January 12: Shirtless Steve

The good news: Steve and Andie both came to church again yesterday. Steve even participated a little bit in gospel principles class and I think the things we are teaching him are starting to stick which is good because previously it felt like everything we tried to teach him just went over his head. Also his doctor told him that he needs to stay off of alcohol and marijuana for I think 6 months. We now know that Steve has been smoking weed. Nice. At least he'll be off of it for a while so hopefully he'll be able to feel the spirit easier. We are probably going to start teaching him at the church building because the spirit will be there easier than his house. Especially because of the fat stacks of Playboy magazines he has in his house. And it means that Steve will wear a shirt because the last 2 times we've been over he has just been in his basketball shorts. For reference, Steve is like 6'3 and 300 lbs. Yeah... The other good news: We had another lesson with Andie on the Gospel of Jesus Christ and at the end we asked her if she believed that the gospel will make her happy and she said yes. Then we asked her if she would be baptized by someone with the proper authority and she said yes. So there you have it folks. This will be my first baptism. It won't be for a while because there are some commandments to be lived so we don't have a date yet but it's gonna happen.

 

In other news we had zone training meeting in Joplin on Friday. President Shumway was there to address the shrinking of the mission in the coming months. He gave us some things to inspire us and get us motivated to keep working hard and to "hasten our hearts" so that we can be better missionaries. I also lost one of my nametags somewhere around that time. We did not get iPads.

 

We saw Richard Long again. He was at the thrift shop we volunteer at and invited us over. So we went over. Unfortunately, he did not play the piano for us again, but we heard him playing when we knocked on his door so he somewhat played for us. The whole time he talked about how he is like a famous preacher or something, and how like one time he got up to speak and I quote: "The spirit got real heavy on me" and then he told us that he talked for like an hour or something like that. We quote him all the time. He said that people keep asking him to come out to their churches and preach to them but he can't because he's like booked for a year but then the only thing on his calendar was the appointment we set up with him for tomorrow. I personally think he's delusional. Then he told us that he was like halfway through the Book of Mormon and we asked him where he was at and he opened up to like Ether so I don't think he's actually been reading it.

 

We saw Tom Mitchell again this week. It was a grand ol' time. There's a table in our meetinghouse that has all these way old church videos on VCR and they are up for grabs because the church doesn't want or need them. Since Tom has a VCR player we decided to grab a ton of them and every time we visit with him we'll just give him another movie and watch it with him because he's not progressing. So we watched Ensign to the Nations with him and basically, if you haven't seen it, it's about how the church has grown incredibly throughout the world. Everybody in it testifies of the truthfulness of the work and the church and everything, so I was wondering what Tom would say about that. First thing that comes out of his mouth when it was over was: Man, I didn't know there was Mormons in Africa! It was pretty funny. Elder Colley kept falling asleep during the movie and the only reason I stayed awake during the movie (it was 60 minutes long ok) was because I was laughing at Elder Colley falling asleep. Then when Tom was trying to get the VCR out Elder Colley and I both started laughing really hard for no reason, behind Tom's back. It was really hard to not just burst out laughing. We poorly disguised our laughing with coughing. I almost peed my pants. In fact laughing has been a constant struggle as of late. Elder Colley and I have a lot of inside jokes and when one of us cracks one in the middle of an appointment it is difficult to keep our composure. We have had trouble at Richard Long's, at Tom's and also at Steve's. It didn't help that Steve didn't have a shirt on.

 

That is about it for last week. I turned 19 on Saturday, that was pretty cool I guess. Brother Fowler took us to Burger King twice. He thinks that I am going to become the president of the United States. He also says that he is going to use his family ties at BYU to get me in so we'll see if that happens. He is such a character. We're going over to his house tonight to watch Ohio State vs. Oregon. It'll be great. Just kidding. Due to the several people who expressed concern about me starving, I must let you all know that there is plenty of food in my apartment and the members feed us quite regularly. I was exaggerating for the sake of humor in my last email. The only reason I don't have any money this month is because I stocked up on necessities that aren't edible. But I have also bought food, so it's all good in the hood.

 

Peace, Love and Star Wars

 

Elder Naegle

January 5th: Transfers, Twilight, Tools and Diabetes

So we had transfers this last week. It was actually on New Years day so for the New Year I got a new companion. His name is Elder Colley and he is a stud. He served with my previous companion so we talk (joke) about him a lot. He's like exactly a foot shorter than me. He actually served in Nevada so he has been on exchanges in Parsons before. So when he got the call to go to Parsons he wasn't too excited. Then he met me and he was even less excited. So it's been fun. Especially since I have no food because last month I spent all my money on a Star Wars shirt and on Christmas cards. So we made an emergency trip to Walmart to buy food because Elder Colley didn't have any food either. Since all my pens were running out of ink I decided to buy a ten pack of multi colored gel pens and a real fancy Sharpie pen. I'll get to your status someday Uncle Charlie. Then I bought lotion because I have really dry skin and then some body wash and then some hair gel and some honey and then I got cash back for the purpose of paying fast offerings. By the 3rd of the month I had already spent $90 of my $130 month allowance. I still don't have any food. :/

There is a lady in the branch who thinks I look like Edward off of Twilight.

Tools can refer to people who are... well, pretty lame for a lack of a better word, so Elder Colley and I have to stifle laughs whenever we hear somebody say "You need to be a 'tool' in the Lord's hands" Yeah we're lame I know.

My whole entire mission, I have only had 3 investigators attend church. Two of them were yesterday. Andie, is living with some members and she came to church. It was fast and testimony meeting and she was really confused by what people were saying especially about Thomas S. Monson. SO that night we actually had dinner scheduled with the family that she's living with and we had an appointment cancel so I asked her if she would like to hear about the Restoration and she said yeah. So we taught her the Restoration and set up a return appointment. Finally a new investigator! Then Steve came as well. I was quick on my feet and texted the branch mission leader to go sit by him and I also texted Bro. Knowles to go sit by him as well because he went with us to an appointment with him the night before. They both went and sat by him. Then he came to a little of Sunday school and then went to the Presbyterian church so he'll notice the difference of the Spirit and want to be baptized. We'll just have to get him to throw away that Playboy magazine. Oh Steve... What a guy, what a guy. 

While I was waiting for my companion to get to Joplin, our whole zone went and helped with a local New Years day 5k. New Years day also happened to be the coldest day of the year so far. Why people would be running a 5k in sub-freezing temperatures is beyond me but luckily I was prepared and wore my thermals (which are a little small for me, one size does not fit all). But I didn't wear my gloves. Also everybody else wore service clothes but because the zone leaders didn't specifically tell us that we would be wearing service clothes, I looked pretty stupid wearing a suit with a baby blue 5k t-shirt. My fingers all fell off. But luckily there was a doctor there who put them back on. Ok my fingers didn't fall off but there was a doctor there. We handed out water. Then the whole zone went to a Mongolian all you can eat place where you make your own dish and they cook it for you. The cookers do (try to) tricks by throwing spatulas and eggs up in the air and all sorts of fun things. The only problem is I don't know how to make good Mongolian dishes so I ended up with a sub-par meal for ten stinking bucks. They had free mints though.

Actually I just remembered Bro. Ince (our branch mission leader) gave us a bunch of cup of noodles so that should hold us over for a while. I gave him the nickname 'The Incinerator' I haven't told him yet though. I'm still working up the courage to tell him because if he doesn't like it then he'll... well, he'll incinerate me to put it bluntly. He's a stud though. 

My Aunt sent me a cool little thing that's got a bunch of little do-dads for in case of an emergency. It's got things like tissues, instant stain remover, scissors, hand sanitizer etc. It's got a little clip so I hang it off my bag. Everybody asks what it is so we've started telling people that I have diabetes and that it's carrying all of my insulin.

Well it's getting really cold now so I need to stop leaving my coat in the apartment. We're too lazy to lock our apartment so hopefully nobody goes in there and steals our... Book of Mormons, Books of Mormon? Copies of the Book of Mormon? The Church needs to come out with an official stance on that. Other than that we're doing good, well besides starving to death. 

As you can tell we have nothing to do today because Kansas is so boring. There's only like 10 things to do in Parsons. 1. Admire the flatness of Kansas. 2. Play Bingo at one of the many senior centers here. 3. Freeze in sub-zero temperatures 4. Get disability 5. Hide from the constant wind. 6. Eat pancakes and compare the flatness thereof to Kansas. 7. Drink flat root beer. 8. Get Naked and take pictures 9. Come up with a list of things to do in Kansas 10. Eat a Cup of Noodles. As you can tell I stretched a couple of things. There's really only 2 things to do in Kansas. Freeze while getting Naked.

I love you all!

Elder Naegle

December 29th: A full moon on Christmas day

So this last week was Christmas-y so we didn't get hardly any lessons in in fact the one appointment we did have set up got canceled (I think they were hung over). We did have fun though. On Wednesday we went down to Miami (pronounced my-am-ah) Oklahoma for a district party. We did a white elephant exchange, ate lots of goodies, played killer bunnies, went to subway and watched Frozen. It was my first time watching Frozen and I wasn't all that impressed. On the way back we stopped at a member's house and borrowed a bunch of G rated movies to watch that night. Then we went to the Church (because it's right across the street from where we live) and watched Monsters Inc. and Rio. On Christmas day we opened presents, skyped our families, watched Rio 2 and the Polar Express, then we went to a members house and ate dinner and watched The Princess Diaries 2. Their youngest son mooned me.... 0_0

Friday pretty much all we did was help a lady move from the house we helped her move into like 2 months ago. A member who used to live here and now lives in Chanute or something like that, owns the house that the lady lived in and the one she was moving into. She's moving because her boyfriend is an illegal or something like that 0_0 She has investigated the church before and wants to continue to investigate (from what we've heard at least) but she is very unnerved by my companion and I. Apparently because we show up without warning and it scares her. So that's kinda dumb. So if this area ever gets sisters than maybe she'll get baptized.

So one time I went on exchanges to Neosho and we visited a less active member and he told me that he really liked me and could tell that I had a good heart. So I didn't think that much of it until I got a Christmas package from him. So that was kinda weird but funny.

Saturday we got to go to the temple! It was really nice. We had to drive for like 3 hours to the Kansas City Temple. It was not as packed as Utah temples are which was nice. The youth in our branch got to do 15 baptisms each. I got to do most the baptizing. Missionaries apparently can't baptize girls in the temple. So I baptized all the boys which was 4 and then another guy who had 12 family names and then he did a family name for our recent convert, Venice, who was there and she brought her father's name to be baptized and confirmed. It was pretty awesome.

Transfer calls came in on Saturday and Elder Cluff is going all the way to West Plains Missouri (which ironically is on the farthest east part of the mission). He is going to be a zone leader there. Meanwhile I get to stay in Parsons and my new companion is going to be an Elder Colley, who has actually been Elder Cluff's companion before. I've heard from 3 people that he's awesome so we'll see how it goes. He is apparently pretty short so it will be funny to see a really tall Elder with a really short Elder. Transfers are on Thursday. The zone leaders told everybody that even if we weren't getting transferred we had to be at transfer point because of something important. Elder Merryweather put forth the idea that we're getting iPads. So that would be pretty cool but it's pretty unlikely. iPads have been a running joke in the OTM for like a year and a half now and I think everybody has pretty much accepted the fact that we aren't getting them for a long time.

Yesterday, Sunday, we actually met with an investigator. Steve. He actually remembered our appointment when we called him on Saturday. So we taught (tried to) the Restoration. I think we did a pretty good job at asking him inspired questions but I'm pretty sure most of the stuff we taught him, even though he claimed to understand, went over his head. Then halfway through the lesson a man came to the door and asked us if we knew where a certain address was on the same street that Steve lives on. So Bro. Ince went outside with him to see if they could find it. The address doesn't exist. Then while they were gone Steve asked if we wanted some water so he got us some water and then went to the restroom. First off Steve told us that he has Hepatitis C. Then while he was in the bathroom and after we had both taken a swig of our water, Elder Cluff said "well I hope we don't get Hepatitis C" It was really funny and if I get hepatitis C I'm going to sue Steve. So we're going to keep working with Steve and hope that we can get him to come unto Christ. However there was a big Playboy magazine sitting on the couch when we walked in so it will probably be more difficult than we originally imagined.

At church the other day Elder Cluff gave a talk. So I was sitting by myself a couple of seats down from an elderly lady. She kept falling asleep and snoring quit loudly. The 1st counselor in the branch presidency kept trying to get me to wake her up but I didn't because that would be very awkward. So I prayed really hard that it wouldn't be necessary for me to wake her up because the Branch president joined in on trying to get me to nudge her awake. So then she woke up and then fell asleep but she didn't snore (at least not loud enough to merit the presidency's attention) again. So the Church is true.

Everybody have a Happy New Year!

Love,

Elder Naegle

December 23rd: Tis' the season

This week was really good. We found out this week that Kristena doesn't want to put forth the effort to read the Book of Mormon or to make commitments to do anything we ask her to. She doesn't think it's worth it even though she's seen it change her mom's life and she told us that she feels miserable all the time. She also doesn't think she has enough time with her husband that doesn't do anything and her two year old. I thought to myself if you even knew what my mom dealt with, but I held my tongue. Actually I just thought of that now after reading my mom's latest email so I wasn't even thinking of it during the lesson. We were able to set up and meet with the Stricklands again after they missed our appointment on Monday. We had a really good lesson on the Plan of Salvation and we started to bring up things like covenants and baptism and she told us that she really likes the church she has started going to and while she loves it when we come over and teach them she doesn't want to leave the church she grew up in and has now returned to. Sigh. So we talked to her about Prophets and the Priesthood and that she needs to pray about the Book of Mormon to know if it's true because right now she just thinks that it's a nice book that makes her feel good. Sigh. So we'll see where that goes. I don't know if I talked about Delinda last time but we had another good lesson with her on the Restoration and it went really well. She is really open minded and she said the closing prayer and asked to know if it's true. We also said we could text her scriptures to read everyday (because Elder Packer taught us the importance of following-up) and she thought that it was a grand idea. So we've been doing our best to remember to do that everyday. There is also a guy named Robby (Robbie?) who lives there. We don't know if they are romantically involved or platonically or what, but he sits in on the lessons and he's quiet but he seems pretty open to the gospel as well. Then we got a new investigator named Steve. We found Steve when we texted everybody on our phone and asked them if they would like us to share a Christmas message with them. He was one of the few that replied and one of the fewer who replied saying yes. We couldn't find him in our area book but he had obviously met with missionaries before because we had his number. So we met with him and he lives alone, I don't think he's ever been married and I doubt he has any kids. He's like 50ish and he seems pretty lonely. Bro. Ince (our new branch mission leader, I gave him the nickname The Incinerator, I haven't told him yet though...) was with us and he started talking with Steve about family history and Steve seemed pretty interested. So hopefully we can get him into family history because he seems pretty lonely and then he'll get baptized because the branch will do great at fellowshipping him.

On Tuesday we had exchanges with the zone leaders. I went to Joplin again and Elder Reed came to Parsons. I was with the new zone leader Elder Drake. He's really chill. He is also a really big Star Wars fan. So we had some very good discussions about Star Wars while hanging up clothes at a thrift store. The exchange was really fun. Then we had district meeting and on the way back Elder Cluff and I stopped at a Pizza Hut and thought we would be on time for the buffet even though neither of us knew the buffet hours. It turns out that the buffet closes at 1 o'clock. We got there at 1:15... However there was still a bunch of pizza left on the buffet table and the lady told us we could have whatever was left. Well, we went ham and ate all of it. There was like half a pizza left and 4 breadsticks or something like that. It was all cold but hey food's food right? Then the lady only charged us half price because the food was cold. We paid like $3 for like 3 pizzas, it was great. Saturday we were trying to contact a bunch of potentials and share He is the Gift with them. We were riding our bikes and lo' and behold we saw Howard, driving his lawnmower with a little trailer attached going to go chop some firewood that he tries to sell. We decided to help him. We don't know if he had permission to get wood from where he got it and I'll leave it at that. Then on Saturday night we were chilling in the apartment planning or something like that, and a member dude from Joplin called us. Long story short, his daughter lives in Parsons with her mother (who isn't too fond of the church and won't let her daughter get baptized which is why we've never met her but her number is in our phone). And his daughter was with him and they had their ward Christmas party and his daughter asked Santa for her friend (who lives in Parsons) to have a good Christmas and that was her wish. So their ward is most likely going to put something together for this girl's friend's family and bring it over and if they do they want us to come too and maybe try to share a message (He is the Gift) and then baptize them or something like that. He hasn't gotten back to us yet so we'll see but pray that it goes through because we always love new investigators.

Yesterday, Monday, was zone conference. Our stake was assigned to go to the Springfield, Missouri one. So we had to be in Joplin by 7 in the morning to get a ride from a member from Neosho that the Neosho Elders arranged for us so we didn't kill our miles. So we would have to leave Parsons at 5:45 in order to get to Joplin on time. So we got up at 4:30 and got ready by 5... So we just waited for 45 minutes for no reason. The conference was a blast though. They had fun and games for the first two hours (8:30-10:30ish) then lunch for like an hour and then Book of Mormon for like 5 hours straight. The Book of Mormon was the theme for the conference. It was really, really good. From start to finish it felt like 2 hours even though it was like 8. After that we rode back to Parsons and we walked into our apartment approximately at 9. So the whole day was zone conference. So our Prep day is today.

Well I wish everyone a very Merry Christmas. Always remember that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is God's kingdom on the Earth today. The Book of Mormon is so, so, so powerful and sacred. Never take it lightly. It is proof of the Restoration and that Joseph Smith was and is a prophet. READ IT! It will change your life for the better. We have a special opportunity to remember the Gift that Heavenly Father gave us which is Jesus Christ, so make this time a special time, because it is important. It is the most important thing ever: Alma 7:7.

Love,

Elder Naegle

Hairy Howard

The OG crew

 

December 15th...

Well this week was interesting. Monday we exchanged with Neosho again and since they were doing a zone activity called flourball, it's like some sort of game with flour and nylon stockings, and since it was probably the last time Elder Cluff would be able to attend it, we decided to exchange on Monday morning. So Elder Merryweather came here to Parsons with me and it was a blast. We had so much fun. Since we don't have a lot of miles to use we didn't exchange back until Wednesday when we had district meeting. So Elder Merryweather got to stay for two whole days. Tuesday we went ham with teaching lessons and we got one fourth of our lessons for the week  done that day. Then we went back to the apartment and took really funny pictures of us getting Naked. We also set off the smoke alarm not once, but twice; by cooking frozen pizzas.

 

We had an investigator come to church finally. We were finally able to teach Kristena again which was good and she finally came to church. So that was really good. Other than her nobody else is really progressing. Laura would totally get baptized but her mom is pretty anti so that's why she won't. We heard through the grapevine that the reason her mom doesn't like the Mormones is because she doesn't like a man named Richard Shouse. Richard Shouse is a convert to the church and apparently he was pretty wild before he converted but he's a stud. He is also the 2nd councilor in the branch presidency. So we'll have to see how this goes. Speaking of the branch presidency, the 1st councilor is the city's prosecutor. He is prosecuting a man named Joseph who stabbed someone. The missionaries met Joe a while before I got here but we met with him on Friday and he said he wants to start investigating again. So it will be interesting if he ever comes to church and sees the man who is trying to convict him conducting sacrament meeting.

 

We set two goals for getting 100% member present lessons and for achieving all 4 of the standards of excellence. We got 100% member present lessons and we achieved 3 of the standards of excellence. We just couldn't find 2 new investigators. Darn Parsonians, they just don't want to be happy I guess. However we found some good potentials though. Well they seemed like good potentials. Only the time will tell.

 

That's pretty much all the interesting stuff that happened this week. Some less interesting facts are these: I ran out of food this week forcing. It was really rough. I ended up eating a whole can of baked beans that I found in a cupboard for dinner the other night. I got to cut Elder Cluff's hair this morning. Well just in the back. I didn't do too good of a job... And the other night I was drinking hot chocolate and I just happened to have to cough. The problem was I had a lot of hot chocolate in my mouth at the time. Since I didn't want to waste the nectar of life, I ended up having a bunch of hot chocolate come out of my nose. It was pretty weird, but cool. I bet not many people have had hot chocolate come out of their noses. So I'm pretty much famous now.

Much Love,

Elder Naegle

Cool suit from the thrift store

Getting Naked in the kitchen

Getting Naked in the shower

Adam/God Theory?

 

Merry Christmas from the King

 

 

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.