Well I made it! 4 and a half hours on the transfer bus on Wednesday and I am here with Elder Clark in the Elko 4th ward. It is awesome here. The ward is really supportive and we have the most amount of youth in the whole stake. Wow. Went from Vintage Hills who had the least to Elko 4th who has the most. Sacrament meeting was a lot noisier but in a good way. It is nice to see little kids again and have an abundance of priests to take out with us. Bishop Howard here is super missionary focused and is doing some really cool things. They have a youth share a missionary experience they had during the week during open exercises in Priesthood and are over these next couple weeks having the youth go out in companionship's to members houses to have a "dinner appointment" with them and share a message on the Plan of Salvation. It is super awesome! We also got a list of people from the ward council to go invite to our Easter Sunday church services.
Ok now some neat stories. This last week we did a LOT of service. There isn't usually this amount, but everyone seemed to be moving out this last week. The Steve's, a part member family were moving out so for a morning and early afternoon we helped them empty their storage units into a massive u-haul. There were so many boxes. We then after got a call from Bishop Howard about someone moving out of some apartments. A lady's husband had died just a few days ago and she was moving all of the stuff out of the apartment. One of our new members saw that they were doing it and him and us converged on the scene. She was very grateful so that will plant some seeds with her. We also while trying by some potential investigators ran into a couple moving out of those same apartments. We offered our help and they gladly accepted. Apparently they were going to be having some family come and help them from Atlanta, but due to the storms going on over there the flights got cancelled and they weren't going to be able to make it to Elko in time. They didn't know how they were going to do it all since there was some pretty heavy stuff. The fridge we moved slightly bruised Elder Clark's arm! Anyway they were very grateful and we were able to come to the rescue. They took us to lunch and we talked to them a bit. They aren't very religious, but the wife has met with missionaries before. She decided it wasn't for her, but at the end of us helping we were able to give her a pass along card with our number, told her if she or any of her friends ever needed help to call us and invited her to watch the #PrinceofPeace Easter video. We helped build her faith!
Yesterday we got to have Elder Nielsen of the Seventy and his wife come and talk with us. It was an amazing experience. There were so many good parts of it, but I will only highlight a few. The beginning was really neat. He invited us to put out of our minds anything that might be bothering us or distracting us while we were in the meeting so that the Spirit could be there in greater abundance. It worked really well and I was able to feel a lot of peace and comfort during that meeting. I received a lot of inspiration and direction and was even happier while in that meeting. I learned while there that putting things out of your mind that don't matter is an incredibly powerful exercise that I will trying to be using more. His wife talked about how to be a good companion. She said that instead of just tolerating them, we need to embrace them fully as they are and learn from them. I have learned to do this with previous companions, but sometimes the hard way. They way she talked about it was she used her children and them getting married and her sons on their missions as examples. Elder Nielsen taught about the Enabling Power of Jesus Christ's Atonement and how it can change us to become like Him. Elder Nielsen really wanted us to understand how through focusing on and developing Christlike attributes we can become happier and have our missions and our lives be what our Heavenly Father wants them to be. He taught us about how to work with members, more specifically less active members. They often have many non member friends and as we help them receive the gospel, they will be able to invite others to hear the restored gospel.
I love this work and am excited to see what happens here in Elko. We weren't able to meet with many people this week, but this week we hopefully will.
Love you all! Love you Anna, Mom, and Dad!
Elder Kynan Sorochan
Elko!
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