week 18: spreading the restored gospel of peace one door knock @ a time!!!!

Hola mifamilia,

Scripture of the week: alma 36:3.

Yes I know I am not in a Spanish speaking mission but I just like to be cool once in a while and greet you in Spanish, so come on just bear with me here.

 

Before I get into details from this week I want to bring up something that has been weighing heavy on my mind for a while but really got brought up heavy yesterday. FAMILY HISTORY WORK! The whole sacrament meeting was about it yesterday here in Lyndon, and I felt strongly that we as a family need to do much better about doing our family history. When we do this wonderful work we will receive divine help from the other side, both spiritual and temporal, we cannot make it through this crazy world without our family backing us up from the other side, so please do all you can to do some more family history work.

 

So this week was a bit of a crazy week. A good week but also a crazy one. I’ll start with Tuesday. We were visiting a less active family and I felt very prompted to flat out ask if the book of Mormon is true, I totally expected them to say no. But he answered with a yes, and then proceeded to tell us that it is true but he also went off on how bad of a person the prophet Joseph was. And if you know elder Zilles you know that you DO NOT dis on Joseph smith, because we are tight. So needless to say I was a bit fired up about that one. But I held my tongue and just bore testimony and then we left.
A few minutes later we got a call from sister Gregory telling us that brother Taylor had passed away. I don’t know if I ever told you anything about ken, but he was an amazing guy that lives on the new hamp side so I haven’t seen him in a while, but elder chen and I used to visit him all the time, we got to be very close to him. So that just added to my bad mood even more.

Then we went and knocked a door and the lady pulled the typical "o we are Christian" which usually means they don’t believe Mormons are Christians and I hate hearing that it drives me crazy. so me being the weak man that I am got a bit angry and said in not a very nice tone "oh we are Christians as well, our name is the church of JESUS CHRIST, you can’t get much more Christian than that" Yeah I know I shouldn’t have gotten short with her but I did, but hey good learning experience.

 

Thursday not much happened but that is when we heard about the whole Boston ordeal. We are very sheltered as missionaries and don’t hear about most of the news. sounds like quite the event.

Friday we ate with the Gorham’s, and I got a call and was asked to speak at brother Taylors funeral. I of course have never spoken at a funeral, and I never imagined it would be something I would do while on my mission.

Saturday was the funeral, I prepared a talk on the plan of salvation. Bishop told me that the spirit I brought in was incredible. I continually have to remind myself that the work I do is not me, it is the lord only working through me. As hard as it is to say, great things are going to come from brother Taylor passing away, his one son who lives around here want the sister missionaries to come over and talk with his family some more about the plan of salvation. So once again the lord works in mysterious ways.

Sunday was a good day as usual, I got to pass the sacrament, non of our deacons were there for some reason, so on the deacons bench we had brother Gregory, me a teacher and then the two dunoskovic brothers who are about my size, let’s just say deacons fit on the bench better than we did it would have been a pretty great picture to see us all squeezed in there in our suits. I was wearing my purple tie(I got my ties thanks so much for sending them and the craisins, although he didn’t say it I’m sure elder g was grateful for the snickers) anyways I was wearing my purple tie and I passed to the Peterson family and there little girl goes elder Zilles likes purple just like I do haha, I love that family. Brother Gregory asked me to teach him how to bless the sacrament and bless it with him next week. In priesthood we had a testimony meeting and all shared how we came to know of the truth we now know it was very neat to hear all of the different stories.

Sunday night we made the long trip to the huge town of Walden Vermont. Main street of Walden is a dirt road so that tells you how big it is. But we had an awesome lesson with our second new investigator for the week. She is married to  a less active member, he is 56 and has not been to church since he was 13. We taught them at his parents house, I will refer to the parents as the sr's We have in the ward the sr's the jr's and hopefully soon . It’s just a wonderful family as a whole. WE are meeting with mike and Lori next week it’ll be great. and soon we are going to have a french toast eating contest,

 We are currently working with about 5 investigators.  The work here in Lyndon is going great and I don’t want to leave. I fear that I could get transferred in two weeks. and if not this transfer I would bet that I will be transferred next transfer. Elder gs first transfer will be over in two weeks, time really does fly.

 

I love you guys.

Elder Zilles

spreading the restored gospel of peace one door knock @ a time!!!!

 

(the vermont "Mountains")