Email January 26, 2015

Helllooooooo family! Hopefully this last week was a good one for you. Ours went well, considering we were finally able to contact a referral who has been hard to get in contact with. So that's was good. :D And it was a great meeting too! He heard about us from a member friend, then one thing led to another, badda bing badda boom, he and his wife have a Book of Mormon, Restoration pamphlet, and want us to come back! So yeah, that was pretty awesome. We got inside and he even already had a quad from a year or so ago that he got at a meeting for something. He hasn't read it, but knows the Bible and the Book of Mormon are in it. Super cool. I'm so excited to work with them this coming week. They said they would try to come to church this week, but weren't able to make it. :( So they are going to come this week I just know it! One of our other investigators and his wife came to church this week, which was great. I have been working with them basically since I got here and they're starting to progress. They're a little slow, I think you guys know that, but they are some of the sweetest people. Really hard to teach them, but they are super nice. The ward loves them too, which is awesome! Hopefully they'll make the step to baptism soon. If they do it'll be a ways down the road, but hopefully they make the commitment and set a goal soon. We also had a lesson with a former investigator, and that was pretty good. It was weird though because the way it all got started with us was because she had an interest in the papyrus the Book of Abraham was translated from and the mummies that were tied in the bundle with the scrolls and just the Egyptian ties with that stuff. We got there and started talking with her about it and she said that she can "channel pharaohs." I asked her what she meant and she said she can go into a medium trance and "become" one of the ancient pharaohs - speak their language and say what they would say. So we talked to her about Facsimile 2 in the Pearl of Great Price, how it is basically talking about Egyptians believe special ordinances are necessary to enter heaven and how it relates to the temples around that time and in modern times. Actually really interesting and cool how it all works into the gospel. But it was a good lesson and she wants to meet with us again so we are hoping to get her more interested in learning how to get back to God so we can teach her the gospel of Jesus Christ and how that is the way! Haha. It's so much more simple than anything we could teach, it really is just those 5 simple steps of the gospel: Faith, Repentance, Baptism, Receiving the Gift of the Holy Ghost, and Enduring to the End. Everything else in the gospel is a part of one of those 5 steps. Notice it's simple, as opposed to easy, haha. However, the hardest things in life bring the greatest blessings! That's about it lesson-wise, but we had another zone blitz in a different ward this time and we were looking for a certain family. So we knocked on the door and it wasn't them, but they had just barely moved in. Curious, I asked where from. Pleasant View, Utah!!! I asked them what part and they said right above Weber High and I was like I know a lot of people there! And asked them if they knew a few families, to which they said no. But they said they know Sam and Sheila Knight, and then the McKnights as well. So if anyone knows a Susan White who just moved from Pleasant View, I just met her and her husband. They aren't members and aren't interested in becoming members, but she was really nice! So the other day, Elder Dixon and I were at the church for our weekly planning session and there were people playing sports in the gym the whole time. So when we were leaving we walked by the overflow and there were some little girls playing a game while their dads or brothers were playing basketball. When we walked by, they looked at us, got these huge eyes, huddled up together, and were talking in hushed voices. At first I was like, yeah they're probably talking about seeing the missionaries. I could hear just a little of what they said and they were all saying things like, "look at the security guards!" and "I didn't know we had security guards!" Just funny things like that. It was awesome! Haha first time I've ever been called a security guard and I thought it was sweet! So yeah. It was a pretty good week. I'm so thankful for the opportunity to be a missionary. I have learned so much about my Savior and Redeemer and one of my recent personal favorites, my Reclaimer. The Atonement is the best thing ever. Ever! It saves us all. I have learned so much about justice and grace and mercy and how they all relate and work in our lives. I love it. It makes me happy. And it should make us all happy!!! Because of our Reclaimer, we can be saved from anything and everything if we just choose to try to be! I love you guys, have an incredible week! Oh and one more thing I learned this week was this: Moses 1:39 tells us God's work and glory is to bring to pass OUR immortality and eternal life. However, the Resurrection happened so the first part, immortality, is already going to be brought to pass for everyone. Check! So now what is God's work and glory? To bring to pass OUR eternal life - to bring us home to Him. That is His single focus. I know He loves all of His children! Again, have a great week! Love you guys! Love, Elder Cevering

Email January 12, 2015

Heyo family! Hopefully you have all had a great week and hopefully you have another good one coming up! To jump right into the email, this week was pretty great! If you were to look at the numbers we got, you probably might not agree, but really it was a good week. We were finally able to make contact with a potentially golden investigator we have been trying to find/meet with since December. Booya! Also, we have gotten some referrals with good potential as well. And then we also have a lady who wants to raise her kids in the LDS church who went to 4 years of seminary and never got baptized whose husband wants to start coming back to church too. So many amazing things have been falling in our lap lately, it has been a huge blessing! Heavenly Father definitely looks out for His kids! Also, Elder Dixon and I have been working on this goal to start working with the members more closely and putting plans to how we are going to do it. We presented the idea to our ward council and suddenly things just fell into place! The stake youth theme fits in perfectly with missionary work and so they want to make it an entire ward theme, not just the youth's theme. We are going to be having a special meeting in the 3rd hour of church on February 1st to introduce the whole goal and plans to the ward and every auxiliary presidency is going to be trying to incorporate ways to help in their own auxiliaries and things worked out just sweet! It was so amazing to see the Spirit of the Lord work in the group. Some Ward Council members were saying everything that happened in the meeting was so inspired because our plan working perfectly into the youth theme working perfectly together to become a ward goal and theme was just brilliant. And I agree with them! The whole meeting was guided by the Lord, I felt it! Things just worked out and it all just fell into place. It was super awesome. I'm a little sad that I'll most likely not see the fruits of it in my labor here, but that's okay. As long as missionaries down the road keep going and that the ward keeps it up, then it will be an amazing program with huge success to follow. And then lastly was a really cool scripture I found this week. Maybe you all have already made this connection, but as I was reading in the Book of Mormon this week I read one of the many verses in which the Lord is telling us, "Inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments, ye shall prosper in the land." I have always looked at that temporally, that if we keep Heavenly Father's commandments He will prosper us in those things that we need temporally. But for some reason I thought about it in a more spiritual light as I reread the verse a few times. It came to mean to me that "Inasmuch as I shall keep the Lord's commandments, He shall prosper me in His land" - in the Celestial Kingdom! If I will do the best I can to keep the commandments and do what Jesus Christ would do and live how Heavenly Father wants me to live, I will be able prosper in the land - I will be able to have the most prosperous land in the history of ever: The Celestial Kingdom. I was like, "Ohhhhhh snap! Why haven't I ever seen that before?!" It was so cool. The scriptures are a huge blessing in our lives, I have definitely gained a great appreciation for how much we can learn through them, even in the most simple of verses. My testimony is this: I know Heavenly Father lives and that He is real. I know Jesus Christ is my Savior, my Redeemer, and one of my most recent favorite, my Reclaimer. I know the gospel is true. Not just because it has been taught to me and told to me over and over and over, but because I have lived it and I have pondered it and I have prayed about it. And I know and love that we can all have the same opportunity!!! Have a great week guys! I love you! Love, Elder Cevering

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Email January 5, 2015

Hello and Happy New Year! First off, I come home this year!!! AHHH! Nooo! That's so crazy and weird to think about. I'll be home to celebrate Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's at home! Ah, that's so weird to think about. But that's a long time away and I don't want to think about it haha. So this was another hard week, investigator wise. Everyone was STILL out of town. And no one wanted to have us back, because of the holidays. We are really hoping and praying that those who have asked us to come back after the holidays are really ready and really interested. Most likely not if they asked us to wait, but I still have faith in them! We were, however, able to make contact with a few new less actives who are wanting to come back to church. One of them who has been wanting to come back to church for a while hasn't been able to because his wife is pregnant - on a side note, his wife is not a member but she went to seminary with him all 4 years and she was always the one awake and listening, and he was the one asleep on his desk - and so he has been safety-fying his house and working and has just been too busy. But like I said, he wants to come back and his wife might be another perfect investigator! So hopefully we can get working with them really soon! An update on an investigator is that she supposedly went to church with her less active boyfriend in another stake. But that's okay because he is actually trying to move down here into our ward and so that would be perfect! She isn't sure about meeting with us because she has questions about things that she's not sure if we can understand and answer, but we still are really hoping the member can persuade her into meeting with us. I may not be able to answer the question or questions she has, but I would be able to help turn her to the people who would be able to answer her questions or help her find peace concerning them, Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. As for the less actives we were able to work with this week, a few of them said they would be coming to church yesterday but they ended up not coming which was disheartening. A few less actives we are working with did come and they are coming back strong, but the ones who didn't come need it so badly and they would be able to find what they need. And as for the title story, we had a service project with a less active (due to health) to move some things around in his house. We took the Nevada City missionaries with us to help out. So some of us started to work on cleaning and a couple of us went on a rampage to clean up the cobwebs. 90% of the cobwebs had these MASSIVE behemoths of spiders. It was terrifying. We went around with one of the long vacuum heads wrapping all the cobwebs on one end and the other went around spraying Raid, the bug killing spray, on the spiders. Literally after spraying the spiders for 5 seconds with the Raid, they would still move!!! So another set ensued and the nerves would still twitch, but a couple even lived after that. Nightmares. It was an adventurous service project!!! To continue on, a couple days ago we were cleaning our apartment after we had gotten in for the night and I wanted to move the 4 bed set up we had. No one else wanted to, but we all decided to try it for a few days. Thank goodness we did because when we moved the beds, there was black mold all over the walls from the bed frames down. It was sickening. I was nauseous for a few seconds. The beds that were covering the mold had been there since way before I got there so I had no idea it was there either, until we moved it all. We had another epic battle against the single-celled organism that is mold. It really wasn't that bad though, just drowned it in Clorox and wiped it all away with gloves and a paper towel. Then washed our hands. Many times. The worst part is now I'm probably going to get some terrible disease from living here for so long. Hahaha. They were all mad at me for having to move the beds but then I turned it back on them telling them "You're welcome for finding it so we could clean it up!" Hahaha. Missionary apartments are gross. :) Well, that's really about it. Other than yesterday at Church I had a lot of prayers answered. Which really filled my heart with gratitude and love for my Heavenly Father. I am so grateful that He is so mindful of His children. He truly does love us way more than we can imagine! Don't ever count yourself unworthy or unimportant or unloved before Him! He ALWAYS loves you and will never stop!!! I know that this is true with all of my heart. :) Love you guys, have a great week!!! Elder Cevering