Just Another Week

 

 The last two weeks have really just been grinding out Facebook finding and preach my gospel lessons. We've had a lot of success recently and I don't know who I can thank for it. Let's go with God. We are teaching 4 different people through messenger text lessons which still is kinda odd but it's working. As long as they respond back in a hasty manner, it works out. Believe it or not, we've gotten all 4 of those people to download Book of Mormon apps and are now reading and praying about it. What a crazy world. 

This is probably going to be a shorter email since, although we've been pretty dang busy teaching, not a whole lot of interesting stuff has happened recently. That'll definitely change with Christmas events within the next two weeks. One of those being I'm performing in a talent show and playing piano with another Elder. I don't know why I sign up for things, I don't play piano all that well. But hey, they said we need enough people to perform otherwise they'll have to do something else. I guess a couple of things that were interesting is teaching this guy named J in person. The last time we were over, we were following up to see if he had prayed to know if the Book of Mormon is true. Well, he did and he had an interesting answer. He (BTW, this guy is 12) said that he heard the thought that said "yes", but then a follow up thought of "why would you believe that?" We had a really good conversation on how typically the first thought you get in these situations is from the Holy Ghost and the proceeding thoughts are the adversary trying to get you to doubt the first thought you just got. J understood completely and accepted his original thought as the answer. He know has a little testimony of the truth and it can only go up from here. 

Another dope thing that happened would be us finally getting in contact with someone named M. She has a very busy life and didn't really have a lot of time for us to begin with. Well, we had a lesson with her at about the beginning of November and it was super duper solid, but contact got cutoff. That is, until two days ago. I just randomly hit her up on Facebook messenger and said "Hey, do you remember me?" She said "Of course I remember you, you are a missionary. You teach people about God." I then proceeded to explain that we really want to talk with her about God again since last time was awesome. She was so down for that and managed to find a 30-45 minute for us to talk to her in her busy life. We were feeling pretty bold so we just started the discussion by saying "Monica, we want to tell you about Christ's restored church" and then taught the Restoration. She was very intrigued and really wanted to have a Book of Mormon so we whipped on down to her house and gave her a physical copy. She gave us some pecans in exchange for the book. Super nice lady. 

Yeah, not a whole lot else to tell you guys. I have 3 picture this week and I'm sorry about that. Next email will be a banger, don't you worry. 

Have a blessed week,
Elder Batman 

 

Catfishing On Facebook

 

 Our last two weeks have been pretty dang action packed. I gotta tell ya, we set a plan for Facebook Finding and had a little training about it and it is really working. No we aren't catfishing people, that's just a joke we say for Facebook Finding. As a Cullman area, we've contacted over 400 people over Facebook and it's paying off. We found 2 people to teach this last week! One is a girl who is 14 years old. I don't know if I've ever met a more solid person besides maybe my first convert. She literally does everything we ask her and has great spiritual experiences because of it. After her first prayer to pray if our message was true, she said that in her prayer that she felt like someone was there with her. Obviously we pointed out that it's the Holy Ghost. She now knows our message is right. Then, the next lesson we got her to download a Book of Mormon app and invited her to start reading and pray if it is true. The next day, she said she had already read 7 pages and had that same Holy Ghost feeling from her  first prayer. Insane. This doesn't happen very often where people listen to you the first time, trust me. I guess it's because she's young and innocent? I have no fricken idea. Oh, I forgot to mention. We have been teaching her over text and it's honestly so relieving because you can't really screw it up. You have time to think about what you are going to say, type it all out so it looks all beautiful and then hit that send button. It's working wonders right now. We're working on getting her to come to church, that's the main goal at the moment.

Remember how I said we could potentially put 2 people on date within the next 2 weeks? Yeah, that didn't happen. One of the guys we were teaching, I think I called him John even though that's not his real name, we had to drop him. Completely opposite of this 14 year old girl we are teaching, John would not do anything that we asked him today. He's got a lot of problems from his past that has completely closed him off from even trying to talk to God and have experiences with him. So, we kinda just told him we can't continue to work with you if you aren't willing to have spiritual experiences. D&C 4:4 says that the "field is white and already to harvest", this guy was not ready to be harvested. But, according to this scripture, there are others who are. We aren't giving up on him but we are putting him on pause. He did mention he wanted to come to church so we'll see what happens. 

We had Thanksgiving this last week! 2 members teamed up and cooked us soooo much stuff. I don't know what I was expecting, but I wasn't expecting what we got. There's a picture down below of what I am talking about. There was a moment during dinner that was probably one of the most uncomfortable I've ever been in my life. Allow me to explain; one of the members has her best friend that lives in one of the other Cullman Elder's old areas. They ended up talking about this best friend for a little bit and the Cullman Elder ends up saying "I was completely shocked to hear that he passed away from the CoronaVirus." That member didn't know that. She burst into tears and none of us knew what to say. What are you supposed to say? The Elder just assumed she knew. Well, now she had an answer why this best friend hadn't called her in a while. Extremely awkward. She perked up after a little bit, but the moral of the story is don't bring up death during Thanksgiving dinner.

There's a few extra things, I'll link a video of my greenie losing a "what are the odds" game making him have to jump in a bush. We are really idiots out here but it was really funny. I'm just a bad dad, what can I say. 

Have a blessed week guys, that's all I got!
Elder Jackson Batman 

The Wonders Of Training

 

You know guys, I think I'm starting to figure out this whole "white wash" thing. After a couple weeks of stress and pleading prays, we actually found some rhythm. 

Nah, it's not as bad as I'm making it sound. I'm kinda just taking it one step at a time and hoping God pulls through. I say it all the time, but if God is going to trust 18-20 year old boys and girls to run this huge responsibility and we haven't completely ruined everything? Yeah, the church must be true. There's exhibit A for ya. 

But yeah, we found some footing. We came to realize pretty dang fast that this area hasn't had much work done in a while regarding investigators in the church. You can probably a test that to the 3 consecutive whitewashes that have taken place in Cullman each only lasting 1 transfer. It can be real difficult to keep an area going when it keeps changing like that. Anyway, we found a few people to teach! How about that? I'll let you in on one of the guys we taught this past week; we'll call him John. John randomly hit us up through Facebook Messenger without even being our friend on Facebook. He said that a friend of his, who is a member, said that the church is awesome and he wanted to hear if that's really true or not. We ended up teaching him that day and man was it a great lesson. Since I am training, I gotta give my son some opportunities to shine and polish some skills so I would just give him a look at random times throughout the lesson to let him know "Your turn to speak buddy." I guess it actually worked, the lesson went really well. Spirit was strong, dude started tearing up, greenie couldn't stop smiling. Just perfect. He wants to come to church next week so that's lit. We'll give him a good time. Definitely shattered his testimony of his old church. 💔 

Okay, let's talk about my son. Training is definitely different. It makes you realize some faults that you have since you're supposed to set a great example of what a missionary looks like and you may not fully know what that looks like yourself. You'll find yourself asking yourself "Why am I telling him to not do this when I'm doing it right now." 😶 Yeah, gut punch. You then proceed to repent and hope he listens to the original advice. It's actually quite a beautiful process; not being a hypocrite. By training another missionary you slowly become a better missionary because you don't wanna corrupt the little guy. Weird how that works sometimes. 

Alright before I go any further, I'm not a bad missionary. Just a few kinks to work out here and there that become obvious in this situation specifically, okay? 🤷‍♂️

Ohhhh here's something sick that happened. My greenie lost a "what are the odds" game and had to eat like 10 Domino's brownies in 10 minutes. Elder Hays, he's kind of a skinny guy. Quite a delicate fella. To be honest, I had no faith he'd finish the challenge. Boy was I wrong. He channeled some sort of inner demon and destroyed that whole cardboard box of brownies. I mean, he did about puke his guts out afterwards, but it made for a good video amiright. 

We also had an in-person meeting with our zone. We were having a discussion, something about missionary work, and the cutest thing happened. My son raises his hand to answer a question and goes "I know I'm just a greeny so this may not mean much.." Oh honey. If you only you knew that your opinion is more valid than mine. The zone hyped him up so much after he said that. Needless to say, he definitely felt like his voice was heard after that little exchange. 

Mkay well, I don't really have much else to say. We may or may not be able to put 2 people on date for baptism this week. 👀 I guess you'll just have to wait and see. 

Have a super blessed day y'all, 

Elder Jackson Batman 🦇 

Whitewash Training Carshare

 

  What a craaaaazy week it has been. A little overwhelming for sure, but that's missionary work at times. I guess this doesn't make sense until I tell you what happened, so here it goes: 

- I got transferred after 2 transfers in Northport and only 1 transfer with Elder Rasmussen. I loved that guy, he's super sick. We got along great and I was honestly hoping we could stay together so you can imagine the disappointment that followed when I got the transfer call from President.  It was mostly because the work in Northport was moving. We had 2 on baptismal date and I was hoping to see those finish out. But hey, duty calls, duty calls. Elder Rasmussen is a super solid missionary, he'll knock those out regardless.

- My new area is Cullman, Alabama. It's real interesting. I've heard many things about this place. One being the KKK had a huge connection with this area. That being said, you don't see a lot of African Americans around here. So many white people. Anyway, I am training. I have a son guys, his name is Elder Hayes. He grew up in Provo, Utah and now lives in Idaho Falls. He's a very creative guy, loves art and drawing. A little bit of the shy type, but hey, that's usually every greenie when they first come out. Since I'm training in a new area, that also means I am white washing which means that a whole new companionship gets put into an area. White washing is pretty confusing to begin with, but then you add another set of Elders who also have a trainee, who share the area with us, and we share a car?! Oh, and our apartments are 7 minutes apart. Just gets better and better, right? I'll hit you with one more thing; this has been a Sisters' area for 6 years. Guys and girls do missionary work soooo differently. I'm sorry but I will not heart attack a dang door (heart attack means to put a bunch of heart shaped notes on someone's door that have inspiring messages on them). That's just not what guys do, but the Sisters did A LOT of that when they were here. Super weird scenario to follow after. But you know, we improvise and adapt. Safe to say, I was mad stressed the first day in, I just didn't understand who thought this would be a good idea. It's working out though, piece by piece. But a lot of problem solving is needing to happen. 

- On a brighter note, the members in this area are phenomenal. We get fed like every fricken night and I can't complain, I really can't. Such a blessing. They come to love missionaries very quickly and they constantly offer up people for us to go and visit. They were super stoked to hear that 2 sets of Elders are coming in after so long. So, when we went to in-person church on Sunday, you can imagine the amount of people that came up and talked to us. And of course, we were asked to speak on the 22nd. All 4 of us. Kinda weird, but okay. This ward is just very involved and shows much love to anybody new who comes in. Heck, they even have a non-member running our missionary meal calendar. I don't know how they pulled that, but that's so sick. I know that as soon as we get all the kinks worked out with blind dating an area, we'll be really busy. 

- Oh yeah, You know like inbreeding? I thought that was just a joke that people say when they talk about Alabama, but nah. That's like a real thing here. This old lady we did service for the other day just started spitting facts about how a lot of people in the southern part of Cullman are all a part of the same family, and not the way you'd want. What a weird use of agency. 

- All in all, what a solid area. I know I'm cracking jokes at it, but I'm super excited to get this place rolling once again. It'll take a lot of prayers and patience, but we'll make it happen. I mean, this is the Lord's work, right? That must mean He will help us out, and I know He will. 

That's all I got guys, I'll let you know how it's all working out in the next email. Definitely being tried and tested, but I'm gonna learn to love it.

Have a blessed day, 

Elder Jackson Batman

Exchanges and Fish Fillets

 

 It's been a crazy two weeks. God is working some miracles in the Northport area and I will never complain about that. Here's what I got for you:

-Our friend, we'll call her Lin, has accepted the invitation to be baptized on the 14th of November. She loves reading out of the Book of Mormon and praying to God. It really seems like she knows this the truth. She wants that light she used to have about her to come back. Little does she know that we can give her that and more. Only issue here is that she lives with her boyfriend. Luckily for us, she's in the process of breaking up with him because he kind of seems like a dirt bag. An alcoholic hot head. What a great combo. She knows she deserves better and knows God wants her to live the Law of Chastity. I'm fairly confident this baptism will go through, just gotta work out a few situations and we'll be solid.

-H, the blind guy with the poor memory, has also accepted the invitation to be baptized on the 21st of November. This is quite the scenario. Our Elder's Quorum President gave us the advice to teach the same lesson three times in a row so that his memory will catch on to the information. We'll, we've been doing just that. On the 3rd lesson, I was on exchanges with another Elder and it was going alright. There was one point in the lesson where it seemed like the direction we were going didn't seem right, and at that moment the other Elder brought up 3 Nephi 17 where Jesus is about to depart but the people beg Him to stay. Jesus shows compassion and asks all to bring their sick and afflicted forward so He can heal them. The other Elder asked Hubert, "Do you have faith that Christ can heal you?" He said yes. The Elder then proceeded in saying that if he gives up cigarettes and is baptized by proper priesthood authority, he will receive his sight. H agreed and then handed us his box of cigarettes. Crazy. That's what we got going for us right now. A little bit of worry in my mind honestly. I mean, what if he isn't healed? We'll see what happens, we just gotta get him to the font first.

Oh and about the Fish Fillets. H was hungry and his daughter was running late to get him food -ya know, since he's blind. So, we just offered to go grab something for him. He's in love with Fish Fillets from McDonald's so we got him a couple of those and now it seems like the dude loves us even more. Service really does soften hearts. Learned that lesson from Hurricane cleanup. 

-We got in contact with a guy that has been completely off the radar since the beginning of August. I just had a random prompting to call him and this guy NEVER answers the phone. Well, lo and behold, he did answer. He said we could come over which was like a 30 minute drive in the most boonies of boonies place in our area. It was a fantastic lesson, he said that we were an answer to his prayers. He's been taught for a fairly long time and so we thought it wasn't too far fetched to challenge him to read the entire Book of Mormon. He mentioned that he has studied the New and Old testament extensively and feels like he's ready for the next level up. The Book of Mormon is that next level up and he knows it. He said he'll text us through the week with any questions he has about what he is reading. I'm just so excited for this man, he's gonna get blown away.

-A pentacostal woman put in a referal request for someone to pray with her. We were terrified to tell the truth. You never know what you are gonna get with pentacostals. Anyway, we said the pray which was mostly about her son who is on trial to go to jail and wants the judge to have fair judgment, and after that we just asked if we could share a message of faith and hope. She agreed. Guys, it went so well. Usually when you bring up Joseph Smith with pentacostals they just hang up and block your number, but not this time. She was very interested, but shared some doubts. She knows that she needs to pray to know if what we said was real and we fully agreed with her. Also talked about the Book of Mormon and she actually had one from some other Elders who were tracting her neighborhood a while back. She agreed to read it! I was so stoked. Just another book that'll change her life. 

Well that's really all I got. A very successful couple of weeks in my opinion. Obviously some little details I didn't share, this was just the key parts, but dang were they good key parts. We'll see how it all works out next email. 

Love y'all, 

Elder Jackson Batman 

Super Duper Busy

 

The last two weeks have been a lot. I told my companion that they were going to wip by and that's exactly what they did. It's already another pday and I don't how I got here. We had Zone Conference, interviews, hurricane cleanup and General Conference. That'll sure make the time pass by fast. 

Zone Conference was alright, not too much to report on there. Our Mission President is a huge fan of repetition so a lot of times these meetings are just him repeating the same topic over and over again making sure it gets engrained in our memory and eventually into our actions. He loves to go off about not wasting time and not being casual about the work. That's basically what ZC was. But hey, I saw some dope missionaries in the zone, that's always great.

In interviews with President, usually they are just 3 minutes long but I like to ask him questions to get answers from a more spirtually mature perspective. I asked him about revelation, like how do you actually do it. Do you wait after you ask a question in prayer? How long exactly? Where at? 

Obviously he told me that I'm completely overcomplicating the process and need to chill out. Just pray to be shown the answers throughout the day and don't be shocked when something different happens. I asked him about receiveing witnesses though, and he hit me with "A witness is no more than praying for guidance and he shows you a little tender mercy later in the day." So yeah, I just need to chill.

As far as hurricane cleanup goes, that was tough work, but it was well worth it. I'll let you in on one experience I had. To set the background; this was the last house we cleaned up, it was about 7:30 at night, our muscles were sore and aching, and you could probably bet that our attitudes weren't super positive. We all just wanted a nap to tell the truth. Well, we get to this house and it wasn't terribly ruined. It had a lot of leaves and tree limbs all over the front and back yard and some of her fence got destroyed so she did want us to get rid of the broken parts. So, we go about doing just that. It took a while. Probably about an hour and a half to two hours. Hurricane cleanup is no joke, it is hard labor and sometimes while you're doing it, you don't feel like you can measure up to the work load you've been given. You don't feel like you have the strength to complete the task. I definitely didn't. But, how grateful I am to having a loving Heavenly Father who supplies strength when we just ask. Those were many of my prayers in the days before this event, "Father, give me strength to do this work and allow this work burden to be lightened so I can bear it." I was actually able to do this work. I knew I was working with a blessing. Oh, but this lady. Oooo, she was so sweet. Her name was Annie and when we were finished and we knocked on her door to tell her, she was so happy. We always like to ask the people we serve if we can say a prayer with them before we depart, and this time around she agreed. The prayer was powerful, the spirit was there. In the closing of it, she expressed her gratitude and how wonderful it was to see such young boys and girls going about doing good. She even asked about our church, where it was at, stuff like that. We handed her a pass along card and went on our way. I guess we'll see if something comes from our efforts. I'm confident that she was touched and wants to feel that feeling again. 

I don't have much to update on Conference because I haven't watched it yet since hurricane cleanup overlapped. I'll watch it over the course of this next week. 

That's all guys, til next week.

- Elder Batman