I feel like Jack Bauer

Hey everyone, I'm sorry but I honestly don't have time to write my weekly email. Today and basically this past week we have been rushing around like crazy to and from place to place. I'm sure that's how Jack Bauer feels in 24 haha! 

I hope you know I love you all!!!

 Elder Reyne

Small Miracles in Oneida!!

Hello everyone! It's that time of the week again! I don't have a whole lot of time so I'll give you the awesome miracle that took place.

So we have two sets of Elders living in our apartment because their apartment isn't ready to be moved into yet so we have been blitzing our area. Blitzing means when 2 sets of missionaries work in one area, so it's been really helpful to be able to work 2 parts of our area because it is so big. There was also a small but testimony building miracle that happened yesterday. So we were going around visiting people and it had been just DUMPING rain for the past 30 mintues. After we drove to the next place we were going to visit my companion asked if we could say a prayer so the rain would stop. So after I said the prayer we got out of the car and starting walking. Roughly 10 minutes later the sun came out from behind the clouds and the rain stopped! It was so cool and amazing that Heavenly Father answered a simple pray to make the rain stop. Prayer is so real and important, but we have to have faith that He will answer our prayer.

I love you all and hope you are enjoying life!

 Love;

        Elder Reyne!!

Is it really Monday already?

So this week absolutely FLEW by I can't believe it. I honestly don't remember much of what happened so I'll give you what I do remember.

So on Sunday there was this event with 5 other churches called the progressive dinner. The churches were the Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, Episcopalian and St. Patricks (catholic). On two streets next to each other these five churches gave tours of their buildings and a history of the church which was pretty cool and interesting. All of the buildings had stained glass windows and high ceilings. So how it worked was we first went to the Baptist church and after a little talk about the church everybody got some food which was just a little appetizer. Then to the Episcopalian for a small history of the church then soup and salad for the meal. 3rd was St. Patricks, 4th was Presbyterian for the main course which was just rice and a shish kabob. Then 5th was the Methodist for desert. All but the baptist church did their baptisms by sprinkling water on peoples head. After seeing all the churches my testimony on baptism was increased because seeing that other churches didn't do it by immersion made me think, "How could such an extremely simple truth like that be lost for some churches". It just didn't make sense to me how it could be any other way than by immersion. I didn't even really care about getting food just the fact that I got to learn how satan has twisted plain and precious truths was interesting enough for me. When you think about it where do other churches even get sprinkling baptisms. Anyway I just think it's stupid. We did meet some really cool people and they told us how much they respected what we did and things like that. We even got a pastor to agree to come to a tour of our building some time it was awesome! 

Overall our week was pretty good but I don't remember any lessons we had at the moment.

Anyway I'm loving the area of Oneida and will no longer be in a trio. I should be in this area for a few transfers probably until around January.

Loves Yas!

             Elder Reyne

Oneida Branch Seminar

So this week was really awesome we taught a bunch of lessons in person and via facebook. The highlight of the week was sunday but I will get to that.

So on Tuesday we started doing service for the YMCA (which is just a workout place like Golds gym) we are basically the janitors because there is only one person that does the cleaning and stuff and she can't clean the boys locker/changing room until night when the gym is closed. We also taught this investigator named Fred. He's a 90 year old Catholic Italian who's super funny. He lost his wife a few months ago, and who happened to show up shortly after her death? The Missionaries of course!! We keep telling him she sent us to teach him but he doesn't believe us. Hopefully he will soon, we keep telling him to pray about it.  

So on Friday we had a super long planning session, mainly because we all get distracted easily, but it was good because we had an epiphany ( the spirit, really) about what we were going to teach on Sunday because we were assigned to teach 3rd hour. We decided we were going to combine everyone for third our and pretty much call the whole Branch to repentance for not doing much missionary work.

So we prepared by getting some statistics from LDS.org and learned that we havn't had more than 330,00 convert baptisms since 1990, that's a long time with out that much growth. We are the true church we should have more each year, mainly because we have more members, missionaries and tools to spread the gospel. Anyway we lovingly, but boldly, told the Branch they weren't doing their job and neither were we because we havn't taught them how to share the gospel in every day senarios. So we had every member, roughly 25, role-play a situation where they could share the gospel. We recorded it and I will share it with you once we figure out how to post it somewhere. 

Well I'm out of time but I love all of you and hope you are doing just wonderful!!

Love ya!

      Elder Reyne!

Am I really 20?

Well I just turned 20 today, it's super weird.  And I still have over one year left on my mission. It's crazy how time flies though!

Anyway, not a whole lot happened this week. We didn't teach many lessons mainly because people LOVE to talk and we didn't have time to visit other people. That's something that's definitely hard about the people of New York is that they can just jibber jabber until the cows come home, seriously, I don't know how they do it but they can just go on for days. We have been doing a lot of reactivation work though and that's always fun because they know their stuff but we just need to figure out why they stopped coming to church.

I am still in a trio in the area of Oneida but should be transferred out soon because another Elder who went home for an injury a few months back will be returning to the mission and he and I will double into an area. But I don't know when that will be but it should be soon.

Being in a trio is pretty fun but when members come with us to lessons it feels like we are invading their space because instead of one extra person there's now 2 and it's probably weird for them. 

Well I hope you all had a great week and I hope you know that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ love you! Also I love you!

Elder Reyne