Jan 26, 2011

Well, things this past week were a little slower but Pres. Miller said our numbers still look amazing. We had personal interviews with his on tuesday as a zone and we were each scheduled 15 min for the interview. Mine was 3 to 4 minutes long! The only thing he really told me was keep up the good work and try playing basketball in the mornings. We taught J-- last weekend and man he is progressing well. We gave him the baptismal date and he accepted with a "heck yes" and when we gave him the date for Feb 6th he responded "Will I be ready?" We said Of course and he was like well lets do it then. R-- is progresing well he is most of the way through Mosiah and he has only had the Book of Mormon for a week. N-- is coming along ok but church is still an issue for him. We found a family of 11 that we are teaching now. Their old house burned down and they lost everything so we are trying to help them. Other than that not much else happened. OOOH we had cow tongue for dinner monday and it was pretty good. We went and taught E-- and E-- monday and her roommate M-- and her husband were there. When we first got there her husband was kind of rude and I went to shake his hand and he said "I am busy". Then he started teasing us because we dont drink. Little did he know he was going to get a spiritual kick to the face. We began our lesson and he asked the question "What spiritual things are important" and we went into the plan of Salvation how there is more to life than work and sleep. His kids 19, 16, 15 are all back in mexico and we talked about eternal families. The whole atmosphere changed as we bore testimony and at the end he said, " I would like to meet again and learn more". It was amazing!! We meet with C--- A--- and I-- and we talked about the temple and are working to get them set up for Baptisms for the dead later in feb.

   Everyone was a little upset with  me today because I was the recipient of most of the mail. Last week I got 6 letters and a package and I only had time to respond to 2 letters but this week i got 8 more letters and another package. I didnt know I had so many friends and so much support. It touches me to read all your letters and words of hope and just how life is going. Thanks for the business cards mom!!! I love you all and I pray for all my friends and family daily. Stay strong and listen to the Holy Ghost. Until next week...

 

Elder Jolly

Jan 19, 2011

 

Well it was a pretty good week. We had the three conformations on sunday for C__ A___ and I___.   I was asked to confirm A___ and I got to do it in english so he could understand it better. The stake president was in there and commented on the sweet spirit the conformations brought into the meeting. We had a meeting with all 10 wards ward councils last night with our mission president to discuss the wards failure on the ward mission process. He was very blunt with the wards and told them that if all the wards meet the requirements that we as full time missionaries should be teaching upwards of 100 lessons a week as a companionship but we are not even teaching 15 so he said it shouldnt be too hard to get us up to 25 lessons a week. He hammered that as missionaries it is not our job to find it is the members jobs, we are full time teachers. He came up afterwards and congratulated Elder Fordham and I on our baptisms and told us to keep up the great work.

    J__ came to church on sunday and we are going to try and give him a baptismal date tonight for Feb 6. He is progressing fast and loves learning, so we meet about 2 or 3 times a week. We had a referal R___ who we always stopped by and made appts but he never showed up and his roommates would always give him a bad time about having misionaries stop by for him. So we dropped him before we could even get a lesson in. On sunday we had a weird impression to stop by again, so we did. He opened the door and actually let us in right then and there. It was quiet and we taught The Restoration and he loved every second of it. Afterwards he apologized and said his roommates didnt like us stopping by but they had moved out the night before. The only question he had when we were done was "Can you come again tomorrow?". So we taught him monday night and tuesday night and he wants us to come back again tonight too! He loves learning and the spirit he feels and so he wants us to stop by every night. I gave him a baptismal date monday and so he is on schedule to be baptized feb 13. We found 4 more people who we are now teaching, one is a less active who left the church after she got pregnant at the age of 16 and the ward black sheeped her. We talked to her for about 20 min on her door step just getting to know her and she said we could come back sometime. I feel that the moment she feels the spirit it will bring back memories of her past spiritual experiences. M__ is another less active we are visiting. He got divorced 1.5 years ago and it destroyed him so he stopped coming to church and he stopped really having faith at all. We talked with him for over and hour and he expressed how he felt abandoned. I asked him if he was still saying his prayers and he said no. I promised him that the moment he got on his knees and prayed those feelings of abandonment would go away, he told us to come back whenever we wanted.

    We had dinner the other night at a ladies house, turns out she sings in the Mormon Tabernacle Chior. She sang for 10 years and traveled all over the world. The chior is an amazing missionary tool because the people listen to the music and feel the spirit so strong. This morning at 6 we went to the Oquer (spelling?) Mountain Temple. It is gorgeous and over looks the whole valley. On the way we drove right by the lindemans house!!!!
Anyways that was the basics of my week. Lots of tracting and lots of success. Love you all! Church is ture and anyone who doubts it or doesn't know should our knees in honest sincere prayer and ask God the Eternal Father and you will recieve you answer. Have a great week

 

Jan 12, 2011

There was an Islamic guy who wanted to convert but the problem with that is that in radical Islam if you convert then you can legally be killed. His wife didnt want to convert at all but he was going to anyways. For the baptismal interview they have to be interviewwed by mission pres and then a few weeks later an apostle to make sure they understand what they are signing up for. During his interview with mission president they had a translator and the elders sat in another room with the wife. The wife started talking about a dream she had the night before. In the Islamic custom it is a sign of respect to kiss someones hands when they are a person of high authority or respect. anyways her dream... She had a dream that she was outside and all of a sudden she saw the Savior Jesus Christ descending, He then began to walk towards her. She walked up to him and tried to kiss his hands but he would not let her, so she tried again, but Jesus still wouldnt let her kiss his hands. He then stopped her and said "you cannot kiss my hands for I have come to kiss your hands" and then he kissed her hands. When she finished relating her dream she was crying and realized the importance of it and she ran into the interview room and said I want to be baptized in her broken english.  We had the baptismal interview for C__, A____ and I____and they nailed it. Afterwords C___ asked me to baptize her and her son A___.  So sunday night I baptized C__ and A__ and the Elder's Quorum pres baptized I___. They have the strongest testimonies!!!!! It was such a spiritual experience to be standing in the water and watch them walk down take my hand and then be baptized by power of the Priesthood. When they came up out of the water you could see how happy they were and the glow in their eyes and on their faces. This sunday they will be confirmed and they will officially be members. I have pictures from the baptism that I will try and send home this week but no promises, they are on a disk like you like mom. Ahhh it was such an amazing experience. Sad though to see the end of our journey together as we now have to hand them over to the home teachers, but I know they will be really strong memebers in the church. Elder F___ was in our branch on sunday and he taught a lecture to all the aux. leaders and us missionaries and then Elder F__ and I got to talk to him afterwards for a few mintues. He told us how the Gospel is like a car. OUtside the car in the world it is freezing but we can keep ourselves cuddled up within the car and we wont feel the cold outside. He talked in sacrament meeting too and we had 11 investigators there, it was hard to manage them all but it was enjoyable.  Anyways I will tell you all about Elder L. Tom Perry next week because I only have 10 min left and I still have to write mission president. But I love you all. I know the church is true. This is the only true church on the face of the earth that has the authority of God. The only church that has the authority to preform baptism and confirmations and seal families forever within the walls of the temple.

Pictures from the MTC

The Thinkers... Pondering....?

Some pictures of Elder Jolly

We all appreciate the self confidence Tay has to bring his own companion on his mission... :)

Hola Mom

Jan 5,2011

Hola Hola Hola,

Well this is another instalment of the Elder Jolly mission story. Well Elder F is alright, not the most obedient but I am working on that with him. He will learn to be obedient and to love every second of it. The area is going great, I C and A's baptism was moved back to this sunday because we found out I lives in the Salt Lake City Mission so we had to go through so lengthy process to get that all worked out and to get approval, but everything is good to go now and he is crazy excited. Everytime we teach them they ask more and more questions and you can see the light in their eyes as they feel the Spirit. I spent tuesday and wed morning on splits with my district leader Elder H (very obedient love it!) and it was awesome. We had two appts last night, one was all in spanish so I taught the lesson because Elder H doesn't speak spanish but he can understand it pretty well. I am surprised at how well and fast my spanish is coming along (thanks to the help of the Spirit). I have had people ask me if I have been out for more than a year or if I studied it in college. When I tell them I learned it all in the past 4 months mostly the past 7 weeks they are blown away. The Spirit is the main teacher of spanish for me. But yes last night I taught the Restoration to E her bf P and her granddaughter E. My teaching was alright but the Restoration dvd was where the Spirit really touched them. At the end of the Movie both E's were almost in tears and the grandma asked her bf "So why do we go to the Catholic church?" I was shocked by that response. I explained the feeling I get when I watch the movie and E couldnt help but agree through her teary eyes. After that we had an Appt with C and A to teach A the Gospel of Jesus Christ in english. We didnt think I would be there so we were searching for a member to come with us but everyone was busy. I was told the Elders Quorum was having a presidency meeting at the building. I turned to Elder H and said we are going to the building, one of the members of the presidency will come out with us. I walked in and told them we needed one of them and so Hermano M accompanied us. I ended up being there though. An amazing lesson followed,it was one of those lessons described in Doctrine and Covenants where we all felt the Spirit so strong and we both rejoiced together. C described how as she continues to learn and feel the Spirit she sees how she can better her life. It is amazing to watch these people take steps to grow closer to God and to rejoice. Elder H after the day was over and we returned to our house said "That was fun, I haven't had a lesson as spiritual as that in a while". He said he wants to be my companion. We talked about obedience a lot and the importance of it as we teach other people. He told me I am on the "watch list" which means Pres. Miller is watching me to see how I would do in a leadership role. It is early in my mission so I dont want a leadership role anytime soon, but who knows. We are teaching N still, he is a new investigator. We taught him on sunday and we asked when we could return and he said monday morning. So we returned monday morning and taught him and he just kept asking questions because he was so interested and it lasted about 2 hrs but it was a great use of time. We are sending the Daily Dose couples over to teach him english because he wants to learn. I had a check up appt with Dr. Jones and my results came back negative. He checked me all out and said I am perfectly healthy and good to go. I now have my driving privilages back!!!

    I hope everything goes great with the adoption papers and that Bernie and Rich are able to enter the temple soon.  4 months gone 1/6 of my mission crazy how time flies. Thanks Bernie and Rich for the package and you too Brenda, your packages and letters are always a great pick me up. I never have a lot of time to write letters but I will try and send one out in the next 2 weeks, hopefully I can find time today.  Anyways I hope you all had a great christmas and I am sorry I couldnt be there to entertain you all for christmas. Did you get a chance to look at the photos I sent home? I will be sending home a few more in a few weeks with more baptism photos. Oh mom if you find time can you go to vistaprint.com and make some business cards for me with my mission info and home info and stuff that I can give to the people in the wards I serve in and converts that I want to keep in touch with. I love the mission field and there is no other place I would rather be and need to be. Next week I will tell you about the baptisms and Elder L. Tom Perry's talk and how I got to meet him and shake his hand and talk with him for a little bit. Stay strong, pray always, read the scriptures and attend church. Those are the keys to blessings in this life and happiness in the life to come.

 

Love,

Elder Jolly

Dec 29th 2010

Hola Hola,

well my doctors appt went well, although the MRI was the most boring thing I have ever done in my life and its a good thing I am not clostrophobic. I dont have my results yet so you will have to wait until next week to hear them. I hope everything goes well with Makenna and I will pray for her. The Priesthood is a wonderful blessing to have in our lives,  just wish people really understood the power they hold. While I was waiting for my MRI i got an unexpected call from the Zone Leaders. They told me that my companion Elder H was going to be transfered and my new companion is Elder F He is from Georgia  has been out less than a year so we will see how things go. I am excited and I think we will work great together and the experience will help our spaish out. Well the first transfer is over and Elder H and I taught 94 lessons to be exact. We have 9 people on date. On sunday we were supposed to have the baptism of C and A but they werent ready, so we went to visit them sunday night. I our other investigator was there too. We taught them lesson 3 the Gospel of Jesus Christ and we drew it out on the white board I had bought for such occasions. At the end we asked them the baptismal questions and they answered them all perfectly. So we asked them if they knew these things were true and they said yes we do. Elder H then asked so what is stopping you from setting a solid date. They said nothing really. I then said what date will you be ready for (thinking they would want 2 or 3 weeks) and C replied Jan 2nd I then said well if she is getting baptized that day then I am too. We are still working with A because he is 13 and understands english better but we think he will be ready for sunday too. So we are having 3 baptisms this sunday as long as we can work out the difficulty of  I not living in our area, but he came to us so we didnt poach. The R family is progressing well although they didnt attend church on sunday so we are still working on that with them. They loved their chirstmas gifts we gave them. We had an Elder's Quorum activity last night, it was a soccer tournament in the stake center. We brought several of our investigators and to my not so surprise I was the only white guy there lol. We played 3 games each to 10 goals. Afterwards several people asked me where I learned to play soccer, I couldnt tell if they were making fun of me or complimenting me, but it seemed like a compliment. It was a ton of fun but I felt like my dad when I was done, like I was falling apart and sore. Love you dad. We went to temple square last thursday as a zone and it was tons of fun although I realized I am starting to really become a missionary. We were walking around temple square and this really cute girl walked up and put her hand on my shoulder and asked me if the temple was closing for 5 years. I felt so uncomfortable I couldnt stop thinking "Why is this girl touching me!?" I mean yes i noticed she was cute but hey I only shake girls hands. It was weird and I didnt like that little experience. We were on the northeast side of temple square and this man gave us a wheel chair to take back to the visitor center in the south west corner. So I was pushing it and Elder H my District Leader hoped on and sat down. As I pushed him through temple square a couple walked up and recognized Elder H and exclaimed "What happened, What did you do to yourself?" Elder H obviously not thinking stood up and everyone around us was a little shocked. We are teaching 5 new people now. A member moved into our ward and is living in a house with 5 nonmembrers so he is working with us to teach them. On christmas day we visited some of Elder H's converts. At one house there were about 20 people having a party but about 10 were pretty sick and they all asked us for preisthood blessings, so we annointed and gave 10 blessings. We then traveled up to Kamas which is past Park City. When we pulled into Kamas the temperature was 12. Anyways I have another really cool spiritual experience about a recent convert who was Islamic and an experience with his wife so remind me next week. Anyways love you all and thanks for the gifts and letters from everyone.

 

Love,

Elder Jolly

Jolly Holiday's

I got the letter with the money and the box. I will put the money to good use. Ummm for Eli, I have no idea, what is really popular here in the mission is nerf guns. We try and have a nerf gun war every other p day. They also have a book of mormon and bible edition apples to apples, that might be cool.

    Well me and Elder H had a good week, president wrote me a letter saying that he hasn't seen such high weekly indicators from Elder H before (lessons taught, investigators with a date and other stuff like that). We have been using up all the book of mormons we have in the house so the 4 I got from bernie and rich will go to good use and we also had to order 10 more to make it through next week.

   Elder Holland gave a great talk, very powerful and like always I think he almost broke the pulpet at one point. At one point he said, "IF YOU GO HOME AND ARE STILL THE SAME THEN YOU MISSED SOMETHING, THEN WE AS THE CHURCH AND ME AS A PERSON HAVE FAILED YOU". He said the most important investigator we will ever have is ourselves and we should come home with a testimony strong enough to keep up active for the rest of our lives. I guess there has been a problem with missionaries going home and going inactive as they head off to college. But then he settled down and talked about christmas. He said its interesting how in the Bible when it talks about the birth of Jesus Christ it says "there was no room for "them" in the inn, it doesnt say there was no room, it says no room for them. He talked about how the Savior grew up with humble circumstances and how he wonders is the Savior couldnt have had better. But he tied it all back in really well talking about how he had to descend below everything.

   Well I had a crazy week. Now don't freak out mom.... lol ok so saturday we had just gotten back to the house from practicing singing because Elder h and I and 2 other missionaries sang in a sacrament meeting "O Emmanuel, O Emmanuel". We did alright lol. Anyways we got back and I ate but I wasnt feeling too good so I had about 15 minutes before weekly planning so I layed down in bed. I guess I fell asleep. I woke up at 2:25 when Elder H came in to get me to do weekly planning. I was feeling better so I got up and walked out the door into the hallway. I started to get dizzy so I put my hand on the wall and said something (dont remember what) and then the next thing I knew I was on the ground and Elder H was standing over asking if I was ok. I felt ok but my head hurt really bad and I was bleeding from my mouth. I had no idea what had happened and it was 2:28. I asked Elder H what happened and why I was on the floor and he said I walked out into the hallway said something and then passed out. I fell flat on my face and smacked my head pretty good. He said I then began to shake as if I was having a seizure. He ran up to me thinking I was joking and then realized I wasnt joking as I was shaking and my eyes were open and I was bitting my tongue. He touched me as he ran by to get some socks to stuff in my mouth and the moment he touched me I snapped out of it and came to. I had no memory of anything between putting my hand on the wall and waking up. I spent the next 5 minutes spitting blood into the sink as my tounge was bleeding pretty good. We called Sister Miller the Mission Presidents wife and she was freaking out but what I found funny was president Miller in the backround was freaking out even more. Lol they set me up with a doctors appt and I went in on Monday. I still had a pretty bad headache at the time, it has since mostly gone away. Doctor Jones asked me some questions and then took my heart rate laying down and standing up and when I stood up my heart rate jumped more than 30 pts. He asked me about stress and diet and he said he thinks I need to drink more water and what happened was I got dehydrated passed out and when a person passes out it is not uncommon to have a seizure like reaction, but he is pretty sure I didnt have a seizure. He then did an EKG to check for heart damage and it came back negative so I am good there. I am going back in on Dec 28th for blood work to double check and make sure it isnt something more serious, he said he wants to do the blood work to rule out cancer but he said that is highly unlikely that I have Leukemia but he just wants to be safe. Then I am getting an MRI and they are going to check to make sure I dont have any internal bleeding in my brain. It all sounds pretty bad but he assured me it looks like I should be just fine, he is just doing these tests as a precaution. I am feeling a lot better and have more than doubled my water consumption a day since then. I drink about 4-5 bottles of water now. Yea so dont worry mom because I know you probably are. I mean if I was writting you a letter saying I had the flu, you would proabably say psh the flu are you joking get back to work ;) Love ya! What was funny is Elder H was more shaken up than I was. I after I spit all the blood out of my mouth I was like well lets go plan, we have people to teach, we have an appt in 2 hrs. Elder H was like wow wow slow down. That night every time I rolled over in bed to get comfortable he would sit up and look over at me and I would just laugh and be like  "I am fine go back to sleep!" Anyways that was my week. Oh and the R family who we are teaching (family of 8 well 7 now the uncle went back to arizona to find work) well we found out they are not married so we talked to them about it and discused the importance of being married and we told them to pray about it, so we will see what happens. We had 11 investigators at church on sunday, it was awesome! Anyways I got to go times almost up, Love you all and Merry Christmas

 

Love,

Elder Jolly