Thursday, December 28, 2017

Hello Again :) From Merry Mesa! Week #72

Hey Mom! Long time no talk! I hope the rest of your Christmas was good! After talking with you guys I remembered how much I miss you😂 I really enjoyed talking with everyone, you all seem super happy so that’s a good thing. I have the BEST family ever for the record.

 We went over to the Tahiliani’s house after talking with you guys and hung out there for a while. Sister T made a HUGE buffet for us and it was amazing. She is a saint. We played some pool there and hung out with the “Baller” missionaries😂 After that we went back to the Garners and played games with their family, it was a lot of fun. And then they fed us dinner, which was super super good. We would be a wreck without the Garners😜 

Singing at the Temple Christmas Lights was super cool. Literally I was freezing😐 No it was a really fun experience, you could feel the spirit so strong. I think we sounded good for the most part, did you guys watch it on Facebook? (Mom note: It's on the Mesa Temple Christmas Lights and Concerts page on Facebook if you want to see it)  I haven’t looked at the videos yet, not sure if you can see me. They were using an Ipad to film it. We sang for about 30 minutes and then kind of hung out at the Christmas lights afterwards. Sad to think it will be my last time singing in that choir:( That’s okay, I’m not that good of singer anyways😂

I went on a few exchanges this week, I went to a different area twice. It was a lot of fun minus biking in the cold. I didn’t enjoy that very much but I survived it. I’m more of a whimp than I thought. We biked actually a ton and I kind of missed it! I’m sort of looking forward to biking again. Anyways when I went with Elder Orse we went to a Christmas Adam Party. They had a plethora of food and deserts. I about passed out from how much I ate. They also convinced us to sing carols with them while riding on a trailer through the neighborhood. That was pretty fun, I really felt the spirit of Christ as we sang to people and they gratefully waved back at us. Cool experience.  We also had interviews with President Townsend. It was a good time. 

Coming up on 2018 it blows my mind that it’s already here. The year went by too fast. I hope you cherish every moment of life like I try to do haha. It’s seriously such a blessing to be living in a time like we do where we have the fullness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ on the earth. We are some of the luckiest of Gods children. We should be engulfing ourselves in the Book of Mormon and serving others. That’s where the true joy comes from. Thanks for being the BEST! I love you sooo much and it was so good to talk to your face. I hope you have an awesome week! HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Love, Elder Findlay

Siblings!

We loved talking to our favorite missionary on Christmas.
 He is very happy in Mesa!

Caroling

Christmas Eve! A gift from the Garners

This was Sister T's dessert table!
Super fancy and there was SOOOO much food!

My boy Elder Parsons! He goes home in January :( 


Thursday, December 21, 2017

7 Days Until My 2nd Christmas in Mesa! Week #71

Hey Mom!

I know 1 week! Super excited to talk to you guys. We will be at the Garners house for Christmas too. We will call you sometime in the morning like around 11:30. I will message Dad on messenger to get everything set up. I will most likely be doing from my iPad again. 

We had a really good week LAST week. THIS WEEK wasn’t as successful. It was actually pretty rough. Sometimes it's hard to keep things going during the holidays.  We had like 8 lessons fall through in a row. Melissa ended up dropping us because she is just too busy to make time to meet with us for now. And another one of our investigators had to be dropped because of the lack of commitment. It’s been hard but Heavenly Father blessed us with a miracle this weekend! We received a referral of a gentlemen named Bill. He is about 50 years old and just decided to check out the Visitors Center on Saturday. He said he wasn't looking for anything specific but he just felt like he needed to go in. The sisters ended up talking with him and then referred him to us. We met with him at the Visitors Center yesterday after church and it was soooo good. He is super sincere and really wants to change his life and follow God more closely. When I taught him about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon, he was speechless and the spirit definitely testified to him of the truth of these things. It’s been a while since I’ve taught someone that sincere, I really hope he can be baptized! Well I mean I hope that for everyone but seriously it would be a miracle. 

That’s sweet that Brooke is putting in her papers! Crazy crazy. Life goes by too fast sometimes. Once this year is over time is going to even go faster😭

Sorry for the short email. We had a really long choir practice today for the Temple Christmas lights concert. If you want you can even watch it live on this Facebook page:

Mesa Temple Christmas lights and concerts

That’s if you want to see me sing terribly😂 it should be pretty good. I did get the Christmas package with the 12 days of Christmas. We’ve been doing it every night and it’s been fun😂 Thanks Momma, I will look for my package tomorrow. I have to go to the mission office tomorrow anyways. Sorry again for the super lame email. I just had hardly any time to email today. Tell Dad I loved his email and that I can’t wait to see him next week! I love you Mom. You are the best. Talk to ya next week!
Love, Elder Findlay
The Garners spoil us every Sunday
 with a PRIME lunch😂


We had zone Conference this week and
each missionary got a gift bag. Guess
who it was from? Yeah Citrus Heights Stake,
my last area. They are very generous😂

Part of our area, it’s sketchy at night haha😂

Wednesday, December 13, 2017

It's Merry in Mesa! Week#70

Hi Momma!

Yeah last week was a little crazy, and this week was just about as crazy in some ways. I again saw so many blessings and miracles happen! We had a lot of success with our investigators and the work is moving along really well 😊 

As far as the trio is going, well it’s kind of not now😂 I emailed President Townsend on Monday and told him that I had never been in a tripanionship before so I was excited to see what happens, I then asked what advice he could give me. The morning of transfers, which was on Tuesday, I got a response from him saying that I wouldn’t be in a tripanionship anymore because an Elder from our mission was going home early😭 He was in our district and had only been out for six weeks. So Elder Landbeck will now be be Elder Orse’s new companion. I was super sad, I love that missionary that went home. Funniest missionary I’ve ever met😂  So me and Elder Draper are still going at it together. But now we have 3 beds in our room. They basically told us to keep it for the transfer. There’s literally nowhere to put it so it just takes up space. I’ve tried pushing it up to my bed and make it a king size😂 Yeah that doesn’t work...oh well.

We had first lessons with a few of our investigators this week. Our first one was with Melissa, she went to the Christmas Lights and asked for missionaries to come by and teach her. So we finally met with her and she is AMAZING. She knows hardly anything about religion, even anything about Jesus Christ. Why He is important, what He can do for us, what He has done for us. It was cool to teach about Christ in such a simple way that even a child could understand it, and that’s how we taught Melissa. She really enjoyed it and since then has been reading and praying about the Book of Mormon everyday! We have really high hopes for her😊

We also found a new part-member Family, the Karazcos, in the area that no one knew about! They are a younger couple who have been inactive for most of their lives. Well this week they came to church! And to the ward Christmas party! On top of that her brother, Newton, is like 20 years old. We started teaching him and he wants to be baptized so bad. So we scheduled a baptism for him on January 13th! Hopefully we can help him meet that date. He really wants it and I know God does too😁

I played pool with that inactive member again, it was the most drunk I’d ever seen him. He was falling all over the place and singing as loud as he could. We try to get some spiritual stuff in but he is never in the right mindset to hear. But we almost got him to come to the Christmas party! We are making progress little by little! At the end of our visit he comes up to me and gives the biggest hug and says I love you😂 If you knew him and how he sounds when he talks you would die of laughter, he’s a funny dude! I would be sooo happy to see him become active again. We're going to keep working on him.

I saw that Sister Kenny went to our house haha, she sent me a picture with you guys! It’s weird thinking that she’s back in Pleasant View. Yeah she was in my district her last transfer, so the last six weeks. I served by her in my first area and then never saw her until this last transfer. But it was a super fun transfer haha, good memories. 

So I will be talking to you guys on Christmas which I believe is on a Monday. Not sure what time we will do it yet, it’s too far to tell right now. We are going to be with the Garners on Christmas Eve, Christmas, and New Years so we are taken care of pretty well this year😇 

I will look for your 12 Days package this week, thanks mom! :) Thanks for everything you do for me Mom! You are such a saint! I hope everyone has a good week. I love this season, I love my mission, and I love my Savior Jesus Christ! #LightTheWorld

Love, Elder Findlay
Some Nativities at the Temple Lights

Our Christmas set up.



My boy Salem (Elder Karren...a previous comp)
was back in Mesa for a few days!

This is TJ. It was cool because Salem came back and
 we were all reunited. Hopefully he gets baptized soon. 

My boy Elder Thompson and Jake on the left

Wednesday, December 6, 2017

Light the World... Week #69

Hey Mom!

It’s finally December!! And it’s going by fast already! I had a super successful last week of the transfer. I saw so many miracles take place and I can’t thank Heavenly Father enough for bringing about those miracles. For the last five weeks we’ve been struggling to find people to teach and I’ve really just tried figuring out which families in the area to focus on. This week we received 8 referrals, I’m serious 8! It was so crazy! We picked up 3 new investigators and now we are staying super busy and are having a lot of success! Two of the investigators we picked up want to be baptized and we will be working with them. The rest are referrals from the Temple Christmas Lights, that means they requested a missionary visit to their home. Super awesome, the VC has been getting over 60 referrals a night. Huge blessing to missionary work!👍 Now our area is pretty poppin, luckily me and Elder Draper are staying.......but there’s a catch😅

We received transfer news on Saturday this week and found out that we are both staying thank goodness, but we are getting another companion....so we will be in a tripanionship. I’m not sure how I feel about that, honestly because we can hardly fit two people in our place and now three...oh boy. I hope he’s clean😂 His name is Elder Landbeck, he’s from Maryland.  It will be good though, he and Elder Draper will get along really well, they both like the same sort of stuff. Now I get to be Senior Companion of two missionaries😂 I’m sure it will be fun, we will make it work. 

So this week was a big change with missionary work, we got our Smartphone!! It’s super crazy I know. We share one as a companionship, except the new missionaries that come out they will already have their own phones. So now I cruise around with my iPad and smartphone haha, such spoiled missionaries. It’s nice because we have data on it which means we don’t have to go to the church every 5 minutes to sync our areabook.  It has a hotspot which is handy dandy. I feel super weird with it sometimes, it’s a Samsung galaxy - similar to my phone before I left. The one Jack has😂 Anyways it’s just weird. But I like it a lot. Contacting people is a lot easier and now we can finally use group texting! Good stuff.

I got to play pool with a crazy dude😂 It was nuts. He’s a member but very inactive, I almost won but still lost because I stink at pool😂 I told him if I beat him he has to come to church, he agreed. Rematch next week. 

The week started off a little hectic I have to say. On Tuesday morning I was doing my personal study in our room when I smelt some weird smelling smoke. I thought it was coming from outside because our windows were open but then I realized that it was coming from the laundry room. So I went in and it was all smokey and I couldn’t figure out what it was. Nothing was on in there so I had no idea where the smoke was coming from. No one was home but me and Elder Draper, so I called 911 and the fire department came and checked it out. Turns out it was an electrical fire that was caused from the water heater somehow. Luckily the fire fizzled out by itself! Jk it wasn’t luck at all, I know God put it out for us. He’s watching out for us😁 I’m glad our house didn’t burn down😂 So basically we didn’t have a water heater all week so we had cold showers everyday....that has been a good waker uper😂 But seriously now I have a testimony of hot water

Salt Lake is looking the same! Except the light the world vending machines, aren’t those the best! We don’t have any here but they look sweet. I bet the wait to donate was worth it. That’s basically what I share with everyone I meet, Light The World. Everyone needs to hear a good message and feel the true spirit of Christmas.

Man Jack looks like a straight up G😂 When I left he was just a little guy. That’s cool that he played some ball with Christian. 

Well I think that’s about it for this week. I’m super excited for this next transfer and I see a lot of success happening! I love you so much Mom! Have a good week!


Love Elder Findlay

Old Ford suits me well :)


I love Elder Sharp

Last district lunch