Having a Holy Ghost great time with the God of the Hood....

Hey fam!

     To start off I would like to share a story to explain the title of the letter. The other week we were tracting in the Hood (Ghetto, poorer area, whatever you would like to call it) and came into some people that we sitting on their porch, enjoying the weekend with some drinks and family. We started talking to them about religion and had a great conversation and they told us about the church that they attended and they then invited us to come to one of their services. Well, I have really not done a whole lot of that on my mission because the time that church has started has always been in the morning, when most other churches meet but since the branch meets at 1:00, I now have the opportunity to do that. So we accepted. I didn’t realize the shock that I was in for! It was a Baptist church in the middle of the hood and here is how the services went: We walked in and the assistant pastor ran up to greet us and introduced us to the pastor. They were both extremely nice. Well the services started and they had a live band and a guy who played the organ professionally to go along with the pastor to add a little "umph" to the sermon. They had a fellowship moment where the pastor said "And today we are honored and privileged to have 2 young distinguished ministers with us, make sure to make them feel welcomed." The next thing I know, I realized he was talking about us and we had a bunch of old, sweet, black ladies come up and give us hugs and pull us up to the front for their community prayer. Well, that finished and they had a welcome song to all visitors and once again he pointed us out as the "2 young distinguished ministers" and they sang this really cool song to welcome us to the church that day. Next, the pastor had invited a gospel group to come and sing for 15 minutes and not gonna lie, that group was really good but I have never been in a church service with so much dancing, singing, shouting and not being able to hear myself think because it was so loud. Here are some of the best quotes from the service: "We are gonna have a Holy Ghost great time" "God is the God of the white house and he is the God of the Hood... and God loves the Hood!!". It was pretty cool to be able to see how different people worship and show their love to God and at the same time it was an experience that showed the difference in the spirit that I felt going right from that to our church service. God is good and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Say Saints is His church. 

We had a new family come to church this Sunday!! Tony is the husbands name, we have been working with him mostly and he has recently started to progress more and finally came to church.  We had a really good lesson with him with a member of the ward that works with him and has recentloy became his friend. They hit it off right away and during the lesson Tony’s wife decided to join and opened up to us about how because of some challenges they have had in the last couple years, that it has led them to search more for God in their lives and how they were looking for a church. She would have come to church but called into work Sunday so she wasn’t able to make it. We had another great lesson with Tony yesterday and it just felt so much more comfortable and like we have a solid foundation set that will help him to accept the gospel and have his family follow along after. I am really excited to work with them. We also had another recent convert /less active family come to church for the first time in a while and it was great. 

Peter, The law student and friend of some members in the branch came to the branch pot luck and loved it! We are hopefully going to go to Kirtland with him this Sunday. He is in 2 Nephi and doing great. He is just going to be so busy with him studying for the bar for the next couple of months that it might be hard to meet with him.

We were able to go to Kirtland with a recent convert, his wife and his wife's sister on Saturday and it was super awesome. The recent convert and his wife got into a wreck about a year ago and it got her pretty bad and she was in a coma for a while and has been recovering ever since and he joined the church after that and she has seen miracles in her recovery. The School of the prophets was super awesome and I haven’t felt the spirit that strongly for a while when they talked about how God has helped them through the last year. Then we went to the temple with him and Elder Rawson and I knew more about the temple than the tour guides did so we ended up breaking off and giving Vince the tour of the temple, lol. 

A couple of nights ago we were stopping by a less active and he didn’t end up being home but the guy who answered the door lit up when he saw us. At first we were confused but he then told us about how he had literally just been sitting there thinking about how something was missing in his life and how he and his girlfriend were looking for a church and he prayed about it and then we knocked on the door. This dude was covered in tattoos and was a rough tumbler, which once again goes to show that we cant judge others by how they look because we are shutting heavens door on them if we do. We ended up teaching him and his girlfriend the restoration and they loved it. We have a return appointment with them next week. 

In closing, I would like to share a little bit from my studies this week. I have been pondering on what it really means to be a Christian and the scriptrues that I have run into are D&C 81:5, John 13:34,35 and a few others that talk about how to be Christs disciples.  We first  need to have love one for another. Being a christian isn’t about finding a community of others like you and just stay there thinking that you are safe and that you can kick everyone else out that isnt like you... it is about succoring the weak and lifting the hands that hang low and strengthening those around you. It is about becoming something, becoming as Christ is and turning outward and thinking of others and not worrying about our "Checklist' to get to heaven. Reaching out to those that are lost in forbidden paths is all about compassion and mercy, not compromise. I have really enjoyed pondering on this subject and studying it as well. I love being taught things from the scriptures that connect together and help me to improve. That is all for this week! Love you all :)

Read your scriptures and be good! 

Stay cute,

Elder Frandsen 

From one decade to the next....

Sup Fam! 

     Quick story from the week: We were tracting and contacting in the Hood of south Akron on Sunday after church. We came across this man who was walking down the street. We started talking to him and the first thing he says to us is, " Y'all got some money?,” and right after that I could smell the alcohol from 10 feet away. Neither of us carry cash on us so we told him no and he got this weird look on his face and said, ”y'all can’t come into the hood talking bout Jesus and not be carrying cash on y'all selfs... Jesus woulda gave me some money to buy a sandwich and a beer”. And then all of a sudden he gets an even weirder look on his face and looks at us and says, " do y'all wanna get punched?... I'll knock you out right now!" Elder Rawson responded by saying" yeah, sure why not." So the guy took one look at him and you could see in his face that the thought came,  “Man, that guy is way too big, he would eat me for breakfast.” So he looks at me and shys away from Elder Rawson (he is 6 foot 4 and 280 pounds and the dude was like 5 foot 8 maybe 140).  He tries to buddy buddy with me and tells us how he runs the streets and he could shoot us right then and there if he wanted to and would drag us off into the bushes and how he is blessed because he has made it to the age of 33 out in the streets of Akron with out dying after being shot like 10 times.  We started to slowly back up a little at a time as the guy was tripping over himself and finally he gets another weird look on his face like he had no idea what he was doing there and just walked away. It was sad to see how much that guy had wasted his life on drugs and alcohol. Whenever stuff like that happens I always feel terrible and wish I could do something more to help a lot of these people out of these situations of poverty and no education... but it is hard to try to help someone realize their potential when their whole life society has told them otherwise. :( 

Well here is the run down for the week: 

      Sadly both of our Kirtland trips ended up not panning out because of different things. Peter, the member referral we have been teaching, got stuck in New York and had to cancel but we were able to have dinner with him again over at the members home who is helping us to teach him. Peter is taking the Bar at the end of the summer so he is taking classes everyday to help him prep for that so we won’t be able to meet with him very often :(.  But he is going to be texting us questions he has from what he reads in the Book of Mormon and hopefully we are able to meet up every once in a while. The other trip got canceled because the recent convert we were going with forgot it was his daughters graduation so he had to cancel, but we are going with him this coming Saturday. 

     There is another Part Member family that recently moved into the Branch and the non member husband grew up here and turns out one of the members that grew up here is his same age and they went to high school together! The husband was asking if there were any members their age and what not, so we are taking the member with us teaching this week when we visit them. The husband had been investigating for a while, back where they were at before they moved here, and was pretty close to joining. I am pretty hopeful for this family. 

      We were able to have another lesson Austin, the boyfriend of a member that we started teaching a few weeks ago, and met with him again a couple of nights ago and it went really well! He kept the commitments we left with him and he had some really great questions. Last night we went and helped out with the youth activity and his girlfriend was there and she shared, for the miracle of the week how austin, who isnt super religious, told her after we left that he felt there was truth to what we were teaching! I have high hopes for Austin as well and hope I am able to see him progress while I am still here. 

    And last but not least, we found a spanish family to teach!! I am a little bit rusty on my spanish I feel. but when we tracted into the family the other day, I was able to speak just fine with them and it was awesome! The gift of tongues is still a real thing and I hope that they are more than just a one and done deal. We have been doing a lot of finding this past week and tracted probably like 200-300 doors and have tons of potentials now we need to help them all become investigators and we will be pretty busy for a while.

      Well that's all for this week! My birthday was yesterday.. the Big 20. It is weird to think that I am 20 already and that my mission is almost over... the things that as you are growing up you are always looking forward to, but they always seem so far away. Life kind of just sneaks up on you that way. It was a good birthday and I wouldn’t have wanted to spend it anywhere else than out here in the mission field of Ohio. Something that I learned this week in my studies is the importance of having a spiritual experience with the scriptures every day. When I apply myself to my studies in the mornings and get soemething out of it, the rest of my day goes so much better and I am able to focus on the work more without getting distracted and thinking about how close I am to going home. It also gives me something to ponder on for the day and helps me to "Let virtue garnish my thoughts" as it tells us to do in D&C 121:45. That has been a big one for me recently is having diligence of mind not just diligence of action. It is so easy to go through the actions of being a missionary and not have your mind be into it. I think the same goes for us as Christians striving to live the gospel. sometimes we are just going through the motions and our hearts aren’t into it and we don’t get anything out of it. I am so grateful for my mission and all that it has taught me. 

Well that is all for this week! Love you all :) 

Stay cute,

Elder Frandsen

Haters gonna Hate

No caption needed

Hey Fam,

     I don’t have a lot of time this week so I am going to make this quick... Plus we already talked on Sunday and so I dont have to much to report on!

     To start off I will explain the subject of this week’s letter. We were getting breakfast with a recent convert at a local restaurant when we had this guy come up to us and start to try and bash with us about the BOM and a bunch of other random stuff. So we told him that it wasn’t the time or place really for that and if he wanted to talk with us we could get his info and give him a call. So he gave it to us and we called him and met with him yesterday.... Something  that you learn really quickly as a missionary is that bashing with people gets no where. Well when we pulled up the guys was sitting out side with his bible and a few other books. He had gone on the internet and found a bunch of things that weren’t true or were taken out of context and tried throwing them at us. I was able to answer all of his questions and show him how, if you want to find out about God, you don’t go to an atheist and if you want to find out about our Church you don’t go to a Baptist.  At the end after he had said all that he wanted to say, I pulled out 2 Nephi 31 and read him some of it, testified about it and told him that God is the one who knows all truth and he wasn’t going to find the answers he is looking for until he prays about it. Then Elder Rawson threw in some good stuff and the guy was pretty surprised that we didn’t want to argue with him and the way we went about it. You could tell he was conflicted because he had felt something but his heart was so hardened to the truth and the lies of the world that he went the other way and started bashing again. So we said a prayer with him and left. It is sad to see how strong of a hold satan has over some people. 

     This Branch is awesome! There are about 80 people or so that attend regularly and they are all missionary minded and will do anything for the missionaries! I am so excited to be able to work with the members here. We are going to Kirltnad tomorrow with a member referral from 2 of the law students in the branch. I mentioned a little bit about him last week, his name is Peter. I am pretty pumped about it. We are also going again on Saturday with a recent Convert named Vince. We have been really busy the last few days as well with appointments and we are findng new people to teach almost everyday! We were driving through Barberton the other night and we felt we should go and see someone that just moved in and we hadn’t been able to meet yet and when we pulled up they were outside on the front porch and we were able to go and meet them! They just moved from Nevada, the wife is a member but the husband is not and he had been taking the lessons in Nevada and was pretty close to joining and he said that he is still very interested and would like to meet with us. It was awesome! Another family to work with :) I am excited about working with them. 

     Other than that, it was great to talk to family :) Tryin not get trunky after that one. Elder Rawson and I are getting along really great and the work is moving forward. I was pondering on being diligent the other day and how I can stay motivated to keep it up and right after that I opened up the BOM to Moroni 9:6  which says:  6 And now, my beloved son, notwithstanding their hardness, let us labor diligently; for if we should cease to labor, we should be brought under condemnation; for we have a labor to perform whilst in this tabernacle of clay, that we may conquer the enemy of all righteousness, and rest our souls in the kingdom of God.

That definitely was the answer to my question I had been thinking about. I love the way that the scriptures answer my questions. 

Well I love all of you and I hope that everything is going well! 

Don’t forget to read your scriptures and pray :) 

Stay Cute,

Elder Frandsen

Bye Brother Kelly

Elder Allen

Bye Elder Alder

Adam Smith, the guy that Paul went to high school with.

Bye Chet

Picking up the Branches

Hey Fam!

     Well this was an awesome first week to being in the New Portage Branch! My new companion is named Elder Rawson and he has been out for about 9 months and is a goofball just like me so we get along pretty well. He has a lot of energy and loves missionary work, (Except when people don’t keep commitments... Then he gets slightly upset) so it is helping me to stay Diligent and Endure to the end. The area that we cover is pretty great too because it has a little bit of everything. if I want to go to the Hood then we can do that, if I want to talk to a bunch of rich Catholics then we have a place for that, and if I want to go with the middle class then we have a place for that. It is super awesome and  the Branch members seem to be really supportive. 

     Here are some cool experiences that have happened in the short time that I have been here:

1. There is this awesome recent convert here named Carlos and he looks like the next Wolverine.  He has had a crazy life and has been through it all and a few months ago after he got out of a rehab place he decided to give it all to God and was praying and about 5 seconds later the Elders knocked on the door and he has been super solid ever since! He has referred a ton of his family and friends to the missionaries and is talking with everyone and anyone that is willing to listen. We hit it off from the get go and I am really excited to work with him. 

2. This area has had a lot going on in the past. In the last month or so it has kind of dipped down so we went through the area book, called former missionaries that served here, and talked to some members about different people to visit. Now we have a booked schedule with more people to visit in the next week.

 3. There was a family named the Hoffmans that had been meeting with missionaries in the past. Elder Rawson had never met them and we weren’t sure why they had stopped meeting with the missionaries. So we stopped by on Saturday and they were pretty excited to see us and let us right in!  We talked for a while and turns out that she is from Mexico. So we chatted in spanish for a bit and are set up to go see them this week :))))

4. there are a good amount of law students in the branch and two of them have been working with one of their fellow students and recently gave him a Book of Mormon and then they invited him over for dinner on Sunday when we were there, and it was super cool! He started talking about what he had read in the Book of Mormon in detail and telling us about all the parts that he liked and how he felt that God was guiding him to do this. So we taught some what of the restoration and he is down to learn more... the only hard part is that he lives in another wards boundaries but the two families that are working with him live in our branch. So we have to figure that one out. He finishes finals this week and wants to go up on a visit to Kirtland so that will be fun. 

5. We had dinner with the Branch President on Monday and we asked him if there was anyone he wanted us to visit and he mentioned a name that neither Elder Rawson or I had heard of. So we went by yesterday and it turns out that the mom who we were looking for wasn’t there but her daughter is a returning member and she was there with her boyfriend. She pulled him outside to talk with us and we had a great conversation. It was kind of awkward at first because of different things but after a couple minutes we were all laughing and having a good time and that led into a really awesome and not forced Restoration Lesson.  He said that since she had been coming back to church recently that he was pretty interested and would love to learn more and come to church because of how he has seen it help her to be more happy. Now we have another appointment to come and read the Book of Mormon with him next week. 

That was 2 solid investigators that we picked up who already have awesome fellowship... and get this, we were planning one day, when a member called us and told us that his brother was interested in learning about the church.  He then gave us all his info and told us that he would set up an appointment for us in the next couple of weeks! That is 3 member referrals within a week! That is more than I recieved in the last 5 months combined! 

Other weird things about the area: We live right behind a fried chicken place and it drives me nuts because it smells sooooo good and y'all ready know that I don’t have money for that... well that is all that I can remember of what happened this week!

I was studying section 89 in the Doctrine and Covenants the other day and verse 4 stuck out to me:

4. Behold, verily, thus saith the Lord unto you: In consequence of evils and designs which do and will exist in the hearts of conspiring men in the last days, I have warned you, and forewarn you, by giving unto you this word of wisdom by revelation—

That section is about The Word of wisdom and it was given at a time before we knew all the full repercussions of the things we are warned against in this revelation. It stuck out to me as another witness of Joseph Smith’s calling as a Prophet. 

That is it for the week.  

Don’t forget to read your scriptures

Stay cute,

Elder Frandsen

New Beginnings To The Endings

Hay fam,

This week was pretty average until Sunday night. I had assumed that I would be staying in the Lima ward for at least another transfer because Elder Alder is going home this week and I didn’t think that they would be shotgunning this area.Well President called me Sunday night to tell me that he has a new assignment for me and that they are combining our now area with the
missionaries going home this Summer and how they

 won’t have as many coming in, so they had to make some changes. In the last two days we have been taking a lot of time prepping a bunch of stuff for the new guys so they won’t feel lost and won’t drop the ball on all the investigators and other that we are working with.

I am pretty sad about leaving right now because of all

the work that we have going on and I am worried about what will happen with theRecent converts, Progressing investigators and especially the Sterchak family, with us leaving and new guys coming in. Luckily the ward council in the last months finally picked focus families and have made commitments and plansspecifically with how they are going to work with the Sterchak family. Luckily though I have been able to say goodbye to all of the people that I have worked with the most out here in the last two days.

We had some awesome things happen this week though. We had a decent amount of members come out with us to the boonies of our area. We were able to get some fellowship for our investigators out there and it is all set up so that they are going to be coming to church in the next couple weeks! I am so glad that we have had members involved in all of this because that will make this transition so much easier for the people we teach and the new guys coming in.

Chet is heart broken because both Elder Alder and I are leaving at the same

time :( I will miss the people here. This has been a good area. I am super excitedfor my new area though! I am going to be in the New Portage branch to finish outmy mission. It is in the city of Akron and is relatively Ghetto and Elder Alder servedthere and he said it was his favorite area and the best in the mission. I am excitedto serve in a branch as well. It will be a good a place to finish out my mission :) Iam going to be with a young missionary who is a hard worker and really funny.

Here is my address: 875 Chester avenue Akron, Ohio 44123

Well Elder Alder is going home and I will miss him. He has been one of my

favorite companions and has taught me so much. He is such a great guy. I am

grateful for the experiences that I have had this last transfer. I have made a lot of

really great friends, learned a lot and have seen my testimony of the Savior grow.

That's all for this week! Lots of changes and things going on but it will all work out.

I love you all!

Hope you have a great week! :)

Elder Frandsen

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