Email March 3, 2014

Greetings Brethren and Sisteren! Transfer calls are in... *drum roll* I'm being transferred to Redding 2nd ward! Woo! I'm super sad that I'm leaving Hillcrest though... :( as you all know, I've been in Hillcrest for 3 transfers, 4 1/2 months (wow, already basically 5 months down!?), and I haven't been able to see a lot of people progress. Only Seth and he had to cancel his baptism because his mom doesn't want him to be baptized. I have been blessed to be a part of sowing a lot of seeds. I just hope like crazy that those seeds grow enough to be reaped by missionaries later on. Redding 2nd is actually Elder Perkins' most recent area. He just came down to Hillcrest from Redding and now I'm going back up to take his last companion's place. My new companion will be Elder Solomon. He is the District Leader for the district I'll be going to. I'm excited because people say Redding is awesome and that I should see a lot of success. I sure hope so haha. Also, Redding is home to two "mega churches," Bayside and Bethel. Everyone says I'll have lots of good stories to come because of these two huge churches. Can't wait!!! In the summer it is not uncommon for the temperature to reach 120...considering I have about 3 transfers until June, I might be able to escape that fate but it's going to be hecka hot leading up to then anyway. Should be...interesting. :) It's been raining a lot this week. The longest we've had sunshine is probably 3 hours and the rest of the day is overcast or raining. I need a new fender for my bike because I get a lot of mud and plant remains all over my back because of the back tire flipping it up. It's only on my big black coat though, not my white shirts haha. :) It's been alright, this week wasn't very good for the work. The normal cancels I'm okay with. But when it's cold and wet and rainy, it's not very fun. Just gotta keep your head up and stay positive and faithful for good things to come. So! Investigator news from this week: Barbara: We weren't able to meet with her this week because she didn't want us to be biking in the rain while Perkins was sick. :( She can only meet Tuesdays and Wednesdays and both days were really rainy and somewhat busy for her so those worked against us a lot. Seth: We were able to have a good lesson with him. We talked about prayer - what it is, how, why, etc. Spirit was strong and as far as we know he still wants to be baptized because he will tell us another time he wants to meet if he can't meet at the first time we set up. He's a cool kid and I hope he is able to join the church like he wants. Shannon and Michael: This family is a referral from the Spanish elders (it's about time we get a referral in return!). They moved down from Alaska last summer, Shannon is an inactive member and her son, Michael, is 10 years old and was taking the lessons before they moved to California. She wants to wait until he is 13 so he can make his own educated decision so I wouldn't be able to see fruition there anyway, but they are an amazing mother and son. Background on Michael, something happened to his head when he was younger and he had to be life-flighted to the hospital. They thought he was going to have bleeding in the brain which would be terminal. By some miracle, he didn't have a brain bleed and survived! A while ago, Shannon was in a car wreck that tore her car in half. They took her body to the hospital where they figured she had died on contact. But she somehow survived that as well. This family is a miracle and I love them so much! I've only met them twice and I might not ever see them again but my life is blessed because I met them. Augustine: He needed some help moving some stuff in and out of his house, but at first we weren't able to help him. He got really mad because he is always there for other people when they need help, but he feels like no one is there when he needs help. We tried to tell him that it was just bad timing and we are so sorry that we can't help ourselves, but that we were going to try to get some of the other men in the ward and some other missionaries to help him as well. However, no one else was able to go to help, but he ended up not needing any help until later that night anyway. That night Elder Perkins and I were able to go over and help them with that service moving things back into his house. Other than this simple service we were able to give, we didn't have any lessons with Augustine. Chris: We had a time set up to meet, but he was unable to. We tried again a couple days later but his friend Zach answered the door and told us that Chris was on a business call and couldn't meet. We asked if it would be okay for us to come back later that night and he said it would be okay but we were still unable to make contact. :( Jill: We didn't have a set time to meet but we still tried to go by anyway. Both times we tried either someone wasn't home or she was unable to meet at the time. We hope to be able to meet with her soon because she seemed really drawn by the Plan of Salvation and our next plan was to teach the Restoration. Jay: We were not able to make any contact with Jay this week. We tried a couple of times but no success. We hope to be with him soon. When we first ran into him he said he is a Christian and we told him that we try to help others build faith in Christ and he was interested. We hope we can meet with him soon to talk about the Restoration. Title story! Elise: There we were, riding through the rain hoping to make contact with one of our potential investigators, Elise. We had been unable to meet with her any of the previous times we had set up and so this time we were stopping by to set up another time to meet with her. We knocked, her mother answered the door, we asked for Elise. When she came to the door we told her we were sorry for missing her last time and we wanted to set up another appointment this week so that we could talk with her about Jesus Christ. She still expressed that she wanted to learn about Christ, but also told us that we didn't need to come by anymore because a lady was coming by every Sunday to read the Bible with her. We were curious and you lease told us that she had the Bible the lady was reading with her. She brought the Bible out and as it was it was a New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures. Right then, we knew that it was Jehovah's Witnesses. We were so sad and we desired to share our message with her, but since she was already meeting with Jehovah's Witnesses and learning about Christ from them, she didn't feel that she needed to have more missionaries come over and teach about Christ. So we asked her to pray about the Book of Mormon which we had given her before and to read it as well. We told her that we wouldn't be back for a while but wished her good luck on her journey to come closer with Christ as we are all trying to do. Elder Perkins and I walked our bikes around the street, sad and depressed that we had just lost a potential investigator but more importantly a daughter of God to share our incredible message with. After trying to visit a less active member who lives right around the corner, we got a feeling that we should go back and try to talk to Elise one more time. So we prayed about it. We felt again that we wanted to go back, but weren't sure if we should. So we put together an attack plan and decided to pray about it again. After having prayed, both of us have experienced the same thought and feeling "bold like a lion." So we went back. 10-15 minutes later and Freaking out of our minds, we locked our bikes up in front of the apartments, approached the door, and knocked. Elise answered and looked confused. We started off by saying that we know we said we wouldn't stop by anytime soon, but we wanted to testify the truthfulness of the message that we have to share. We gave her a pamphlet about the Restoration and boldly testified of the things that we knew to be true. We asked her if we could have one more chance to serve a message that we love and desire all the people that we know to year and she said that we could come by the next day, Saturday, at 2. We were so excited, the plan had worked! We came by the next day at the time set up. We prayed that we would be able to share our message and that the Spirit would testify strongly of the Restoration. We knocked...no answer. We knocked again...no answer....we knocked again!...no answer. We walked around the apartments trying to think of what we could do, letting time pass while we waited for her and her family to arrive. 15-20 minutes later, we knocked again...only to have that door stare us in the face again. We left a pass along card saying we had tried to visit and that we would try back again. We were so sad. But! That is the story of the time we were told not to come back, but we went back 10 minutes later and got a return appointment! It fell through, but they'll be trying to meet with her again as time goes on. That was the time Elder Perkins and I were Bold Like a Lion. Awesome. Well, this week hasn't been too great. Tons of cancelled appointments, disappointments, and sad weather that didn't help lift our spirits. The Lord has been helping me stay positive though. I love that He is constantly there, helping us in those times when we don't feel we can do any good. He loves us and i know that for a fact! I wish the best for you all this week, do your very best to have the best week ever. :) I love you guys! Love, Elder Jacob Cevering :)