June 30, 2014

The waterfall is under a bridge right next to our house

Catskill mountains

Bike Rides = No fun!

So my week was really awesome despite the title (I'll get to that in a bit).

We picked up a new investigator on Monday and he is pretty sweet. The senior couple met with a less active family and their less active daughter few weeks ago. After their visit they told us that the daughter has a 14 year old son and she wants him to learn about God and have good male role models in his life and she thought of the missionaries! So after a week or two of forgetting to call and set up an appointment with them, we called and set up an appointment to start teaching Shawn about God ( the missionary lessons). His mom told us that he has a learning disability and that it might take a while for him to learn and retain everything, so we had to teach very simply. So we taught the first lesson with using the new teaching method ( using the Restoration pamphlet) and he seemed to understand for the most part. We met with shawn and his mom Dawn again on Sunday and taught about the Book of Mormon and committed him to baptism and he said yes! But we will need to work with him more before he is ready.

Thursday we had our zone training meeting and like always the spirit is very strong and I always leave with a renewed desire to work hard and bring many people closer to Christ. After ZTM instead of leaving the stake center and coming back for priesthood leadership meeting we worked with other Elders in there area, it was great! The leadership meeting was good too. It was all about missionaries and members working together and our branch has trouble with that so hopefully our branch leadership will start having the rest of the branch help us.

So now for my bike riding tale of misery! So one day each month in the summer time our mission has what is called a car fast. It's the same as a fast from food only with the car and it's all day long. So Elder James and I decided to ride the bikes because I never have ridden a bike since I've been on my mission. Well let me just say, it was flippin' hard!!!! There are SOOO many hills here. Up and down, and up and down, and up, and up and UP. My legs were jelly!! We rode about 17 miles. I thought I would be fine but I'm used to riding in California where it's flat everywhere! No potentials or investigators came from that day but it was a testimony builder to me that we need to work hard in every aspect of missionary work.

Anyway. I hope your legs aren't killing you!

      

Love

      Elder Reyne! 

Festival Celebrating the countries freedom

Here Comes Summer

So it's basically summer time now and the horror stories I've heard from other missionaries about the heat are true! It gets so hot here and the stupid humidity makes it 5 times worse. I miss the dry heat! It hasn't been too bad just yet but you pretty much start sweating right when you walk out side. It's no bueno. The humidity makes 90 degree weather feel like 110! So these next few months should be fun!

On to my week!

So we didn't do nearly as much service this week has we have been the past 3 weeks and it has been SOOO nice to do some actual finding!! I know it sounds weird but was stoked to do some tracting! We didn't find any new investigators this week, but that's nothing new here.

Elder James and I haven't had luck with finding any new investigators, so this week we made a goal to just find at least 1 super soild investigator. We are both a little tired of doing service, don't get me wrong I apsolutely love helping others but we should be finding more often. So we are going to work super hard this week because every day is basically open. It's going to be sweet! What won't be sweet will be the heat BUT we will work hard anyway!

I'm so grateful to be here in Greenville, there is a lot of work to do and I hope we can find as many people as will receive us. This branch doesn't have the best idea on how to do missionary work so we are working hard to get them excited about inviting others to come unto Christ, I think that is one of the reasons why I am here.

I hope you all are doing well and are finding success in your endeavors!

Love,

         Elder Reyne!!
                            

From left to right; Me, Marissa (brother Vulcanos daughter), Brother Vulcano, Sister Vulcano (got baptized in March) Elder James

You probably think that service is all I do here?

Again we did a bunch of service this week but I love it it's great!! I would like to be teaching and finding more but if this is why I was sent to Greenville, I won't complain! We do some teaching though, it's not completely service.

 On Monday we help an older member, Brother Kruppenbacher, build a ramp up to a shed that he keeps his lawn mowers in. He is so funny! You know how Elmer Fudd (spelling?) from Looney Toons sounds right? It's the guy who says "wabbit" and is always trying to shoot Bugs Bunny? Well picture an old man with a walker who sounds like that and you'll get Brother Kruppenbacher. He is so awesome!

Tuesday we helped an investigator of our plant tomatoes, sunflowers, corn and beans, it was a lot of fun! Because I told her that I knew how to plant tomatoes she made me plant them all, haha! She was shocked when I told her we had a garden is Arizona she was like "How do you plant anything in that dry place!?" Ha ha I thought about it and honestly I have no idea how things grew there!

Then on Thursday I went on exchange to my last area in Hudson! It was super weird, plus I was with my last companion Elder McPherson too, we had so much fun!

Friday we did some more painting at Brother Anastasios apartment house, and the senior couple came and helped too! It's looking a lot better since the tenant who lived there last trashed the place.

 Saturday we had a baptism! But I take zero credit for it because he already had a date set, I was just there. His name is Mike Vulcano, his wife Elizabeth got baptized 2 months ago. They are both super awesome and just the nicest people. I'll send pictures next week.

Anyway I hope you are all doing great! I hope you know that Heavenly Father and His Son love you and are aware of you!

  Love ya!

        Elder Reyne

Some More Service

So like last week we did a lot of service but this time instead of painting we helped the Brittons rebuild a truck. Bro. Britton built the motor but we just helped put it in and lift the cab of the truck onto the frame of the truck. I unscrewed a lot of nuts bolts and it was super fun I love doing things like that! The main reason why we did so much service is because they live close and could give us rides to and from the place where we worked on the truck and also because we hardly had any miles left for the month of may. To explain, each area in the mission with a car (95% of the mission) has a set amount of miles they can use per month. Our area gets 1150 miles each month. With our area so spread out we can't really go anywhere by foot. We did however get a TON of help from the senior couple. They drove us a bunch this week because they have their own car and can drive as much as they want. I don't like how the mileage restricts us from doing the Lords work but it's to prevent Elders (or Sisters) from driving everywhere and costing the mission a bunch of money.

Anyway the week wasn't very eventful but it's a new month so we get more miles yay!!! So next weeks email should be more eventful!

Love ya!

    Elder D 

Helping the Jensen's make bread sticks