Theme for the week: I'm Tired

January 19, 2016

Hello my good friends! A little bit of a change of scenery this week emailing on Tuesday instead of Monday. It seems like this country loves to have national holidays on Mondays. That's just one of many interesting things we do here in America. That along with the use of inches, feet, yards, miles, pounds, fahrenheit..... just to name a few. I am still confused to this day why we do all that dumb stuff. But, its the world we live in and their ain't no changing it. Maybe the gospel can change it. Idk, we shall see what the Millennium has in store for us. Fingers crossed that we use the metric system.

Anyway, this week was just a big week of Elder Ericson being tired. Holy cannolie. I don't really know what happened. I didn't feel top notch for a few days and that really seemed to throw my sleep patterns off quite a bit. I didn't even really get super sick or anything. I just had a little bit of a stuffy nose, and it wasn't even that bad. But it sure threw me for a loop. I have been really working on having good preparation in the mornings and that didn't happen at all this past week and personal study was me sitting there dozing off for a good 45 minutes. And then comp study consisted of reading 3 pages from the white handbook and then eventually me going to lay down for a little nap in my bed. But, I survived. I call Elder Stringham every Monday to account for my efforts on my visions/goals/plans and last night I got to tell him all about failing every day for the past week. But, we got each other pumped up to straight kill it every single day this coming week and even have a mid-week accounting on Thursday. And so far I am 1/1 for the week! I went to work this morning and did real good.... until the last 15 minutes of personal study... but I'll get through it by the end of the week! And when we both go 7/7, "We're making waffles!" (in Donkey's voice from Shrek). But since we don't have waffle makers we are just going to make pancakes and let each other know how it goes with them. So, stay tuned to hear about my pancakes next week!

 

We had a pretty sweet Zone Conference on Thursday in Abilene. The leaders of the church realize that the reason why most people go inactive after they are baptized is because they weren't fully repented before they were baptized. And they realize that Preach My Gospel has little to nothing about teaching repentance, so we are having a world-wide missionary broadcast tomorrow to hear about that. And in preparation for that we had a killer zone conference about repentance! Elder Stringham instructed about the "culture of the mission" and how we are going to change our mission culture to "teaching repentance". Good stuff there. I don't think he was planning on using his "culture of the mission" instruction to put an emphasis on teaching repentance, but he made it work. And then usually President Heap has a little more than an hour for his instructions and sometimes an hour and a half, and he said that he had an hour and a half worth of material... but he went over two hours I believe with a killer instruction about repentance! His style of teaching us isn't to teach us how we need to teach repentance to other people or whatever the topic may be. What he does is he teaches us the doctrine and principles of the topic to increase our knowledge of it and help us apply it ourselves, and then in turn have us be better able to teach it to others. So he gave a killer big long instruction about repentance to help us understand it better for ourselves and become more converted to the process of repentance, and then as we continue to study it and learn repentance more fully for ourselves we will be better be able to help others repent. I think his style is genius. I think a lot of leaders would teach us how we need to teach repentance to others and how we can incorporate it into our teaching, but all he did was help us have a better understanding for ourselves. Ultimately I think it is a much better approach because "faking it until you make it" doesn't work effectively. He has done it time and time again with the Book of Mormon, the sacrament, and other topics. And I have greatly improved my ability to teach those topics to others because of I have gained stronger testimony for myself through his instructions and then applying what he teaches us. Good man he is!

 

Mac is all ready to be baptized on Saturday! We were able to have a sweet visit with him on Saturday and we continued our reading and also were able to talk about the sacrament, repentance, and the baptismal covenant. Sis McMunn told us that he seemed to greatly appreciate learning more about the sacrament and apparently he is excited to be able to take it with his baptismal covenant! And we were able to teach him some sweet stuff about the sacrament because of good ol' President Heap and applying to ourselves the things he taught us about the sacrament! Perfect example. Anyway, Mac had his interview on Sunday and is good to go with that. Sis McMunn texted us last night and said that she thinks that he is getting excited, and so I responded "He would never admit it... but he is!" in which I got the response, "You have gotten to know my man so well"! hahaha Mac seems to not have any emotions about his baptism, but its so there underneath his stubbornness!

 

Now for a fun story about the people of the world and how ridiculous they are. On the way to the McMunn's on Thursday we stopped to talk to this man. He is a Vietnam vet and a retired psychologist. Long story short, for about 15 minutes of conversation I wasn't able to get through any of my thoughts and explain things like I wanted to because this man kept cutting me off. And then, right at the end, we both started talking at the same time but I decided I was finally going to get my word in so I just kept talking and got my word in. And of course, this dude responds, "Well see now you're just pissing me off! You need to learn to listen to people and not cut people off. The most important person is who you are talking to, and you seem to be more worried about what you have to say that what I have to say." Ok sir. You are right. I apologize for politely letting you cut me off for the last 15 minutes and asking you questions that were all about you and nothing about me and letting you talk and talk and talk only to get told that I need to not cut you off and spend more time listening to you. I apologize from the deepest vessel of my heart. I truly do. Because that was just wrong of me. It truly was. Hmmmm.... people these days. But in all reality I got a good laugh out of it!

 

Well my good friends. It is time for me to bade you farewell! I love y'all and thank you for all the love, support, and prayers on my behalf! Hold to the iron rod! The fruit of the tree of life is too delicious to not partake of!

Much Love,

Elder Reed Ericson

Is This Really Happening?!!!!!

January 11, 2016

Hello my good friends and family! What a CRAZY week this past week was! And it was really only made CRAZY by one thing... but that one thing is worth a lot of CRAZYNESS!!!!!!

 

MAC MCMUNN IS GETTING BAPTIZED ON THE 23RD OF JANUARY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I kid you not!!! Now, y'all probably don't have a clue how big of a deal this is, but let me allow you to understand a little more. So, lets go back to basics and cover the Mac story. Mac is 81 years old. He married his wife, who is a member, when he was 29 years old. If you do the math, that technically makes Mac a 52 year investigator! He went to church off and on with his wife throughout the years, including paying tithing and all that fun stuff for many of those years. But, he would never get baptized. About two years ago a very bold sister missionary decided she was going to get on Mac's case in accordance to the plan Mac's wife gave her. So at dinner one night the sister asked, "What's your problem, Mac?" in a very bold, confrontational way (from what I've heard). Well, Mac met with the sisters for quite a while but never would get baptized no matter how close the sisters claimed he was on the teaching records. Well, they put elders in the area and Mac stopped meeting with the missionaries for a time. Three months before I got here two elders white-washed into the area and started to visit with Mac and try to get him moving along. In the last two months since I've been here we have made some serious progress with Mac. And by "we" I mean the Lord. After a couple BOLD lessons in which we really threw at him the principle of being baptized with faith that it "could be true", he felt pressured by us and his wife. It was a good thing, because it really made his think seriously about it all. But we decided that we needed to back off a little bit and let him breath.

So for the last couple weeks we have just been reading the Book of Mormon with him and help him understand everything and learn principles from what we read. Last Thursday we had a typical visit with him in which we read and he was still on his, "I guess I'll be baptized........ but I need answers before I do it!" type of comment making. Typical Mac. Teasing us with excitement, and then crushing our souls down to the floor. We returned on Saturday for another visit and something happened between Thursday afternoon and Saturday afternoon! He said that he didn't receive the answer that he's been looking for for all these years, and he didn't say why or what changed his mind. But he said that after all these years he might as well just do it! So I sat there waiting for his typical follow-up comment that crushes my soul. But he just sat there for like 10 seconds staring at his wife while not a single heart was beating in the room, and then he just said, "I guess". Holy cow!!!!!!!! I never thought that I would be so insanely excited and surprised to hear the two words "I guess" in my life! So he told us that we can go ahead and start planning everything for his service and get an interview scheduled for him! HOLY COW!!!!! I STILL CAN'T BELIEVE WHAT IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW!!!!! They say that the chapel could legitimately be completely filled with people for his service. I am literally basically shaking right now typing this because I think its finally hitting me that its happening. Oh my gosh. I am so incredibly jacked about life right now!

 

Along with this all. I have had many feelings of inadequacy the last couple days. I question why God allows me to be a part of such amazing profound experiences in the lives of others. I have been thinking back to my time teaching Mark in Odessa and the experience that we all had witnessing his once in a lifetime baptism. And now my experience with Mac. I don't know why God allows ME, an average 20 year old boy from Kuna, Idaho, to be a part of something so spectacular and eternally significant. I don't know why he sent me to Odessa when he did. And I don't know why he sent me to San Angelo when I did. He very easily could have sent someone else more qualified to teach these people and be a witness of their first step of covenant making. But for some reason that I know I will be eternally thankful for, he sent me, Elder Ericson. Maybe I will learn one day why it was me, but for now I am content with being thankful for the unknown!

 

On top of all this, I have been getting to be a softy the last week or two. I have had multiple times that I have been reading something in the Book of Mormon and almost started crying after reading something that didn't even seem to be significant at all. Its been weird. I've just been getting hit with these walls of spiritual emotion. Even writing in my journal has become more difficult to make it through while trying to stay manly. I don't know what's going on. But I like it! Hahaha I am saying that in my head quoting Elder Nebeker.... which you obviously weren't there for so I am probably the only one laughing right now. Oh golly, I totally just ruined this whole paragraph by adding in what is going on in my world at this very moment. Oh well. All in all, I think its all just a result of a rapidly growing testimony. I don't know how it just keeps on growing and growing, and then after over 14 months of steady constant growth it just has a huge splurge of growth. Doesn't make sense. "But I like it!"

 

Other than good ol' Mac..... we had a sick week all lined up but we had some cancelled appointments with some solid people, so some things that would have made this past week even better fell through. But, the whole "Mac is getting baptized for real" thing was enough for me to just be amped about life.

 

Other than that fun bunch of information I don't have much else for y'all. Oh yeah, I totally do. I have added very nicely to my road-kill picture collection. I added another possum, my first raccoon, and my first three deer! Yes, you heard that right! My first THREE deer!!!!! All in the span of about 5 minutes! There was a stretch of road with just fields to the side on the edge of the city that was a total goldmine for dead deer!

 

Now that I've ended this on an extremely disgusting note, I will discontinue telling y'all about my road kill excitement and leave y'all with a few nice words! I LOVE YOU! It truly is a wonderful life that we have the opportunity to enjoy and I hope and pray that y'all will have a particularly wonderful week!

 

With much love,

Elder Reed Ericson

Beast Week!

January 4, 2016

 

Hola mi familia y amigos! I have been on an espanol tear the last few days so bear with me. I may throw in some good ol' Tex-Mex into this email to spice things up a little!

So, as you probably don't remember from last week, this week was just a waiting game. Transfers were supposed to be on Tuesday but because of the storm the said that they were hoping to get them done by Friday. Then they changed it to Tuesday (tomorrow), and then changed it to Saturday. It seemed like every day we were getting a text telling us a new plan. So they ACTUALLY happened on Saturday! We basically had our 7 week transfer last transfer however last week was considered Week 1 of this current transfer which will be the 7 week transfer. So we are a week in already even though we spent week 1 with our old companions/areas and still have another 6 weeks ahead of us. So that's the situation down here. Anyway, while a lot of the mission didn't get out of their apartments until Thursday or Friday we went out and worked in pleasant weather all week! It was a little chilly at times but I went out without a sweater a time or two! Rock on, San Angelo! And kid you not, I taught more lessons this past week than any other week of my mission! Ok, that's a lie. I've taught the same amount of lessons twice before. Once in Odessa and once in Sweetwater. And if you're wondering what this staggering number is, don't get some crazy number in your head. A lot of missionaries would consider it a bad week for them, but it was dynamite for West Texas! We taught 10 lessons!!!!!!! Holy cow! It was the craziest thing ever! This was literally the third time in over 14 months of serving and laboring here in West Texas that I have taught double digit lessons! One thing that not being a high numbers mission does for you is that it really teaches you that it is NOT about the numbers. Like, I don't give a hoot what my numbers look like. I care about the service that I put into trying to help others! So, 10 lessons really isn't a big deal.... but still. Heck yeah. It was interesting though, because I was pretty checked out for most of the week, not gonna lie. When the transfer is supposed to be over and a new one is supposed to start, but it basically hasn't, you just kinda start checking out. So, the week in all reality was kind of a struggle, but we did some good work.

On Saturday I had the privilege of making the trek up to Abilene so that I could be the designated driver for Elder Christensen (who doesn't have a TiWi card) and Elder Ramos (from the Dominican Republic and has no drivers liscence). That was a sweet trip! That drive between San Angelo and Abilene is probably the best looking drive between two cities in the entire mission! You drive through lots of rolling hills and there are lots of trees along the road that quite honestly make me extremely claustrophobic after getting used to driving through barren land. There are more trees in San Angelo than anywhere I've had before, but its not like its a lush forest. Most of the main roads and the loop have no trees along them. Its mostly just the neighborhoods. So, taking a long drive through rolling hills with trees on both sides of you really throws you for a loop! But I enjoy it every time! We were waiting in Abilene for like 45 minutes at the church and they had a couple baptisms going on one right after the other. But, this wasn't your normal baptism. The baptismal font looked like it was filled with coffee. Like, it was straight brown. So gross. Apparently there was some flooding that messed up the water system or whatever it was and it caused the water that filled the baptismal font to be legit brown. You couldn't even see the bottom of the tank it was so dark. Ewwwwwww YUCKY. Anyway, the trip was fun all in all. I got to chill with Elder Christensen for like 6 hours in total. He's a funny guy. And its quite funny because his Spanish still stinks and his new comp doesn't speak very good English so its just a jolly good time with them! And then after being with them all day my new comp, Elder Andrus, arrived. Pretty sweet day. Oh yeah, when I was with Christensen and Ramos killing time until my comp got here we stopped by my good friend Hector's house to visit him. Holy cow, he was drunk alright and I was dying laughing for 15 minutes. And when he's drunk and we talk to him about anything spiritual he gets hit by the spirit insanely hard. Whether its actually the spirit or not is questionable. Highly questionable at that. But he just stomps his feet and grabs the table and says "Whoa! That's beautiful! Just beautiful!" Hahahaha its a good time! And then as I said the closing prayer I heard him move so I looked up and he was leaned forward and threw his hands in the air and had his eyes closed with the funniest look on his face! Oh my goodness.... he is a nutcase! So funny! But he is definitely one that you have to visit before lunch time or he is too drunk to even have a productive visit with. But then again, he'll give you a good time if he is drunk. So you win some and you lose some either way.

We picked up a LEGIT new investigator this week! He has been taught a few times before and was nearly baptized but things just happen each time. His name is Andrew. He is 24 years old a just a straight homie. He called us up on Friday morning and said that he had a really bad (sinful) night the night before, which was New Years Eve, and that he was ready to change his life and go the whole way this time. Having visited with him a couple times now he has really had a lot of experience with learning and growing through experiences through the Atonement. He is just straight legit. And he remembers almost everything from being taught before so after teaching him the restoration last night, he asked if we could teach the Law of Chastity the next time we came! Hahaha so I am pretty hyped to teach the Law of Chastity for like the second or third time on my mission to my good friend Andrew! Mac is still getting along. He set the date himself of January 23rd to be baptized. So we're just hoping and praying that the Lord gives him what he's looking for by then. Our good and old friend Sam has been interesting lately. We've had some pretty interesting visits to his place. But he really wants help understanding repentance and also he wants to quit smoking so we are planning to help him with that. So all in all, we've got some sweet people and some interesting people right now. We shall see how it all plays out!

We had some bomb food this past week as well. On Monday we had some bomb beef stroganoff! Holy cow! Usually that stuff is "eh" but this stuff was divine! Not your typical beef stroganoff! And then on Thursday we had some bomb roasted ham & cheese sliders on King Hawaiian rolls doused with butter. Holy camolie. I think I was on the verge of heart attack but I ain't even mad about it and don't regret it one bit!

Also, one last note. Thank you to all of you that sent me birthday/Christmas cards! It was much appreciated and I felt so much love during the Christmas season from friends and family! I don't have the time to thank everyone individually, but this is my mass thank you note to all!

I love y'all and hope y'alls new year starts off with a bang! Hold strong to the iron rod and press forward with steadfastness in Christ and let his grace change you this year!

Lots of Love,

Elder Reed Ericson

Christmas Week!

December 28, 2015

Hello my good friends and family! Well, I successfully made it through the week without dying. Which is a real concern for the people of West Texas right now! As you know, we had transfer calls on Saturday and I will be staying in San Angelo but will be receiving a new companion named Elder Andrus! However, West Texas is basically shut down right now. Apparently Amarillo got something like 4 feet of snow and Lubbock got something like 3 feet of snow. Don't know how legit that is, but I guess you could Google it. They say that New Mexico is in a "State of Emergency" and Lubbock is in a "State of Disaster". Or vise a versa. Whatever way around it is. However, I am down here in San Angelo where we got some gnarly weather yesterday that has left us with a little bit of slush and wet roads, which has shut the city down basically. hahaha Texans crack me up. We have sacrament meeting last for our ward and they sent us home after the sacrament was passed yesterday! Gotta love it! So while the rest of the mission is shut down this week we will continue on with our missionary work in our "old" companionships down here in San Angelo. Maybe one of these days we will get everyone shipped to where they belong. Its kind of a bummer though. Everyone else is getting sweet mission stories right now of being shut in by a blizzard in West Texas and the only story I get is doing missionary work with wet ground. Oh well, at least we get to work this week unlike everyone else! We at least have something to do! We shall see how the weather plays out for us in the coming days!

We had a sweet Christmas week! On Tuesday we took the trek over to Midland for the second annual Jingle Jam!!!!! It was a grand time! Holy cow! So much fun!!!!! The Jingle Jam is in three sections: Talent show, lunch, and then chapel talent/movie. The second I walked into the gym I was swarmed by people asking me to do something for the talent show. Elder Stringham came up to me and asked me to do a dance or something because not too many people were on the program and apparently the north half of the mission had a pretty boring talent show. So, I didn't have anything to do and couldn't come up with anything so I sat there content with not doing anything and was planning on just enjoying the show. Well, about halfway through the talent show they threw together a beat-boxing competition to get the energy level up since it was kind of dying out. Elder Stringham took over as the emcee because the normal emcee was in the competition. We got down to the final two beat-boxers and they told Elder Stringham that he needed to dance to the beats. So I yelled "DO IT ELDER STRINGHAM!!!!! DO IT!!!" and he responded by summoning me into a dance battle against him! Hahaha so after gathering a crew for myself and Elder Stringham gathering his crew we went at it! It was your typical father/son dance battle in front of 100 missionaries! In the end, after busting a few moves, Elder Stringham basically won because my name tag had flown off and he did a ceremonial "drop the tag" in front of me to end the battle. So, I think I lost...... but its hard to say. They never declared a winner. So we'll say it was a tie! Lunch time was beast! The Odessa 2nd Ward Relief Society always comes up big! I sat with all my Odessa peeps and some others and it was a good time. I miss my Odessa boys! They were a lot of fun to serve with and it was good to be reunited with them! Once we went to the chapel the performances started. Little did we know, the San Angelo zone had been signed up to sing "Angels We Have Heard On High". So we all found out that we were doing so when they announced it.... so it was a fail. We didn't practice at all, but taking that into consideration we didn't do too bad, I guess! And then after all the music we watched "Its A Wonderful Life". It was interesting at first and we were all severely confused, but we got it all straight and it ended up being a wonderful movie to feel the Christmas spirit! After the movie, President Heap blew my mind with some Christmas facts/information and then we had a good long mingle session before we all departed to our different areas! It was such a good time though! I'm going to miss the Jingle Jam next year!

Then the day after the Jingle Jam was pretty sweet too, kind of. After a regular day of work I embarked on an intense journey of 4 consecutive baptismal interviews! They were for Sarah (1st South's investigator) and her three kids. Sarah's interview was LEGIT! She is so fantastic! So prepared by the Lord and the gospel has had such a profound influence on her life! It was such a blessing to be the one to conduct her interview and hear her testimony and share with her a few words as well! Holy cow! What a blessing! Then her three kids were definitely interesting. The first one was her 10 year old daughter. That was regular. Besides the fact that I had to basically teach her all of the commandments. Then I interviewed the 11 year old son. That was actually an awesome interview. I got to see how big of an impact this has had on an 11 year old boy who is crazy and wild. But during the interview I had a couple pretty tender moments with the kid. He has been impacted so largely and positively by being taught by us missionaries! However, I had to teach him all the commandments just like his sister. And then after him I interviewed the 9 year old daughter who has ADHD. So, after 3 interviews I was getting pretty wiped out and then I had to interview another young girl with ADHD..... holy smokes. That was a patience tester. Plus, I had to, once again, teach her all the commandments basically. So, after well over an hour of interviews I was exhausted!!! But it was worth it! It was such a pleasure to be a part of their road to baptism and I am thankful to have been able to sit down with all of them and converse with them about it all! They were baptized a few days later on the 26th of December and it was a wonderful service! They had so many people there for the service and many many more wanted to come but were out of town for the holidays! Elder Cooper and Mangum did a dang good job with getting them involved with the ward and so many people are friends with them already! And then yesterday they were all confirmed in Sacrament Meeting (before they sent us home) and that was an amazing thing to be a part of as well as Sarah asked me and my companion to stand in for that! Once again, just like 4 interviews in a row, 4 confirmations was quite the feat as well. Brother Malit from the ward confirmed all 4 of them and I can't imagine what a blessing that was for him! Overall, it was an amazing experience to be a part of everything for Sara, Jonathan, Kathleen, and Julia!

Christmas was pretty good too! On Christmas Eve we were with Elder Mangum and Cooper playing Risk at about 9:00 when we decided we were just going to have a Christmas sleepover! So we went to our place and picked up all the stuff we needed and our Christmas packages and went and finished our game of Risk and went to bed. Then on Christmas morning we all woke up and placed the tiny little Christmas tree in the middle of the room and placed our presents under it and went to town opening them! It was so fun! We all felt like little children again! I am glad we did it with Cooper and Mangum too! That made it all that much better. They are the best! For Christmas breakfast we went to the Lunkley's for some crepes and then skyped at their place as well! Always a good time seeing the fam! However, after we skyped we were stuck at their place for another few hours because the other missionaries were here and there so we just sat and waited for them and then finally had Bro Lunkley take us home after 6 hours at their place. We are only supposed to be in a home for 3 hours, but they wanted us there more than they wanted us out so it worked out! Kind of frustrating though because we just had some miscommunication with the other elders. Then we went to dinner with the Crespo family. That was nice. Interesting, but nice. We left there by about 6:30 and then went and I laid on my bed and turned on some tunes and jammed out for like an hour and looked at some pictures and basically almost fell asleep. It was quite nice!

Other than Christmas festivities we actually were able to get some decent work in! We have been meeting with this old guy named Sam for a couple weeks and he is just your typical old lonely man who can't really grasp things real well. However he's coming along slowly. We've also been working with a couple others but nobody is coming along super well at the moment. Mac didn't get baptized this week obviously. He still has a ways to go. But his wife said that he is willing to set another date to work towards so he is just keeping the faith! The work this week should be interesting with it supposed to be transfer week but transfers not happening. So we shall see how it all plays out and see what work we can get done! But me and Elder Schroeder will be able to tear it up together for another few days! Also, funny note, Elder Schroeder is getting transferred all the way over the San Angelo 2nd South! Haha he is still going to be in my district so I will be able to bring him over for exchanges and tear it up with him in 1st North again!

Anyway, I hope y'all had an enjoyable Christmas week! I sure did! May the Lord continue to bless y'all in your many endeavors! God bless y'all!

With much love,

Elder Reed Ericson

Birthday Week!

Birthday Week!

December 21, 2015

Hello my friends! I know, I know... last week I said that I wasn't going to have p-day until Tuesday this week, but that was just a big miscommunication between the leadership so here I am on regular p-day! Boy oh boy, this past week was something else, I'll tell ya that much. Definitely had its ups and downs! And more specifically, started with ups and ended with downs.

 

The week started off well with a pretty rad district meeting on Tuesday. I pretty much just did tons of role plays/practice throughout. We I have a really young district and I realized that one skill that they need to learn early to benefit the rest of their mission is finding and more specifically just normal street contacting. I felt like the skill level in that aspect was a little low so I raked them over the coals with role plays and practice! It was a good time. I compared finding people to building a fire. Super cheesy, I know. But it worked. To build a fire you need some good logs (approach), some kindling (thought-provoking question), and then a spark (teaching/testifying) to ignite a raging fire! It isn't the best analogy, but it was the best I could think of. After district meeting we went on exchanges and so I went and tore up our area with Elder Mangum! Elder Mangum is the BEST!!!! He is such a beast missionary and such a good time! At the beginning of the exchange as we were biking away from our apartment he asked, "What do you want to work on today?" and I just replied "I just want to go to work!". And that is precisely what we did! We met some wonderfully pleasant people and ended up spending the entire afternoon in one area talking to so many people and having good conversations! Elder Mangum is the master at finding and just has a way of using the spirit of discernment to know what to say to people and what questions to ask. I don't know how he does it, but every person he talks to actually listens to us to a certain degree, which is insane. It was a good time. Lots of killer work to help our area out quite a bit! And then on Wednesday morning at 8:30 we went and raked and bagged 21 bags of leaves for someone! Holy cow, that was quite the chore for the two of us! It took us a good 2-2.5 hours to get done but we conquered! My hamstrings were shot however after our bagging all those leaves with our super effective bagging technique. Super effective, but not the most comfortable. Super solid exchange though. Probs one of the best I've been on!

 

With that exchange and all, we were tearing it up early in the week through Thursday. Lots of stuff going for us. Meeting lots of people, having some good lessons, making some good progress in our area, BUT THEN......... it hit. Everybody was dropping like flies. I woke up Friday morning and between the hours of 7am-9am I went from feeling fantastic to throwing-up. Turns out, Elder Mangum got hit as well at about 6am so me and Elder Mangum spent another day together wallowing in despair while our companions spent another day together. By early afternoon I had yacked three times and had it coming from both ends. And along with that my legs were super achy, my back hurt from lying in bed, my head hurt, and I was just super super fatigued. Elder Mangum was just as bad but wasn't yacking anymore. He got all his done with before he came over to hang with me. It was difficult to sleep because of the pain and chills and so I just basically laid there super uncomfortably all day long. I found out that the couch has more back support than my bed so I decided to sleep on the couch (don't worry, its a straight shot from my comps bed outside the door) and figured that along with taking some Nyquil would do the trick for me to have a good night. Well, by 1am the effects of the Nyquil were long gone so I woke up and was super uncomfortable, so eventually I got up to go to the bathroom and threw up again while sitting on the toilet. And then I had a repeat situation at about 5am. After that I took some more Nyquil and moved to my bed where I slept peacefully until about 10am minus waking up to the 6:30 alarm. I felt a little better on Saturday, which happened to be my birthday, but was still super tired and nauseous so we spent another day inside. I probably would have been able to make some visits if it wouldn't have been for having to either walk or bike to get places. So that pretty much put us in for the day. I was able to get some good sleep and rest however. I was able to make it out to our dinner appointment though, and that was legit. I didn't eat very much, but they understood. However, Elder Mangum tried to be a champ and power it down and it cost him big time as he was about to lose it for the next hour or so! Hahaha he was dying! He didn't mention it until we left but I could see it on his face! I felt bad, but I also thought it was funny!

We had dinner with the Peterson's and they are super legit! They are a young couple and he is a white boy from Idaho and she is from Sri Lanka! No joke! I have never met a Sri Lankan before until the other night! She is the funniest thing ever though! They had a Sri Lankan wedding in Vegas when they got married and they showed us the photo album of their wedding and it looked like the coolest thing EVER! Anyway, back to my sickness, I thought I felt good to go on Sunday, but then the longer church went on the more I had to second guess myself. Right before sacrament meeting (we have it last) I told Elder Schroeder that I didn't think I was going to be able to make it a go. So I stayed in again Sunday afternoon and got some more rest and felt better last night, but we had to get some weekly planning done since we didn't get it done on Friday. So that made three days in a row without going out to work. Which made our super awesome week into an ok week. Dang. I feel pretty good today though. Not 100% but pretty good. I told myself that I was never going to miss a full day of work unless I was super super sick, but then Friday did me in and then I just didn't feel up to biking/walking a round trip of probably 5 miles to make just a visit or two.

 

On the bright side, I think I lost some weight. The pants that I am wearing today usually have a nice snug fit to them and the second notch on the belt us usually perfect for a nice snug fit as well. But they are a little looser today than usual. And I think I may have lost a bit of chub from my face. So that's perfect timing because we have the Jingle Jam tomorrow and then a wonderful video chat with the fam on Christmas! So I will look slim and trim hopefully! Now I just have to keep it off!

 

Hmmmm, well, I'm 20 years old now. So that's cool. My birthday was a little uneventful so that blows but it could have been worse. I feel the exact same as I did when I was 19 so that's whatever. Maybe 21 will bring a new feeling of age and maturity. We shall see.

 

We may or may not have a baptism on Saturday. Its very largely up in the air. Mac is still going but its a long story. We are hopeful, but you never know with that situation. Also, Chase and Melody, who came to church my first week here, should be back in town today, so hopefully we can pick up where we left off with them. They were pretty solid. And then we have a number of other people who are pretty sweet who we've only taught maybe once so hopefully we can have the opportunity to teach them during this busy week!

 

Y'all are wonderful! Thank you for all the birthday and Christmas love you have sent my way! Keep the faith and fight the good fight!

 

With all my love,

Elder Reed Ericson

The Christmas Spirit is Kicking In!

December 14, 2015

Well hello my good friends! What a week its been down here in San Angelo, Texas! Its truly a wonderful experience to be alive during this Christmas season, isn't it!

Our week was pretty busy! To start off, we had interviews with good ol' President Heap on Wednesday morning! When we got there we sat down and I had a nice chat with Elder Stringham and Elder Young (you don't know him) about the one and only Sweetwater! All three of us served there for no less than 3 transfers so we all knew the place pretty well and knew lots of people. It was a fun chat being able to ponder the early days of my missionary service in possibly the most dear area to my heart! Man, nothing beats that place! Both me and Elder Stringham would love to go back there because we would do things so much differently now! We had no clue what we were doing but dang did we work hard day in and day out! And then Elder Cardon and myself obviously didn't have a clue what we were doing because we started off with a total of 3 months of experience between us. Anyway, my interview was alright. Nothing too special. We talked about the struggle to find people (which I feel is pretty typical for us state-side missionaries) and also about how God knows exactly what we are doing so there is no need to worry why the work isn't booming when you feel like you are putting forth effort to work hard and improve. It was a good chat. Nothing beats a nice conversation with Pres.

We actually did quite a bit of teaching this week! We shared a sweet Christmas message with a media referral named Gloria who ended up wanting a Book of Mormon, so that looks promising moving forward. We taught our good friend Hector a couple times. We were also able to teach the 3 baptism age children of Sarah who is being taught by the other set of elders and they will all be baptized on the 26th! That was a fun lesson teaching 3 kids.... hahaha we made it through! We taught the Plan of Salvation to them, and by we I mean I mostly did. Teaching 3 talkative kids is pretty difficult to try to manage with two different people trying to teach. So, I took that one and holy smokes, I had to pull out all the teaching skills and working with kids skills. Wow. We had some good laughs though. We had a couple members who are the primary teachers for them there with us teaching them and we'd make eye contact trying not to die laughing like every 2 minutes! Oh man, I love kiddos. They are such a hoot! We taught 3 lessons the day we taught the kids! I hadn't taught that many lessons in one day in MONTHS! It was actually pretty dang exhausting! I went to bed pooped out that night! 

 But, the most intense teaching for the week was with good ol' Mac! Holy cow!!!! Our lesson on Thursday was intense! Let me tell you a little more about Mac. He has been going to church for about 50 years now. He has made a lot of progress lately in actually diligently and sincerely looking for an answer. But, he just doesn't know how to feel the spirit. Yes, for most of you you'd think this would be easy to help him with. But you have never met Mac. But everything lately has been leading everyone to the knowledge that he needs to get baptized off of faith that things are going to work out for him and that he'll "receive his answer" after he is baptized. Everything is pointing towards it needing to happen like that. EVERYTHING. So, we read some sweet scripture with him on Thursday and had like a 2 hour lesson with his wife there finally. And after all that, apparently he said some pretty interesting/good things in his prayer that night that we were told privately, so I cannot tell you. His wife, who has been having stress and anxiety about him getting baptized for years said that she has felt at peace after that lesson about everything. But then, on Saturday we went over again, and it seemed like it had all died off. Ugh. The missionary life. It is just full of ups and downs. Apparently when Mac gets baptized his service will be held with a full chapel filled up with people! I feel pretty hopeful that it'll happen soon though. There are so many other things that are just pointing towards a fairytale story unfolding in front of us soon! I just keep praying hard for it to happen!

 Some other amazing news.... BLUE BELL IS BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So yeah, Blue Bell is back! Blue Bell, for those of you who don't know, is like the best ice cream on the planet that is only sold in selected places in the United States. It took forever to get over here to West Texas because they got it into all the bigger cities first, and the entire Western half of Texas has like 10 people in it so it took forever. So naturally I bought a 1/2 gallon tub of Cookies n' Cream today! They don't have all their flavors rolled out yet though so flavors were limited to maybe 6 or so flavors. Which is nothing compared to their normal array of flavors. Blue Bell is like a religion down here. Heck, I have pondered practicing Blue Bellism. Its one of those things where you can practice both Mormonism and Blue Bellism because all Blue Bellism requires of you is to eat a lot of Blue Bell ice cream. Which, that is kind of contrary to the word of wisdom so I'm not sure if I could practice Mormonism fully because I would be not following the principle of the word of wisdom to the "T".... but I'll figure it out.

Speaking of food, I had fried catfish last week. Dang good stuff. I ain't one to enjoy fish but I totally dug that stuff.

Also, one last note, which I'm sure the fam will be made aware of soon... but p-day won't be until Tuesday next week because we will be having the SECOND ANNUAL JINGLE JAM on Monday!!!!!!!!! I LOVE THE JINGLE JAM! I am so pumped! So yeah, I'll fill you in about that next week!

Well I hope y'all have an amazing week full of the spirit of Christmas this week! Its weird to thing that I will be 20 years old by the end of the week! Life is just flying by! God bless y'all!!!

 With much love,

Elder Reed Ericson

Feelin' The Christmas Spirit

December 7, 2015

Why hello my friends! Another week down here in San Angelo, TX! The weeks keep on flying by and the months are flying by too! It felt like the couple months before my year mark went a little slow but its true that once you get over the hump you just go cruising right down a hill! Its kind of freaking me out a little bit.

 

Anyway, it was an alright week down here. Nothing too special going on. Just the regular stuff. But I have thought about a few things this week that were pretty sweet. So, let me begin. As we were out doing our thing on Thursday-ish morning I started to think about the true joy of missionary work. And I realized that it is just being a light. I have found that the true joy of this work is being able to talk to people and bring a feeling of joy to them. I love when I have an opportunity to visit with someone and just talk to them about who knows what when you know that they need someone to just talk to. For example, this past week we had two examples of such service. Earlier in the week we stopped by Grandma Cats house. She let us in and we spent about 15 minutes of our day talking to her about her holidays and her family, and then also her cats. She took us on a tour through her very cluttery house and showed us all the hundreds of hundreds of cats she had decorating her house. This is a lady who has lived by herself for nearly 20 years now and I could feel a sense of joy coming from her just because of the fact that two young men visited her and put a smile on her face. Did we teach her or share anything with her? No. But those were 15 minutes of our 8 hours of proselyting that were more than well used to be a light in someone's day. Another example was from Saturday. On Thursday evening we went and visited a man named Hector and, well.... he was super drunk but we taught him anyway. Super hilarious visit. We were having a good time with him! Anyway, we went back Saturday afternoon and he hadn't started drinking yet and was sober. Right from the get-go you could tell that he was just down in the dumps and it was pretty evident that that is his whole life. He lives alone, and his mother and him just fight every day. So, we sat there and talked to him for about an hour about this and that, made him laugh a few times, and were his friend and a light in his life. After about an hour we shared the Restoration with him and he definitely understood it a lot more than the previous time a couple night earlier. So that was good. But, a lot of missionaries would consider that a waste of time to sit and talk to this man for an hour before teaching him. But, I felt much satisfaction and knew I did my part as a disciple of Jesus Christ by taking some extra time to be a light in his life. I see a lot of missionaries that are too focused on the work that forget to stop and take a minute to think about what this is all about. Its a ministry, not a business. And I know that my mission has been the amazing experience it has been because I've focused on being a light in people's life. So, that is what I have had on my mind this week and realized that is the reason for this experience being so wonderful!

 

Anyway, another thing that has been prevalent to me this week is very simply the New Testament and how it just shows that the church is true! Good heavens! I feel like every day during personal study I read scripture after scripture in the New Testament that are just right on! My goodness. The Epistles of Paul just preach to the truthfulness of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints! Having a knowledge of the restored gospel also is a big part in being able to understand what is being taught by Paul. There are doctrines that he teaches that are clear to me because of what I have been taught about them previously and so those scriptures only confirm what I have been taught! Ugh, its so dang good. I have a cow every day during companionship study going on about what I read concerning the Epistles of Paul! Its a good time.

 

We were able to attend the San Angelo 1st Ward Christmas Party on Saturday morning! It seems like most of the wards down here are going to morning breakfast parties instead of the evening ham dinners. Both Odessa wards were doing that and it seems like that is the trend in San Angelo as well! It was pretty awesome because it was something different than the same old same old ward Christmas party that we've all been to a million times! I definitely wish I could have been at the Odessa 2nd Ward Christmas party this year because this ward is just so dang big that we were just kind of there. In Odessa we would have been a part of the party! But I can't complain. It was an hour and a half on a Saturday morning and I got free breakfast that was actually pretty dang good. But that's something to think about for anyone who is a part of a ward council for the coming years... a morning ward Christmas party with breakfast and pajamas!

 

Also, another random note. I realized that my legs were getting big again this week. I have been having a little bit more difficult time with my slim fit suit pants and also I realized that I can power up hills like a champ again like I did in Sweetwater. Biking in Odessa wasn't quite the same leg building exercise because it doesn't take much effort to bike on extremely flat terrain. So, that's both a plus and a negative. A plus because I am getting stronger legs but a negative because my suit pants are getting a more restricting in the quads when I sit down or tie my shoe or lift my leg up for anything. We'll see what the future holds for my legs and my pants.

 

We were able to teach a few lessons this week. We continue to visit with our eternigator Mac. He is pretty much just on his own timing now. There really isn't much we can do to help him out besides be there to help answer his questions from what he read in the Book of Mormon and discuss things. His teaching record is like, way too long. Like, it shouldn't even be allowed for one person to be taught as much as he has. We also were able to teach Hector, who I mentioned earlier. Our first lesson he was super drunk so it was just a hoot and a half talking with him and joking around with him. And he obviously didn't recall anything or understand anything so we just taught him the same thing a couple days later and it was actually a pretty good simple lesson. Hopefully we can keep catching him at sober times and that he'll actually have the ability to comprehend things. He is a super nice fella and he needs some hope! We also went over to take the sacrament to this old guy in the ward that hasn't been to church in a while because of some health stuff. I think he is forgotten about by the ward so we took the initiative to get it approved by the bishop to take the sacrament to him after he mentioned that it would be nice earlier in the week to us. Also, this dude is a convert of about 10 years after a long time visiting with the missionaries. So, we walk into his house and he had a dang cigarette in his hand! So, no sacrament for you Brother Bobby! But we just talked to him and shared a scripture with him that led to another scripture that then let to yet another scripture and so on. Then after like 6 scriptures I put them all together for one super simple powerful message! And right after this he had a few friends/family show up and he let them in and said, "Sit down. These boys are warm!" and told us to continue! Not wanting to add even more scriptures to this already long line of scriptures we pretty much just reviewed everything and then left. The message really seemed to hit him hard though and help him out! He mentioned how powerful it was and how it really got him thinking about things! So that was sweet!

 

Well, I best be closing this puppy up! But I love y'all and hope y'all have a wonderful week as we get hot and heavy into this Christmas season! And if you haven't seen it already check out the secondary Christmas video! I'm sure everyone and their dog have seen the "A Savior is Born" but go to christmas.mormon.org and scroll down and watch "A World Without a Savior"! I think that it is way better than the other one and more powerful! Definitely gets you thinking! That has been the video that we've been sharing with people over the main video and have had a lot of good discussions with people about the topic!

 With all my love,

Elder Reed Ericson