Email May 26, 2014

Everyone! Hello and Greetings from Redding, California! First news first, this week was transfers! I'm staying here in Redding 2nd ward, but Elder Solomon is leaving and Elder Rosenbaum is coming in to be the District Leader in Solomon's place. So again I am District Leader Buddy! That's not an actual title, it's a term made up by the missionaries haha. I hope Elder Rosenbaum is ready to work because this coming transfer I want to work harder than I've ever worked. I want to go finding a lot this transfer to increase the number of investigators and, therefore, increase the possibilities of helping someone receive the ordinance of baptism! I haven't been blessed to have an investigator progress to baptism yet so it's getting really discouraging and it is really hard...but I know that I'm doing what I can and I'm happy with the progress that I've seen some people make so far. Including myself. I mean, again, I haven't been blessed to help anyone receive that sacred ordinance which is really sad and so hard when I see so many others around me having that success, but I've been able to stay positive and happy by seeing the growth I've been blessed to experience. I've definitely become more reliant on my Father in Heaven and I have grown so much closer to my Savior and I will continue to do so because those are both so key to receiving the happiness that we all need and want in our lives. I've never seen so much growth in myself and I know I will be able to continue to grow a lot because of my Savior and Redeemer Jesus Christ. It's awesome. :) So I look forward to working hard and growing so much more! As to investigators' progress: Rick: Still in the same situation, and we weren't able to meet with him this week. :/ But there is still hope! Keep him in your prayers that he will be touched somehow and desire to be baptized for the remission of sins! Jim: We were able to meet with him and finish up the lesson on the Restoration and taught him a little about the Book of Mormon and answered questions. He said he would come to church, and didn't come to church. Still not quite progressing...but there is still hope! Just keep him in your prayers that he'll commit to come to church! Kyle and Brenda: We weren't able to meet with them this week again. He is so busy and his only day off of work is Sunday so we tried his door a couple of different times through the day, but to no avail. Hopefully he's still interested next week, haha. He has got some good potential so keep him in your prayers! Kevin and Nicole: Weren't able to meet with them. She is wanting it more than he is, so it's kind of just waiting for him to start progressing. Well, to finish up with a couple of stories: So last Saturday morning we had a service project helping replace some fence posts for an 80 year old man. There were only 6 people who showed up and we did what we could to the best of our abilities, and it looked pretty good when we had to leave after a couple hours. So Elder Solomon and I are biking past that house on Wednesday and we see the 80 year old man out sitting by one of the posts hammering at the concrete we poured a few days earlier. We pull up and ask what he's doing and he said he's going to take the post out and re-put it in because it was crooked. So we look and sure enough it was crooked, and we asked if we could help. He said no, and we talked a little more and were able to get him to let us do the work instead. So we spent another 2 hours sledgehammering concrete, digging a hole, mixing more concrete, and re-setting the post all in proselyting clothes and 95 degree weather. It was hot. I was literally dripping sweat off of my nose and chin constantly. So we finished up there and made sure it was as straight as possible and went on our way. Then we bike by again the next day and ALL OF THE POSTS WERE PULLED UP. We were like, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! And a little later we got a call from our bishop who said we were going to go rebuild the entire fence that night. So we did. For another 2 hours in the hot weather (service clothes this time, woo!) we re-destroyed all the concrete from off the posts, re-re-dug all of the holes, re-re-set the posts with cement, and called it a night. It was absolutely crazy. It was the never ending service project! Haha but it felt so good to finally do some more service. It was great. Last and title story: We were biking after having worked on the fence the past two days and I was exhausted, it was hot, and it was kind of miserable. I just kept thinking about how tired I was and how not cool the situation was. And then in the middle of biking down the street, I had this thought run through my mind in my voice, only it was silent...? I don't know, I can't really explain it that well. Anyway, it said, "You know, I bet Jesus was tired too..." and I proceeded to think of all that Christ had done for me, and it was so humbling. I had the thought that I will try to never let the hardness of the mission get me down, and I hope that I don't. I know that I can rely on the Atonement of Jesus Christ to help me through the hard times, and that's why I have been so happy despite having to pour my soul out to Heavenly Father in a plea for help to stay positive and happy in spite of seeing so little success and so little progress in the investigators, how they are all so uncommitted to the gospel. It has been so helpful in buoying me up and I am so grateful for that. I know this gospel is true! You can always count on Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ, the Holy Ghost, and the Plan of Salvation to keep you happy! Love ya! Love, Your Favorite Elder Jacob Cevering

Email May 19, 2014

Herro, Everyone! As always, I hope all is well with all of you. :) Well this week was pretty boring as well. :/ We had a lesson with Brother and Sister Francis, answering their questions. Even after we answered they weren't quite sure, but I feel like the Spirit was there to testify of the truth. We invited them to a baptism that was happening in another ward last Saturday, they said they would be coming, and they didn't come. :( Apparently Sister Francis wasn't feeling well so they weren't able to make it out, so we again invited them to church and again they didn't make any promises because they don't want to make promises they might not keep, and they didn't come to church. Which means she will have to push her baptismal date back. :( Please pray for them, they need to start committing or they won't be able to progress. We weren't able to meet with Rick, he was out of town or something. And we weren't able to meet with Kyle and Brenda either, so we're going to try back again with them this week. And Rick is expecting us this Friday so we will have a lesson with him this week too. Other than that, we talked with Bob again. Have I told you guys about Bob? Atheist geologist? If I have, cool. If not, he is an atheistic geologist who doesn't believe in God because it's not logical to. Even though it is logical to believe that somehow all of the matter forming the entire known universe was suddenly created from nothing. Which goes against scientific knowledge that matter cannot be created or destroyed, only changed. I don't understand him, haha. He asks great questions that make me think and enjoys us coming around so that he can learn more about our religion and he reads the things we ask him to read so technically he's progressing more than our religious investigators. That's frustrating! hahaha. His questions, like I said, make me think about my testimony but each time I do my testimony comes out stronger because it shows me that man obviously came from a higher power because science can't answer questions of the soul or questions of the universe, haha. I don't have much else to say, but I will close with a few thoughts including the title story, starting with the title story. So we had dinner at our Ward Mission Leader, Brother James McClung's house. He has a young daughter, Kate who is, I think 5, and hilarious. So we are waiting for dinner to be ready and she asks us: Kate: Do you guys wanna hear a joke? Missionaries: Of course! K: Okay, knock, knock. M: Who's there? K: Lamp. M: Lamp who? K: Lamp like when you grab it and open the front door and catch the rug and bring it all out with you and Mommy finds out and says, (and then her voice got as low as her little 5 year old voice could get, which obviously isn't very low, adds a little bit of an old man accent on, and says really slowly) "That is unseptable!" IT WAS ADORABLE AND HILARIOUS!!! The joke made NO sense WHATSOEVER and the voice she did was just absolutely hilarious! Hahahaha! It was a great moment, it was soooo funny! Ahhhh man, it was great. :) Second to last thought: We were talking with someone who served a Korean speaking mission and he told us some gospel trivia. Is the Brother of Jared the older brother or the younger brother? In English, that's not important. But in Korean, the way they say brother matters and makes a difference so when they were translating the Book of Mormon into Korean, they needed to know which form of brother to put in to be correct. So they asked the Prophet at the time (I don't remember who) to find out from The Lord. He went and asked and came back with the answer that the Brother of Jared, Mahonri Moriancumer, is the younger brother of Jared! Haha, there we go useless gospel trivia. :D Last thought: Heavenly Father sees us as our full potential, even when we do not. So, what do we see ourselves as? He knows our potential fully because He is our full potential and He wants to help us get to that point! We are children of God and because of that we can become like our Celestial Father. But do we truly understand our potential? I know I don't but we are told we are children of God and I believe that I am a son of God. I don't know what all that can be, but I know (don't understand) that our potential is so much more than we can ever imagine! Love you guys, you are full of immeasurable potential and CAN achieve that! Never forget that! Love, Elder Jacob Cevering

Pictures of Elder Cevering in Redding and at Shasta Lake

Email May 12, 2014

Hello Everybody! I hope you all are doing fantastic because you deserve it! So this week was Mother's Day week! Woo! I'm sad it's over, but I'm so happy that it happened!!! I got to see my family and, the celebrity of the day who is included in the family but I'm separating her anyway, my Mom! Wow I'm so glad to have seen her and everyone else! Again to her and everyone else in my life who is a mother, a grandmother, an aunt, a younger sister, - basically any female I've ever met in my life because you are all going to be, are, or have been a mother: Happy Mother's Day! I hope it was absolutely fantastic! The world today is turning motherhood into a downplayed, old-fashioned way of life. And that is so, so sad! I'm sure we have all heard at least a few times this weekend how much mothers truly play a role in helping their children out, and I know personally that my mom has made me who I am today, yet they're destroying that critical role in the world. Stay-at-home moms are frowned upon and women are being fed the lie that if women are not equal to men then they aren't important. THAT IS THE BIGGEST, FATTEST LIE. Just because women don't have the same ROLE as men doesn't mean that they aren't equal or important! Men and women have different responsibilities and roles and if the world didn't have one or the other how sad of a world it would be! Mothers and motherhood are way too important to be downplayed. Taken from motherhood.mormon.org, "Motherhood is the 'highest, holiest service . . . given to mankind.'” And I agree wholeheartedly. I encourage you, if you haven't already, to go to that website (motherhood.mormon.org) and read what is has to say concerning mothers and their role, it is amazing! Mothers are incredibly important, we all know that to be true. I am so thankful for my Mom. I love her so gosh-darn-flipping much! So, again: Happy Mother's Day Mom! I LOVE YOU! Well, this week minus Mother's Day was pretty boring. We taught the Francis family the Word of Wisdom and they are striving to live it, so keep them in your prayers! She has a baptismal date still set for June 7th so keep her in your prayers! We stopped by their house Saturday night to remind them about church in the morning, but they have a complicated question about marriage so hopefully we can help them work through that. It's a good thing that they have a setback, though, because if there wasn't opposition then that means there wasn't progression. But there is opposition so there is progression! So please pray that they'll progress! Had a lesson with Rick, he's still just kicking the idea of being baptized around. Good, but he's been doing that since before I got here so it could be a while. We are just starting from the beginning again to see if we can get something to click this time around. I pray that something does and it would be great if we could get your prayers for him as well. :) We had a visit with Kyle, I'm not sure if I've told you guys about him much. Our very first visit with him went like this: we had just visited with an investigator and were walking up the street to our bikes which were at another house and he called us up and talked to us about our beliefs for about 30 minutes. And the information we picked up from him since then is that he is a marine and thinks God is great, but has said doesn't really know about God and doesn't have a lot of time to learn about Him either. He has a testimony that God answers prayer and that is a great start. We gave him a Book of Mormon and he has said that he will set 10 minutes a day to read from it. He hasn't done that yet, but his wife said she'll get him to do it. His wife, Brenda, is a good story too. When we first met her she said that she isn't religious, just spiritual. We said alright and we kept visiting with Kyle. But this week when we were over and we were closing with a prayer, he asked her if she would come pray with us and after a little hesitation said sure. WOOOOOOOO! Making progress. It's fantastic. Please keep Kyle and Brenda in your prayers as well as the Francis family and Rick. They are all amazing people and I love the heck out of them! Funny story for the week: When we were over at Kyle's, there were a lot of super funny things that happened. At one point, Kyle was trying to throw Cheez-Its into his wife's mouth while she was getting angry at him for throwing the Cheez-Its across the room. And somehow we got on the topic of his wife making a "belly-flattening" water. Kyle, Elder Solomon, and I were all like, "whaaaa...?" haha. And she pulled it out of the fridge and said, "Yeah. This water is supposed to flatten your belly. Kyle said I needed to flatten my belly after having my baby." (They're a really funny, playful couple if you can't tell.) She just had a baby I think 9 weeks ago. So she pulled it out and had Kyle try some then asked us if we wanted any. We were like,"...uhh...yeah, sure..." She went on to explain that there was cucumber, lemon, lime, and ginger mixed in the water and that it's supposed to flatten your belly. However, she didn't realize that she needed to skin the ginger until after we all started drinking it! Hahaha! So there were furry chunks of ginger floating around in our drinks, it was hilarious and kinda gross. The water itself wasn't too bad, it was more the aftertaste haha. But I do have to say that I don't see any results of the water, haha! But that's probably a good thing because I don't want to lose any weight! So that's basically it for this week. I'm so very grateful to be out here! The mission is incredible and I'm so thankful for the changes it is making in my life. It is bringing me closer than ever before to my Heavenly Father and that is incredible. I'm getting so much out of my scripture studies and things are just going great! I've hit a little bit of opposition in different areas of my service and life and that has been super tough...but I know that the principle of opposition is true and real: that if there is no opposition then there is no progression. But I've hit opposition, so I must be progressing! I know I said that principle twice in my email, so I guess that's my message today: Progress is so important and you can tell you are progressing by if you are having opposition at different times of your life. And oftentimes the opposition is what helps us progress! Keep progressing, even when it gets hard because that is when you progress the most! I love you guys, have a fantastic week! Love, Elder Jacob Cevering

Email May 5, 2014

Hello Everybody! This has definitely been an exciting week! My address will most likely be changing come the end of this transfer, the last week of May. We live with members here in Redding 2nd ward, but they have been trying to move since sometime last year. This week they told us, very nicely and sadly haha, that if one of us gets transferred that they're probably going to have us move out so they can use the second garage space we live in for storage when they start boxing things up. So, if you want to send mail to me come May 20th (this coming Sunday, Mother's Day) send it to the mission office address: Elder Jacob Cevering 8583 Watt Avenue Antelope, CA 95843 I'm really sad to be moving out of the Goodwin's...I love the heck out of them! They're like a mom and dad away from home! One of their nicknames since housing the missionaries is "Pseudo Mom" and "Pseudo Larry." I don't know why it's "Pseudo Larry" instead of "Pseudo Dad." But they're awesome. We go over just about every night after we plan for the next day to talk with them. On Mondays, Larry makes us maté (sounds like maw-tay) in the mornings. Maté is a South American drink made from a plant called Yerba Maté, or something like that. It smells like green beans and dirt and tastes like dirt. But I guess it's really healthy for you. And you start to get used to the taste of dirt, so it's no big deal soon haha. But yeah, we'll go over in the mornings after getting ready and before studies and drink maté with Larry and Strause (another nickname for Sister Goodwin. Her first name is Lynette in case you're wondering, haha. Strause is her previous married name and I don't know why we call her that but it doesn't bother him or her so alright) and talk with them while we sip on the dirt drink. Well, I sip on it but they usually down it pretty quick...I'm getting better but still not quite used to it yet. :) They're just awesome, and I love them. They make it feel more home-like and it's awesome. They fill our apartment's freezer with food somewhat frequently, let us do our laundry in their machines, supply us with paper towels and toilet paper, etc., they'll give us snacks every once in a while, give us rides places, take us to dinner if we don't have a dinner one night and sometimes if our dinner falls through. They're just fantastic. Like I said, temporary parents away from my real parents. Larry is retired and knows a lot of stuff about a lot of stuff and is kind of a conspiracy theorist, haha, but he's a really good one because, for the most part, his theories make sense. I don't personally believe them but I think his theories make the most sense out of a lot of the conspiracies we all hear about haha. And he's suuuper hilarious. Sister Goodwin just retired from owning her own quilting shop a few weeks ago. She is really good at sewing, and she's super funny too. She's not really a conspiracy theorist but thinks the same way as Larry and goes along with him. But again, I'm so sad to most likely be moving away this transfer. So I know this is going to sound weird, but if you could pray that they don't make us move out, that would be fantastic. They're receiving such great blessings by housing the missionaries and the missionaries are so blessed by them and I don't want that cycle to end. But I guess the Lord's will be done. There's a young man in our ward, teacher age, named Mason. He is a really funny and cool kid. He likes to make those bead things that we used to make all the time up at Snowbird, the ones where you put the beads in a pattern and iron them under wax paper and they melt together. Not sure how else to describe it. Anyway, he likes to make those for people and has made lots in the past for missionaries. So he made Elder Solomon and I the pokemon Charizard out of these beads. :D It's pretty cool. He showed us some of the stuff he has made in the past and one of them was the character Lin from the Legend of Zelda, so I challenged him to make a Captain Moroni out of the same pattern but with different colors. But from what I hear, he is kind of free-handing his own pattern and it sounds like it looks cool, so I'm excited to see it. But yeah, he's a really funny and cool kid. Well this is getting to be a long email so I'll begin to close. This last week we got a referral from some missionaries down in Red Bluff (a city a little south of Redding) for an investigator they were teaching who really wants to be baptized! Woot! His name is Tony and we're super excited to begin working with him and hopefully he'll still want to be baptized. That would be fantastic. And lastly, with the paragraph above this one and this one combined they make the week fantastic. So last week I told you all we were working with the Brother and Sister Francis, he is an inactive member and she is an investigator, and that we were going to try to set a baptismal date with her. Well, we went over to their house and had the lesson on the Gospel of Jesus Christ (Faith in Christ, Repentance, Baptism, Receiving the Gift of the Holy Ghost, and Enduring to the End) and when we talked about repentance and baptism and how they cleanse us from our past, she said that that sounds like an incredible opportunity! So we talked about that for a little while and invited her to be baptized on June 7th, and she accepted!!! Woohooo! :D *happy dance* She told us that she knows she'll need to overcome smoking and we told her no problem, that we and The Lord will be here every step of the way to help her out. She knows we can change the date if she doesn't overcome it by then, but she seems to really want to work toward the 7th so that is fantastic! Please keep her in your prayers that she will be able to overcome smoking and be baptized, she is an awesome lady who deserves to have this chance to have her past forgiven and forgotten! I know that she can have that opportunity to be forgiven, and I know that we all have that opportunity too. That is so incredible. Thanks to The Lord Jesus Christ and the Plan of our Heavenly Father, we can overcome our pasts and put them where they should be: in the past! We can receive strength to overcome every trial in our lives, we can receive forgiveness for sins we have committed, we can receive eternal life with our friends, families, our Savior, and our Father in Heaven. I love this gospel! I know it is true! I can't wait to see my family next week, but I love being out here sharing this phenomenal gospel and right now there is nowhere else I'd rather be! I love you guys! Love, Elder Jacob Cevering