Elder Cevering's District in Roseville

Email July 20, 2015

Good Afternoon! Unfortunately, I don't have a ton to report on this week. I really wish I had more, but we had to do a ton of zone leader reports, plus we were preparing for a mini missionary (a boy who lives in our area and will be serving a mission in the future - it gives them a chance to see what a mission is really like by living the mission life with us for a few days) to serve with us this weekend, and this was the final week of the transfer so we were trying to get ready for some of that, plus we had to attend all of the zone's district meetings - it was just a lot of stuff. However, we did get to have a few choice lessons so that was wonderful! We were blessed to find 3-4 potential investigators with good promise, so Elder Wilding and his new companion will be able to work with those and that will be awesome. He and Elder Poulter, this missionary replacing me, will be blessed to see a lot of work come! And Elder Wilding will be keeping me updated on things, so I'm excited for that. We had a lesson with a potential named who has some friends in the church and started coming to church because of the happy feeling he gets whenever he is with them. So he figured there was something to it, and we had a lesson! It was really great as we talked about the Restoration and he had a couple awesome questions as well. We ended up talking about the Book of Mormon and testified how all of the questions he had could be answered by reading and praying about the Book of Mormon. We testified of the awesome blessings that can come into our lives as we find this truth and promised he could have that happy feeling all of the time as he is able to have the Spirit with him when he keeps covenants with Heavenly Father. It was a really good lesson! Hopefully something comes out of it because at the end of the lesson he said he will need some time to think about it all. So we're praying he will read and pray with real intent. Should be great. He is super ready for the gospel. We had a lot of lessons with less actives in both wards and those went well, although only one of them came to church this week. Dang it. :( But the one who came to church has made a complete change in her life ever since she started meeting with us. And I would have never known it if she hadn't talked about it. So it was super awesome to hear the changes that the gospel has made in her life. I am so grateful that Heavenly Father has used me as an instrument in His hands and that is one of the greatest feelings ever. And due to a combination of lack of things to talk about and lots of things I need to do still here, I have to cut this pretty short. Transfer calls are in! I am heading up to a small town about 10 minutes south of Redding called Anderson! I am going to be a zone leader there and I am doing something called "shotgunning," which is when the companionship is brand new to the area. So this ought to be fun! There are also two other companionships who will be shotgunning, so over half of the Anderson zone is going to be brand new to the area. It is going to be a lot of fun. I am grateful for the opportunity I have to serve! I'm pumped for the chance to shotgun and it is going to be a blast. My new companion's name is Elder Bernhisel (sounds like burn-high-zull). I'm just so pumped. Out of the 10 missionaries in the Anderson zone, six of them are going to be brand new to the zone. So that will be very interesting. I have had the APs and President tell me that they are sending me up there to help with the entire zone because they haven't had a baptismal date in the whole stake for months. It's a huge compliment. I don't want to let them down. I'm going to work real hard and hope to see some success there before I come home. It's going to be so awesome!!! I love the gospel, I love the Book of Mormon, I love my Heavenly Father. Stay true to Him at all times, even when it is hard. It will bless your lives more than you know. I promise you that. It's going to be hard to trust in Him, but I promise you will never experience more happiness than when you act in faith. I love you guys, have a safe week! Love, Elder Cevering

Email July 15, 2015

Good Tuesday! (Now Wednesday...) I am so sorry to have to write today. I wish I could have written yesterday, but our pday was kind of stolen from us. Story time! We got a call about 9:15am from the mission office that someone needed some help moving 3 big pieces of furniture io storage. They would meet us at the storage place and we would move it in and be done, no big deal. We get there at 10, when we were supposed to, and they don't show up for another hour. We get into the storage unit and there's an entire 26' Uhaul truck there. They open it and it's full. And instead of just moving 3 big furniture items, we move the entire truck. Almost by ourselves as well! Not that I don't like providing service, but something we figured was going to take 20 minutes ended up taking 4 hours. It took literally half of our pday. But now since our pday was moved to yesterday, we had to squeeze it in between all of our appointments so I didn't have a ton of time to write, this is all just a bunch of little pieces put together. On Tuesday we had a great opportunity to visit a former investigator. He's pretty awesome! He was asking us questions left and right and gave us a lot of opportunity to bear our testimonies of the gospel, of why we are out on our missions, etc. and it was super awesome! We were blessed to talk about a lot of different things that mean a lot to us and he said he's pretty open and loves to hear about different religions and says if he were to find what he feels God is telling him is right, that he would join himself to it! So that was a great experience! We are going to be seeing him again soon! Also on Tuesday, we stopped by and tried to see another former. He had a baptismal date in the past but never made it and the teaching appointments randomly stopped for no reason. So we decided we would go over and see him, which we are glad we did because he still has his Book of Mormon and said he would start reading it! So we left him to read 3 Nephi 11 and got his phone number and we'll be stopping by this week to see how he liked what he read! He wants to meet up this week and seems pretty excited to do so! We had a lesson last Monday with a lady we've been teaching and talked about the second half of the Plan of Salvation and it went super well! The Spirit is so strong every lesson we have with her and her husband. It is so amazing, I love it. She already has such a strong faith in Christ and it is so cool to see it in action! Whenever we teach something she has never heard of before, she always says "That's new, but I like it," or something similar and she is always willing to try it out! She and her husband are on a cruise to Alaska for a honeymoon and they get back this week so we'll be able to have a lesson with them this week! It's kind of funny, though, because after we taught her about the word of wisdom, the husband said something along the lines of, "Well, we have been trying to figure out if we should get a new coffee machine. I guess this is our answer." Haha! It was awesome. It was an opportunity for me to see God's hand directing me because I felt at the end of the lesson that we needed to discuss the Word of Wisdom, and so I acted in faith and brought it up and it was a big blessing! One lady we are teaching has pushed her baptism off indefinitely. Which I am okay with because she is not ready for baptism. She could be, but she hasn't been doing anything for herself to gain a testimony because she is so sidetracked by all of the crazy things that are going on in her life right now. So I am okay with her saying she wants to wait because it's going to help. She just needs help to meet her temporal needs before we can meet her spiritual needs. So that's our plan! We talked with Ali - the girl we baptized a few months ago - after Sacrament meeting and she said she has been looking at the papers for serving a mission!!! ALI MIGHT SERVE A MISSION. Ah!!! That would be so incredible. She would have to wait a year, but it would be so amazing to hear if she serves! And that's about everything I can say for now! I love you guys! I know the gospel is true! It changes lives. That I have seen time and time again on my mission. If you are dissatisfied with your life in any way, use the gospel of Jesus Christ. Live it. Live it fully. Blessings and miracles will flow into your life from heaven. I love you guys! Have a great week! Love, Elder Cevering

Email July 6, 2015

Goooooood afternoon! Happy late 4th of July & Independence Day!!! It is so amazing to know that God is watching over us. It's really sad to see everything that is happening because we are slowly losing our freedoms. But I know that if we are faithful, Heavenly Father will keep the promise that He made to us that we will be able to stay a free people. I am so grateful for all of the people who have given their lives and who still give their lives in defense of this country and all of the rights and privileges that we enjoy. This truly is a God-blessed land! I was really blessed this week to be able to have an interview with President Marston! It was time for the quarterly interviews and mine was super awesome! We had a really good talk. One of the subjects has been something President has been talking a lot about lately, the Good/Better/Best spectrum. He said something that really made me feel so good. President said he trusts me because he feels I will always choose the best. That came as a huge compliment to me because I constantly worry about how good of a missionary I am. And when he said that it made me feel so good. I love President Marston!!! So on to the missionary work! We were able to have some good lessons this week, although we had so many people out of town so it was hard to have lessons. It's like it was a holiday week or something. This week was really good though! We had a really good talk with an investigator last night. She is getting the gravity of everything! And that is super awesome! We talked with her and decided, with her, to move her baptismal date back one more week so that she has more time to pray and to study and ponder. Things that we were telling her over and over to do, but that she wasn't doing. One of her close friends really got her thinking about what this all could mean and it has affected her so she is really thinking about it now in a way that she hasn't before. Pray for her that she will find the answer that baptism is what Heavenly Father wants for her! We also had a great lesson with another investigator. And, as of this last week, she is married! She and her member fiance got married! We had an awesome lesson about the Plan of Salvation and most of it is stuff she hasn't heard or thought of before, but she feels it is good! She is praying and studying and she is excited for a baptismal date that we set with her for August 1st! Please keep her in your prayers that she will pray and study and come to know that these things are true! August 1st is going to be an amazing day! Transfers are coming up in two weeks and I only have 2 more so I might be going somewhere! It will be crazy to see because 2 transfers isn't a long time to spend somewhere, but it is enough to still be transferred to a new area. So I have no idea what will happen! I'm honestly fine with whatever happens. I think it would be super awesome to train again because that's how long the program is to train a new missionary, but I have no idea what will happen. Again, I just honestly want to do whatever Heavenly Father wants me to do! I love you guys and I know that the gospel is true! I have been super blessed by Heavenly Father this last week to see a lot of different ways my testimony has grown and become stronger since I left on my mission. It makes me think about the blessing it is to have a testimony and really truly how much stronger our testimonies are than we often think. I have been reading in 3 Nephi, it's where I am in my personal studies. And I absolutely love how the Book of Mormon shows Jesus Christ's love for His people. I know Jesus Christ is there, He is real, and He loves us. He loves everyone, no matter what. He is perfect and His love is perfect. It's always there! I love you guys! Have a fantastic week! Love, Elder Cevering

Two good looking missionaries!!! :-)

Email June 29, 2015

Hello! It's hot! Supposed to be a nice warm 111 on Wednesday! It has been hot all week! 100+ every day if I remember correctly. Warm. :) We spent a lot of time trying to contact former investigators and updating their information and haven't seen much success with them yet. But we will keep on trying because I have faith that former investigators are a great resource for finding new investigators! Plus, a good number of them have had testimonies at one point so all we would need to do is help them find it again. Harder than it sounds, but it provides great opportunities! We were able to have some good lessons! We were finally able to meet an investigator's son who is less active and he's super cool! It's really sad that he and his older brother had a bad experience at church and aren't willing to give another ward a shot. We invited him out to church and he said it is a 50/50 shot. Didn't come. Neither did our investigator. They need your prayers!!! She has started to read sporadically from the Book of Mormon, which is good, but it's not quite enough. Keep them in your prayers. We had an AWESOME lesson with one of our investigators! We were able to get some things out of him that are concerning him. It's all based around his family too which is super cool because it shows he loves his family. We had the lesson at his girlfriend's home like usual and her mom sat in and shared her conversion story. She shared how it was important to her that she converted for the right reasons, not just for her husband (boyfriend at the time). I think that was really good for our investigator to hear. He and his girlfriend are starting to read more and have committed to being more committed to their studies and they committed together at the end of the lesson to study more deeply and to pray more to know if these things are true. I know that if he does, he will find the answer that it is! And that will bless his life so much. We were able to talk to him about sealings and how his family, if they aren't able to accept the gospel in this life, will have the opportunity to accept it in the next and he felt really good about that. It was a great lesson, definitely very guided by the Spirit. Please keep him in your prayers that he will read and pray and receive the answer that will come to him! There was a lesson we had with a less active YSA who moved in not too long ago. The lesson was about prayer and how it is essential to gaining our testimonies. We shared the story of Enos and he really liked it. We talked a lot about how Enos describes his prayers and how he receives his testimony and it was a great lesson! The Spirit was strong there as he shared his desire to be fully active in the church again and gain his testimony again. He works with another YSA member who has gone less active recently and he said that he is going to try to get him to come back to church as well! How awesome is that! Alex is super cool! At our lesson with an investigator and her daughter we found out that they watched the Book of Mormon movie, the one that covers 1 Nephi through part of 2 Nephi, and they loved it! The coolest part is that it was shortly after we invited her husband into the lessons and HE was the one who looked it up! It got them excited to keep reading! They really wished there was another movie, but there isn't. :( However! We had a good lesson! She had some concerns about Joseph Smith because she heard that some of his prophecies haven't come true yet. So we are a little worried about potential anti stuff, but we had a really good talk about reading the Book of Mormon and praying about it yields an answer that man cannot give nor take away. It is a God-given answer and what is given by God overpowers what humankind says. Basically saying that no matter what you read or hear, if you read the Book of Mormon and pray about it and get the answer that it is true, anything anyone else says about it doesn't matter because you know, from God, that it is true. They really liked that too! So they committed themselves to reading and praying about it every night as a family!!! Please, please, please keep them in your prayers that they will keep their commitment! And also please pray that their daughter will be able to make it to Girls Camp! We did see a few other choice people with good lessons, but I'm running out of time so I'm going to tell why this week was so crazy: like I said earlier, most of the first few days of the week were spent knocking on formers' doors and either getting no answer, finding out they had moved, or hearing they aren't interested. It yielded no fruit. :( So over the next few days it got a little better, but it was still pretty unfruitful when it comes to finding new people to teach. Friday right after our prayer for weekly planning we get a phone call from a guy who needs help moving. So! We went. And then when we got back we got stuck in a conversation with our missionaries about some stuff going on in the zone. And we had very little time to plan so we got almost nothing done before we needed to leave. Then that night after a lesson we got a phone call from a companionship saying they're stranded and needed help getting home because their bike tires popped and were on the opposite side of their area and it was 9:30. So we went and rescued them and didn't get in until around 10, 10:15. Then the next day we had to take them to the bike shop and then take them home and we decided to help them fix their bikes. But it took forever. Then we had to have a talk with them because they have been struggling within the companionship lately and it's getting really visible and so we wanted to help it get better ASAP. Then we find out that our quarterly interviews with President are taking place on Wednesday, district meeting on Tuesday, and we have our weekly MLC meeting on Thursday. We have to talk with the whole zone about goals and a number of other things. It has just been thing after thing! Nonstop this week was crazy! But I loved it. I love the gospel. I love how the gospel gives us hope and help. I know there was an Atonement performed for all of us. I'm glad to know that the Atonement can strengthen me and can cleanse me. I'm glad to know that the Atonement gives us both the enabling power, or the strength and ability to overcome struggles and challenges in our lives, and the cleansing power, or the ability to be forgiven and purified. I'm glad to know that repentance was and is the first plan, and that it was never the backup plan. Repentance and change are real and they are made possible because of the love of our Heavenly Father and our Savior. How amazing is it that even though we make mistakes, there are two perfect People out there saying "Look, you made a mistake. But that's all it was. It's not the end of the world, it's not the end of your life, it's not the end of your test. You've still got plenty of time to make it right. And with Our help, we know you can overcome this. We know that you don't have to always feel the guilt and shame and embarrassment of past choices. We know you don't want to feel those things. We know you're not perfect and We are willing to work with that because We love you and We want you to be with Us, forever!" The Atonement is real! Change is real! Repentance, change, and perfection in Christ are real! I know this is all true. I love you all! I hope you have an incredible week! God loves you! Never give up! Love, Elder Cevering