Man, I never imagined myself doing this on my mission!

November 11th

Okay, so this past week. We were kept very busy here in the office with the missionaries going home and the new ones coming (like the start of every transfer).

Although this time, it seemed like everything that had potential to go wrong did! We actually had a pretty funny experience with that.

So to sum it up, all the missionaries coming from other countries get a document in São Paulo at the MTC that's really important. Without it, you're in really big trouble. So as we were giving on of our trainings as the executive secretaries I learned that one of the new Americans lost that document on the trip here... I'll just say that I got a little stressed out because of that. Something that President likes to say is that we don't have "problems" just "opportunities to learn", and this certainly was because I've never had this happen before, and it was the first time since President Scholz has been on his mission as well! After a few calls to the church in São Paulo and a few trips to the federal police we were finally able to get it sorted out and get him a new document. We were going all over the place in the city doing all the steps necessary to replace it! Something that I thought as I was going from one place to the other was "Man, I never imagined myself doing this on my mission!" And who would've thought that this would be something that I'd have to deal with? But, I know that Heavenly Father will give us the experiences that we need, even if they aren't necessarily what we expected! Something cool though is we got a new missionary, Elder Wilkey, from Draper that went to Jordan. Pretty cool to talk to someone from home! He's from Ty's grade. 

A cool experience we had this week was with a new investigator that we found named William. We were able to teach him 2 times this week, and the second time we taught him I was super impressed! On the mission (at least in my experience) it's really rare to find someone that reads the pamphlet about the lesson we taught and remembers everything in detail about what we said. He was able to understand really important principles that most new investigators have a hard time understanding, like how the church was restored through Joseph Smith, not founded by him, and that the church that Christ established on the earth when he was here had authority and that authority was lost after the death of the apostles. Elder Vilas Boas and I were surprised he remembered so much! We're excited to see what happens with him! It's really cool to see how the Lord prepares people to hear the gospel, and even if it takes longer than we hope at times, He will put those people in our paths.

My personal study this week has been focused a lot on the Book of Mormon itself. What does it mean to me? What does it mean to my investigators and to people we talk to on the streets? How can I better apply it in my own life and as a missionary? My testimony of the Book of Mormon has really grown a lot on my mission. Not that I didn't know it was true before the mission, because I've always 'known'. But the difference is that now I'm starting to see the effect that it can have in our lives and in the lives of those we love. I'm starting to understand just how important it is to study it! Like I've said in the past, I wish that I wouldn't have taken it for granted like I did at home. Our lives really will be blessed in every way though daily study of the Book of Mormon, and I should've made better use of it!

Alright, well this is Nick's last week of his mission. I can't believe he's already done! Time really flew by. I'm really grateful for him and the exemple that he has set for me. I've received a lot of strength on my own mission thinking of him and experiences that he's had on his. He's always carved the path for me in a way being a year ahead of me. In school, sports, mission, now with college! It's been so cool to be able to serve at the same time as him throughout my mission, but now he's going to be able to help me in a different way being at home I'm sure!

Alrighty, that's about it for me. Sorry that I've been so bad about taking/uploading pictures, that's something that I really need to do better with. I'll start trying to take more! But love you guys, have an awesome week!! Give Nick a big hug from me!

Elder Odom 

Sounds Like a Missionary

Hey everyone, this week was good. But, I honestly can’t say that a lot happened! It was a bit more uneventful than normal.

This week in the office we were just focusing on getting everything ready for the transfers. I had a few scares because I kept sending stuff to our travel agent that helps buy our tickets, but she wouldn’t respond! There was a ton of stuff too and so eventually I had to call the church offices to have someone else help us figure all the stuff out. But in the end, we were able to pull everything together even though it was a bit of a close call. I ‘m sure this isn’t the most exciting for you to read back at home, but It’s just part of life in the mission office!

Speaking of transfers though, I’ve come to the end of another. It really went by quick! When you’re working and focused, time really just goes by fast. At the beginning of my mission it was definitely harder to stay 100% focused, because missionary life was still so weird and different! But now that it’s super normal now, time just keeps going by faster and faster.

In the field, we just focused on finding more people and cutting the ones that aren’t super interested. Any missionary can tell you that there’s a lot of that, cutting. Talking to a bunch of people, marking dates to go back and teach, and then if they aren’t interested, cut them from your teaching pool and start the process again. Here in the mission, we talk a lot about finding the “elects” of the Lord. I’ve come to learn that that’s true, the Lord really does prepare people to hear! But, that doesn’t mean that everyone will be willing to listen and learn and change. Very few people actually have that desire, and as missionaries it’s not our job to teach every single person, just find those whom the Lord has prepared, because they will listen and have the desire to change.

In my personal study one day this week, I was reading in 1 Nephi 11. Something that stood out to me was how we can get answers from the Lord following the example of Nephi. He says in the first verse:

“For it came to pass that after I had desired to know the things that my father had seen, and believing that the Lord was able to make them known unto me, as I sat pondering in mine heart I was caught up in the Spirit of the Lord”

This verse is awesome! He gives us a very clear pattern of what we need to do in order to receive knowledge or answers that we need. We need to have a desire to know/receive, then believe that we can get an answer, then pondering these things in our hearts. When I read this verse, I thought to myself; “how often do I do all these things in order to receive revelation from the Lord?” This is something that I’ve learned to do much better during my time as a missionary. At home, we have so much going on; family, school, work, friends, etc. and lots of times we don’t spend as much time thinking day to day about gospel related things as we should. On the mission it’s great, we can spend all day thinking and pondering! But I know that that will change once I get home, but I don’t want to lose that habit! Because this is what we need to do when we need something from the Lord, this is what he requires of us. This is what I’m trying to do a little more each day, despite the fact that I have to worry about more ‘temporal’ things than other missionaries being in the office, I try to think about things I’ve studied or what I can teach my investigators. I know that as we do these things the Lord will bless us with the knowledge we need!

Last Sunday I had the opportunity to talk in sacrament. As I was preparing and deciding what I needed to talk about, I kept coming back to obedience. Something that I focused a lot on during my talk was the fact that there as many commandments that are small, so sometimes we think that they “won’t make that much of a difference”. I know that there really isn’t such thing as a commandment that doesn’t make a difference! Every little commandment that we choose to not follow will make a difference in our lives. A talk that I studied in preparation is “Obedience Brings Blessings” by Thomas S. Monson. It’s really good! I encourage everyone back home to read it.

Something else that happened is I was called to be a district leader this transfer. It’s a bit strange that I am being called as a secretary in the office and district leader at the same time, but it should be a good experience to grow and learn as well as try to help other missionaries! I’m looking forward to the new experiences.

That’s my week though. I hope you all have a good one! Love you guys, until next Saturday!

Elder Odom

I Just Felt Good

October 28th

This past week was a good one for sure, went by super quick! Not sure what the highlight was, other than I just felt, good, this week. Nothing specific happened to make me fell good, but I was just happy this week. I think it's because my comp Elder Vilas Boas and I are really just putting forth effort to be really obedient and do things the right way, and we were able to feel the Spirit throughout the week really good.

This week my testimony grew about how the Lord does His part when we do ours. So after the first 3 weeks in the area, we're finally starting to grow our teaching pool. We've been doing contacts with tons of people and really just trying to find those whom the Lord has prepared. This week we were able to find so many cool people! Generally, you get "rejected" and people saying "no" 90% of the time but it seemed that as we searched for people by the Spirit, we were led to those who were ready to hear the gospel. One example is last Sunday, when we did splits with other Elder's in our district. I stayed in my area and brought a missionary named Elder Acuna from Mexico, who got here 4 weeks ago, to work with me. We were going to look for new people to teach, and so we said a prayer asking the Lord to help us find those who'd accept us. Within 5 minutes of finishing, we we're walking on the street and I looked at a house and just got a feeling that we should knock on it. So we did, and it turns out we found a family who recently changed religion and were really interested! Its a couple and their young son, about 7 years old. We taught the 3rd lesson, the gospel of Christ, and marked a day to go back. We were leaving the house and then we heard "missionaries!" We turned around and saw them calling us back. They said that they'd passed the wrong address and wanted to give us the right one. Pretty cool actually, there aren't a lot of people who'd do that! Elder Vilas Boas also went to another area to help out some other missionaries during the week and also had lots of cool experiences with finding, and was led to people in the other area to people that live in our area! Super cool. I've just been really grateful to the Lord for helping us out so much. Lot's of times missionaries, everyone actually, think that they have to do things by their own efforts, But we don't need to! The Lord wants to help us, we just need to be worthy and willing to let him! If we do our parts, He'll always do His. We can depend on him for anything and we get get help. It's really comforting for me to know that I'm not alone in this work, because I know that there's no way I could do this by myself! I think this is one of the challenges we face; letting go of our own desires and needs to control our lives and just trusting in the Lord to help us out. It's something that I'm trying to learn more and more each day.

This week's been busy, like most weeks, in the office. This transfer is only 5 weeks so that just means that I have 1 less week to do stuff to prepare for the next transfer It's the last week of the transfer and I have lots to do still, so we've been working hard! Something that I found out that I like to do as I'm working is listen to the "Face to Face" things that the Church does. It's when they get famous members of the church like Lindsey Stirling, the Piano Guys, David Archuleta, Apostles, etc. and youth send in questions and they answer them. They're really cool! One that I really liked was with President Eyring and Elder Holland. They talked about 2 things that I really liked; prayer and the Atonement. It's just cool to hear them answer in real time. Talks are awesome too, but it's just different when you can hear when they say when they don't plan. You guys should watch it as a family! I think it would be really cool to talk about what you guys learned and how you can apply it as a family. I'm  grateful for living prophets in our day that will always guide us to making the best decisions. My testimony of this has grown a lot about this on the mission, the we NEED to listen to what they say!! If we do we WILL be blessed! It's impossible to listen to and put into practice their council and not see a difference in our lives!

Well, there it is. I hope that this next week is awesome for you guys!  

Elder Odom