Week 25

HEY! What's up everybody! This week was a pretty darn good one!  I got my new companion on Tuesday!  His name is Elder Plumb and he is from St George, Utah and he has been out for about 14 months!  He's a great guy!  We've been working really really hard this week and its been great!

I've learned a lot this week!  I think the biggest thing I've learned this week is about agency!  Its a kind of frustrating thing haha but its good! So we have been working really hard and talking to a ton of people and we have a few people we are teaching that have some potential but there were some other people that had a TON of potential and we were really excited to learn and one guy in particular that we met we said a prayer with him and talked to him for a little and he said when can you guys come again? Can you come over on Sunday? and we said of course haha we were really excited and ready to see him and he even told us not to be late haha! So we were really excited to come and see him and we cam over on Sunday and knocked on his door and nobody answered! I was pretty bummed! because we had been working pretty hard and we found this guy who was pretty golden and ready to learn the gospel and we were there on time ready to teach him and he still wasn't there!
I'm still not sure what happened but we will keep trying him but the point is even if we work super hard and try our best people still have their agency and that's okay!  Our purpose as missionaries is to invite others to come unto Christ, not to force them to haha sometimes we wish we could because we know it can bless them so much and its what God wants for them but STILL they have their agency and they can choose!

Other than that this weeks been pretty average!  I'm finally feeling like I'm working as hard as I should and I'm coming close to my full potential but I still feel like I'm not there yet!  I feel like I'll probably never be satisfied fully until I'm done! I just feel like I have alot to do and not enough time to do it!  We've been biking every other day this week which has been pretty good haha. I come home so exhausted!  But its great!  Maybe that's one reason I'm feeling a little better about what we've been doint is I'm a lot more tired lately so that makes me feel accomplished haha but yeah it's been fun!  No crashes yet!  My peddle did fall off on Wednesday and my companion slapped it back on there while I was looking for the bolt and we realized that it was on the wrong way so both the peddles were facing down and then I couldn't get it off because it was stuck so I had to ride my bike all side saddle back to the apartment and get a 9 iron and wedge it off but eventually I got it!  (after bending the 9 iron) but its all good!  I bought a new crank shaft from the local bike store and it'll probably come any day now! So that'll be good! But yeah haha missionary life! I'm loving it out here and hope you guys are having as good of a time as I am!

Love you guys!
Para Siempre Dios Este Con Vos!
Elder Follett

Me and Elder Plumb

Investigators Wedding and the Mariachi Band!

Week 24

FAMILY
What's up everybody? How was everybody's week?  This week went by pretty darn fast!  So transfers finally came haha and I'm staying in Shelbyville!  My companion is getting transferred to Lexington so I'll be getting a new companion tomorrow so that's pretty exciting! So I have at least 6 more weeks in Shelbyville and maybe more! I love it here so I'm not super disappointed! BUT we did get a call on Friday and the mission is taking our car away and giving it to another area so we have to share a car with the English Elders so now we'll be biking every other day which is a lot more than we were haha so that's a bummer but oh well!  Something else that's pretty new is we've been given one hour a week to do family history work and we have a little book called My Family and you put pictures and stories of the people in your family four generations back so I need some pictures of mom, dad, Grandpa Phil, Grandma Follett, and grandma grace that would be great!  If you just email the file that would probably be easiest!

Also this Tuesday I went on an exchange with my district leader (who happens to live in the same apartment as me and has the same area just English speaking) so it wasn't super different but none the less it was a really good day! I learned a lot and just a small lesson I learned for me at least as a missionary its super important to be there for ANYBODY!  Literally the most random people will open up to to you just because you want to talk to them about God and people need it!  I'ts kind of something that at first was annoying because everyone that talks to us just wants to complain and vent to us and tell us all their problems but it is super important to be there and to help whoever is willing to talk to us even if all they need is someone to listen to!  Often times people have to feel like they trust us and know that we love them before they will be willing to listen to us or want to change their life so listening is HUGE in missionary work.

So We've been doing a crazy hard workout every morning and we had a slumber party in theliving room on Saturday night to celebrate because we didn't have to workout on Sunday morning haha but I've actually already lost like 10 pounds in 2 weeks which is cool!

This is me and Elder Gay, his girlfriend sent him that weir shirt because he forgot to bring like any t-shirts!

This is us playing Soccer on Saturday night!  They were all joking it looked like we were in Mexico because I was the only white guy there and my white companion was taking the picture, haha!

And this is us on the way home from Soccer!

P Days in a four elder apartment are never boring! haha

and this is from District Meeting

I love you guys all so much and hope you have a great week!

Para siempre Dios este con vos!
Elder Follett

Week 23

What's up everybody! This week went by pretty fast!

So needless to say we've been struggling a little bit here in Shelbyville haha but this Friday we had a zone conference here in the Crestwood Zone and it was great! One thing that President Brough did with us in one of the work shops was practice inviting people to pray! He said it was crucial that they pray at the end of the first lesson!  So we practiced it with him and he told us to never again ask the head of the house who they wanted to pray because every time they would say one of us (which is totally true) so he told us to tell them "in a minute you are going to say the closing prayer but first we want to tell you how to say it (and then explain it to them) so like I said last week we've been trying to work on the outskirts of town and the other small surrounding towns so we started working in a little town about 10 miles west of Shelbyville called Simpsonville and we were there working our magic and we had a first lesson with a guy and we talked and it was a pretty good lesson and at the end we asked him if he would say the prayer and he said yes and said the prayer perfectly and I was shocked!  Later we went to go try  and find a less active family that lived out there on a farm but the address we had didn't exist and we were about to head home when we went and knocked a door at a little apartment complex and this lady Ana let us in and we taught her the first lesson and we got her to pray after for us to and it was perfect! It was so easy if we just did it the way President taught us to!  In the past that was a pretty big hurdle we had to get over but now it was just easy as can be!  It was really cool and made me think that our leaders really are inspired and how often do I think I know everything and can just do it my way when the Lord has established a way for us to do things and for a good reason too, because it works!  It was a great reminder for me.

This Saturday a member in our ward let us come over and bring some investigators and less active members to have a little campfire and it was really cool!  He had a bunch of land and we had a great time!

Love you guys! Hope you have a great week!
Para Siempre Dios Este Con Vos!
Elder Follett

This is Elder Gay and Me, yes that is his name haha! He is from Joseph, Utah and he is a real life cowboy haha, he lives on a ranch and he is brand new!  This is his first transfer but anyway to explain this picture for some reason he always comes and gets in my bed but this is a picture of the two greenies in the apartment reading our letters from our girlfriends! (because we're green and still get letters!)

Our Campfire

Week 22 "the Lord our God did visit us with assurances that he would deliver us"

What's up! This week was another pretty good week! I can't believe it's already September! 5 months today!  It feels like its gone by pretty quick but at the same time I feel like I've been here my whole life! haha But I'm really enjoying my life here in the old KY! I love it here! I feel like I'm kinda starting to be adjusted to everything I feel like it's getting easier!

So something that's new this week is English class!  We got permission to use our church building here to hold weekly English classes every Wednesday night and they are so fun! haha it is a blast!  We only had about 5 or 6 people show up but it was really fun to teach them English!  The church puts out this program called the Daily Dose and it is really cool! The way we do it is we have everybody stand the whole time and we just talk in English the whole time and ask people questions and repeat phrases and it really reminds me of my MTC experience haha! But it is fun to be on the flip side of it!  Hopefully we can get more people to come and get the class bigger but it seriously was the most fun I've had in a while haha! So we did have P day yesterday but we couldn't email because it was Labor Day and the library was closed so we got permission to just email today!  which is kinda weird to email on a regular proselyting day but whatever I won't complain!  Since yesterday was P day and we couldn't email we had a lot of extra time so a member took us up to the church building in Crestwood (where we have church) and we played basketball all morning and it was really fun!  We had about 20 people there and it was a blast!  We came home and we were all exhausted though haha my legs are still sore!

This week has been pretty normal other than that, Just same old stuff! We've been biking a little more often then I would like lately but now that it's a new month we have more miles now so that's cool!  We've been trying to work in the outlying areas of Shelbyville so our miles have been a little stretched lately!

So this week I've been reading in Alma and a scripture I really like was in Chapter 58 verse 11 "Yea, and it came to pass that the Lord our God did visit us with assurances that he would deliver us; yea, insomuch that he did speak peace to our souls, and did grant unto us great faith, and did cause us that we should hope for our deliverance in him."  I just thought that was cool that the Lord will deliver us in whatever circumstance and grant unto us faith!
I love you guys! Have a great week!

Para siempre Dios este con vos!
Elder Follett

     

This is our English Class

This is me drinking milk!

Week 21

FAMILY!
whats up everybody!  How has the week been?  Sorry about the Tuesday email, we had a mission conference yesterday!  We drove to Lexington and Elder Craig A. Cardon, of the Seventy was there and taught us, it was pretty cool!  It was a really spiritual experience and I feel like I grew a lot! It was a pretty long event we left at 8 in the morning and didn't get home until 6 so it was an all day thing!  I wrote down some things that he said that I really liked, "You are here on your mission, more because of what you feel, than what you know" and he also said "your knowledge will not get you here or keep you here or anywhere in your life, without the spirit."  It was a great time! So in preparation for this mission tour we were supposed to study chapter 4 in preach my gospel which is titled recognizing the spirit and we were supposed to prepare a brief three minute talk about it and he would call on people randomly to come up and share their talk so of course, out of all the missionaries at the conference I was one of the lucky few that got to share the talk haha. So I shared a story about a time when me and Elder Vidaure were walking down this street trying to find Hispanic people to contact and I saw this house and I thought I need to knock on that door but I ignored the thought and kept walking and I had the thought again you need to knock on that door and I tried shrugging it off it was just some random house that definitely did not look like Hispanics lived there and I had the thought again to knock on the door and I still didn't do it when all the sudden my companion asked me "hey see that house right there? Wanna knock that one?"  So I was grateful that even though I ignored the spirit that he didn't so we went and knocked on this door and this lady answered and she seemed really surprised to see us and we started talking to her and before we got three words out the door swung open a little more and a man was standing there and he asked us, "Is there a list you can put us on to never come back to this house again?" and we were like umm no not really and he was really mad at us SO I was really confused why I felt so strongly to knock on the door and so did my companion if they would't even be interested but I came to the conclusion that the spirit will guide us what to do and we have to follow that direction no matter what the outcome will be.  Maybe those people needed to see us and maybe that will help them in the future or maybe God just wanted me to recognize his promptings and see if I would obey but no matter what the reason or what the outcome, we have to recognize and obey the promptings of the spirit!

Elder Cardon was also the president of the Rome, Italy Mission way back in the day and one of his missionaries, who is now the president of Eastern Kentucky University came and told a story of a missionary in Tennessee who at the conclusion of his mission told his mission president that he felt like he had failed in his mission and asked his time and his parents money and the mission president asked if he baptized anyone and he said yeah just one little hill billy kid way out in the mountains and nothing will ever come from that and he said that later in life that hill billy kid started wearing shoes to church and eventually started wearing a tie and eventually he grew up and moved to Idaho and started a family and had 6 sons that all served missions and did the math and over 5000 people ended up joining the church all because of this one hill billy kid who that elder baptized so I came to a huge conclusion that its not important to measure my outward results of missionary work but that by just being here and being one of the Lord's servants, eventually I will make a difference in the world!

I love you guys all so much and hope everything is going great back home!
Para Siempre Dios este con vos!
Elder Follett