God leads His prepared servants to His prepared people...

Hola Familia!

We had another baptism this week; he is 12 years old. He had kinda a rough past. He was baptized last night and he was super happy. His mom couldn't come and he had little support from the branch but he loved it!

We had a cool miracle this week. A couple of weeks ago another Elder told me about a former investigator that he had taught on splits like 6 months ago and how she almost got baptized.   So we found her address in the Former section of the area book and her phone number. We tried calling her a bunch of times but her phone was disconnected and the address was wrong in the area book. So one day we were knocking and we met this girl and for some reason I just said we are looking for L---, she said “That's me. I'm L---.” I asked what her last name was, and she said “It's me- L--- D---.” She was the exact person that we were looking for earlier in the week but was impossible to find. She agreed to come to church on Sunday but wanted to come to the English ward. So we said “perfect!” We explained to her what Fast Sunday was and what a testimony is. Half- way through the meeting she leaned over and said “I want to go up.”  So she went up and we translated her testimony. She explained her part of the story of how we found her. She said the night before we knocked on her door she had said a prayer asking God to help her find a way back to the church. She testified that she knows if we pray and really believe that we are going to get an answer then we will. She described her feelings of happiness that she had when she saw us and how she knew God loved her and answered her prayers. It was a miracle to her that we found her, for us and for her.

It was ANOTHER witness that God has a plan and everything is going to happen when He wants. We had tried to contact her a week before and couldn't find her, then once she asked God for us to come we found her. Maybe God knew that she needed to have the experience to strengthen her faith and that's why He waited a week before He led us to her. God leads His prepared servants to His prepared people.

Oh yeah I forgot to mention about when we played soccer with all the little Spanish kids we are teaching, it was a big game-- like 2 on 2, haha. Half of the field was ice and the other was really wet grass. To make a short story long, I got a little too competitive when the 12 year old girl kicked my trash and scored two goals on me. I decided to execute and scored two goals in a row and then it got serious. The playing conditions were rough and the competition fierce. My comp was on the break away and right before he tired to score a goal he slipped...and landed in dog crap hahahaha. All over his suit and it was sooooo funny. But me, being the competitive one I am took this opportunity with a man down to take the lead. I took the ball and dribbled down the field like Ronaldino and right when I tried to juke the 12 year old girl, I slipped and....fell in dog crap and this time it wasn't funny at all. The bottom pant leg covered in the nasties- haha. So instead of helping me up, the girl scored a goal and trash talked me. You are probably wondering why we would play on such a field, right. Well fyi both times we hit the ground we broke the ice that was on the field and were unpleasantly surprised with what lie underneath.

Siempre Crean,

Elder Creer

I have seen miracles because of keeping the faith...

Hola Familia!

Things are going pretty good here; it was a pretty tough week. We baptized almost all of our teaching pool and so this whole week we were concentrating on finding new investigators. We were just knocking doors and going through the list of formers to try and find someone new to begin teaching. We worked hard all week and weren't having much success, but this was a test of our faith. It came down to Saturday and we added six new investigators and three of them have agreed to get baptized so that was cool.

When things are getting the hardest and when it seems like we aren't going to have any success, something great happens right after it. I have seen miracles because of keeping faith until the last second so that has been kind of cool.

We had another baptism this week. This whole week Satan was working really hard on him to try and convince him not to get baptized. We visited him every day this week but we seemed to make little progress. So we ended up taking them to Temple Square to take a tour with the Sisters from Temple Square... The Sister missionaries were great! Long story short, we went into Temple Square and he didn't want to get baptized, then we met the Sisters, then we left and he wanted to get baptized, haha so he was baptized last night!

We had interviews this week with President Winn which went well.  My District Leader Elder Montgomery and his companion Elder Fore are like the funniest people in the world so this transfer had been great with the district.

                                      

Well that is all I have to say today. Hope all is going good there.

 Love Ya!

Siempre Crean,

Elder Creer

It's cool to see the progress of a missionary...

Hola Familia!

To answer your questions:  We are still playing ball every week. Right now there are a couple ballers in the zone. Elder Dreyling is from Florida he had scholarships to play for a couple small schools in Florida. He is really quick. Then there is Elder Orr who is from Oklahoma and grew up on a farm. He is lights out; all he does is stand and shoot threes because he had 3 knee surgeries. He is like 6-5 with tons of range, and he always wears OKC thunder stuff. Elder Rodgers, the Crawford’s friend is in my district too.. He is like Noah Hartsock, haha he just has a soft jay inside the key, money every time.

The greenie breaking is going pretty good. It's cool to see the progress of a missionary when you are helping train him. He is pretty happy too because we have had the opportunity to help investigators progress to baptism.

We had another baptism Saturday night. They are really nice and always invite us over for dinner. The food is really good because she is from Mexico and I like authentic Mexican food!

So we are walking right now because both of our bikes broken. My tires are flat and we tried fixing it like 10 times and we can’t and then my comp was riding his and the pedal broke off, haha so we are just walking now.

Hope all is going well at home, sounds like the snow storm was crazy! Thanks for the package, I shared the turtle bars with my district and they loved them.

 Love Ya!

Siempre Crean,

Elder Creer

New Year's Eve Mission wide activity:

The things that can help my investigators I can apply to my own life...

Hola familia!

This week went pretty good except for the fact that I got news that my Broncos got destroyed by the Patriots, haha. A member who is a Patriots fan rubbed it in my face.

This week we had Zone Conference, which is the second one that I have been too. We got trainings from the Mission Presidency and the AP's. The focus of the trainings was the Book of Mormon. Something that I learned in the training that has already been helping me out a lot is how to use the Book of Mormon when teaching. I have gotten pretty good at using specific scriptures to help people and have been somewhat successful with that but after Zone Conference I found a different way to start using it which is helping me to read the Book of Mormon in a different way.

Before training, when I would read I would just look for good scriptures that would help our investigators with what they were going through. After the training I have been reading the Book of Mormon more. Trying to really understand what is happening and not just looking for scriptures. They taught us that it would be good for investigators to have a person or a story in the Book of Mormon that they could relate too. I think this is perfect because instead of just using a scripture to help the people we are teaching, we can teach them a story of a person who had a similar experience and then show them how they dealt with that experience. President Winn promised us that they (the investigators) would get a testimony of the Book of Mormon if they did this and I can already see it working. It is also helping me learn a lot more from my personal study because the things that I can apply to help my investigators I can also apply to my own life.

We got snow twice this week, which was kind of a surprise because it got up to 50 something earlier this week and then we woke up one morning and there was snow. Then the next day it was like 50 something again so it all melted and started getting warmer and warmer and then we woke up this morning and there was snow again, haha.  So the weather here is definitely unpredictable.

We had two baptisms this week. They were for a single mom and her daughter. It was kind of crazy how we found her at first. There was a returned missionary from Mexico who decided to pray one day before he went into the store to buy some food that he would find someone that the missionaries could teach. So he prayed and went into the store and found this mother. Then she and her daughter were baptized 3 weeks later. Cool story huh! They are a really nice family, we are still teaching the teenage son to try and help get him prepared too.

Hope all is going well there and love ya much!

Siempre Crean,

Elder Creer

He will only give them to us if we are prepared...

Hola Familia!

I really like this area. There are some pretty cool recent converts that are younger.  The miracle baptism that we had last week is doing great. He told us this week that we were the best thing that the Lord had ever given to him in his life. So if I wouldn't have come on my mission there is no way that I could've been an instrument in the Lord's hands and help His children come back to Him. It makes me want to continue to be exactly obedient and work as hard as I can because I really don't know where I am supposed to be going or who we are supposed to find. But the Lord knows and He puts them in our paths just like this man who was baptized last week. He puts them in our paths if we are ready for them. He has prepared people but He will only give them to us if we are prepared.

Every day I am trying to become more like Jesus Christ. I was called by a prophet of God to represent Jesus Christ. I was thinking a little about that this week too. I thought what does it mean to represent Him? So far I think that if I was called to represent Jesus Christ it is because He can't be here. If He could be here teaching these people and performing miracles He would be, but He's not. He can't be here so I was called to represent Him. That means that I should try my best to be like Him and represent Him, do the things that He would do if He was here.

I also think that being senior companion is helping me become a better leader.  I am learning how to positively motivate my comp and others and I think it is helping me out a lot.

 That is pretty much it for this week; we spent most of the week contacting referrals without much luck.

Hope all is going well. Love ya!

Siempre Crean,

Elder Creer

I knew without a doubt that God was there...

Hola Famila!

So transfers were this Wednesday which involved a couple new changes.  I got to go over to the Hernandez’s house for dinner on Tuesday for my requested last time, haha.  We had the best tacos ever. So Wednesday came around and we drove to the transfer building. We got talked to a little from President Winn about the goals for 2012 and then we found out where we were going. I got shipped to Rose Park which is the farthest north in the mission. My new companion is Elder Lopez.   He has only been out for one transfer and I am supposed to help him with training still. I was a little surprised that I was chosen to help train him because that is pretty important but maybe since I trust in the Lord, He is going to trust in me now too…

 The first night in my new area was kind of no bueno. All I could think about was my last area and the people and I wanted to go back. I think it's kind of funny now because sometimes missionaries feel homesick and want to go home and I felt area sick and wanted to go back. Guess that means I am loving the people! So after the first night things got a little better.

Thursday and Friday we did work. We put people on date to be baptized and added a lot of new investigators and had a really sweet miracle!

We were going to have a lesson with this guy on Thursday but he canceled and then we planned it for Friday. So the lesson came around on Friday and we brought a member with us which ended up being perfect. The guy we were teaching went on to tell us that he was having a hard time in his life right now. We had planned a lesson but the Spirit said “no” to that and the member shared his testimony of God's love. He shared a personal experience of a tragedy in his life.  He talked about how he was really lonely and that is when he found and felt God's love in his life. He said that even after that horrible experience he knew without a doubt that God loved him and whenever he felt lonely he knew he could talk to God. So right after that I shared with him my experience when I was diagnosed with a tumor and how I felt with that and even though it was a really hard experience not knowing if I was going to die or not, I knew without a doubt that God was there and He was always ready to talk to me. We promised him that God loved him too and knew exactly what he was going through and knew exactly how he felt. We testified of the Atonement and how Christ literally felt every ounce of pain that he was feeling. We promised that he wasn't alone and God was ready to help him. The Spirit was suuuuuuper strong and we asked him to be baptized and he said yes and guess what?   He was baptized yesterday!! Pretty crazy huh!

I think that this was definitely a miracle and just added to my testimony that God is really there and he really loves us. Hope you all are looking for God's love everyday in your lives, we can always recognize His hand in our lives. God loves you, and I love you too!

Siempre Crean,

Elder Creer

She must have noticed his determination...

Hola Familia!

It was nice talking to you yesterday. So pretty much there isn't much to say because we talked yesterday, haha. Tell everyone thanks for the presents!

So transfers are Wednesday so that is probably going to mean a new home and a new comp for me. I will make sure to keep ya posted next week on the changes that will be happening. Yesterday after I called you we went to church for an hour and a half.  Then we went to an investigators house.  She fed us tostadas which were really good.  She had a neat experience this week.  We first began teaching her son.  She made it clear she wasn’t interested, but must have noticed his determination to pursue the path to baptism because he received an answer from God. 

We had the thought to take them to Temple Square this week so we did.

 Every time that we take investigators to Temple Square we get two sister missionaries from the Temple Square mission to help us. Long story short is that we had a two hour lesson with her and the Temple Square Sisters.  They were great!! The Lord was able to change the heart of this mom.   That was the big miracle of the week. Things are going good here!

I would email some pics home that we took for Christmas but I am using a Mac right now in the apple store in the mall because the library is closed. So I will have to wait till next week. Hope all is well there and try not to party too hard during New Years. Love ya!

Siempre Crean,

Elder Creer