parsons, Kansas. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy

So we've learned from people that live here that Parsons is a pretty dangerous place. In Kansas it is 7th on the list for most crime per capita. So that's pretty sketchy. Luckily we haven't run into anything that dangerous. Although the other night we were sitting at a stop light and there was this dude on a motorcycle. He looked like a stereotypical tough motorcycler. The car behind him must've did something to make him angry because he was making less than friendly hand gestures at them. He motioned for them to follow him, assumingly to settle the affair with a manly brawl. The car didn't follow him so he flipped around and started chasing it. It was clear that the guy in the car was very frightened because he took off like a bat out of you know. Car man made a hasty turn and we looked back and the motorcycler turned down the same street. So we can only assume that there was a fight of epic proportions and that many heroes were discovered and some villains became infamous.

There's a less active/part member family in our branch that only sometimes comes to church. The dad isn't a member but they invited us to dinner this last week. It was very delicious. He, the dad, has a smoker and is apparently very good with it. They fed us smoked pulled pork sandwiches and then gave us some leftovers. It's strange he seems like a total Mormon, he just isn't baptized. But my guess is that he will eventually join the church because he is a great guy.

We had an appointment set up with a less active member for Wednesday. So we went over and met with him and his family. It appears that he grew up in the church and got baptized but he was never active. His wife however is not a member. She is struggling with depression because their son committed suicide like a year or so ago.  We watched the Restoration video with them. Which is awesome because we were leaving our apartment and Elder Cluff was like: hmm we should bring along a Restoration video. So it was inspired. She told us that she didn't feel depressed when we were there and she is really interested in that. We went over again last night and taught them a little more but mostly set up an appointment with them for next week. At this point they are really golden.

We were helping a family move to another house in Parsons on Saturday and this guy who is related to them came up and started talking to them. He told them that he wants to quit smoking so the grandma told him that we could help him. So we gave him our number and got his and met with him that night to get the ball rolling on the Stop Smoking workshop (which neither myself nor my companion know how to do). We got it started with him and then asked if he would like to learn more about the gospel and he said sure. So then we met with him yesterday at his cousin's house (the one we were helping move) and he asked them if he could live there because he's from Wichita and he wants to live here now and he's living off of disability. So now we think that he might just be trying to mooch off of his relatives so we are not going to meet over there anymore. But I think that we can get him to recognize the truth. He seems to have a lot of faith in Heavenly Father so that will help him if he reads the Book of Mormon.

Thanksgiving was good. We had dinner at the Jones's with the Adams and a friend of theirs. We went over there at 11 and helped them prepare and then eat dinner. We got done eating desert at like 3:30. The only problem though was that Bro. Fowler called us that morning and set up to eat dinner (at a restaurant ugh) at 4. I could barely finish my pie at the Jones's and we had to eat dinner with Bro. Fowler... We got there and we all got the turkey dinner and I thought it tasted like typical cafeteria food. Which is another way to say very low quality. I barely ate any of it. Elder Cluff cleaned his whole plate. I really don't know how he accomplished it because I barely ate more than him at the Jones's. I'm jealous of him now because he can eat more than me... :(

The only other thing that happened this week was exchanges with Neosho. I went over to Neosho again. This time though it was with the other Neosho Elder who coincidently came out with me. We are both in training and they stuck us together expecting us to be able to do anything. We taught a good lesson to an investigator and met with a less active who said he could tell that I had a really kind heart(?) and we got dropped by an investigator and did a lot of tracting. I felt really good about myself because I placed a BOM and was able to hold the people's attention. The Elder I was with however was a robot. He had a script that he just blurted out and of course nobody was receptive. Oh well.

That's pretty much all the interesting things that happened this week besides the fact that I got a haircut today so that was a fun experience. Please keep me in your prayers! I love all of you!

Love,

Elder Naegle

Elder Cluff took a picture of himself with my camera so now you all know what he looks like.

                                       

                                           I broke the screen on our sliding door.