Tucson--#12

Hey Everyone!!

Chris and Alexia's baptism was awesome!!!!!!! Yvonne, who is the wife gave the talk on baptism and holy ghost. It was a great talk! You could tell that she was talking from the heart and not just reading some scriptures and explaining what they meant. She was grateful that Chris and Alexia were making this first step on their way to being sealed as a family in the temple! I ended up baptism Chris and Elder Woodland baptized Alexia. We were the second baptism of the morning so the font was rather cold. Alexia was shivering a little bit. I was nervous out of my mind to baptize Chris. I felt the spirit so strongly and I know that I was performing a saving ordinance of the Gospel. I am seeing D&C 18 start applying to my life. I have now experienced the joy of seeing not one but two people come unto Christ and now I want to get the entire city to come unto Christ. Maybe I should dust off my soap box and go to work! :) There was a pretty good turnout from the ward given that it was Thanksgiving weekend. The EQP and PP attended which was good for Chris and Alexia to get that support. After the baptism Chris asked if we could do the confirmation on Sunday. He asked me to confirm Alexia and Elder Woodland to confirm himself. Man, I thought the Spirit was strong at the baptism? Boy was I mistaken! After church we talked with the Otero's about the confirmation. They both noticed a change. Chris was more able to describe it. He said that he felt more at peace with his decision and knew that he was making the right decision. Hopefully, he gets the Aaronic priesthood next week or the week after so he can start administering the Sacrament. The ward is real supportive of us but we are still not getting any referrals from the ward. I hope that the ward notices that we are serious about missionary work, given that in the last 2 months we have had 4 baptisms. This Saturday we are meeting with the ward mission leader and are going to create a ward mission plan focused on member work. Member work is crucial to our success because tracting has gotten us no where with investigators. Elder Foster emphasized this when he visited that members are the ones who are supposed to find people so we can teach them. He told us that we need to make sure that the ward understands how easy missionary work can be, it all starts with a single invitation. Because we lost our two strongest investigators, we are going to focus strongly on finding new investigators. We are going to have multiple FHE's with ward members this week and hopefully get them pumped up for missionary work! One of our Thanksgiving dinners had to cancel so we ended up having dessert in the morning and two full meals in the afternoon. I was stuffed! (no pun intended) One of the families was the Samson's, who are less active and we baptized their 9 year old daughter, Ahdryanna last month. I feel like Christmas time is going to be the best time for missionary work. With the mormon.org/Christmas page and with the ward's help we should have enormous success in our area. That is so cool that Emma Hunt got her mission call! She is going to be a phenominal missionary! The field truly is white and is ready to harvest but the labourers are few and that needs to change and will change with the lower mission age. There should be an excess of labourers

Love,

Elder Urry

LiveStrong

D&C 76:22-24

Tucson--#11

Hey Everyone!

This week has been awesome! Chris and Alexia Otero are getting baptized on Saturday!! They are completely solid investigators. Chris keeps bringing up getting sealed in the temple and also being sealed to immediate family. Chris asked me to baptize him. I am so nervous. This will be my first "real" baptism, one that I was there for their entire progression. Words cannot express my happiness! We have had trouble getting members to fellowship because of stake conference or they could only come to Sacrament meeting. We are planning on a big turnout for their baptism because we have really gotten the word out. Tonight we are having a family home evening activity with the Oteros and Neumillers (bishop's family) at the church. Alexia is the smartest 9 year old I have ever seen. She told us that she wants to serve a mission like us! We taught Ramon the Restoration and he came to church which is awesome! We extended a baptism invitation but he did not seem to like that. He has said that he knows that the church is true but if he gets baptized 'mormon' he is going to get baptized in every other church. We have a little obstacle that we need to overcome with Ramon but with the Lord's help I know that it will happen. We taught Patricia the Plan of Salvation and gave her the D&C video so she could watch Joseph Smith: The Prophet of the Restoration. She loves the story of Joseph Smith! We have not extended a baptismal invite to her but we are going to during our next lesson. She is hesitant about being baptized but we are going to relate setting a baptismal date to running a marathon. If you want to run a marathon but do not set a date, you are not going to prepare yourself that well. Whereas, if you signed up to run a marathon next month, by golly you are going to be running your heart out to prepare for the marathon next month. The half-mission conference with Elder Foster was really good! He expounded on Elder Holland's remarks during stake conference last week. Elder Holland in his usual self, called out all Arizona members about not being good missionaries. He said that tracting is a dated tactic and that member missionary work is going to lead to the most success from here on out. Elder Foster taught us how to better utilize the members and get them fired up for missionary work. The church is doing a website page all about Christmas. it is http://www.mormon.org/Christmas It officially opens up on Nov. 26th I think but members can still get on that webpage to paroose around. Chris and Alexia Otero, Patricia Vespoli, Ramon Gonzales, Kapua Subica, Ahryanna Samson have all been referrals whether member referrals or self-referrals. Elder Foster enlightened us on how missions are selected. A member of the 70, an Apostle and someone from the missionary department go into a room. There are two screens. On one screen appears your face, name, etc and your application with bishop and stake presidents recommendations. The apostle ponders over your picture and if Pres. Eyring is doing it he actually talks aloud to you :) They pretty much say, "Elder Urry, you are a fine young man and the Lord wants you to serve in Arizona. Wow that is close to San Diego but it does not matter that is where the Lord wants you." Then on the second screen pops up all the missions in Arizona or wherever it may be. They say, "You are wanted in the Arizona Tucson mission" They click the mission on the screen and walla your mission has been assigned. I am looking forward to this week. We have found out some PM families in the ward whose husbands have come to church every week for the last year or so but have not been baptized. We will get them baptized, if it's God's will, which I am sure that it is. Kind of reminds me of Brother Thompson who came to church for forever before he got baptized. And we got a unbaptized childrens list (9 or older) and are going to follow up on those as well. I am going to take my own spin on a famous Gen Conf quote from October. I am a Missionary. I know it. I live it. I LOVE it! I would not change anything in the world from right now.

Love you all!

Elder Urry

LiveStrong

Alma 26:22

Tucson--#10

Hey Everyone!
First things first, they found Brother Wilkinson! Thank goodness! I
honestly thought that the next time that I would see him would be in a
coffin at a funeral. He was somewhere thirty minutes away and is now
getting necessary help for his health issues. We found three new
investigators this week: Chris (dad) and Alexia (8 year old) Otero and
Ramon Gonzales. Chris Otero is completely ready to be baptized! He is truly
one of the Lord's elect! The first time we met with the Otero's we did a
little "How to Begin Teaching" from PMG and then asked if he had any
questions. His first question was, "How do I go about being baptized?" That
took me by suprise! I actually chuckled a little bit (oops!) Elder Woodland
was a little bit more composed than I was and answered his question
perfectly. We watched The Restoration DVD and the Spirit was definitely
present! He committed to take Moroni's promise to read, ponder and pray. We
stopped by later on in the week and taught the Word of Wisdom (we saw he
was drinking tea the first lesson) and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. After
talking about the W.O.W. he willingly accepted to live it. They have three
young girls, Alexia being the oldest. We taught the Gospel of Jesus Christ
with an object lesson. We talked about how baptism and the Holy Ghost helps
us get back to heaven. We used a tea-bag to demonstrate this. We opened up
the tea-bag and dumped out all the crushed up junk. We then took the bag
and shaped it into a cylinder. We took a lighter and lit the top of it on
fire. The fire moves down the bag and when it gets to the bottom the warm
air rises and takes the tea-bag with it. They...and I were fascinated with
the lesson :) We plan on meeting with them three times this week and their
baptismal interview will be on Saturday because they are going to get
baptized on Nov. 24th!! I am so stoked because this will be my first
baptism that I had a large part in the entire teaching process. Ramon is on
parole and is living in a half-way house. In prison he would go to meetings
where they would read the Book of Mormon together and discuss it. He seems
really solid and has the desire to come to church. Oh, great news in a
sense! Doug never went to Utah! He went into a drug rehab center here in
Tucson and called us still wanting to be baptized! Sunday was Stake
Conference and it was a broadcast from SLC. Elder Holland and Pres. Eyring
talked. Elder Holland mentioned that he cannot remember the last General
Conference that so much revelation was received and brought before the
entire body of the church. Wow! That was a pretty bold statement! He talked
a lot about the mission lowering age! The mission department called
President Killpack and told him that withing 3-4 months the number of
missionaries is going to go from ~180 all the way to 250! President Eyring
talked about the need to be optimistic through hard times because the
optimist is always better off then the pessimist. Thursday, Elder Bradley
D. Foster of the Seventy is coming to tour the mission and we are having a
half-mission conference. I don't know what that means yet but hey, it will
be good. Missionary work is fun! There is no better joy then seeing the
change that only the Holy Ghost can cause to happen. Thank you for your
love and support!

Tucson--#9

Hey Everyone!

This week has been absolutely crazy! There is a stomach bug thats been
going around and I got in on Thursday. It was no fun at all! I am just
starting to get my energy back but my appetite is lagging behind. Our only
progressing investigator, Doug Dicky was scheduled to have his baptismal
interview last Saturday. It needed to be with President Killpack because of
his past life. He didn't show up on Saturday for the interview so we
rescheduled it for yesterday. Funny thing happened while President
Killpack, Elder Woodland and I were waiting for Doug to show up. There was
a plane in the sky that had just drawn a smiley face in the sky. I thought,
"That is totally awesome!" Then the pilot started spelling out a word. It
started with an 'R' and then an 'O' and eventually spelled out Romney. It
was pretty cool to see and all of Tucson had to have been able to see it
because it was so large. I could not get it all in a single picture because
it happened almost exactly over our heads. Well, back on the home front
now. Sunday rolled around and I saw Doug before Sacrament meeting and he
seemed excited for his interview after church. After church rolls around
and I go up to Doug and ask if he was ready for his interview. President
was all ready for the interview and everything. Doug tells me that he
doesn't want to be baptized anymore and he is moving back to Utah tomorrow
which he is probably already gone by now. This took me by complete
surprise. He would not talk to us about it so there was nothing that we
could do to help him. On a positive note, we had a part-member family come
to church today where the husband and oldest daughter are not a member.
They had not been to church in a LONG time, since before I came out and we
did not even need to remind them. The husband is interested in learning
about the Gospel and we are meeting with the family on Wednesday. We also
met with Patricia Vespoli and gave her a large print copy of the Book of
Mormon. We talked about the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith. Her seed of
faith is already starting to grow. She told us basically what Elder
Holland's General Conference talk was on a couple years ago about the Book
of Mormon and Restoration. She said that Joseph Smith would not have died
for what he believed and knew to be true unless he actually KNEW. He would
not have lied to the thousands and now millions of people. Ever since our
Palmyra trip, I have looked at the Book of Mormon in a completely different
light. So many things needed to fall into place and they did and hundreds
of millions of lives have been changed because of Joseph Smith and
everything that the Restoration includes. I have noticed my testimony of
the Book of Mormon grow rapidly while being out on my mission. Talking with
Patricia, heard a change in my voice as I testified of the Book of Mormon
and I honestly felt like my voice was "like the roar of a lion". Oh if more
people would recognize the great good and eternal blessings that the Book
of Mormon brings to their lives and coupled with the Bible one's testimony
of both books will grow immensely. This morning, Sis. Wilkinson
(less-active family) texted us saying that her husband had been missing
since last night and had left a suicide night. I have come to realize real
fast that the mission is not for the faint of heart or for the little boy.
It matures you real quick if you allow out. I would never have seen myself
a year ago not even a week ago trying to console a wife who for all she
knew her husband is gone. I feel like this should be an exception, please
pray for Sister Wilkinson and her family that they will be comforted.
Love,
Elder Urry
LiveStrong
Alma 34:32

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