Monday, January 28, 2013

Miracles!!!!!!!

Juanuary 22, 2013

What a wonderful week. First off, Elder Fischer and I are staying together for one more transfer and because of complications with the fleet of new missionaries coming in, this next transfer will be 5 weeks from today instead of the regular week.

Okay miracle #1. We had to go to the mission office one day (by bike) because Elder Fischer had to drop off some suits. We go in the building for about 2 or 3 minutes and I come out to find my bike tire completely flat. I look for holes in the tube and it looks just fine, so I pump it up and we are on our way. About 15 minutes later we get to a stoplight where we are on the road waiting for it to turn green. It doesn't. Two more cycles go by and the light will not turn green to let us go much to the displeasure of the amassing cars at the light, and FINALLY it turns green. So we are going a little way forward down the hill and a guy with a long board in about his 20's waves at me and signals for me to come over. He said that he was not in a good position in his life and was drinking and smoking etc. and wanted to have religion in his life. So we look at each other and say we would be glad to help him on his quest. He said "you guys seem to be the only one's trying to spread God's word these days." So we plan on seeing him this Saturday. We looked through our area book and found out missionaries taught him 4 years ago but he disappeared. It was amazing but I could see the God had seriously delayed our journey so we could meet him. My tire is still fine to this day, there's nothing wrong with it. Someone must have just walked by and let the air out or something, but I can't explain the stoplight. If we were there 30 seconds before or after our paths wouldn't have met.

Miracle #2.  We set someone on date for baptism yesterday! We have a member dating a nonmember who grew up catholic and wanted to learn from the missionaries. We have been teaching her for a while but she really wanted to move slowly, but yesterday we talked about baptism and its purpose and read her D&C 20:37 which talks about the qualifications for baptism. She just got so excited and said "how soon can I get baptized?" So we set her on baptismal date for Feb 23. It was a wonderful experience.

Miracle #3 I learned from Elder Jennings today that one of our investigators is getting baptized on the 31st of this month. She married her boyfriend two weeks ago and is getting baptized. I hope I can go to that and get pictures. But it was nice knowing my efforts in Heather Ridge have not been in vain.

So there you have it. Wonderful things happening. I hope the miracles continue. Things are going well and its warming up so a little easier on the biking side. Thanks so much everyone for all that you do for me.

Elder Bringhurst

 

 

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

And I thought last week was cold!!!


Yesterday morning we woke up to a balmy -3 degrees F. This morning we woke up to a summery 2 degrees F. Needless to say...it’s cold and its also dangerous. I fell like 3 times on my bike yesterday (but luckily I had padding) So I was kind of an inching along on the bike rather than riding. I wrapped up every square inch of my body to prevent frostbite and the result was I look like an arctic ninja. I'll send a picture.



Everyone was extremely depressed on Sunday because the Broncos gave up a 35-28 lead in the 4th quarter to send them into double overtime and an interception turned into field goal for a loss (I got the whole rundown from our ward mission leader). It reminded me of the time when BYU almost put down Utah at Utah a few years ago but failed to make a short field goal. It was hilarious during the game because the only people on the road were elderly people in their cars. Everyone else was barricaded in their house. Nobody answered the door during that time. It was tough.

But it was a fun week. Not really much progress in the baptism department, but that's not really news. We weren't able to see a lot of people this week because everyone we knew was pretty much out of town. But it's the last week of the transfer this week and I hope we will be able to get something going. Hopefully it will warm up!
Elder Bringhurst

It's cold!!! It's cold!!!

January 7, 2013

Wow this last week was frigid (from a biking point of view). Not nearly as cold as it has been in Utah, but it has been in the low teens to the mid 20's all week. It doesn't seem that bad but when you add a wind chill on your bike it’s just cold. I've had to use my super thick gloves a couple of times and I'm always in thermals.

On the bright side a lot of people have been more willing to let us in after seeing a couple of missionary popsicles show up at their door. I do a pretty good job of keeping warm. My policy is always keeping my hands warm, and the rest falls into place. Elder Fischer is a slow biker, so to elevate my heart rate I'll put on the brakes and pedal to add resistance. It keeps me warm. I thought it was funny because I was the only one who was predicting a frigid winter in the summer. But everyone kept saying "the farmer’s Almanac says it will be a warm mild winter." So much for the farmer’s almanac!

There are still massive ice patches on the road from the snowstorm that took place weeks ago. And everyone told me the snow melts after a day or two in winter in Denver. But I was prepared for cold weather. Everywhere except my face. It’s a lot warmer today; I'd say it's almost 50 degrees now. I wonder how cold it has been in the cabin - probably not that cold because of the inversion.

Anyway, in other news I saw a small miracle yesterday. A member told us to knock on the door of a less active family who hadn't been to church in six years. (I could only imagine what the family would have to say...) We knocked on the door, and she let us in. We had our beginning pleasantries and we asked them about why they hadn't been to church. First was the usual, "it just started to be hard because my husband got a job on Sunday," but we dug a little deeper and found out she had been offended by a past relief society president who she said looked down on her because she was a convert. She didn't like how members looked down on converts. So I told her simply that we are all children of God, and thereby are heirs to the blessings of God's kingdom, so God commands us to treat each other with equal amounts of respect regardless of the earthly position we hold. Then I told her that God restored the church so that we could be taught to live the principles of the gospel. The church is here for us to strengthen our personal relationship with God. We are not here for the church. I also said that our role as missionaries is to invite people to live the principles of the gospel, and the church is a vehicle for us to be able to do that. Essentially I said being a member of the church is meaningless unless you live the principles of the gospel. It really touched her and she agreed to have us over again. Well that's my report :)

Elder Bringhurst



Happy New Year!


December 31, 2012

Well here's a little short letter that I can write to everyone. Christmas was a really fun holiday. We got to go to a few places and have a lot of food!  Even though I have only been in this area a short time, some people still gave me Christmas gifts.

I loved all of the Christmas gifts! I thought I got a lot of treats for Halloween but THIS... This is a lot. The difference is its all homemade goodness or Ghirardelli’s or such, all so good! It might take me till next Christmas to work off all the weight I'm gaining this holiday season.  But thanks to everyone who took the time to send me a gift or a card. It was really nice.

Our Christmas dinner was a little awkward. It was with a less active family who wanted to feed us on Christmas, but God is not a part of their lives. We all got some Christmas Gumbo (a beef soup with crab legs in it, YUM) and everyone just started eating. We asked if we could say a prayer first and she literally just said no. It was kind of like having dinner with the dad from SIGNS... So we just said a silent prayer to ourselves and ate. Otherwise it was really good.

I sent some pictures to everyone. I have more but I thought I would send the highlight pictures that are at least remotely interesting. I'll be able to send them more regularly in this area.


(Here we see Brandon hasn't lost his sense of humor)
Brandon's Christmas tree sent from home
So Christmas was really fun and it was hard being away from family but a wise man once said "I'll be home for Christmas." Hope to enjoy all of the Christmas festivities with everyone next year!

Elder Bringhurst