March 5, 2018
Well everyone this week was C R A Z Y . If you think missionaries don't have hard and crazy weeks, well I'm going to tell ya, they do. The week started with on Monday me getting some kind of flu bug and it lasting till Thursday. Wasn't even able to go to District Meeting this Tuesday haha. On Friday the car got damaged and we spent all day dealing with that. That day the weather was terrible and roads were bad. We didn't have a dinner that night though and we had before the incident asked a certain member if we could have dinner with them. Turned out they were able to help us a ton with the car and we were able to get the car towed into Reno for free through their AAA insurance and then they took us to A&W for dinner. Saturday and Sunday were whack because we couldn't go really anywhere because there was snow so no biking and we are so spread out walking is hard. Sunday too one of the church services got cancelled but the other didn't but no one told us about the status of the second one. We were late to church because of it. MISSIONARIES LATE TO CHURCH ARE YOU KIDDING ME!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! I was so embarrassed but it was fast Sunday and without breakfast my mind doesn't think as well. Plus just the week.
At some point in the week I was wallowing in my difficulty because I sometimes do that and an interesting inspired thought came into my head. The phrase "Be still and know that I am God." I also on Saturday or Sunday watched a video documentary from President Hinckley we have in the house and he talked about that same scripture for himself. It has all still been hard but it is working out. I know His hand is with me and that it is all going to work out.
We met with the Zone Leaders referral. Her name is Chloe and she is getting baptized this Saturday! She is so prepared and normal. That sounds bad but a normal person amongst all the crazy is a blessing and a half sometimes. Her husband Andrew grew up in Washoe Valley so they are going to fit in great!
Well love yall!
Elder Sorochan
February 26, 2018
Hello everyone! This week was yet another great one. The weather has been bad for Nevada standards but to me it's nothing. I have been acclimatizing so I'm feeling the cold at -7 to +5 so that's not great but oh well. I had an embarrassing moment on Sunday. We had ward conferences in both wards so we had church from 9 to 4 and had linger longers after both. In foothills I was talking to Sister Naylor who is feeding us on Wednesday about dinner. She asked what we would like. I said not chili because I don't like beans. Only after I said it did I realize that the family sitting at the same table as Sister Naylor was a family that this past week had fed us chili and heard me. It was so awkward. Oh well, they seemed cool with it. :D
Monday we had FHE with the Curtis's it was so sweet! We had each of the kids come up with a question or two about life/the gospel for Elder Christiansen and I to answer. It was such a good lesson they had great questions! I loved answering those questions with Elder Christiansen. It is so nice having a comp that is focused and works with me. It makes life that much more great!
Tuesday we had a meeting with Robert again. He is rather interesting. We found out he believes that Jesus is the human form of the Sun. Yeah so we are probably going to put him on the back burner for now.
Oh and we also had our zone activity last Monday! We had a volleyball tournament. With my ankle I couldn't play but I found the score board controls and with some help got the score board running. That is my favorite job when I can't play I was blessed to still be able to participate! Woohoo!
Tuesday we also had our interviews. I have built such an awesome relationship with President and Sister Chesnut. I feel so close with them. I also found out we will be getting phones before general conference. I will not have to buy one so I will just use one for a bit and learn the tricks of the church apps so I am a pro at them!
Our appointments fell through this week but it's ok! We got in some good service and found a new house in Foothill that is letting us come back this Tuesday! We also Saturday got a referral from YSA that someone in YSA got married to a member. She was already investigating and should be baptized in a couple weeks, but she lives in Washoe so Washoe ward will be doing the baptism! The ward will be so excited they need this! Also a member in Foothill was doing his home teaching and after helped out someone across the street with her recycling bin and ended up giving her a book of Mormon! We are going to stop by soon.
Saturday we helped out with a ward service project. An older couple has a beat up trailer that they want to rent out. They need the income and the person moving in is also in the ward and needs it so it was a double whammy! We got to weed wack and lay some fake tile. I got to wear some incredibly attractive eye goggles for the weed whacking.
Friday I went on exchanges with Elder Hambrecht. He is becoming an awesome missionary! He has been out for almost 3 transfers and he killed it on our exchange. He planned super well and talked to people like a pro!
Pictures to come next week. Something I learned from church is whenever we go to do some kind of service or kind thing we should always think "Is there someone I could invite to come with me?" Love y'all! Don't forget to smile!
Elder Sorochan
February 19, 2018
Hey everyone! Hows it going? Well, you can't answer me right now because this is not a text but oh well. Let's get started!
Monday nothing special really happened but Tuesday was sweet! At district meeting we had an awesome training on how to use the scriptures. Everyone was focused and wanting to learn it was such a fun meeting! We also after dinner got to help the husband give a blessing to his grandson which is always a great thing to do! I love being able to do that!
On Thursday we had dinner with the Gills and they invited a non member over for dinner! She accepted a Book of Mormon, said she would read it, and is very interested in coming to church! WHAT THAT NEVER HAPPENS.
Friday was zone conference. It was so fun. I got to play the piano for the hymns and nailed it! I am getting better at playing in front of people. Then after I went to go get my ankle checked out. Turns out the bone is perfect so it is just a cartilage and/or soft tissue problem. I will be starting physical therapy soon. Fortunately no surgery is needed yet so no going home! WOOHOO!
On Sunday I played my In Humility Our Savior piece in foothill ward and it went awesome too! Other than that it was a chill week with resting the ankle! Love y'all!
Elder Sorochan
January 12, 2018
Hello everyone to another week! Something funny that happened is one day we stopped by Jared's and he was outside with someone else and there was this giant random lego man outside. IT WAS REALLY WEIRD. We also saw this car go past us or turn or something and we looked away for a second. Then it was just gone. IT WAS ALSO REALLY WEIRD. Anyway this week was just good. Here's some reasons why!
The beginning of the week was pretty uneventful, but on Wednesday I went on exchanges with Elder McBride. We did a lot of service and got free chocolate milk! It was awesome! He is a really good Elder. Thursday we got a new gator (investigator) named Carla!!!!!!!! She is from Italy and works at Walmart. Her schedule is crazy but she is taking some time to meet with us. She said the closing prayer and was really touched by the experience of praying in the Savior's way. It was awesome!
Friday we met with Robert and he is a really smart man. He knows a ton about Christ's early church. We answered a lot of his questions and gave him some really interesting things to think about. He really liked what we had to say. He isn't investigating yet but definetely wants to meet again. Met with the Johnsons to read some more and they gave me SALT AND VINEGAR CHIPS! They are so awesome. We read 2 Nephi 3.
Sunday we gave talks. Elder Christiansen's was on the Book of Mormon initiative and he killed it! Mine was on stuff I wish I knew before my mission on a more gospel focus.
Love you all! So sorry it's short had a lot of messaging.
Elder Sorochan
February 5, 2018
Hello everyone hope your week has been better than a doughnut that someone just gave to you after you just tried to talk to them on the street! No lie that happened this week. This week was sweet let me tell you why!
We did some service for Mark again. Elder Christiansen is prepping a Book of Mormon for him. He does a lot with missionaries around so we are hoping to move him forward. He likes to drink but this week he says he hasn't drank for awhile. Hopefully that stays!
Dang I forgot my planner in the car and I'm short on time so I will wing it and add anything I forget next week y'all! It was a sweet week though! On Wednesday we FINALLY got our car back! Sing praises and hallelujahs we are so glad to have it back!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WE CAN GO PLACES!!!!! Our area is so big it is redonculous. We helped out at Davis Creek again and went to Bowers mansion. I have been so bad with sending pics I will do it next week I promise! Ranger Nick gave us a tour of Bowers mansion too which is closed for now but hey, VIP privileges you know :D Then we went to the Virginia City Highlands at night which probably wasn't the most thought out decision we have made. It was dark and in the middle of no where but we had a TON of banked up miles from not having the car for a week so we really wanted to go up there because we never do. It was fun!
Thursday Elder Christiansen finally got to the chiropractor and got all fixed up. He feels way better now. Love chiropractors.
Saturday I went on a crazy good exchange with Elder Tolbert. I've sent a pic of him before but we had a blast biking around a couple different parts of our area and teaching Jared a bit about the plan of Salvation. He is so helpful and a great example of a Christlike leader!
Elder Christiansen is awesome! I love being his companion he is a great missionary!
Love yall! Till next time!
Elder Sorochan
January 29, 2018
Hello everyone! Welcome back! Turns out I'm still alive so that's good. It's questionable if in one piece but oh well. Hopefully I'll find my other arm one day ;) Well after that random and nonsensicle rambling let's begin!
Last Pday was really fun because we got to celebrate Elder Christiansen's Birthday! It was really on Thursday but due to details which I will not bore you with, we had his big birthday dinner planned for Monday night. The Curtis' who are an awesome family in the ward took us out to the Outback for some delicious food. One of my favorite parts is we got some appetizers! I love appetizers. Anyway that was super fun and Elder Christiansen is now 19. This is the fifth companion I have been with for their birthday and the second where we have been together for both our birthdays.
This week was a rather interesting week with many obstacles that were placed in our path so I will tell things in order from the less interesting to the more interesting. Firstly we have been without a car for most of the week. Our car has been having the problem of having the ignition switch not turn when you put the key in. Having the key not turn apparently makes the car not start very well, or really more not at all. Who knew? Any way after trying some tricks it would usually turn but Tuesday night it got to the point where it took us about 15 minutes atleast to get the darn thing to turn so that was when we decided it would be a good idea to call our handy dandy vehicle coordinator, Elder Bellamy! We called him the next morning and he came down to Washoe Valley to see if the other key would work at all. During the 20+ minutes of him driving to the our house from the mission office I proceeded to try to get the key to turn with no success. Fortunately when he got here he was able to get it to turn a couple of times and me once after he got there so we were able to get it to the dealership without towing it. We dropped it off and found out there was a recall on this problem which is nice, but they didn't have the part and so they had to order it. This means that we haven't had a car since Wednesday. The area in which I now live is bigger than a couple of my previous area's so walking takes FOREVER. Fortunately, I like walking. We can't really bike right now because this week Elder Christiansen's back has been giving him some bad problems randomly with an unknown cause so between these two things needless to say it hasn't been the most productive week, but some cool things still happened!
With the car being gone we have been getting a lot of rides to places we have been needing to go and we have seen a lot of miracles with that. We will literally get a ride from someone to one place and the next people will be willing to give us a ride, or someone will have come to that house to join us for what we are doing and they will give us a ride after, or we even were walking down the road to dinner and were late and someone we knew, Mark actually, picked us up and drove us to dinner! #Miracles
We got to help Mark out a bit with his renovations some more. It is been really cool to see the progress that it is making, kind of like the deck I helped make in Elko for Joe.
I had a neat experience of receiving some inspiration this week. Sitting on my desk has been a stack of old records that I have wanting to do something about for FOREVER but for some reason I never got around to it. This Thursday during weekly planning I had some time to go over them, so I did. As I first went through them I discovered that a bunch of them were just photocopies of ones already in our area book. It seemed like that was all that was in the pile so I picked the pile up and went over to the trash can. As I went to throw out the records I got this feeling that it wasn't right to throw them out but should still go through them. I did and it turns out that there were quite a few records that didn't belong in our area but in another area in my district so instead of them being lost they can go to where they need to be!
The last cool thing for the week is with the Johnsons. We had dinner with them on Tuesday and got to read the scriptures with them again! Their son who is 8 read and he read better than almost all my investigators ever have! He also gave me the hardest played game of checkers ever! He is a clever cookie. Sister Johnson the next day also asked to come give her niece a blessing.
Love y’all, till next time, don’t forget to smile. BYE,!!
Elder Sorochan
January 22, 2018
Well everyone this week was weird. Or at least some really weird stuff happened and we will get into a few of those. First though something really cool happened last week on PDAY while shopping. If any of you can remember back to the Dayton days there was a couple we were teaching named the Millers. Sister Miller was not baptized and couldn't be while I was there. Recently in our mission newsletter the "High Desert Disciple" I saw her name in the list of people who were baptized! I couldn't believe it I was so excited. Then by the tender mercies of the Lord and by divine design while we were shopping at Winco, this place a lot like Costco except you don't need a membership, I saw them in the meat section! I went and said hi and told her congratulations. It was so cool to see them. If we hadn't had a house inspection that morning, we wouldn't have been there at the right time either. It was really nice.
That night too we had Chicken Wings and fries at Sister Knox's house! She asked what we wanted and consented to chicken wings it was sweet!
Tuesday we got to watch the Special Broadcast with President Nelson it was sooooo cool! The Q&A that they did was awesome too. President Oaks was especially spot on in it. I know they have been called of God and President Nelson is our new Prophet and President. We also that day got to go to the temple which was really enjoyable. The more I go the more I like going.
We helped at Davis Creek again this week. It's for Justserve.org. We rake up pine needles. Woohoo!
Saturday is the more weird day that I will talk about. It started in the morning with us planning. In my prayer for it I asked for something spontaneous to happen. I don't ask for this all the time but sometimes I do and something usually happens. Well, this time was no different. On our way to the first person we were going to go try that morning, we met a man named Don. He is an older gentleman who was looking for his hearing aid that had fallen out of his ear while running. He really wanted to find it because they are $700 a piece. We offered to help him find it and at first he was hesitant to accept but we just kept talking with him and he finally accepted! We looked and weren't able to find it but he still drove us home. He is a devout catholic man who goes to Mass everyday. Apperently if you want to be a true devout catholic that's one of the things you do. Who knew? But he said he was very impressed with us and that we had really given him a high opinion of our church which is awesome!
Then we went to the Ballards. They are an old couple only the wife is a member. They are 90 years old! The husband isn't a member but is a 32nd degree Mason! They have a crazy house keeper too! She was not happy with us trying to get to know the Ballards before we tried to share a message or anything. She made us teach and then continued on after Elder Christiansen's closing prayer. The people you meet!
We also finally got to teach Jared most of the Restoration with Brother Huston our Ward Mission Leader in Washoe. It went really well. Jared is really progressing well. Love yall!
Elder Sorochan
