So Many Miracles

So many miracles this week it's just been ridiculous. We had two investigators at church, Sheila and also Steven and his little boys (Steven and Sheila are different families). Steven found his own ride to church and wore the white shirt I gave him and everything. Sheila, someone that had a bad experience at church 30 years ago, came yesterday! Sheila's had bad knees the past couple years and they were getting progressively worse just as Sunday was approaching. She was doubting that she would be able to make it to church, even in a wheelchair. But we gave her a priesthood blessing and the next morning she woke up with a lot of her pain gone, her knees were feeling healthy and she decided she wanted to go to church. And she did! She had a good experience! Both are coming next week as well!

  Both Steven and Sheila have had smoking problems. And before we had taught either of them about the Word of Wisdom they both told us that they wanted to quit smoking. Their desires had simply changed as they felt the spirit from reading the Book of Mormon. That's the power of the Book of Mormon! Of their own free will they decided they want to quit smoking. The spirit will teach us what we need to do to better ourselves if we just allow his guidance in our daily lives, and what better way to provide ourselves a spiritual boost than from reading the Book of Mormon?! Sheila has already gone 2 weeks without a single cigarette! She tells us that whenever she wants to smoke, she reads the Book of Mormon until that desire is gone. How incredible!

  Another cool experience. We were tracting up in Medway, a rural town with a small lake at it's center (and lots of mosquitos that found me). The first house we knocked we met an older lady named Penny. She promptly told us that she's glad we were not Jehovah's Witnesses but she still doesn't believe what Mormons do. She didn't like the whole "work for the dead" idea that we do in the temples. But we briefly explained the plan of salvation and her concern was resolved. She asked us "So what's the difference between Mormons and other churches anyway?" Golden question that every missionary jumps at the opportunity to answer. We proceeded to teach her the restoration on her porch (While I was getting eaten alive by mosquitos- great fun). Elder Brown allowed me the opportunity to teach her Joseph Smith's first vision. As I related to her Joseph's words about his experience in the sacred grove she began to cry. She felt the spirit so strongly. It seemed as if even the mosquitos were reverenced for that moment and took a break from nibbling on me :) She no longer thinks Mormons are weird and we return next Thursday to teach her again!

   The spirit is so strong in the testimony of the Restoration of the truths that we enjoy in this church! I wish I could tell more but time is up! Love you All. Tengan una buena semana!  -Elder Kevin Graf

Pictures from Ohio

  WOW. Our house looks good. Mom you should be proud of your rearranging and decorating, it all looks really good. Don't worry, even though I'm not in a third world country I'm still learning that Christlike attribute known as gratitude. Looking over these pictures after spending a few months in the run down streets of downtown Dayton makes me realize how well off we really are. We come from such a blessed background. Delete this message after reading it so you don't frame these words and hold it over my head for the rest my life :)

  I actually bumped into Elder Fivas at the concert! I didn't know someone was able to pick me up so easily but that's what Elder Fivas did in the form of a hug. It was great. The Concert was amazing, too. I would definitely go to it if they swing by Utah.

   Oh and we just bumped into our investigator Steven as we were tracting! That's our primary finding method. Not as effective as referrals, but it's what we've got on our plate, we have a small branch. As for daily plans we make plans the night before. We plan by the spirit. If we say a prayer to close our nightly planning session and it doesn't feel right we make changes until it's good. Unfortunately this process often carries us past 10:30 P.M... Something I don't like but we're working on making it happen. Regardless of the time we go to bed at night (even if it's 12:30 A.M. after the Motab concert) we ALWAYS get up at 6:30 am. I feel like a million bucks after exercising early and diving into the scriptures! Well my other letter will be pretty short and sweet because I've got to stilll write president and send pictures from this sticky public keyboard :) Write back in a few! Love You!

I can only send two pics at a time which makes life great. But I found a street called Utah Street so I got a pic. Dayton has a street for every state. Utah's is basically a back alley way. haha

Okay here's a few pictures. one is of our mini missionary and the other two are of this chain mail that our branch president's son made. It's the armor of God plus a sword :)

 [Kevin's missionary apartment. A former missionary or maybe his current companion must be the soccer fan.]

[Kevin told us earlier about a door approach where he and his companion would make a small snowman and then ask for raisins or chocolate chips for the eyes and buttons.This must be a picture of that.]

 An Elder's apartment with a wall of nearly 3000 waterbottles. Many Elders don't drink the tap water. This is a wall (and the pic doesn't show all of it) of a compilation of months worth of water bottles at an apartment I was at for exchanges. Crazy. Just crazy.

 Those last couple emails didn't match the right pictures up. Well my time is up. Trying to write all these emails can be awfully stressful! Never enough time! I'll try once more to send a couple pics but I'm over time... I'll write a letter home about this week. It was a pretty awesome and awful week at the same time. Great teaching lessons but a friend of Elder Brown's died in a car accident so he's been really struggling. I'll tell you more about it in my letter home!

Dad, Happy Father's day again! Love you all!

Elder Graf

New Mission!

Transfers are happening this week and the results are in! Drum Roll....

I'm staying in the Dayton Spanish area! Same area, same companion, New mission! Because I'm staying put that means that I’ll be within the new Cincinnati Mission boundaries! Not many people get to say they had two MTC dates, let alone that they served in two missions :) I'm excited about it, but I hope I will get to visit the Columbus Temple sometime.

Another exciting event is that the whole mission is going to see the Motab concert tonight! It'll be cool to see the whole mission gathered together. Motab becomes a bigger deal when you're outside of Utah.

This week I'm officially done with my training! However I'll still be with Elder Brown this next transfer so there's obviously still work and learning that the Lord has in store for both of us. In Huber heights, where our apartment is, we do bilingual work, which means we get to keep the English investigators that we find! And we have two solid English investigators that we've been working with the past couple weeks. One is preparing for baptism on July 20th and the other is preparing for August 3rd! Both are sincere and we're going to get them both to church this Sunday! I'm super excited for them :D

This week we've also had a "mini-missionary" tag along with us. Every companionship in the mission got one, some got a couple mini's, and several sister missionary's got 4. His name's Daniel and he's 16. We've decided that he's a perfect mix in personality and likes/dislikes between me and Elder Brown. He, like me, has greenie fire to be obedient, likes basketball, loves granola bars, and snores :) Like Elder Brown he has a bit of a theatrical side and loves to pretend he's an Opera singer. He however doesn't speak more than a few words of Spanish. Poor guy has had to suffer through a few Spanish lessons with us but he's been a great sport. We'll all get a picture together and I'll send it next time. Speaking Of pictures I'm going to wrap this up so I can send a few!

Love you all! Have a great week! Be happy! Work hard! Serve others! Pray always! 

Elder Graf 

Lo siento familia! I don't have a card reader available to borrow so there'll be no pics right now :( I'll buy one today so I'll have one for sure on Monday. Bye!

Howdy Utah

HOWDY UTAH! Okay where to begin? The days sometimes blend together and I forget what was when and what stories I've already told you. But we were teaching this Air Force guy about the Plan of Salvation last night and he asked us if God had a body. We explained that he does. And he was like "Cool. Is he ripped? Cause he's perfect right? So he's gotta have a toned body. Is your God ripped? My God is." It was so weird and unexpected. We all had a good laugh over it.

In another lesson we were teaching in Spanish and the brother of the guy who we were teaching walked in and told me that my Spanish was really good! WAHOO. I'm getting there! Still tons to learn but I'm communicating pretty decently now. While I was on exchanges with my district leader (who is only English speaking) I even contacted a few Hispanics and talked to them all by my lonesome! :D

Random thing, while on that exchange with my DL we also ended up playing Bball on the street with all these black kids in Downtown Dayton. We played for like an hour. It was fun. My District Leader says it's a good way to get people interested in who we are and what we teach as missionaries. Because when two white dudes in shirts and ties come to play bball the whole neighborhood comes out to see it haha. I don't know if it really is the most effective proselyting technique but it was fun to play a little. The music he listens to is also probably a little apostate for the mission field. It's primary songs put to dub step haha. It was a crazy exchange but it was fun and I did learn a lot.

When I got back with Elder Brown we had a cool lesson. We found this guy that's trying to get back into the marines. He's a nice guy with a small family. We were teaching him the first lesson and it was EXTREMELY hard to focus (Dog, little kids running around, immature skater friends that eventually left. etc.) But while Elder Brown kept the dog preoccupied I told him the First Vision. The room seemed to settle down as I told him Joseph Smith's experience. The spirit confirmed to Steven's heart that Joseph Smith did in fact see Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. He described it as a "warm tingly feeling" while pointing to his chest. He liked it so much that He wanted me to tell him the First Vision again. We told him that he could feel the spirit again as he reads the Book of Mormon.We teach him again tonight! Hopefully he reads!

Se que Jose Smith vio el Padre Celestial y su Hijo, Jesucristo. Se que Dios nos ama mas que podamos entender y El esucha y contesta a nuestras oraciones sinceros. Se que Jose Smith fue un profeta, aun el profeta de la Restauracion. Se que Dios y Jesucristo viven en este momento y ellos comunican con un profeta moderno. Se que todas estas cosas mediante los sentamientos del Espiritu. Y por los mismos sentamientos de paz y consuelo, yo se que el Libro de Mormon es verdadero y es la evidencia que La Iglesia de Jesucristo de los Santos de los Ultimos dias es la iglesia de Jesucristo en la tierra!

There's a quick testimony in Spanish! Love you family! Have an awesome week!

Elder Kevin Graf

My area is possible the largest area in the mission so we have everything from rural farms to suburban neighborhoods to downtown inner city.

The Lake was in a place called Springfield Ohio. We had a branch party there and we had food and played soccer on the beach. It was a lot of fun. Other Elders were there and two other spanish branches were there. I'm not much of a soccer player (especially in jeans and shoes) but it was fun to get involved.

Dayton

HOLA HOLA! so this weekly email will be super short because of Memorial Day mixing things up. So Dayton is quite the ghetto, lots of crime down there. Lots of people tell us to be careful down there so we don't linger around when it gets dark. We see remnants of newly torched homes every week. Fantastic right? But I know Heavenly Father hears all of our prayers and I know we're protected so long as we don't do anything dumb. (so don't worry mom :) God's got my back) But down in Dayton we met this Biker lady, she's hard core, bandana, Harley Davidson set of wheels and everything. She wasn't interested but she was telling us about this Heavy Metal Church of Christ. I thought it was Hilarious. They read from the Bible and then have breaks to drink a beer, smoke a cigarette, rock out to some heavy tunes and then dive back into the good word. I guess whatever you got to do you got to do. The world is a pretty crazy place. Lots of wacky ideas. What a blessing it is for us to have the foundation of pure and simple truths in our lives.

But we're finding new investigators. One of them is named Julio. He had talked a little with the missionaries in Mexico but has lived in Ohio the past 4 years. We taught him the restoration last night. Elder Brown began teaching about Joseph Smith when he paused, thought to himself, then asked me to proceed with Joseph's story. Somehow we both knew that I needed to deliver the story of Joseph Smith's first vision to Julio. My heart was beating a little bit, which was unusual because we've taught this a million times. But by revelation confirmed throughout the earlier parts of our visit we somehow both knew that I specifically needed to deliver the first vision to him. I did so and the spirit testified to us all of the reality of Joseph's vision. Everyone felt the spirit's presence. It was pretty powerful. I don't know exactly why I was the one who needed to teach the first vision to him but I know that it will be a valuable experience for Julio to remember in the future. We teach him again next Tuesday. I'm excited about it. LES AMO!

 

Cow Brain and Pig Kidney

Kevin sent replies to our letters and then a short separate letter. That’s why this is so disjointed.

 

I keep telling Elder Brown I want to see a tornado but he's said he's never seen any big storms the whole time he's been out (he just hit his year mark last week). But who knows, maybe this week is the week haha.  I'm sure mom loved the Star Trek movie. She's quite obsessed with them

This week was pretty slow going. We're trying to really focus on finding new people. We've found a couple that we are excited about. My Spanish improves little by little and it's exciting. I can't believe I'm already on my tenth week of 12 week training! This transfer is going by really fast!

 

Hola querido familia mia!

Alrighty. Due to only a few minutes left of time this email will have no rhyme or reason to it. Enjoy!

Elder Brown ate cow brain taco while I tried pig kidneys. Both were equally undesirable.

It's crazy to think that I'm already on my tenth week (of 12 total) of training! As I was telling mom, this transfer has been flying by. The experiences I've been having have been awesome. I'm learning tons about myself and the gospel. We continue to use the priesthood to bless others. I feel that Heavenly Father has allowed me many opportunities to use the priesthood because the Hispanic population is almost entirely Catholic.The difference between us is obviously the restored authority.

Well sorry this was so short. I'll write home about this CRAZY door to door experience we had. I'll write home about other stuff from last week as well. Love you all, work hard, be happy.  :D

 

Go and Do

It was great to talk to everyone yesterday. Before we know it it'll be Christmas and we'll be talking again. Happy Mother's Day again! Mom, I love you tons. You've taught me the incredible principles of strength, love, faith, and hard work. Just like a true pioneer-spirited mother! Know that I'm well taken care of out here. This is best experience I've ever had. I'm growing tremendously in so many ways. Thank you for all your prayers and know that they are answered. Know that I'm healthy, safe, and happy.

Cool pictures! It's crazy to see pictures of everyone. Basically everyone looks the same except Camille looks a little older and Rachel's hair is more brown than I remember. I'm super excited for Kolby. He's going to be great for the people of London. I’m not sure why but I just think that mission fits him so well. I'll have to pinch out some time for emails to Kolby and the cousins overseas; might as well save a couple bucks like you suggested.

Well, well. I'm trying to send pictures but it's not working. So until Elder Brown shows me how to work his card reader I shall publish a scriptural thought :D but before I do that I just want to say it was awesome to talk to you all yesterday. It was a little weird but it was also so cool to actually hear your voices. Keep up the good gospel livin' :)

Okay so look up 1 Nephi 3:7 The famous "Go and Do" scripture. It says that God has prepared a way for us to keep EVERY COMMANDMENT. Do we really believe that? Because in verses like 3 Nephi 12:48 we also read that we are commanded to be PERFECT. How can we be perfect? What is the way prepared that we might fulfill this commandment? Well, here's where I like the wording in D and C 19:19 (read D and C 19:15-19). It talks about The Atonement. But when Christ completes the infintite sacrifice He doesn't say He finished the work and the glory, He doesn't say he finished our salvation, He doesn't even say He finished the Atonement. What He says is that He "finished my PREPARATIONS unto the children of men." Interesting word choice. Christ has prepared the way for us to be perfected, it is up to us to finish and fulfill this commandment. It is up to us to Go and Do, to Believe in Him, to put our faith in Him, to use and apply the power of the Atonement in our lives.

So there ya have it, a correlation between a few scriptures that I thought was pretty thought provoking. Study these scriptures, bake some cookies and... WHOALA! Family Home Evening is already figured out for tonight. !!!LES AMO!!!

 

Kevin thought this truck with all of the toys stuck to it was "quite hilarious!"