Well familia,
This week was freaking awesome. That’s awesome Cameron is home. Blake, Jeff and Kale are all leaving. Kaitlyn is getting married? That’s so weird I can’t believe it. This past Monday I met with our investigator Andy. I have known him since I came to the mission 6 months ago. He is the boyfriend of a recent convert girl Karla, he is 17 from the Dominican Republic. I have met with him every Monday for the past few months and he has always had so many doubts and it was very frustrating at times, but I learned a lot trying to research answers to his questions. Anyways, this Monday we met up at the church like always with a youth member Josue. We started the lesson by watching a couple of the special witnesses of Christ which brought the spirit. Afterwards we started talking about the atonement. I started pulling out all kinds of scriptures about the atonement of Christ and told him the importance of repentance. I asked him how we fully take on the name of our Savior Jesus Christ. What do we need to do to receive complete forgiveness of our sins? He said we need to be baptized. That was the exact answer I was looking for. Then I opened up all my favorite scriptures on repentance unto baptism. We read all those and I testified that we can only receive the remission of our sins through baptism and making a covenant with God. We have to do our part in order for the atonement to take place in our lives. I then asked, "Andy, what is stopping you from being baptized?" He said after a long pause, "an answer." He told me he really wanted to know if this was the true church. We all testified that the lord would give him an answer. Something hit me hard and said “set a date for baptism”. I explained and testified that the only way to receive an answer is if we ask with real intent which means showing the Lord what you're gonna do if he gives you an answer. Every time a date is set for baptism, the answer comes right away. Our member Josue shared his testimony and shared why Andy needs to be baptized. I then said Andy, will you be baptized this Sunday if you get an answer? I know you will get an answer tomorrow if we set this day. Will you do it? He sat there and during all of this was more serious than he had ever been. The spirit was so strong. He sat for about 5 minutes in complete silence as we waited. Then he said almost in tears, "I'll do it." We met with him a few more times during the week and prepared him for baptism. He did get his answer the very next day like I had promised. All he said was I prayed and I feel really good about it. He had asked me to baptize him because I’m a good friend of his now and yesterday he was baptized. It was the most amazing experience. The difference in Andy was miraculous after he had received a witness of the truth. He had to stop drinking and all of the other things that come along with being a youth in New York, but he has made a promise with the Lord. He shared his testimony after the baptism with all of us there and told us the real answer he got. He said that he used to go to church because of his girlfriend. He said, but recently I have been meeting with the missionaries without her because I really was interested and wanted to know if it was true. He said that when he prayed and asked if it were true his heart started to race and he felt this excitement, happiness that filled his entire body and knew it was true. He didn’t tell his girlfriend he was getting baptized till Saturday night, a night before, it was pretty funny. But, I know that miracles happen. We have worked hard; I have fasted and prayed lately for a miracle. The Lord always pulls through. We have 2 more baptismal commits for the upcoming weeks but I WONT BE IN RIDGEWOOD. Zone leaders told me Wednesday night that I had an interview with president Friday morning. I went to the interview and he asked me to be DISTRICT LEADER! I’m freaking going to MIDWOOD, which is South/Downtown Brooklyn to be district leader. I’m going to live in a 3 story rundown house with 10 elders. It’s a ward not a branch and it’s a huge District. I’m only starting my 5th transfer which will make me the youngest district leader. I was so humbled and am humbled because I’m still so young and now I have so much responsibility and have no idea what to do ha-ha. It'll be a good experience. President Nelson gave me a few compliments that were extremely nice and has a lot of trust and confidence in me. I have to pack all my bags today and leave tomorrow morning. Church was kinda sad yesterday because I had to tell all the members I was leaving. I have grown to love all them. An awesome family threw a BBQ at their house for me Saturday night, it was amazing. I have come close to all the youth here and they all wrote me letters and are we're having another get together tonight. I have made a lot of friends here and it has been great. I hope you have a great week.
I love you all, Elder Breinholt
Monday, September 28, 2009
September 7, 2009
Hola familia,
Well I hope you're all having fun up at the cabin. This past week wasn't the best week. We were all sick in our pad for the first part of the week. We rested Tuesday morning and then fought through the sickness and worked while the Zone Leaders basically slept all week and bummed it. It’s all good though. We're all better now, it was just some sickness everyone’s been getting around here.Well the week went pretty well besides that. We had an activity Wednesday night at the church with the branch and some investigators and watched the Testaments on the projector. Mauricio came and loved it. We visited him on Saturday again with a recent convert who is awesome and about the same age. He helped us teach the Word of Wisdom and it was rough at first and didn’t think it was bad to once in a while have a beer but it’s just bad to drink excessively. We talked for a while and I bore my testimony as well as I could so that he could feel the spirit testifying of the truthfulness of keeping the word of wisdom. It was cool cuz after that he went silent and said that makes sense. He told us he would come to church Sunday, as he had to in order to get baptized next week. He had work at midnight and we waited in church for him. He never came, and called later and said he got out late. I’m so bummed cuz now I can’t baptize him cuz I think I’m getting transferred next week. Its ok he'll get baptized the week after. We had 4 investigators at church though and some really good people progressing. We are trying to find more people and talk to everyone. We had a lady stop us on the street and ask us to come over which was something new, so we're going over there today, hopefully that goes well. My companion and I are getting along great. I’m gonna miss him and scared to get someone I’m gonna dislike. Missionary work is depressing sometimes, not gonna lie. We work so hard, follow all the rules and sometimes things don’t go the way we want them to but it’s ok because the Lord knows what he's doing. 3 years ago this mission was something you couldn’t believe. Missionaries weren't missionaries. My last president came in and did all the dirty work and turned the mission around. All the useless missionaries are basically cleared out a couple transfers ago. The new mission president is gonna take the mission to a new level. He's excited and turning things around, changing a lot of things. Its gonna be cool to see what happens over the next year and a half. Even though we have hard weeks sometimes its ok, we just have to keep going forward. I got up and bore my testimony at church. The branch is a good branch and has the potential to grow; it’s just that everyone blames each other for not doing stuff instead of just buckling up and doing it themselves. It’s frustrating because the missionaries do everything here and coming from home it’s different, because everyone in the ward would offer to help with everything. I’ve grown pretty close with everyone in the branch.I’m the choir director after church on Sundays. It’s so funny because nobody can stay on tune. They split up into different parts and don’t even know how to sing different parts. We are singing for a district conference in a couple weeks, it'll be interesting. Not too much is new though. Just working as hard as I can and trying to stay positive. I hope you all have a great week and a good labor day. Love Elder Breinholt
Well I hope you're all having fun up at the cabin. This past week wasn't the best week. We were all sick in our pad for the first part of the week. We rested Tuesday morning and then fought through the sickness and worked while the Zone Leaders basically slept all week and bummed it. It’s all good though. We're all better now, it was just some sickness everyone’s been getting around here.Well the week went pretty well besides that. We had an activity Wednesday night at the church with the branch and some investigators and watched the Testaments on the projector. Mauricio came and loved it. We visited him on Saturday again with a recent convert who is awesome and about the same age. He helped us teach the Word of Wisdom and it was rough at first and didn’t think it was bad to once in a while have a beer but it’s just bad to drink excessively. We talked for a while and I bore my testimony as well as I could so that he could feel the spirit testifying of the truthfulness of keeping the word of wisdom. It was cool cuz after that he went silent and said that makes sense. He told us he would come to church Sunday, as he had to in order to get baptized next week. He had work at midnight and we waited in church for him. He never came, and called later and said he got out late. I’m so bummed cuz now I can’t baptize him cuz I think I’m getting transferred next week. Its ok he'll get baptized the week after. We had 4 investigators at church though and some really good people progressing. We are trying to find more people and talk to everyone. We had a lady stop us on the street and ask us to come over which was something new, so we're going over there today, hopefully that goes well. My companion and I are getting along great. I’m gonna miss him and scared to get someone I’m gonna dislike. Missionary work is depressing sometimes, not gonna lie. We work so hard, follow all the rules and sometimes things don’t go the way we want them to but it’s ok because the Lord knows what he's doing. 3 years ago this mission was something you couldn’t believe. Missionaries weren't missionaries. My last president came in and did all the dirty work and turned the mission around. All the useless missionaries are basically cleared out a couple transfers ago. The new mission president is gonna take the mission to a new level. He's excited and turning things around, changing a lot of things. Its gonna be cool to see what happens over the next year and a half. Even though we have hard weeks sometimes its ok, we just have to keep going forward. I got up and bore my testimony at church. The branch is a good branch and has the potential to grow; it’s just that everyone blames each other for not doing stuff instead of just buckling up and doing it themselves. It’s frustrating because the missionaries do everything here and coming from home it’s different, because everyone in the ward would offer to help with everything. I’ve grown pretty close with everyone in the branch.I’m the choir director after church on Sundays. It’s so funny because nobody can stay on tune. They split up into different parts and don’t even know how to sing different parts. We are singing for a district conference in a couple weeks, it'll be interesting. Not too much is new though. Just working as hard as I can and trying to stay positive. I hope you all have a great week and a good labor day. Love Elder Breinholt
Thursday, September 3, 2009
August 31, 2009
Hey family,
It was a good week this last week. I didn’t sleep a whole lot so I’m sick now. My companion sleeps on the top bunk and moves a lot when he sleeps and the bed creaks like crazy. It has been rough in that area but other than that it’s been awesome. We meet our goals for the week and taught a lot of good lessons. Our investigator Mauricio is going down (getting wet baby). We taught him an awesome lesson about the atonement and baptism. Our mission president told us all to focus on the atonement in our personal study and with our investigators, so I've been trying to do that more. It has been awesome because it has strengthened my testimony and brought more power to the lessons. When you think of Christ the first thing that comes to everyone’s mind is, he died for our sins. Yeah, that's correct he did, he died for everyone’s sins. The thing people forget is that our salvation isn't free. Christ’s atonement isn't free. We have to do our part first for his atonement to take place in our lives. Well what is our part? We need to take upon ourselves the name of Jesus Christ which is done through baptism. In the scriptures it always talks about the repentance and then baptism. We need to teach faith unto repentance which leads us to be baptized. If I could only help people feel the need to repent they would ask to be baptized. That's how it was done in the scriptures and that's how it should be done today. Anyways, we taught the atonement linked to baptism to Mauricio and committed him for the 6th of September. He kinda gave us an answer of yeah he wants to but has fear. We just told him pray and ask the lord if he wants you baptized this date and I promise you he'll give you an answer. We went back 2 days later to see how he was doing. He had just bought a little DVD player so I pulled out my DVDs’ and asked which one he wanted to watch. He pulled out the restoration, we watched it. He then pulled out finding faith in Christ and we watched that. We talked after shared our testimonies and asked if he had prayed. He told us he had, and he told his wife who is in Ecuador the night before he was going to get baptized and she gave him the ok. He had received an answer to his prayers. He had to come to Church yesterday in order to be baptized the 6th because you have to come 3 times before baptism. He worked from midnight Saturday to 11am Sunday and couldn’t make it to our 10 o'clock church. We went over last night and rescheduled the date to the 13th. The last Sunday of the transfer. He said he will come to church this week for sure and I’m praying it all works out. One thing that I have noticed is that when an investigator has a date for baptism before receiving an answer that it’s true, they pray and always receive an instant answer. We receive no witness till after the trial of our faith. We also taught a less actives boyfriend Rommel again last night and taught a very powerful lesson on the plan of Salvation. It was amazing. We need him to receive and answer and hopefully can get him baptized the 13th with the less actives 9 year old daughter. We'll see how the week goes with them. He came to church a couple weeks ago and didn’t like sacrament meeting. Said it wasn’t very reverent which at times it’s not because most Spanish people here don’t discipline their kids. We're trying to get him to give it another shot. Everything has been going great. The weather is good because of some hurricane so no complaints there. We're all going to play football right now as a zone. I love missionary work right now. It’s always hard at times but there's nowhere else I’d rather be. You learn so many things on a mission that you can't learn anywhere else. I know that this is the Lords work. It's not easy because it was never easy for him so why should it be easy for me. I can't complain I have no reason to. I love you all and thanks for everything.
Love, Elder Breinholt
It was a good week this last week. I didn’t sleep a whole lot so I’m sick now. My companion sleeps on the top bunk and moves a lot when he sleeps and the bed creaks like crazy. It has been rough in that area but other than that it’s been awesome. We meet our goals for the week and taught a lot of good lessons. Our investigator Mauricio is going down (getting wet baby). We taught him an awesome lesson about the atonement and baptism. Our mission president told us all to focus on the atonement in our personal study and with our investigators, so I've been trying to do that more. It has been awesome because it has strengthened my testimony and brought more power to the lessons. When you think of Christ the first thing that comes to everyone’s mind is, he died for our sins. Yeah, that's correct he did, he died for everyone’s sins. The thing people forget is that our salvation isn't free. Christ’s atonement isn't free. We have to do our part first for his atonement to take place in our lives. Well what is our part? We need to take upon ourselves the name of Jesus Christ which is done through baptism. In the scriptures it always talks about the repentance and then baptism. We need to teach faith unto repentance which leads us to be baptized. If I could only help people feel the need to repent they would ask to be baptized. That's how it was done in the scriptures and that's how it should be done today. Anyways, we taught the atonement linked to baptism to Mauricio and committed him for the 6th of September. He kinda gave us an answer of yeah he wants to but has fear. We just told him pray and ask the lord if he wants you baptized this date and I promise you he'll give you an answer. We went back 2 days later to see how he was doing. He had just bought a little DVD player so I pulled out my DVDs’ and asked which one he wanted to watch. He pulled out the restoration, we watched it. He then pulled out finding faith in Christ and we watched that. We talked after shared our testimonies and asked if he had prayed. He told us he had, and he told his wife who is in Ecuador the night before he was going to get baptized and she gave him the ok. He had received an answer to his prayers. He had to come to Church yesterday in order to be baptized the 6th because you have to come 3 times before baptism. He worked from midnight Saturday to 11am Sunday and couldn’t make it to our 10 o'clock church. We went over last night and rescheduled the date to the 13th. The last Sunday of the transfer. He said he will come to church this week for sure and I’m praying it all works out. One thing that I have noticed is that when an investigator has a date for baptism before receiving an answer that it’s true, they pray and always receive an instant answer. We receive no witness till after the trial of our faith. We also taught a less actives boyfriend Rommel again last night and taught a very powerful lesson on the plan of Salvation. It was amazing. We need him to receive and answer and hopefully can get him baptized the 13th with the less actives 9 year old daughter. We'll see how the week goes with them. He came to church a couple weeks ago and didn’t like sacrament meeting. Said it wasn’t very reverent which at times it’s not because most Spanish people here don’t discipline their kids. We're trying to get him to give it another shot. Everything has been going great. The weather is good because of some hurricane so no complaints there. We're all going to play football right now as a zone. I love missionary work right now. It’s always hard at times but there's nowhere else I’d rather be. You learn so many things on a mission that you can't learn anywhere else. I know that this is the Lords work. It's not easy because it was never easy for him so why should it be easy for me. I can't complain I have no reason to. I love you all and thanks for everything.
Love, Elder Breinholt
August 24, 2009
Hola familia,
Como estan? Sounds like you all had a good week. The weather is freakening killing me. I’m used to heat but the humidity is pretty rough. It’s all right though I’ll live I hope. I got the letter from all the missionaries in the ward. Sounds like everyone’s doing good ya? I can’t believe Max and Ali are getting married already that’s nuts! Courtney Casper’s is probably gonna get married soon also. This last week was pretty good. We had someone from the quorum of the seventy come and we had a fireside. Elder Pace from the Seventy. We brought one of our investigators Thursday night, Carolina and stuck a translator on her head and she was good to go. It was a good night. She's gonna stop working on Sundays we think so we can get her wet in the font. Mauricio, quit his job so that he can come to church and we're gonna commit him either today or tomorrow and I think he's good to go. We have a lot of investigators right now that are so ready to be baptized and are being held back by little things. I’m praying that this week we can get rid of those little things and get some people ready for baptism. It was a very interesting week for me. I had one investigator Rosa, the sister of Carolina from Guatemala tell me she wants to marry me. She asked me if I would marry her and take her 4 month old baby in as my own. I just did a few of those awkward laughs and tried to ignore her a few times. I never responded ha-ha. Then after that we started teaching and she starts feeding her baby, yes right in front of us. It was just a wild visit. There’s also this little 8 year old girl in the branch who is the cutest little girl who made me a bracelet with my name on it and wrote me a love letter and gave it to me at church. It was so cute. I’m gonna miss this branch here a lot. I'm so close to everyone here, its gonna be hard. On Friday we had zone conference and Elder Pace talked to us for 3 hours straight. He's a funny guy. He's been a general authority for 26 years or something. He talked about humility. He said we suffer more from an unhealthy self image than a lack of humility. We are denying ourselves the blessings we have already earned because we wallow in our weakness. He talked a lot about the faith to find new people and the power of testimony. We have the ability to have a lot more baptisms in the mission and lots of missionaries wait around for members to help with missionary work instead of going out and finding ourselves and then bringing members in to teach. That’s the way it needs to be done here in New York. His talk was very powerful and pumped us all up.I think our new mission president is gonna change this mission and help make it a lot more successful. He's awesome and he's all about baptizing. I know Elder Oakes and I can get a few baptisms this transfer. We have so many that can do it maybe we just need a little more faith. We fasted last week and saw the blessing from that. Mauricio quit his job and a few of our other investigators are doing great. We just need to do all we can do and the Lord with come through and help us with our goals. The Lord is bound when we do what he says. He is literally tied up to bless us as we do what he says. I'm just trying to be obedient and work hard so I can have success which brings happiness. I love this work and I’m learning a ton about lots of different things. Thanks for everything. By the way I bought a new suit last week ha-ha cuz one of my suits is for handicap people. The crotch goes to my knees and it’s just messed up. It was only 100 for the new one so when you get the chance send me a Benjamin ha-ha thanks a lot I love you guys.
Love Elder Breinholt
Como estan? Sounds like you all had a good week. The weather is freakening killing me. I’m used to heat but the humidity is pretty rough. It’s all right though I’ll live I hope. I got the letter from all the missionaries in the ward. Sounds like everyone’s doing good ya? I can’t believe Max and Ali are getting married already that’s nuts! Courtney Casper’s is probably gonna get married soon also. This last week was pretty good. We had someone from the quorum of the seventy come and we had a fireside. Elder Pace from the Seventy. We brought one of our investigators Thursday night, Carolina and stuck a translator on her head and she was good to go. It was a good night. She's gonna stop working on Sundays we think so we can get her wet in the font. Mauricio, quit his job so that he can come to church and we're gonna commit him either today or tomorrow and I think he's good to go. We have a lot of investigators right now that are so ready to be baptized and are being held back by little things. I’m praying that this week we can get rid of those little things and get some people ready for baptism. It was a very interesting week for me. I had one investigator Rosa, the sister of Carolina from Guatemala tell me she wants to marry me. She asked me if I would marry her and take her 4 month old baby in as my own. I just did a few of those awkward laughs and tried to ignore her a few times. I never responded ha-ha. Then after that we started teaching and she starts feeding her baby, yes right in front of us. It was just a wild visit. There’s also this little 8 year old girl in the branch who is the cutest little girl who made me a bracelet with my name on it and wrote me a love letter and gave it to me at church. It was so cute. I’m gonna miss this branch here a lot. I'm so close to everyone here, its gonna be hard. On Friday we had zone conference and Elder Pace talked to us for 3 hours straight. He's a funny guy. He's been a general authority for 26 years or something. He talked about humility. He said we suffer more from an unhealthy self image than a lack of humility. We are denying ourselves the blessings we have already earned because we wallow in our weakness. He talked a lot about the faith to find new people and the power of testimony. We have the ability to have a lot more baptisms in the mission and lots of missionaries wait around for members to help with missionary work instead of going out and finding ourselves and then bringing members in to teach. That’s the way it needs to be done here in New York. His talk was very powerful and pumped us all up.I think our new mission president is gonna change this mission and help make it a lot more successful. He's awesome and he's all about baptizing. I know Elder Oakes and I can get a few baptisms this transfer. We have so many that can do it maybe we just need a little more faith. We fasted last week and saw the blessing from that. Mauricio quit his job and a few of our other investigators are doing great. We just need to do all we can do and the Lord with come through and help us with our goals. The Lord is bound when we do what he says. He is literally tied up to bless us as we do what he says. I'm just trying to be obedient and work hard so I can have success which brings happiness. I love this work and I’m learning a ton about lots of different things. Thanks for everything. By the way I bought a new suit last week ha-ha cuz one of my suits is for handicap people. The crotch goes to my knees and it’s just messed up. It was only 100 for the new one so when you get the chance send me a Benjamin ha-ha thanks a lot I love you guys.
Love Elder Breinholt
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