One Hit Wonder

This week was alright. Our one hit wonder streak continues. We teach a new investigator one lesson and then never see them again. Ashton came to church and she was able to get a Gospel Principles book which she was wanting. We also got our neighbor, Buck, to come to Sacrament again. Then we gave him a Gospel Principles book and later that day he told us how much he is enjoying that book. So we'll see where that goes. I haven't quite figured out Buck yet. He's interesting. Thanksgiving was good. I didn't eat hardly any food. For some reason lately I can't eat as much as I used to, and I'm never hungry. The craziest thing that happened this week was on Wednesday. We went to visit a newly moved in member and they have a pretty cool place. They have a really big pond (it's big enough to put wave runners on) and a good couple of acres, and horses and not only do they have horses, they have a miniature horse! No, it's not a pony, I asked them, it is literally a miniature horse. It's about the same size as a dog. A little bigger. Then while we were talking to them in their front room, we heard a car honking, and we looked out the window and what did we see? Well it wasn't popcorn popping on an apricot tree, it was a van that was on fire! There were flames coming out from the undercarriage and the driver apparently didn't know that his car was on fire, because he kept on driving. Then we saw some cars take off and chase him down. Then we saw the cars come back. Then we heard fire sirens and saw two volunteer fire trucks driving by, but in the opposite direction as the van went. We don't know if those trucks were connected. Then we saw a hooker at dollar general. It was a crazy day. Well that's about all that happened. Everybody try to keep Christ in Christmas this year!

Love,

Elder Naegle

One and Dones

Over like the past month and a half, all the investigators who we have found here have all been one and dones. We don't even talk to any of them anymore. We literally have nobody in our teaching pool. It is a struggle finding things to do besides tracting. But that's cool, I've kinda just accepted it. We came up with a list of stereotypical things to look for while tracting to keep it interesting. Some of the things include but are not limited to: confederate flags, a dog, multiple dogs, people smoking, hoarders, people who've been 'saved', people who tell us of their visions, people who won't stop talking, people who mention polygamy or Mormons being a cult and a few other things that I can't think of right now. I lied about our teaching pool, we've got one solid investigator. Her name is Ashton and I've talked about her before. She's the one who's uncle is a member and we teach her at his house. Her uncle and I agree that she would already be baptized by now if it weren't for her husband who is just fighting her about the whole thing. He had some family members who were Mormon but then they got excommunicated and now they tell him all these nasty things about Mormons and whatnot. It's super lame. She knows it's true, so we just gotta work on her husband... Probably the only slightly cool thing that happened this week was that while we were tracting we knocked on a baptist preacher's door and so I asked him if he would like a Book of Mormon as a gift and he said yeah and that he'd read it. He was pretty nice and didn't try to attack us or anything. So maybe he'll read, maybe he won't but who cares we gave him one anyways. Well that's about all folks.

Elder Naegle

Super Dry

This week was kinda lame. Nothing really happened until Sunday. Our teaching pool is super dry and empty. So we've done a fair amount of tracting. Sometimes tracting's really fun, sometimes I just want to shoot myself. I did have a really interesting conversation with an old baptist lady. One of the first things she told us was that somewhere in the Bible is says specifically, that Mormons are a cult. And seventh-day adventists. She conveniently couldn't remember where in the Bible it said that though. It was a fun conversation. Sunday I was able to confirm Cliff, we had stake conference last week so we couldn't do it then. We saw him wiping tears from his eyes so we think it was a really good experience for him. We had one of our investigators show up to church that we weren't expecting so that was a nice surprise. She stayed the whole time with her aunt, who's a member, and she even asked for a gospel principles book. Then the family who one of the members has been telling us for about three weeks now, showed up, and they seemed to enjoy themselves. They only stayed for sacrament but they are considering lessons. This member also has a baptist preacher friend who she's trying to get to take the lessons. That would be pretty cool. I can't remember if I said this already or not, but thank you Papa Roy for the gps, it has been a life saver! Other than that not much else has happened. We're going to be doing a lot more tracting this week so that will be fun. Our zone got the most lessons in the zone though by a lot this last week so that was fun. As much as I'd like to take credit, I can't, it's mostly Elder Nau, he got 33 lessons and 8 new investigators last week in Mena and 29 lessons and 7 new investigators the week before. He's making me pretty proud because I trained him. I think I lost my usb connector to my camera, so I might not be sending pictures for a while.

Elder Naegle

Pretty Good Week

This week was pretty good. People don't like to respond to us and the adversary is working pretty hard on a lot of people we're working with. One of our investigators just lost her job, the mom of a family who some members are trying to get to come to church and who are pretty open got attacked by a dog and had to get stitches and so they couldn't come to church. One investigator, we're pretty sure is getting fed anti by her husband. And we teach her at her uncle's house, who's a member, and every time she's been taught there her parents, who aren't too friendly to the idea of her taking the lessons, show up randomly and try to distract everybody from everything. Luckily we did the lesson long before they showed up. This other guy who I haven't even seen since I've got here, he committed to baptism and then his daughter, who is 7 months pregnant, went into premature labor and he's been holed up at the ER for like 2 weeks straight now and we haven't been able to see him. So things have been pretty nuts. But the baptism went well. The guy's name is Cliff and he had a friend who gave him a copy of the Book of Mormon a while ago and then he read it like twice and then lost it. So he called his friend to get a new copy and she sent the missionaries over. The first lesson I had with him we were able to commit him to a date. He's like the nicest older gentleman ever. He loves coming to church. Everything just made sense to him. I forgot my camera today so I'll have to send pictures next week. We had MLC last week as well as zone training meeting and both were very good meetings. We also had interviews with President Loveland. After zone training meeting the other zone leader and I had a meeting with President and Sister Loveland and the assistants. They were very complimentary of our zone and how the meeting went so that was nice to hear. In our zone, every companionship has a trainee in it besides the Spanish. So we're the youngest zone in the mission. This is also probably the best zone I've been in. Everybody in it is hard working and obedient. There's only one companionship that doesn't get along. Things are looking up here though so we just need to get to work because I've been super lazy the last two weeks, mostly because I don't really know what's going on in the area and neither does my companion, so we're almost starting from scratch here. Well I love you all, keep it real, and read The Book of Mormon.

Elder Naegle

hmm

This last week was cool. Nothing too exciting happened. We went down to Mena on Halloween to see a guy I taught get baptized. It was cool to see Elder Nau too. Hopefully we'll be going down there again sometime soon to see another person who I had a strong hand in teaching get baptized. Meanwhile here in Sallisaw, we've got a baptism scheduled for this Saturday so we're hoping that everything goes well with that. Right now we're working on finding people to teach because our pool is pretty small right now. My companion is pretty quiet so I gotta work on helping him be more comfortable talking to people. And our ward had a chili contest, and Elder Kealer and I decided to enter it, and the sisters serving in Gore gave us a chili recipe and we made some chili from scratch. We were hoping to win but we took like 4th place if it was in order of worst to best. We won 'Hottest Chili' and ours wasn't even spicy...

Well other than that, I've been listening to a lot of BYU speeches because they're pretty good. My favorite speaker has got to be Bruce R. McConkie. He is very knowledgeable and he knows how to speak. 

Love, Elder Naegle

P.S.  Also could you extend my appreciation and thanks to Papa Roy for sending me a GPS, it has really helped out a bunch. Thanks, love you!
Josh

From my days as a Protestant Pastor

The baptism in Mena

4-Stater

Well my whole mission I've wondered if I would serve in all four states and now I have. I can go home happy now. Well Sallisaw is awesome. I've got a really cool companion, he's only been out for about 7 weeks now and he doesn't talk much in lessons but that's mostly my fault because I get on a roll and then don't stop... He is my second step-son so my posterity is growing through adoption. The work here is good but we don't have a gps and Elder Kealer didn't do a lot of driving last transfer so he doesn't remember where anything is at... We've already got somebody scheduled for baptism and one other guy who has committed to baptism that we'll be seeing on Tuesday, well I'll actually be in Poteau on exchanges. But Elder Kealer and another missionary will see him. Other than that not much is going on. We have a really interesting investigator named Buck who lives in the same apartment complex that we do. He is very interesting and he thinks he is very unique for his beliefs and I almost burst his bubble by telling him that there's a lot of people who think that it doesn't matter what church you go to and that you can make up your own way to heaven if you think you're still being good, but I didn't. He prides himself on being "unique". He came to church yesterday though and said he really liked it so that was good. We think he might get it eventually, but it will be a long eventually... Anyways the only other news I can think of is that our apartment has a washer and dryer and that makes me very happy. And I bought a Star Wars coloring book today and it came with stickers!! Our address is 102 E Ruth Apt 6a Sallisaw, OK 74955. Also I was reading 2 Nephi chapter 2 today and it was already one of my favorite chapters but today it became my favorite chapter. It's very interesting how the more you learn about the gospel, the more the scriptures speak to you. The Atonement is real!

Love, Elder Naegle

pimp my ride

We found him!

FBI stakeout

It's just like that new Mormon movie "Freetown"

We took this at the lowest elevation of the mission.

Pumpkins we carved.  Mine is the one with the bat

Transfers

Well this last week was pretty good. We were in Mena full time and we didn't really have a teaching pool, so we spent a lot of the time getting referrals and finding new investigators. We found a lot of solid potentials and we also found some good investigators. We're still working on the ones that we've got but we've got a lot of new people to work with now. Not really any progress with anybody though. We're having some trouble getting people to come to church. We haven't even seen Daniel forever, except we saw him this morning while we were walking out of walmart... But one time we were with this kid named Brandon and he had a friend that wanted to hang out so we went to the church and shot some hoops and then started talking to his friend, who's name is Nick, and we ended up having a really good, really spiritual lesson with him. It was cool because it was going good and then we got to Joseph Smith and he was like "I don't believe that crazy stuff" but then we circled around and told him the First Vision story and the Spirit was super strong and then he got really excited about it and he took The Book of Mormon and yeah he even recognized the Spirit. It was cool because he was like: "I didn't know that God and Jesus appeared to Joseph Smith" and then I was like: "why do you think they appeared to him?" and he was like: "because they wanted him to start a church!'' and we were like: "yeah!" Then we went and got a bunch of those little pizza pockets and chocolate milk and ate lunch at the church. There's this really good brand of chocolate milk here called Promised Land and I don't know if they sell it in Utah but it's really good and we get it all the time. By 'we' I mean Elder Nau, I don't get it as often as him. Anyways it was cool that we got all these new people to teach but it doesn't really matter anymore because I'm being transferred to Salisaw Oklahoma. It's nice because it's still in the zone just on the other side of Fort Smith. I'm going to be split training again a guy named Elder Kealer and he's really cool so it'll be good. Also another funny story was they asked us to bless the bread in sacrament meeting and so we were chilling up there and all of the sudden Elder Nau looks under the cloth and he said: there's no bread! so I looked under on my side and I saw no bread. So we got up and went to the kitchen to look for bread, meanwhile they start singing the sacrament hymn and we're in the kitchen microwaving a frozen heel of a bread and we come back with our microwaved bread and the high councilor and one of the speakers are up there breaking bread... so I guess we just didn't see the bread... then everybody was asking us why we left and it was embarrassing but funny at the same time. Well that's all I have for this week. Keep on keeping on. The Atonement is really real. I promise. At times it doesn't feel like you're moving anywhere but when you look back you've gone further than you ever could've imagined, so don't quit!

Elder Naegle