Routine of Craziness

Cheyenne is engaged?!?!?! That's so crazy!!!!

Sorry for not emailing yesterday by the way. We had a mission leadership conference so we are having pday today. Only we aren't really having a pday today because we had to plan for zone meeting tomorrow and then I'm leaving in a few minutes to go to do exchanges with the Greenville elders so that I can do a baptismal interview for one of their investigators that is hopefully getting baptized this Saturday. We also are hoping to baptize this Saturday. If all goes well the K…'s will be baptized this weekend! The kids were baptized a few months ago but the parents needed some extra time. They got married and we have been helping them to quit smoking. We have been having some amazing lessons with them over the past week. It's so hard to catch the whole family at home but God has made things work out to where we've been able to teach them powerfully and they are changing. It's amazing to see how the gospel can change people. If we see people how Heavenly Father sees them then we won't have any room to doubt that people can change, because of the incredible potential we all have within us. 

Heavenly Father has really been helping us. We've been so involved with the zone that it's only by miracles that our own area has been having success. God has literally just brought people to the church for us and has given us the opportunities to be able to share the gospel. I believe in setting goals. We need to set goals for ourselves because it shows God that we care about something, and it invokes His grace to help us achieve our righteous desires. On Sunday we had a goal to find 2 new investigators. Throughout the day we weren't finding them. We kept praying and asking, where are they? Where should we go? And we started to listen better and better to "generous thoughts" or inspirations from the spirit. It was getting darker and darker and the rain was pouring and it was 8:30. We had a half hour before the end of the night and we came to several part member families to try to visit. The first didn't work, the second didn't let us in, but the third? An incredible family of many children that were setting up a Christmas tree let us in and we love them tons already and they are super ready for the gospel :) Set goals, plan to achieve them, have faith, go to work, and watch how God will operate. I've seen that God often likes to test us and make us step into the water before he will work His miracle and cause the Red Sea to split. 

Anyways, too many exciting things are happening at once. The church is doing a Christmas Initiative with a video called "He is the Gift". Watch it at christmas.mormon.org. It will be playing in Times Square NY this Friday. Our Schedule for this week is crazy; 

Monday: Mission Leadership council (8 hours of revelation from President Porter)

Today: Prep for zone meeting and exchange with Greenville

Wednesday: Zone Meeting and get the K…'s interviewed

Thursday; 3 Thanksgiving dinners

Friday: Weekly planning session with the zone. (Basically a second zone meeting that we will have to prepare)

Saturday and Sunday: Hopefully a Baptism and Confirmation!!!

This is just on top of the regular routine of craziness, not including prep for stake presidency reports that we get to do and possibly another exchange and preparing for zone conferences next week and trying to keep up with all our investigators. I feel bad that I’m not good at writing but we are busy to say the least. 

Above everything, I'm grateful for all these experiences. I’m grateful for my family. And I'm grateful for the Savior. I know that He lives and the spirit testifies of it!

Until next week!!

Elder Kevin Graf

First Snow

Cool that we're all serving as zone leaders! President had been telling me early on this year that he wanted to use me but for what ever reason he felt that I needed to stay in Spanish work for a little longer (which I was happy to do). But things worked out perfectly. I'm really grateful for all that I'm learning right now with these new experiences but I'm also grateful for every extra transfer I got in Spanish work for many reasons. One of those is because of someone really cool that I got to meet and serve and love, J…! And oh, by the way, he was baptized last Saturday!!!  :D

Dry cleaning is in the process haha. Half of them are now dry cleaned but no longer in my possession just because of how crazy our lives are. We are constantly running around like wild chickens. So yeah, I feel like my suits and pants are currently scattered all over the zone because of all the exchanges that we've been doing. But I'm sure they will all get back to me sometime soon :) Because there are 3 of us we can split and divide and conquer in all sorts of creative ways. Elder Harper technically isn't a zone leader but we just use him as one. So we'll drop him off in one area and then the remaining two of us will also split with other elders. And sometimes I'll have spontaneous exchanges with the Spanish elders in our zone when they need a third person to teach single moms or something. So this week we have 3 exchanges planned, back to back to back... starting tonight! It is super exhausting but the Lord somehow gives us strength to do it. I kid you not, we are given energy beyond our own and it is 100 percent by the grace of God and blessings from above. 

So anyways, I'll be excited to read the updates from the cousins. That's always a good time for me. And today will especially be fun because it Snowed for the first time this year! And we are also doing a zone fun day! So we're getting the whole zone together today and we're going to have a good time! Probably playing soccer, or volleyball, or Frisbee, or basketball, or something. Maybe ice skating?! Just kidding. We aren't doing that. 

Oh, you also asked about my companions. They are sweet! I love them tons. They are not difficult at all and being in a tri-companionship has been surprisingly easy and beneficial. Elder Jensen Klodnicki is from Texas. He's been out about 16 months. He was originally called to Brazil but after a year of waiting for his visa he prayed and decided to stay in Ohio. What a champion. If I had the option I definitely would have gone to Brazil haha. But president still wants him to learn Portuguese and he's actually had a handful of opportunities to teach with it! His dad is an Air Force chaplain and a former seminary teacher. Elder Jonathan Harper lived in Utah until about 12 years old but then moved to Oklahoma so he just says that he's from Oklahoma. He is an outgoing guy. He comes from a solid Mormon family and is very positive and happy. Both of Elder Klodnicki and Elder Harper were involved in theater in high school. That kind of worried me when I found that out but they are actually super cool guys. They love musicals and therefore love singing. So... never a dull moment. So we are the mobile party of three but we manage to stay focused and we get a lot of work done together.  

So this might be my main email for today haha. I kind of just meant to respond to your email and then send another one but I guess I just got a little carried away. Anyways, thank you for all your prayers and concern and for being the best parents/ family in the world. Gospel is true. Amen. :)

Elder Kevin Graf

 

Another pic of the exchange with the assistants! 

J... after his baptism! Mexicans don't smile. It's just what they do. But it was CRAZY getting there. Our brand new branch mission leader and his wife were lined up to give me a ride down there when another pair of Spanish elders needed us to pick them up last second. So we were running late but we walked into the baptism right before J... was getting ready to go the font and step into the water! Miracle! it was fun to see several Norwood members again! So cool to see J... finally get baptized! His family is also attending church now!!

This is a picture Bro Bristow took of the Spanish missionaries that  have served in Dayton. He was at the transfer meeting.

Ohio Cincinnati Missionary

We have been so busy that I when I sit down to write about the past week I can't even remember what has happened. So I'll just type it as it comes to me haha.

So yes, somewhere last week I had a birthday. Thank you for the package! There hasn't been an opportunity to eat cake yet but the protein bars and shirt and cd's were perfect! I got a lot of random birthday songs through voicemails throughout the day from both our zone and the Spanish zone so it was pretty fun. 

Something that is pretty cool is that I still get to use some Spanish! Last Monday we started teaching a bilingual family. The mom and kids speak English but the father is from Mexico. The Spanish elders referred them to us because it's better that the family go to an English branch so that the mom and kids can understand. And now that I'm here we can also teach the father! The father speaks only broken English so I get to talk to him and I'll translate for him when he comes to church. Working with this family is another confirmation that I'm where I need to be and that the transfer calls were inspired. I also get to do exchanges with the Spanish district in our zone! So lots of fun. But to continue, we invited them to come check out the church during the week so that they could be more comfortable coming to church on Sunday. Side note is that the Dayton chapel is not your regular building. It is an office looking building from the inside that has been rented out and turned into a chapel. Pretty cool because it doesn't look like a church at all from the outside but the inside still has the same familiar spirit that exists in our LDS buildings. So Friday night we gave the family a tour of the chapel and it was great because our branch president was there and he got to testify of how the gospel has blessed his kids growing up. At the end of the chapel tour we invited them to be baptized and the mom was super excited. In her words she "felt like dancing." She has never been baptized before and is excited to work towards baptism the end of this month. We actually have several people working towards baptism for November 29th so we're expecting a big baptismal service the end of the month. Anyways, the family committed to come to church and the mom and kids actually came on Sunday! The father was unfortunately called in to work last second so he didn't make it but we'll get him this week. The process of getting the mom and kids to church last second without the father's truck was a miracle and a half. But with the help of some very selfless members we managed to pull it off. We can't do this work on our own. That's for sure! The members totally saved the day in getting several of our investigators to church. And when we got there we were surprised and pleased to see a less active family show up that we had invited the day before. Some people are just waiting for an invite! And by grace from above God also blessed us with several member referral investigators at the church when we got there. So we had a really good turn out for church. The total branch attendance was over 100! So we were super happy. 

Okay, a million things have happened but I need to send pictures from the past couple weeks! This one will actually have to be short because other people are waiting on me!!! 

Love You! 

Elder Kevin Graf

 

A CRAZY family sung happy birthday and then got me with a birthday cupcake. I will need to take my suits to the dry cleaner this week due to the frosting and due to the bird that pooped on my other suit... haha.

Here is a pic of me, Elder Klodnicki and Elder Harper. They are fun guys!

Really cool view of Cincinnati! The assistants took us to a really cool look out point at the end of our exchange and had us think about what it means to be an Ohio Cincinnati missionary. Cool experience.

Birthday presents that I opened after getting back from our exchange with the assistants!

Dayton Zone Leader and English Work

Family! Thanks for all the happy birthday wishes! I don't feel like I should be 21 yet. How is this happening so fast? Make it stop!

Anyways, I have no time AT ALL anymore to write emails. My emails will probably be super short for a while. And for that I truly apologize! But today we have been driving all over our zone to help a couple people, including a struggling missionary that just came to the mission last week. We had to show him how fun a mission is so we drove way out to their area and took them out to lunch and did a few things, which has left us almost no time to email. And next week we will be helping a senior couple move out of their apartment so I'm not sure when we'll get to email next week either. Writing in my journal has come to a complete stop, as we are yet to go to bed at a decent hour this entire week. It also doesn't help that I now sleep on a couch because we don't have an extra bed.

This will probably make more sense if I tell you how transfers went. So I didn't receive any leadership call the day before transfers so I figured, "cool, I'll just pack my stuff and I'll go where the Lord wants me to go and me and my new companion, whoever he is, will just go to work and we'll work hard." It wasn't easy to say goodbye to a few members and investigators but I’ll attach a couple pictures. So I'm sitting in transfers and then they announce my name. They assign me to be senior zone leader serving in the Dayton zone with 2 companions! That's right; I'm BACK IN DAYTON and I have TWO companions! We are in a tri-companionship and I have a zone leader companion in Elder Klodnicki and a junior comp in Elder Harper. Both are awesome guys and this past week has been a complete PARTY. Elder Klodnicki has only been a zone leader for a transfer and Elder harper is hilarious. In fact, almost our entire zone is new to the zone. I know president probably washed out the area to spark some faith and hope into the area. As crazy as it is, I love Dayton. We are having the best time of our missions but we've never been so exhausted. We share a tiny apartment with only one bedroom, one bathroom, and a small kitchen. We only have two beds so I took first shift sleeping on the couch haha. We are however, blessed with a car! I LOVE CARS! They are so warm inside. But because we are always on the go we are eating out a lot more. I don't like fast food but it's very inconvenient to go back to the apartment and eat, which is technically out of our area. 

So yeah. This transfer is going to provide lots of room to exercise Faith because I have no idea what I'm doing. I've never been a zone leader before but I'm really just going to trust on inspiration through the spirit to teach me what the heck I'm supposed to be doing. I've never been in a tri-companionship before. And, I've never done English work before! Yes, I'm in English work now. It's quite sad actually. I don't get a language study anymore. I miss the Spanish culture more than I thought I would. I feel like I've been booted out of a family of missionaries that I've worked with for the duration of my mission. Actually, Elder Klodnicki was a visa waiter. He was going to go to Brazil but after a year of waiting he decided to just stay in Ohio. So he actually knows a little bit of Portuguese. I still use Spanish at ever opportunity I get. I’ve given a few referrals to the Spanish elders. I cry inside as I realize that I don't get to teach them anymore. English work is so different! It is so much easier because you can talk to EVERYONE. We also get referrals from church headquarters! I thought media referrals were only a myth but they actually exist! So Dayton is a branch of about 70 people average and about 300 less active. Almost everyone is on welfare so cars are scarce. That's the biggest difficulty here. Because it's hard for the members to support other investigators when they themselves don't have transportation or other things. But this area has tons of potential and we're excited to baptize. President Porter has promised the mission some amazing things over the next couple weeks and we're already seeing miracles. We a re working with the K… family to baptize the parents. The kids were baptized a couple months ago. We are also working with the B… family. The kids were also baptized but the parents have marriage issues going on. Another guy named P… is the coolest guy ever. He's a hard core biker that has developed a soft heart and has been searching for the truth for a long time and he would have come to church last Sunday if he didn’t get staph infection the day before :( bummer. But awesome things are happening and this zone is going to be great! I can't believe I'm back in Dayton! We've been so busy with zone stuff now that our apartment is a wreck and we've hardly unpacked anything. I'm going to start sending a lot of things home. I want to really dial in and focus these remaining weeks. So anything that I don't need over the next 90 days is going home. I'm going to focus on the essentials and really lose myself in the service of others. It's almost not even an option at this point. There is so much work to do and we're having a blast but we barely have time to catch our breath. 

Sorry for spelling a million things wrong. It's just that my mind is racing. All leadership went to the mission home and we received an awesome training last week and we are training the zone on it tomorrow morning in zone meeting and we still have to prepare a few things but I have no idea when we're going to do it because we still have to drop off the struggling missionary back to his apartment right now and then teach a couple lessons tonight so life is crazy. Bye. Adios! 

Church is true! We've seen miracles last week that I wish I could talk about but there just ain't time! Heavenly Father is definitely sending lots of tender mercies to help me adjust. But life is good with the gospel. I know that if we remember in whom we have our faith and if we diligently follow Him and consecrate our all we will be blessed to be able to do things beyond our own physical and spiritual capacities. I know this to be true especially because of last week. I can't believe this email got this long but I am just typing like a madman. Love you all so much! Jesus is our Savior and He lives and the work is hastening! WOOOO!

-Elder Kevin Graf

Elder Foote and Elder Graf