Last minute

Hey Fam,                                                                                                    April 26, 2017

 It was another great week out here in the boonies of Ohio. I will explain a little bit about the title to start off with. Saturday morning Elder Alder and I got a call from a member of the bishopric telling us that the other talks for Sacrament had canceled last minute and was wondering if we could both speak. So of course we said yes and surprisingly this was my first time being asked to speak in sacrament meeting my whole mission, so I was pretty excited. Considering that we had no time to really prepare we planned out like an hour and a half to go and write the talks. We were asked to speak on Service.  So I went about it by talking about how Service is a fruit of being a true disciple of Christ. Based off of John 13:35 and how others will know that you are Christ’s disciple by the love you show unto others and what better way to show Christ like love than by serving others. Elder Bednar gave a really good talk called "The Character of Christ" and in it he talks about how Christ’s character was to turn outwards and not inwards even and especially in times of his own distress and trial. For only having one day to prepare I thought it wasn’t all that bad of a talk. It was a good experience for me.   

       Another last minute assignment that we were given this week had to do with our Zone Conference. The sister Training Leaders had been asked to give a discussion and we had told them that we would help out if they needed it... so the night before they texted us and asked us if we would give a mini discussion on how to work with the youth in the wards and branches. Well we were on exchanges so we couldn’t prepare it then. When we got to Zone conference we went in and tried to prepare something but then President walked in and had to talk to us so we didn’t have anytime to prepare it. So I brainstormed some ideas, and wrote them down as an outline while someone was talking about different things and showed it to Elder Alder and we rolled with it and let’s just say that the spirit is the teacher, not us. It went pretty well considering the circumstances. 

      We went on two exchanges this past week and on both of them we had some cool finding experiences. On the first one we found a family while tracting that had lived in Arizona and was really good friends with some members down there. We have a return appointment with them this coming Friday, I am pretty excited about that. On the other exchange, I had seen a park with a bunch of kids playing basketball and it gave me some flashbacks to my time in Cleveland where we would go basketball finding and play basketball with all the kids in the streets and if we beat them we could share our message with them. So I pitched the idea to the Elder I was with and we went and tried it out and played a few different games with the kids and it was awesome! Since it was in that Elders area he was pretty excited about being able to come back and meet with some of the kids again. There are so many different ways to do missionary work so why not make the most of it? 

       Other than that, not a whole lot else happened this week. All of our other investigators are progressing slowly and Sam Sterchak finished the Old Testament Children’s book in 2 weeks so we have to find more reading material for him! 'His parents are working crazy hours right now so it is hard to really move forward right now with that family for another month or so until their schedules slow down. Hopefully this next week we will have a few more new investigators coming to church! I am grateful for the opportunity to be serving in this mission and to have been able to meet the people that have changed my life in so many different ways over the last two years. I was reading in Hebrews 12 this week and it talks about how the Lord Chastens those whom he loves and a little bit after that it talks about how Esau sold his birthright for a morsel of meat. Both of those scriptures have been pretty cool to think about and all the different places in which they apply. Are you willing to sell your birthright for a morsel of meat? To give up the blessings that God has promised for only a momentary pleasure? it makes you think. 

Well that is all for the week! 

Love you all! 

Elder Frandsen