They like to give us Food here

Monday September 12, 2016


Hey everyone I'm back! Hope you have all had a great week! It has been a very good week here with lots of learning. And food as the title implies. Let's see where to begin? Let's go with the funny story first.

On Thursday while we were waiting to meet with Mark we went around street contacting with some tracting thrown in there. One door we knocked on had the inside door open. We thought "awesome! They are home!" Well when we knocked on the door this girl runs across the view we have of the inside. Great, people! We waited about 10 seconds after that with no one coming to the door. We then heard a loud whisper from inside that said "hide! hide!". Elder Jones and I looked at each other, then left. We laughed. People will always do weird things when it comes to missionaries.

Ok first, we got to do some service for Chuck this week. We worked on the car I told you guys about which was fun. He has some issues with faith so while we did work on the car Elder Jones and I came up with some Book of Mormon chapters to give him to read. He asked for them I think. Or was very interested in having them. He has read the Book of Mormon twice in the past so we hope that we can help him feel the Spirit from his reading. We are building an image of obedient missionaries with him and Carol so we will see how it goes. He is very friendly and likes us, so I hope that we can help him along.

Bro. Larkins this week texted us to take us up on our offer of service. We unloaded this gigantic u-haul truck full of food into a storage shed. He let us grab stuff we wanted as we took it out. We got so many goodies it's not even funny. And with all the stuff we took we didn't even come close to making a dent in all the food that was donated to him. It was awesome! He is really becoming friendly to us. We really hope we can start having lessons with him soon. He is such a great person and so fun to be around. It would be amazing to teach him. He knows aikido (sp?) which is this japanese martial arts. It is so neat I want to learn it when I get home. Look up some stuff on youtube. It will be just as cool and a lot less painful than him lightly demonstrating some stuff on us.

Brenda is still killing it. She is just trying to do everything by the Gospel. We had a discussion on just some life things that she is going through right now and she is trying to figure out what God would have her do rather than what she would maybe want to do. I just love this woman! She is just fantastic in the Gospel. Everyone be like Brenda. (oh and she wants to have us over for dinner too.)

We got to have dinner with these non members Jeff and Jennifer. They spoiled us as you can see in the photos. In the Top 3 dinners on the mission so far. They are really great people. We stop by every couple weeks and share scriptures and have a good gospel discussion. They aren't really people who will progress so we don't go by very much but they will one day so we keep contact. They slowly however seem to have their faith growing. They are asking more and more questions and as we try to testify boldly they are receptive or at least listen.

I continue to be gaining Charity. I have been learning this week how to have more Charity for my companion. I haven't always been the best when it comes to being his friend like I should, but as I have prayed for charity I have seen where I have done not so well and have improved. Elder Jones and I are becoming great friends and I am so happy to be serving with him. Have a great week everyone!

Love you!

Elder Kynan Sorochan

The burger! 

 My portion

Charity

September 5, 2016

Hello! I am so excited to write to you guys! This week has been awesome. Our plans didn't seem to always work, or lessons didn't always go according to plan, but they always worked out. First off, this last Monday with bowling I did the best I have ever done in my life. I scored a 171 and got a turkey (3 strikes in a row). WHAT?!?!?!?!? It was so awesome. Our hike to the waterfall was fun and I will send pics of that next week. I just want to say right now how wonderful this work is, proclaiming the gospel. Ok now to business, some neat experiences from this week.

A few weeks ago we ran into this guy outside Walmart doing this fundraiser thing for Veterans food thingy and was talking to some missionaries in our zone. He flagged us down and started talking to us and asked us if we wanted to donate. Now you see I was in a hurry because we had just booked me a hair cut which was in half and hour and we needed to get our grocery shopping done. He suggested before we replied that we could just get some money after shopping and come give it but I just asked "could I give you a dollar now?" I grabbed my wallet where I only had dollars in my personal money so I grabbed one, gave it to him, and went to leave. He said to wait and that he wanted to feed us. His wife is a member and so this last week we finally had dinner with them. We ate the largest burger of my life. It was soooooooooooo tasty. He has an interesting sense of humor, but we just joked around with him and he really opened up to us. This week we are doing service with him and we see if he is up for some legitimate lessons. He is a really great guy and has had missionaries over before. I think we can help him make some progress. His name is Bro. Larkins.

Now update on Brenda. This week we taught her the plan of salvation and tithing. She is so awesome. After just explaining what tithing is she immediately wanted to be paying it. She is just so great! We took her to the Why I Believe fireside which is a fireside arranged by missionaries where recent converts and returning members bear their testimonies. We needed a ride since it was in Carson and we felt prompted to ask a member, Bro. Crosby, to take us. He was available and while there he ran into 2 or 3 people that in the past he had tried to help return to the church. They were in the crowd and are returning! Plus a co-worker's mom talked since she was just baptized a little while ago. He was super grateful to have come. Brenda of course loved it. She is just learning like mad. She is such a blessing to have found.

This last week I have really been working on loving and being filled with Charity. As you can tell, it is continuing to strengthen my positive attitude while being out here. I love my companion, I love the people here, and I love missionary work. Any problem that comes up, if I try to have faith, hope, patience, and charity, I am able to turn it around. I am not as tired. I am able to deal with more and not be as stressed. This is just all working out. I love doing this missionary work. Now for all of you who read these emails, I hope you like them and they are helping you. If you have any questions, comments, criticisms, concerns, or anything else beginning with the letter c, please email me. kynan.sorochan@myldsmail.net

Love you all!

Elder Kynan Sorochan

Attitude!

August 28, 2016

Hello everyone! I am so glad to be writing this email to you as a missionary because you know what? Missionaries are awesome! And so is missionary work! This week was jammed packed so listen up.

First off let's talk about Brenda, the lady we street contacted into last Saturday. She is so awesome, I don't know where she came from, but she is definitely prepared. She just wants to learn everything. We spent almost 2 hours with her last week teaching her different things. She is very excited to go to the temple. That's really just it. She is a golden investigator without being an investigator and she just get's excited about everything.

Today we have our Zone activity. We are going on a short hike and going bowling again!!! I forgot my camera today so I will get pics from someone else I am very sorry. (really I am)

We ran into this really cool couple this past week in a really weird way. We got a lot of referrals this week. The unfortunate fact is a lot of referrals don't always work out, but as we keep trying and have faith, weird but miraculous experiences like this next one happen. We had dinner over in Moundhouse which we never really go to, but we have started up some less active work there so we are now looking to find more work out there so it is more worth it when we go out there. We had dinner there and got a referral to go to the house behind the house we were eating at. When we went there a couple days later to knock on the door we were blessed to run into a lady who lives next door who was just getting out of her car. Naturally we talked to her and she told us to go try a house just along the main street in the community we were in. The first house wasn't interested so we went to try Chuck's house, the second one we were referred to. We knocked and they weren't home so we went and did the other work we had planned on and came back. When we knocked on the door Chuck opened it and immediately said "hey guys how's it going?" He welcomed us in and we got to know them for a bit. Turns out they used to have missionaries over all the time, but that had stopped back in 2014. We only realized it had been that long when we checked our former investigator records. Turned out they had been taught everything, but things had become more of a hang out than a teaching situation so the missionaries stopped coming. Since it has been essentially 2 years since their last lesson we see it as a miracle that we found them and that they could maybe even be ready to progress some more. We hope so and will try. It will also be a fun test of obedience since Chuck and Carole are really fun and want to have fun, but Elder Jones and I will be ok I think. We are both very dedicated to obedience. We will bring our new Ward mission leader in Dayton since he is not afraid to offend but is very loving at the same time to help see if they will be willing to progress. They are awesome people, but just need to learn the missionary purpose.

Lastly I wanted to talk about some learning I had this week about my attitude. I was not letting myself be happy. I was being way too negative because I want so badly to change. I want to be a great missionary so bad that I am not letting myself enjoy the good and focusing too much on the bad. I could, but I had gotten into the habit of saying "I'm not improving or changing good enough. Why can't I do this myself?" This Sunday I was thinking about just how great this week was. We had 10 less active lessons and 3 lessons with members presents which is amazing. The week before we had only 3 Less Active lessons and maybe 1 member present? We had been doing some great finding and have a few great potential investigators to try to turn into investigators this week. We are working great with the wards and more people are starting to keep commitments. I wasn't as happy as I should be and I knew that it was my attitude. I wasn't being happy Elder Kynan Sorochan, I was being grumpy Elder Kynan Sorochan (Elder McKenna would have told me to eat a pixy stick, that usually solved things.) Sunday morning I knelt down and prayed. I knew all the things about grace, I knew I needed Christ, but when I prayed the thought came to me "Let Christ change you" For some reason this worked. I have been happy since and not as tired. I have been just going forward, learning, and leaving the worrying and the changing to Him. I was trying to do this before, but for some reason now it is better. It will still take work and I will keep getting better, but for now I have reached the point I needed to and will now work to the next one.

I love you all and hope you all can, like me, keep coming closer to our Savior Jesus Christ.

Love,

Elder Kynan Sorochan

Me and Elder Baker

Me and Elder Schow

You gotta have faith

Hey Everyone!  

This week was jammed packed so let's get to it. First off we had Zone Conference this week. For those who don't know, Zone Conference is when 2 area's of missionaries or zones (this time it was the Carson and Fallon zones) get together for a good chunk of the day and are trained by the Assistants to the President, a couple of the senior missionaries in the mission office, and then President and Sister Chestnut. It was super fun. There are some pictures of your's truly on the website nevadarenomission.com It was so great. The assistants gave a training on finding, Sister Chestnut gave a training on our thoughts and making sure they are in line with our work, and President Chestnut gave a training on teaching the doctrine in the lessons found in Chapter 3 of Preach my Gospel. It was so awesome. There was a great Spirit there and I found a lot of great inspiration and guidance from the training on finding. We have been working to improve on that this week and I have a neat story to share about that.

Normally our street contacting and tracting has yielded no real results. There has hardly been any interest from the people we talk to so it gets discouraging. From the training though I learned that you can't let yourself become discouraged. You need to press on. In your mind you have to think that this next person you will talk to will be interested. When they aren't, you move on to the next person with the same attitude and enthusiasm. This week was hard because almost all our lessons fell through and our finding was being its usual self. Elder Jones and I though were working to keep our faithful happy attitude. This Saturday while we were stopping by some less actives (who weren't home) we started to go back to our car. We saw an older lady with a walker going down the street and so we decided to go and try to talk to her. We are supposed to talk to everyone and not be hasty so that's what we did. We went up to her and while we were approaching I thought "what should I say to her?" The thought of family history came to mind and I don't really use that much so I decided to give it a shot. When I offered to show her about the family history stuff the church has she said "that sounds very interesting, you guys are Mormon right?" We said yes and she then proceeded to tell us that her family joined the church when she was 9 and she was baptized but a couple years later their family moved to Central America and she hasn't been back since. Lately she had been thinking about coming back to church and learning about it, and that it was very fortuitous that we had run into her. She asked if there was a church here and what time it meets, and we told her tomorrow at 9. She said she would love to go but she didn't have a way of getting there. We told her we would get her a ride to which she was very grateful. The next day she came to all 3 hours of church and loved it. We are meeting with her next week and is very excited to learn all about the church and Book of Mormon.

I am out of time but I just wanted to let you all know that we need to have faith. I gave a talk in the Comstock ward on faith yesterday and it was so amazing to give it. My testimony on faith and my faith in my Savior have grown so much. I truly love serving Him. This is so hard and discouraging at times, but I will not let that get in the way. I will keep my head up and put in my all. It is so hard, but in the end it will be very worth it. I know this because I get little opportunities like this last one where there is great joy and proof that it is worth it. I love you all. Thanks for your prayers and support.


Love,
Elder Kynan Sorochan

It's been a week?

August 15, 2016

Hello and welcome to another exciting episode of Elder Sorochan: The Mission Chronicles! I can't believe it has already been a week, that flew by. I'm right now trying to remember what even happened. I think we will start with the fun story of the week.

Now everyone knows I am a genius right? Right, and this here story is going to show all y'all how right your thinking is. It happened on Thursday. We were going over to teach Mark and we brought a new priest with us named Chase. His brother just left on a mission and he just became a priest so we were excited to take him out with us. As we showed up we needed to get a pamphlet from the trunk so I went in got it and closed it. Then I realized that I had left the keys in the trunk. Now, this trunk doesn't have a handle, you have to use a button on the remote or a lever in the car. Fortunately, I hadn't locked the car yet so we went and pulled the lever to open the trunk. It didn't work. We then with the help of Mark and Chase we tried to get into the trunk through the back seats. We couldn't figure out how to get them down, but we could put our hands sorta behind the seat and could tell that it was the way into the trunk. We are in a 2012 Toyota Corrolla and the farthest we could get was getting the bottom of the seat off and moving the seat a little forward to get our hands in there. We then checked the car manual and it turns out the seats do come down but the leaver to do that is in the trunk. Very helpful. Mark eventually had to leave and we still couldn't reach the keys. We used my camera to take pictures of the inside to see where the keys were and they were right against the front of the trunk, not the seats. Eventually Chase went home to get a flashlight and his mom had the idea of calling Bro. Soderborg. Bro. Soderborg is the first councilor in the bishopric and is a really fun and helpful guy. He came over and told us to pull the lever. He listened to the latch not let go. He told us to keep pulling it and he started banging on the trunk. It opened. After an hour and 40 minutes it finally opened. I'm glad Chase has a good first missionary story.

Now for the more spiritual side. This last week is Elder Baker's second last week. He goes home Thursday to be home in time for school. He is our district leader and has helped me a ton since Elder McKenna left. He has helped me through my stress and anxiety and feelings of being overwhelmed these past few weeks and has become a great friend. I had the privilege on Friday to go with him on his last missionary exchange of his mission. We had a great time. We got to do service making Jam and mowing someone's lawn. We went to a fun place for lunch and had taco's with the Comstock ward mission leader. (that was really fun for Elder Baker because he was called spanish speaking) The best part though was what we learned that day. Elder Baker through talking with me and using Preach My Gospel has showed me how much we learn about the Atonement while on our missions. This last exchange was no different. He shared with me the talk by Elder Skousen on what is the meaning of the Atonement or something along those lines. It is a talk by him sharing what he has learned about the need, purpose, and effect the Atonement has on us. It really rang true to me. I have been learning so much about the Atonement and my need to always be supported by it. My Savior is my strength. He is the only way. We can do anything as we come unto Jesus Christ. I am so grateful for Elder Baker, Elder McKenna, and so many others already who have helped me realize this and learn this. All of this, the church, the gospel, everything, is true and is to make us happy. Even though all of this is still hard and makes me work harder than I ever have in my life, I am still happy and am filled with joy because of this experience because of Jesus Christ. I hope all of you can see this for yourselves too. Love you all!

Love,
Elder Kynan Sorochan