CHANGES!

January 18, 2015
Things have changed again!

Elder Coy is officially in Ellensburg. I'm gonna miss his stupid jokes and his experience in the mission field, but I know he's in good hands. I am officially training a brand new missionary! His name is Elder Folkman, and he's from Big Fork, Montana. He's awesome. I'm lucky to have a greenie that doesn't need much work :) We're pretty excited about being companions. This area has lacked member trust for a while, and so we will be doing everything we can to establish that trust again and get the work moving once more. It's interesting being a trainer after only 12 weeks, but now I know that you learn a lot more from training than you do from being trained. I have to rely on Preach my Gospel in order to train, so I'm learning a lot more than I thought I would. Elder Folkman has a desire to work hard and teach people, so it is awesome. Time to hit the pavement. 

We just got back from helping an older gentleman in our area, Mr. Skordas,  move a freezer out of his house, so that's why we are emailing a little bit later than usual. Afterwards, his son thanked us and made us these really tasty omelette things and we talked to Mr. Skordas about water skiing and mountain biking. He's 75 years old, but he still water skis every year. He even went mountain biking in Moab recently! We talked about his bike and he told us to invite him if we ever hike the trails in this area on a p-day. Elder Folkman and I really like hiking as well, so we're definitely going to do that!

This week has been a hazy blur with all of the changes, but last Wednesday was the day of exchanges. As I was waiting for my companion to arrive, the Elders from Moses Lake said that the lady that brought them wanted to talk to me. So I went over to talk to her. Turns out that a friend of our family's while we were living in New York, Sister Tolley, lives in Moses Lake now! You can't escape running into people you know in this tiny world :)

The past few days has been full of tracting and introducing Elder Folkman to investigators and members. Our first day together was awesome. The sun was out, the people were talking to us, everything was going great. One lady when we knocked on her door came right outside and started asking questions as if she had been waiting for us. She explained that she has a brother in Texas that is a member of the church, and she had lots of questions about prophets and the Book of Mormon. We taught her the restoration right there on her porch (she lives alone), and she really seemed to get it. She asked for a Book of Mormon so that she could "read and find out for herself." Perfect. Took the words right out of my mouth :) We didn't have any lessons planned for that day, so it was awesome being able to teach right away with Elder Folkman. After that, we came across another man cutting down a tree, and we asked him if he needed any help. He accepted, and then right away started talking about how his Dad had joined the church 20 years ago. HE said that it changed his dad's life, and that he could really use something like that in his own life. We got to teach him about the atonement and the gospel of Jesus Christ right there in-between moving tree branches and interruptions of the chain saw. He really appreciated it, and gave us his phone number so that we could talk to him again. It shows that any opportunity is a teaching opportunity. Never be afraid to talk to someone in any situation, because you may have been put in their path just for that reason. That's why we can't miss our chance to talk to anyone! 

Our investigators have been either sick or gone this past week. Satan is really working hard on them right now, haha. But that just means that they have great potential, so we will meet with them as soon as we can! The only one that we were able to teach is Jaime, the cuban guy. We went over to show him the restoration video, and he made us approximately 1 1/2 metric tons of rice and carne asada stuff. Elder Folkman looked at me, trembling with fear, and asked if he was going to get fat on his mission. 

"Yes. Yes you will."

The lesson went well, but he is progressing pretty slowly. We also need to get him a Spanish Book of Mormon so that he can read. We'll keep working with him, though!

I'll leave you all with our greatest creation: The peanut butter cookie and jelly sandwich.

Have a good week everyone! :)

Elder Moser

Elder Folkman!

​We were literally talking about working out at the gym 5 minutes
before this picture was taken.