Parker's Challenge 10/17/12

 2 pound hamburger, 1 pound shake, and 1 pound fries

: )

Owner of the Restaurant

Baptismal Interview Dropped :(

This has been a very stressful week. It is tough to plan for everyday when I know the area and Elder Lieberum doesn't and it made me realize how much Elder Scott knew of the area and how little I actually know. I'm showing Elder Lieberum the area and all our investigators. I loved church yesterday, it was the first day since Elder Lieberum came that I felt relief. Elder Lieberum is a great missionary and we get along fine. He is from Houston, Texas and is 22 yrs old. He's been out 13 months. The area he just came from is glascoe? Not sure if I spelled that right. But Glascoe is in the NE corner of Montana I believe.

So we got a depressing call from "John," our golden investigator who was going to have a baptism interview tomorrow, saying he didn't want to be baptized. He didn't understand why we have to have a interview and says it is between him and the Lord. We encouraged him to pray about it and we are going to try and keep in contact with him.

We still have Teresa from Drummond who will have an interview this Thursday and will be baptized this Saturday. That should be good. We will also see Anita tomorrow up in Seeley Lake and teach her, she is still on date for the 10. Yesterday I was a witness for a kid baptism. Bro. Wilson received the Melchezidek Priesthood several weeks ago and he will be married this Saturday in the Temple in Spokane and be able to seal his family together. :) The Wilson's are an awesome family.

So at church yesterday we had a High Councilman there and he said that he was the one when he was Stake President that he created the Clinton Branch and got the building for this Branch. He also said that the Clinton Branch is very close to becoming a ward! That is great news.

So I was talking to a member yesterday and I found out that her sister's husband is the High School Football coach in Bakersfield who beat us in the Semi's last fall. She is the first person I met who knows where Clovis is and she knew Clovis High. We talked a little bit about the game between Bakersfield and Clovis High.

Anyway, hope you have a great week!

Elder Ashcroft

Another Another Golden Investigator!!!!! :)

WOW!!! Things have been going great this past month! We got another referral this week from Seeley Lake. There is this lady name Anita and she is staying with a member and she came to church with her and she said she felt drawn towards the church and she expressed her desire to be baptized! We set a date for her for November 10. She is so prepared and she pretty much already has a testimony that this is the true church and that we have the proper priesthood in our church. We also still have Teresa from Drummond on date for November 3. Dave and Vilene are doing great! We have been seeing them two to three times a week. They are following through with the Stop Smoking Program and haven't smoked a cigarette. They are set for a baptism this Saturday. They will have a baptismal Interview this Wednesday. Unfortunately they have a issue that we will have to take care of which will delay their baptism and will take some time to resolve. Dave is on probation and I so I don't know how long it would take to resolve this issue. But I know they will get baptized because they are totally prepared and ready. They also asked me to baptize them, so I hope I do get the opportunity to do that.

Sad news. Elder Scott will be leaving me today in the afternoon to Powell, Wyoming. My new companion will be Elder Lieberum (Lee-burr-um) and he is from Houston, Texas. He has been out longer than a year. Other than that I don't know anything about him. Well, I was just talking to Elder Thawley who was with me in the MTC and I found out that he is already going to train a new missionary! Also, apparently all the missionaries in the world will be going through training even if they have already gone through it and I just got finished training, so I guess I'll have another 3 months of training.

I was able to drive this past week to know the area better. It was nice to drive again. :) Yesterday we had another Stake Conference. So many conferences have been happening. We already had Stake Conference, General Conference, Zone Conference, Mission Tour, Stake Conference yesterday, and Branch Conference next Sunday! Anyway, the Stake Conference was special, it was broadcast from Salt Lake for Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado. Elder Nelson (Quorum of the 12), YM First Counselor, YW President, and Elder Callister (Presidency of the Seventy) spoke in the Broadcast! It was Amazing! They mainly focused on the Youth and preparing them to serve a mission now that the age has been changed.

I'm sad that Elder Scott is leaving, and I won't be able to listen to his CD's anymore. So if you would like to get me the CD's that would be Great! 1. Leeland the Great Awakening    2. Mercyme      3. Eclipse Grateful Praise       4. Stand in the Light (EFY 2004)


Hope your week goes well!! Oh, the trees here are beautiful and so are the mountains. I'll send pics next week when I have more time since I will be dropping Elder Scott off in an hour.

Elder Ashcroft

Devin's Study Area

Another Golden Investigator!!! :)

This has been a really great week! We are still teaching Dave and Vilene and they are still on date for the 27. They are reading the Book of Mormon and since we last checked they were halfway through 2 Nephi. They always have good questions to ask. They went to church yesterday, and unfortunately they had to hear Elder Scott and I speak. We found out that we were speaking at 10 Saturday night so we didn't have much time to prepare. I spoke about how the BoM is the Keystone of our religion. We also had two other speakers and they were really good. Anyway, Dave and Vilene really enjoyed church. During third hour, they taught the Word of Wisdom and Dave said he will try and give up smoking. Elder Scott and I are lucky that we didn't have to teach the WoW but we will still go over it. We also invited them to see a baptism that is going to happen in Missoula this Friday so they know what is going to happen. They are a great couple and they know that everything we are teaching is true.

New Golden Investigator! We got a call Friday Night from our Branch Mission Leader in Drummond that Teresa has been taking lessons from the Branch missionaries for a month. I wish we knew this earlier! We are never in Drummond because the Branch Mission Leader doesn't want us tracting there since it has been tracted out and the people been living there for a long time. So they made an agreement that we wouldn't tract there for awhile. Anyway, Teresa became interested because of Lacey, who is a college student at BYU-I has a job there in Drummond. It all started because Lacey bore her testimony of not drinking coffee and the Word of Wisdom so Teresa became interested. Teresa has given up coffee. Anyway, she has been taught all the lessons from the branch missionaries, so yesterday we saw her the first time with the branch missionaries. We did a review of the first two lessons and we will see her again this Wednesday. We set a baptismal date on the 27!

It's starting to get cold and the smoke has finally cleared out and it is raining a little bit today. It has snowed once, and that was two weeks ago but the snow didn't last long and melted within a day. So the snow isn't here yet. The trees are yellow and they look beautiful. Things are going great here in our area. We get transfer call this Friday, so I'll find out who's leaving or staying.

Ovando

Golden Investigators!!!

Well, to answer some questions, On P-day Elder Scott will have personal study and sometimes companionship study in the morning. We then clean our rooms, bathroom, and truck. We then go into Missoula and do some shopping at Walmart. Then we go to the stake center where we meet with 8 missionaries and we usually play basketball, but today I played Risk and I took second, I almost won, oh well, maybe next time I'll win. Yup, that's mostly my p-day. Like I've said before, Elder Scott is from Robinson, Illinois and he will have been out a year in November. Clinton is his second area and he has been here for 7 months. As for meals, the Starks that we stay with feed us breakfast every morning. We have members feed us most of the time, but this week we won't since we didn't pass out our dinner calender this Sunday. Haven't had any game meet yet, rifle season starts next week so I can't wait so we can get some good meat from members.

Well, this week I was in a trio from Monday night to Thursday morning. Elder Savage stayed with us, he has a special calling of a traveling assistant. Elder Savage travels from area to area and stays with other misionaries for a few days. He is a really cool missionary and he's been out 22 months. Anyway, we saw George, an investigator, and he gave us a referral to a retired couple. So on Tuesday we meet the Spragues and they are just golden investigators. We committed them to baptism and they accepted, we then came back on Wednesday and talked to them more and we set a date for their baptism on October 27! They also watched Saturday morning (members house), Sunday morning (different members house), and Sunday afternoon (their house) sessions with us! They are actually reading the BoM too! :) They are really amazing. I was really shocked about the age change for missionaries!

Anyway, Elder Savage was a really cool missionary and helped Elder Scott and I a lot. He was super funny and spiritual. I'm going to miss him. Things can either be going well with stuff to do, or be really slow with nothing to do. Something funny and bad happened yesterday. Elder Scott was getting inside the truck, but the thing was, he forgot to bend down to get in and he walked right into the truck and got an inch cut between his eyes, luckily it wasn't a deep cut. He's fine and it wasn't anything serious.

I went winter shopping today and I went to Murdoch Ranch and Family Supply and a member in our branch is the manager. He was very helpful in getting us good winter clothes and he actually bought the stuff for us, which was really nice of him. He is a really cool member.

Well, I hope you all have a great week.

Elder Ashcroft

Sunset

Zone Conference

I'm still in shock that President Barrus passed away. I would have never of thought of him being gone. I will always remember the big smile he always had and how he would thump me in the back or chest then always giving me a huge handshake that would last a whole conversation. I also always enjoyed listening to him when he gave talks, either for stake conference or when he spoke to the Youth. Also, when I had just been ordained an Elder and had only been an Elder for a few days President asked me to go with him to give a blessing to someone at the hospital. It was my first blessing I ever did and it was with him. I loved how he was always willing to serve and also give other people a chance to serve along with him. I'm so thankful for him taking me along so that we could exercise our priesthood authority. He's been a great example of helping others and to use the priesthood authority to bless others. I will miss President Barrus!

Well, we started teaching George and he is really interested. We also taught Clifford who we tracted into last week. We also got four referrals that we are going to try and see this week. We still don't have anyone on baptismal date but we are working on it. I'm super happy about Dave, a less active, because he just got custody of his children and because of that they have been coming to church the last two Sundays and I believe they will become active. Dave daughter, McKell, who's 10 is amazing and very mature for her age. I think it would really help if she was old enough to go to Young Womens. We are also working on Don, a less active who is really trying to change and become active again and has been coming to church. He just has a problem with smoking but he's an amazing guy.

We had Zone Conference in Helena last Wednesday and Elder Robbins of the Seventy was there and Elder Ecohawk who just been called as a Seventy and it was his first mission tour. Elder Robbins stressed the importance of inviting others to be baptized. He said that our mission doubles the average of baptisms in a mission, but we half the average of having investigators in a mission. He said that our mission does a lot of tracting but we need to use other finding methods. That we must take advantage of converts since they have many friends who are not members and we need to ask referrals from recent converts. He said that we need to use the wordgoal to  baptism in every lesson, so Elder Scott and I made a goal to use the word baptism at least twice in every lesson. I also love Zone Conference since I'm able to see some of my friends from the MTC.

Well, there is not much to talk about. Love ya.

Elder Ashcroft