Paths Cross

Dear Family and Friends,

Bad days just don't happen here in Corvallis. Even when the work is
hard or we're rejected, it's still so much fun to be a missionary! It
may be hard for me to leave this area someday.

The prophets and apostles have been encouraging us to "go to the
rescue" lately, and it is so satisfying. There is a very dear Family
in our area by the name of Latu and they have been less-active for
quite a while now. Ever since I have been here, we have been stopping
in randomly and talking with them, and last week they came to church!
They are the Polynesian family that feeds us every Monday now! One of
the daughters works at the grocery store we shop at and she needed a
new tie so she gave me some fabric and I made her one! Last week when
we were there we shared a video about the sacrament and talked about
how important it was to partake of the sacrament weekly. What a
treasure it is to be a part of this family's life and see the good
changes they are making.

The hardest part about our lessons with Mitchell these days is not
getting completely sidetracked. We all just get along way too well, and
it doesn't help that Sister Chapman is always feeding me a sugary
dessert just before the lesson haha. This last week we went really deep
into priesthood and priesthood keys.

Last week we were sitting in Gospel Principles and a woman in the ward
came to the door and beckoned us outside. When we got out there, she
told us there was a woman on the phone that wanted to talk to the
missionaries. Nobody calls the church phone, ever. I pulled the cord
phone into a nearby room because the hallway was crowded and loud,
just like mom used to do when I was being loud and annoying and she
was on the phone. This woman told us that she was in need of some
help, both spiritual and physical. We set up an appointment for
Tuesday. Her name is Bonnie, and we had such a great lesson with her!
The spirit was strong and we were able to set a date for her baptism!
God guides us to those that are ready.

Last week as we were walking home late at night, Elder Peterson almost
got run over when he walked out in front of a car! I grabbed him and
they slowed down, but then they pulled into the nearby driveway. God
literally puts people in our path, but in this case we happened to be
in their path haha. We went and talked to him for a second. His name
was Troy, and he was extremely kind and invited us over next time we
were available! Tuesday night we saw that his vehicle was there so we
went and visited. His son Shane answered and Troy called out from the
background, "come in, do you want some meatloaf?" Luckily, we had felt
the prompting not to eat a lot during dinner that night, so we gladly
accepted! As we ate, his two daughters came home from work. They were
so kind and fun to be with! It was late when we got there so we
couldn't stay long, but before we left we shared a spiritual thought
about Christ from the book of Mormon, 2 Nephi 25:26. When we go back
we will teach the first lesson.

We got to teach Maeci again. She is such a fun, happy girl. Every time
I shake her hand her elbow pops, we can't figure out why, but it does
haha. She is not completely invested yet and her father is not forcing
her, but he is doing all he can to help her improve. He is a very
good, patient man.

Last night we taught Fred and Cara about keeping the sabbath day holy
and the Ten Commandments. This is one of my very favorite lessons to
teach. We use the "Sign Language of the Ten Commandments," hand signs
to remember each commandment. This always accompanied by some good
laughs.

We didn't get to meet with Randy and his family this week because they
are all quite sick. Please pray for their healing.

Amy Weidow just had her LAST INTERVIEW!!!!! She and her two children
will be baptized on November 19th. So exciting:)

Love,
Elder Thomas

Not many pictures this week. Just more of beautiful Montana!

Started off with a bang!

Dear Family and Friends,

Started off last week with a bang! Right after preparation day we went
and had dinner with Clint, Audrey and Martha Weidow. I love this
family and all the kids! It was a crazy night with lots of kids, food
and talking. It kinda reminded me of family parties at home! I loved
it. We don't know if we will ever see the fruits of the work we do up
there, but I hope and pray there will be some good ones.

We then went and taught Mitchell gold again. Mitchell has reserved us
for every Monday night at 7:30, and we couldn't be more happy about
it. Mitchell still remains very strong and determined to make it out
of the mess he is involved in.

Tuesday night we had dinner with a member family, but right after we
had a lesson with a Polynesian less-active family! We just felt like
it would be rude to cancel either, so we did both! It was a fantastic
experience. We had dinner with the Latu's and then we shared a talk by
Bruce R. McConkie, his very last talk actually, the purifying power of
Gethsemane. If you have never watched that talk, watch it. It is powerful.

During our lesson with Maeci Thomas this week we were able to finish the Plan of Salvation lesson. Maeci is such a fun, happy girl! She loves books and learning things. She loves teasing her father and just talking. We love the opportunity to meet with this family.

On Friday we had a lesson with WILL AND KARA!!!!!! The whole lesson was focused on the baptism which would occur the next day!! They tried on their baptismal suits and we had our final lesson focused on baptism! It was amazing. The next day was baptism day!! It was so beautiful. Before the baptism we brought Will and Kara into a room to see a "special guest!" When they walked in they saw an iPad, with ELDER ANGLE on it!!! It was awesome, Kara started crying. He also got to talk to Joel and Marilyn:) It made us all very happy. I got to talk to him as well! The baptism was beautiful. Will was baptized by his younger brother, Zeb, and cried and gave him a huge hug as soon as he was out of the water. Kara was baptized by a very close friend of theirs, Jeff Jessop. After the baptisms I had the opportunity to give the talk on the Holy Ghost. Kara started crying and made me cry. I must cry a lot. The confirmations were powerful. I love this family a ton, and I love being a missionary!

Sorry, no more time!

Love,
Elder Thomas

Oh my...

Training outside, yes??

WILL AND KARA'S BAPTISM!!! :) :) :)

A WHOLE YEAR???? Well flip.

Dear Family and Friends,

Hello people of the earth, I am exhausted. That is all, love ya
bye.... But seriously. Missionary work demands every mental thought,
every last bit of energy, even sleep because you receive spiritual
revelation and manifestations in your sleep. The weird part is, I love
every second of it.

Conference was amazing. I wish I had time to relate all the things I
learned and felt but it sufficeth me to say that I learned much about
my role as a leader in the mission field, especially during Priesthood
Session. I will be looking for my Amuleks and trying to lift those not
yet confident in their own abilities. I am so excited to implement
this leadership advice and see those not yet confident in their own
abilities flourish as men and women of God.

My dear humans, it has been a WHOLE YEAR since I came out on my
mission. I can not tell you how much this fact breaks my heart. I am
past the halfway point, and everyone says the second half goes way
faster. Darny darn.

This week was super good. We had lesson after lesson and event after
event. We were very very busy.   We taught Randy again but he is
having a hard time making much progress. He is far too comfortable
where he is at and we don't think he quite sees why all of this is so
important yet.

We met with Sandro again. Sandro is a veteran and has many stories. He
is always very distracted and it is hard to keep him on subject. We
love him and he wants so very badly for us to keep meeting with him so
we will keep on doing so! However, if he doesn't start keeping
commitments we may have to drop him.

We got to teach Mitchell again. This time we got into a little bit of
the deeper stuff in regards to the group. You can't dive into the deep
stuff with members of the group right off the bat, you have to wait
until they have decided to move forward. Otherwise they will feel like
you are trying to feed them "anti-group" stuff. But Mitchell is ready!
We are so proud of him.

This week we were praying to find someone in our area book named
Stephany, but the only information we had was her first and last name.
The night before we were wondering who it was and felt a distinct
prompting to look her up on Facebook. As soon as we saw a picture, I
remembered meeting her at church once when she was there with a
friend! We added her as a friend and prayed we'd be able to find her.
The next day as we were headed home from Zone Training we saw an
investigator we had been trying to contact moving into a new place. We
pulled over and offered our help which she gladly accepted, and low
and behold, her son arrives with Stephany! Crazy. Prayers are answered
so fast sometimes. We talked for a little bit and got to know her a
little better. She has a lot of friends in the church, there is a lot
of potential here.

One more thing then I gotta go, WILL AND KARA GET BAPTIZED ON THE
EIGHTH!! I'll tell you all about that next week:)

Love,
Elder Thomas

Sunny Rain

Taking pictures to announce conference

The Zone

Weirdos.

FIVE.

Dear Family and Friends,

This would be so much easier if you could all just read my mind and know everything that happened this week. So i'll let you all figure out how to do that, because I am very short on time today... jk, I do have a little time.

Mitchell Gold is one of the most humble humans I have ever met in my life. We absolutely love him. I have learned time and time again from his example. This week we taught about prophets and polygamy and cleared up some questions and confusions.

The Walker family is so welcoming to us! We love them. Randy has a testimony of the Book of Mormon but he has not realized the significance of that knowledge. We feel that if he will commit to come to church and keep that commitment he will receive the answer he is looking for.

We resumed our visits with a man named Sandro this week. Sandro has had a rough past, one that makes it hard for him to trust others. Sandro has asked us to prove the Book of Mormon to him historically. We explained to him that he must prove it to himself by reading the Book of Mormon and praying. He didn't like that answer too much. While Elder Angle was still here we tried to have a drop lesson with him but he wouldn't let us! He enjoys our visits a lot and really wants us to keep coming back. He is humble enough to have us over so we will be working with him step by step, scripture by scripture, precept upon precept. It may be slow but he definitely has potential!

There is a non-member who comes to church every week. This man was excommunicated for leaving the church and joining the apostate group up in Pinesdale. He now wants to rejoin the church and has been working on that for about a year already. His daughter, age 12, is now beginning to figure out what religion she wants to join and has begun the discussions with us! She is so intelligent and is completely willing to read the Book of Mormon and seek a testimony of it.

Taught the Plan of Salvation to Amy and Cory Weidow this week and it went so well! Amy and her kids are hoping to be baptized soon but Cory is lagging behind a little. We talked about eternal families and making certain that we will all be together someday. I think Cory understood the message but is not ready to act yet. He understands though, which is good.

Fred and Cara are just like many of the other incredible investigators coming from Pinesdale, golden! They do have some incredibly difficult questions, but we have learned how to answer them and the spirit always comes in with the save. This time we taught about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and we were also able to answer their group doctrine related questions on polygamy and the sacrament. A challenge for each of you: Go to D&C 20:76 and answer this; what does the word "administer" mean in this verse. This is a huge stumbling block for those in Pinesdale because they feel we do the sacrament wrong. If you can't figure it out email me.

We did five service projects this week. FIVE. We helped a less-active family paint the floor in an upstairs room, we helped the sisters in Blodgett Canyon move a fifth wheel trailer hitch from one truck to the other for an investigator, we helped a physically handicapped woman dejunk and downsize her storage unit and ended up with all the junk (trying to get a member of the ward to come pick all this up and take it to the dump for us), we helped some non-members move into corvallis with two other sets of missionaries, and we helped our investigator, Linda, paint her shed. It was CRAZY.

Wild week. Love you all!

Love,
Elder Thomas

Big dog named Finnick. Love him! 

Rainy days :)

Service. I am working hard in my head, ok?

Can it get any better than Montana? 

One more door... Just a little longer...

Dear Family and Friends,

Story time. Saturday night Elder Peterson and I were discussing the silly little things satan tries to distract us with and we came to some conclusions. The first being that satan always tempts us with the same silly things. The second being that he always does it around the same time of day and in the same situation. Because of this, we have the ability to look forward and prepare for any temptations that he may try to bombard us with. As I pondered on this subject I thought it would be a good idea to change the iPad password as a reminder to always be preparing for the next moment. I did just that and went to sleep. The next morning my alarm went off and I tried to unlock my iPad... and I had completely forgotten my passcode. Here is the deal, after 9 failed attempts at unlocking a missionary iPad, it wipes all data and information on the iPad. Notes, PDF's, Pictures, Gospel Library... and it did not take me long to get to 8 attempts. I tried many different variations of what I was pretty certain the password was based on, thinkahead, lookahead, thinkforward, lookforward, beready, prepare... other stuff. I was panicking. We prayed, and pondered, and prayed again. I just could not remember! At the end of the day we were sitting in our room as Elder Peterson wrote in his journal. Randomly he looked up at me and said, "plan ahead." Immediately I knew what he was talking about. He was simply thinking about his future and "planning ahead" and it hit him! We had to wait till the next morning to try it out because we wanted to make sure that there were no other options. We called the mission office and they let us know that if I couldn't remember the password, I would just need to wipe the iPad and start over. At this point it was the worth the risk. We entered in each letter 1 by 1... p-l-a-n-a-h-e-a-d... then I re-entered it just to make sure I did it right. I pushed done and... IT WORKED!!!!!! My iPad truly has 9 lives, and we saved it right on the last one, but only through personal revelation. God loves us and if our desires are righteous, he will make a way.

Other miracles, one night we prayed to know where to go. I felt a prompting to go tracting, Elder Peterson had the names of a member family come to his mind, Jeff and Maria. We put two and two together and went tracting on Jeff and Maria's street, got a referral from another member and got a referral for a less-active at the end of the street who is in need of service this week! God sends us two by two for a reason.

Around 8:00 in Montana, everyone goes inside and gets ready for bed, or some other form of relaxation, but God has asked us to be out till 9:00, so we do it. As we walking home this week at about 8:50 we saw a man out on his porch. We talked to him and found out he was a less-active! He was so willing to have us come over. His name is Bradley and he is such a cool man, we have high hopes for his future progression.

Sometimes you just have to have a list of people you could go visit and then pray about it. We prayed over a list of potential investigators and felt a prompting to go visit some investigators that we believed had moved and were intending to drop. We knocked on the door and no one was home, but we knew God had sent us there for a reason so we knocked the other doors on the street. No one was interested till the last house, when a young man named Sam saw us approaching and he came out to talk to us! He told us most of his friends were Mormons. He was so willing to listen and have us come back! He gave us his address, phone number and set up an appointment with us for this Thursday. We are so excited, we have heard nothing but good from his friends in the ward. Always knock the last door.

Another night it was getting late and we felt a prompting to send a facebook message to a young man, Ron. I personally do not like doing Facebook messaging unless we have to, but God told us to do this one. It turns out that it was an answer to prayer and from what he tells us it was one of the most powerful spiritual answer he has received in his life. He was really seeking for guidance and we messaged him at the right time. He just recently moved to Billings, but the Billings missionaries will be teaching him. We had only met him two times before this. God knows his children, he knows what they need, listen and act.

God blesses you when you knock that last door or stay out for that last ten minutes.

I'm sorry, that's all I have time for. I love you all.

Love,
Elder Thomas

Blodgett Canyon hike

Zone Leadership Conference

Love Montana

Y'all Gonna Be Mad At Me

Dear Family and Friends,

I know I'll be in trouble with at least one of you (Mom) for doing
this, but this will be another very short email.

First cool thing, Mitchell has decided that he is ready for baptism
and has had his first interview! It was such an amazing lesson, to see
his countenance change and all the wait he has been carrying fall
away. He finally realized the difference between being imperfect and
being unworthy. So important!

We were able to get up and see Jim Neaves, the bow maker, again. He
has dropped us and asked us not to teach him, but there is still a
friendship and a bond there, so we went up to see how he was doing. It
was a wonderful visit, and it was good to see him again.

Went on an exchange with Elder Porter! (The one taking selfies at the
interviews) He is a good missionary and we saw miracles. One of the
miracles was that we got to see Jordan again! It is not very easy to
catch him at home, but we did! He has been reading the Book of Mormon!
He had a few questions about the origin of the Book of Mormon and
Joseph Smith, which we were able to answer to his satisfaction. It was
cool. On the way home we felt a prompting to stop by our next door
neighbors and talk with. When we got there he was grilling some steaks
(yes at 8:30 PM. Here in Montana they cook meat whenever they feel
like it haha) and was visibly distressed. We began talking with him
and he opened up about all the problems he was having and how hard
things were. We were able to testify of the love Christ has for him and his
perfect plan. He kept saying, you'll probably be hearing from me
again.

We did have other cool experiences but I don't have enough time.
Sorry! I love you all very much.

Love,
Elder Thomas

Beautiful Rainbow :)

Just before bed selfies

Waiting our turn for interviews with President

Sunset

I must be working him too hard :)

We Out About and We Workin'

Dear Family and Friends,

Some quick updates:

Last Monday was crazy. While we were out getting lunch we got a call
from a woman named Adrienne. Elder Angle met Adrienne in a parking lot
a few weeks ago. We got to talk to her while her husband worked on a
locksmith job in the back. It was a delightful conversation and we
learned a lot about her. Her father was dying soon and we got to
testify of the plan of salvation and eternal families. We also learned
she was moving and stayed in contact through texting. When Adrienne
called us on Monday she was asking for our help with moving. It was
preparation day, but who cares! When God's children need help, you go
no matter the cost. It was so cool and they were extremely grateful!
We were able to lift some very large boxes that they may not have been
able to lift and get to know them really well. They are a wonderful
Christian family and they have very great potential. She wants to have
us up for dinner as soon as she can!

Randy is continuing to progress! He has asked us to read the Book of
Mormon with them every time when we come over. He is reading on his
own when he has time too. His son RJ has autism but he loves the
gospel! We love this family.

This week we had a meeting with a man named Joe Jessop who is a church
historian. We call it the Pinesdale meeting because he teaches us the
history behind Pinesdale and the reason for some of their different
doctrines. It is a very detailed meeting and so much information is
brought forward. I love it, it helps us understand where our Pinesdale
investigators are coming from.

We had a second meeting with Michael! We taught about the Restoration
of the gospel. Michael was very receptive and loves meeting with us.
We brought a member with us who is a wrestler because Michael loves
wrestling. It was such a perfect fit! We invited him to be baptized
but he felt he wasn't ready to make that commitment yet. He said he
might be in the future. The member we brought invited him to church
and even said he would pick him up. He seemed like he wanted to go!

Will and Kara have had their general authority interview, and it was
such a wonderful experience for them! They spoke of the powerful
presence of the spirit and the love they felt. We are so happy for
them.

As of right now that is all I have time for. I LOVE YOU ALL!

Love,
Elder Thomas