Few Things I've Learned on My Mission

This week is transfer week but Me and Elder Gibb are staying here in the great Kentucky! There are two other elders in our branch. Elder Prach, who has been here for 2 weeks, and Elder Carranza, who has been here for a year. Who is getting transferred? Elder Prach of course. It's crazy that Elder Carranza is staying here, pretty unheard of to be here for this long. He feels like he's worked and done everything he knows how to in this area but apparently there's still more for him here. I'm super happy to stay here. We have a sweet apartment and are one of the only remaining Spanish elders to have a car. The mission has been swelling and there aren't nearly enough cars to go around. Most areas share a car. But more than anything I really love the members. They are so fun, such incredible people. They are all pretty new to the gospel as well. As I've mentioned before, almost every single one of them are recent converts. So we have to basically teach the branch how to run church meetings and fulfill their callings. Lot's of work but lot's of rich blessings.

I feel like I'm saying the same thing every week but we really did have another good week again.

The nature of our work is basically morning schedule (exercise, shower, eat, studies for 4 hours: Personal study, companionship, 12 week training program, language study), afternoons (afternoons are hard - no one is home because Hispanics work hard non stop) and then nights, (which are super busy because that's when everyone finally gets home). We spend most of our time in trailer parks and apartment complexes.  There are 3 member families in our area that we see a couple times throughout the week and a couple less active families as well. We haven't had to do too much tracting because we've been working out of the area book, a book of records of the history of the area. We are learning that basically EVERY Hispanic is related to each other. So the trick here will be to just convert one of them and then all of them will convert :) We're working on building up our investigator pool and we've been doing well finding new gators, the trick is just finding the ones that are going to progress in the gospel. Yeah, we're doing well.  Elder Gibb is a good elder and we're working well together.

Dad requested I list a few things I've learned on my mission; here are a few!

Basic Survival: Ironing clothes, washing clothes, cooking. I wish I knew how to sew better :(

Revelation. There are several different ways we get it (scriptures, prayer, church...) but it always stems from the spirit. That's something I began to learn in the MTC, the spirit is a real guide that can give us counsel and comfort in the form of impressions upon the heart and mind. As we follow those impressions of the spirit, we can recognize God's hand more fully in our lives and revelation becomes easier to recognize and more clear. But we have to take the initiative. Notice the pattern of the scripture "ask, and ye shall receive, knock, and it shall be opened unto you".  Heavenly Father is anxiously waiting to bless us and direct us, but He is waiting for us to first act and "Ask' and "Knock". The Bible dictionary also says some interesting things about Prayer, how it is a channel of revelation and certain blessings are only revealed through prayer.

That's another thing I've learned: Prayer and Fasting are powerful. I don't have time to expound on all of these right now but I've come to love praying and fasting.

Temples truly are Houses of the Lord. I haven't been able to go on my mission so I'm grateful I went as many times as I did before I left. Memories of the temple burn in my mind like a spiritual punch to the face. Mom and Dad, I vividly remember the sealing room with you the Saturday before I left.

My first few transfers in the field I learned of the importance and blessing of the Priesthood. Priesthood Power is real and amazing. I certainly have a testimony that it is God given authority for the blessing of His children. How blessed we were and are that dad always lived worthy of the priesthood so that we could have it in our home.

Gift of tongues is real. I know Heavenly Father has helped me learn Spanish. I still have lots to learn but a year ago I never would have imagined that I'd be speaking another language like I am.

There is a beautiful chapter in Preach My Gospel called "Christ like Attributes". I feel like I've particularly been learning Charity, Faith, and Patience. Throughout my Mission I know Heavenly Father has and will continue to provide me the companions, members, and experiences I need to be molded into a more Christ like Disciple.

I've learned that God wants everything you have - heart, might, mind, strength, faith, choices, thoughts, words, time, talents, and desires. He created us, and He knows what He wants us to become.

I sure am grateful for the home and family I come from. I know I don't have to worry about you. You have the gospel in your lives. Things won't ever be easy all the time but you have the foundation of spiritual truth you need to overcome anything. I love that I'm here, with the opportunity to dedicate all that I am to bringing peace into the lives of the people here. I really feel blessed, really, really blessed.

Well have an awesome Thanksgiving!!! Elder Gibb and I will celebrate all the holidays together (My birthday, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years!). Elder Gibb is already singing Christmas songs. If you think for one minute that we're not going to do some serious caroling this December you're wrong!

Love, Elder Kevin Graf

Not many pictures this week....

But here is one of a banana that we've had in our apartment since our first week of the transfer! It's our third companion and we refuse to get rid of him.

Bueno como esta mi familia?!?!

Bueno como esta mi familia?!?!

One of these days I'm just going to write my entire email in Spanish :) It will be so fun. But on second thought maybe not, because I don't know where the accents are on this computer.... and that might confuse Google translate when you use it.

Anyways, this week was a good week. We are steadily improving the number of lessons we teach each week, so that's a good thing. We also found a handful of new investigators, so our teaching pool is growing. Last night we found 3 new people to teach thanks to a referral from some sister missionaries. They basically call and say "Hey this guy wants to be taught in Spanish" and so we went and got him. We taught him and his friends about Joseph Smith and Revelation and now he's going to come play soccer with us tomorrow. It's not church, but it's a start haha.  But yeah, that's how referrals normally work for us. We don't get them too often but when we do it's just something like "Hey we heard Spanish music coming from that house" or "They speak Spanish". It's not much but it's enough for us! So we go over and give 'em the gospel.

I'm feeling pretty good about my Spanish. It truly is something I hope I keep throughout my life. I hope I'll have enough opportunities to speak it when I get home so that I can keep it. Elder Gibb and I travelled with a member to help him apply for food stamps. We were there to translate for him. I was a little worried about my ability to do it, because discussions about topics other than the gospel aren't very common, but I soon surprised myself that I was actually pretty capable. And then it kind of hit me "Whoa, I'm speaking two languages!". I thought it was pretty neat. Pretty proud of myself. Gift of tongues is a pretty sweet thing :)

It snowed the other day. Definitely getting colder over here. Elder Gibb is hilarious. He is never comfortable. He is either blasting the heat or the AC, no in between. But Elder Gibb is a good companion. He likes to talk a lot so that keeps things entertaining. His Spanish is still broken Spanish but it's getting smoother and he's able to say more in lessons. He always wants to improve himself so he works hard at it. He really is a good companion to have. He's healthy, works hard, and has fun.

Well I really have no complaints. After Jonathan's baptism last week it's back to work looking for who's next. We never know who God has prepared, so we just have to do out part by inviting everyone. We're working well and our branch is starting to catch the vision. The branch council was really involved yesterday in communicating good missionary opportunities with holiday activities that are coming up. There's nothing more exciting for a missionary than to see his branch or ward really step up to the plate and try to get involved. So there's a new energy for missionary work in the branch and it's fun to be a part of it. We just have to follow up with them and help them maintain it.

Elder Gibb and I were the new kids in town because we were doubled into our area at the beginning of the transfer, but now the members are getting to know and trust us. I've really met lots of amazing people out on my mission. In Utah we were surrounded by people with our same standards (which has it's own nature of difficulties at times, but is more often a great support), but here there are so many unsung heroes that are diligently living their faith even though the meetings are small (we don't even use the chapel for sacrament meeting). Our branch is just a small little group of families that come to church as a safe haven from the troubles and influences of the world. I love stepping into our church building, it's something that I've really come to appreciate, there's always a familiar spirit there. I love it. It's a home away from home. And the branch is my Spanish family. They even come with all the drama of Hispanic culture :) The branch members are seriously like a Spanish novella; they are all so dramatic and quick to be offended. But they're also the nicest and most loving people you could ever meet.  

Until next week!

Elder Graf

Picture of a city named Covington just 10 minutes or so to the north of us. It's actually in the other Elders' area (did I tell you that there are 2 sets of missionaries for our branch here? Well there are.) But we were travelling there to help translate for one of our members while he was applying for food stamps.

 A note about the storms that sent 50 tornadoes into the midwest: Yeah, so missionaries don't have T.V. Thus we had no idea that a storm was coming. It was super windy and rainy but Elder Gibb and I didn't think anything of it. So.... we went to work! We had a regular day, making visits, when later we learned that a tornado alarm had sounded? We never heard it. Turns out nothing ever happened anyways. Just a rainy day :) However, just as we finished visiting a less active's home, literally walking out of the door, all of the power in the neighborhood went out. I felt bad for them because they had lots of company over for a little girls' birthday party. The birthday lights got blown out for her. But, like I said, nothing happened. Just a regular rain storm for us.

Fantastic Mix of Emotions

This week was a fantastic mix of emotions. Here's the play by play!

Monday: What a nightmare of a Pday. We had a zone "fun" day where the whole zone went bowling. Not bad, but at the end of it we learned that some elders needed a ride home. We were already pushed for time and we didn't have tons of miles on our car but we couldn't leave them stranded. So we drove them through Cincinnati and dropped them off. We didn't fill up on gas before we left because we were supposed to have sufficient miles to get there and back no problem. Oops. On the way back we noticed that the freeway was in stop and go traffic. We realized that it was very possible that we could run out of gas in that slow moving traffic so we decided that we needed to fill up before we got back on the freeway. What ensued was probably 2 hours of the greatest frustration in my life. We could not find a gas station to save our lives. The GPS led us astray several times, and the people we asked didn't give us very helpful advice. With time slipping away, the day getting dark, and 3 miles left on our car we finally stumbled upon a gas station. We made it home with no time to eat dinner and just grabbed our bags and went out to teach some of the best lessons I've ever taught on a Pday. What a test of patience and temperance, but Heavenly Father rewarded us by the end of the day.

Tuesday: My Birthday! YAY! Me and my district went to Red Robins for lunch to celebrate. I ate like a King! Our morning schedule was a little different because we had taught someone that morning. So we were making up for our language study in the afternoon when we got a text on the phone. Elder Gibb read it to me. He then told me the number and I recognized it as dad's phone. It blew my mind. I have no idea how you got our number but that definitely threw me for a loop for a minute. You probably weren't supposed to do that but thanks for the birthday wishes, haha.

   Later that night we taught our baptismal candidate, little Jonathan, about the commandments and prophets. It was pretty sweet. At the end of the lesson I finally felt like the spirit told me that I had done my part in preparing him for baptism and that he was ready. Really quite special. It was kind of a sigh of relief and also excitement at the same time.

   That night we also had a fantastic turn out for soccer. We play at 8 at night on Tuesdays. We begin and end with prayers. We're also thinking of giving a chapel tour before we play so that we can turn some of these soccer players into gospel investigators!

Wednesday: President called together all leadership missionaries for a sweet council meeting with several big mission advisors. It lasted almost all day - like 8 hours. But it was a once in a mission opportunity to receive some great training. Our mission is really good at finding investigators and involving members, but we need to work on becoming more powerful teachers. So the training was all about how we can improve our teaching and really bring the spirit into our lessons and change lives. I loved it. It was basically a third of the mission gathered together. So it was fun to see all of the other Spanish elders that I know. Basically all the junior companions were paired up for the day and stayed out in the field, some pretty funny stories because of that. I'll get to them later if I've got time.

   But on the way home we got in a 4-car pile up on the highway. Pretty exciting. All the pictures I took were on other missionaries' cameras (Because mine was in my backpack which was stuck in a bent trunk after the incident) :( But I did take a couple pictures with my camera this morning so I'll show you those. Our car didn't have it as bad as other cars so we were able to drive away. But we're still working on getting the repairs done. Basically what happened is that we were in stop and go traffic approaching Cincinnati. We pulled to a stop behind a black van. But the two cars behind us didn't. So yeah, we got rear ended... twice. Each impact was only a second apart. Both impacts slid us into the black van that we were parked behind. But neither the four of us missionaries nor the drivers of the other vehicles were injured. It really wasn't a bad accident because the other drivers weren't going too fast. A police officer saw the whole thing happen because he had just finished reporting an accident that had happened on the other side of the highway, haha.

  But we eventually get back to the church and explain to Jonathan's mom why we were a little late. But Elder Carranza gave him his baptismal interview and he got the green light for baptism. So once again a crazy day but it ended on a really high note.

Thursday: Thursday was a little slower but we did get to teach a couple members.  We also taught English class, which is pretty hilarious sometimes. I can only imagine what Hispanics think of us as we try to learn their language as well. 

Friday: Friday we had a sweet lesson with a guy named Edgar. He's my age and super humble. We taught him really well about the Restoration and the spirit was there. He probably would've been our next baptismal candidate if he hadn't just texted me 5 minutes ago and told us that he's dropping us. It still hasn't hit me yet, but I'll probably be super bummed about it later today because of it. We'll have to try to see him and his brother again and talk to them about it. It's really hard when people turn away from something that we know will change and bless their lives for forever. But they do have their agency, something that is absolutely essential to our eternal progression.

Saturday (and Sunday): BAPTISMAL DAY! Woooo! Jonathan entered into the waters of baptism at around 1:45 p.m. and on Sunday he was confirmed the newest member of our branch. I have never headed and prepared a baptismal service before, and it was quite a roller coaster of coordinating. Members were cancelling on things last minute. So I frantically put together a program the night before and prepared a talk. But the morning of the service I learned that half of the branch was expecting to give talks, even though I had only specifically assigned one of them. But with some calls and rearranging and reprinting of the program it all worked out so that well before anyone showed up we were ready to go and we enjoyed a sweet spirit filled service (Hispanics have a different watch than the rest of the world and so all of our church meetings and services naturally start at least 20 minutes late, no exaggeration). It was such a sweet experience. Especially to see one of our members, who is preparing to serve a mission, baptize little Jonathan. As a rule of thumb we have the members perform the ordinances because members are critical and can provide better, longer lasting fellowship. It was also great because most of the branch was able to come, so lots of support.

  That night a senior couple took us out to dinner at Olive Garden.  We closed out the night with a couple sweet lessons as well, because of which a less active came to church Sunday. Woot!

So Saturday and Sunday were super super awesome. The branch is doing really well right now and I feel blessed to be a part of it. But there is still so much work to do. There are so many people that need what we have. We need to match the vision of our leaders and see our area of the vineyard double (vision of President Hinckley and of our local Stake President, Pres. Greenhall). There are about 750,000 people in our Cincinnati Stake, and only 3,300 are members. Lots of work. And Work it surely is. It's not easy to put ourselves out there but It's what the Lord expects and requires. These are the days where the Lord is asking everything from us. These are the days that He is hastening His work. These are the days that angels are working with us (D&C 86:5). These are the last days that all the ancient prophets testified of. We are the church, the very body (Ephesians 4) of Christ, and our brothers and sisters are relying on US. Make this day different than yesterday. What will you do different this day? How will today be different than yesterday? Act, don't be acted upon. 

Love you all so much. Have a fantastic week. Church is True :D

- Elder Kevin Graf -

Birthday Presents!!!

Me in a trailer park that we often work in.

 

Our Baptizee and Baptizer!

Me and little J...!

The family and Elder Gibb, and Elder Elbaba (one of the missionaries that had helped teach J... before we got there.)

The bumper, or what's left.

Church is SWEET

Thanks for all the birthday stuff! I can't wait to open it. I'm going to wake up early tomorrow and have myself a little fiesta opening presents :)

Well, this weekend we're going to have a baptism! Everything is in place for little J…. to get baptized. It's going to be awesome. We're super excited for him and he's super excited as well. I'll write about it next week!

We had a good week this week. Several cool experiences. The branch is really getting mission minded and we're getting together "noche de hogars" (family nights) for all the families so that they can invite us and their friends over for us to teach! We also did a huge Noche de Hogar with all the branch last Saturday. All four of us missionaries taught about families and how family prayer strengthens our homes. It was cool to teach to the masses, it was a pretty good turn out.

Sunday we also had a super cool testimony meeting. Several members got up and talked about recent miracles they've recognized in their lives - the greatest always being a family with the gospel of Jesus Christ. I know that that's the greatest miracle for me as well - that I was born into a good home, with goodly parents who taught me to love and follow the Savior. I also know that the miracle of conversion can happen every time we choose to prayerfully study the scriptures, especially the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon has always been very special to me. It has a very profound impact on my faith and spirit, which both grow tremendously every time I read from those sacred pages. It's not so much the stories that are important as it is that it is a doorway to revelation and comfort and direction. I Love the Book of Mormon and I love sharing it with others. Elder Gibb and I had the sweet opportunity to bear testimony to an older widow of the power of the Book of Mormon and the knowledge it provides us of Heavenly Father's Plan, especially that she could be comforted in knowing that her husband who recently passed away could be with her again.

The Plan of Salvation is something I particularly enjoy. I love thinking about the eternities and our eternal progression to become like our Father in Heaven. It gives me assurance that every sacrifice is and forever will be worth the reward. It opens my perspective and reminds me of the greater purpose of our lives. It removes all fears and all doubts and makes every trial that much easier to endure. Maybe that's what ultimately has helped me to stay positive and love my mission, is knowing that we're much bigger and more divine than we often remember we are. That's why I love the scriptures and my patriarchal blessing, they always help put things into perspective and help me see things more how Heavenly Father must see things - not as things currently are, but what they have the potential to become. So read the Scriptures! And your personal Scriptures (aka blessing), it's so important! We have to make time for the things that matter most, the spiritual things! Us Mormon folk are a peculiar people, and that's the way it's supposed to be. We are different because of the truth and joy that we have, and we can't forget the value of what we have and who we are as members of THE Church of Jesus Christ in these last days. The world may not recognize the value of who we are yet, but we do! The Restoration of the Church of Christ was and continues to be the greatest work in our day. AND IT'S AWESOME TO BE A MISSIONARY! :D

So yeah, life is good.

Okay so I was absolutely terrible about including any details about this week but I'm out of time!

Anyways, love you all and stay champions.

Church is SWEET. Amen.

-Elder Graf 

In answer to a few questions from mom:

I got the package! Thanks for putting that together. I haven't read or opened anything yet, I've been diligently waiting for tomorrow. However I have been nibbling away at the sweets.

I also got Sister Foote's package. I opened it thinking that it was going to be like the one you sent me, with wrapped presents inside, but I was mistaken. Whoops. So it's already been opened and I already have worn the tie and eaten the oreos that she sent me haha. Be sure to tell her thanks for me! (And thanks from me, his mom. Elder Foote was a great companion!)

 

The budgeting is enough. The members help feed us pretty well, it's never been a problem for me, but for some missionaries that can't budget are leaving on pennies when it gets to the end of the month.

 

We also eat pretty healthy. Elder Gibb is super super super worried that he's going to gain weight on his mission. Every so often I tease him and tell him he's looking a little pudgy. He practically counts calories. So we've been stocking up on bananas, apples, and lettuce each week.

Here is the legendary Elder Carranza. He's the Spanish Zone Leader/Assistant. He's from Guatemala and he's hilarious but also super serious when it comes to doing missionary work. He's been in the Ohio River branch for almost all of his mission (11 months) except for 1 transfer.

Here is our little Spanish District of 4. Elder Gibb, me, Elder Carranza, and Elder Prach (in his second week of training). Almost everyone in the mission is either training or being trained. Half of the mission has only been in the field for less than 120 days. We're growing pretty quick!

Before Sunday we forgot to fill up the car. We made it through the day with 1 mile left until the tank was empty!

Here is the view from our porch right outside from where we study. Not bad with the nice fall colors.