Muffins Work Magic

Muffins work magic. If you want less actives to come back to church all you need to do is make muffins for them :) Mom, if you have any recipes of delicious things, then please send them! We need more ideas for treats that we can cook for people! We love making things for people and members and investigators love it. (Recipes for treats like banana bread, peanut bars, and various types of cookies would be appreciated)

Well, this week was pretty awesome. It seemed as if everything went well. We contacted all of our less actives (which isn't an incredible number of people, but nonetheless an accomplishment to find them at home) last week and most of them came to church yesterday. Several of the members are really becoming missionary-minded and offering their help to teach and are also opening up their homes to host a Noche de Hogar (Family Home Evening night) with investigators. Elder Foote and I have found a few people that are going to progress really well, and Elder Taylor and Elder Garcia (the other elders that just moved in this transfer) are working with a couple people that want to get baptized in the coming month or two. Our branch church attendance was like 40 plus people yesterday! (Normally we only have about 30.) But it is also sad because one of the coolest families is moving back to Mexico for a year or so :( I sent a picture of the family in another email. But, this branch's potential seems like it's really starting to bubble. This last week was really fun. Throughout my mission I've been learning and growing on so many levels but I feel like this last week especially was when the work was really fun. I went on exchanges with Elder Garcia (A native to Mexico. Well, he's technically American, but his parents are 100 percent Hispanic and so he's familiar with the culture.) and we really learned from each other. I've changed my approach. I've learned how to be more relaxed and interact and love the Hispanic people more and it changes how they respond. Once we really try to develop a friendship with them and show them that we have a genuine interest in them they are much more open with us and willing to hear the gospel!

There were so many cool experiences this week but because of this extremely sticky keyboard I'm only going to be able to type one quick one....

Saturday night it was really late and we were thinking about driving back home but we decided to stop by and visit an investigator named Guillermina. She recently moved to the Little Mexico trailers in Medway and has 3 young kids. We knocked her door and we talked to her for a few minutes on her porch. She seemed a little weighed down with things (maybe work and family, I don't know). But Elder Foote and I sang to her two verses of "Mas cerca, Dios a Ti" (Nearer My God to Thee) and it was so cool. I know that that was something she really needed that night. Maybe all we did was provide her a little renewed hope but it was enough. While singing to her in the quiet of the night the spirit was like BOOM, It came so strong and it was such a powerful experience. Her whole demeanor changed and she's completely more open to us. The spirit works some pretty awesome changes in people. It's such an incredible gift that we have.

Anywho, life is still good in Dayton. Love you all and stay close to the scriptures!

Elder Graf

Play by Play of the Week

Hola toda de mi familia! It's definitely getting colder here. But I'm super excited for conference! Invite people over lunch Saturday and have them stay for conference :) The time difference throws me off though, conference here is 12-2 and 4-6.

This week was a good week. We were diligent and worked well and we're happy and loving it. Here's a brief play by play of some of the things we did last week...

Monday: Pday. Had dinner with branch President Vilches and his family, they are really fun. (We often eat with the other companionship so we see them almost every day). We went to a town called Trotwood to try to contact a few potential gators but nothing came of it. But we returned to Huber Heights and had an awesome lesson with a guy named Sergio. He left his wife and kids 5 years ago to come here and work. He's been through a lot but we gave him a run down of the Book Of Mormon. At the end he prayed and the spirit was so present that he began to cry. It was an awesome lesson! I love being a missionary in these moments. He works like crazy (like most Hispanics) and so it's going to be tricky to get him to church. But he's such a humble guy and we're going to try to teach him every Monday night! (it's the only day that he has breaks).

Tuesday: Big service day. We helped someone move into a new apartment. We also did service for Penny and gave her a blessing - she was hurting that day from her physical disability (I forget what it's called). We also removed a wild tree from the Vilches' back yard (don't worry we didn't use an axe and no E.R. trips were involved) the worse thing that happened is that Elder Foote got stung a couple times. We also helped our super cool neighbor move a few things into storage. He's name's "D" (I call him Grandaddy D) and he gave us an electric guitar which we gave to the ward's bishop's son for bishop appreciation week :) We also talked to D about the book of Mormon and he's interested! But doesn't speak Spanish but we'll continue to share the gospel with him when we see him. I honestly think one of the best ways to share the gospel is by service and example - people really begin to notice that there is a difference in us Mormon folk and they are curious as to what makes us so happy, but they often won't ask, so we need to be bold enough to start the conversation!

Well time's slipping away so I'm going to have to speed this up...

Wednesday: District meeting and visiting various potentials in Dayton area. We made cookies and gave them to Dustin and Andrea as a late BDay present.

Thursday: AWESOME lesson with the Lima family (less active family of 4 that lives in Medway). We just began sharing favorite scriptures with them and BOOM, spirit comes into the room. Without even saying a word about church to them they decided that they need to reactivate. The Spirit taught them what they need to do, our job as missionaries more or less is just to bring the spirit. So they invited us to visit with them each week to have scripture study with them!!! Wahooo!

Friday: Good lesson with the Torres family. We watched the Restoration video with them and spirit was there again. We also sang to them - I love the hymns now! They really help bring the spirit. Throughout the week if we don't have time to teach a full lesson we just sing a hymn and pray with people and it's so cool to see people change as they feel the Spirit. Bro Torres also bought a tie and we're going to give them a chapel tour this week!

Saturday: FUTBOL. Soccer is helping us get less actives involved with the church again. We are also going to get English classes started pretty soon. This day we did some work in Park Lane area which is near Medway.

Sunday: ANDREA AND DUSTIN CAME TO CHURCH!!! :D just for sacrament but they had a good experience. Dustin doesn't speak Spanish but he's a good sport about supporting his wife and kids. I really love this family. (They're the same family that I sent a pic of a few weeks back) Anyway got to go. Know that I'm having a great time out here. Sorry for all the crazy typing. Love you guys!!!

Elder Graf

Mexico Independence Day

WHOOO! Celebrate Mexico Independence day!

So fasting has become a part of my life here in the mission field. Mom I know you think I'm hypoglaucemic or something because I eat so much (and yet have not gained any weight hehehe) but you'll be surprised to know that fasting has become a lot easier for me. We fast like twice a week. Whether it's as a companionship, district, zone, or mission depends but we do it all the time and I've come to love it. And we do it because it works. I always feel especially close to my Heavenly Father and in tune to the spirit on those days. On days that we fast we always see blessings and miracles because of it! So I have a testimony of fasting now. :D yesterday is an example. We had an AWESOME day yesterday, and I'd attribute it to our prayers, sacrifice and fast. We found 2 new investigators yesterday and met all of our daily goals with 4 awesome lessons, and Andrea (less active) and her husband Dustin (invest.) are committed to coming to church next week! Also we had a miracle yesterday at church. A guy from Korea posted online that he wanted to learn Spanish. A member saw it and gave him the address and time to our branch services and he came! The other elders began teaching him right there at the church and gave him a tour of the church. They then went straight from the church to have dinner at a member’s home. They had dinner and watched mormon.org videos and he loved it. He's headed back to the member's home tonight to celebrate Mexican Independence! Booyeah! Member missionary power!

I've learned another aspect about how inspired our mission calls are. The mission is just as much for the missionary as the missionary is for the people. If the missionary wants to have success amongst the children of God whom he serves the missionary must become the person that God wants him to be. For example, I've been called to Spanish speaking Ohio where surprisingly most of the missionaries called to our Spanish zone aren't naturally outgoing people. But in order to connect to the Spanish population we must become more energetic and enthusiastic than we are. We are at least required to "fake it until we make it." This applies to me as well. To connect to my Spanish investigators I've got to be more outgoing, I'm required to stretch and grow in ways that Heavenly Father wants me to grow. I don't know if this made any sense and I don't have time to correct it if it doesn't but I guess I'm trying to say that Heavenly Father delicately guides and shapes our lives. Heavenly Father maybe wanted me to become a little more outgoing so maybe that's just part of the reason He called me to Spanish work where I'm now playing soccer every Saturday and singing Spanish hymns with random people so that they can feel the spirit. And, all in all I love it. Life is good here in Dayton. It's my little "pueblo" away from home. Hope you are all doing great! I love you all tons!  

Elder Kevin Graf

This must be a picture of the tornado he saw several weeks ago.

Ohio Scenery

He titled this one "gourmet dinner." Notice the sign on the doorknob.

Pretty sunset.

Stay diligent and follow the spirit.

LOVE YOU MOM!!! Thanks for keeping me updated on things. Hope work is going well. You and Dad are probably pretty busy but you need to take time and watch movies for me every once in a while :) I feel bad because I've been super bad at writing these past couple weeks. Please tell the grandparents that I love hearing from them. I will try to respond to them sometime in the next month :/ 

So 7 minutes... okay. Well these past few days we received Elder Taylor (from Utah and almost looks like me and came out the same time as me) and Elder Garcia (from El Paso Texas and a native speaker, 1 week in the field, 2 weeks in the MTC) into our branch. It's pretty exciting to have 4 of us in the branch. They're good elders and I'm excited to work with them. I didn't realize how much I've come to love people here, even people that I’ve only talked to a couple times. We haven't officially set boundaries on how we're going to split the area but I have an idea of who I'm going to have to hand off to the new elders and it kills me. I LOVE people here and I want to keep them forever!!! But the other elders will be great. Between all 4 of us we have less than 18 months experience but we are going to do some great things here and I'm excited. (in answer to one of your questions mom our district is the 4 of us. They are staying in our apartment until they get theirs. So we're squeezing and getting cozy for the next couple days)

Also that's super cool about Facebook. I have no idea when we'll get to do it in our mission. Haven't heard anything about it. But seeing as there's not a crazy amount of Hispanics in Ohio and most of them don't have internet access, let alone the ability to read, I wouldn't get your hopes too high on seeing me through Skype anytime soon.

 

Sorry this is short and so vague. I will try to share more detailed stories in the future. Just know that I'm loving it here. I told President Porter that I never want to leave Dayton haha. We just finished one of our best weeks last week. We got almost all of our goals and stayed busy with lessons. No one has been to church recently but we're patiently working on changing that. No one is progressing rapidly towards baptism but I know Heavenly Father has baptisms in the works. We just need to stay diligent and follow the spirit. Love you all! Cheer for the Cougs and the Aggies for me!! -Elder Graf.

Dayton Forever

Wow that's a crazy Sunday! Glad to hear that you're all alright. As for the mattress cover... hmm I don't know. Maybe just wait til my next area, which might not ever happen. I just emailed president and basically told him to leave me in Dayton, Ohio for forever because I love it too much. :)

BOOO. That's too bad the Aggies lost. It's sad BYU lost too, haha.

Well shoot, what do I say about my life for the past 10 days? Hmmm. Well transfers are this week but Elder Foote and I are staying put! We will not leave Dayton until we baptize and help this branch grow! We refuse! So ya know how I said there would be a curve ball in Heavenly Father's plans for me? Well, it happened. The Spanish zone wasn't big enough to have Spanish districts. So previously, Spanish missionaries were attending English district meetings. So I've been District leader but I've had the comfort of doing it all in English... until today. I was just called and now they're making a Spanish district! Crap. Now I've really got to figure out what I'm doing. They're also splitting our area! They called and asked me where to put the new elders, hopefully the other elders will like it haha. But now our little branch of 30 will have 4 Spanish elders! FOUR. that's like 10 percent of the branch is missionaries, I'm not sure what to think about it. It's kind of exciting but it's also going to make the work a lot harder. Especially because we've just started to have really good success in Dayton. We've found a couple promising people and it will be super hard to give them up to the new coming elders.

Last week was rough, we didn't have a lot of teaching appointments. The Torres family also didn't make it to the branch picnic we had last Saturday. But we found an awesome new investigator that made all of last week's frustrations worth it. Her name is Nereyda and she is a young mom with a daughter that is obsessed with Dora the Explorer. We had an incredible visit with her. We are super super excited for her. She is searching for truth and peace (whether she knows it or not) and we've got the answers!!! We are going to try and visit her again tonight!

What to say, what to say???

There are so many awesome experiences I'm having and I haven't told you not even the hundredth part of them. Just know that Heavenly Father is molding me into what he wants me to be. I don't like the way He does it (about 5 days of humbling for every 2 days of outrageous blessings) but He knows what He's doing and I've just got to trust him. But I love it. Dayton is my little part of the vineyard to cultivate and I never want to leave it!

Quick story then I got to go. I went on companion exchanges with the English Elders (little weird because I had to do all the teaching because the other Elder obviously couldn't communicate. All more the reason to have a Spanish district.). But the other Elder said something cool. even though he couldn't communicate he could feel the spirit in everything that was taught and he could tell when I was teaching what part of the First Vision. It was sweet! Just goes to show that it's really not about the words we say, it's all about the Spirit! And what an awesome gift to have this constant companionship. Always live worthy of and in harmony with the spirit.

  

This work is awesome and I'm happy as can be right now. Glad you’re all safe. Love you tremendously. Sorry for the terrible grammar!!!

Love, Elder Graf