It appears that Loni smuggled scissors in her room to wrap birthday presents for herself during quiet time. At some point she also decided that she didn't like long hair (her words not mine) and cut it. It took me a few minutes to realize what she had done. I searched the floor of her room for the fallen hair, but found nothing. Then she revealed her hiding spot. Sigh...Well, at least she was clean about it. Plus it could've been a lot worse. I put Loni in the bath and evened out her hair as best I could. Her new hair-do looks cute, however the curls are gone.
Justin's HOME! He came to see his birthday girl turn four years old this weekend. There's a new energy in our home now that had been missing. Love having him home.
I hope everyone is ready for Halloween! Out here, they have something called "Beggars Night" which is the day before Halloween. That is when the children do their trick or treating instead of on Halloween.
We had a really good week in terms of finding! We were able to find eight new investigators this week which was a huge improvement over last week! We are teaching a lady named Michelle and her sixteen year old daughter Victoria! We had an awesome lesson with them this last week on the Gospel of Jesus Christ and church attendance! They couldn't come yesterday, but they promised to this Sunday! We found a couple named Rodney and Tammy who are looking for a church to raise their family in! AND, none of them have been baptized before! So that's one less concern to overcome! Hopefully we can help them start progressing as well!
This week I got to go on exchanges with Elder MacCabe! It was awesome being able to be his companion for the day! It's been a long time since our MTC days!
You guys! It is getting cold here! Noooooooooooooooo! It snowed for the first time this week. Nothing stuck, but it was still scary! The cold weather and wind is back :(! Oh well, at lease I only have to endure a couple more months of it!
I hope you all have a rocking Halloween! I love you all!
We had transfers yesterday night. Nothing changed in my district, so no new news. I get to terminate training my comp, woohoo!!
My companion and I are working REALLY hard using our new technique of finding. While applying this last week, I decided I would start praying for miracles in finding. I never thought to pray for miracles in finding. I had always prayed for miracles with the investigators we have now. Then I remembered the promise that every righteous thing we ask for will be given us. We just need to do our part. So, I decided to align my will with the Father's and pleaded for miracles in our finding efforts.
I thought that maybe it would retard (demorar is the word in portuguese, no Idea how to express this in english) a few days; however, after that same night, we recieved miracles! We have over 10 first lessons planned for this week and established 3 baptism dates in this last week alone. The Lord has seen our efforts and our true desire to do His will and His work and has guided us to find His children that are waiting for this glorious message of the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And these miracles continue to occur. Our area is considered "difficult" in my mission because the people are less receptive, but nobody can deny the Spirit when the right words are said to touch their hearts. I have never loved a people more than I love these people now. Never have I felt so strong a desire to spread this message of the Restoration.
On saturday, a beloved investigator decided to drop us... She told us that she no longer wanted to be baptized but I felt it had much more to do with her parents (whom are very catholic) because the day previous she was excited for the baptism and was loving the Book of Mormon and the Church. She "changed" her mind and her attitude in less than one day. After a night of sorrow and tears, we tucked her Relatorio de Progresso (Progress Paper thing to keep track of the lessons taught) into the Area Book for future missionaries to visit her.
God is not dead. He is our Father and is working miracles before our very eyes. The very earth trembles in humble submission to His will. We are not to align His will to ours but ours to His. After all this, we will see the miracles blossom in our lives and multiply our joy knowing that we have a Father who loves and cares for each one of us. We are literally His children. He cries when we cry, He laughs with our joyous laugh, and He is happy when we find His Eternal Gospel and when making the right choices.
Wednesday, I received a call from Maureen telling me that Lucy was in the hospital barely holding on. She had gotten a bad flu which was giving her respiratory problems. The next day, I walked into room 366 wearing a required mask, gown, and gloves to visit my adopted mom/grandma. Lucy was sleeping amidst the noticeable struggle to breathe. I just sat beside her bedside, not wanting to wake her. Soon, her granddaughter joined me and Lucy opened her eyes. She smiled in recognition of us and conversed in between coughs and dosing off and on. Before I left, I was able to update her on all of the kids as she smiled like a proud grandma would. That was the last time I would get to talk to Lucy. The next day, she slipped into unconsciousness, returning home to God this morning. She will be missed.
My favorite time of day is the evening. Homeschooling a high school junior has been difficult. I honestly don't know how I'm going to get Kirsten to graduation day. Completing all of her required subjects is taking all day. At this phase in the older boys' education, they had graduated early and were taking courses at West Valley. So, this is a new adventure for me. By evening, both Kirsten and I are spent. It's refreshing to sit outside and enjoy some downtime. Here's to quiet evenings!
This week was FAST!! Wow, I blinked and it ended. Serious, if the mission is always like this, I will be home in less than 100 blinks (Let's not think of that, it scares me to think time is moving that fast).
So, we made pancakes today with vannila syrupe because the stores here don't sell maple, so it tasted pretty interesting. Not bad but different. I will definetly have to work on that recipe. Haha, I feel bad for my companion eating the food I am trying to cook. Haha!! I just thought of something else, after we ate, my comp said something that was weird at first. He said, "Your accent doesn't make sense. Your American but you don't sound like one." He explained how my accent wasn't American but also wasn't completely Brazilian and he was wondering why. Back story: Most of the people here think I am from Europe (Usually, Germany or Sweden), I thought they thought this because of my hair and eyes, but my comp said that my accent is because everyone thinks I must be from there. So, that was interesting.
Our investigator Vinicius is progressing but wasn't at church yesterday. We only had two investigators at church. We are hopeful this next week will be better attendance wise.
We had an awesome experience with a brother of an investigator. His name is Rafael. He was interested in what we believe, so, logically, we taught the First Vision. When we got to the point of Joseph Seeing God and Jesus, the Spirit FILLED the room completely and it seemed like noise didn't exist. After I recounted Joseph's experience, I paused and let the spirit testify. This moment was more powerful than any other moment during the lesson. At the end, I said to him, "If this really happened, then the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the very true Church of Christ, and we MUST be baptized into His church." He agreed and accepted the invitation to be baptized and pray to know if these things are true. Which they are.
I know, with every fiber in my body, without any shadow of a doubt, that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is His church. He lives. He atoned for us. He is the Christ and we must follow Him.
Hello!! This week was filled with a LOT of normal activity and learning. Let's get this show on the road!!
So, first things first; we were working out the kinks in our new technique and we have refined to the point of finding more new investigators. So far, we haven't gained any investigators progressing, but we have some first lessons the week to come. So we are hopefull. To expand on what this technique means number wise, we made more than 50 lessons because of this, shutting down any commentary about us being new to the mission and thus showing our ability to work hard and get things done, and expanding our new investigators to more than 25 people. Statistically, this means more souls will be brought to Christ!!
The teaching pool is "smaller" but has more potencial as we have refined our technique. In my opinion, our teach pool has grown because of the potencial we have found but "numerically" it has shrunk (If that statement made any sense at all...).
We had Zone Conference on Thursday, so that was pretty awesome recieving counsel and training to apply in our areas. I am pretty ecstatic to bring more people to Christ!! At this Zone Conference, President Acosta banned the use of hangouts in the emails, so I am pretty bummed but I know the that he recieves inspiration from the Lord and I want to recieve all the blessings I can get to help my investigators better!!
Vinicius didn't go to church yesterday, we are pretty worried because we know for sure that he REALLY wants to be baptized but he is starting to not progress... We will teach a lesson really firm this week with him in order to give him the strength necessary to brighten his fire.
Love you guys! I attached a video of us singing our Mission Hymn!! See if you can find me.
Transfer week brought a ton of changes for me! On Tuesday morning, I was informed that I would be getting transferred to Indianola Iowa! Indianola has a population of about 16 thousand people, so it isn't too small of a town! It is just south of Des Moines. I also found out that my new companion would be Elder Davidson! We have gotten along pretty well the past few days! Elder Davidson is probably the most positive and nicest human being I have ever met! He has been out for 14 months and is from a small town in Eastern Washington.
After I learned that I was leaving, I said bye to some of the members here and packed my bags! I have really enjoyed my time in Indianola so far! The work is really slow right now. We found two new investigators these past couple of days, so hopefully things will turn around! The branch here is awesome! The members seem pretty fired up to support us!
Thats pretty much it! Love ya all!
Elder Zinn!
BRO ABBOTT!
The George Fam!
The Rounds!
The Lineage! From Left to Right! Elder Dotimas, Me, Schoenfeld (my son), Barney (my grandson), and Blanchard (my great grandson)!
This email brings a lot of comfort to me. Knowing that Steven is around people who care and love him makes it easier for me to be at peace with him being so far away.
I've got one extremely motivated cub scout living in my home. He wants to work on different Wolf requirements everyday. However, I am a bad mom and limited him to working on one belt loop a week. This has worked out great and goes hand in hand with homeschooling. This week Daveo completed the requirements for Motor Away. He built two boats out of household objects and a Lego car that moves under its own power.
I sweet mom from James's mission texted me yesterday to let me know he had been transferred.
"Elder Zinn is leaving Iowa City. We are sad to see him go. He wanted me to tell you he will be going to Indianola. We love him. He will always have a special place in my heart!!!"
Two more transfers until this child of mine comes home!
So, this week my companion and I decided to "retrain" a little. Seeing how both of us have less than 6 months on our mission, our level of experience is really low. This week was filled with finding ways to find more people and have more lessons. So, it worked but had a different effect than I thought.
What did we do:
We decided to teach people RIGHT when we found them, without asking permission to see how it would work. The goal in mind is invite the spirit immediately. This worked surprisingly well. We had a record of 42 lessons in one week and diminished the number of false addresses by A LOT. This also means it diminished the number of new investigators. But now we are ONLY finding the people who will progress.
We are still working out the tweeks but we have flattened out most of the awkward parts to make it smoother.
The COOLEST PART!!
We have an investigator named Vinicius. He is SO excited to be baptized but has to wait a little because he is living with his girlfriend. So, they are seperating so that they can be baptized. We are very excited for them! He brought us milkshake today before we came o send emails. He is super awesome and excited to follow the will of the Lord.
This last week was cool. Trying new techniques and finding new people. A cool experience happened yesterday.
We were walking to Lunch and my companion pulled out a pamphlet of the Restoration. He then looked at me and said, "I have no idea why I pulled this out but... ok?" And we just laughed and continued walking. Right when he was about to put into back into his bag I saw a man sat on the bus stop and I felt the Spirit tell me to talk to him. So we went. We talked to him and when he saw the pamphlet of the restauration he got really excited and said, "Oh! I know your church! Missionaries already stopped by our house and left a message" With this, we have a new investigator!!
I taught my companion bread with cinamon and sugar. It is really good and be also ate some ice cream to close our Sunday. Video attached.
This last week flew by! We had a pretty good one. I am still sick. Can't seem to shake this one haha!
Tomorrow are transfer calls! We will see what happens, but I feel like I am getting transferred. After this week, I have two transfers left so wherever I go will probably be my last area!
We had a full week of finding and teaching investigators! We weren't able to teach Mohammed this week. We were able to find some fairly solid new people though! No one came to church this week, but we are very hopeful for getting people there next week!
We had Zone Conference this past Friday in Nauvoo! So that is where most of my pictures are from this week.
The weather is cooling down out here. It has been cold and rainy all week, so we are hoping for a bit more sun.
That is all I have time to write this week! I love you guys! <3 div="">
After days, and weeks and months of wiggling one of Daveo's lower teeth finally fell out. Loni watched on in confused interest. I asked my sweet girl if her teeth will fall out like Daveo's. Her shocked reply has me smiling:
Kirsten and her friends had a fun evening getting dressed up for a church Halloween dance. Each of them made their own costume. I'm impressed with their creativity.
This week was MUCH better than last week. We actually had lessons and found a lot of new people to teach. Sorry again for the lack of photos, we are not allowed to take pictures while proselyting.
We have a family that is really AWESOME. The mother is not really interested but is fulfilling all our invitations minus the invitation to church. But her children are REALLY interested. The two oldest want to be baptized this week. Let me rephrase that, the two oldest wanted to be baptized this week. Except... The father (seperated from the mother) told them that he dosen't want them to be baptized in this church because he raised them in the catholic church. The mother already authorized the baptism but the two of them are pretty torn now because the decision is on them. They don't want to disapoint their dad but also they already recieved a witness of the truth, so I invited them to fast with us this next week and we made a couple inspired promises with the family. We'll see what happens.
We have an other kid (Luis) he has the same age as us. He is also very interested in the church, his problem is motivation to recieve a witnesss from the Spirit. We are going to make a invitation realy firm with him to go to church this Sunday and see what happens. We made a goal with him to be baptized the week to come.
One night we were knocking on doors (915ish because it is a rule we cannot return to house until 930) and one guy answered. My companion began the usual routine "Hi, good evening, we are missionnaries of th...", the man, "No no no, I don't want to hear from you guys." After which he went to inside the house and I said, "Falou" This translates to "Said" but here it means bye. He responded with, "Falou nada (Bye nothing [weird in english], talking about God at this hour?!" And slammed the door. We had a good laugh with this but it is really sad that this man has a time set for God in his life.
Made me think a lot. Am I willing to allow God in my life at whatever time during the day and night? For sure here on the mission this is necessary but I need to remain willing for after as well.
This will be short because I am a little pressed with time. So only a short, funny story.
We were knocking on doors one night and everything was going as expected. That is, we were being rejected by everyone. We came upon one door and I rang the bell. A lady walked out timidly and asked who we were, normal. We explained we were missionaries and had a really important message with her and her family. I then asked for her name, she said, "Regina". I did not believe her one bit, I could tell she was lying. But I continued with a small message about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. At the end a pizza guy pulled up and handed her her pizza. She left the pizza inside, came back out and asked me where I was from, still really scared. I explained I was from California.
All of a sudden, her moood changed from scared tovery excited and she told us about how she loves CA and even visited there for 15 days. She told me she visited San Jose and went to a park. She described the park and it was the very same park where I ran almost everyday!! She said she loved the park and wants to visit San Jose again. Anyway, at the end I asked her name again this time with more success. Her real name is "Vanessa" and she wants to here more from us. WOOHOO!!
I am reflecting on this past week, and nothing too crazy happened. It was a very average week. I am sick again ughhh. At least this time I only have a cold!
Both Donelle and Iseel have dropped off the map. We haven't been in contact with either of them since last week. We found a cool new investigator named Mohammed! He used to be a Muslim. But now he is agnostic because he believes that God has forsaken our world. Quite the religious background huh? We had a super good lesson with him where we explained the Restoration to him! He was really engaged in it. We gave him a copy of the Book of Mormon and he has been reading from it for a few days now! Hey promised to come to church next week so we are hopeful for that!
Sorry for the short email this week. This computer is glitching out like crazy!
This year, we broke with tradition and ventured to Half Moon Bay to choose our pumpkins. I'm so glad we did. It was a beautiful sunny day at the coast. Farmer's John pumpkin patch had everything we were looking for. We picked this place because it wasn't commercialized; no rides. Daveo and Loni had fun exploring Native American houses, climbing on bales of hay, and marveling at the variety of pumpkins. We even took our picture in front of corn stalks to send to our Iowan missionary.
Next, we drove north to Fitzgerald Marine Reserve. Just as we parked the car, the fog came rolling in. Brrr. The temperature drastically plummeted and we found ourselves wishing for San Jose's warm sun. We sat for a while on a bench marveling at the waves rolling in at many different angles and the cute seals playing in the tempest. The tide was in to far to explore the tide pools. However, a nice ranger pointed us in the direction of a nice trail through Cypress trees. We all had fun exploring this new place and before long, the sun burned off the fog. Our walk led us to a sandy beach where we spent the rest of our time. What a wonderful afternoon we had!
