Week four in Sandy-Daaaah!

 This week has been pretty exciting with lots and lots of phone calls! We called the bishops and all the leaders and got lots of info on the unbaptized kids and part member families. In the end, they just told us that most of them aren't interested. But there should be a few people that we can get a hold of and teach. The Boshards canceled their appointment with us and so we are having a hard time getting in contact with them. They seem to be extremely busy, so we are working on what we can do.

We helped out at the bishop's storehouse every week now. We had a lesson with one of the coolest members I've met here named brother Laytent and he told us that we might get to have a video call with one of his good friend, Elder Soares! One of the missionaries that lives with us has been transferred and will be serving a service mission and so Elder Martin joined our companionship. So we have been in a trio for a few days. We had a book of mormon study with a reactivated member that had been inactive for over 35 years! He served his mission in Ecuador back in the day and is now being reactivated. It's crazy to even think about that, but it shows that there is always hope for everyone and with some people, you just have to be patient and give them time. We had lesson with a sweet old grandma and her grandkids aren't members, because her kids went inactive. So, she too is hopeful that they will return. All we can do is love, serve, and be a great example them, like Christ was the perfect example for us.


On Sunday, we went to 2 sacrament meetings this week. All 3 of us the missionaries gave talks. 

We had lots of virtual meetings with all the wards and we had a lesson with our homeowners. Their 2 dogs are pretty funny and crazy and always jump at us when we go outside!


Something pretty funny happened while we were biking to the church and these kids parked at the church rolled down their window and as we passed by them, they daaaaahed me! And right after I daaahhed them back and they did not see that coming, haha!

We also just found out that Elder Martin will be transferred to another area tomorrow, so it will be my companion and I, overseeing the stake. Then in 2 weeks, we will each get new companions and will be back to covering 4 wards. Have a great week everyone and look for ways you can serve and love your neighbors even if you dont know them very well yet. We have been pushing that with the members, so that they will expand their circle of influence and will have more missionary opportunities!


Love, Elder Talbot


Pictures - It finally snowed here

Member Lessons

This week has been busy and full of member lessons, this aspen hills ward loves giving us as many lessons as they can with members. For example, we had nine member lessons in one single day!

We had zone conference this week, but the Mission President had Covid so he didn't go so that was pretty disappointing. We did role plays for baptism and learned about personal conversion. With our member lessons, we handed out books of mormon to the members for them to write their testimonies and mark their favorite verses and then prayerfully give them out to their friends. We are hopeful this will be a more effective way to get others interested and receive referrals.

I went on splits and and I finally had the opportunity to meet with the part family, named the Boshards, that my companion has been teaching for a while. They have 2 kids, one that is 6 years old and was raised a catholic, but somehow is an atheist now. Then they have a cute 2 year old named Sophie. So we get there and aren't even able to teach the lesson within the first 30 minutes, because RJ was having one of his daily spaz attacks and didn't want to listen. Yea so then when we do start teaching, he just starts screaming and being very distracting and throwing another fit. So yea we are going to have to figure something out with RJ because he cannot be doing that haha. So then we travel to the next lesson and when we get there, the mom calls down her kids to come first the lesson and one of them yells "Nooooooo!" . Finally he comes down and says WHAT DO THESE CLOWNS WANT TO TEACH US!? So that was a great first impression:) So then we start teaching and I say we're going to watch a video and he then gets up and leaves to go back upstairs haha good times.

One thing we also did is contact all the missionaries who are out serving from the sandy stakes we are serving looking for referrals.  We are actually getting some good responses in regards to people they may want us to teach.

On Sunday, we had like 3 stake/ward coordination meetings so that was nice. Then at night, we had a zoom lesson with this girl named Crystalyn. Going into the lesson, we didn't know if she was a member or not because somehow no one could tell us. Anyways, we meet with her and she is a member, but she has been inactive for a while.  She said that due to negative influences in her life she felt like she wouldn't be supported in her spiritual growth if she chose to try being religious again. She lives with people that aren't very strong in their faith, and so she said at this point in her life she doesn't know if she believes in a God. This was a great opportunity for us and we taught her about hope in Ether 12:4:  Wherefore, whoso believeth in God might with surety hope for a better world, yea, even a place at the right hand of God, which hope cometh of faith, maketh an anchor to the souls of men, which would make them sure and steadfast, always abounding in good works, being led to glorify God

While this is a very simple precept, it is very important, especially for her, in her situation. We learn that those who believe in God actually have hope for a better world. While those that don't believe in God don't have hope, as they just believe that their life will be over when they die, the end. How can they ever have enduring hope?

We also taught her about faith in Alma 32 and that she just needs to desire to believe that there is a God, and that will be enough to plant the seed of the word of god in her heart. And as she nourishes her seed, over time she will be able to know with perfect knowledge that the seed(word of god) is good. That is the ironic part about faith, we can’t obtain it, unless we put forth faith to gain it. So we are really happy for her as she had told us that she used to always read the book of mormon when she was younger, because it would comfort her. And so just reading it, she says, helps her reminisce the times that it comforted her in the past. We invited her to read the book of mormon every day and we could tell she was excited to do this! We plan on meeting with her every Sunday and so we are thrilled to have the opportunity to have front row seats on her journey. We will get to watch and see her growth every week as the book of mormon does its role in strengthening her hope, faith, and conversion in God and in the Savior of the world, Jesus Christ. We know that the book of mormon has power to do these things, as I have seen it in my own life. It has the power to do so, but we have to be willing to allow it to, and we do this when we read, study, and pray about it!

Have a great week everyone!
Elder Talbot

The pictures are

1 my new favorite meal!

2.  a donkey that has been taped down to the shower head, ever since I got here 

3. The hill that we have to bike down, and up!

Planting Seeds

 This week has also been pretty slow, but we have done a lot of preparation for these upcoming weeks. So, we are hopeful and pretty confident that we will be able to find some people to teach, after all of our finding projects have been rolled out.

 

So we are in charge of 4 wards and so we switch off focusing on a different ward every week. We have lots of lessons with the members that are set up by us and also by the ward mission leaders. We have been focusing on trying to help the members reach out to their neighbors and get to know their neighbors better. The thing that we have come to realize is with the absence of teaching non members, we have found that we can make a huge impact on the members and so they have become our primary focus. We also had a crazy lesson that reminded me of the Mexico days. It was with an old couple of the evangelist faith and it lasted an hour and a half.

 

Besides that, we had some great member lessons. One in particular, there was a family with a 16 year old boy and he was having some problems. When the time came, I felt inspired to bring up patriarchal blessings and the dad was very thankful that we did so. He later told us that that was exactly what his son needed to hear.

 

With some of our extra time we have been working on filling in our online areas book with all dots and names for all the houses. We have contacted the bishops and got a hold of their ward maps. We are waiting for the letters and reference list to be sent out at the stake and ward members. Each bishop is choosing how to distribute the letters in the way that he thinks will be most effective so we will see what works the best here pretty soon. We worked at the bishop storehouse again

 

We had lots of member lessons and we got to talk to lots of priests since the bishops have asked to talk to them and see how they are doing. 

 

We went to Costco and this old man started following us around. Then when we got to the checkout he was like "Come here you guys I'm paying for all of it" We insisted that he didn't because that is what we are supposed to say haha but he was stalking us so we knew we werent going to win this one. So he paid for all 70 dollars of our groceries from there.. Then we went to Walmart and got the rest of our groceries. When we were done, this other guy came over to my companion and I and asked who we were having dinner with tonight? We told him we weren't allowed to eat with the members and then he just gave us a 20 dollar so that we could buy dinner! So, we went to Mcdonalds and as you will see I got a lot of food with 5 dollars. We have been very blessed today and made sure to give thanks for all of it.

 

This week I read a scripture about missionary work that I had never before really noticed. After all the examples of the missionary work that Alma and the sons of Mosiah had, this is the overall message.

 

ALMA CHAPTER 28:14 

And thus we see the great call of ^adiligence of men to labor in the vineyards of the Lord; and thus we see the great reason of sorrow, and also of rejoicing—sorrow because of death and destruction among men, and joy because of the ^blight of Christ unto life.

 

This scripture is very fitting to the work that we do here. As missionaries, we work diligently in the vineyard of the Lord as a full time job. We get to sorrow for those that choose not to accept or listen to the message of restoration and hope that we have to offer. And we get to rejoice when we find those that have had their hearts prepared to receive the gospel of Jesus Christ in its fullness. And the last part talks about the light of Christ unto Life. As we know, Christ is the crucial and cornerstone piece to the plan of salvation and for this church- His church. Without Him, and his willingness to atone for all of us, the eternal law of justice would not have been satisfied and we would have no way to return again to our heavenly father. But because of him, we now have the ability to return and be exalted under the conditions of repentance and a change of our hearts.

 

My hope is that we can all get on, or continue down the path that leads to a real and personal conversion to our Savior Jesus Christ. Along the way, invite those around you, your friends, neighbors, family, strangers to join you on this marvellous journey.

 

Have a great week everybody and the challenge this week is to simply reach out to someone you see or think that is in need of a friend.

 

The pictures are of the service that we did last week, my house with some weights, some food and some more food and some more.

 

Love, Elder Talbot

 

Returning to the Mission Field

 Hey everyone so I'm back on my mission!

I have been assigned to the salt lake city south mission and I am serving in the Granite South area and we are assigned to serve over the stake with another companionship. I did receive an email already from the mission president saying how Mexico has opened up to foreign missionaries, but that the transfers will be very slow and gradual. The first elder is being sent back to Mexico this week so that is exciting!

We are fortunate enough to have bikes and no cars. We don't get any meals from the members and we aren't able to accept anything like dropped off food, or gift cards. And I only received 20 dollars to buy all the food for my first week, so that was OH BAD for me. 24 meals with $20, that's the situation I was put in for some reason. Anyways haha we aren't allowed to knock doors and so tonight for example we just spent hours calling members asking for references and trying to set up later appointments, and trying to get information about their non member neighbors. Only about  8% of the members actually picked up. So the calling was not working and so we realized we had to do something else. We started our search for new finding ideas.  We also had the chance to go to the Bishops Storehouse and so we did some service there for a few hours.

We attended sacrament meeting on Sunday and got the opportunity to speak to the bishop about our plans. As of right now we only have 3 people that we are teaching and so here are our best plans to find new people

1. Write out a letter stating we are missionaries and our duty is to help others come unto Christ and that we would like to share a message of peace and hope with anyone that is interested. Then have the members hand them out to pretty much all the houses in ward and stake boundaries
2. Create ward and stake Facebook pages
3. Go on facebook and filter only the people that live in Sandy, Utah and Friend request and message as many people as we can.
4. Start a shared document with all the members for whenever they have a referral, to make them more cognizant about doing their own missionary work.

2 Best lessons of the week

1.  Was with a recent convert who was kicked out of his family's house and is now living at a friend’s house. So it's been pretty rough for him. We taught them about the importance of daily scripture study and prayer as a family, and invited them to reinstall that habit back into their lives. They were very appreciative of this reminder as they had told us that they had gotten out of the habit, due to their crazy holiday times.

2.  We also had a lesson with an old lady that had gone through some extremely difficult experiences in her family. Because of this, she has learned to heavily rely on reading the Book of Mormon every day to keep her on the path. She has said that since the death of her 3rd husband, she hasn't missed a day reading the Book of Mormon in 40 straight years! She would rather die than go to bed without reading her Book of Mormon.  Her reading the Book of Mormon every day causes a chain reaction by keeping the rest of her spiritual habits in check, such as praying, keeping the commandments, and much more. Her example was so inspiring for me and I imagine for all of you as well. There's no reason that we can't do this and so I encourage you all to join me in this challenge! Choose a time every single day to study the Book of Mormon. Make it a top priority, and make it happen every day. If you do this, I have no doubt you will not fall away from your faith, and you will stay on the path that leads to eternal salvation. The Book of Mormon is the greatest resource that we have to build our faith and testimony in Jesus Christ, as well as the truthfulness of our Church! Have a great week!

Elder Talbot