Raynoldsburg OH

Sounds like this was a crazy week for you guys with the rain. I'm happy to say that this week was for the most part really warm. It was sunny and it was 45 degrees. I loved it because I didn't need to wear my coat. The car makes things really nice. We have 1100 miles for each month. So about 39 miles a day. We do indeed have bike racks on the cars, in fact every mission car here has a bike rack. I wish we could get through to all of our investigators but a lot of them just are not progressing. Which means they are not reading or praying about the Book of Mormon. It's sad but we are not going to visit them for a little while and see if that gets them into action. Its a sad part of missionary work were we stop talking to them to see if they decide to continue to do the things that we commit them to do or if they decide to not talk to us anymore. So this week we have prayed about it and feel that we have to give a lot of our investigators a break.

  So because of that we have been doing a lot of finding this week. In other words we were out in the cold knocking on doors all day. So one night (your going to love this) we were knocking on doors in this really nice neighborhood. It was like 8:30 and I knock on this one door to this big nice house on a street called Strawberry hill. The lights are not on in the house but I decided to knock anyway. So this man comes to the door. It a double door and its all glass so I can see right in to there house. He comes to the door and he shines this little flash light in my eyes and then slowly answers the door. He then gruffly asks me what I want. So I tell him that I'm a missionary and that we are sharing a message about Jesus Christ. He then says that its late and that he's not interested, and as he saying this he moves his hand that was behind his back and puts it on the glass door. In his had though he has this pistol that maybe was a .9m or maybe a .45 IDK. But it had a huge clip on it. Of course though I don't see it till after I ask if we could come by at a better time. I then see the gun and tell him to have a nice night and walk away. That was a fun experience.

  Other then that we were able to find several new investigators one of them is a family. The Velderrain family. They were so cool. We taught the first lesson and they were interested and of course had questions but I have a really good feelings about them. After our lesson the offered us dinner they were so nice, but we had to leave. We also taught this lady named Carol on here door step and she was also very interested. Something cool about that lesson was that it was really cold that day like 20 degrees and windy, needless to say it was really cold. She came out side in her pj's and a shawl type thing. So we taught a lesson as fast as we could and after we apologized for keeping her out side for to long. She said that she wasn't cold and that she actually felt really warm. That was a tender mercy from God. We then taught a man named Pablo who was raised Catholic in Mexico but considered himself Atheist. He said that he couldn't prove that there was not a god he just hadn't felt him in his life. He also said that he had not prayed in a long time, but we were able to get him to say that he would read and pray about the Book of Mormon. We even got him to pray at the end of the lesson. The spirit has been very strong and prevalent in my life these last few days of this week. It has made my testimony grow. I know that this church is true and that God loves and guides us. I know that the Book of Mormon is true and that is something that can guide us and help us in our lives if we just have faith. I know that I'm were the lord wants me to be and I can't imagine being anywhere else. I miss you and love you all. Continue to write me. 

Love Elder Young

P.s If you want things to get to me fast just send it to my apartment, because if you send it to the mission home I have to wait for them to drop it off the next time they are over in Reynoldsburg when ever that is.

I have a big head and little arms, I don't know how well this plan has been thought through.

Oh look I've been impaled

So long Suckers

Kevin's a girl?

Crack House!

Reynoldsburg OH

I will try my best to go into detail but if I don't your just going to have to sue me. Anyway, this week has been slow because we were running out of miles toward the end of the week so we had to bike a lot. It really drains you. When we got back to our apartment at night I could barely make it up the stairs. We are back to full miles though. We actually use the car to transport us and our bikes to were we will be mainly focusing on and then we park and bike. Which is so much better than full time bikes. Its funny we actually but our bike helmets over our beanies to keep from losing our ears. It has been a little rainy and it is snowing out side right now. 

We were not able to meet with any of our investigators and none of them came to church AGAIN. We have started a scripture study class and we get more investigators to that. Well one and some less actives and one member. The investigators name is Cham Kahari. He is a nice guy but he reads anti material so when we do get to go to his house he asks weird questions randomly. He also has this weird hatred towards pictures because they try to sway your opinion or something, plus there not diverse enough. He is also black. He also really does not like the whole Santa Clause thing. He doesn't like how we lie to children about how Santa is real when of course he is not. Any way he is interesting person. From what I could tell he liked the class.

I really like it here in Ohio. My ward I'm in may be small, really really small, but they are very nice and active in missionary work. They are all willing to come out with us to lesson with our investigators. It has also not been to bad weather wise. We were suppose to get six inches of snow Sunday but it rained instead. The weather here is so weird. Its 32 and snowing, now its 46 degrees and sunny. It makes life a mystery. Love you all. Stay healthy and Safe. Thank you for the music.

Love Elder Young

P.s

Stupid is as stupid does

Your mom went to college

If you could change your fate would ya (Scottish accent)

Past the point of NOOOOO return 

Great Scott 

Reynoldsburg, OH

Wow your week sounds like it was really full. Sorry to hear that you got sick:( That really is not fun. Ok I really do try to tell you everything but the days all blur together. So to start of with on Sunday I went to a fireside and sang in the choir, I know weird. The really cool part was that D. Todd Christopher came and talked. It was really cool. He talked about baptism and why the holy ghost was the most important thing about being baptized. He said that if all we received when we were baptized was the Holy Ghost then we would be set.  This week was really slow leading up to Sunday tho. No one would talk to us and all our lessons fell through. I'm a little mad to say the least. Other than that some cool things have happened. On Thursday we gained another Elder Simkins, so in our zone we have two Elder Simkins and two Elder Young's. In total there are four Elder Young's and one sister Young who is married to one of the Elders, if that makes sense. Our area also became a full time car area. No more trading cars with other Elders. 

The people here are really interesting people. We did run into one person on the street when we were knockin doors. He just started throwing questions at us. He wasn't mean or anything he just had a lot of questions that he just kept coming and coming. The he said a really interesting thing ever. I would share it with you but he said the N word ( he was black). I will say this it was really funny and both of us were just so confused by him. Oh and I got to go to a store that sells nothing but Russian food. Almost everything was in Russian and the were people speaking Russian I felt like I was in Russia. The store owner was nice and we got some dried sausage sticks and some candy. The store owner asked us how old we were when we asked him if he sold chocolate. Which I thought was weird until he showed us some chocolate that contained vodka in it. He was laughing when he showed us the candy as we read vodka on the little chocolate cover. So I hope he didn't let us buy anything with vodka or any sort of alcohol in it. That crazy Romanian.  

Well I am running out of time. I love you all. Stay safe and healthy. I love you all. Tell Dad to take it easy and to take it easy on the pie. 

Love Elder Young 

I was trained to defuse a bomb with my eyes blind folded using nothing but a stick of gum. I think I can get you into a bikini with out looking.

SCOTTIE I NEED MORE POWER  

I may throw up on you

All we know is his name is Jack Reacher, no one knows where he is, he is a ghost.

  Sorry to interrupt but there is a Jack Reacher here to see you. 

Higher up the berry tree the sweeter grows the berries.

S stands for Sitter I was going to go with a Big BS, but you know what people would have thought.

P.s you stole my NO CAPES

Reynoldsburg OH

Good to hear from y'all. Emma you are just a special person and should change just a little but not much, because you might just drive mom and dad mad with all your sarcasm (did I mention that I love you). Of course I'm more fun I have been telling you this my whole life. I'm glad you all are doing good, but I am saddened to hear that mother has not been well. I'm doing better now that the weather has been really warm for this time of the year. Zach the one with the crazy eyes is doing very well. He has been reading the bom like crazy, in a week he has read 15 chapters of Nephi. Last time we met with him we talked about Lehi's dream and invited him to be baptized on 21 of January. We will see how he feels when that time comes but I think it could happen. Oh ya transfers are this Thursday I'm not sure really how it works, but I will most likely will not be transferred because I'm still being trained. Now back to investigators Darryl the baptist preacher has hit a road block on the darkening of the Lamanites skin( Darryl is black), but we think we can explain it to him now. This week we got 3 investigators to church. TJ, Chris, and Jesse. That was so great and I know for sure that TJ liked church and he said that he learned a lot and felt welcome. Chris stayed for sacrament then left. He is a talker and is hard to teach because of that fact. Now Jesse we have not meet with out side of church once but he has come to church three times in a row with out us asking. So I don't know but there may be something there. We also have a investigator named Queta. We have been meeting with her once a week and I think we finally got her to start reading the BOM. What has been helping is the testimonies of the members we have been taking out on lessons. Members are a key to conversion. That is something that I'm really learning. If you get the chance to go out with the missionaries to teach lessons you should do it.

I love you all very much and I hope you know that I love you. I am learning a lot about the gospel of Christ and My testimony is always growing. I hope you have been feeding the missionaries. The food is nice but what I think is the nicest part is being in a family home when you are away from your own. It's really nice to feel the support of the members through visits to there home. Again I love you all.

Elder Young

Twisty

What what? 

yoohoo Big summer blow out

Green blooded hobgoblin

I shall name him squishy and he shall mine. 

I am a Klingon!

Shall We Dance 1 2 3

Higher up the berry tree the sweeter grows the berry

Reynoldsburg OH

Hello Family in Oregon,

Its been wet and its been extremely cold but I'm still alive. For the most part we have been walking everywhere and that is hard work. I have been staying very warm in the -5 degree weather, But mobility goes out the widow when I wear my full thermal set. The boots are very nice and keep my toes toasty warm. I get comments on them all the time. I let another Elder use them when I went on exchanges in another area (we had a car where I went). He made fun of them and laughed at them, but he thanked me repeatedly when I got back because his feet were never cold when he had them on. Yes when we have the car I have the duty of backing up the car. We don't have and calls or anything, I just walk behind the car and yell and wave my arms around if he is going to hit something. Other than that I tell him if cars are coming or not. It a rule that every mission has if they have cars.

Our investigators are going great some of the original 7 have dropped us but we still have a lot of investigators. They are all fun to talk with and to teach. One of our investigators is a Baptist preacher, and a lot of our investigators are black. We get asked a lot if our church is diverse and it is so funny when they do. We had two investigators on date for baptism but they are now of date because they have not attended church uhhhhhhh. Oh and when we take members out on lessons with us they take over the lesson and take it all over the place. So if you go out with the missionaries to teach an investigator stay on topic and don't speak unless spoken too. Sorry that was my little rant for the day. 

I Love it here and it is so cool to see the interest people have in our church and in what we teach. We as missionaries become an unspoken magnet to people confessing every sin they have committed in there life, and we get to see how the atonement can help them. The thing is getting them to church, to read the Book of Mormon, and to pray. Those things seem to be impossible to get investigators to do, well most anyway.

Now to the pictures. All that roman you saw, it answered the age old question if roman can go bad. It was given to us by a member and it was all bad. I opened one of them and I kid you not there where spider webs in the packet. We threw it all away. We did in fact kill a mouse and I think there are still more. We do not have Clorox wipes but we did try to disinfect the area. I will send you some more pictures next week maybe. I have not been taking to many pictures because our apartment as you can guess is a mess and out side is to cold. I forgot to say but it did snow we got 5 inches on Tuesday. We shoveled drive ways all day. Well we tried anyway. There are a lot of people who wont take service or don't know what it is. I kid you not someone was confused on the subject of service.

Fun experience this week would be that we got a new investigator who was very interested in the restoration lesson and has read four chapters of the Book of Mormon. We bumped into him when we were knockin doors and he told us to come back so we did and he let us right in. The hole lesson he was staring us down. I think he blinked 4 times total the whole time we were there. We also got a new investigator last night when we visited a less active member that moved here that Elder Simkins bumped into when he was knockin doors before I got here. His wife is not a member and so we taught the first lesson. So we got a new investigator and a member to reactivate. I'm excited to see what happens.

Other fun stories..... Elder Simkins and me have the same coat the same sweaters and the same beanie hat and the same shoes and the same CTR shirts. We are twins and we get made fun of by members and by the sister's in our area all the time. We made the mistake of both wearing sweaters. That was a really bad burn secession by the members that were feeding us that night. Not only are we police but we are twins. CTR clothing is a blessing and a curse right now. Oh and I was not kidding about the thermals and mobility. I feel like Frankenstein. But I got so warm that when I took my gloves off one night steam was coming out of my sleeves. Don't get them wet either I learned that the hard way. But despite all this I am doing awesome. I love and miss you all. I can't believe a month and a half has gone by already I will be home before to long. Keep up your reading of the Book of Mormon.

Love Elder Young 

May the Force be with you!

Why's it dreen?

To infinite and beyond!

P.S sorry for complaining

(we started putting movie quotes at the end out our letters to Elder Young and so that's why there are movie quotes at the bottom of his) 

Reynoldsburg OH and PICTURES!!

Wow it sounds like you guys had a lot of fun this Christmas. Was it because I wasn't there waking you up at 6 in the morning? Emma got a smart phone!!! That's cool for her i guess. I only got packages from you guys. Yes I did get the tubes and the new tires. I was getting tubes from Kmart and Walmart. I blew tires because of all the pot holes, glass, and what ever garbage is on the street. 

We have met with TJ an Aarika but have yet to have another lesson with them all. We were able to do some service for them, we raked leafs it was fun. I went on exchanges for the first time that was cool. I got to drive a car because the elder I was with didn't have a licence. That was intense. We have the car until Wednesday. Then we switch to bikes again, AND THAT'S WHEN THE BAD WEATHER IS SUPPOSE TO START. Its suppose to start snowing like crazy. It kind of snowed today. Which surprised me because its 17 degrees with a crazy low wind chill.

Other than that the mission is going great we just had a big flow of new investigators, 7 to be exact. Plus the members are starting to go with us to more lessons so that ever cooler. I'm praying like crazy for guidance and help in general. We have been extending a soft version of the Baptismal invite every first lesson and have had great success in that area. So I'm very excited to see what happens this week with all of our new and old investigators.

I finally remembered to bring my camera with me so i just sent some pictures to you. I didn't write anything with them so your just going to have to give people names that are in the picture until I figure out how to use dropbox. Just pick through the pictures I sent you them all so enjoy.

Love Elder Young

P.S I got to eat a delicious Gyro today for lunch.