Hello

 

Elder Andrasko and Elder Colemere got to go to a baptism of someone they taught in Ark City! They had someone lined up to take them, but that fell through. Luckily, Charlie's brother-in-law, Shane, has a sister who lives in the area and she was able to drive them to the baptism.  Thanks Kari!!

 

This week was pretty sweet!

After a pretty not so awesome week we knew that we would have to work twice as hard to make sure this week was twice as better.

On Tuesday after district meeting we were doing an exchange and I was going with the district leader to his area, but his companion asked for the keys so he could unlock the bike from the bike rack on the car, and soon after they had left. We got into the car then realized, "we didn't have the keys!" So we start calling Elder LaMont trying desperately to get the keys back, but they weren't answering the phone...so we called Sister Pinkerton, the member who we live with, to tell the Elders when they get there that they have our keys. Almost two hours had passed before they finally made it back with our keys and we could get to work. After all that missed time, we elected not to ride our bikes around.

The next morning we went to the gym, I hadn't been since I was in Ark so needless to say I was pretty sore after, and we had a service project to do. The zone leaders were at the project so Elder Colemere and I did a lot of messing around, but the job got done! Afterwards we exchanged back, after a district lunch at McDonald's, and went to work. We had a lesson scheduled with an investigators mom, who we had heard was 100% against her son being baptized, and how she hates our church, and blah blah blah. But when we met her it was a very pleasant surprise, half of her family is actually members, and some of her best friends, so she is very open to it. And now she and her two kids are working towards baptism! She's been to church a bunch of times but she currently works on Sunday's, so she's asking her boss for Sunday's off so she can come to church!

We've been working with this one investigator ever since I came here and this week at church he told us that he had a dream that he was baptized, and now he is determined he wants to be baptized. Which is completely different from when I first started teaching him, before he
told us that church was nice, but he wouldn't go to the point of being baptized.

So now we have four people progressing towards baptism! Two of which can be baptized this weekend, so we have to go as hard as we can to make it happen so we can baptize this month!

Thursday we had interviews with our new mission president, it was pretty good. But he asked Elder LaMont and I to prepare a role play for the next zone conference. Which kinda sucks, I can teach investigators well enough, but when I have to teach missionaries or lessons in church it just doesn't work out haha.

Well I don't have a lot of time to write today cause we have had to help the sisters move for the past 3 hours :P and we have dinner at 5:30, and we're on bikes. So not the most fun p day.

But love ya tons!

- Elder Andrasko

More Than a Feeling

Elder Andrasko is in there somewhere!

This week has been really great! I've just been working super hard to
get to know my area!

Probably the biggest miracle we had this week was meeting Andrew.

Andrew is a former investigator that we decided to visit.  The first time
we went see him he was busy and told us to come back in a few hours.
When we showed up Elder LaMont started to talk to him and I went
around to talk to his son. When I finished talking with The son,
I went around to see how it was going with Andrew, both him and Elder
LaMont were having a Super spiritual experience and Elder LaMont said
it was the strongest he has felt the Spirit on his mission. We were
then invited into the house and finished our lesson. We found out that
Andrew has 7 children!! But he is living with his fiancé, and they are
not getting married till next year. Hopefully we can move their
wedding date up. We have seen him a few times and he is working
towards a baptism date!

We tried a ton of former investigators this week, and we found some
fruit with that, we met Anton. He's kind of different, but he said that he
believes the church is true, but he believes 11 other churches are
true too. He was talking about when Jesus fed the 5000 there were12
baskets left, he said that signified the 12 apostles and the 12
biggest churches and each of those 12 churches are true. So we need to
help him understand the restoration more haha.

This week we also met Gary and Larry, they are brothers who are
currently living with their mom who has cancer and only one year left
to live, so they are really open to growing their relationship with
Christ and are steadily progressing towards baptism. We found Larry
when we decided to just pull up to this apartment complex, and it
turns out that he lives right below a solid member. A few days later
we brought the member to go have a lesson with him, but he wasn't home
and we met his brother Gary.

Sorry for the short email, but I don't have much to write about this week haha.

I am loving my mission so much and am looking forward to baptizing in
the month of July! We have so much potential here and the members in
this ward are really cool and willing to come out.

Love y'all so much!

- Elder Andrasko

Looking for Miracles

Elder Colemere and Elder Andrasko celebrate their birthdays together!

My week was pretty great.

So Monday the transfer doc came out, so we would know who was
going where and stuff. Needless to say I was super surprised to hear I
was leaving Topeka. I mean I had only been there for one month. So I
was to start my 3rd full transfer with my 5th companion in my 3rd
area, crazy. But Monday and Tuesday were just full of goodbyes. Elder
Mitchell was leaving Tuesday to drive around with the Zone Leaders to
a bunch of his old areas and say goodbye to the people there. So
Monday he spent saying goodbye to the people in Topeka.

Tuesday was hard for me, I knew that I was leaving the area so I just
wanted to say goodbye to everyone. But since Elder Porter was staying
he wanted to work.  I ended the night by finishing up all my
packing.


Wednesday our entire zone met at the Stake Center to catch the charter
bus to Wichita, since Prez Bell was leaving the entire mission was
going to be in Wichita to say goodbye. So everyone who was getting
transferred loaded up their bags and made the trip down to Wichita.

Goodbyes were super hard, not only was prez leaving but 20 other
missionaries. Including 3 former assistants and several zone leaders,
lots of awesome missionaries. After goodbyes we loaded all my stuff up
and dropped it off at my new place. Where I am now is super nice, we
are staying with a member of the ward, Sister Pinkerton, she's a sweet
lady who has housed the missionaries for years. But we have a lot
of nice stuff in he house, except for the shower it's way way way to
small. Like a 3x3 box. But it's great other than that! We didn't get
to do a lot Thursday which makes for a boring day.

So Thursday we started off seeing a few potentials, but then we had a
team up with our ward mission leader. We went to see this guy who has
a Book of Mormon and is reading it and stuff, but he's had a few
things pop up in the past few days that has stopped him from
progressing. We are able to share an awesome message with him and I
started talking to him about baptism, but right as I was getting ready
to extend the invitation our team up took the conversation a whole
different direction and the lesson ended shortly after. Hmm. not what I wanted.

After we went to meet Gloria, she is the sister of a member and seems
pretty interested. The only bad part is she doesn't live within our
ward boundaries, so we will have to pass her off. But we had a church
tour with her, a super quick one cause we had a meeting right after,
and she seemed really impressed and definitely felt the spirit and
asked a lot of questions about baptism. Again we missed the chance to
invite her.

We super quickly made our way over to where our meeting was and had a
quick meet and greet with President and Sister McCuistion, they seem
really cool and I'm excited to get to know them!

After our meeting we had a dinner, and only a few hours to do more
work, so not a whole lot of lessons that day.

Friday was definitely he highlight of the week. We started off going
to see a few people that were semi interested. But they were actually
sleeping, I guess most days they don't get up until around 4-5, but
the sister answered the door and invited us in. Elder LaMont started
writing a note for the 2 that were sleeping and I started to talk to
the sister. She is one of those people who has a belief in a higher
power, but doesn't know if it is God, we were able to have a great
lesson with her and introduced her to the Book of Mormon and asked if
she would be baptized if she found out for herself if it was true. She
accepted a date to work towards! Unfortunately she is super busy right
now, she is making a costume for this big convention coming up this
weekend so she is spending almost all of her time making that.

After we went to see this kid named Josh, Elder LaMont met him
earlier in the week and talked about the Book of Mormon, unfortunately
he didn't have a copy with him so Josh wasn't able to get it at that
time. But we stopped by his house and had a solid lesson with him
about the BOM and he seemed excited to read it. Then we proceeded to
put him on date as well! We haven't been able to meet up with him
again, but we'll see him tonight or tomorrow.

The last lesson of the night was equally as awesome! So we were able
to get into contact with this former investigator, Anton, and set up a
time to meet with him. He was super  focused on mercy and grace and we
had a killer lesson about that stuff. Then we did the same as the other two 
and invited him for baptism and a date to work towards, he accepted!

I'm super excited to be serving in Wichita and we have a lot of
potential to baptize this month! We just have to keep our nose to the
grind and always be looking for miracles.

Oh yeah I don't know if I said this last week but Bill, my old
investigator in Ark, finally got baptized!!! He gave up smoking the
week Elder Colemere and I left Ark and was baptized a few weeks later.
And Wyatt's sister Abbie should be getting baptized later this month!
Elder Colemere said that we could go to that baptism!! So lots of good
stuff coming up.

Love ya tons!

- Elder Andrasko