October 17, 2016
Hey everyone! It's exciting! I'm getting transferred to Sparks into the Vintage Hills Ward! I am so excited. My new Companion is Elder Hadly and he is the District Leader so I will get to go on exchanges with the Zone Leaders! I will be biking as we don't have a car. Fortunately for me Bro. Greenlee our Comstock Ward Mission Leader is fixing the flat tire my bike got from sitting in our apartment. Right?
Ok quick updates. This last week was slow not a lot of eventful things happened. No one was available this week. It was a slow week but it was still great. Sorry to the Washington Whites I ran out of time I will answer your letter questions next week guaranteed.
For our Zone activity we went and had hot dogs and smores and then went bowling. Elder Latham paid for our bowling which was super nice! It was a lot of fun I am going to miss all these Awesome Elders and Sisters here in Carson. It has been amazing serving here in Carson/Dayton. I can't wait to see what happens in Sparks.
My experience of the week comes from Saturday night at our Why I Believe fireside. Brenda spoke at it and got to bear her testimony! It was amazing to hear her talk about all the progress she is making and about her experience with finding us. She loves the gospel so much. She has read all the Book of Mormon, half of the Doctrine and Covenants, and most if not all of the Pearl of Great Price. I can't wait to see what comes next. I will give better updates next week. Love you!
Elder Sorochan
Chuck's house
Me and Elder Jackson and Elder Soto
Cool sign!
In the zone
License plates from Brother Soderborg. One on the left Is for Mosiah 28:3 Preach Unto the Kingdom! The second one is Moroni 6:4-5 Jesus Christ's Church.
October 10, 2016
Happy Canadian Thanksgiving Hola! How is everyone doing? This has been a hard, but good week. It has been been hard because everyone in Dayton is getting sick and other things are happening, but hey, gotta love my crazy Dayton! The people here are so great! I love it here. Shout out to the Duvall Washington White Family. I got your letter last week, forgot to mention it last week, and forgot to bring them today, so your questions will be answered I promise in next weeks exciting adventures!
Ok fun story of the week. On Tuesday we were teaching Conner. He is getting baptized soon!!!!!! He and his mom talked to Bishop Galloway and he says all they have to do is pick a date. They are planning on having him baptized in Utah so all of their family can see it. It is so exciting. To help get him ready we are just reteaching the lessons again to him going over the key points. We taught him the Restoration this week and with that I want to share 2 highlights. The first comes when we are starting with talking about God. I asked Conner who God is and he said Heavenly Father. Right I said and then I asked him if Heavenly Father was a spirit or if He had a body. Conner then proceeded to totally out smart me and said that Heavenly Father has a body and a spirit. I then said it was Elder Jones' turn to teach. hehe. 8 year olds are smart. They aren't perfect though. My redeeming moment came when I asked Conner what the name of our church is and he got the first part right, but instead of saying Latter Day Saints, he said latter day satans. HAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHA!!!!! I died laughing. It was just after he told us about Joseph Smith and his mom said that she is very proud of him for remembering all of these truths. It was great.
This week we got to teach Sister Lawrence again! It has been awhile but she said she wanted to meet again. We set up a lesson and, drum roll please, Brenda came with us! She is now doing missionary work with us. She was great. She was just constantly talking about how great all of this stuff to do with the church is and said that she would sit with Sis. Lawrence at church when we suggested it. Unfortunately something came up and Sis. Lawrence wasn't able to come, but we still had a very good lesson on the 10 commandments and following the prophet.
Brenda had us over for lunch (again) and we as well had a lesson. She loves to have us over it is so great. I love doing stuff with her. She is very good about letting us go when we need to so we are still being obedient! Exact obedience is very important and something I am always striving to do. We read with her the Learning and Serving in the Church pamphlet and taught her about how she could get a calling soon. We hope she will she would be very good at whatever they ask her to do. This coming Saturday is our Why I Believe fireside and she is going to speak at it! She is going to do some great missionary work there. It's so great getting to know her and become her friend. She has become very special to me. I will try to get a picture with her this coming week.
We as well got to go on exchanges this last week. I went with Elder Garcia into his area in Carson and Elder Coronado went into our area with Elder Jones. It was a fun day with Elder Garcia. The theme was "Exchanges Gone Wild". It started with some miscommunication between them and us where we drove into Carson and they drove into Dayton so we then had to drive back. We got home later than we were supposed to but it was due to an accident so we were ok. The next morning Elder Garcia and I had left the phones in the car by accident in the rush to get home so didn't have an alarm and got up at 7:10am. Not my most proud moment, but again, it was an accident. The rest of the day was really fun though. We got a phone call from someone in Utah and asked us to go see someone in the hospital who needed a blessing. She was a less active lady in the area and was going to have surgery so requested a blessing. When we showed up we arrived with only 10 minutes to spare before the operation. Elder Garcia gave her a beautiful blessing and it said many things not related to the surgery fully. We contacted 4 other referrals and found a bunch of pineapples. It was a really fun exchange.
I have been learning to really focus on Christ. The purpose of the Sacrament is to help us always remember Him. If we do, we become more like Him. Every time I am frustrated or angry, I am trying to remember Him. I've found it really makes a difference. It helps you remember who you really want to be through those irrational emotions. I testify that He is the only way to true happiness and back to our Heavenly Father.
Love you all
Elder Kynan Sorochan
Elder Coronado
Elder Garcia
October 3, 2016
Hey everyone! Did you all love conference? Did you watch it? Do you know what it is? Just kidding :D (but really if you don't email me I will tell you) I loved all the talk on the Plan of Salvation, Repentace, work, and Joy. Very inspiring. I can't wait till I can read it all again. Never have I been so motivated to do so. It's awesome. Ok first a funny story that was told in Sacrament Meeting a couple weeks ago.
Bro. Soderborg was speaking. This is a true story I promise. He is the first councilor in the Bishopbric. He told us about how one day he lost his church keys and could not find them anywhere. One night, Bro. Soderborg had a dream where he was at his mother's house in a particular bedroom. In the dream he reached up on top of a bookshelf and found his keys. The Bishop was planning on getting new keys, but Bro. Soderborg told him to wait. That weekend Bro. Soderborg went to his mothers house and went to that particular bedroom. He reached up onto the bookshelf and there he found a card saying "Happiness is knowing where your keys are." XD
This last week had some cool experiences. Firstly is one with Julie. She is getting ready to be baptized on October 22nd. We are very excited for her. She has had a few baptism dates that have fallen through in the past, but we feel that she is ready to try again. Her biggest obstacle is tithing. She is not very well off and she doesn't know how she can pay it. She can hardly keep up with life, and she does not want to commit to it if she can't do it. She wants to be baptized so badly, but with all her health problems it is a true test of faith. In the last couple months that is what we have been trying to teach her, is faith that she will be taken care of as she does pay her tithing. This last Thursday we went on splits with the Dayton ward and I got to go with Bro. Kondik, am member of only a year and a half. He has such a powerful testimony and was perfect for our lesson with Julie. He testified of trusting the Lord and having faith that even when we don't know what will happen, it will all work out ok. I shared the story of the widow and the mites, and another of when a lady gave the prophet her and her sons last meal, and was blessed with much food. I remembered those two stories and then asked Julie if she would pay her tithing no matter what. She said yes, but that it all seemed kinda scary. I told her that life is sometimes like that, but promised her she would be taken care of. I pray she will cling to her faith in Christ and that He will take care of her.
Lastly of an experience on Saturday. We had a lesson with a less active member named Cody. He is a referal from Bishop Galloway of the Comstock ward. He wanted us to go see Cody, but warned us he might be rude to us. We didn't care and went to see him. When we met him he wasn't rude at all and we set up an appointment. At the appointment this Saturday, we were talking and found is a really good guy. Very friendly. As we were getting to know him his fiance who isn't a member got home from work. She briefly went into the kitchen, but then came right back and sat down next to Cody. We asked Cody if he would be interested in coming back to church, and he said yes and his fiance Brittany was just as receptive. We thought excellent and proceeded to teach the Restoration lesson. Both were engaged the whole time. Brittany later said she has been wanting to go to church, and is very interested in ours since Cody's family is very LDS. She said she would read and pray about the Book of Mormon, and when I committed her to be baptized, she said yes! She is very interested in coming and will be very supportive with Cody in coming to church! We are super excited to keep teaching them since they are so receptive and have seemed like they have been waiting for this for awhile! I love miracles! This truly is one. It all just sort of happened and it is all so perfect! There will be obstacles, but they are so ready and prepared.
I love this gospel and this work. Thank you for all your prayers. Have a wonderful week!
Love you,
Elder Kynan Sorochan
Zone activity
Zone conference
September 26, 2016
Hello wonderful people!
Life here is fantastico! Ok so I ran short on time today so it is not going to be a very long email but I hope you will forgive me.
First off I wanted to talk about our new investigator April. She is a interesting lady with a long back story. Long story short, she has been humbled by the drastic change in lifestyle her family has had due to her husbands drastic decline in health, and is now ready to receive the gospel. We had a great first lesson with her where she was just feeling the Spirit a lot and while we committed her to read the Book of Mormon she told us without reading it that she already feels it is true!!!! For the first time on my mission after she said that I invited her to be baptized. She said is absolutely wants to! It was great! We are meeting with her again on Tuesday.
I think I have mentioned Chuck before in my emails but we had another lesson with him this week. First we did some service for him and the Workman family in Dayton ward came to help! They are such an amazing family. Sister Workman just recently was called as the Relief Society President and is already doing a spectacular job and their oldest son comes out with us a lot. We got to have their oldest and his brother sit in on the lesson and they both did some great testifying. They are going to be great missionaries. Chuck will take some work. He has studied so many different religions, but says that ours and some Hindu religion come closest to what he feels is the true religion. Interesting right? He is now reading the Book of Mormon again and praying about it. He says his answer on it's truthfulness hasn't come yet, but he is getting the prompting to keep reading. Perfect. We invited him to be baptized when he knows these things are true, and he said that if he learns that this religion is the true one, he will 100% convert and be baptized. Excellent!
Brenda is progressing as well. She is all the way to Helaman in the Book of Mormon and she has backtracked once too. She is reading so much it is great! She loved General Conference for the women's session. We asked a member to take her and they all had a blast. She is very excited for this coming weekend of General Conference, and she has a meeting with the Bishop next week so she can talk to him about going to the temple. AND she is doing family history work. She is our golden teaching person. (since she is baptized, she isn't an investigator, but she still is amazing)
Hope you all have a wonderful week and love General Conference!
Love,
Elder Kynan Sorochan
Dinner with Sister B
Dinner with Sister B
September 19, 2016
Hola! Como Estas? I'm practicing my Spanish because this week we go on exchanges! Our district leader is a Spanish missionary and I (finally) get to leave my area and go to his! He is training so he is staying in his area and his companion Elder Garcia will come here with Elder Jones. Since we are doing splits with the Dayton ward Elder Jones is getting some good experience leading missionary work when he goes. For those who don't know "splits" are when members come and go do missionary work with the missionaries. The missionaries normally stay in their assigned companionship, but can split up when with members. The members become their companions. Elder Jones this last week got us 2 lessons set up for this coming week from splits on Thursday. He nailed it! He is such a fantastic companion. I swear he trains me more than I train him even though I am "officially" his missionary trainer. Funny how that works. Ok funny story for the week.
I am apparently good at locking the keys in places that I can't get back into. Yesterday I locked the keys in the library. We were about to go to dinner with the Peterson clan in the Comstock ward. The oldest bro. Peterson (sometimes called old man Peterson) has 3 kids and their families that are living in Dayton. The odds of that are amazing. No one chooses to live in Dayton. Dayton chooses you. I've met only about 2 people that have moved here because they wanted to. The rest are here mostly because of work. Well Bro. Greenlee our ward mission leader in Comstock is a member, he married in. We were going to have a meeting after dinner so we stopped by the church to make a copy of the teaching progress record for him. As we were leaving I found I didn't have the keys with me. I had left them on the table in the library, which had now closed and locked. Our keys to open the library were now in the library. Now we do have an extra set, but those are in the apartment, the keys to which are still in the library. We called the younger Bro. Peterson and he came and saved the day. He went and got Bishops keys so that we could get into the library, get our keys, and go to dinner. Fun Sunday nights.
Now lets talk about Brenda, or Sister B as she likes to say in her texts :D Sister B is just awesome. She loves meeting with us and fed us dinner yesterday. She fed us steaks, crinkled fries, corn, and cantaloupe. AND lemonade too. So good. We are teaching her the lessons and are trying to build a desire to go to the temple. It is working. Yesterday was stake conference and there were 3 talks I believe either about or discussing the temple. Right after the closing prayer she says that she wants to go to the temple! As soon as we find her records and have her talk with Bishop about what he thinks she still needs to learn, she will be set to go do baptisms for the dead! She is just so great. Where in the world did she come from?
We got a new investigator this week named Chuck. I think I have mentioned him before. We have done some service for him and were able to this week have some time to have a sit down lesson with him. It has been 2 years since he has last met with missionaries. The missionaries before either were having trouble explaining things to him, or the Spirit has really been working with him. He has a problem with faith, and this week as we talked about faith he was really seeming to get it. We think so anyway because he said that the way we were explaining it is really making sense. His thing is he doesn't like blind faith. We used Alma 32 to talk about how we don't have only blind faith, but that faith is what we have that leads us to knowledge. We start with a belief, then have faith, or act on that belief, and it turns into knowledge. That really made sense to him. When we left he thanked us for the help we have been giving him in service, but that what he really wants us here for is to teach him. HOW GREAT IS THAT?!?!?!?!?! It is great.
Love you all. There are so many miracles in my life right now, it just takes diligence, faith, and patience. Keep being great all of you. Thank you for your prayers. Keep praying for missionary opportunities. The scriptures promise us that as we pray, they will come.
Love,
Elder Kynan Sorochan
