Stormy Weather

These two pictures were taken 20 minutes apart!!

Just another week in paradise!

This week we did a lot of less active work. We drove out to Hillsboro
to see the Willis family. 
We went and saw Brother Robbins, another less active, he had been
working an adding an annex to his garage. But I guess when he was
working his ladder wasn't secure and it fell out from beneath him and
he landed on his side and broke his hip. I feel really bad, we told
him we'd come help him and we came once, but we didn't go back until
after he broke his hip. We are going to come back this week and see
how he is doing and to give him a blessing.

So last Sunday we committed Fabian to church, but we weren't able to
see him during the week because he works. He owns a taco truck that is
open from 8am to 10 pm, so he's pretty busy. But we stopped by his
truck Saturday and he said he would come to church! We had a really
hard time trying to find a ride for him, it wasn't until 9 Saturday
night that someone said they would give him a ride, and we were trying
for days! But  Sunday rolls around his ride goes to pick him up, and
his wife comes out and says he's not coming. So we'll see what's up.

Another person we've been working with is a guy named Mitch, I've
probably written about him before. But he is pretty crazy, we had a
lesson with him and he kept interrupting so it was hard to have the
spirit. But he told us he  going to come by our church, not sure why
he wasn't there Sunday, but again we'll see what's up.

We didn't get to see the Nichols family this week, we tried a few
times, but we were never able to see them. We got a pretty cool
referral this week, a mom of a recent convert from a different state.
We texted and she said she'd love to meet with us, we don't have an
address or anything, but hopefully we'll get to see them this week!

We ate pretty well yesterday. There was a baby blessing and the family
invited us over to eat afterwards. So we ate there at about 4, it was
chicken on rice. Then we have a standing dinner with another family so
we ate pulled pork around 6. Then one of my favorite families, the
Travellers, had us over for a steak dinner, that was at around 8. The steak 
was as big as my face, and brother Traveller always makes sure we get 
fed well. So even after we are full he keeps putting food on our plate, then he gave us doughnuts. I'm not sure if I've ever been that full before, so much food I couldn't fall asleep.

It was a sick week, it's the last week of the transfer. Hopefully I'll
get to stay and serve here for six months!

- Elder Andrasko

Great Expectations

Our Mini

Another week in the life of a missionary!

So this week was pretty good, we had some fun times, and some unexpected things happen. But overall it was a good week!

So Monday, P-day, was a good fun day. Elder Jordan and I decided we wanted to start playing tennis. So for a few hours we were at the court playing, and it was a ton of fun! Not a whole lot else happened on Monday.

Tuesday we had our district meeting, so we had to make the long drive out to Hutch. It's pretty lame, for any sort of missionary meeting we have, we drive at least half an hour. When we go to Wichita it is an hour. So it's lame being so far out of the way, but totally worth it to be serving in a small town like Mac. The only thing that it needs is a branch! One day. After district meeting we came back into town, someone said that if  we didn't have dinner plans then to call them. So we made a dinner appointment for that night, it was with the Travellers. They are one of my favorite people I have met my entire mission, I guess we didn't give them enough heads up about dinner, so instead of ribs we got steak. But hey I'm not complaining.

Wednesday we met a pretty cool college student. She was in our area book, but they dropped her as an investigator for a little bit because she was gone for winter break. So we decided to go try and meet her. Her name was Destiny, she was cool, but she is super busy and so it makes it hard to meet up with her. We've also been trying to meet up with a less-active family. But every time we set something up, they have to cancel of move the appointment because of work or something. So hopefully we can see them sometime soon.

So almost all of this week, the zone was talking about how the Wichita stake is doing mini-missions. Because Utah doesn't do mini-missions I will explain. Youth, 16 and older, sign up to become a mini-missionary, which means they go out with full time missionaries from Friday night to Sunday night. So anyway a few people in the zone were told that they were getting mini-missionaries. But we were in the clear. Friday we had a meeting down in Wichita, they had a big thing explaining what we need to do with the mini-missionaries. Then they told us that we were getting one! We had only a few hours notice! We had zero food for him, we barely had enough for us.

Anyway we went to go pick up our mini, the meeting started half an hour late. Then the Zone Leaders come up and say that ours didn't show up so we could leave. So we start driving home, 10 minutes from our house we get a call saying that we have a mini missionary and we need to pick him up! Luckily the Newton Elders drove him to Newton so we only had to drive an extra 20 minutes instead of 50.

Saturday with our mini missionary we went out to show him what missionary work is like. We had one set appointment and a day full of nothing. So we knocked on a bunch of doors! It was kinda fun? But at the end of the night we went to see Jim and Gayle and told our mini missionary, whose name is Thomas, that he had the lesson for today! He was kinda freaked out, but he told the restoration the best he could :) Jim and Gayle also had a visitor, and 8 y/o neighbor. She seemed a little interested, and liked the story of the restoration.

All in all it turned out to be a good, fun, week. We found out that Jeremy, the father of the family of seven, is a pastor. At the most popular church in town. So we aren't really sure why he is meeting with us. And the mother of the Nichols family, Theresa, got a job this week, which she attributes to the power of prayer! The Nichols family is cool, we just have to make sure they make it to church this week!!

It was a great week, with more to great things ahead!

-Elder Andrasko

Mighty Change of Heart

Hello from Kansas!

This week was meeting-filled! We had interview with our Mission President on Thursday, Zone conference on Friday, and General Conference on Saturday and Sunday! Needless to say it was a revelation-filled week!

We had some good lessons with the father of one of our families. We left him with a Book of Mormon to read last week, and when we came back he was about 20 pages in, and had some notes of questions for us. We were able to help him with most of his questions, but there are a few that we needed to do more studying for. It seems like he has a genuine interest, but he is also very rooted and involved in his current church. Hopefully as we continue meeting, he will continue to read and he will have a "mighty change of heart" and come to find out for himself.

We've been working a lot to try and find new people, which is always a struggle. But I think as we make and follow a plan we will see miracles! 

We met another cool family this week. Well part of a family, and actually we found them last week. But we were able to talk a little bit more, the Dad's name is Rod and he's pretty big, not fat. He's a really nice guy who has met the missionaries before. It's a little hard to meet up with him because he goes to Hutch every Tuesday and Thursday for his free mason meetings. I have been really surprised at the amount of free masons around, I don't think I even knew anyone part of the masons before I came to Kansas.

We started meeting with another family that I met a few months back. One of the boys and girls said they have been reading the Book of Mormon, and they've read quite a bit. But when they went to get it they couldn't find it, so I guess we'll see if they've actually been reading haha. But we finally met the dad, and wow he is huge, he might be the most muscular person I've ever met. Hopefully we can get down to Moundridge more often to see them.

Today Elder Jordan and I decided we wanted to play tennis. So that's our new p day activity, since there's not a whole lot else to do around here haha :).

Not a whole lot going on, but we'll have to go to Wichita again this week! That makes 4 times in 2 weeks.

Looking forward to this coming week!

- Elder Andrasko

Change the World

Transfer week!

We started off the week with just a bunch of goodbyes, a Elder Tolley was sad that he was only here for one transfer, but I am happy that I get to stay.

Wednesday we drove down to Wichita to do all of the exchanges and what not, and Elder Colemere was there! He told me that he is going home one transfer early to play soccer, so he only has two transfers left. So the end for him is coming up quick. Wednesday night we didn't have any plans so we go to a potentials house when we knocked on their door her mom came out and looked pretty annoyed at us. She asked us, "what are you doing here?" And as we told her what our purpose is as missionaries her heart was softened, and she invited us back to share more of our message. It's a family of three and they are super excited to learn more about the gospel. We are gonna see them tonight!

So a few weeks ago we offered some service for someone we saw working, and he accepted our offer. After we finished he invited us over the next week, well the next week he rescheduled for this last week. So we went over on Thursday for dinner and a lesson. Well they are a family of 7 and the father, Jeremy, has had a lot of experience in the church, he had friends growing up that took him to stake dances and seminary and stuff. We had an awesome lesson on the restoration!

So we were looking through the area book and there was a guy whose address was "royal ct, black truck" so we look up royal ct, and there isn't a street with that name anywhere near us. So we just type in r court, and we found a ranch court. So we decided to drive over there and see if we saw a black truck. When we got there almost every home had a car in the driveway, but none of them were black. But we decided to knock the whole street, and the second house we knock on was the guy we were looking for. We got a return appointment, and there was another house that we are going back to as well.

Elder Jordan and I are getting along pretty well, we are planning to make this the best transfer yet! There's not a whole lot to talk about this week. We had a lot of people bail on us, but we met a ton of potential. Like the family of three, the Nichols, and the family of seven, the Bowers.

Looking forward to an awesome transfer!

- Elder Andrasko

Stayin' Alive

Well this week is transfer week, and I will be staying in McPherson for another 6 weeks! But I will be getting a new companion, 3 companions in 3 transfers in 1 area.

This week was pretty good, we once again went to eat with the awesome Mexican family in Newton, we watched The Testaments with Jim and Gayle, and we met cool people.

So on Monday we got a call from a member in the ward who said someone who used to live in the ward needed help moving things. So the three of us went and helped move things out of storage into a moving truck, there wasn't a lot of stuff just a lot of spiders. But afterwards the Brother who called us took us out to dinner, we went to Applebee's! I got a burger. 

Tuesday we had District Meeting, the last one of the transfer! Also the last one we would have in Hutch, or so I thought, guess us and the Newton missionaries (who is in the same ward as us) are going to be in different districts for another transfer. But we had some trainings, did some role plays, and went to McDonalds! The rest of the day didn't go as well. We had our day pretty well planned out, but every single person we went to see cancelled! But we did meet this guy named Craig, he has talked to missionaries before and has a lot of the same beliefs that we do. But he also doesn't? He said he is in between believing creationism or evolution, but just doesn't know which he believes more. We had a pretty good lesson with him, and he said we could come back some time.

So Wednesday is our weekly planning day, which takes a little bit of time. So before we started that we went to try a potential that we met last week, but she wasn't home. So we came back, did weekly planning and eat lunch. Then we had an apartment inspection, that took a lot longer than I would've hoped. But the good news is we have a clean apartment. We didn't get a whole lot of time to do work before dinner, but we did help someone move a mattress! We then had dinner with our awesome Mexican family, then we went to our missionary correlation meeting, and since we were already in Newton we could physically go! Which is a first for me in this ward. We had around an hour to work when we got back from Newton. But we found two new investigators in that hour! One is an older woman named Juanita, the other is a guy named Brett. 

Thursday was a biking day! Since we had drove a TON of miles we decided we should probably save some for the rest of the month. But it was a good day to bike, even though my bike is not very good. We committed some people to come to church! We went and tried this former, Bill, who I've met a few times. He's progressed a little in the past so we stopped by. He told us his frustrations with the other churches he's been too, and so we showed him a video from our fancy "church tour" app, and he said he would come this Sunday! A little bit later we saw someone we knew down the road and we stopped to talk to him. Well he wasn't in much of a talking mood, he was drinking, but his neighbor talked to us. Her name is Wanda, and she is dating Craig (who was mentioned earlier). She's been going through a rough patch in her life, so we talked about Christ and his atonement, and she said she needed to be going back to church and would come to ours. Nice!

Friday was another biking day! We've been having really good weather, so biking has been really nice. So we went all the way to the north side of town, to try some less actives, and try to contact people around there. We met a kid who was real polite and accepted a copy of the Book of Mormon. So once we got to the north end of town, the people that we tried weren't home/didn't answer. So we rode all the way to the south end of town! We met a lot of interesting people, but they all have an awesome faith in Christ! We had set a time to have dinner and watch a church film with Jim and Gayle for Friday, but when we got there they had company. Well it was the lady who lived in the house before them and is keeping all of her stuff there. Jim and Gayle hardly have any room for their stuff, she was supposed to come and take her stuff this month, but she hasn't yet and this visit wasn't it either. So we moved dinner back a few hours to when she wouldn't be around. But when we went back we watched The Testaments. That was such an awesome movie, even though it was a little cheesy.

Saturday we had another rough start to the day, we couldn't catch anyone home! We went to see Bill, and he told us he wasn't going to come church with us! So after we tried everyone we had made plans for, we decided to go to Hillsboro a few hours earlier than planned. We were able to see the Willis family, our super awesome less active family. We had our lesson with hem at the park, her oldest son was visiting and she promised she would take the grandkids to the park. On our way back from Hillsboro we stopped in to see Mitch! Now this guy is crazy, and E. Tolley is the fourth missionary who has seen him with me (E. Smack and twice on exchanges). He said he'd come to church if we watched a movie with him, I agreed but told him we got to pick the movie! We didn't come to church though, so no movie! Then we saw Brandon, who I met in exchanges a few weeks ago. He told us he is getting ready to go down to a Disney Oklahoma to do some rock crawling! So we connected a little bit talking about Disney!

Sunday was a hoot! I love Sunday, especially going to sacrament meeting. Our ride for church picked us up at 7:45, which is pretty early. And I was exhausted the entire day! After church the sisters had a baptism! We had a part in the program, it's always super fun to see baptisms. 

Anyways this week was super awesome, transfers are coming up which means another opportunity to learn and grow. And learn how to get along with another companion.

Looking forward to a killer week!

- Elder Andrasko

The Circle of Life

Hello one and all! Here's the latest on my life!

This week definitely had its ups and downs, just like the rest of life. But it was great!

Three reasons why this week was great

1. We went bowling as a zone!
2. We had dinner with awesome Mexicans and played Mexican Bingo!
3. People came to church!

So just some cool things that happened.

Monday, just like I said above ⬆️, we went bowling! Afterwards we all went to the church and started a 4v4 basketball tournament. The way we played was when a team scored 3 baskets the loser would rotate out and the winner stayed in the court. There was only three teams so it was pretty exhausting, especially if you won multiple games in a row and hardly got a break. Monday night we did the real hard/exhausting work though, we did missionary work! Missionary work is great, but I've never been so tired all the time in my entire life. Anyways we didn't have many plans when it got to the end of the night, so we were kinda just walking, but we decided to try a door...Then just like that we find an awesome person who likes the message and is willing to get baptized. The bad news is that we haven't really been able to see her since. Her name is Zoie (Zoey spelled differently) she is 16 and a junior in HS, we had a return appointment so we could talk to her mom, Theresa, some more but it turned out not to be a good time for us to come by.

So this week like half of Kansas was on fire, luckily it didn't affect our area. But just to the west of us in Hutchinson the fires were out of control! As soon as I got out of the car, on the way back from Wichita on Monday, I could tell something was on fire. The winds were constantly blowing, with gusts up to like 50 MPH! So that didn't help the fires either. A few people lost their homes, and a lot of farmland was lost as well. So that's not good.

Tuesday was a pretty lame day, we had almost zero lessons. We weren't able to get into any houses to teach lessons until the end of the night. Even Gayle and Jim who we see every day we weren't to see, so it was kinda a rough day. But on the bright side we got bomb taco truck food from Tanner and Morgan! Also they decided to start attending institute! So that's cool. We also had our district meeting on Tuesday, which is in Hutch so the main road to get there was closed, because of fires, and the road the church is on was also blocked off. So it was a little more difficult to get there.

Funny story that happened on Wednesday. So we were signed up to eat with a less active family, and we had confirmed it the night before, but when we show up  the husband, was asleep and he hadn't told his wife that we were coming over! He worked from 11 PM - 11 AM and had gotten to bed just a few hours before we got there. So they just gave us a pizza instead. But I do feel bad for waking him up, that's why they are less active, because his work schedule is crazy.

So Thursday was my 1 year mark, crazy how quickly time goes. Seems like just yesterday I got to the MTC. I remember that I forgot my bag with all my scriptures and stuff in it at home! Fun times. So there was a Mexican family that had signed up to feed us Thursday, but all the other missionaries on Friday. So we weren't quite sure, if they meant to sign up for us on Friday too. So we tried getting into contact with them, but we had no working phone number for them. So through the sisters we were able to confirm that it was indeed Friday and that we were invited, even though we don't speak Spanish. Which was good that it got rescheduled, because gen we could make it to Family Home Evening! It was our best turn out yet, which still wasn't too great! But I had this great lesson all planned out on my iPad. But guess who forgot his stuff over at Jim and Gayle's house? Of course I would, I am pretty absent minded sometimes. So we had to kinda make something up, so we talked about using social media for missionary work! Which was also kinda my plan. But it worked out pretty alright, afterwards we tried to play a game of Mafia! But it didn't work out with so few people, still fun though.

On Friday we met this crazy lady who had no teeth! We had a pretty good lesson with her. We decided to walk to our next few appointments to try and meet more people, and because my bike is terrible. It was a good time, but it started getting chilly this week. Wednesday was 70 degrees, which maybe we got warmed by all the fires. But the temp started dropping. But walking still was fun! We got to meet some people, some nice, some not so nice. Later we went to talk to the parents of a kid we've talked to a few times, the dad wasn't too nice to us and told us not to come back. Darn. But that night was probably the highlight of the week! Dinner with a Mexican Family! They made awesome tacos! It was fun because they hardly spoke English and we know almost zero Spanish! And after the dinner they got out Mexican bingo, lotería, which was a good time. I won once! Then at the insistence of Brother Medina we took lots of pictures.

Saturday we met a few cool less actives. One of them loves hunting, you could say he is obsessed. And after talking for a bit he brought us some deer summer sausage with cheese and jalapeños! And it is pretty good. Another less active we met asked where we were from, and after he heard I was from Sandy he said his dad lives in White City, and that he went to high school at old Jordan High! So I was able to meet a fellow beetdigger! Awesome, you never know what you'll come across here in Kansas.

Sunday was awesome!! So we made it to church late, because our ride is a college student, but when we walked in we saw Challenge and his wife Mika (the less-actives who gave us pizza)! Then when we sat down we saw Jim and Gayle! Yay! Jim loved church, and hopefully he will continue to come and work towards baptism!

This week was awesome and fun! I love missionary work so much, and I especially love Kansas and the people of Kansas. Tornado season is here, so maybe I'll get the chance to see my first tornado!

Have a killer week!

- Elder Andrasko

Livin' on a Prayer

 

This week was awesome! We saw what I thought was a really awesome miracle when we were trying to contact some former investigators. We go to the door and she informs us that her and her husband talked and that they decided they weren't interested. I told them that we weren't trying to take away from their Catholic roots, but just to help build on that faith. She told us that she has been reading the Book of Mormon every day since it was given to her and told us a time we could come back. So today we are going back to see them and hopefully build heir faith!

We also committed one of our investigators to attend the addiction recovery program. So hopefully his week he will be able to make it to that!

This week we did exchanges, again, but this time we were able to stay in McPherson. I went with Elder Colton, while Elder Tolley went with Elder Harper. So while the other Elders went to all of our set appointments we went to just try a bunch of potentials and less-actives. Our dinner was in Galva, which is like 5 minutes east of Mac, so about an hour before dinner we went out there to try and meet some people. We ended up meeting a guy named Brandon, he has a bunch of family that are members, and cousins that are on missions. So he was interested in learning more, but he is really busy so it might be hard to try and catch him home. We later had dinner with a less-active, it was really awesome ribs.

So we started a taco Tuesday tradition with our good college buddies Tanner and Morgan, so we had some pretty bomb taco truck tacos! But they told us this week they'll have to change the day, because they will be going to institute! This week during Family Home Evening we helped Tanner do some family history, so that on Saturday he had names so he could go to the temple for the first time!!! Tanner is so awesome!

So this week Gayle and Jim were moving, to the house next door, so on Saturday we went over and helped them move! We tried to get a few members to help us, but we were only able to get one to help. But the good thing is that there wasn't a whole lot of things to move, just mostly couches, dressers, a fridge, and a washer and drier. It took us a little bit, but she made some lasagna for us for dinner!

This week we also had Zone training! I love all the trainings we get as missionaries, it was awesome to hear from the leaders in our zone, we also talked a lot about helping members to use social media to share the gospel with friends. That is a huge emphasis for us now. So I invite y'all to share something on social media pertaining to the gospel, or share your testimony with a friend who you feel needs a message of Jesus Christ at this point in their lives!

I love you all so much! Have a killer week!

- Elder Andrasko