WEEK OF MARCH 7, 2016
So this week was downright awesome :D We saw a lot of success. We had a lot of appointments, started teaching a solid investigator, and found 4 really solid potentials that invited us to come back this week. Grace also came to church, and that's a miracle in and of itself. She's our 93 year old investigator that can be really stubborn, but she finally made the effort and was able to make it to church this weeks. I was ecstatic, to say the very least. The investigator that we started teaching is the daughter of one of the most awesome families in our ward. They got baptized about 3 months ago after walking to their neighbors (who are super awesome members) and asking if they could come to church and start meeting with the missionaries. Anyhow, their daughter, Savannah, just finished up at a rehab facility in Kaysville and is now super interested in seeing what her parents have gotten themselves into. She's really searching and has really loved everything we've taught so far. She still has a few demons that she's trying to leave behind, however the gospel has already done a lot for her. It's been pretty awesome to see.
WEEK OF MARCH 14 2016 (This was a general, only one we've had since February)
Hey everyone!
So I promise that I'm still alive. Sorry that I've been so lame about getting one of these out the past couple weeks :P I"ll try and be better about that...
So the past few weeks have been really great! I'm really loving it here in the Thousand Oaks 4th ward :) We've seen a lot of success which is always a great thing! This week was downright awesome :D We saw a lot of success. We had a lot of appointments, started teaching a solid investigator, and found 4 really solid potentials that invited us to come back this week. Grace also came to church, and that's a miracle in and of itself. She's our 93 year old investigator that can be really stubborn, but she finally made the effort and was able to make it to church this weeks. I was ecstatic, to say the very least. The investigator that we started teaching is the daughter of one of the most awesome families in our ward. They got baptized about 3 months ago after walking to their neighbors (who are super awesome members) and asking if they could come to church and start meeting with the missionaries. Anyhow, their daughter, Savannah, just finished up at a rehab facility in Kaysville, UT and is now super interested in seeing what her parents have gotten themselves into. She's really searching and has really loved everything we've taught so far. She still has a few demons that she's trying to leave behind, however the gospel has already done a lot for her. It's been pretty awesome to see.
As for a spiritual thought, this week I studied a lot about conversion, which was actually really enlightening. I realized that my concept of conversion (and the concept that a lot of others seem to hold) was a bit warped and that I didn't understand it as well as I thought I did. My original concept of conversion was equivalent with having a testimony. If you have a testimony, you're converted. But now I realize that isn't true. Conversion is much deeper than a spiritual witness that the Book of Mormon is true, that Joseph Smith was a prophet, or even that Jesus is the Christ. While that may act as a catalyst, I now realize that conversion is 1. A lifelong process rather than a single event, and 2. A fundamental change in who we are, how we think, and what we desire. Conversion is the effect that Christ's grace has on us when we truly accept him and make an effort to follow His gospel, and it's what distinguishes those that achieve Celestial glory verses Terrestrial glory. Anyhow, it's greatly impacted how I prepare to teach and how I study. It was a pretty good breakthrough :)
I hope you all are well. Things are great here and the Lord continues to smile upon us. Thank you all for your support and prayers :) I love you all!
Much love,
Elder Brennan Jon Rosenlof
1. District selfie!
2. Dead end? (Sorry I just thought this was funny.)
WEEK OF MARCH 14, 2016
Well this week was pretty good. Honestly it was the slowest week of the transfer, but it's a sign that you're in a good area when the worst week of your transfer is a good week in any other area. So really no complaints here. The coolest thing that happened this week was with Johnny. He was the guy that I met in Home Depot a week before I got transferred here. Anyhow, we prayed on Wednesday that we would be able to get into contact with him because we hadn't been able to get a hold of him for the past couple of weeks. Thursday, he called us saying that he missed us and that he wanted to meet up some time. Pretty cool miracle numero uno. We managed to set up a time for Saturday morning at the church and planned on doing a church tour with our WML. The whole thing went really well. He was really thoughtful about everything and you could tell he really felt the Spirit, then we finished off by showing him the baptismal font. Miracle numero dos is that the font was even open. We didn't have a key, but we wanted to show it to him and, well, the Lord provides. When we opened it up he was like "Woah! Dang! That's so cool!" which I thought was kinda odd because it's a really plain font, but afterwards he talked about how he felt something really clean and pure when we opened the doors that made him evaluate himself and his worthiness. When we asked him what he thought it was, he said he knew it was the Spirit. So awesome. Miracle numero tres of the situation was his prayer at the end. Oh my heck. He's a born again Christian, so ordinarily his prayers are super short and informal, but this time it was one of the most beautiful, heartfelt, sincere prayers I've ever heard in my 19 years humaning on this earth. Twas awesome.
That was the highlight of the week. Other than that, things have been pretty normal. Missionarying, not killing my ZL's, operating even though I'm completely exhausted, etc. Also, I love my district. I've said that before, but we're still awesome. This week we've started a thing where we meet for lunch and proceed to have what I've coined "The Daily District Table Topic." Essentially we sit around the table and have super awesome gospel discussions that Bruce R. McConkie would envy. I love these Elders haha!
And that's about all for this week! Hope that you're well :)
Dang. :(
WEEK OF MARCH 21, 2016
Anyhow this week was AWESOME. We taught Savannah again, and we also started teaching her boyfriend, Tyler, who is now one of my new favorite people. He has a wicked cool story and he and I just hit it off really well. He's also super prepared for the gospel, and he and Savannah are now looking toward baptism on April 20th. We also had a potential investigator family (think I mentioned them) invite us over this Tuesday to have dinner with them and teach the restoration. I about passed out from sheer excitement. We've also had a few other potentials that have come out of the woodwork, so we're busy as bees. I REALLY HOPE THAT I STAY. I mean I've only been here for 6 weeks, but there's always the chance and its that chance that's making me uneasy....
Other than that, things are going well! I'm doing well, the area is doing well, our investigators are doing well. What else could I ask for? Love you! Have a great week!
WEEK OF MARCH 28, 2016
Anyhow, this week was pretty awesome! The Lord is still continuing to smile down upon TO 4th. We had that dinner with Scott and Tamara(that potential family that invited us over for dinner), and that went really well. Not quite what we were expecting, but we feel it went as it needed to. We didn't really have time to sit down and teach the Restoration, but what it turned out to be was them firing a lot of genuine questions at us and it turning into an awesome gospel discussion so I'd still say that our mission was accomplished there. We also had an opportunity to do some service with Grace and have a mini lesson. We found out from her fellowship earlier in the week that the reason she is so hesitant to get baptized is she is really just scared, which is entirely rational if you think about it. It's no small feat for a 93-year-old woman to step down into a font and be fully immersed in water. So right now we're easing up on the pressure and praying to find out how we can help her overcome that. We also had multiple awesome things happen with Tyler, the highlights being him committing to live the WoW without hesitation, him saying multiple times that he's excited to get baptized, and the news that he will be moving in with the Z family in a couple weeks which means that he'll be in our ward boundaries and that makes his baptism A LOT less complicated. So yeah this week was pretty great.
In transfer news, I will be staying another transfer in Zion (cue uproarious applause). Elder Plummer will be heading up to Atascadero so that's really exciting. My new comp will be Elder Hunter, and from what I hear he's super awesome.
Anyhow that's the week in a nutshell!
#chameleonselfie
WEEK OF APRIL 4, 2016
OH MY HECK I LOVE GENERAL CONFERENCE. Sorry. Just have to put that out there. This conference was just extremely uplifting for me. I went into it with 4 very specific questions that I wanted answers to, and every single one of them was answered several times over. I was a revelatory experience, to say the very least. And yeah having Holland as the closer was a great call. Also Uchtdorf's talk in Priesthood was absolutely phenomenal. My favorite was probably Christofferson's though. He's slowly become my favorite, and he gave a really good one this conference.
Anyhow, that was basically the highlight of the week but the rest of the week was great to! Tyler is on track towards baptism. He had an awesome experience at conference this weekend, and he is praying at least twice daily and is reading the Book of Mormon everyday. He's had some great questions for us this weekend, and we're going to be talking about those in a lesson with him hopefully tomorrow. But it definitely looks like he's getting dunked on the 30th. That's really exciting :) Honestly he's probably my favorite person I've worked with on my mission so far. I'm pretty sure he and I knew each other in the premortal life haha! He has also been visiting with Grace when Sister Z goes over there, and they uncovered a major concern of hers. Apparently she's worried that if she joins and then messes up in one way or another, she'll be excommunicated. That's definitely helpful, so we know what we'll be talking about next time we see her :)
As a comp report, I love Elder Hunter. He's pretty awesome :) He's a total goofball, but he knows when to get serious and get crap done. This should be a good transfer :)
Anyhow, hope you guys are good! I'm great, the work is great, the Lord is great, all is well in Zion. Hope you guys have a great week!
1. Elder Hunter with a life-sized Spider Man.
2. Selfie with a living snow ball/bunny
3. The District
WEEK OF APRIL 11, 2016
Anyhow this week was pretty good! We kinda took a look at our teaching pool this week and reevaluated some of those we were "teaching." So we ended up dropping a few people, and we're hitting the ground hard with finding. We found a couple potentials this weekend though, and we actually had a super successful contact using family history last night! Pres has been emphasizing using that as much as we can recently. We were really determined to find someone that was interested in it and we did! We stopped and talked to her on the street and she told us she wasn't interested in learning about the Church, but I felt prompted to ask her about family history and she really got into it! We ended up exchanging information and we're going to give her a call and set up a time to meet up at the family history center! That was a pretty cool miracle. In regard to investigators, Tyler is still doing well. He's working really hard on developing faith, and that's been resulting in him working hard on repenting for several of his shortcomings. It's actually been really cool to see faith working unto repentance in him. Grace has been mourning over the past few days due to the passing of her sister. We won't be meeting with her this week due to that, but hopefully this should help her move closer to baptism. I hate to sound like I'm trying to find a silver lining in someone's death, but she herself said that she'd have more time when her sister passes so...yeah :)
In more of a spiritual light of things, we got to here from 2 Seventies this week! Elder Hamula came and did a mission tour, and Elder Gavarett was the presiding authority at our stake conference this weekend. I really enjoyed Elder Hamula's training. He spent literally an hour and a half expounding the scriptures to us and teaching us exactly what it means to be a child of God. Probably the coolest thing I've ever heard, plus it really helped me to more fully internalize that truth which has been truly life-changing in every sense of the word. It's really changed my outlook not only on myself, but it's also changed the way that I make decisions and how I look at other people. It's actually been really cool. Gotta love the gospel :)
That's about all for now! Glad to hear all is well in Zion :)
1.This is one of the greatest things I've ever seen.
2. #LDSGQ
WEEK OF APRIL 18, 2016
Well things are going pretty swell. I just have to say though that I literally am in the greatest mission in the whole freaking world. When you start to feel a bit warm because its 85 for the first time in months so you just turn up the AC in your car a bit, you know you've got it made.
Anyhow, this week was a bit slower. We fell into the trap of letting our teaching pool become a little stagnant so we had to ramp up our finding efforts. We didn't see to much fruit from it this week, but we did meet a few people that I think have some real potential and we should be seeing them again sometime this week. Tyler is doing really good though. He and Savannah should be getting engaged soon. Yeah not sure how I feel about that one. They seem really happy though, and I've got the faith that it should all be fine. They have the makings of a miracle story and enough trust in God that it definitely could all work out just fine. So keep them in your prayers :) Hahaha but so far things should be going full steam ahead for his baptism on May 8th so that's good! That may or may not be saved until after the wedding though, so we'll have to see. Hopefully not though! I'm pretty sure I'm out of here after this transfer. We had interviews with Pres this week and yeah I'm pretty sure I'm getting transfered which really sucks. This ward is tied with Atascadero as my favorite area so far. But hey, so it goes. I was thinking about it the other day, and I probably only have to do the whole transfer thing two more times at most. That's a weird thought. Also I realized that Kendall's birthday is my 18 month mark. Mixed emotions there to.
Hahaha anyway that's really been the week. Working hard and freaking out about my mission mortality. You know, the usual. Anyhow I'm outta time....sorry about the lame email :P I had exchanges that I needed to report on so that took a while....anyway hope you guys have good week!
