Tucson-- #8

Hey Everyone!

This last week has been very busy! We visited a less-active member in our
ward, Yvonne Otero and talked to her about the importance of coming to
church and The Book of Mormon. As we talked with her she mentioned that her
husband and daughters are interested in having us teach them. The oldest
daughter is 8 years old and the Bishop has given us permission to teach her
because she turns 9 next month. We meet with their family on Wednesday and
am looking forward to seeing the change that only the Gospel can bring. We
got a referral from a lady named Patricia. She lives in the "Catalina
Foothills" which is the higher income part of my area. On Saturday we went
over and got to know her. Previous missionaries had taught her but she
stopped having interest in the missionary lessons. She was born Catholic
and said that she has been looking for a church that she could go to. Her
research started with our church and keeps on coming back to our church. We
talked about Jesus Christ establishing His church, the 12 Apostles and the
Great Apostasy. We decided to watch the Restoration DVD which is about
20-25 minutes. The Spirit was so strong during the DVD and answered her
question about how and why Joseph Smith was called to be a prophet. She
seems pretty solid and is interested in learning more! She actually is
already looking forward to attending the temple. We plan on meeting with
her sometime this week and hopefully will be able to get her to church. We
set a baptismal date with Doug Dicky, who is an investigator that we have
been teaching for awhile. He knows and understands everything but has had
trouble with the Word of Wisdom. He understands the importance of staying
clean from drugs and not smoking and has been proactive in finding a better
environment to live in. His baptism is set for Nov. 17th and I have seen a
change in him that was not present before when we taught him previously and
set previous baptismal dates. He is volunteering at the Bishop storehouse
for 8-12 hours at a time and wants to do as much service as he can. He is
also a great missionary. He brought a friend, Dylan, from the rehab
recovery time home that he is staying in and Dylan mentioned to one of the
ward missionaries that he is interested in learning about the church. On
Thursday we went out our bikes to go and see if we could check up on some
former investigators. When we got to one of the apartment complexes we saw
a U-HAUL trailer and that people were moving in. We offered to help and
they graciously accepted. As we were helping take items and furniture into
the apartment we were engaging in normal small talk to get to know them.
Once we were done moving they mentioned that they would like us to come
back and teach them on Tuesday (tomorrow). Although I have been only field
for 7 weeks I have learned that the biggest missionary finding tool is
providing service and setting a good example. We did not bring up anything
about the Gospel in our little small discussions and yet they still invited
us back over to teach them. On Saturday we went over to the Wilkinsons who
is a less-active family for dinner. They invited a lady that Sister
Wilkinson works with to eat also. Although she was not *YET* comfortable
with having us teach her and her daughters, she saw and noticed the way
that we acted and carried ourselves. She is interested in the church but
wants to take it slow. She would make a great member of the church. Time
will only tell. We gave the Wilkinson's a copy of The Family: A
Proclamation to the World to give to her. The work is going real well out
here. The weather is starting to cool off so it makes biking that much more
enjoyable. I actually got my first flat tire on my bike so I am going to be
fixing that today. I had to bike to church yesterday on the flat tire and
it was the most miserable thing I have ever done. I cannot remember the
last time I was that tired and it was less that 2 miles! haha

Love,

Elder Urry
LiveStrong
Alma 7:11

Tuscon-- #7

Hey Everyone!

P-day got moved to today because today was transfers. Sorry for not letting
you guys know that you wouldn't receive my update yesterday. For the last
week I was in a threesome companionship with Elder Woodland who had just
gotten back from a 3-4 week medical leave for cystic fibrosis. Some people
enjoy three-somes but I did not enjoy it because it made teaching very very
awkward so we needed to pick and choose who we would visit and would
actually have enough room for us. Given the overall age of the mission, 11
zone leaders needed to be replaced this transfer! Elder McKenna was called
to be a zone leader in the Rincoln Tucson Stake and Elder Woodland is
staying as my companion. President Killpack introduces all of the new
missionaries at the beginning of transfers. One of the sisters that came in
was Sister Mayo and she was from Michigan. That name sounded really
familiar because there was a Cameron Mayo in my ward up at BYU. Long story
short is that she is the sister of Cameron. It is a small world! Last
Monday, Jaidee, who is an excommunicated member that we are helping to get
back called us and asked for a blessing because she was in the hospital
preparing for surgery that would require a shunt in her brain because she
gets really bad and frequent migraines. We went over and gave the blessing
and talked with her for a little bit. Before we left she asked for a Book
of Mormon because she felt like she needed to give it to someone. Tuesday
morning we get a call from her saying that she gave it to Juanna who was a
lady in the hospital bed next to her and wanted us to come over and teach
her. We went over and taught he Restoration and challenged her to read,
ponder and pray about the Book of Mormon. The Spirit was so strong during
the lesson and I know that she felt the Spirit. We went to visit her again
on Thursday but she had already been discharged :( Hopefully Juanna will be
able to get in contact with the missionaries in the area that she lives in.
This whole election with Romney running for President has people from all
different types of life coming up to us and wanting to talk to us. Most of
the time they want us to speak politics with them, which is pretty hard for
me NOT to do since I need to stay neutral. It provides a perfect
opportunity to try and teach them. The tire on our car blew out while we
were driving. That was fun! We were driving and hear a weird noise. I
looked out the window and smelt burnt rubber and saw that if we didn't pull
over we would only have three tires to drive on. When we stopped and put
the spare on, there was a couple huge gashes and the tire was really about
to come off. Good thing that we stopped haha! Missionary work wise, nothing
really happened in my area. I was on exchanges for three of the days. In
the Campbell ward area that I was in, we taught a lady, Sister Brooks who
is a returning member. We taught her the second half of the Plan of
Salvation and she asked a lot and I mean a LOT of questions which was
great! They were getting pretty deep too. Good thing that she had been
coming back to church and really had a strong testimony of the Gospel
because we got into a good discussion about the spirit world, resurrection,
order of the resurrection, judgement, missionary work in spirit world and
temple work for the dead. She was asking really good questions and I can't
remember where I heard it but someone said that if someone is asking
questions as you teach them, the Spirit is working in them and helping them
learn. Sister Shelley came to church on Sunday but left after Sacrament
meeting. We went over Sunday night to meet with her. She shared her
favorite scripture in Isaiah and I was prompted to share the scripture
mastery chapter in Isaiah 53 (sorry I don't know verses). I talked a little
bit about the Atonement and then had the impression to show two of the New
Testament videos that the church has been doing. The first one was when
Chirst was in the Garden of Gethsemane and the second one was about Christ
being scourged and crucified. The Spirit was strong during those two
videos. Afterwards I asked her how the Atonement can apply to her life. She
gave an answer like, "Well I can learn more about Him. That's probably not
the answer you were looking for though." It wasn't what I was directing the
discussion towards. I told her that you got out what the Spirit and
Heavenly Father wanted you to get out of the video and then I asked, "How
can you learn more about Him?" She paused for a moment and then broke down
in tears. I yelled "Uh-Oh, what did I do!?" in my head. She talked about
how Christ did EVERYTHING, suffered EVERYTHING for us and she had trouble
reading her scriptures for just 10 minutes? That was what I wanted the
discussion to go towards: reading the scriptures. After that lesson I
learned the importance of listening to the Spirit and asking inspired
questions to help people learn and grow in the Gospel.

Love,

Elder Urry

Tucson--#6

Hey Everyone!!

Kapua got baptized on Saturday and then she and Ahdryanna were both confirmed yesterday! The Spirit was so strong during both ordinances. Yesterday was the first time that I have stood in while someone received the Holy Ghost for themselves. I have done it in the temple before but it is a completely different experience when someone is receiving that saving ordinance for themselves. Our teaching pool of investigators is bone dry so I have been working really hard to get that filled up again. Elder Makenna went on two exchanges this week. I had to take over the area for both those days. Even though I have been in Tucson almost 5 weeks, I still do not have a complete handle on the area yet. One of my favorite and ironically other missionaries least favorite thing to do is tract. I decided that I was going to have an appointment with the Lord. If you do not know what that is, I said a prayer and asked Heavenly Father to guide me to his elect and then I prayerfully selected a couple streets from our area map. I had come up with three streets: Monte Vista Drive, Hayhurst St., and East Gate Drive. To make a long story short, I found 1 new investigator and 4 potential investigators. How we got the new investigator is actually a pretty funny story: We were tracting on Friday and knocked on a gentleman's door. He asked us, "Is there anything that I can help you with?" We responded with a typical door approach about the Plan of Salvation. He said that he was not interested but appreciated us knocking on his door. I offered him a mormon.org card and he thought about it for a little bit and opened the security door to accept the card. I explained what mormon.org was and how he could learn a lot about the church on the website. He said that he would go to the website. He then asked us, "Do you by chance happen to have a Book of Mormon on you?" We answered with a resounded, "YES!!!" and gave him a copy and explained what The Book of Mormon was. He said he would study it out over the next week and would like us to come back and talk to him about it more. During our conversation we discovered that he had been studying the origins about the Bible and how it was put together. He was not comfortable with the idea that people just picked and chose what books to include. He felt like there was more. He is completely ready to hear the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We would not have known this otherwise if I had not offered him a mormon.org card after he had rejected us. One of the potential investigators could possible turn into a family of new investigators. The first time we knocked on the door, a kid (maybe 10 years old) answered it and asked us to come the next day because his parents were asleep. We went the next day and the mom answered but she was really sick and told us to come back this week. She seemed really interested though, so I hope and pray that their hearts will be softened. I have been praying every night to find a family that is ready to hear the Gospel and I really think that they could be it. All I can do is put my faith in the Lord and have the Spirit teach and deliver the message "unto" their hearts and pray that they will use their agency for good. We visited a lot of Less-Active and Recent Converts (LARC's) this last week. It is amazing the excuses that people have for not coming to church even though they know that it is good. One Less-Active member is Sister Shelley. She says that she doesn't feel welcome and is offended one no one acknowledges her at church. Whenever she would come to church she would be late to Sac. meeting and leave Sac, meeting early so no one would have the chance to "acknowledge" her. She says that she still has faith though. I felt like this was an instance of being converted to the church (aka friends/members who occasionally move out of the area) and not being converted to the Gospel. We felt impressed to ask her if we could be bold with her. We have a very good relationship with her and she agreed to let us be bold. This next experience was probably the most I have felt the Spirit during a lesson and the Holy Ghost placed words in her mouth. We told her that there is a difference from "having" faith and "showing" your faith. We told her faith leads one to act. Faith will lead you to read your scriptures, go to church partake of the Sacrament and be more Christ-like. Faith is not something that sits idle, ready to be used at a moments notice. It needs to be nourished. We read the sacrament prayer for the bread and explained what it meant. We told her that if she wanted to feel that same Spirit she felt when she was baptized, she needed to come to church and partake of the sacrament. We could tell that this struck her and she really was thinking about what we said. She committed to read the BoM and come to church this Sunday! Missionary work is awesome! Great experiences will happen, all you have to do is "Put your shoulder to the wheel, [and] push along."

 

Love,

Elder Urry

Tuscon-- #5

Hey Everyone!

TUCSON IS GETTING A TEMPLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Funny story about that. My zone had interviews with President Killpack Thursday before Conference. While I was waiting Sister Killpack asked me if there was anything confusing about the letter she and President mailed after I got my call. I told her nothing that I recall. But I was confused that there were five stakes in Tucson but NO temple! She laughed and mentioned that the church had purchased some land a while ago in the Foothills (richer part of Tucson) and were thinking about building a temple there. And then two days later President Monson announces that Tucson is getting a temple! We cheered so loud that we did not even here the Peru temple announced haha. I doubt it will happen but it would be so cool if the temple was finished while I was still on the mission. If not, I am definitely going to travel to the dedication. Ahdryanna Samson was baptized on Saturday! A good amount of people showed up to support which was good. The only scare that we had was not finding a baptismal suit for her dad to fit in. The first one we gave him was too small and the only other one was just a little bit bigger. Needless to say, he was able to fit in the suit but it was skin tight haha I'm going to start calling him Elvis. Kapua is going to be baptized this Saturday at 9 AM which will be cool. A lot of people in the ward thought she was already a member because she has been going to church every week for the last year! She wanted to be baptized on her year mark of going to church. We were able to visit Dickiann but she ended up dropping us. That hurt more than other dropped investigators because she was the first person that I tracted into. Life goes on and I know that there are other people out there looking for the truth but do not know where to find it. Elder McKenna and I are going to focus on finding a good amount of new investigators that we can teach because our teaching pool has really evaporated. This last week we taught a lot of Less Active members and contacted some less-active referrals. There is a lady in my ward that has a salon at her house. We went there to get haircuts recently and it was nice. Not as good as mom's haircuts. I looked like a marine afterwards haha. Every P-day, the zone has some type of activity that we do. Last week it was bowling and this week it was sand (more like dg) volleyball. Every Wednesday is district meeting and afterwards the entire zone goes somewhere for lunch. Most of the time it is a place called Molcha's. They are a street hot dog vendor/mini restaurant. They make Sonoran hot dogs which are amazing! On wednesdays they are buy 1 get 1 free so as you would expect there are always a bunch of missionaries there. A sonoran dog is a hot dog wrapped in a juicy piece of bacon with beans, grilled onions, regular onions, tomatoes, mayo, mustard, bell pepper all packed into a sweet tasting bun. It is so delicious! The zone record is eight in one sitting. I will break that record...eventually. I loved General Conference! My favorite talk was Elder Scott's and then Elder Holland's. A quote that I loved from Elder Holland's talk was, “I need someone to feed my sheep and save my lambs. I need someone to preach my gospel and defend my faith. I need someone who loves me, truly, truly loves me, and loves what our Father in Heaven has commissioned me to do. ... It is the work of the Almighty and it is to change the world…So we have neighbors to bless, children to protect, the poor to lift up and the truth to defend. We have wrongs to make right, truths to share and good to do. In short, we have a life of devoted discipleship to give in demonstrating our love of the Lord. We can't quit and we can't go back.” That pretty much sums up my purpose of being a missionary. Is it just me or were the Apostles more bold than usual? I found it amazing that they shared the same story from the scriptures multiple times. Especially since the talks get looked over by the First Presidency. I was glad to see that Elder Hales looked 300% better than the last couple sessions of conference. It is an amazing thing to look into their eyes as they bear their testimonies.

 

Love,

Elder Urry