Week 90 We're Getting Smart Phones

Haha I wanted to start out with one of the funniest things that we did this week. Since we have Elder Biranibwebwe we have to do a lot of studies. One of them is called 12 week. We go over pretty much missionary 101 and practice it in out flat. For one of our role plays we had Elder Biranibwebwe knock on our door. We were in the study room and he knocked on that door. When he knocked on the door we yelled out just a minute. From there we opened up the window and jumped out and closed the window. We ran around the house and peeked through the window. He was so patient and finally after a minute he knocked on the door again and again and again...no answer. It was so funny. Finally he opened the door and was so shocked. He looked in the closet but we were nowhere to be found. Haha he lost his companions. It was pretty funny. Sometimes we have to spice it up and have some fun. It made for a great day!!

Last week out of the blue Sam called us and wanted to meet. He was a former investigator. We stopped by on Saturday and caught back up. He wants to turn back to the church for a second chance. It is amazing when you drop someone. It can be a really good thing. When you stop visiting they stop feeling the Spirit and recognize that something is missing. That happened to Sam. We invited him to come to church and arranged for a member to pick him up from work. Oh my goodness it was so funny when he showed up to church. I was surprised that he came but more surprised by what he wore. Since he came from work he was in short shorts and a T-shirt. What made it worse was there was a picture of a girl in a bikini on the shirt. It was not a good picture. So when members came up to greet him they were so surprised. The good new is that he has been to church before and all the members remembered him. So once they got over the inappropriate t-shirt they loved him!! Haha it was a crack up.

We have seen Sam a lot this past week. Almost every day. He is doing really good and wants to get baptized!! I hate smoking. It is the only things holding him back. Rob also and a million other Aussies!!

It was just such an amazing week. Last week we really tried to set up as many teaching apt so Elder Biranibwebwe can see what to do. We had a day when we did not even plan for the day because it planned itself. Every house was full. We had apt after apt. All of them were amazing. One was with Sam, Rob, Karol. Etc.... It just went on and on and on!!

Karol was a great lesson. We had Bishop come with us and start to go over what it is going to take. Karol was just so excited and can’t wait. She was been living the commandments for 8 days now. No smoking and now the law of chastity. She says she is keeping it because she says it feels good. She feels the Spirit. We finished the lesson and Bishop said, “Elders she is amazing.” During the lesson we told her that. I even told her that when we get into the car we always shout for joy because she is so good. I told her I took a video of it so when I feel down I can watch it and get myself excited to see miracles. Well now she wants to see the video. Haha I just love her so much!!!

During the week we had our Mission Leadership Conference and to start it out President McSwain said, “I was woken up at 4:30 this morning and have a message that the Lord wants you to hear today!!” Oh my goodness we got spoken right to the soul. The spirit was so strong and the meeting was amazing for so many reasons!! The general theme was why would the Lord send me to you today?

Well during our lessons we would ask that. Guess what it works. Miracles happen. We did not know why we felt prompted to see this one family that we have not seem in 5 months. So we stopped by and shared a scripture but it just felt awkward. So before we left I bore testimony that I knew we were supposed to be there. They then said we prayed that we could get a blessing. Can you give us one? Boy I grew in testimony that we are sent to people for a reason!! We are the Lord’s hands right now!!

At the end of our MLC President McSwain said, “Now I have just spoken with Salt Lake and they are sending over a million smart phones to our mission.” We are going to be getting Samsung smart phones next month. So for the two years that I will serve I will be able to use a smartphone for the last month.

Haha what a blessing. We will not have tablets but the smartphone is going to make a huge difference. We have been using the small Nokia brick phones. Geez they are a pain to use. So what a blessing it will be.

Last week we got a new investigator named Joanne. She is living with a member right now but will be moving out into her own house in a few weeks. We went over to see her. The lesson went so amazing. We taught the Restoration and at the end I nudged him to invite her to be baptized. Oh it is so fun remembering the first time you teach lessons and are so scared. He was shaking so bad but we just knew she was going to say yes. June 16. He did a great job inviting her and the lesson ended with her, her friend, and the fellowship crying. Miracles do happen. The best part is she is already living all the commandments. No smoking!!! YES!!!

Life is just so great and we are so blessed to have the gospel in our lives!! I could keep going on for hours writing about all the fun we had but what I have written sufficeth me. I have written it by my own hand and I know that it is true. I have read too much of the Book of Mormon lately that is has become part of my language.

That is one of the funnest things about the mission is you find so much joy in quoting talks or Mormon movies. We have memorized every funny line from all of Brad Wilcox talks and Ephraims Rescue. When we fall asleep at night our conversations get pretty funny.

Have a great week everyone, I love you all so much!!

Week 89 I'm a Father

Wow where to start??? I have not had a busy week like this in awhile!! Well, first things first, I am a father now!! We got a call from our mission president that we would be picking up a brand new missionary. He stayed at the New Zealand MTC for 3 more weeks to learn English so he came in mid-transfers.

We picked him up on Wednesday last week. That alone was a crazy day! We had temple P-day that morning so we woke up at 4 am to get all ready to drive there through the traffic for the 8 am session. Oh how I love the temple. The only down side was they played the really really old video. Oh it was so hard to pay attention when there was no emotion. I still took a lot out of it but boy was I tired!!

From there we had to make our timing just right. Our Golden was landing at 1:00 but we had to meet at the mission office at 3:00. We had a few hours to spare so we toured Brisbane city and ended at the Ferrari store. Since we were dressed up in suits we fit right in and the sales people talked to us. It was pretty funny to look at all the nice cars and have people think we were really interested in buying one.

Well that does not matter. At 3:00 we went to our mission office and met Elder Biranibwebwe. He is a great elder!! He is from Kiribati and is doing really good so far. His English is far better than we thought. We have a few elders from Kiribati and they have been out for awhile and are still struggling. Elder Biranibwebwe struggles with grammar but he knows the words and sounds. Language study has been pretty fun. We do a lot of role plays and reading.

His first day was one like never before. We picked him up at 3:00 and hung out with all the senior couples in the mission office until 7:00. A few weeks ago we were invited to attend the BYU wind symphony in Brisbane Hall. They are touring Australia and had a guest singer with them from Australia. It worked out perfect that we were in downtown Brisbane on the day that they were here. So we drove with everyone from the office to the Hall and got to listen to the concert. What a great way to start the mission. My welcome to the mission was getting back onto an airplane and flying alone to a place I did not know. Having a Golden has brought back so many fun memories of first starting the mission and not knowing what to do!!

It has been really fun to learn again the basics of missionary work and help someone figure it all out. Boy it is hard to adjust to mission life. God truly does bless his new missionaries though. We have had things happen this week that just don’t ever happen. Out of the blue this week we got a call from a former investigator that said he wants us to come back tomorrow. It was crazy!!!

We also had a woman named Joanne come to church. She is related to a member in one of our wards and wants to get baptized. We stopped by this week and just got to know her and talked about the Holy Ghost and Jesus Christ. She is Golden because of our Golden. The miracles don’t stop there.

Karol and John have really been progressing. They both have come to church 2 weeks in a row and then on other multiple occasions. We have really been enjoying teaching her but we know that getting baptized is something that will be hard because of marriage issues. Even though we see her regularly baptism has never been one that we set a date for or talk about. It is really hard to get divorced over here and then it takes 30 days to get married so if she were to get baptized it would be long term. So we thought... She sent us a text that said, “I want to keep all the commandments. I have given up smoking and moved into a different room than John and have my own part of the house. Can I be baptized?" Oh how do you reply to a text like that!! The qualifications of baptism are if they have a desire and are living the commandments. We gave our mission president a call about it. The only problem is the temptation is still there and the appearance of evil. What will John’s wife think of him and the church if she gets baptized but is not married to John...But then he said if she is living the commandments and wants to get baptized we cannot deny her that. It a tough one. So then we spoke to our bishop. The conclusion is going to be in order for her to get baptized she has to fully know and understand the consequences of sinning and meet with bishop every so often until she gets married to him and John has to either give permission or talk to his soon to be ex wife about how the living situation will be so she does not get a bad idea of the church or John. The good news is the wife is still active just in a different ward in the stake.

So that is that!! I love her desire but I am on the fence about it. But we cannot deny her the blessings. So it will be fun to work all out and help her get going. She gave up smoking pretty easy!! Her testimony is so strong that the church is true!! Boy do I love Brazilians!! First Bia and Alessandra and now Karol!!

Our week was just so crazy and full of amazing moments. One of my favorite parts of training right now is door knocking. The only way to learn it is to do it. With 3 people it can get easy for Elder Biranibwebwe to sit back and not get involved. So we are really trying to help him to participate. When we door knock we have two people go to the door and the other one hides up the road a bit, then we switch. We told him ok this time I will not say anything it is all you. He agreed and as soon as the person answered the door he froze. I remember doing it and then turning to Elder Cadiang for help. He did not give me help so we did not give Elder Biranibwebwe help. We had knocked about 25 doors and showed him how but now it was his turn. Geez the awkward silence is so painful!! After about a minute he finally got some words out. He is doing a lot better now and we do help him when he struggles but it is so fun to see them learn it for themselves!! Haha it has been a fun week!!

It was also really amazing to call my family last week. It was weird to think that it was the last call before I come home. I have felt like the time will never come that it is time to come home but every week I get reminded either by the members of the ward here or by my wonderful Mom. Haha I am excited to come home but look at this wonderful week. It is going to be sad leaving it. I love my mission so much. It has been so crazy to think of all the things that have happened and all the things I have learned!!

I love you all so much and hope you have a good week in the summertime sun!!I It has been really really cold over here right now. I always wear long selves and a jacket. We do not have a heater but have figured out a quick way to get warm in the morning while cooking breakfast!! You can look though the photos and see what I mean. haha.

Love, Elder Cahoon

Week 88 No Email, Just Pictures Because of Mother's Day Call

Week 87 Sick of Door Knocking, Let's Use Members Instead

This week was pretty great for some of our Investigators.

I don’t know if you remember for not John and Karol. He is a member and she is from Brazil. Well we had not seen them for the last few weeks because John was in the hospital. Well he is out now and we have set up to see them every Monday night and Wednesday night.

On Monday this week we went and planned on teaching The Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is a fairly easy lesson to learn. Most Christians already have that knowledge. So when we taught it to Karol it really made sense to her. We have been dreading the next lesson which is the Word of Wisdom. We always smell a very heavy smoke smell and have seen both of them smoking before we come.

At the end of our lesson about the Gospel, John looks over and says today we gave up smoking. Elder Tewes and I looked at each other in shock!! We did not see it coming!! They decided that morning that they would both give it up together. It is going to make our lesson with them tonight so great!! Karol is going to love it. She wants to give it up because it is unhealthy but once she learns it’s also because God does not want us smoking she will really love giving it up!!

Rob on the other hand is still really struggling to give it up. He is down to 6 a day but can’t go past that. Boy drugs and smoking can really mess up someone’s life. I think 9 out of 10 Aussies smoke. We see everybody smoking. In the car, the house, walking. They do it everywhere. It is so sad that they are all addicted to it!! Rob has decided that it is the fear of stopping that is preventing him. At our last lesson he said it is just going to happen one day. I don’t know how I feel about it just happening because it never just happens but he is trying so we have faith in him.

Last P-day we went with out the AP's and Office Elders to a outdoor laser tag place. They dressed us up in camo and gave us some pretty cool guns. For 4 hours we ran around completing different missions and shooting each other. It was a pretty fun P day activity.

Right now we are like I said last week really trying to figure out how to work with the members so we don’t have to knock on doors. It is useless to knock on a door. It takes 1 in 1000 to get a solid person to teach. I am done wasting time doing that. It is so great working with the members but so frustrating. This week our Bishop met with our Elder Quorum and Relief Society President to go over personal ministering and who to visit. We were invited and in the meeting all three of them talked about this family. The husband is a less active member. His wife is not a member and 4 of the 6 kids are not members. The other ones are still too young. WHY has nobody told us about this family??? We stopped by and it turns out he loves the church, his father is a mission president. After our visit we got invited back and hopefully we will start teaching the family. It was so great!! But what drives me crazy is I have been here for 6 months and nobody thought to tell me to go see this person. Everybody knows him but never told us. Instead I just go knock doors for hours at a time. There is such a better way to do missionary work. The members have all the knowledge of the ward. The missionaries are sent there by the Lord to teach and preach the gospel. The only way they can do both is if they have your help.

Sorry for the rant. I am just really passionate about this subject and we are trying to help both the missionaries in the zone and the members see this. The good news is our Stake President sees it and is on board!!

To get contacts this week we decided to do some GQing. It stands for Golden Question. You walk down a busy street and just start talking to people. It is something that I never have done because it is a bit worse then door knocking. We still have to report good numbers for our area but with all the time we have spent teaching we don’t go finding. We got rebuked for having low contacts even though all of are other numbers were really good. GQing is really fun because you can talk to 10 people in 1 min. So this week we planned our time really wise and we went for 30 mins every other day and got pretty high contacts. Nobody came from it but we got people from the members so it works out.

Missionary work is just so amazing. I love it so much right now!! It is a bit crazy to think it is going to end. I feel like I have been doing this for as long as I can remember now. It is a weird thought to think it ends one day. I am not looking forward to it. I am really interested to see if I get transferred or not. Elder Tewes and I are doing a great job and doing really well so I sorta hope I don’t get transferred but I also am getting tried of the area. Either way I will do what the Lord needs.

Have a great week!!

Love,

Elder Cahoon

Week 86 10 Baptismal Dates

WOW!!!! This last week we had a really good week!! Two weeks ago I got the idea to only hold the elders and sisters accountable for four numbers in district meeting!! Baptized, on date, sacrament meeting, and new investigators. These are the only numbers the church tracks so I figured we should give it a go for our zone. Some of the missionaries have not had a new investigator or anymore on date for two or three transfers. They justify their week to be good because they had a lot of contacts but nothing else...We figured if we held them accountable for what really counts they will try to get those numbers.

I spoke to my mission president about it and he gave us the go ahead and we started it.

The day that we introduced it we got three texts during the day saying that they set baptismal dates!! Two of them were in areas that have not had a date in ages!! We were so excited. We were back at the flat at 8:30 and I was writing in my journal about it!! Three dates set!! That was pretty cool. At 9 we were going to text the zone thank you for the good job. After we sent the text out we got a text from some elders and they said make it four. haha Then we got a text from the sisters that said, “We just set one.” Then!!!! the other sisters called and said they set five. Within one day our zone set 10 baptismal dates.

It was all just so amazing!! They are working so hard and just smashing it. We also set a date. Rob. He is a great investigator who just needs to give up smoking. We see him everyday and read the Book of Mormon with him. He will happen soon. It was just amazing to see that the day we decided to focus on only four numbers is the day that everyone sets 10 dates!! How cool is that!! Inspired!!!

That is pretty much how exciting our week was the whole week. We keep seeing Karol and John They are doing really well. We were having dinner with a family and they just had their sister-in-law move in and she wants to investigate the church. We have people coming out of nowhere to teach. It keeps us busy all the time. I have not gone door knocking for more that 30 mins at a time now. We just have so many people to visit and see. It gets hard trying to progress everyone but we are coming along pretty well!!

I had a pretty fun trade off with Elder Burnett this week. He is an elder from California. We smashed the work for the day!! There are days when everyone is home and some days when nobody is home. Today was the day when everybody was home. We were able to see some really good people and really yoke with the members. I just love doing missionary work!! Elder Burnett taught me some really good principles and we had a deep conversation before going to bed!! It is so fun being on the mission.

In the morning we have been meeting at a park to play touch rugby. We have really gotten into it. It is a really fast pace game. You never really stop to hike the ball. It just keeps going. It has been a really good way for us to get up and exercise really well. I forgot my camera today while emailing but I will send some videos and photos next time.

Things are just going great right now!! I have really enjoyed my mission. I never thought I would be the one that everyone jokes about going home. They have finally started and now the jokes are never ending. Are you excited for Mother’s Day call? hahah It will be your last one. hahah It is pretty fun!!

I know and have learned so much about the gospel but the biggest thing I have learned is that it is true. We are all human and make mistakes but this gospel is here to help us. We should never turn away from it!!

Have a great week.

Love,

Elder Cahoon