There and Back Again: A Missionary's Tale: February 2017

Friday 24 February 2017

Made you look

February 20, 2017

Hi Everyone! I have a funny joke for you all today curtesy of Bruce the Iranian Chicken Eater. We listen to the Book of Mormon while we cut his chicken and we got to the part where Nephi is having his vision where he learns about his fathers vision. In the scriptures the Angel tells Nephi to look, Nephi Looks, and then Nephi learns something. Bruce's joke with it is as follows:

And the Angel said, Look! And I looked, and the Angel said, Made you look!

Haha silly Bruce.

This week was a good week. We got to go to the temple this week and it was a really great experience as usual. We went to L&L after and found someone from Utah that isn't a member but was excited to see missionaries. She said we could send the missionaries over so we sent the referral to the missionaries in her area. It was awesome. We helped move furniture out of a couple of missionary apartments. Bishop went to Canada and got me some Old Dutch chips which I have been craving! We had our Why I Believe fireside and Yvonne and her kids came! It was a really good meeting that I think helped her a lot. There was a speaker that really seemed to be what she needed.

This weekend was transfer's but I didn't get transferred fortunately. I want one more transfer here in Sparks! It is really fun here and I love the members. I love the city and Elder Williams is a great companion.

I think I mentioned it last week but I am working on learning specific scriptures each week to help me in my teaching. I try to memorize them mostly so that I can have the Spirit bring them to my memory more easily in lessons. This week is 2 Nephi 30:8 which is a prophecy about how God will bring about a restoration in the later days, and the second is Mosiah 4:26-27, 29-30 which teaches about how to gain a remission of sins and endure to the end!

I also want to share a little nugget of knowledge for you all. In this world it can be hard to be optimistic all the time. It is impossible to be that way always, but there are things that we can do to increase the amount of time we spend being happy rather than pessimistic. I learned yesterday that if we can look at every situation with an attitude of "How can this strengthen me" or "What can I learn from this" we will be blessed with a greater Spirit of Optimism and Joy. We will think of the Savior more and use everything that happens to us for our benefit and gain. I love this gospel and know it's true.

Love you all,
Elder Sorochan

This is Bruce. The man we cut chicken for.

Cool license plate

After District meeting. That's Elder Gailey middle and Elder Williams Right

Elder Williams styling it

Elder Williams being funny

#Nevada

Nice plate

O Swell!

Bishop Cocanour went to Canada and brought me back Old Dutch Chips! I controlled myself and had them last 24 hours

The Sparks Zone! (I look fat. Dumb camera. Adds 50lb's)

At the temple trip

Wednesday 15 February 2017

You never know what is going to happen

February 13, 2017

Hey everyone so it has been a fun week! Fist off last Pday we went to IHOP with Elder Gailey and Elder Lima. It was really good and Elder Williams had a gift card so it only ended up costing me 5 bucks. Oh yeah! We also went to Scheels which is like a combo of Sport Chek and Cabelas. Their hockey section was so sad. They had hardly anything. We also had Elder Williams and Elder Gailey work together to do a combined district meeting. That never happens, but the topics for our trainings have been so similar these past few weeks that they wanted to do a different spin together as district leaders so they got President's permission and it was fun.

Tuesday we had a cool miracle. In the morning before we planned Elder Willams and I both had the thought to go and see a less active member, Bro. Sledge. He doesn't get out much due to health, and the ward wants to help him start coming back to church, and it had been a few weeks that we had seen him. When we went we found out that he had only been visited once by other people besides us in that time. We were pretty surprised. (it's things like this that have me very determined to make sure I do all my home teaching every month to meet the needs of my families after my mission. Home and visiting teaching is crucial to the Lord's work it turns out) His car hadn't been working and we helped figure out that his battery was dead because a light had been turned on. We jumped his car and got it working. I have been working on having a better attitude as well when appointments fall through. This happened with the Carter's when we tried to confirm, and when we got the text that they needed to reschedule, I was pretty bummed, but then I decided to have a better opinion and just understand that it happens. 5 minutes later they texted us saying we still could come! Blessings for a good attitude.

Another fun story from the week is when we got to go to Elder Gailey and Elder Lima's baptism this Saturday. We brought Yvonne and showed up about 15 minutes before the baptism about. Turned out that the person who was supposed to come and fill the font hadn't come, and it takes an hour to fill it up, and it had only a couple of inches of water. Can't baptize someone without water now can ya? Almost all the missionaries combined to start filling up water jugs from the kitchen and dumping them into the font so we would have enough water to baptize the lady being baptized! It was fun watching the cart of jugs and bowls filled with water as the service started. Fortunately, all turned out fine. The font was filled, the baptism happened, and it was a nice time. There was a lot of people there too.

I hope you all had a great week. I had a power lesson in my personal studies about the Christlike quality of Virtue. I while planning my studies felt inspired to go to chapter 6 of Preach My Gospel, so I did and flipped till it felt right. Studying Virtue felt right, and I learned that to be at peace and truly happy, it needs to start on the inside with your heart, and go outward, not the revearse. We have the Gospel! It should be easy to be happy. As I have been applying becoming more virtuous in my everyday desires, not just the desires we normally associate with virtue, we can be a lot happier more of the time! I would invite you all to go to Preach My Gospel and study it for yourselves if you are finding you are just not happy about different things when you want to be. I promise it will be a powerful lesson for you as it was for me. I have a much better attitude because of it now.

Bye!

Elder Kynan Sorochan

Funny bumper sicker

Companionship study

Monday 6 February 2017

The Miracle of the Piano

February 4, 2017

Well hello everyone! It's been a good week with some good updates for y'all. First off we had Zone Conference this week! It was a really fun Zone Conference. We had a good training on planning in 30 minutes where Elder Lyman did an example of how to be counterproductive. It happened with him having Preach My Gospel, the scriptures, and the DVD player around him. He then proceeded to eat cereal and brush his teeth at the same time. It was awesome. I had a cool miracle for Zone Conference too. They needed someone to play the piano, but I was the only one who said yes to doing it, and I didn't know one of the songs and only knew the other a little bit. The one I didn't know how to play was Onward Christian Soldiers and the one I knew a bit was Praise to the Man. I got asked on Monday near the end of the day and was given permission to practice during proselyting time. That left we Tuesday and Wednesday to learn the two songs. I ended up having only about 3 and a half hours of practice between the two days to learn two long tricky hymns. I wanted to help and do it so I said a prayer and went and PRACTICED! I have never practiced the piano with such focus and diligence before, but I knew that if I worked hard God would make up the rest. It worked! I learned the songs and did a good job playing on Thursday! I didn't really stress about it because I knew that God would help me as I worked hard. It was awesome!

We had a really spiritual lesson again with Yvonne. We read over some of Alma 32 and the Spirit is really building her desire to act. The Spirit also taught us that she really loves feeling the Spirit and that is one of the big reasons she keeps having us come. When we were weekly planning for her I felt a strong prompting on what we should teach her which was neat.

I love my ward. I really realized that yesterday. Things here aren't easy, but I have really come to just love it here and I would love to be here for a long time. These are my people. They are my brothers and sisters. I love their qwerks and their strengths. I love it here in Sparks and I love serving the Lord. Keep reading your scriptures, saying your prayers, and going to church everyone!

Love,
Elder Kynan Sorochan

Ties from Momma Williams

At Zone Conference

Zone Conference

Things are good

January 30, 2017

Ok so I have a fun story from a couple weeks ago to share. Elder Anderson and I were on exchanges in my area and we were street contacting while on our way to try by a less active couple. We were walking along and a lady came out of her house and asked us to keep an eye out for her dog who had run away. We got her number and proceeded to try to talk to her about the gospel. She wasn't interested, so we said we would keep an eye out for her dog. Now people have asked for this help before, but I have never found anyones pet. I don't really expect to. How many times do you see a stray dog in the middle of a regular neighborhood? As we were walking though we see in the distance a dog with the right description walk across the street by herself. We started to track down this dog and ended up catching her! We double checked the tag and sure enough it was the lady's dog. We called her and saved the day! It was fun. I have never caught a dog before. She was very thankful and we helped to build her up for other missionaries someday!

I had sushi this past Monday with Yvonne. It was really good, but I think I am good for awhile. 16 rolls between the 3 of us and then 3 hours of basketball after do not give me a strong desire for sushi again anytime soon.

The missionary broadcast this last week was awesome! There was a lot to learn. They introduced the new missionary schedule to the world, a reform to the key indicators we now send in, and taught us more on how we need to teach repentance and baptize converts. The teaching repentance was the bigger focus in my opinion. They were trying to teach us the baptisms aren't what makes a good missionary or that we should judge all of our success. The key is to teach everyone what true repentance is and tie that to all the other parts of the gospel instead of making a big checklist of everything. They want us to teach EVERYONE repentance. Members, active and less active, and investigators alike. Everyone, repentance means to change, to progress. It means to become better. To stop doing what is contrary to God's commandments and make a change to be happy. It is the path to happiness. Repentance is a joyful choice and leads to even more happiness.

Things are going well in the area. We are teaching a little more and we have a couple of new potential investigators that will help us grow our teaching pool this week hopefully. This last week we taught Yvonne about patience from Preach My Gospel chapter 6. She says that everything she reads or does in relation to the gospel is pointing her to patience and we are now sending her a chapter from the Book of Mormon to read everyday.

Love you all!

Elder Sorochan