Shining Dragon, King of the Universe and a Rock

Hey Fam,

    Quick joke for the week:

   "How many Mormons does it take to change a light bulb? 6, 1 to change the light bulb and 5 to bring refreshments."

Maybe one day I will be funny...

     

     Well it was another good week out here in Ohio; I'll start off by explaining the subject title of the letter. Longhui and Angelina, the 2 Asian investigators that we are teaching, have been struggling to progress recently and we knew it would help if there were some fellowship that understood where they were coming from. We heard about a member in the singles branch named Bruce Wong who had moved from china to go to school here a couple years ago and had a similar religious background before joining the church. We were able to take him teaching with us to them and for the first 20 minutes the 3 of them were talking in mandarin and it were so cool! Of course Elder Durrant and I had no idea what was going on but it was really good because longhui was really excited to see someone his own age and ethnicity that is a member. He said that he would love to start going to the singles branch with Bruce from now on which is exactly what we had been praying for to happen... poor Angelina still has a few years before she can go to the singles branch. So at the end of the lesson Bruce and Longhui showed us what there names are in symbols and how there names mean "Shining dragon and king of the Universe" then come to find out that my name means "Rock" yeah not quite as exciting as king of the universe or shining dragon.

     Mike and Lisa came to church again for the second week in a row! They brought 2 of their kids as well and by the end of church their 8-year-old boy already had 3 girlfriends in his primary class ha-ha... talk about good fellowship. After church last week when we visited them mike had mentioned something about all the guys having on white shirts and how he had never owned a white button up shirt so hopefully it was okay for him to show up in a polo... of course it is okay but Elder Durrant and I decided to go and buy him a white shirt and tie with a little instruction sheet on how to tie a basic simple knot. I have never seen someone to be so happy and grateful to be given a white button up shirt and tie! I love being able to help people it is always a good experience. Well when he came to church it was great because he fit right. Almost too well because most of the members thought he was already a member who was just visiting from out of state! The relief society took Lisa right in as well. This ward is pretty awesome with welcoming people into the church. 

     Other news from the week: Sonja continues to progress really well with her baptism coming up soon. She has awesome fellowship and has blown right through all of the discussions and has finished Helaman. Our next step is to help her prepare to go to the temple after her baptism and she has already shared a desire to do that. We also got to talk with her husband again this week and he is very supportive and a really great guy. The lord is preparing people all around us.

     Other things from the week... Elder Durrant and I received the comment of "you 2 are the most normal missionaries we have ever met" not sure if that is a good thing or not... also, that surprised me because I am the weirdest/ most unnormal person that I know. Whited sepulcher maybe? (Mathew 23:27) 

Well that is all for the week!

1 Nephi 7:12

Study your scriptures and say your prayers. 

Love you all!

Until next week,

Elder Frandsen

Jesus Is In My Veins

Hi friends and family.                                                                    September 12, 2016

    So to start of I’ll tell you a little story from when we visited our drunk investigator the other night. His name is Stacy and he is middle aged and lives alone... he has had a rough lie and got into some bad things and about 50% of the time we visit him he is hammered drunk. This last time that we visited him though he shared with us some of his really profound "drunken thoughts". When we got here we realized he was hammered and that the lesson was not gong to go.  We started talking about Jesus and the first thing he says is "guys, wait I can feel him... He is in my veins!" and then preceded to talk in some form of "tongues" it was pretty great. Afterwards he then shared with us the other profound statement of "guys, if it weren’t for us we wouldn’t be here!" really great.. Feel like my life is changed forever now because of the new doctrines. 

Here are some other funny lines that I have heard from people recently that I think you would enjoy:

1. "Adam didn’t have a belly button in the garden of Eden because he was made out of the dust but when he took the fruit and fell from the Garden of Eden part of that was him getting a belly button to show he wasn’t perfect."

2. The mother of Jesus, Mary is black because of the time when he changed the water into wine. Jesus said "my time has not come yet" and Mary was like" I don’t care I need some wine for the guests" This guy’s argument was only a black mother would do a thing like that, therefore Jesus is black... That is one of my personal favorites. 

3. "Sorry I am catholic"

    Well while on the topic of weird/funny things said I guess I will share the story of what Ron said this week? So Ron who is a 50 year old man and got mad at us for waking him up or something like that told us to come and get the shirt we had gotten for him. So we tried once and he got mad at us even though he told us to come and get it. So we called again the next day and he told us to come and get it. So we show up to his apartment and he opens the door, hands us the shirt and looks at me and says if y'all try to come back I'll sit on ya, Rip your head off and shove it down your throat!" and slammed the door... Of course it was sad to see someone who had wanted to join the church turn against that for reasons unknown and to realize that he had been lying to us the whole time. But it is also something I will never forget watching as this extremely large man tells me that he is going to sit on me and rip my head off at the same time. Ill probably always get a chuckle out of that one. You wonder why he didn’t just use his big boy words and tell us what was going on. But I guess life was never meant to be that simple.

   In other news this week did go really well... we picked up a new investigator named Tom who has read the book of Mormon 3 times in the last 4 months and is now half way through the Doctrine and Covenants! He apparently just lost contact with the missionaries for a while and was super glad when we stopped by. He told us he fully intends on joining the true church and hopefully bringing his family along with him... he has 9 kids! He well on his way to being a Mormon. It was a really cool experience. Next, we had dinner at Sonja’s house this week and were able to meet her husband; he is such a cool guy. Really down to earth a relaxed. He is supportive of his wife which is great and he himself isn’t a very religious guy. But if something makes his wife happy then he is all for it. She is doing really well and came to stake conference this week and it went well. Another miracle is that this young couple whom at first we didn’t think would have a whole lot of desire to learn has actually proved us wrong and kept all the commitments we have left with them and have showed a real desire to change and strengthen their marriage. They even came to stake conference even though she only got an hour of sleep because their child was up all night. They are really excited to try something new. God is good and prepares those whom are willing and sometimes those whom we least expect. 

    Well that is all for this week... Another good one has come and gone. I am so thankful to be out here serving a mission I can’t think of anywhere else that I would want to be right now (even though Hawaii does sound nice). I am grateful to be in Ohio. 

God is good

Read ur scriptures

Say ur prayers

Until next week,

Elder Frandsen 

Sleeping through the Restoration

Hey Folks,

     Where does a sister missionary go after she finishes her mission to get a little break?  To the RELIEF society...

I know, I am funny you dont have to tell me... (if you don’t get it or do not know what the Relief Society is you can contact your local missionaries for further assistance.)

     Anyway, This week didn’t quite go as we had hoped and thought that it would. So I'll start out with the story of why Ron’s baptism got canceled. 

    We went on exchanges on Thursday so the district leader could be here to do Ron”s baptismal interview, but about halfway through the day Ron calls us and says, "having some chest pains can’t meet today" or something along those lines, kind of inferring that he thought he was having a heart attack and then hung up. So Elder Durrant calls him later to make sure he is okay and told him that he and Elder Edwards would stop by in the morning to do the interview and give him a blessing (he was doing fine at this point) and Ron told them to call and come around 9:30-10:00. The next morning rolls around and they do just that and there is no answer the couple times they called and even stopped by on the way to exchange back and still nothing. Well later in the afternoon Ron calls us when I have the phone and I wasn’t really aware of what had transpired. So he starts out by yelling at us and saying something about waking him up or what not and didn’t give me a chance to say anything before he told us he was done and then hung up... it was right after that when the spirit kind of just confirmed what I had thought before that he wasn’t ready, especially if sleeping is more important than making a covenant with Heavenly Father.  So we called off the baptism after two weeks of planning and hard work to get a pool and what not all set up for him. Even though it was disappointing there was a silver lining, I didn’t have to worry anymore about accidentally dropping a 500+ pound man in the water and not being able to get him back up and out of the water... I may have had a nightmare or two of messing up a couple nights before. It was all just an altogether interesting situation.

     But there is good news from the week! We started the discussions with Sonja over at the Bishops house and even though the lesson may have gone a bit longer than planned (adults always like to talk) it was still really awesome. She came prepared with tons of great questions and basically could have taught us the plan of salvation because of how much she had studied it. It’s always a missionaries dream to have an investigator come prepared to a lesson having kept the previous commitment and with lots of questions, more often than not though, that isn’t the case. But with Sonja it goes to show that we get out of things what we put into them... The more effort we give the better it is. Sonja came to church again this week and again it was really great. We also have a baptismal date set for around the beginning/middle of October. It is one of the most rewarding things about being a missionary watching as people begin to find their own relationship with god and growing their faith in Jesus Christ as their own personal Savior. 

One other little story from the week. I got to go on exchanges with Elder Clawson who is a greenie of about a month or so and it was fun too watch him take charge of his area for the first time and go through a lot of the same challenges that I went through just one year ago. It is crazy how fast that time goes by and how much we each grow in that short amount of time. I was also able to find them a Spanish investigator that spoke mostly Spanish so that was pretty cool to be able to use Spanish again. That night though, we went over to a part member family and we had decided to share a message about the priesthood but right before we could do that the husband asked if we could give him a blessing so we directed our message towards that of faith and the power of the priesthood. So when It came time to give the blessing for some reason he asked me to do it and of course I was happy to do it. I didn’t know this guy 20 minutes previous and I was able to give him a blessing that talked about and addressed all the things he was struggling with and the coolest part is I don’t remember one word that I said, when he told me that afterward. Well right after that his wife asked If I could give a blessing and the same thing happened... and then the daughter asked as well and again the same thing happened. It was a really cool experience for me to be able to do that and again be able to rely on the spirit for what to say. I am always very humbled to be the one asked to give a blessing because I always feel like my companion or the other missionary I am with probably has 10x the faith I do and would do much better, but they are always really great experiences. 

Well that is all to report this week from Toledo Ohio.

Read your scriptures daily its good for you I promise

God loves you.

Until next week,

Elder Frandsen