Baptismal dates tho'

This last week  started off well with us setting a date for Darien to be baptized. I'm not quite sure how ready he is but I think that once he gets baptized it'll motivate him to learn more and to come to church and church activities more. He seems pretty excited. Hopefully it'll help to get his foster parents more active in the church. Right now we are trying to get the ward more involved in missionary work. We're not quite sure how to do it.  We're hoping we can get the ward on board for a 40 day fast because that would help out a ton! We really need to work better with our ward mission leader because we have hardly no contact or interaction with him except on Sundays. Honie is still being herself. She didn't come to church on Sunday. Elder Osborne doesn't think she trusts us that much so somehow we have to get her to trust us. We also have to get her to realize that the point of religion should be seeking out truth, truth that only our Father in Heaven can give us not just a talented pastor. She doesn't seem to recognize that. Tomorrow is that last day of the OTM. Wednesday the Shumways will leave and the Lovelands will be in charge. Some members showed us an article that they read in some LDS publication that was about President Loveland. Apparently he runs a 5,000 acre farm and is leaving it all in the hands of his daughter, who is like 26, and his son who just barely returned from his mission like a month ago. That's a lot of responsibility for those guys. Oh really nothing else happened this week.

Elder Naegle

I saw a beaver...

So this morning while I was studying in the basement where we live, I looked over the the big, sliding glass doors that we use for an entry way, and there was a beaver just chilling right outside on the back porch. At least I think it was a beaver, I couldn't see his tail very well. I reached down to grab my camera and he darted, so I have no proof. Well it was transfer week so not that much happened. Most people were very surprised that Elder Chapman was leaving. A lot of people don't even know that he left and there's still people that pronounce my name wrong. My new companion is Elder Osborne. He's from Las Vegas and he knows a lot about computers. He's really quite and kinda socially awkward. He likes to sleep-in in the mornings so that's gonna be a struggle. I think I can get him to lift with me though. Either that or the ladies at the gym will let him just sit and chill while I workout by myself, which is what we did this morning. I think this transfer will be good though. 

The only investigator we saw this week was Honie. Elder Osborne and I went over and taught her a lesson and I don't really remember what our lesson was on but she told us that she's just taking it at her own pace and that she thinks we put too much emphasis on Joseph Smith because we sang Joseph Smith's first Prayer in Sacrament meeting and so she thinks that we worship Joseph Smith. We tried to clear up her misconceptions and kinda succeeded. We had stake conference on Saturday and Sunday and those were really good. The Saturday night session was all about ward councils. And I thought it was good because we don't get invited to ward councils very often. Then they did a mock ward council and had the Ava ward council come up. And we just stayed in the audience because we never go and then the Bishop asked us to come up so we went up and just sat there the whole time and it was kinda awkward. President and Sister Shumway also surprised everyone and showed up to both sessions. It was really neat. Then the St. Louis temple pres and his wife showed up to both sessions. The temple pres totally slammed wards that don't invite their missionaries to ward council and so I'm thinking that we'll get invited to ward council a lot more often. 

I also had a priest who's a convert of about 2 years ask me to ordain him as an Elder so that was pretty neat. I did that on Sunday right after stake conference so Dad you gotta get me my Priesthood lineage line deal so I can get it to him. He's also going on a mission soon so he'll need to be going to the temple soon to get his endowments and we're hoping we can go with him because he's a recent convert.

 I just talked to the family history lady here and she said that it was probably a groundhog that I saw just to let ya'll know. We probably won't ever get to see the Shumways again because they leave in 8 days :'( but it was nice because we got to give them each one last hug. We're also not allowed to be in contact with them once they go home. 

Something crazy that happened this week though was on transfer day. We've been having a lot of problems with our tires. Actually last Monday we were driving home from dinner and our driver's front tire went flat while we were driving. Luckily we were right by a member's house so we stopped in front of their house and it's where Darien lives so he actually came out and helped us put on the spare. So on transfer day we drove our own truck to transfer point so that we could stop in Springfield on the way back to go to the Nissan dealership to get our truck fixed. We dropped it off and they said they'd be done in like 2 hours so we went with the Springfield 1st Elders and went and got lunch. Then like 2 1/2 hours later we get a call from the dealership saying that they had to keep the truck over night. So we had a sleepover in Springfield. It was dope. Then we got our truck and apparently our vehicle coordinator ordered a bunch of things to be done on the truck because it was pretty messed up. We got Rugged Trail tires and they are pretty sweet. We now officially have the nicest vehicle in the mission, perhaps even the world. Elder Betts dropped $1,100 on the truck though and he kinda chastised me and asked if my driving privileges needed to be revoked but we were able to figure it out because it was my first companion here that messed up the truck. Well sorry for the long letter, I hope you all have a good week.

Elder Naegle

            We actually got to ride in the like 2 weeks ago. It's a replica of the car off of gone in 60 seconds.

This is what the rain did to our road, and by the way the road flooded again and we tried to drive through it but we got scared and so we didn't

them deer tho

So we got transfer calls on Saturday and Elder Chapman is getting transferred and I'm staying in Ava.  Oh well. Nothing else really happened this week that I can think of. A dude in our ward got married and it was weird because he was actually disfellowshipped earlier for doing something but he ended up getting married to the person that was offended...

Wow, I'm trying really hard to think of things that happened this past week but my mind is continually blank.  Honie came to church again and we think she's starting to get to know people in the ward and start to bond with them. Hopefully she'll go to the family home evening tonight even though we won't be there. And also hopefully she'll go to the relief society thing that's on Tuesday night even though we won't be there either. I think that the key will be her being befriended by the members. So we've got a bunch of new investigators that we've found over the last couple of weeks but we haven't been able to contact any of them and it's been super frustrating. The goal for last week was for everybody to hit the standard of excellence and Elder Chapman and I worked hard the whole week and our numbers really stunk. We did have 10 investigators at church though, but we're only teaching two of them so I feel like it doesn't count. We still haven't met with Zach. We met with Darien yesterday and it went alright. I think he's doing better and he like wants to go to church and everything. He even said when he turns 18 and he moves to his sister's house in Minnesota, he's gonna look up the Mormon church and try to go there. So, we're gonna hopefully get him baptized soon, we're gonna aim for the 4th of July but we haven't told him that yet so we're gonna try and set the date with him this week. He still gets distracted all the time though... 

We helped chop wood for a member in our ward, on Saturday. We got to run a log splitter and it was pretty dope. It was a lot of hard work though. We moved some really heavy things of wood. We almost hit two deer this last week, like really really close, like within a few feet of hitting them. I don't think I killed anything this week. Because of the humidity, I always feel sticky. We'll probably be moving out of our members house and into town pretty soon. We went and got our tire patched on Tuesday, and then on Wednesday we heard a different tire leaking, so we went back to the shop and got that one patched. Right now the tire pressure light keeps coming on but it goes off when we fill this one tire up with air so we're just chilling with that right now. That's really all that happened this week. Elder Cluff is going to be my zone leader now so that will be fun. 

Elder Naegle

Kewl Beans

So this week was pretty good. Honie finally came to church so that was really good. She seemed to enjoy it and she stayed the whole time, even in Relief Society by herself. The importance of the gospel and the difference between our Church and others, seems to be sinking in. We've talked about baptism a couple of times with her and she seems to be pretty open to it. Whenever we ask her what she feels she always tells us she doesn't have an opinion though which is not ideal. I'm also worried that now that she has come to church it will be harder to get her to come a second time. But one of our members invited her to a family home evening that a bunch of the older folks in the ward attend every Monday, which also happens to be our dinner, so we're hoping that she'll come to that and really get fellowshipped by the members because we're really all she has at this point in time. we met with Darien once and it was an alright lesson. Gabe came with us and he bore his testimony to him and then I kinda bore my testimony so it ended on a good note. Zach was busy all week but we got word from one of his friends who came on exchanges with us yesterday that Zach really enjoyed the stake zone conference that he came to last Sunday. In fact he was on his phone but then whatever the speaker was saying caught his attention and then he didn't look at his phone for the whole rest of the time. So I think that we'll be able to see him on Sunday so that will be really good. We got some new investigators, one is a really promising one but she might be moving away this week so there's that. Then we found another one who I think has some promise. Then we got two potentials yesterday, one of them I think that he let us set up a return appointment just so he could get back to playing his playstation but the other is a son of a member who hasn't been baptized so that will be good. Zone conference was really good. Learned some really interesting things about the Bible and the Trinity. Then President and Sister Shumway gave everybody hugs, so I got to hug Sister Shumway for the first time. Then I got a picture with them. Then Elder Dye came to Ava and pretty much all we did that day was watch Elder Perry's funeral. It helped me learn the importance of planning. So I think that was everything interesting that happened this week, except for the fact that I ran over a turtle, so my kill streak continues. And I killed a bunch of wasps this morning. Transfer calls are this Saturday. It's nuts I've already been in Ava for three months.

Elder Naegle

Flooded spiders and big streets I mean flooded streets and big spiders

So not really much happened this week. Don't get me wrong it was a good week, but not really much happened. The mission goal was to get 100% member present lessons and we did so that was really good. We met with Honie with a couple named the Michaels and it was really good. We asked her about her opinion on everything and she kept saying that she didn't have an opinion then we started talking about truth and how there can only be one church with complete truth and that's the church that is led by Christ. Then Bro. Michael bore his testimony and then I bore my testimony and we said a closing prayer and when we said goodbye she was really solemn and not her usual talkative self so she was totally feeling the Spirit. Then later Bro and Sis Michael told us that we did a great job teaching her and that was nice of them to say that. We didn't see Darien or Zach at all this week, but we had a stake/zone conference yesterday and Zach came so that was really good. He's got state baseball pretty much all week and then on Sunday he'll be with his dad so it will probably be a while before we see him again. We had a zone conference yesterday with the stake and it was really good. We also have a zone conference on Thursday and it's gonna be the last zone conference with President and Sister Shumway so there will be a lot of tears shed. We met with and tried to meet with a bunch of less actives this week, so that's where most of our lessons were going to. One day we were with our ward mission leader and we went to like 4 people's houses and none of them were home, it was so frustrating. One day we stopped by Darien's house and he wasn't home and it was that awkward time where it's almost time to go home but you're not supposed to go home yet so we just went home and cleaned a little bit and watched the Church's Bible videos. Then we found an absolutely massive spider on the chair that Elder Chapman was sitting on just minutes before. So we devised a way to kill it. The only way we could think of was using a hot iron. So I knocked it off the chair with a broom and proceeded to get it to go in the direction of Elder Chapman and the waiting iron. Then it started running/jumping towards Elder Chapman and he dropped the iron on it and it killed it. It was one of the scariest things I have ever done. During that whole time it was raining like crazy and there were tornado warnings and everything. So the next morning the creek that runs alongside the road we use to get out had risen like 3-5 feet and the road was flooded so we had to use the back way out. I will send pictures.

Peace

Elder Naegle

 here is a picture of Elder Chapman and Darien I found on his camera

                                    

 here is the spider we killed, we got it taxidermied and now it's hanging on our wall

                           

This is a pretty nice view, and if you look behind us you can see a nice view as well

This is our new mission vehicle, I'm not quite sure how well it will fare on dirt roads tho...

Party Rock in the Arkansas Bentonville Mission

So this week we worked hard and we didn't get a ton of lessons but we got a lot of good stuff done. For example one night, we were just chilling in the basement we live in and we got a call from a guy in our ward whose name is Bro Wilbur and he's the coolest person in the ward because he's only like 37 and he has a contract to build Buffalo Wild Wings like all over the country and that's only the tip of the iceberg. He has a really nice house, but I digress... anyways he's super missionary minded and the other day he called us and said that he got his neighbor, whose sons go to scouts and are interested in getting baptized, basically to take the lessons. So we got 3 new investigators and they're looking pretty solid.

Honie is doing good. She listens to the Book of Mormon on the gospel library app and she's gone all the way to 1 Nephi 17! So that's really good. I think she's starting to understand the gravity of what we're teaching her. I'm pretty sure she would come to church because we hound her about it every time we see her, but she takes her friend to church because her friend doesn't have a car. Her friend is also an inactive who we've tried to work with before and she's making me really angry because she is stopping the progression of our investigator! It'll all work out though. The Lord cannot be stopped.

We went and did service on Wednesday with the Sisters in Mt Grove and the Houston Elders because we didn't have a district meeting. We planted potatoes and that was pretty much it. Then we went to Pizza Hut and ate the buffet. I'm pretty sure the Sisters in our district think we're idiots because we all acted like it during the service project. When we're with other missionaries it's our only time where we don't have to be super serious so sometimes we overdo it. :/ Then we went on exchanges and I took Elder Skinner who is 26 and has only been out for like 6 days. It was fun. We went and taught a lesson to Darien and it went a whole lot better. Darien wasn't as distracted as he was the first time we taught him. We'll see where it goes. He still asks us to go fishing with him when we set up lessons with him...

Zach is doing great. He says he believes that everything is true but he doesn't feel ready to be baptized yet. So we told him to focus and pray and now we're gonna pray too and he is reading the Book of Mormon so it's all gonna turn out good.

The other day we were gonna go get gas and we pulled up to the gas station and we couldn't find our gas card. So we looked and looked and then went to our basement and looked in some pants pockets and then we still didn't find it. Luckily we said a prayer so we knew we'd find it. So we went to our last appointment of the night and ate dinner there and then we went home and Elder Chapman sat down in his chair and he thought he sat on something and it was... the button on the back of his slacks but then he started looking around on the chair he was sitting on and lo and behold he found the gas card! So that was a pretty cool story. 

On Sunday I was driving and we were going to church to eat some cereal for breakfast because all our food is at the church and there was a bird that flew right in front of the truck and I hit it. He died. I'm a killer...

Love all you!

Elder Naegle

When I drove our truck through a river

Zone training meeting with President

So I forgot to mention in my email that our mission just got a big change. As of July 1st the name of the mission will change from the Oklahoma Tulsa Mission to the Arkansas Bentonville Mission. It's not getting split or anything just the mission office and the mission home are moving to Bentonville. Our President has been trying to get this to happen for a long time. He also wanted it to be in Rogers so it could be ARM so we could call it the Lord's ARM but he's pretty sure that Elder Bednar made it so that it would be in Bentonville so that's probably what happened but it will be nice because the President and the APs will be more centralized in the mission. So kewl beans

Transfers

So this last week was transfers. I got a new companion. His name is Elder Chapman. He has only been out 4 1/2 months, so I'm the senior companion which is weird because I don't feel like I know anything about missionary work.

This week has been super slow mostly just because Elder Ewart just wanted to go see a bunch of people before he left. I'm pretty sure all the girls in Ava cried when he left because every single girl had a crush on him. Transfers was fun. It's really nice to see a bunch of missionaries that you know and love for a couple of hours. Then it's really sad to see them all leave, and some of them to the land of endless preparation from whence there is no return. Our ride was cool with staying the whole time too so that was really nice. 

So Elder Chapman's a baller. We are being a lot more obedient than my mission has been for a long time. It's nice to have a companion for once that wants to obey the rules. On Friday we did a really good weekly planning and we set a bunch of goals that we want to achieve before the end of the transfer. We are gonna get Ava bumpin with missionary work. We're planning on visiting everybody in on the ward roster because there's a bunch of inactives in this ward. Also President Shumway is really pushing active member lessons and getting our wards and branches involved so that's what we're gonna be focused on. Elder Chapman also wants to work out so I get to keep working out this transfer, which is good because I have gained so much weight since I've come on my mission. I weigh 230 lbs! And it's all from members giving us food. We have so much cake in our fridge it's not even funny. A member who can bake really well gave us a bunch of this stuff called chocolate chocolate chocolate cake. It's chocolate chip cookies with brownies on top with oreos in the brownies. It's very delicious. I made the joke that she is trying to get us fat and somehow it got back to her and so I just blamed it on Elder Ewart because he's gone and he cares about his body a lot more than I do. 

So we taught Honie and it went pretty well. She kept arguing with me about prophets and how people are supposed to interpretate (yes that's how she says interpret) the scriptures and stuff for themselves. But I think we finally got her to understand what we were saying. We tried really hard to get her to come to church but then on Sunday she didn't show up. She also said that she just wanted to learn more about our church when I said something about how only The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has the fullness of the Gospel, so we'll keep working with her. 

Darien didn't show up to church which kinda bugs me because his parents (he's adopted) are members and should be helping out. It's gonna be interesting with him because I feel like because Elder Ewart and I showed that we aren't too serious about the church through our disobedience around him and so he doesn't think he has to be too serious about it either. So we'll see...

Zach is going good though. We taught him on Sunday with his mom and his step-dad who I just barely met because he's been out of town for so long. We taught him a good lesson about the Plan of Salvation. But because we had to leave to drive for like an hour to our dinner, we forgot to ask him about baptism and if he's been reading the Book of Mormon. I think that having Bucky (his step dad) home will be good for him though because Bucky is an awesome convert. 

That's about all that's going on. In other news I ran over a squirrel yesterday, zone training meeting is this Friday and we have interviews with President! Those are always the best. We have one more zone conference in June and then that will be the last I see of President and Sister Shumway :( We also figured out a way to break into the Family History center so that was fun. 

Love Elder Naegle

This is a picture of the squirrel that lived in our attic from when I was in Sprinfield

Izaiah and Elijah's baptism

Only in Missouri...

                            me and Elder Chapman picking up chicks... don't tell president