Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Week 20

Here is Chandler's latest email home.  He's having a lot of fun and I love to read his letters and see how much he's grown!

Dear Everyone, 

I've been almost 5 months now which is pretty crazy it seemed to fly right by. Before I know it I'll be home! We had transfers this weekend and I'm staying in Coquille with Elder Madsen. We're pretty excited because now we'll get to spend the holidays on the beach and also winter doesn't exist out here so that's nice too! So this week sucked. We had all these appointments set up and we were all excited to have a good week and then every one of our set appointments fell through. In a week we were supposed to have 19 lessons we had 5. In an area this small it's already been tracted so many times that when we come by people don't even open their doors to us anymore. So we have to resort to other ways of finding and have tracting as a last resort. So we went through a giant list of former investigators and less active and part member families. For hours each day we went and visited these people and not a soul wanted us. Haha So we are hoping that this week goes a lot better and we will be able to meet with everyone we have scheduled and not run into any issues and hopefully have a great week! Another thing if you are capable of feeding the missionaries I encourage all of you to do so! As a missionary in an area where the members don't feed us very well I can say frozen burritos and top ramen are going to be the death of me! Haha So if you can feed them please do because we really do appreciate it. 

So every Saturday after exchanges us and the Bandon Elders meet up and exchange back at this small pizza joint. There we are able to buy a couple pizzas and then we eat and catch a little bit of college football for about an hour then get on with our day. Well when we showed up this week there was this guy and he apparently loves missionaries so he was just talking to us and just telling jokes and he kept yelling "GO BYU!" I informed him that I strongly dislike BYU and that I'm an avid U fan and he said "Cmon brother you don't have to lie to me. You're a mormon you gotta be a BYU fan!" And he then said that I must've been the pack leader of us four elders because I have the biggest mouth and am the most outspoken. After that his team started playing, he's a Notre Dame fan, and so he said "brothers let's have a group prayer that the Irish will win." So I was like come on over say a prayer we don't care. So he came over and we all held hands and he prayed for his team. After that they started scoring like crazy and he was yelling that Mormons are the best and that we need to pray for every game for him. And then he just bought us pizza which we were thankful for because we saved it and had it for dinner that night. Well so what does this have to do with anything. One word. Prayer! After this experience I kept thinking about the power of a simple prayer. Now in this case this guy said a simple prayer for his team which on the grand scheme of things is not necessarily a great idea nor is it something I would advocate BUT nevertheless we learn from this that no matter how silly we think the thing we are praying for is, it matters to Heavenly Father. If you ask in faith and truly desire an answer or a result and you're willing to put in the work needed the answer or solution always comes. Now I later learned that the Fighting Irish won. Was this just a happy coincidence? Or was it an answer to this mans simple faithful prayer? I can't say. But I can say this, and that is that Heavenly Father will always answer our prayers no matter how silly we think our request is. I've seen that on my mission many times as I've said small prayers that the rain would let up or that we could walk the extra mile and it seems that every time I've been answered. So did you think to pray? If not I encourage you all to do so. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen. 

Love, 
Elder Colton

Missionary for: 
The Church of Jesus Christ 
of Latter Day Saints

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