The Week of The Car

Family!

Let me start by telling you how my morning started off to show you just how tough we have it here in Ohio.  We start each morning with a run in our neighborhood, and this morning we decided instead of the usual exercise, we would go for a doughnut run.  A literal doughnut run.  For our exercise we ran to this little family owned bakery near our house and bought doughnuts, then ran back to the apartment and ate them!  It was the perfect way to negate all the effects of our running!  And let me tell you, they were the best doughnuts I have ever eaten.  They put Krispy Kreme to shame.  So yeah, we've got it pretty rough out here...

Well, this week has been awesome, and there was one experience in particular that made it so good.  We went on exchanges with the new Spanish Elders, and Elder Graf went with Elder Taylor down to Dayton leaving me up here in our area with Elder Garcia.  Elder Garcia has been out 3 weeks, and I've been out 3 months, so we had less than 4 months experience between the two of us.  But, because he was so new, I was senior companion for the day!  Which means.........I GOT TO DRIVE A CAR!!!!!  That might not seem like a big deal, but one thing I've been missing recently is driving.  It has been 3 months since I last drove, and we do a lot of driving out here, but since I'm not the "designated driver" of our companionship, I just ride along.  But I finally got to drive!  And I didn't crash! =)  But anyways, I was in charge of the area for the day, which was super exciting, but also a lot of pressure.  It was up to me to take the lead in everything and come up with things for us to do.  But it worked out really well, and me and Elder Garcia had a great time.  We did have a pretty crazy experience with one of our lessons though.  We went to teach a guy named F-------.  F------- has been taught everything.  Everything from the restoration to tithing, he's heard it.  And he's been being taught for nearly 6 years!  So we went to go teach him the about the sacrament again and try to get him to come to church.  The lesson was going really well, but all of the sudden it took a crazy tangent, and we were out of nowhere talking about Adam and Eve!  I have to still concentrate pretty hard to understand what people are saying, so I had no idea how we had got to that point.  I kept trying to bring us back on topic, but I still don't have the language skills to cut someone off and take complete control of the lesson again, so I just had to sit and wait for an opportunity.  Elder Garcia had the language skills, but he lacked the teaching experience to know how to get us back on track.  So we both kind of just sat there, trying to get the lesson back on track, while F------- talked and talked and talked about the beginning of the world and all of his beliefs about all sorts of stuff.  We ended up finally stopping it and ending the lesson alright, but it was a pretty crazy experience.

Here's another story about a new investigator we found.  We were on exchanges and had just tried to contact a potential investigator, but they didn't answer, so we were headed back to the car to go to our next appointment.  I saw a guy sitting on his porch, and I had the idea that I should go talk to him.  He was in no wise Hispanic, but I went anyway and started talking to him.  He wasn't interested in what we had to say in the slightest, so the conversation was pretty brief.  At the end of talking with him, I asked him if there was anyone who spoke Spanish nearby.  He pointed us to his neighbor's house, so we went to try it.  No one answered, but since finding Spanish speakers is rare, we made note of it and decided to visit it again next time we were in the area.  We were in the area yesterday, so we tried it.  A guy answered the door and immediately let us in.  That was pretty surprising!  We had a really good first lesson with him (J-----), and we set up a time later in the week to meet with him.  Asking referrals from people really works!

Here are just a few other things worth noting from this week:

--We taught the T----- family again.  It went well, but for some reason they were really concerned about what types of meat we are allowed to eat in our church.  They brought it up again and again, and it was kind of weird...

--Our ragtag futbol team is growing!  We had 12 people there on Saturday!

--We spent 3 full hours digging through nearly 6 years’ worth of records in our area while splitting the area book for the new Elders. Lots of paperwork!

--There are some amazing member families out here.  We eat with the English ward every other week and one member said this: "I figure we're all here to build the Lord's kingdom, so if we're not doing that, then what are we doing?"  I really liked that quote.

--We have started singing to invite the Spirit into our lessons.  We're not too good, and we still need to work on learning the hymns in Spanish, but I have definitely gained a testimony of the power of music this past week.

--Ohio has some pretty cool sunsets!

And that's about it!  Thanks so much for the package last week!  That was amazing!  I'll send a picture of my reaction....  I do have a request.  It's not urgent, but when you get the chance, could you maybe send me a few talks?  In particular I would like:

"Seek Learning by Faith" by Elder Bednar, 2006; "The Fourth Missionary" by Lawrence E. Corbridge; and "Becoming a Consecrated Missionary" by Tad R. Callister.  If you could find those and get them to me anytime in the future, I would really appreciate it!

Love,

Elder Foote

Colby's expression when he opened Mom's amazing package.

I got to drive!!

A sunset over Huber Heights Road..

How awesome is this sunset?!?  We're right by the air force base, so we get all sorts of cool airplane exhaust patterns.

The results of our literal doughnut run.  The best doughnuts I ever had. 

Hastening Week!

Family!

This past week was a crazy week.  But crazy in a good way, so all is well!  Let me tell you why it was crazy.

We got two new Spanish missionaries.

So now there are 4 of us here in the Dayton Spanish area.  The new Elders arrived on Thursday, and they have been living with us since that then.  It's been a little crazy having 4 Elders live in the apartment after spending all this time only having the 2 of us.  We weren't prepared to have them come live with us, so our food that we normally eat ran out pretty quick, and all of those stories you hear about missionaries living on ramen noodles and pop tarts came true!  But we made it to P-day, so we have food once again! 

The new Elders are super awesome.  Their names are Elder Taylor and Elder Garcia.  One of them speaks Spanish as their native language.  Can you guess which one? =)

But anyway, with 2 more Spanish Elders, we'll be able to cover this massive area (it's literally so big that I don't even know where the boundaries are) a little bit better.  They'll be living down south in Dayton when their apartment is ready, so they will most likely cover the south part of the area and me and Elder Graf will work up north.  Hopefully that division will allow us to focus more on specific areas and people instead of trying to cover everything.  But with this change, we've already seen a huge increase in interest for missionary work in the branch.  They are all getting more excited, and it's pretty amazing to see how almost overnight their excitement for the work completely changed.  I think this addition is really going to help the work get moving here.

I had a few cool things happen this past week.  We got back in contact with one of our investigators who we hadn't seen in almost a month.  We had been teaching them pretty regularly, but all of the sudden they stopped answering their phone.  We tried stopping by, but we could never catch them home.  Then this past Sunday we sent them yet another text, and they responded!  Their phone had been broken, and they just barely got it replaced.  We were super excited!  We also found out they had actually been trying to get our number by calling the church, so that was super cool too!

We visited a less active we hadn't been able to see for a while this week, and we compared him to the Lamanitish woman Abish. (Alma 19:16)  It might sound a little weird, but for his circumstance it worked pretty well.  We were a little apprehensive about comparing him to a Lamanitish woman handmaiden, but it ended out being a pretty good lesson.

We finally got to play futbol again, and I'm still not all that great.  To illustrate that point:  I tried to steal the ball from our branch president and ended up slipping and falling flat on my back.  I'm going to buy cleats later today, and maybe that will help...

Just before coming here to the library to email, I got to do my first anointing for a blessing... in Spanish!  We went to give a blessing to a lady who works with one of our members.  She had a brain aneurysm, so she wasn't conscious for the blessing.  But her whole family was there, and it was a little nerve-wracking doing the anointing in another language, especially since they were recording the whole thing.  But the Spirit was there really strong, and it was a great experience.

Well, I'm just about out of time, so I'll wrap this up.  Thanks for the emails and letters!  Hope you all have a great week!

Love,

Elder Foote

P.S.  I'll try to do better with pictures next week.

Exchange Week!

Family!

Sorry for not emailing on Monday!  I wasn't aware that P-day got pushed back to Wednesday on transfer week, but now I know...  Anyways, I got the call this morning, and both Elder Graf and I are staying here in Dayton.  This is what Elder Graf and I figured, because I’m still in training.  We will be getting two more Spanish missionaries in this area tomorrow, so the area will most likely split, so there will still be changes, even if we aren't leaving.

Well, this past week I got to go on two different exchanges in different areas, which means that I was an English speaking missionary for two days!  It was weird.  The first exchange I went on was with our zone leader Elder Elquist.  We did a lot of walking in the humid weather (last week had some of the most humid days I've had here), and we talked to a guy about how his baptism would go.  I haven't got to do that yet, so that was cool.  My second exchange was on Monday with Elder Sunderland, and we went down to Dayton for that one.  I had a member teach me what a buckeye is during my time there.  Basically it is a poisonous nut covered in a spiky shell.  The member thought it was funny that the state mascot of Ohio was "a useless nut" (his words, not mine).  I also got to offer a home dedication while down in Dayton, so that was pretty cool.  It was in English though, so that diminished it's coolness by a bit. =)

Last Friday we had a meeting especially for the Spanish speaking missionaries.  It was specifically geared to help us better understand the nature of Spanish work in a predominantly English-speaking area.  It was amazing!  President Porter shared some scripture for us for a while, and then our Spanish zone leader Elder Coranza (who is the only native speaker in the mission) led the rest of the meeting.  I learned a lot about how to better connect with the people and how to adapt to their culture.  We were given a strict charge from President Porter that from that day forth we were to be Hispanic and no longer Gringos.  So yes, you are currently reading words written by the Hispanic version of Elder Foote...  But seriously, I think this will really help me.  It will force me to be more outgoing and it will help me to learn the language better.

We had a branch picnic last Saturday, and it was a lot of fun getting to know the members better.  Our investigators that were supposed to be coming didn't end up making it, which was a huge bummer, but we still had a good time.  I got to try some super spicy chorizo, but since I'm Hispanic now, it didn't burn my tongue at all! (I wish...)

We found an amazing new investigator this past week.  She is probably the most prepared person I have met, and I couldn't even believe how blessed we were to find her.  She has a ton of questions, and we are so excited to meet with her in a few days!

That's about all I've got to report for this week.  I hope everything is going well at home.  Thanks for all of the emails and letters!  Happy Birthday on Sunday Trevor, hope it goes great!

Love,

Elder Foote

Apostle Week!!!

Family!

This past week has just flown by!  But, just like the title says the highlight was getting to spend some time with Elder Dallin H. Oaks yesterday!  I'll start off with that...

We had to drive all the way down to Cincinnati to get to the meeting, so we had kind of a road trip!  After a while we got there, got all prepped for his arrival, then studied scriptures while we waited for him to get there.  He got there, and we all got to shake his hand before taking our group picture with him (picture on Facebook page)!  It was amazing!  In setting up for the picture, we had to set up chairs for some people to sit on, and he dove right in with the rest of us and set up chairs!  I don't know why, but it amazed me to see an Apostle of the Lord setting up folding chairs in the gym of a church meetinghouse.  He only got to talk to us for about a half an hour, but it was amazing!  He is such an amazing teacher.  He can truly take something complex and explain it so simply that anyone can understand it.  So yeah, that was the highlight of the week!

Don't freak out about the bedbug stuff, just like I said, we have it taken care of.  I don't need a mattress cover, because we caught it early and it is all gone.  Sister Porter called us to check up on it because I guess you sent her an email, so if it continues, we'll let her know.  But it has now been almost two weeks since I've had a problem, so we should be good.

Here are a few other things that happened this week:

-We found a golden street in Dayton that is completely full of Hispanic families, and we got 3 new investigators from it!

-Elder Graf is now the District Leader.

-I learned that some Catholics believe that if a baby dies without baptism, it turns into a goblin, or a duende in Spanish.  Good thing I knew the word duende before that lesson...

-We might be getting two more Spanish missionaries in our area to help cover geographically.

-We are now allowed as Spanish missonaries to play futbol to help fellowship less actives and investigators.  We play on Saturday mornings.  Last Saturday, no one showed up except for our branch president, so we got a half hour lecture on the politics of futbol.  He also gave some awesome soccer jersey’s (pictures included).

-We had two lessons with our progressing investigators the T----- family this week.  They are super nice, and when we got there for the second lesson, they had a full on Mexican feast waiting for us!  Mexican food is the best!

-We went shopping just before this at Walmart, and some guy asked if I worked there because of my shirt and tie.  That is not the first time that has happened...

And that's about it!  Not much more to say!  Thanks for the package with all of the food/candy, I forgot to say thanks last week.  Have a great birthday Mom!

Love,

Elder Foote

Elder Foote and Elder Graf.

New missionary clothes.

Colby's new Jersey.

Welcome to Ohio!!

Week of Insects!

Family!

I know, what an intriguing title, right?  You're probably wondering whatever could have happened this week for me to title it the week of insects...  Well hold on tight, because here it comes.

BED BUGS EXIST.

Yep, it's true, I've seen them with my own eyes.  It was a perfect contrast to the joy I felt when I learned that fireflies exist.  About a week ago I started noticing a lot of bites on my arms and legs.  Now that didn't concern me, because we do a lot of work up North in a little town surrounding a lake, and I'm convinced that all mosquitoes in the world come from that town because there are so many.  Anyway, I wasn't concerned.  But then I started noticing bites on my feet.  I thought to myself, "I know the mosquitoes out here are crazy, but there is no way they could bite my feet through leather..."  So, I checked my mattress after I emailed last week.  Now before you start writing me an "I told you to check your mattress the second you get in every new apartment" email, I did check it.  I don't know when the invasion began, but it most definitely started after I arrived.  But anyway, on with the story.  Well, after some searching, I found the infestation.  Luckily we had some heavy duty insecticide in the apartment, so in a few hours the problem was taken care of.  And there weren't very many, so we had gotten lucky in that we had caught them early before they got really bad.  And they haven't come back, so I'm safe again!  But yeah, I now know the meaning of "Don't let the bedbugs bite!"

So yeah, that was an adventure.

The highlight of this week was by far our Zone Conference last Wednesday.  It was a 6 hour meeting, and it was probably the most amazing meeting I have ever sat through.  I am thoroughly convinced that if every member could have sat through that meeting, the number of convert baptisms would quadruple in a few months!  The topic of the meeting was about how the work is hastening.  President Porter shared with us a bunch of quotes from the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve that they had said during the New Mission President's seminar.  My biggest impression from that was that the time of preparing for the hastening of the work is over.  The hastening has begun, and the work will continue to progress faster and faster, because time is limited.  We all have to share the Gospel and help prepare the way.  I could go on and on, but I don't have time, so you'll just have to take my word that this meeting was amazing.

After that meeting, Elder Graf and I were super pumped to do the work, so we set some new goals and started going.  We have been working for the rest of the week to include the Lord more in our plans and follow the Spirit even more.  From the time I got here, to that meeting, we haven't found one new investigator, but in the 5 days since that meeting, we have found 5!  It is super exciting to say the least!

Yesterday I had a lesson with this lady, and it would be an understatement to say that I was completely lost.  She was trying to convert us to her Mexican religion (I think), so she was talking about all sorts of crazy stuff.  Anytime I thought I understood what was going on, the topic would change, and I would be lost all over again.  Learning Spanish is fun! 

But really, it is.  I enjoy the challenge, even though I just wish I was fluent already...

Well, I didn't prepare a plan for this email, so sorry if I’m rambling.

And that's about it!  Happy Birthday tomorrow Katie!  Good luck at school!  Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Foote

BED BUGS EXIST.

BED BUGS EXIST.

Crazy Ohio Weather!!

Family!

TORNADO!!!!!

Yep, that's right, I, Elder Foote, saw a tornado with my very own eyes!  We were contacting a referral in a town out west, and as we left their porch, this crazy siren went off!  It was super loud!  Everybody came out of their houses, and they were all looking around trying to figure out what was going on.  Then we saw it.  It wasn't a full-blown tornado, but it was a funnel cloud that started to come down from the clouds!  It was amazing!  I hope the pictures I took do it justice...  And yes, instead of heading indoors, we stood outside and took pictures. =)  It didn't really amount to anything though; after about 10 minutes it went back up into the cloud and disappeared.  But still!

While I'm on the topic of the weather, I finally got a taste of the humidity everyone said I would feel.  We had a few days where it was so humid I sometimes thought I could see the water!  Also, I got to experience one of the crazy Ohio rainstorms.  I thought I had seen rainstorms in Utah, but the one we were in was insane!  We had to pull off the road it was raining so hard, and afterwards there were inches of water left on the road.  It was awesome!

Thanks for the package!  I got it last Monday after we got back from emailing.  It was perfect!  I did think of something else I need.  I don't need it right away because Elder Graf has one, but in the future sometime, could you maybe send me a card-reader thing.  I think Dad has one; it's that thing with the USB on one end and a place for a memory card on the other.  It would help to have one.

No strange food this week.  The members either feed us at their homes, or they give us gift cards to nearby restaurants.  So I've had a lot of Subway and Chipotle this week. =)

As for the work, it is hard.  Finding Spanish speakers in Ohio is an ongoing challenge.  There are only a few central areas where they live, and over the past few years those areas have been tracted by missionaries many times.  So finding people who haven't been talked to before is hard.  We tried a new technique a few days ago.  We got the phonebook, looked up every Hispanic sounding name, plugged the addresses into our GPS, and went contacting!  Needless to say, we are trying to get the members more excited so we can get some referrals from them.

While we are out, we run into all sorts of people with all sorts of beliefs and stories.  A few days ago we talked to some guys from Sudan who had come to Ohio only a few months ago to get away from the wars over there.  There are lots of amazing people and stories out there.

But yeah, we just keep plugging away for now.  We just have to keep in mind that the Lord sent us here for a reason.  In a training meeting last week President Porter said something to the effect of: "The Lord doesn't make mistakes."  I know that's true.  I am where I am for a reason, and if we keep working, we'll find the people the Lord wants us to teach.

Well, that's about it.  I hope you all have a great week and good luck with your last week of summer Katie and Trevor! 

Love,

Elder Foote

P.S.

Oh, I almost forgot.  I might need a bike.  It's not anything urgent, but I've been passively looking for a bike shop around here.  Just thought I'd let you know.

The apartment

My amazing baking job...

A giant statue of Jesus as seen from the freeway.  A few years ago it had it's arms raised upwards, but it got struck by lightning, so they rebuilt it with the arms down.  If you look closely, there's a lightning rod on the head now...

Crazy rainstorm.  Picture doesn't do it justice.

TORNADO

TORNADO

TORNADO

Southern Patriotism in Dayton Ohio...

Fireflies Are Real!

Family!

Lot's to say and not much time, so I'll dive right in!

First off: FIREFLIES ARE REAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yep, I've seen them with my own eyes, and they are amazing.  It took me almost a full week to notice them, but now I can see them everywhere...

Do you remember how the Casto family started calling me Luke because they thought I looked like Luke Skywalker?  Well, I'm starting to think there might be some truth to that statement.  I have now had 4 different occasions where people have told me I look like Luke.  They've come from members, missionaries, and people in the MTC.  One member lady even said I should take a light saber with me tracting to help us get in the doors...

Well, the members here are great!  The branch is super small, so every fast Sunday they have a tradition that after sacrament meeting we go right in to the cultural hall and have a lunch as a branch.  It was really fun, and I got to try cactus!  That's the only really weird food I've had so far.  But anyway, I can kind of communicate with the members.  Most of them know at least some English, so after I've struggled through a few sentences, they'll help me out and respond in English.  I overheard some of them talking about me, and they said that I speak very clearly (or at least I think that's what they said...) so there's that...

Last week was the last day of the month, and with our car we have a limit on the number of miles we can drive each month, so we were pretty much out of miles.  So we drove a bit that day, but we planned on walking the rest of the day.  We had everything all planned out, and we were going to get to our dinner appointment right on time, but then we realized that we were headed to the wrong address!  So we ended up having to call a member to come pick us up since we had walked like two miles in the opposite direction of the real house of the dinner appointment.

On a more spiritual note...  We were in a lesson with a Spanish speaking investigator, and before we started I felt impressed to read 1 Nephi 2 with them.  So we read the chapter, and afterwards the investigator related Lehi leaving Jerusalem to his family leaving Mexico and making a better life in Ohio.  It was a super cool analogy, and it led to a pretty good discussion on how God loves each of us and is always looking to bless us if we'll follow him.  And I said everything in Spanish, which was amazing!

Dad asked about how we do tracting, so I'll put something in about that.  We are primarily focused on teaching the Spanish speakers in our area, so we try and focus on finding the people who speak Spanish.  So our tracting is really only focused in places where Spanish speakers live, which aren't too common in the middle of Ohio.  A lot of times we'll ask people if they have any Spanish speaking neighbors and follow that, but we also spend a lot of times in some little towns north of Dayton where there are more Spanish speakers.  It is pretty difficult to find people who speak Spanish that haven't already been talked to by missionaries, and are also interested.  We also teach a few English lessons as well.  So really I'm doing bilingual work, but I really only know one language... =)

Oh, I forgot to mention last week, Dad, our transfer meeting was in Middletown, so I was there for about half a day!  And we have a referral down there, so I might be back there sometime this week!

Well, I think that's about it.  I'll end with a short scripture that I think is pretty cool and applies to me pretty well.  You can find it in D&C 39:14, “Behold, verily, verily, I say unto thee, thou art not called to go into the eastern countries, but thou art called to go to the Ohio.”  It's a great reminder to me that of all the places in the entire world, I was called to Ohio.  There are people here for me to teach the message of the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ.  I just have to go find them!

Have a great week!  Love you all so much!

Love,

Elder Foote