Spooktacular Hard Week

Hey Everyone,

Happy Halloween! We started the morning off serving the seniors at the local senior center by playing Pickleball with them. They have enjoyed our efforts to visit with them and play a round or two. 

This has been a very trying transfer. One of the hardest of my mission thus far. It seems every corner we turn it's a dead end. Every ounce of effort we have given has been turned down. Even when inspiration strikes and we pivot and make changes we are not seeing success. I'm asking today for prayers. Please pray for me, our trio, and our area. Our fasting and prayers are not leading to finding new investigators. Please pray that we can find someone to teach. I need prayers. Thank you.

We spent some time this week serving ward members and went back to the family who cut down tree branches all around their large property. We loaded branches for several hours and filled flatbed trailers to the brim.

Bed bugs have struck our mission! Every single Zone in our mission has at least one apartment that has bed bugs. What a crazy struggle this has been for our mission. We are bed bug free here in Higginsville so far. 

We only had one member dinner this week. We ran out of food and that is quite an experience when there isn't anything to eat. And, we didn't have money on our mission cards because they hadn't loaded them yet. We are grateful today is Pday and we have money on our cards and we've bought extra food this week. 

This week I felt inspired to place 3 Books of Mormon through walking the streets. I shared my thoughts with Elder Waterlyn and Elder Paul and they felt it was a good opportunity to find investigators and they were on board with the idea. One afternoon we each took a copy and started walking the streets. We talked to dozens of people, really nice people, and not one of them would accept a copy of the Book of Mormon. We felt so confident in our efforts but we couldn't place a copy of the Book of Mormon in over 3 hours. We did introduce ourselves and what missionaries do and shared several short messages and scriptures with those we met, so seeds were planted. 

We have really struggled to stay within our allotted mileage this transfer. Officially we were out of miles last Sunday when we arrived at church. Since then we have been on borrowed miles. Staying home and trying to find only through FaceBook has been difficult. Again, we need prayers. 

We did find Dewey through cold calling. We taught him and hope to be able to return and continue teaching him. We have several that are not progressing and so we will drop them. 

Our trio is going strong. I have enjoyed having a second companion and we are getting along well. We carved pumpkins last Pday and I carved JESUS on mine. Elder Paul has made friends with a huge spider that lives in a funnel on our front window. He feeds it dead moths from our basement. 

I think not having food to eat, no miles on the car to drive, not a lot of people to teach, and lack of success has made this one of the hardest weeks of my mission. I was asked to do a training on Charity at District Council and I studied Moroni 7: 43-47. I taught that steps to feeling and living a charitable life actually have important first steps. You need to have faith before charity and then you can show meekness, kindness, love, gentleness, and through prayer to our Heavenly Father we can wrap all of this goodness into having and sharing a pure love of Jesus Christ. Hard weeks come and hard weeks go. Trials come and sometimes stay for a long while. Giving ourselves a little charity and showing love and charity to others during trials shows our deep love and gratitude of our Savior, Jesus Christ. I am looking forward to having a better week ahead. I will remain steadfast. 

Elder Mortensen

Pictures and Videos this week:

Heading to District Council 

Pumpkin carving

A bike that grew right in the tree branches 

Football duck "borrowed" from some other elders

Beautiful fall trees

Cool cars we saw when we were walking the streets

Video of the Bells that ring in Higginsville