February 17, 2014 Email

Hellooo :D How is everyone? Good? I hope so! I do have to say that it both seems like forever since I last emailed home, but it also feels like it's been a super quick week. I hope I'm not the only one that feels like time speeds up and slows down, is fast and slow all at the same time. EXAMPLE: Four month mark yesterday on my birthday. WHAAAAT?! Holy cow. It's probably just because I'm so used to others being on their missions so I only knew what it felt like when they were gone for so long, but from the perspective of the missionary it goes by soooo fast. Only 20 months left. Scary. I feel like it's going to go by too fast and that I won't have achieved all that I wanted to. I also worry that I'll look back sometimes with too many regrets. And I worry that I won't become the person/missionary that I want to be by the time my mission ends. However, don't let this email worry you: I am loving it, I am doing everything I can to have no regrets (and I know that I probably will have regrets, but if what I hear is correct just about every missionary has at least some regrets so that makes it a little better), and I'm doing the best that I can to become who I feel I am destined to be and who my Father in Heaven wants me to become. It's taking a massive amount of faith, but I know that if I keep pushing forward, striving to do what I know I should be doing, that I'll learn and become what my Father intends me to become. Man, faith isn't as easy as they say it is. ;) So, that was unexpectedly deep. If you remember anything from this email, remember this: If you are doing your best and trying to do what you should be doing, then you will become who you are meant to become. Now on to the rest of the week. Less important things first, thanks for all of the birthday wishes to anyone who may have written on my Facebook wall or sent me a package or letter. I also want to thank anyone who may have given my little sister birthday wishes as well! And I want to wish my little sister, Mikayla Cevering, a happy birthday, so...Happy Birthday Mikayla! I hope it was a great day! I know I'm a day late, but I feel it's more appropriate a day late than 6 days early. :) My day was pretty good, partaking of the Sacrament is always great especially as I come to understand its significance step by step. We did a lot of finding, most of which didn't turn out like usual, but that's alright! We had dinner at a member's house and had a pretty good dessert, so no need to worry about a cake. Plus, my family may or may not have sent me 27 1/3 pounds of candy for Valentine's and my birthday so yes I had a great week and birthday! Oh, and Sister Weston, President Weston's wife, gave me a call to wish me a happy birthday so that was pretty great too. :) I love my mission president and his wife! They are amazing! No onto the title story, which will be wrapped in quite nicely with another, overarching tale of a small town called Robbins. This last week we went down to a very small town called Robbins, population about 100. This little niche IS in our area, as I'm sure I've mentioned too many times, and is probably under 2-3 miles in circumference/perimeter. Maybe almost under 1 mile. Anyway, Elder Perkins, Devin Hungrige, and myself all went down (in Devin's car) to Robbins to tract and street contact. Anyway, we go tracting and in a few houses we are able to place a Book of Mormon, woo! And he said that if we come back and he's home, we can stop by to share more of the message. Woot. So we keep tracting and we ran into a Hispanic man who speaks hardly any English. One of those people who knows enough of a language to say that they don't know how to speak that language. So, Elder Perkins knowing I speak a little Spanish, looks at me and awkwardly chuckles. So I try to explain that I know very little Spanish and I give the Spanish introduction as to who we are, what church we're from and what our message is about, "Hola, somos missioneros de la Iglesia de Jesucristo de los Santos de los Ultimos Dias y tenemos un mensaje de Jesucristo. Que interesante?" (For those of you who speak Spanish, I don't quite understand how to ask if they are interested. :)) So he replied saying Spanish words at light speed. Needless to say, I reinstated that I didn't speak much Spanish. So in my broken Spanish I tried to communicate with him about what was going on and by his body language and tone of voice I figured he wasn't interested and so I asked if he was Catholic, he said yes, I said that was good (wishing I knew how to say that any faith in Christ is good, in Spanish) and tried to ask if anyone else they knew was interested. He said no and we were on our way. Well, this happened at AT LEAST 3 different doors, my Spanish limping along with me. However, one of them I was able to communicate well enough with that she seemed interested, wanted a pamphlet that was in Spanish, and wanted to hear more. My dying on the wayside Spanish worked! Referral for the Spanish sisters! WOOT! Hahaha it was truly amazing. I love speaking Spanish and I do wish I had been called foreign speaking, but it looks like I'm getting enough of an opportunity already! Haha. Brothers and Sisters, it was awesome. :) To begin something sort of new, I would like to introduce: Investigator Insights! A new section of this email which will cover stories/updates we had with the investigators in the last week. So, here goes: Jill: Jill was on our list of potential investigators. When we went to visit her initially she said that missionaries had offered to mow her lawn about a year ago, she told them no, and that was the only contact she had with them. Interesting that she was on our list of potential investigators because nothing of our message was mentioned to her and she only saw the missionaries when they asked to do that simple service for her. However, when we went over with she invited us back to hear about our message! Our initial approach was the Plan of Salvation so we gave the Plan of Salvation lesson, gave her a Book of Mormon, invited her to read the introduction, and we have another lesson with her for tomorrow which will be the Restoration. Woo! Awesome. Jay: Saturday night, we were on our way home from the Ward Mission Leader, Brother Martinez's, house when we ran into a guy working on his car. We asked how he was doing, he said he's done better, so of course we're going to start talking. He was replacing the spark plugs in his car and since both Elder Perkins and I don't know much about cars and since he offered to teach us how to replace spark plugs, we went over to watch. It was 9:20ish PM when we started talking to him. We talked about his car, car parts, and cars in general (he got his 1968 Camaro to run a quarter mile in 9 seconds. That is insane!), and at about 10:10 we had talked a little about his religion and finding out he is Christian and looking for a church because he's here in California on military duty, we told him our message is aimed to help build faith in Christ and asked if he would be interested. He said yes and we set up a time for this coming Saturday! He's a super nice guy and we're excited and hopeful! Barbara: We had a lesson with her Wednesday but it had to be cut short because she was heading out to see a friend who was in the hospital. We read in Mosiah 3 and 4 and shared the mormon message called The Will of God. Look it up, it's great! It was an alright lesson, Barbara has been investigating for 13-15 years. Yeah, it's tough to teach her because she knows just about everything about the church and also about tons of other religions. Yeah. Pretty nice though. Seth: Taught the 10 Commandments this week. His Mom doesn't want him getting baptized so we've had to cancel his date. I've probably already told you guys that, but in case I haven't. :) So, unfortunately, he isn't getting baptized yet but he is still taking lessons and coming to church, even if it is with his friends in the other ward. That doesn't necessarily matter until he has permission to get baptized. The biggest news with him: He actually talked with us! Wooooooo! He is actually a really great and funny kid. We're hoping we can figure things out with his Mom and hopefully see if she would be interested in the message too. Only time will tell. We generally meet with him on Thursdays. Augustine: He cancelled on us again this week. He supposedly likes us a lot, but we haven't been able to meet with him for a while. Dang it. :/ We keep trying though! Chris: Suuuuper nice guy, we taught the Plan of Salvation this week, I believe. He has really good questions, but when we invited him to church he said he feels it's more meaningful to do it on your own time. He thinks he'll try it out sometime, but isn't sure about it yet. We have a meeting with him again this Wednesday, we've had REALLY good lessons with him so it's just a matter of time hopefully. Elise: We tracted into Elise last week and after our initial blurb about being missionaries from the church and sharing a message about Jesus Christ she said that she wanted to learn more. It caught Perkins and I off guard so we left her with our number to try to contact us and set up a better time for a lesson because she is usually busy, but when we went back to the door again we left her with a Book of Mormon, invited her to read the introduction, and set up a time for Saturday. Saturday's lesson fell through, so we're going to try to stop by again this week and set something up again. Well, that's everything for this week. I hope you guys have all had fantastic weeks and I wish the best for you this coming week! The church is true. One thing I have started to learn is to look forward with faith. Let go of the past sins and believe that Christ can and will help you. Just look forward to the future with faith and put your trust in God. Something that we all know we should do and something I have been working on and I'm starting to see its effects, even from the little I understand and am actually doing. It's amazing! I love you all! Love, Elder Jacob Cevering