Happy Pioneer Day!

Good Morning everyone! And Happy Belated Pioneer Day!

For all of you who have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about, don't feel too bad. I was pretty hazy about what it was until by companion explained it to me. Apparently the 23rd of July is the day that the pioneers settled Salt Lake City if I remember right, so of course celebrations ensue. So ya. Happy Pioneer Day!

(I did explain to Nick that Pioneer Day is actually the 24th, but since it fell on a Sunday this year, most celebrations happened on Saturday.  And yes, he has celebrated Pioneer Day in Utah on several occasions...)

I am honestly doing great! My knee has been bothering me a little, truth be told I haven't been he greatest at wearing my tape. I was just talking to sister Wadsworth about it and she practically killed me :) So ya, do better I will :) 

Oh! Also on a completely unrelated note, I finally got around to polishing my shoes! Is it bad that I think I can count on one hand how many times it's been done? I know there was once in great falls when Elder Glorious Hendricks helped me. Then I think I did it once in butte. I think Elder Hendricks might have funny enough also been there for that. But ya! Polished shoes! Granted bro. Cheatham may or may not have told me that I couldn't leave the house until they were polished, thankfully not Air Force style, but ya. They were done well. I tried to get a before and after picture but it didn't turn out so well. I'll attach it.

Also finally took some pictures of Ten Sleep!

Anyways, this week was absolutely fantastic! 

Sorry but the rest of this email is going to be a little short, just got back from zone preparation day and we have 20 min. until dinner.

This week Elder Ison and I decided to put our faith to the test. We haven't really been getting too many investigators over in basin lately so we started striving to go tracting more there and truly offer EVERYONE the gospel. It's been amazing! We seriously got quite a few promising potential investigators and one who no joke practically begged us to come and teach her and her husband. It was amazing! I am so thankful that we know that we are not alone doing this work. 

Anyways quick update on investigators: 

Lancaster's: doing great! Still haven't been able to get them to church but they said that they would for sure be there next week so fingers crossed! Also we finally found a member who is willing to come to our lessons with them so hopefully we will get some lessons in a members home! 

Travis and Wife: we met this awesome family, funny enough right across the street from the Lancasters and they are so pumped to learn about the gospel! We have a lesson coming up with them soon so more to follow! 

All of our recent converts here are thankfully all still active and kicking hard! It's so awesome! 

One of the things that I've learned here in Greybull, don't mix Bleach and Hydrogen Peroxide. Apparently it gets poisonous. Heh heh ya. Also! Hydrogen peroxide will get blood out of ANYTHING. it's awesome. Even if the blood stain has been there for quite some time. It's really cool to wash. Just don't mix it with bleach. 

(After I questioned why he was mixing those two chemicals and why he needed to get blood out of clothes, what he had blood on, and how the blood got there, I got this response- )

Well I had laundry and I thought that it would make my clothes super white. Ya nope. I just know that bro. Cheatham and I were draining it and he was instructing me to not do that again, of course in the most lovingly instructive way. So I think I realize why I like bro. Cheatham so much. He reminds me of so many people from home. So he's the ward chorister (Flo) constantly teaches me to think things out in my head before asking questions, really gets me to think a lot more (Gingerbeard) has a sense of humor and just reminds me a ton of (Bro. Anderson.) He is constantly taking the time to talk with us, give us life advice and tells lots of great stories (all three).  Of course he's totally his own person and I love him for some of his own traits, but ya :). I've been blessed. :) 

Oh ya, anyways it's just been random things like bloody noses, a few scrapes from bike crashes or other stuff. Thankfully just little things. :) And really just shirts.  It (the bike crash) was really just once. Don't worry I do still have some balance :) And the bloody nose was from  just walking into doors actually. :) 

Sorry, I love you all and hope that you all have a most fantastic week! Just remember that the Lord truly does love each and every one of you and we can truly gain a relationship with him through prayer. This I honestly know to be true. I have and am currently experiencing it. 

Never give up, Never Surrender!

-Elder Berrett

Ten Sleep part 2

Good morning everyone!

This week was another crazy week down here in the Greybull/Basin area!

To start off, this week, we got invited this last Monday by some recent converts of ours, the Frames, to go and play volleyball with them! Apparently someone there was interested in the gospel so the last elders that were here were playing trying to get to know them, and had a lesson set up but then transfers happened. Anyways, while they didn't show up, we met some other people who might be interested! But ya, me. Volleyball. No coordination.  It was interesting. :) The funny thing is my companion took off for the other team, the one with the Frames and a few older players. And he put me on the team with a bunch of young girls. Unfortunately they weren't exactly the best players.

And they were way better than me, so it was really funny. My team and I just spent the entire time laughing or telling me that apparently you can't do certain things in volleyball, like kick it. :) Anyways ya! It was fun!

Tuesday was service almost all day, it was awesome!

Wednesday we spent most of it in Lovell with the Elders there because Elder Ison needed to go to the doctor for the pain in his back. Man I have bad knees, he's got a bad back, we bring a whole new meaning to the term "elders" :).

Thursday we actually had quite a lot of lessons with less-actives who seem to now finally be progressing! It's so awesome! We have one in particular Frank, who is basically struggling with the idea of Faith.  He thinks about everything logically and has to prove everything to himself. Our next lesson will probably be reading Alma 32 and challenging him to pray. Honestly it's amazing what miracles happen when people sit down, read the scriptures, and pray. When people do that, all of the miracles happen in their lives :)

On Friday we got to go out with Bro. Cheatham and go and do service for a less-active named Boyd. He had a giant pivot (a giant water sprinkler thing with wheels) break down on his farm so we got to go out here and help him get it unstuck. It was actually a ton of fun and my companion even got to talk with him a lot so hopefully we now have a solid connection. :) Also on Friday we also met a new family that we will hopefully be teaching tomorrow! They live right next door to some members and the members told us to basically just leave a Book of Mormon on her doorstep and see if she is interested. Well thankfully she was outside when we went over so we got to meet her and her kids and discuss the gospel a little bit!

Saturday. Now here's where it gets interesting :)

Saturday morning we went and did some service for a less-active in our ward, sister Shepard. She has a ton of old dead trees in her front yard that we got to help cut down! It was awesome! Tons of hard work though because we weren't allowed to use any power tools so we both just went to town using saws and actually did quite a ton of work! Eventually another less-active family (who is friends with her) came over with a chainsaw and helped us take down some of the bigger stuff, we just had to climb up, tie a rope to it, and pull the rope in the direction that we wanted em to fall. The best part was that not only did we really help her out and get that all taken care of for her, but she even came to church the next day! Even after she told my companion that she might not because of how exhausted she was! It was seriously an awesome miracle!

Also Saturday we finally headed back out to Ten-Sleep! Unfortunately we weren't able to get too much done Saturday night, our lesson with that new investigator over there fell through, :/ so we decided to go tracting. Eventually, just as it was getting close to 9:00 and we were heading back to our car, we knocked into some members. Now real quick funny side story. Originally the plan was that the Ten-Sleep bishop was going to arrange with some members to house had for the night while we were up there. Well we unfortunately we never able to get a hold of him (there was a minor family emergency that may or may not have involved hitch hiking, thankfully everyone is safe and ok) so we decided that we would just camp out at the church! We figured a couple of couches, plus a giant supply of living scriptures videos. We were set. :) Thankfully however the member that we ran into found out about our plan, and got some housing arranged for us. We stayed in this amazing ranch house in the attic. No joke the attic totally reminded me of Mary Poppins. At least the layout of the bedroom did.  It was awesome! Possibly one of the best parts though was waking up to a sunrise over a giant grassy field with Red mountains in the background. I was in paradise. It was gorgeous!

But ya, that was about our week! Oh! I almost forgot! On Sunday we had another awesome lesson with Bro. Ledford! Following up with him he read a ton of his scriptures this week and was definitely excited to get back into them in our lesson. While unfortunately it didn't sound like he was going to be making it to church the next few weeks, he said that One of these weeks he would make it. He will get re-activated one of these days I know it!

But ya, that's about it, now all I have to do is convince my family to all move down here so I can still be close to them after my mission :). I love it here!  I just can't get over it! First off the people are definitely amazing here, sometimes the less-actives drive me a little crazy, but everyone here is really honest and kind :).  Also it is gorgeous down here. Green mixed with red rock everywhere. Especially around Ten Sleep this entire county is just gorgeous. 

Oh! Did I tell you some awesome news? Bro. Cheatham, the member that we are living with, just told me that when I come back, he will teach me how to Fly! I've been secretly hoping that it would be a possibility since especially he is an awesome flight instructor (his wife likes to brag about him even if he doesn't like it) :) he even has a little special thing on his flight instructor license that apparently only 5% of people have or something like that. But ya. :) I can totally learn how to fly post mission if I want to. :) 

 

This week I have been studying a ton on humility and on repentance.  Concerning humility, I love Preach My Gospel. Oddly while studying it this week, I found that this was a section that I honestly hasn't read too much up on. :/ It was awesome! In  Preach My Gospel it referenced Ether 12:27 and I think this is one that I've talked about before recently but studying it with the question in mind "How can I be more humble?"  It was amazing! I am so thankful that we all have a loving Heavenly Father who KNOWS that we have weaknesses, that we make mistakes. That's why he provided his son, and because of Jesus Christ, we can use the repentance process to truly change ourselves. To become better disciples and sons and daughters of God. Brothers and sisters I KNOW that as we humbly ask our father in prayer how we can improve, and what our next step is, he will guide us to it and then HELP us change and accomplish it.

I love you All!

Never give up, Never Surrender!

-Elder Berrett

Week 46 (I Think)

Goooooooooood mornin' good mooooornin'!

So get this. Today has a HIGH of 73, right now Siri says that it's 72, but with the wind it feels quite a bit cooler. Soooo ya, I hate to say it, but I'm a little glad that I'm not in Gilbert right now. *Cough* High of 108 *Cough*. Granted I'm still a total wimp here. Yesterday it got down to 65 and I had to put on a sweater. I promise you I was probably the only person in a several hundred mile radius wearing a sweater. Now who else can say that? :)

Anyways this week went by too darn fast.

This week, what did we do? Let me check area book real fast. Ok. Got it.

Tuesday, we had our lesson with Marci. This week she specified that she wanted something "Fun" so we gave her "fun". My companion and I decided that we were going to teach them the principles of missionary work, and enduring to the end. To do that we cooked up a two part activity, a missionary boot camp, and a extremely down-Sized, miniaturized Trek. For the missionary part we did a few funny activities, bike race, eating weird foods, then we also did some role plays to show that it honestly isn't as scary as everyone makes it out to be to do missionary work. For the Trek we did a few activities like a stick pull, eating flour water, and a few scripture chases, then finally you had to pull someone who was "sick" in a wheelbarrow while everyone threw water balloons at the two people until they made it to the other side of the yard, Zion, where brownies awaited them. :) I personally was really proud of it. Thanks to my companion's genius ideas we even had music playing for part of it. If any of you are familiar with The Nashville tribute band, we used two of their albums, "The Work, and The Trek" but ya, it was fun. :)

Also this week we did a ton of service, I'm fairly certain that I used a weed whacker at least twice this week. Oh! Also we got to help an older less-active sister in the Ward cut down several of her trees that were dead. She had us using some sort of a branch cutter thing to cut through thankfully not the big base but the two big arms that usually start after that. She said that she would pay someone to come in with a chainsaw and do the rest once we finished. It was a ton of hard work but totally worth it. She totally came to church! Any other week and she would have been swearing up and down that she wouldn't come. However she totally came! It was amazing!

Also this week we had another lesson with the Lancaster family! They are doing great! We had a short but powerful lesson with them. While bro. Lancaster unfortunately didn't have too much time to read this last week, his wife read the title page, the introduction, the testimonies of all the witnesses, and the testimony of the prophet Joseph Smith. She had a few questions, but it was all like "What does this mean?" or "I'm not I understanding what this said". She absolutely loved it and he was so pumped to read it this week. He asked for a copy of his own (he denied one last week) so that he could read it on his breaks at work! We also set up another lesson with them for next week and they offered to feed us again! While it will be interesting to see how we can get a member there, I can't wait for it!

Anyways ya, we didn't get to have too many lessons this week, a ton fell through, however a bunch of people really started progressing this week so yay!

Things are going really great here! My companion and I have been getting along better, he still thinks that not talking is the best policy when he gets upset. That he can just hold things in always. However he told me some things that really bug him, I did the same, and we worked things out :) My knee is doing alright. I put off changing my tape for a while and now some random muscle keeps spazzing out on me. :/ I took some ibuprofen and did some physical therapy and that seems to be helping so that's where I'm at. Got a little forgetful, but I'm working on it :). 

Bro. Cheatham took us to this hill over the valley, it was literally completely random, we were driving back in his car from tearing out a floor at his old house when he just randomly turned and started off reading up to this giant plateau. He told us that his favourite thing to do in an airplane is take it along this and just take off from it.  Then he remarks, "You know, I'm sure we can get pretty far with this suburban", and just takes off. 50. 60. 70. 80. Finally YARDS from the edge he slams on the brakes, spins the wheel one ways, and throws the e-brake sliding our car away from it. Show off. :) we stopped and took pictures real quick then headed home :). My impressions were like, "Holy cow this is really high up". And "Man we would have been just a splat way down there." :) Also complete awe. He said that was the highest hill in the whole Big Horn county. It was a fantastic experience.

Greybull is one place that I NEED to visit after my mission. I love it here!

Anyways, this week I was reading the scriptures and came across this little gem. Turn with me if you will to Jeremiah 50:5 "They shall ask the way to Zion". Now while that's not the whole verse, that part really stuck out to me. We all know that the Lord loves us and truly wants us to have joy in this life. Brothers and sisters I can promise you all that if you will ask God, and continually turn to him, you will truly find so much peace in this life. :)

Love you all! 

Never give up, Never Surrender!

-Elder Berrett

Ten Sleep!

Good Morning everyone!

So guess what, we finally had a lesson with the Lancaster Family! It was amazing! They offered to feed us dinner and we taught them the restoration! It was absolutely fantastic as we got to teach them the gospel. Neither of them have been too religious so it was amazing too see their reactions as we taught them that Families are supposed to be eternal and don't end here. While we didn't get to put them on date yet, they committed to being baptized when they know that it's true at the end of the lesson as well! I am so pumped for them!

Let's see. Also this week we got to finally make it out to the Ten Sleep Ward! (Sorry mom, we forgot to take pictures, we heading back down in 2 weeks though!) It is honestly a beautiful small town.

Unfortunately we picked a heck of a week to head down. Apparently everyone in the valley and even some from out of state head to Ten Sleep for the 4th of July festivities. So this little town of 240 people was just packed! On the bright side church was packed! While it is technically a ward, they have a tiny little branch building and we basically had chairs clear into the cultural hall. We were still setting up chairs after the sacrament! It really is a wonderful little town though.

After church was over we got to sit down and have a great meeting with the bishop there who is honestly such a great man. He gave us a solid referral for someone that he knew in town and so we immediately went to go contact him. This guy is totally prepared for the gospel!

Because he was busy we taught him a little bit of the restoration then gave him a pamphlet and set up a lesson! Unfortunately because miles we won't really get to go back for another 2 weeks, however the bishop will be trying to make daily contact with him. :)

Oh! Also this week we had a super amazing lesson with a less-active of ours. Vicki. She has been taking the lessons from missionaries for quite sometime now, well in our lesson this week she called her self out again! I think I talked about her a bit last week. However this week throughout the lesson she was constantly testifying of the gospel to her roommate, who thinks that the Book of Mormon is true, and basically telling her that she needs to come to church with her :) she is progressing so much!

But ya. That's pretty much been the week. We did do some service for an older sister in the Ward this week, sister Shepard. She is such a hoot! She had us trimming up trees and picking s bunch of weeds, all a bunch of normal stuff. But then after that she wanted me to go and install Windows 10 on her computer. Bless her soul she was just so fantastic!

We were planning on having bro. Cheatham take us to Byron tonight to sit RIGHT UNDERNEATH some fireworks. But that entire event got moved to Friday and today is the only day that we are allowed to stay out till 10:30. However bro. Cheatham said that we will just have to have our own party or something to that extent tonight.  We had a lesson planned for today, but it got canceled so we will mostly be doing finding activities today. Tons of people are out and about so hopefully we can get he gospel spread a little bit :). Other than that, our plans for today are mostly just eating ice cream, and emailing home. So much ice cream. The Cheatham's recently chewed us out for not eating enough of their food and buying our own. Soo now we have quite a bit of extra money. And we just happened to discover this insane awesome ice cream place over here in Basin. Ya. It's been bad. Thankfully I'm still at my pre-mission weight so yay!

So literally just minutes ago a freakin miracle occurred! We just got a call near the end of companionship study from an unknown number.  Well apparently she met some missionaries a while back who gave her a Book of Mormon and told her to call when she finished. Well she just did. She apparently also read preach my gospel, the missionaries told her to look it up and read the lessons, and now she wants to meet with us. We have a lesson Thursday! So ya. We got another call from her about an hour ago asking us if we knew that the Book of Mormon was true. Like really true. She was breaking in and out of service but she sounded near tears. All we really got out was that she knew the promise in the back by heart, and that her dad is a preacher.   Apparently she took last semester of college off to go do a 3,000 mile hike of the country. Apparently she ran into some return missionaries on the hike or something and then also somehow got a hold of our number here and on the hike read the entire Book of Mormon, then most of Preach my Gospel. Seriously. We are waiting to hear more from her, at the moment we have a day and time scheduled with her for our lesson, but we don't know her name or where she lives/wants to have the lessons.

So this week in my studies I have been finishing up 2 Nephi. Wow. I think these are some of my new favourite chapters in the Book of Mormon. Quick scripture time, 2 Nephi 32:3 "Angels speak by the power of the Holy Ghost; wherefore, they speak the words of Christ. Wherefore, I said unto you, feast upon the words of Christ; for behold, the words of Christ will tell you all things what ye should do." I love that last part so much. "The words of Christ will tell you all things what ye should do."  My testimony to you all is that they truly will. If we ever need any advice, turn to the scriptures. I have received so much counsel and guidance from them, they are truly a blessing in my life.

I love you all!

Who told my car?

 As his mom, I chided him on the condition of his lips, and asked him to use chapstick and drink more water.  His response- Hahaha ya, I've gotten so many things of chap stick from members on my mission. :) I was pretty good in Butte, but here it's just hard since I can't find a decent water bottle. I think I'll look next time I go to Lovell. There just aren't any decent stores here. But yes I will do better. :) I think it (the water bottle) got ran over. I can't exactly remember I just know that it got destroyed. :/

Elder De Mille!

Poor sick Elder Ison

Never give up, Never Surrender!

-Elder Berrett