Quincy Week 12 (Mission Week 51)

Hey everyone!! 

This past week was very slow. I was really sick the entire week so we barely left the apartment. Being sick as a missionary sucks even more because you know you want to go out but you just can't. We managed to get a few things done later on during the sick week but no much. Here's how my days went.

Monday

We had a district p-day here in Quincy. The elders from Susanville and Portola came and we hiked up to the Q on the mountain. Its a very small mountain so it wasn't much of a hike but I have looked at that Q for 3 months now so it was cool to be there and see the opposite view. We also played basketball after. 

Tuesday

I had started to feel sick Tuesday morning. Despite this we went to Susanville for the last district council of the transfer. Our vehicle coordinator, Elder Burt, and his wife were there so that was fun. We had a district lunch afterwards and I made a cake for everyone. As always district council takes up most of the day so we got home and went straight to dinner. It's was with Nates family so we were there for a while talking about missions, getting ysa stuff going, and other stuff we can help out with.

Wednesday 

Nothing happened. Was in bed pretty much all day.

Thursday 

Once again a sick day. We did manage to muster enough strength to still have Thursday night basketball because we knew alot of people would show up so we rested all day and went to oversee it. 

Friday 

And it came to pass that another day of nothing happened. I read all of 1 Nephi start to finish though haha

Saturday 

We had scheduled to help someone move some stuff so we went ahead and went over there but boy was that hard. I thought I was good enough but I was not haha. I barely made it through. We went home and then slept more.

Sunday 

Finally was on the mend and felt like I could do stuff. We were halfway to Greenville before we found out there was no church meetings there so we turned around and made it to Quincy meetings in time for sacrament. We had an awkward day because the guy I mentioned last email who we talked with and had some questions about whether he was a member or not bore his "testimony" about how he is never coming back to the Quincy Ward because of the rumors that spread about him and blah blah blah. We had told Bishop that he was gonna do it. Luckily he wasnt really aggressive but he called us out even though he said he wouldn't mention any names. Oh well  The whole ward knows that we are good missionaries so no one really batted an eye haha. We did have an impromptu lesson with Paul's new wife, Sherry Ann, during the second hour of church. That's was one of the hardest lessons ever because I was good enough to come to church but not to teach a lesson. The rest of the day we took breaks in between visits so I could rest and get more power to go out.

Lesson Reviews

Lorraine

We discussed what she remembered from our previous lesson and if she had any questions. We discussed why it seems like religions "change" but we said that there is ongoing revelation and while policies may change doctrine never does. We also continued to discuss prayer and how she has to desire to believe that God hears her. We also left a GOJC pamphlet for her to read which we will teach next lesson.

Sherry Ann

We taught the Gospel of Jesus Christ by reading 3 Nephi 27:13-21 and discussed each principle of the Gospel. She is still really quiet but Paul does a good job in making sure she understands. We also asked if she were to know these things were true would she be baptized and she said yes. We will discuss that more on a later date.

Well that's it from this week. Hopefully this upcoming week is much more productive because I might actually be able to operate haha. Oh and this is my final week before I hit a year!!!!! April 4 is less than a week away!!!

I love yall and have a great week

Elder Proctor

Quincy Week 11 (Mission Week 50)

Hey guys!!

This is gonna be a shorter email this week! Alot of stuff happened last week but I wasn't able to write it all down so I'm gonna have to do a short summary or else I'd  be writing this for hours haha. Here's how my week went!

Monday

Regular pday. We played basketball with some of the guys from Thursday night ball.

Tuesday

We had district council in Susanville which always takes up a majority of our time.  We had dinner with Brother Cook and President Thrall in Greenville. Our lesson with Maddy was canceled. We got stopped on the way back from Greenville because of a landslide so that took even more of our time. That's pretty much it for Tuesday

Wednesday

We spent the morning walking around Downtown Quincy and we had a lesson with Ray. We took a bit of time in the afternoon making new meal calendars because we made the decision to give Greenville some days to feed us. Our lesson with Shelly fell through. We had dinner at the church with the Elders Quorum presidency before we had our meeting. We had a good lesson with Michael (a referral from Brother Asbury).

Thursday

We had service in Greenville in the morning and then headed back to Quincy to do our weekly planning. Our lesson with Nick fell through so we knocked some doors instead. We had Thursday night basketball and we had 35 people show up!!!! Holy moly was it fun. Somehow we managed to keep everyone's behavior in check. The elders quorum presidency came to see if we were keeping it in check and if it was a good thing and they were very impressed and even entertained haha. I played very well as well and my team won 9 games in a row and it got to the point where everyone was just trying to beat my team. It's funny because my team had a 6th grader and everyone else are either college football players or athletic guys haha. All in all it went very well.

Friday

We helped out at the food pantry in the morning. After we went out and contacted some people and invited them to the ward game night. We had a lesson with Lorraine that went well and then we traveled to help the Susanville elders with service before we started exchanges. I spent the exchange in Susanville with Elder Call. 

Saturday

I was in Susanville for exchanges until 3pm and then on the way back to Quincy we contacted some people. We had a correlation meeting with Carlos and then we headed over to the game night. We usually invite a lady name Donata and her granddaughter to the game night but they haven't ever came but this time Simone (grand daughter) was there with one of our youth!! That was awesome to see. Also a couple of Nates friends who come to Thursday night ball were there too. It was a fun night.

Sunday

We had a great day at church. 5 non members were there!! Donata came with Simone and Donata even is friends with our relief society president so she was with her helping prepare for the potluck! Carlos brought his barber Aaron. Everyone enjoyed church and said they would come back. At the potluck I found a chicken nugget in the shape of Texas! I was going around showing everyone and I kept it haha. After church we contacted some people and then went over to Bill to address some concerns that we had about teaching him. It didn't really go too well and he said that he is done with coming to church. Hopefully we get that settled out but that took a lot of our time. Our return lesson with Michael fell through as well so we spent the night knocking doors to no avail.

Lesson Reviews

Ray

We read Mosiah 27 and talked about how Almas conversion story is similar to his life journey. We managed to make it 3/4 of the way through the chapter and he started to go off a little bit. We weren't able to finish the chapter because we ran out of time and he had went way off course. He plans to move to the Bay area soon and would like to get ahold of the missionaries there.

Michael

We introduced ourselves and talked about how Brother Asbury said that he wants to be baptized now and for Bro. Asbury to be his "sponsor". He said that is correct. He said that the last time he was ready for baptism the thing that got him was tobacco and he wouldn't give it up. He said that he wants to now but when we saw it on the table and asked if we could take it with us he said no and he can stop himself. We gave him a Restoration pamphlet and a quick synopsis and will return on Sunday night.

Lorraine

We went over the whole Restoration and she was writing notes on what we said. It actually went pretty well. At the end she expressed her belief that God doesn't hear her prayers because she is a sinner. We bore testimony that He does hear our prayers and we can never stray to far off the path to where He doesn't hear or answer. She also had a question on why religions change and we will answer that on our next lesson

Sidney

We read Acts 14-16 and talked about how being a Christian often comes with blessing, but also has it's fare share of trials as well. We also talked about how the law of Moses was done away with and that. We also talked a bit about our beliefs and she agreed to learn a bit about it!

Well that's it for this week. This is the last week of the transfer and I'm really hoping I stay here. I'll know by the next email!! 

I love you guys!!

Have a great week

Elder Proctor

My Texas Chicken Nugget!

Ballin for Souls!

Quincy Week 10 (Mission Week 49)

Quincy - Week 49

Hey everyone!!

The weeks are definetly flying by now that I am approaching my year mark in 3 weeks. This past week went well as opposed to last with with lessons anyway. If you recall last week we had 11 lessons planned but only 4 of them happened. Well this week we only had 4-5 planned and we had 10 lessons!! What an honor it is to be taken care of by the Lord and to have blessings like these. Heres how my week went!

Monday

P Days are funny to report because we do the same stuff each week and it's rare we actually have something eventful to share haha. 

Tuesday

We did alot of shovelling snow in the morning and early afternoon. The best thing about Tuesday was that we had 3/3 lessons go through!! We had one with Sidney, Michael, and Maddy! It's rare that all of your planned lessons in a day actually happens so that was a pleasant surprise.

Wednesday

Pretty much all we did was shovel the whole day. We were asked by a lot of people to help them prepare for the upcoming storm. It is supposed to rain a lot so the snow needed to be cleared off rooms and shed so thats what we did. We were supposed to help the Gonzalez family and they live about 20 minutes out of Quincy. We got there and I thought the map told us we needed to go right to get to their house (which was an unpaved road of 4 feet of snow) so I decided to walk down it a little bit and but it was too far down so we decided to go back to Quincy and give them a call that the road is unplowed. We drive back to Quincy to call them (we had no service) and they tell us that the road should've been plowed but that's OK. I look at the map again and I made a discovery. I had been looking at the map upside down........ oh well haha. We had a lesson with Ray as well that went well. We had a lesson with Mike but it fell through and since we had a little time Carlos wanted to take us out to eat. We were going to Lucios which is literally 0.1 miles and somehow Carlos got pulled over by a cop immediately hahaha. It was funny and we got it on video. It's not everyday that you see your ward mission leader get pulled over right in front of you haha

Thursday

We had pretty much a full day of shoveling. It started snowing very hard midway through the day which wasn't fun. The best thing about today was definitely. Thursday night basketball. We had 21 people come which definitely made me have to use my authority a couple of times so everything remained in check. We managed to keep everyone in good spirits but it was definitely one of the more stressful nights haha. The best thing about the whole thing was that I was able to talk to a couple of people about missions and even made a small world connection. While we were shutting down the place and waited for people to leave one of the guys came up to us and asked if this was a Mormon church. We said yes and said that we were the missionaries of the ward. He said that he has a couple of extended family and friends that are members. We started talking along with one of his friends about missions in general and where we are from etc. He mentioned that he is from Hawaii so I said that we have couple of missionaries in the mission from Hawaii and they are some of my good friends. When I mentioned Elder Mokuahi he paused and said "wait Mokuahi?" I said yeah Sam Mokuahi and he immediately got excited and said " Yoooo I know him!!! He and I went to high school together in Hawaii!" Turns out Elder Mokuahi and Loni are friends and are from the same island. I told him how cool that was and that Elder Mokuahi and I were in the same district and we balled together all the time. I then showed him a couple videos of he and I playing basketball together. Such a small world!! What's even better is that by this time we are the only ones left at the church and we are still talking about missionary life and why we are out here. His friend asked what we do in our off time since we cant watch TV, movies, hang out with friends etc. We then gave them a short 1 minute Restoration summary and said that we are out here telling the world that the Restored Gospel has been brought back to the earth and that what all our days consist of. Their ride arrived right then but I am super pleased with all that happened with Loni. Hopefully this can be the start of something good!

Friday

We had zone conference in Reno which is always a treat. Some missionaries don't like it but I absolutely love it. We combined with the Reno and Sparks zones so there were a lot of people there that I knew so that made it even more fun. We had some awesome trainings. My favorite was President Dunns training on how the Restoration is an ongoing event with ongoing revelation. It definitely gave me a boost of motivation. I had a great interview with President Dunn after as well. We started exchanges following zone conference. I went with Elder Van Der Watt. We got some Costa Vida and someone paid for our food!! They had an extra gift card and they gave it to us. Big perk of being a missionary that I will definelty miss when I am off the mission. Never in the rest of my life will people pay for my food just for my calling. Once we got back to Quincy it was pretty late and dark outside but we still went out tracting. We found one lady named Shelly and we set up a return appointment on Tuesday! We then got a call from Brother Asbury when we got home for the night and he had a referral for us and he is going to try to set up a dinner and a lesson. Big success night!

Saturday

Still on exchanged with Elder Van Der Watt. In the morning we went to the Adult league championship game that a few of the Thursday night basketball guys play on to support them. It was fun. It was not very well run though they didn't even have refs haha. After that we went and proselyting around an apartment complex and we found a person named Nick! We had a lesson with Sidney and then we went to Greenville and did work there for the first time since all the snow started. A cool thing that happened was that we randomly knocked a door and it turned out to be a less active member whose house burned down in the Dixie Fire and we didn't have her new address. That was good to be able to know and report to the branch. We then ended exchanges and drove back to Quincy. We had a lesson with Larry to end of the day.

Sunday

We finally got to go to Greenville Branch for church for the first time in a while. We hadn't been since January because all the snow, stake conference, and speaking assignments in Quincy. It's good that we were there because we increased their numbers by 20% by us being there haha. We were talking about basketball and how I've used it as a missionary tool and Brother Cook said that one of his cousins did the same thing and even got permission from his President to play in a men's tournament and I freaked out because I have people here asking me to do the same thing. I have already asked President Dunn and his original answer was ask how the Greenville members feel about it and then he changed it to no. The members in Greenville actually think it's a good idea and Brother Cook emailed President Dunn telling him his thoughts on why he thinks it's a good idea for me to play in the Greenville men's tournament!!! That would be such a cool mission story if I was able to do that. Anyways after church we did some proselyting around Greenville and talked to a couple of people. We had a lesson with Lorraine and set a return appointment for Friday. We went back to Quincy and checked our dinner calendar which is usually empty but it was FULL!!!! I WAS SO HAPPY! We have a member meal every day until next Wednesday!! We ate dinner at the Walmers and they gave us each our favorite cereal that we discussed last time we ate with them so that was a pleasant surprise. After dinner we had a correlation meeting with Carlos and then an impromptu lesson with Ray because he is staying at Carlos's house while it's flooding here.

Lesson Reviews

Sidney

We read Acts 6-8 and discussed what principles are taught. We talked about how the Holy Ghost is given through the laying on of hands by someone with proper priesthood authority.

Michael (she's a lady btw)

We had a great lesson on prayer. She said that she wanted to know of she was praying in the correct way. We taught the proper way to prayer and why it is important to pray that way. We also told stories on how prayer has blessed our lives.

Maddy

We had a great lesson with Maddy. She is really picking everything up and desires to follow Christ. We discussed prophets and shared Amos 3:7. We discussed the Word of Wisdom and the origin behind it. We read it straight from D&C 89. We promised that as she followed the WoW and the prophet then she will be blessed. We also discussed her baptismal date and said a prayer to confirm the date. She is still unsure on what date to be baptized on but we invited her to pray through the week and she will know.

Ray

We read Alma 14 with him and discussed how we can break the bonds of the adversary through our faith in Christ.

Shelly (new person)

She said that her mom is a member and she attends with her at times in Modesto. We taught how Jesus Christ set up his church when he was here and it was taken away when he died through man's changes and a Restoration was needed. We testified that as she reads the pamphlet and prays to know the truth then she will find it.

Nick (new person)

We asked if he would be interested in a message about Jesus Christ and he said yes! We shared part of the Restoration with him. He said his schedule is really busy because he is on call all the time but we managed to set a return appointment for Thursday afternoon.

Sidney

We read Acts 10-13 and discussed revelation as well as how God is no respecter of persons and loves us all. We talked about how baptism is how we show that we want to be linked with Christ and after we are baptized we receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.

Larry

We read 3 Nephi 27: 13-20 and taught the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We had a great discussion on faith and repentance. Whenever we got to baptism we found out that he was baptized as a baby. We talked about how that wasn't done by proper authority and that lead us to talking about the Apostasy because he had a question on how the priests didn't have authority. We initially went in with the goal of determining how to move forward with Larry so we asked him if he were to come to know the truth of the things we taught him through the Holy Ghost then would he be baptized. He said no and that he is comfortable where he is at. He said he didn't see the need to be baptized twice after we explained it. Carlos then told a couple of stories and by the end Larry said he will "consider" saying a prayer.

Lorraine

We talked with her for a little bit and then we asked if she had any questions. She had some questions about the Dead Sea scrolls and some other non church beliefs that we gave our opinion on. We then asked if she would like to be taught and she said yes and wants to learn about the Restoration. We gave a quick synopsis and will return on Friday to go in detail!

Ray

He is staying at Carlos's house this weekend and we had an impromptu lesson after. We read 2 Nephi 4:16-35 and talked about putting our trust in God and Jesus Christ forever. We talked about choice and how it's easier when we make a choice on what we are going to do when a situation arises before it comes instead of deciding in the moment. We must choose to follow Christ in all things before temptation comes.

We may have to give Larry a little bit of time before teaching him again. He is simply just not ready to progress unfortunately.

Our missions motto is "You can do hard things." I've heard that statement come from President Dunn about a thousand times haha. I do know that I can do hard things because I've been out for just under a year and more importantly I know that all of y'all can do hard things as well. 

Sorry that this was a bit of a longer email. I'm pretty bad at journaling so I figure if I make my weekly's long and meaningful then I will have a great 2 years worth of work to look over! 

I love you guys! Have a great week!

Elder Proctor

Quincy Week 9 (Mission Week 48)

Quincy - Week 48

How's it going everyone?!!

This past week has been good. It has continued to snow more and more which means a lot more shoveling. I have been told that this is the most snow Quincy has had since 1993. What luck I have to be here when this only happens every 30 years haha. There has been hidden blessings from the snow though. We have 5 or 6 new people that I can think of that we have met that we didn't know before the storms so that's a good thing. The snow has increased our teaching pool so thank you snow haha. It was a busy week from shoveling to teaching. We had 11 lessons planned throughout the week but only 4 of them happened. Some had valid excuses and some didn't haha. I'm glad for the ones that we did have because they were great. Here's how my week went.

Monday

Just a regular p day. It continued to snow for the 6th day straight.. We played basketball in the afternoon and then contacted some people in the evening.

Tuesday

Because of the snow we weren't able to drive to Susanville for district council. It was coming down very hard. Instead we drove to the church building and did it over Zoom. I led the training on Christlike attributes and it went well. We had a lesson with Rianna that fell through. We then proceeded to shovel snow the entire day. One good thing is that we shoveled for a lady named Linda and after we were able to share the Restoration with her and she wants us to come back! She even asked for a Book of Mormon. That was the success of the day.

Wednesday

You guessed it. More shoveling. We had a couple more people call us asking for help so that's what we did during the day. We had two lessons with Renae and Brittany but both of them fell through. We don't think Re are is interested and then Brittney ruptured her eardrum and was going to the doctor. We were able to give Brittany a blessing though so that is good. We got a break from the snow which was awesome. 

Thursday

We spent the day in Meadow Valley shoveling snow. A guy named Darrell called us and asked for help. He and his wife are extremely nice and are familiar with the Church. They fed us grilled cheese, soup, and cookies. We were also able to talk about the Gospel as well so that's a success. Luckily the snow managed to stay away so it made shoveling a lot easier. We had basketball in the evening and that went extremely well. 19 people came including the high school basketball coach and the college coaches. They were pretty good too which made it fun. We also made the realization that two of the people that come are actually in our records as grey dots (not interested or not teaching). We hope to use that to our advantage.

Friday

It didn't snow today either. We helped out at the food pantry in the morning. We then went to a lesson with Joy but it fell through. Oh well. We shoveled some more and then drove to Meadow Valley and continued shoveling there. We had a lesson with Maddy that also fell through unfortunately. A good thing about this day was that we got to talked with Darrell and Jennifer again.

Saturday

The return of the snow for the 3rd time. The 3rd winter storm to hit Quincy started so that means even more shoveling for a couple of days. In the morning we had an AWESOME lesson with Linda, the lady we found after shoveling her driveway on Tuesday. Right after that we were supposed to have a lesson with Michael but because our member couldn't come due to her child being sick we had to cancel the lesson since we can't go inside Michael's apartment (Michael is a older woman). In replacement of that we just went and contacted some people. Our study with Sidney also fell through because of a play date so we rescheduled that. We then started walking around in the snow asking to help people who were shoveling their driveways. We had a great lesson with Mike in the evening. This guy has a giant baseball card collection and he has 6 cards that are worth 80,000 cards each!!!!! They are error cards of Barry Binds and he is working to get them authenticated so he can sell them haha. He gave us some 40 year old unopened card packs. Maybe I'll be rich because of it lol.

Sunday

It snowed A TON more overnight. Church was canceled which is a big deal because I thought last Sunday was a lot of snow but church didn't get canceled like this week. We went out and helped people shovel once again. I'm getting pretty tired of the snow. I want to go back to short sleeve shirts and 1 pair of pants haha. We had dinner with the Herbert's and we taught his wife, Sherry Ann, the first lesson because she is not a member but wants to learn more. They recently got married and she is from the Phillipines. The lesson went well. In the evening we had correlation meeting with Carlos. Our truck got stuck once again in the snow at 9pm at night while it was snowing hard. We had to call Brother Sandlin to help us get out. Luckily we weren't up a mountain and with no service this time. We got out within 25 minutes haha.

Lesson Reviews

Linda (Tuesday lesson)

She had questions about why there are so many religions and why we can't all be friends. That led us into talking about the Great Apostasy and where our church comes in and why we believe that we are the restored Church of Jesus Christ. We talked about the Book of Mormon and the Bible testifying together of Jesus Christ. She said she would like a Book of Mormon!! She said that she doesn't know about converting but she is very interested in what we have to say. We responded by saying that the Spirit will be with her and let her know what she needs to do.

Linda (Friday lesson)

Wow!! What a great discussion. She read the pamphlet and even wrote down questions and when we answered them she wrote notes. We talked about the difference between how Protestant religions came to be vs ours. We talked about proper priesthood authority and prophets. She had questions about general stereotypes about Mormons such as polygamy, garments, etc. We had a great discussion on the Holy Ghost and following promptings. She is very interested in learning. We gave her a Book of Mormon and invited her to read Alma 32!

Mike

The lesson took awhile to get started because he was showing us his baseball cards that are worth alot of money haha. We read Mosiah 18 and talked about what we can learn from the chapter. Mike talked about his past and his desire to change and he is already in the process of repentance. We are here to help him through that. We set up a return appointment for Wednesday.

Shelly Ann

We taught the Restoration in its entirety. She is pretty quiet because she isn't comfortable speaking English but she listens. We watched the Ask of God video after we taught. We invited her to read from the Book of Mormon as well as the GOJC pamphlet.

Well that's it for this week. We have zone conference and exchanges this weekend so I'll report on that next week. It's not supposed to stop snowing until mid week and then it's turning into rain so we will see how that goes haha. I love y'all and once again thanks for all the prayers and thoughts coming my way!!

Have a great week

Elder Proctor

Quincy Week 8 (Mission Week 47)

Quincy - Week 47

Hey everyone !!

Well this week has definitely been an eventful and different week. We got BLASTED with snow. I've never seen so much snow in my life. It has snowed 5 days straight and now we are going through a blizzard on top of what we already had. Anyways here's how my week went. Sorry this is a longer email haha.

Monday

The Portola elders came up for P day and we played games with them in the morning. We played a round of disc golf with Brother Dolezal in the afternoon. We played basketball as well that was really fun. Its funny because we had 14 people there already but one of the people invited a bunch of other people so randomly 8 more people popped in and it was crowded. They wrote their names on the board but they decided to leave because of how many people there were which I was very happy about. Trying to maintain 22 people would've been very hard haha. The rest of the day consisted of normal P day things.

Tuesday

We had district council and a district lunch afterwards. We had a good discussion on the Saviors Sermon on the Mount. It started snowing pretty bad while we were driving home (which is up and down mountains and such) so we decided to turn around and drive back to Susanville. Elder Salinas took over driving because he is from NYC and has a lot of experience driving in snow unlike Mr. Texas Boy. When we got back to Susanville we talked to our district leader for a bit and then we decided we would try it again because the traffic cams looked OK. This time as we drove home the snow seemingly vanished. I'm glad that we turned around and didn't take the chance in the snow. #promptingfulfilled haha. We stopped in Greenville on the way home and did some work there. We talked to Brittany for a bit and then knocked some doors. We had a good conversation with a 7th Day Adventist lady on the doorstep and we will check up on her when we are in the area again. On the way back down to Quincy we had to drive slow because it was dark and icy. All in all we spent most of the day dealing with the snow and driving conditions 

Wednesday

We did all of our studies in the morning and then helped Sister Peay with some yard work after lunch. We had a really long talk with Ray that took up most of the afternoon. After our discussion with Ray we had a "lesson" with Chad. I call it a "lesson" because he was very drunk and everything was going straight over his head. So he said where are my glasses, got up to find them, forgot what he was doing, sat down, and then immediately said where are my glasses AGAIN. Another thing that happened is that he was saying that he couldn't see because he didn't drink his vegetables as a kid. Another thing is that you will be reading a scripture and when you look at him he will be staring straight into your soul. Chad is always an interesting discussion but is always centered on Jesus Christ which Im happy about. We are going to go back with one of the youth who is about to go on a mission so he gets a funny outlook on missionary life haha. After dinner we went over to Larrys place and did family history for the evening.

Thursday

It snowed ALL DAY! Holy cow it reminded me of the Texas winter storm in 2021. There wasnt a time in the day that it wasn't a blizzard. We woke up and did our studies and then got all of our warm clothes and gear on then started shoveling snow around Quincy. We walked all around Quincy for 4 hours. We made a brief stop at Larrys house and talked with him while we were out. What's funny and kind of annoying is that all the work we did got replaced with even more snow. Oh well. Its the thought that counts. After we got home my companion and I both took a nap haha. We usually don't do that but we were DRAINED after 4 hours in the snow. We conducted our weekly planning session and then we went to basketball. I was worried that because of all the snow that not as many people would show up but we had 13 people still come. Weve got something really good going on because one of our ward members have said that some people have reached out to her and have told her that they love coming on Thursday nights. Its nice to see that we are created a good image for the church and making it more relatable so when people want to ask questions they will feel more comfortable doing so. I did some quick math and about 90% of people playing are nonmembers. I have list of people who have came since we've started (missing a few) and it's 27! 3 are members haha.

Friday

Oh. My. Gosh. I've never in my life had to go through this much snow. It snowed hard all night into the morning and didn't stop all day. I thought Thursday was bad but this was another level. Every 5 minutes I was at the window amazed at how it was still snowing. We got about at least 2.5 feet of snow. In the morning Elder Salinas and I walked downtown in the snow to eat at at restaurant called Morning Thunder. Once we got back from that we had an over the phone Bible Study with Sidney. After our study, we got back on the grind with shoveling. A couple of people had called us asking for help so we were booked until dinner. We dug someone's car out and made it possible for them to get out of their rv. Then we headed over to this random lady who called us asking for help and it turns out we were shoveling for a couple of her tenants as well as herself. We shoveled out a path from the highway to her house which was about 100 feet away as well as making little paths to that main path where the cars were. All I can say is that was some work haha. I had a total of 7 layers on the top, 6 layers on the bottom, 2 pairs of socks, a cloth mask, and a headband to keep me warm through the day. After all of our shoveling duties for the day we headed over to the Dolezals house for dinner and to recover from a hard day of cold work haha. We ended up playing some games with them and their sons friends that were spending the night. All in all the one thing I have gained from today is a confirmation of my desire to raise a family in Texas where it doesn't snow like this haha

Saturday

In the morning we ate breakfast with the Dolezals. We then went out with some ward members and helped shovel out driveways as well as the church. That was pretty fun serving alongside the ward members. I have always liked whenever things out of the ordinary happens like this which causes us to work together to serve. The rest of he day consisted of even more shoveling snow. It is the only thing we have done for 3 days straight haha. While we were shoveling Terry and Vickis house, a couple of the guys that come to Thursday night basketball rolled down their window and shouted "Hey Proctor!!!" Thats nice to know that we have left at least a good impact that they want to say hi. They also were able to see our example of service. Bill called us and gave us a referral to go shovel one of his friends driveway which we did. A cool thing that happened was that as we were walking with our shovels a guy rolled down his car window and asked if we were the missionaries. We said yes and he said that he is a college student at FRC and that his family is big into the church and he is from Utah. He asked where the church building was and said he will start coming! Hopefully that leads to somewhere. In the evening we had correlation meeting with Carlos. We actually got pulled over by the police on the way home because Elder Salinas didn't put the car headlights on haha. We took a picture with the cops lol

Sunday

The snow came back after a day off. I saw many blessings of obedience this day that I will explain later on. We had church in the morning. We attended Quincy Ward because we didn't feel comfortable driving to Greenville. We had a ward potluck after and I made some devils food cake for it. After church the snow was coming down pretty hard but we decided to still go out and work. We had such a good day. We had a referral a couple weeks back named Michael but she hadn't responded to any of our calls or texts so we went to her apartment and knocked the door. She answered and she had originally said that she was studying with someone else now but by the end we had set a return appointment with her for Saturday for a discussion on prayer! We then contacted a lady named Rianna that we had never met but had records for and we got straight to the point and asked if she wanted to take the lessons and she said sure and we set an appointment with her. There's a guy named Mike that I had never met but have tried to get into contact with for an entire transfer and we finally met him! He has been on date for baptism but because of legal trouble it didn't happen. We set an appointment with him for Wednesday. We had 2 other contacts that went well. We got out of dinner around 7:30 and we had every excuse to call it a night from it being dark, cold, snowing, and late but we kept going and oh boy am I glad we did. We found 2 people in a row after 8pm! We knocked this lady named Rose and no one answered so we walked away to our truck a couple houses down. As we were walking a truck drove passed us and pulled into Rose's house. Immediately I was thinking "Ok God what does that mean. What do you want us to do" haha. We waited a minute and then walked right back and tried again and she answered on the first knock. It wasn't Rose but a new homeowner! She invited us in and said she has family that are members and asked us if we had a pamphlet that she could read. We gave her the options and she wants to learn about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We have a return appointment with her on Wednesday. Thats Gods hand in our work. We could've easily just drove away even though we saw a truck go into the driveway but we chose to follow what God wanted and it turned out great. We went back in the truck and were going to head home because it was 8:25 but we had a feeling to stay out for a little longer and try one more person we had planned for. We go over and she didn't answer but as we are walking back to our car we passed a couple of houses and one of them stuck out to me but I ignored it at first and kept walking and I cant really explain exactly the feeling I felt but it was as if something was pulling me back and I had an intense need to knock the house. I get 4 houses down and then I do an about face and say to my comp "we're going back" and we go knock the house that stuck out. Keep in mind it is 8:40 by now. An old lady named Joy answered and she has some religious background and she knows a few members of the church. We talked with her for brief moment and we asked if we could come back and talk about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and she said yes! We gave her a pamphlet and will go back on Friday. Now right there is a blessing of obedience. We easily could've just went home early and sat around but instead we chose to go out and work even in the cold snow and look what happened. It has definitely given me a boost of motivation because I KNOW that that was the Spirit directing me. I call these "Hand of God" moments where things line up to good too be coincidences and the work of man. This is Gods work and we are His instruments.

Lesson Reviews

Chad

We read Alma 7: 1-13 and talked about what Christ did for us and the nature of the Godhead. Chad was quite drunk so everything flew over his head most likely. He says that he's a sinner and prays to Jehovah everyday. He says he loves talking about Jesus Christ and wants us to come back and talk more. We will talk about what happens after we die next time we see him.

Sidney

We read Acts 4 and 5. Pretty much all we did because of how little time we had.

Michael

We introduced ourselves and shared Alma 37: 36-37. We set up a return appointment for Saturday at 3. We will have Sister Martinez tag along for that because Michael said she knows her.

Brittany

We originally were there for Rose but she said that Rose has moved. She invited us in to talk. She has family members that are members of the Church. She asked for a pamphlet to read and she asked specifically for the one about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We gave a brief overview and set up a return appointment for Wednesday evening!

Joy

We introduced ourselves and got to know her religious background. She knows a few members of the church and said she would be ok with us coming back to discuss the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We gave her a GOJC pamphlet and a brief overview of it!

That's it for this week! Here's to another week of more snow. It's not stopping until later this week. We have a lot of lessons this week so hopefully the snow doesn't impact it so much. We have much more shoveling ahead of us. I love you guys!!

Have a great week!

Elder Proctor