Time Flies!

Hello! 

This week has flown by... Probably the fastest of my mission yet! 

Real quick, I forgot a little something in the address last week.

174 main street Painesville Ohio 44077 Apt #31

Well it is very very very very very very cold. I miss the dry cold of Utah! Being right next to the lake makes it so that it is humid, cold and windy all at once. We are walking 10 or so miles a day all over the town and so I have accepted the fact that I am just going to be cold for the rest of my life and that my fingers just won't have any feeling in them for the next 5 months or so. But that is okay because even though it is very cold I love every minute of it! Although I am a little scared because it has started to snow and elder strict land, who is from Arizona, has never driven in the snow before and he is already scary enough to be in the same car when he is driving in normal weather... I think I might just start walking the long walks to the meetings where we use the car. 

Well here is some highlight from the week!

We met with Tim again this week and made some real progress! He is praying about when he wants to be baptized. He isn’t sure yet because his mom is having surgery here soon and he is going to be helping her out pretty much full time. 

Painesville every Christmas puts up a bunch of lights in the town park right next to our apartment for Christmas so there are people walking around outside in the town at night now! Plus it is really cool and it makes the town seem a little less sad because everyone here seems so sad but this lightens up the mood.

We had an awesome lesson with Doug and Jessica this week! So they are still making the decision about marriage and we gave Jessica a blessing last week to have the strength to overcome her addiction of smoking and in the past week she has already cut down her usage almost by half!! She also shared with us how this is the happiest and most peaceful she has ever felt in her life and how reading the Book of Mormon and praying every day has helped so much and how thankful they both were for having found the church. It is so cool to see these changes take place in these people that we teach and watch them become happier and happier each week :)

So we taught a few more Spanish people this week and during one of them The guy and I were speaking in Spanish for the first five minutes and then we switched to English for a couple and then all of a sudden were just switching back and forth a lot and I would answer his question that he asked in English in Spanish and he would answer mine in Spanish when I would ask it in English Hahira I really surprised myself because I had always had a hard time just switching back and forth so it was really cool being able to do that. 

These past 3 weeks we have taught almost 90 lessons and we are walking all day and I have never been so tired in my life!! But I love it so I know that I will miss being tired like this after my mission so I might as well make the most of it. I am grateful for the Opportunity to be serving in this area and I am grateful for the opportunity to be serving in an area where there is so much church history. 

I am very thankful for my family and for their amazing examples. I am Thankful for the Gospel. I am thankful for The Book of Mormon. I am Thankful For the Atonement. I am thankful for a companion who puts up with my weirdness. Aaaand I am thankful for all of you :)

Love you all!! 

-Elder Frandsen  

Monday Already?

Hey Everyone! 

This picture was posted on Facebook.   According to the certificate, the picture was taken at the Kirtland Temple Visitor' Center.  It looks like Elder Ogle is not too happy with his plant.:)  You can tell Lafe has lost about 20 pounds, look at those baggy pants.  According to the last letter he hand wrote to us, he has also grow an inch.

So the apartment I am staying in finally got a mailbox so here is my new address

174 Mainstreet Painesville Ohio 44077

Well here is how my week went! 

Tuesday: We went back to Brentwood and we ran into this guy who actually came up to us and told us he felt like he needed to talk to us. When we told him who we are and what we do he just got this big smile on his face and told us to tell him more so we did! We ended up teaching him the restoration and the Plan of Salvation and by the end of it he said how everything that we had told him is exactly what he believed but he just hadn’t found a church yet that actually put it into words! Sadly he lives outside of our area :( but I know that the other missionaries will take good care of him. That was pretty cool.

Wednesday: We went to visit all of the potentials we had found the previous week and one of the people was not home but her brother answered the door so we ended up teaching him instead and he was really interested and we have a return appointment set up for this next week. We went out by the lake to do service for one of the members and it was really cool... the lake at night is really pretty with all of the stars. 

Thursday: It hit me how fast these last 3 1/2 months have flown by! Each day of this week has gone by so fast... People always said that time starts to just fly by after high school and now I know they weren’t kidding. Cool little story... So we have been working on a huge apartment complex with over 400 doors and we got down to the last door and for some reason god likes missionaries to find solid investigators always at the last door Hamah so we ended up teaching this guy named mike who loves the bible but told us he knows that there is something more out there but he doesn’t know what it is and then we gave him a book of Mormon and taught him about that and the restoration and he was super excited! We are meeting with him again this coming week as well! 

Friday: So Friday morning during studies I decided I needed to set new goals with learning Spanish so I did and during the day Elder Ogle and I learned 100 new words and that night we traced into an all Spanish apartment complex and taught 4 lessons in Spanish! We haven’t taught a solid lesson in Spanish for 3 weeks now and I feel like it is because we weren’t working the best we could to improve our Spanish so it was cool that the day that we set new goals that we were able to find some new Spanish investigators. 

 Saturday: The most exciting things that happened Saturday was that we had a very devote Jehovah’s Witness end up accepting a Book of Mormon and read from it. Which is something that JW's almost never do because they don’t accept other literature from other religions. We have been working with him for a couple weeks so it was exciting. 

Sunday: We had stake conference and Doug and Jessica came! Elder Perkins of the seventy spoke and gave a really great talk on faith. Afterwards we went back to the Spanish complex and taught 3 more lessons in Spanish and found 1 more investigator! 

Elder Ogle and I Decided two weeks ago that we wanted to teach 60 total lessons in two weeks so that was one of our goals and these last 2 weeks we taught 62 lessons and Have found so many new people to teach. I Love my companion and how much he pushes me to work harder every day. 

Well that’s all for this week! 

Love you all!

Elder Frandsen

This was texted to Lafe's dad from someone from in our Stake that was visiting a Stake Conference in Ohio.  

This was sent to us as a text, it read:  Your sons are doing wel and they are a pleasure to be with.  Jonathan from the Perry ward.

Reflecting on the past 100 days

Historic Kirtland hosts tribute to veterans

Members of the Painesville post of the American Legion, Post 336, and others look on as missionaries with the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints perform a patriotic number in honor of U.S. veterans and the men and women currently serving in the U.S. armed forces.Jonathan Tressler - The News-Herald 

Hello everyone! 

   Can’t believe it has already been 100 days since I entered the MTC! 

Here are some things that have really stuck out to me these last 3 months,

1. The scriptures (The Book of Mormon especially) teach us everything that we need to do in order to be happy in this life no matter what we are  going through.

2. The eternal perspective of things. Something that has hit me as I have been teaching investigators the plan of salvation is just how short this life really is in comparison with everything else but just how important it is. If we can remember when the times get tough that one of the big reasons we were sent here is so that we can be tested and tried in order to learn that I have found that it brings a sense of hope.

3. Our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ loves everyone so much, no matter what we have done. They want to help us so much bu they can only do that if we let them. 

4. I am so grateful for the Atonement in my life and all that it has done for me. Repentance is something I didn’t really quite understand before my mission I have realized But the more that I learn about it and see it work in my life as well as others I become more and more thankful. 

5. The Gospel is simple.

Well here are just a couple things that i want to share about this last week.

1. Elder Ogle and I decided to set really high goals this week to see what we can accomplish. We set a goal to teach 32 lessons which hasn’t been done in this area yet but we felt like we could do it. Last night when we had call ins with the zone leaders we saw that we had actually taught 33 lessons! The people in the area that we focused on this week were really receptive. We found 8 solid investigators and a family that had their records removed a couple years ago that now has changed their minds and want to start over again and come back to church. 

2. We had a less active we have been working with since i arrived i the area come back to church for the first time in a couple years. It is really awesome the feeling of seeing someone come back to church and see how the ward just welcomed them back with open arms. The smile on her face after partaking of the sacrament and everything made this all worth it. Just seeing that we were able to help someone feel of that happiness again is awesome. 

3. On Saturday there was a performance for all the veterans in the area and i was able to participate in that. I love serving in the Kirtland area it is such an awesome experience.  Here is the link to the article about the performances. https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.news-2Dherald.com_general-2Dnews_20151107_historic-2Dkirtland-2Dhosts-2Dtribute-2Dto-2Dveterans&d=CwIFAg&c=z0adcvxXWKG6LAMN6dVEqQ&r=EjAw-8N6rwsajrekJwRJNIl7ID56QYKTePUhy_5eGLU&m=smvP7dpvioWXd8N-HpfdBOOlneV-qPvYC4AduaWAX9A&s=o0-K4WDrwkpGP1hxeCfB14PxDCFUHIYBSfrbhmx-57U&e=

And if you look at the picture i am the guy right in front the only one wearing a grey suit

Well that's all that i have for this week. I love being able to serve the people of Ohio. I am grateful for the lessons that I have learned so far. Love ya all! 

Elder Frandsen 

"Juan" more week in the books.

An investigator sent this picture with the message, 

"Fabulous Elder. Mighty Men of God."  I am sure the Sisters are wonderful too!

Hi Everyone,


Quick story about Juan... I met Juan last night in a street contact and we got to talking Spanish and it was going great and he seemed like a golden investigator... until I asked him where he lived and when we could meet with him again then that is when he told me that he just happened to be moving to Mexico the next day and has no clue when he will be back :( the sad life of being a Spanish speaking missionary in the states... That is the 4th time that has happened... planting seeds is better than nothing at all, right? 

Also, another quick little funny story or two!

Joseph Smith was arrested in Painesville about 20 yards from our apartment 8 times in one day! So if I get arrested some time soon I guess that I am in good company! 

The other day we were knocking on some doors at a big apartment complex and this lady was walking by when I was talking to this guy and turned her head and blew her smoke out right as I was breathing in. I then proceeded to cough for a few minutes and I have never been so light headed in my life... The life of a missionary! My companion and I had a good laugh afterwards because there isn’t a whole lot we can do about that one. 

Last Tuesday: Some people came and dropped off the beds for the two new elders who were coming in but we still had no clue what was going on so that was fun! But the sad story from the day is that we had talked to stabbing about giving his mom a blessing because she wasn’t doing well that night and he texted us at 5:30 saying that we should come by around ten because she is getting worse and then he texted us 10 minutes later telling us that she had passed away :( It was the saddest text I have ever received. Something cool though is that two days prior we had taught him the plan of salvation and how we can see our families again after this life and I hope that message was and is able to bring him peace through out this tough time. I hope we can continue to help him.

Wednesday: Two transfers down already!! We met the two new guys, Elder Fairbanks and Strictland, and finally found out how the area was going to be split... So we are now the Painesville and Painesville township Spanish biking elders so yes we do not have a car anymore and winter is upon us... this will be fun :) But yeah the new guys have a huge area and are pretty much starting from scratch because most of the people we had are still in our area. But I know that they will do great! We also started a random puzzle that we now work on every night for ten minutes and will hopefully have it finished by next transfers but you got to do what you got to do to keep entertained at night. 

Thursday: Let the walking begin... Luckily I had just bought my jacket the day before because now that we don’t have a car we are walking! We walked a total of 10 miles or so in just a couple hours but we were rewarded for our efforts! We have decided that we are going to finish knocking all of the apartment complexes in our area so we walked to one and knocked on probably 20 doors and ended up teaching 8 lessons total placing 4 BOMs and have 6 return appointments set for this week and that wasn’t’ even half of the apartments at this place. After that we were supposed to meet with Doug and Jessica but Doug is sick so we went out with one of the members in our ward to a couple of people he thought we could talk to and we ended up going to the wrong house but it worked out because we ended up teaching the guy the first lesson at his door step and the member from the ward gave him a BOM with his number in it. 

Friday: Halloween Eve! We forgot to grab our helmets from the other elders before they left so that messed up our plans a bit but we found a ride and ended up doing a couple hours of service for this Lady in the ward who is sick. I actually learned something useful from my job I had this summer! Her lawn mower was running and I remembered how to fix and change the spark plug from this summer and it ended up being just what we needed so yeah that was fun! Also her yard needed some work done in other ways and when we finished she was so happy to be able to see parts of her lawn that she hadn’t seen in years that she almost started crying. It was really fun being able to help her and see her that happy afterwards :)

Saturday Halloween: well the reality of being a missionary is that Halloween really is not much different than any other day of the year... BUUUUT we made the most of it before it got dark and all the little kids started mobbing the apartment complex we wanted to knock. First we had an awesome lesson with Tim and He told us he is going to be baptized but he just hasn’t decided on what date yet so technically we cant count him yet but it was still such a awesome thing to hear!! We reviewed what we had taught him before to make sure that he really understood and were able to answer his questions and concerns that he had. He is a really great guy. Other than that not a whole lot happened other than the many different smells that I encountered during the day as we knocked different doors... 

Sunday: Another miracle happened! First, One of the less actives we have been working with that told us how he doesn’t know if he believes Thomas Monson is a prophet and told us that he would never bare his testimony in front of people but he found his answer to the first and bore his testimony second and it was so cool! During his testimony when he said that he had found out for himself that Thomas Monson is a prophet of God and that we should follow him, Elder Ogle and I both were so surprised that we almost jumped in our seats but we felt like 2 kids at a candy shop! Secondly, we met with the bishop for the first time and sat down and had a really great talk and established that we were here to help him build up the ward and want to do whatever we can to help take the burden and load off of his shoulders and he was so surprised and happy it was really cool! He then opened up to us about what we could do to help him this week and how we can prepare some people to get to the temple. I am so thankful that we could finally establish a good relationship there and hopefully that will help with the process of having more members open up to us and refer us to their friends.

Well it was a good week! We have already walked about 35 miles or so in the last three days! Also if anyone has any tips for getting rid of smelly feet then please let me know because Elder Strictlands feet are very ripe smelling ha-ha and we have all been trying to figure out how to fix the problem Ha-ha. 

Oh also we found out last night that Elder Ogle and I are leading the zone in lessons and investigators!! This really surprised me because I thought we were in the middle and that we can work a lot harder which we can. But I hope that the rest of the zone does pass us because that means that everyone is seeing success and more people are hearing the gospel. 

Love ya all! 

Elder Frandsen

The Bigs Crouch

Another 6 weeks done!!

Wow I can’t believe I have been out for three months already! Time flies.

Anyways here is how my week went...

2 Mondays ago: Not a whole lot happened except for when a guy tried to bible bash in Wal-mart. By the end of the conversation he almost said himself that the Book of Mormon makes sense but he caught himself in the middle of the sentence and then left with out evening buying anything. Well at least we gave him something to think about and it helped me to continue to see how powerful the Book of Mormon is. 

Last Tuesday: We met with Tim today and had a really good lesson! We ended up teaching him the plan of salvation and he has already listened to three chapters in Nephi on his phone... The only thing that we forgot to do was to be baptized which is kind of a big one but we live and we learn right? We also had a really awesome lesson with a Less active who we are helping return back to church. He shared with us how he wants to be sealed in the temple to his fiancé and how he is so thankful for us helping him in the path to obtain this. This helped me to realize that its not just about "baptisms and knocking doors” but helping all people come closer to Christ whether they are fully active members or someone who we talk to on the street for 2 minutes. Also while we were teaching him he has a question about something and I wasn’t sure how to answer it then I just had a random scripture pop into my head and I went to it and it was exactly what he needed. It is cool how the spirit does that.

Wednesday: Missions aren’t just a walk in the park... You may be having success but that doesn’t mean that it is easy or that we are always going to be happy. Satan works harder during those times when you are working the hardest to be a good missionary. This with the stress of adjusting to missionary life all just came at me at once and it was pretty hard going through out the day probably the hardest day yet but we had interviews with the mission president that day and he gave me some great advice and helped me a lot. It was still hard but this is probably something every missionary goes through at some point. Later that night we had a cool experience with another less active who finally let us in for the first time in years and then opened up with us during the lesson and started to cry part way through because he felt the spirit so strongly and realized how much he needed church back in his life. It definitely helped me to forget about all my other stresses for a while so it was really cool.

Thursday: Still another hard day but we met with another less active who shared with us her baptism story and how she wants to take the Sacrament again. This week has just been full of crazy cool experiences with less actives and there desires to change. I really hope that I will be able to help all of them do what is needed to get back on the path again. Then that night we had another great lesson with Doug and Jessica!!! The only weird thing is that we were teaching two people about marriage and why it is important and why it is something that would need to happen before they are baptized when we have never been married and if you asked me 5 months ago if I was going to be talking to two people about being married I would have thought you were weird ha-ha. But I hope we helped them to understand why being married before you live together is important and that they can be guided in knowing what they need to do in order to progress. 

Friday: The Temple trip fell through so We ended up not being able to do much but I did accidently get habanera pepper in my eye during dinner... Yeah my eye was on fire for the rest of the night but it was pretty funny. Then I ended up standing in a dumpster for 30 minutes when we were doing service that night stacking boards that ended up making my body itch for the next day ha-ha. But we took another investigator on a tour of historic Kirtland. I am grateful to be so close to Kirtland because it has become such a great missionary tool and it helps to gauge how interested the investigators are. 

Saturday: Well apparently we are for sure getting another set of Elders and they just bought the studio connection to our apartment but we have no clue if they are splitting our area or if they are making us Spanish only... Hopefully we find out before transfers but if not then there isn’t much we can do about it. Tim wasn’t able to meet and had to go out of town until Sunday night so he wasn’t able to come to church either but when we met with him Sunday night we had a great lesson and this time invited him to be baptized and he said yes he wants to take that step forward but he wants to pray about it first which is awesome!

Sunday: We had two less actives we have been working with come to church and same with Doug and Jessica and then half way through the meeting as we were sitting by them this crazy homeless guy came in asking for money so Elder Ogle and I had to go out and talk with him in the hall way and he just kept asking for money and saying some other weird things but finally after sacrament the bishop came out and handles the situation and it worked out and everyone was happy but it was still not something you expect to have happen when you are at church. But yeah nothing to much else happened that was exciting because all of the Spanish investigators who we usually meet on Sunday weren’t home :(( 

Well that is how my week went!

Here are a couple things I learned this week....

I am so grateful for the atonement and the hope that it gives us. Repentance for sins is an on going process, which is hard, but in the end we are so much better because of it. If we went to church every Sunday prepared to take the sacrament the way it is intended then we would be so much better because of it. The gospel is simple and we need to always remember that. 

I am so grateful for the opportunity to be serving a mission and learn more about and come closer to Christ each day. 

I love you all! 

Elder Frandsen