New Family to Teach

Here's my thoughts with Skyping on Mother's Day: I have church that starts @10am, so I'll probably need to be finished by 9 am so I can get to church in time and talk with our investigators (However, transfers is coming up the first of may and it is likely I'll be transferred. When is Mother's Day anyway? I apologize that I don't know.) Ideally it'd probably be best for me to do it between 5am-6am (California time) or right after your church service @ 2:30 (California time) because I don't think that we're supposed to Skype after 6pm here. If I choose to do it in the morning I also realize that both Joshua and I would need to get specific permission. Joshua for getting up before 6:30 and out of the apartment and I for choosing to do that instead of study time (I'm sure I'd get permission for it). I would also need permission to Skype after 6pm if we were to do it in the evening which I may not be able to get, but I will ask. Just 30 minutes isn't enough. I'll use my maximum of allowed time instead of just 30 minutes. (It was either 40 min, 45 min, or 50 min, I can't remember, probably 40 minutes.)

As a side note, I thought Mother's Day was the day that we're supposed to serve our Mother in secret? How am I to do so if I am directly contacting my Mother... no no no, rather I will Skype Dad instead and have it indirectly bless Mother without her thinking that I'm actually Skyping Mom. =-)

Dad, do not procrastinate the day of your taxes, for it shall come to pass that they shall be requested of you. For behold, most abominable consequences await those that don't finish their taxes. (If it's the same around the country, the day to turn in all the taxes is today. Hopefully when Mom said, "He's been busy working on taxes." It also implied "and he finished them because he worked so hard on them.")

We found a pretty cool family to teach over the past week. W. and her mother (and W.'s two kids under the age of 3). W. has a background of being an active Jehovah's Witness proselyting (witnessing) for twelve years. Her mother is very doctrinally aware of the teachings of the Bible and choose to be a 7th day Adventists to "keep the sabbath day holy" until she met us and we resolved her Sabbath day concern with a couple things more than "it's the day Christ was resurrected". They are wonderful people and perhaps more sincere and doctrinally in tune than a grand majority of everybody I've met on my mission. I sincerely hope they receive that witness of the Holy Ghost confirm to them the truth of all of these things we have shared with them. They watched part of conference online and attended a ward activity Friday and came to church yesterday. Their road blocks are pre-existence, Authority/Apostasy, then they have questions about Temples and Eternal Marriage from the talks given at church yesterday. She also gave us a home-made loaf of cinnamon craisins (raisin-ed cranberries) bread. They are my favorite investigators right now.

Love you all!

Elder Benjamin Ray Walker

Christmas Eve

I wanted to tell you about one of our investigators... A week ago Saturday we called W. to confirm our appointment for Saturday morning and he dropped us over the phone. He never wanted to see us back at his home again and wasn't interested in the church. I asked him if he had read any of the Book of Mormon or prayed about it at all, his answer was no. I committed him to read something, anything and pray about it and told him that we'd come by in a couple of days to see if he changed his mind. He told us to not come over because he didn't want to see us any more. I told him we'd call him then, he consented and we left it at that. On Wednesday evening, we were on an exchange and our plans ran short and we were near his home so we went over to see him anyway instead of giving him a call. He let us right in, we taught him about the Book of Mormon, he told us he didn't pray or read, but he committed to church (which was one of his big hangups) and committed to be baptized. I tell you I was pretty confused, I was expecting him to not even let us in the door again. Alas, he came to church, and is still committed to be baptized. It was kind of a neat unexpected miracle. Since then, he has started reading the Book of Mormon and now has a testimony of the Prophet Joseph Smith. Very interesting. I'm short on time for various reasons, one of which is because we are at a member's home; however, I will talk to you tomorrow. 

I meant to make a bunch of Christmas cards and send them to a variety of people, but all the Walmart photo maker machines are broken thus unfortunatley my Christmas letters aren't going to get sent or made. =( I just don't have time to write everybody.

My time is spent, I love you all,

Elder Benjamin Ray Walker

Day After Mother's Day

Elder Benjamin Walker Skyped home yesterday for Mother's Day. It was really good for everyone to hear from him. In today's email home he wrote:

My collection of stories is constantly increasing! The only worry I have is that eventually I'll run out of money for the cost of copying them, 10 cents per page... no, I'm just kidding, I have more than I need. Tell Joshua and Robert that when they go on a mission I'll either send 1 story a week to them or all 100+ pages of talks/stories/poems/other all at once at the most inconvenient time, right before I think they are going to get transfered to another area. (s\So they need to make room for it all after it is too late! muahahaha!) 

So, like I told you while skyping, I went to the temple last Tuesday... I am surprised I forgot to tell you last Monday that I was going. It's kind of a rare even that most missionaries don't get to go in their mission before they are preparing to go home and go with President Holm. The member that brought us doesn't even have a temple recommend and we asked him Monday night to bring us because others couldn't do it. He'll be blessed for it I'm sure! Then, after the temple, the member friends that baptized Lee Ray Ragsdale took Elder Peterson and I out to eat. It was wonderful to be able to do that. I'm glad I've been blessed so. 

I am going to finish my backwards journal soonish... it's almost finished... I think then I'll start a journal that is written all in "short-hand" so I can write a lot in a little space. As this is the reason I don't like to write in my journal, because it takes so long... I'll practice in a new journal so I can write down all the stories of stuff... I have a request for you now. This is what you can send me in a package: papers of stuff that will describe to me in detail for how to write in shorthand. (Probably printed off the internet somewhere). I imagine that it won't take much more time than double the time it took for me to learn to write backwards comfortably. I don't know where you can send me that... Dad might know how to get something like that better. (Because he's probably more technologically advanced ... or Joshua ... or even Robert or Monica for that matter...you should probably hand this responsibility off to someone).

Christmas

On Christmas day we received a call from Elder Walker. It was nice to chat with him a bit, but in truth he was only calling so he could contact us later through Skype! So it was nice to be able to see and hear him as he chatted with us about life. He's doing really well and we are all so proud of him!

One of the best things about Christmas for him was that he was able to chop down his own Christmas tree, which none of us have ever done before. He was also blessed with receiving many Christmas letters/cards:

I received 24 letters on Saturday, Dec. 17 and I went back to the mailbox on Sunday, Dec. 18 (there wasn't really a reason to but I did anyway even though mail doesn't come on Sundays) and received a 25th letter... there was another letter in the mailbox... wow, that's a lot of letters.

Something I noticed for the age of people that sent me letters: the younger they get, the less they know how to fold a letter to put in in an envelope. One kid I don't know kind of just randomly folded the letter until it fit in the envelope and our youngest brother's was folded in fourths to fit inside. 

Our brother Joshua, a senior in high school, who will be serving a mission in a year and a half, wrote Elder Walker a letter asking about some aspects of the mission:

How much can you drive?
~We have 1,000 miles a month we can use for the car amongst the four missionaries in our apt. Two companionships. It's really not as much as it seems. It takes 100 miles each way to go to a meeting in Columbia for transfers or other stuff, thus far we've been going there twice a month (400 miles) since I've been here.

(Joshua) has been looking at Summerville weather
~Well, I've been looking at Modesto weather. We check the weather here too every once in a while. We call "tell-me" which is a free service that allows lots of things like weather, directions, businesses, etc. to be told to me. We have that number saved on our phone we have. Don't be deceived for how warm it says it is here. The humidity makes the cold, really cold and the hot, really hot. There are some days in between but it usually feels like one of the extreems. Last year at this time it was snowing, this year it still gets in the 70's. There seems to be cold fronts and warm fronts around here.

The most common food I make: mac & cheese or top roman
~Ha ha ha, very funny. No. The most common food I have eaten is pancakes. I do love pancakes. However, home-made mac & cheese seems to be a common thing to be made here in the south. During Thanksgiving and the ward Christmas party (which was really really wonderful btw) most people had made home-made mac & cheese. 

Josh remembers to water his cactus
~That's good, keep it growing, I see a lot more cactus' in people's pots on their porch around here, maybe that's just because I'm tracking and get to see everybody's house, there are a lot of weird things to see while tracking. I met my first midgit and first reorganized LDS saint on Saturday, Dec. 17. There are also a lot of wild animals that walk out of the forest all the time. (Remember the forest is everywhere around here.) How's the raspberry bush doing? I hope you've been watering that too. 

I have been eating lots of strange foods I've never thought of before. We ate dinner at the C–'s house yesterday. Bro C– knows 9 languages and counting and Sis C– doesn't like to cook but knows how to cook everything from every country it feels like. (I've had some of the most unique food at their house) 

How is the ward I'm in:
~The Summerville Ward is stupendous! (super). They have done such a good job with welcoming the investigators or others visiting the ward. Their activities that they organize are also really good. The Christmas party, for example, was really really good. They had about 500 paper (really only about 200) snowflakes strung across the gym and Christmas lights all over. The tables had crayons for me to draw on them and there was way too much food. It was like a while Thanksgiving meal per-table. (about 16 of them. 7 chairs a table). And lots of dessert. The different Thanksgiving meals we went to were awesome too. We are always told by people, as missionaries, "If you ever need something, food, a ride, or are in the area and need a drink, or want access to something you can't get because of mission rules (like internet, pages printed out, or movie made for us) just ask us and we'll be glad to help you." Both members and non-members tell us that. Which reminds me! We made a video for the Christmas party that we spend 1 1/2 hours on but a non-member actually made for us... one of these days I'll get it and mail it home... our view of what the movie was going to be was so much better than it turned out being. I was disappointed the first time I saw it... but we had a talk with the guy who made it for us, and he told us of these cool effects he was going to add to it... but his computer crashed several times trying to burn it on the DVD so he did a straight shot clip because he procrastinated due to lack of time. Looking back on it, it's still pretty good though.

I got a haircut from Elder Winger today... he's pretty good at cutting hair.

You know how you sent me that extra picture of our family's boys, mom? Well, that was the second time you sent me a replacement picture... I have two of them now for the one I lost at the MTC. (That one I had no control over because the blackhole ripped it from my possession into the midst of the fabric of time.)

And to me he says:

Dear Alexandria Mae Walker,
     Mom tells me that you are super. Thanks for being so super for me. You really are wonderful for updating my facebook account for all of my friends to see what's going on in my life right now. (I'm not sure if it's facebook or something else, but nevertheless, thanks a bunch!! You are the best oldest sister in the world!)

Thanksgiving Weekend

Elder Walker had a very filling Thanksgiving weekend. The best part was that this past Saturday they had 3 baptisms. A mother and her two children. He was really excited about it. He was able to confirm the daughter. What a great thing to happen over Thanksgiving weekend! He then shared how his Thanksgiving was:

I had plenty of Thanksgiving. I had 4 meals on Thurs. (four entire blown-out meals ... there was no room for desert and it was over the space of 5-6 hours) it was supposed to be five, one of the times conflicted. We were invited to a lot more though but turned them all down. We also had a Thanksgiving meal with a family yesterday right after church. We have a lot of food in our fridge right now. 

I participated in a turkey bowl game with the ward (football game) (yes, we had permission to) it was lots of fun and it was a little bit painful for me. I was pretty sore the next day.

Elder Walker has been in the Summerville area for the last few weeks. There are four missionaries in that area, but he and his companion have the west side of the city including St. George City Northwest. Soon after he had arrived in South Carolina a few weeks ago, his mission president and the wife wrote us to tell us how great of a person he is. They sent us two photos! Here's Elder Walker's words describing his travel to South Carolina:

President Holms and Sister Holms with Elder Benjamin Walker

When I stopped in Atlanta, Georgia it was a huge airport so I had to use a subway train to make it to the place where we boarded (and called you). After we got to Columbia, SC, our mission president was there to meet us. All 13 of us, how nice. We went with him to his house I think (just to let you know I wrote this stuff down in one of my journals so you can have more info on it later if you ask nicely). His house seems to be a little bigger than our house except the space is much more efficiently used up. One room has four bunk beds in the one I stayed in. There are 3 other rooms for missionaries 2-3 beds each in them, not including their master bedroom. The next day we went to the forest outside the temple (there is forest everywhere) which resembles the sacred grove, then talked to the new temple president for a couple of minutes in the waiting room of the temple. Then we went out to eat at a southern place and Pres. Holm made a referral out of the waitress (he showed us all how it's done) and now I'm here.

He also shared a bit about their apartment:

We borrowed a carpet cleaner from a member. My companion loves that thing. The carpet still needs to be replaced but it looks a million times better, that's right, 1,000,000 times better!

He seems to be doing fantastically. Keep him in your prayers this Christmas season! If you'd like to send him a Christmas package you'll have to send it by the end of November or the beginning of December so that he can receive it at his next transfer meeting which is a week or so before Christmas. The address is the same as the normal mail address.