Happy America Day!

Happy America Day everyone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm so excited that we have P-Day on 4th of July we are going to go on a hike in Carson on a hill called C-Hill which has a giant C and American Flag on it. We are as well going to have a BBQ with the Bowder's in Comstock ward and as well we have permission to go see fireworks. It's going to be so fun. I'll see what I can do for photos of it all. I had a great Canada where we went to the Sonerholm's house for dinner and had steak and mashed potatoes. They are a very american family so it was good. I sang Oh Canada in the morning. Before bed I took a photo with all my very Canadian things it was great.

Ok funny story. We are teaching this 8 year old boy named Conner who is such a cool kid. Or as Elder McKenna would say, "he's such a G!" He is from a less active family but they want to have him baptized so Bishop Hamblin of the Dayton ward asked us to teach him. He is pretty much ready. He is such a smart kid. Elder McKenna said that after Conner was taught the Plan of Salvation he went and taught it to some of his friends! What?!?!? I didn't do that when I was 8 I don't think. Anyway his mom comes and sits with us in the lessons too and helps teach and is relearning from us too. His dad doesn't yet unfortunately. Conner really likes hotwheel cars and he usually asks us to try to figure out how to apply what we are teaching to his track and cars. It works pretty well. A couple weeks ago we taught the 10 commandments and following the prophet and there just happened to be 10 track pieces and then the loop so each track piece was a commandment and the loop was following the prophet. This last week when we visited we actually before hand played a game called bean boozled which for those who don't know is where you have to eat a jelly bean that will either taste really good or really bad. Between a rotten fish flavored and spoiled milk flavored I almost threw up. Woohoo! We then used the beans to teach Conner about tithing. So fun.

Now a little bit on my amazing trainer Elder McKenna. He is a VERY funny guy. Very good at telling jokes and stories he keeps me very entertained. He however also knows when to switch to serious mode and is very attentive. That is very beneficial for me since he helps make sure that I in all my craziness am always improving. Especially in just the little things in what to say or do with people he helps make sure I am becoming my best. He is very good at following the Spirit when giving me advice. We have fun. He likes to make LOTS of Canada jokes. Everything I do he pretty just pins on me being Canadian. All fun and games. Love the guy. He is a great trainer.

So I am very excited for this week. Turns out the whole mission has been having trouble finding because we got a text saying the assistants to the president would like to have everyone fast for us to find those who are ready to be taught so that is encouraging. With all the faith being put into this we are going to find those people! We have an interesting potential investigator named Tony. The Olsen's in Dayton ward are friends with him and have lots of good gospel talks with him. He is a very interesting guy and has lots of questions about life and God. The Plan of Salvation would answer most of his questions so we are really hoping to get a sit down lesson with him. On monday we had a great discussion of just talking with him after dinner at the Olsen's. They are the ones who help us with Jesse and have our lessons with him at their house.

Missionary work is really great. It is really hard and drives you to be motivated. I know this is what I need to be doing. So much has already happened, I am so excited to see what adventures still wait ahead. You all are great. Keep being amazing. Love you!

My very Canadian Canada

A cooler as a mail box. 'Murica

After stopping by a house a couple times that we got as a referral, they put this up. lol

On the brink of something

Hello!!!!!

Ok so this week has been cool America is so weird. I wear my shoes all the time I almost never take them off when we are out of the house. There are so many nice cars here and people riding motocycles. We saw this one guy riding down the street with a rifle in a case across his back. 'Murica. Everyone here in Nevada has a dog. Usually more than one. They are very nice to use as doorbells. Haha. It is getting so hot here. Almost everyday it was about 90 degrees Fahrenheit. I am learning to use that temperature now too. Hottest it got according to our car was 98 degrees. I love having a car. I might have to deal with the heat next week though. There is another elder being trained in our district and his companion is our district leader and for exchanges he wants to put us greenies together and neither of us are authorized to drive yet so... bikes! Yeah I haven't rode my bike yet we just park the car somewhere and walk around. Our area is too big to bike especially covering 2 wards. The town of Dayton has just a few thousand less people than Portage I think. The area is just huge. There are a couple of places that we have that we never go because they are so far away. Virginia City and Stage Coach. Stage Coach is where people who want to hide from people go and Virginia City is a tourist town so it doesn't matter too much. We might get to go there for 4th of July fireworks. I am so excited for that.

So this week didn't have many huge highlights. One lesson we had was with a really solid investigator named Jesse. He is 17 and really wants to be baptized. He can't till he is 18 because his parents say that they baptized him catholic and he can do what he wants but that starts when he is 18. They are fine with us teaching him though. He asks so many good questions it is my favorite. I love to answer peoples questions about things to do with the gospel it makes me so excited. We taught him a lesson on the Gospel of Jesus Christ which went really well. There was a good Spirit there. We had it in the home of some members named the Olsen's. Bro Olsen was a stud in the lesson he did such a good job of bearing his testimony and when he said things. Love it when members do missionary work. I am so going to do a better job of that after my mission. :D With the hard time we are having finding new people to teach and finding people who want to progress I have been really turning to the scriptures and prayer. What I am learning is that I need the Spirit in my heart. I need to feel Him more and be more in tune with His promptings so that I am doing what will bring success. As well making sure that the Book of Mormon is what I learning how to use to teach. I am doing this by applying the promise in Mormon 9:21. It is so powerful and very true. Well my time is up I will talk more next week!

Love,
Elder Kynan Sorochan

First pictures from Reno

Elder Sorochan on the way to Reno

 Slot machines at the airport in Reno

Mountains!

It's nice to see him so happy

Random Alpaca

 Hawaiian BBQ

Elder Sorochan and Elder McKenna

There are mountains everywhere!

HELLO FROM RENO! Oh it so great to finally be here. It is so great here. Dry and hot. It's supposed to get into the 90's here this week so let's see how it goes. The plane ride here was great. I talked to two people about the gospel. One wasn't interested but was going to tell his brother about family search which is good. The other person took a restoration pamphlet and a Book of Mormon and is down to meet with the missionaries! Ok so update from Portage. Marlene is planning to be baptized on the 25th which is great hopefully that goes through. I won't know until next week though. Sister Judge made me a hockey pillow case which was very nice. I love it. She makes all the missionaries pillow cases.

Now to Reno. So there are mountains galore here. Everywhere you look there is a mountain. After my mission I am coming rock climbing here as much as I can. It's just so beautiful. I even love the desert. It makes me so happy. There are a lot of casinos here it is great. In the airport there was just slot machines everywhere. The prices of everything here is insane. It is so much cheaper down here. For fruit there are so many more options at great prices. I can buy a big bag of cherries for maybe $2 or $2.50. President and Sister Chestnut are the best! So my new trainer Elder McKenna is awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! He is really good at asking me questions so that I learn what I really need to get out of something. We are in Dayton which is about 20 minutes out of Carson City. We cover both the Dayton and Comstock Wards which is hard. Things are spread out here and Elder McKenna has been here for 3 transfers already. When we street contact he seems to have met everyone already so finding right now is a little hard. We have an ok teaching pool but we are praying for inspiration to know how to find more people to teach. On Friday we went to In and Out Burger and it was really good. The other restaurant in the photo is L&L which is a Hawaiian bbq. The members here are great we have a dinner appointment every day! It is great. I am so excited for July 4th we get to stay up late and watch fire works!!!! Yes. We did have a crazy thing happen to us this week though. On Wednesday during personal study in the morning we randomly got a phone call from a lady. She is a less active member named Sister Lawrence. She said hi, I have been inactive for 38 years and I would like to meet with you. We were just ok can we meet today? Turns out she has been dating a catholic guy who is going to be baptized. Through this she had a crazy experience with a super strong feeling of wanting to go back to church and remembering the song "I am a child of God". The Holy Ghost just testified to her of the truth so now she is reading the Book of Mormon and will be coming to her home ward this coming week. Well I am short on time. I need to organize my emailing time better. Everyone have an amazing week and remember to smile. You are a child of God! Love you!

Elder Kynan Sorochan

He's finally there!

Rainy Days

Hello! 

It has been raining so much here. I think it has rained at least two fifths of my time here. Yes two fifths. So the members here are just great. We have been fed 3 times so far and have that many dinners this week! There has always been great food and especially we have had meat. In Canada on a missionary budget meat is not something that it seems I can buy too often. Oh well. Hashbrowns it is. :D 

So many great things to tell you about! I`ll start with 2 involving a member, Sister Rossiter. She is a super solid member and comes every week. She directs the music and is nursery leader. I believe on my second day here in Portage she called us over to the hospital because her mother had just had a heart attack the day before I believe. She called us to give her mother a priesthood blessing and we did. We went and gave it and left. It was only yesterday that we found out completely what happened, we knew her mother had gotten better quickly, but it turns out that she got better within a few days. Her heart rate had been really high but after the blessing it had gone down to what it should be very quickly. She was recovering at a very surprising rate and the doctors and nurses were very surprised. After everything settled down she got to leave the hospital early. They like to keep people who have had heart attacks there in some kind of care for 3 days after a certain point and Sister Rossiter`s mom only stayed for 1. Now their relationship is better than ever after this because they have been able to talk about things and Sister Rossiter has been doing a bunch of service for her mom now and it is just so great to see. That`s just one miracle here. 

Soon after this Sister Rossiter had us start teaching her friend Marlene and Marlene`s boyfriend Lyle. Marlene has apparently been wanting to get baptized for a long time now and is just accepting everything we say! She and Lyle read the Book of Mormon together which helps Marlene get more out of it because she has trouble seeing. Lyle is accepting but says he needs some more time to think about it. He will come along. 

Ok another amazing story so after we came out of the hospital and were leaving Elder Moore had this prompting to go talk to someone in a red van in the parking lot which he didn`t act on at first. It stayed though while we were driving away and so he flipped around and we went back and talked to the person. When we showed up we found out that her fiance was in the hospital with some pretty serious stuff going on and was going to need a procedure done in Winnipeg. We asked if we could say a prayer with her and she agreed so we prayed to have God give her comfort. As we prayed her fiance Lawrence came into the car and after said we could come by and teach him and Dana (that`s her name). When we came the next day or two (can`t remember) we taught the first lesson and it was accepted really well. We have met with Lawrence lots but not Dana. She hasn`t been around at the hospital as much. Lawrence is so great. He has done a lot of reading in the bible and a lot of deep reading so when we read the Book of Mormon he understands a lot. He apparently has been praying to have God help him improve in his life and make steps to move forward in his life. He sees us showing up as an answer to that prayer and knows how big of a commitment baptism is and so wants to be sure of himself in a legitimate way before he says yes to baptism. So great. Now all he needs to do is actually start reading the Book of Mormon on his own and praying about it. XD

Thanks to all the emails I get from all of you. I love hearing from everyone. Feel free to send me one whenever! Love you all! My challenge this week is to pay attention to the words in the hymns you sing this week. They are so powerful. See ya!

Elder Kynan Sorochan

More pictures!