99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall....

Indianapolis Temple

Hey Fam!

     In accordance with the title of this Letter, I only have 99 Days left! Hopefully that helps it make a little bit more sense. Also, I would like to make you aware to the fact that for those who are not members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints are actually a part of another , Non-Prophet organization... 

     Well here are a couple stories from the week. The first was on our trip to the Indianapolis temple an back. On the way there, like 30 minutes into the 2 hour trip we had a tire blow out on the members car and luckily it was right next to an off ramp. We threw on her Spare tire, headed off to firestone and luckily the temple had another session after the one we were scheduled for.. We made it up there and it was probably the best temple session I have ever had... it all clicked a lot more this time and I am just beginning to understand a lot of the symbolism and how it applies to everyday situations. Afterwards, we went and got some food and Sister Rowley, who I went to High school with and is now serving in the Indianapolis mission, showed up and we talked for a little while. It was pretty cool to be able to see someone from back home and see how they are enjoying their time as a missionary. 

     We got a message from our EQ president that Chet was in the ER from falling off a ladder, cutting himself open and then after he got up he slipped on his own blood and fell down the stairs. WE were pretty nervous there for a while but come to find out he is one tough 83 year old and is doing good. We went and visited him yesterday and he is the same old Chet and is as good spirited as ever. He got bruised up pretty badly so like halfway through our lesson he lifts up his right arm, which is pretty much black from bruises, and says "Look I am half black now!" and then put his arm down and continued on talking. He is the funniest guy. I am glad that he is doing alright. 

     There was a funeral in the ward this week and the members family came and one of them is from Brooklyn and knows Stephen so we talked about that for a little while, small world. Thought I would share that small tid bit. 

      We went to a Catholic Easter mass on Saturday and it was pretty interesting. I love being able to see so many different faiths and being able to interact with people of those faiths and be able to see the world from different points of view. 

      On exchanges this week the Missionary that I was with, we I handed out over 40 cards and talked to about 50 people, and it was really awesome! He has been struggling due to his companion situation and so afterwards he told me that he didn’t know that it was that easy to talk to so many people and gave it him a lot of confidence for the situation he is in. It was a fun time. 

     That was about all that happened this week! I have been learning more and more about faith all the time. Faith is such a simple yet complicated thing. We can learn so much about it and there are always more things that faith applies to in our daily life. True Christ centered faith is such a powerful thing. That is what the world is missing... true Christ centered faith. It would solve more problems than any wars,diplomats or any sort of thing could ever solve. Having faith In Christ, His Atonement and His Resurrection bring so much hope into a dark world. I am grateful for the faith that I have. 

I love you all! 

Until next week,

Elder Frandsen

Suns Out Guns Out

Hello Family! (and others who may be reading this as well) 

     I have this problem where every time I come to the computer to write my weekly letter home my brain just goes blank and all of a sudden I can’t remember anything that has happened in the past week... I am not sure If that comes from being a Frandsen or the fact that I was dropped on my head as a child one too many times. With that being said, try to stay with me as I remember what happened this week. 

     I will start out with a little story first. The other day Elder Alder and I decided to go out to one of the many little towns in our area that we have yet to visit and go work out there for a bit.  One of the members who lives in one of the little towns populated with about 50 people asked us to help out with some yard stuff for a little bit because she just had surgery. Well on the way out to her house, as we drove past a million and a half farms, we finally made it to a town of little houses. The first thing we see is this girl who is fully decked out in bud light beer can boxes from head to toe (Looked kind of like a robot, if that gives you a better visual)  smoking a cigarette and yelling to some people down the road. So we look down the road and what do we see? Tom sawyer and gang coming out of the river with their canoe falling all over each other. Turns out that the walking bud light advertisement lived right next door to the member that we were helping out along with Tom sawyer and the gang.  It was one sight that I will never forget. I wish I would have had my camera to take a picture of it all, lol. Afterwards we drove to some of the other outlying towns and every single one had a giant Catholic church building that dominated the town and 95% of the towns were Catholic and had gone to that church for like 8 generations back.

     The other noteworthy thing that happened this week was when we had exchanges I was able to go with Elder Hulet who is a former assistant, we have been on exchanges before. It was weird to be the leader of the exchange this time but it was super fun.  We had an appointment fall through so we went tracting for 30 minutes and once again we found 2 new investigators in that small span of time. Later on that night I had the feeling that we should go and stop by a former investigator who fell off the map right before I got to the area, so around 8:50 at night we stopped by and he was home!! So we set a return appointment with him and we saw him a couple days later and had a really good lesson with him and are teaching him again now. 

    That was basically about it for the week. The thing that is really frustrating about this area is so many of the people work on Sundays and they have families to care for or other reasons and the bosses of these people are not very willing to let them even take off three hours Sunday morning and then come to work. It is really frustrating... Fred hasn’t progressed because of it and it is hard for the Sterchaks, and every Sunday that they could come satan is trying his hardest to make sure that they don’t with either car problems or health problems. But the one good thing about it is that if they make it through that hard time then it really strengthens their faith and their resolve. 

     This week we are able to go to the temple for personal worship and I am really excited... we are going to the Indianapolis temple which is a pretty neat temple. It will be a refresher and a boost for me to finish out the rest of my mission strong. I am grateful for the temple and all the blessings that come form it. I am grateful for all the many lessons I have learned on my mission and I know God works according to the faith of the children of men. I read in Ether chapter 12 again this morning and something interesting that I read in verse12 that i hadn’t really thought about before... It says that God can do no miracles among the children of men if there be no faith and I realized that God really CANNOT perform miracles among those who have no faith, because they aren’t humble enough to recognize the miracles or to even accept his help.  God can’t force miracles upon us, he can only help us when we are willing. Which goes along with verse 27 that talks about making weaknesses into strengths if we are humble. IT talks about the power of faith and humility together and how God can work miracles with someone who has faith and is humble versus some one who is prideful. When we are humble we are willing to submit to God’s will and by doing that he shows us what things we need to work on and little by little he makes us strong. I really love the scriptures and all that they teach me and help me to understand... well that is all for this week!  Love you all! 

Until next week, 

Elder Frandsen

Adventures with the Old Folks....

Heyya there! 

Another week has come and gone out here in the boonies of Ohio and I am still alive and kicking. That always makes for a good week. 

      I'lll Start off with a story to explain the title of this letter. So Elder Alder and I have been volunteering at this Assisted Living facility every Monday because a member has recently started working there and suggested that it would be a really good way to help her have more missionary opportunities with co workers and plus it is always good to serve. What we do is call Bingo for an hour with the Old Folks and then we clean their bird cage afterwards. So far it has actually been really good because the residents love having us there and members co workers keep asking lots of questions! This week when we went to call Bingo we had quite the experience... A former missionary who served in this mission once shared with me a tidbit of advice. This is what he told me "whenever you go to a rest home or any type of facility like that where there are older ladies, always throw them a wink, a smile and tell them they look pretty today or ask them about there day and it will never fail to make their day.”  So I have taken his advice and try my best to apply that principle... It works! But sometimes it may work too well becuase there was one lady, as we were calling bingo that kept saying "young man, if I don’t get a Bingo this round I am gonna spank ya!" Over and Over again and it was the funniest thing. Luckily, she was never able to catch me as I was walking by but now I have to watch my back every time we go. It has been really fun to be able to spend some time with those people. 

     Conference!! I really Loved General Conference... There were so many awesome talks given and wonderful insights and principles shared. The coolest part for me though was that in preparation for this General Conference I prayed about and made a list with 5 topics that I was seeking guidance on. Some were more specific than others but regardless each one was answered in just the way that I needed it to be as I listened to what the Leaders of the Church had to share. Especially the Talk by M. Russell Ballard... I felt like that was directed specifically towards me, and  of course president Monson’s talks were really great, simple and straight forward. The other talks that I really liked were the ones by Gary B Sabin, Ronald A Rasband and Dale G Renlund. I received  a lot of answers to how I am going to stay strong in the gospel when I go home and continue keeping the good habits I have made out here a continuous thing. I love having Modern day Prophets and Apostles!! It is the greatest thing to be able to be given the direction that we are given by them. The Gospel is so simple and I am reminded of that every time that Conference comes around. Faith, Repentance, Baptism, Sacrament, The Holy Ghost, and Enduring to the end. Mathew 11:28-30 is something I have thought about a lot for the past couple days and also the thought to treat others as I would want to be treated... that is such a great mantra to have throughout life. THE GOSPEL IS THE ONLY WAY TO TRUE JOY IN THIS LIFE. I wish I could just help everyone to see how living the principles of the gospel will truly bring happiness... but the natural man is an enemy of God and it makes it just that much harder for us to keep focused on what is most important.

    Other than that, the Sterchaks are doing great. Sadly our conference plans with them fell through at the last minute because the bishop had to leave for an emergency and we weren’t all able to go there and watch conference but they were still able to watch it on line together as a family. Chet and another person we are working with named Frank both came to the priesthood session and really enjoyed it. The work is good and people are progressing at their own pace and in such a way that is best for them. I am grateful to be able to help people along the path that leads back to Life Eternal. God is good. I love you all!! 

Until next week,

Elder Frandsen

Well... I am running out of creative subjects.......

Hey there,                                                  March 29, 2017

I have run out of Gospel Jokes and probably shouldn’t move on to Gentile Jokes.

     This week was interesting... The biggest highlight of the week was definitely picking up another new investigator named Cole. Here is the story about what happened and I am too lazy right now to type it so I will send it to you from Elder Alders point of view :)

We found a new investigator the other day. He was a potential that we had two very different contacts with. The initial contact he was pretty nice and wanted to learn more. The second time he was very cold and made it pretty clear he wasn't interested. We decided to wait a week and go back anyway. We arrived on the doorstep and knocked. Nothing. We knocked again. Nothing. We decided to knock a third time. A dog came to the door. We asked ourselves what was the worst thing that could happen by knocking a fourth time. We knocked again. Elder Frandsen didn't knock so loud so I almost considered knocking a fifth time. A large man came to the door and told us the potential was in the back. Cole was back there. He welcomed us warmly and we taught him the Restoration while he was cooking some steaks. We had a really great lesson and got to know him and lead into the restoration. When we got to the Book of Mormon he asked us, "You really believe that? You believe that if you read that book and pray that you can know if it is true? I am really interested." He has 5 kids and has been going through some problems with his relationship with his wife and he is super prepared. We have a return appointment set for every Friday night at 5 from here on out. 

The other interesting thing of the week is that Elder Alder got bit by a mysterious "thing" like 30-40 times and luckily I didn’t get attacked... so we were worried it might be bed bugs (they are a popular item that gets picked up here in Ohio) and I wasn’t too excited about that one so we took a whole day of spraying down every inch of the apartment with bed bug spray and putting traps at the foot of our beds... I dont think I have ever seen a cleaner apartment :)) Since then for four nights Elder Alder hasn’t had an attack so we have won that battle for now. #goteam

That's about it for this week... I am super excited for General Conference this weekend to be able to receive some direction for the next 6 months on what I need to do especially with me finishing up my mission in that time and starting another phase of my life. I want to be able to have the best start to that part of my life as possible. I am grateful for the gift of repentance and the ability to apply that gift every day in my life as I listen to those promptings of the holy ghost that come everyday on what things I can apply and work on. General conference is definitely a time when we can receive revelation on some things that we can apply in our lives and see what God would have us do. It has been really cool this time around being able to teach people about General Conference because it has strengthened my testimony of the Church. Ephesians 4 is a really great chapter that talks about some of the benefits of having leaders chosen by god if you have a couple extra minutes and are looking for something to read :) 

Love you all!! until next week,

Elder Frandsen