Hello everyone
This week has kind of gone by slow Elder Armantrout was sick for the first part of the week then I got sick the second half and I still kind of sick I’ve almost lost my voice right now which is fun as a missionary :D…. We have this on investigator who we met with about a month ago who was really solid but ever since then every time we have set an appointment something has come up like work and this last time she was really sick and she didn’t want to calls us this last week to cancel because she didn’t want to seem flaky so the member she is living with called us telling us that. Every other time before that when she had to call to cancel you could tell that she was really sorry and she kept telling us that she didn’t want to seem flaky so it has been interesting.

That kid that we have been working with is still on fire and his dad came to visit him again after church yesterday so we were able to meet him he seems like a really nice man

Oh and at church after sacrament meeting this guy walked up to me saying “are you guys the umm the umm people who umm” and I said “the missionaries?” He was like “yes them”, I am a member and I kind of fell a way for a little while and my grandma has been bugging me to come back to church so here I am. But the way he said it was slow and sounded like he was drunk but I showed him to the next class and gave him a Book of Mormon and were able to give him a gospel principles book and introduced him to the bishopric and they got his information because he wasn’t on the ward roster and the whole time he seem a little drunk but he didn’t smell at all but we set an appointment to meet that night when we got to his house we learned that the reason why he acted the way he did was because he had a “learning disability” I don’t know the proper way to say that and he was living in this group home where it was him and this other kid who was also kind of slow and they and this worker staying there with them to make sure all is well with them so that surprised us a lot and kind of made us feel a little bad for being so quick to judge but we were able to have a great lesson with him and his roommate and the worker guy. The member seemed slow but he remembered a lot that he learned at church which was great and he is exciting to start coming back to church he told us he does drink and smoke a little and knows he needs to stop so we helped him dump out all the beers and stuff. He was really excited to do that. It was great. It will be interesting to continue to visit with him because he seem all there just slow and it is a nice break from teaching people who all they want to do is bash or just disagree with everything we say and it is also nice having to teach soo simply it really helps us get back to the basics of what we teach.

Elder Birch

Hello

Thank you for the pics, they are pretty nifty 😀

Our Christmas dinner was pretty good. I have not met an Elder Alvey yet why? We didn’t have any real appointments this last week because a lot of the people we were work with were out of town or really busy so last week was a lot of hit and miss with our investigators.

The kid we have been working with about two days ago was told by the other people he was living with that he had to move out by the 15th of January if he stills want to continue being “mormon” so it is just one more thing fighting against him and it has been amazing to see how strong he has been though all of this. Yesterday we had dinner with the bishop and he invited him over too and this kid was really excited to come he has started to talk with the bishop every month to get ready for a mission and was excited to be able to talk with him some more and be around more people who love him and support him. The bishop was able to find someone he could talk to to find another place to live here and he was so grateful for it.

Today it is snowing and it supposed to snow all day so that exciting except for the part where we give the car to the other elders today so that’s kind of a bummer…

It was really good to see all of you guys too. I was pretty surprised to see everything that changed. Man everything is going to be so different when I get home.

Elder Birch

Hello everyone,

This week was pretty cold this last week was transfers and I’m staying for another 6 weeks, yay. and on Thursday when transfers were supposed to happen we had a big snowstorm that went through the whole mission with icy snow so it was canceled until Friday and the mission president told us not to go out unnecessarily and all our appointments fell though because of the snow and we didn’t have a car so that put a damper on that day.

Remember that less active kid I talked about last week? Yesterday the member we were having dinner with invited him to come too and since he doesn’t have a car the member gave him and us a ride and while we were heading back to the member’s house we got talking about how gung-ho he is right now and he told us that how he felt about the whole thing he started by saying that after he left the church he felt that he should take a full ride scholarship to UMKC and after a semester he felt he should quit and that’s when he met a campus minister who helped him find and get to know Christ and then when he met with us he felt that he needed to come back to the church and now he feels that God is leading him to go on a mission and then start school back after wards and when we heard that we were pretty excited he is going to be meeting with the bishop this Wednesday to talk about where he is right now and what he needs to do to be right and to be able to go on a mission. It has been an amazing experience for Elder Armantrout and me to see how he is fully embracing to church after leaving it. 😀

Oh and about the bling watch, when I was in Leavenworth there was this barber who is a member in Lawrence and we helped organize his shed that he had in the back and he gave us each a bling watch.

Hello

This last week was pretty awesome there was this less active kid that Elder Meisenheimer talked to in October he was almost 20 and when we met with him he was really nice but from then on was would just softly blow us off then last Friday we I invited him to church he said he couldn’t so I just asked him if there was a time this week that we could meet with him he said sure and we set a time for Thursday and when we met with him on Thursday Elder Armantrout and him really connected. We learned that he left the church when he was a senior in high school because he was going through some difficulties and felt like the church wasn’t helping and that no one understood what he was going through and about a year ago he moved to Kansas city and at that time he was super against the church saying that it wasn’t true and how it was evil. About the same time he moved here he went to a church with some of his friends and he met one of the pastors there and just felt super comfortable around him so he told him all the difficulties he was going through and the guy was able to help though them and helped him realize how much he needed God to help him overcome these challenges and it was there he understood the atonement. When we met with him this last week and really told him a lot of how the bible talks about the Book of Mormon and other stuff things were finally clicking and he told us that every time we would try to contact him he would be struggling and he was able to make the connection that this is what God wanted him to do so we invited him to read the Book of Mormon and we also invited him to come to our Christmas party and he was pretty excited for that and when he was there he started to make friends with some of the members there so that was pretty awesome and he was excited to come to church the next day and after the Christmas party we taught him the plan of salvation because he wanted to know more and we tough a really powerful lesson. It was almost two hours long and he was remembering thing he learned in the church in his youth and was getting really excited. On Sunday a little before church we got a call from him saying that he work up late and missed the bus and that he’ll try to make another one but we might need to pick him up. So it ended up that we needed top pick him up and we were going back to the church he told us that the night before his phone had 2 bars and when he woke up it was dead and that was why he woke up late and the other bus he tried to make came early and so he missed that one too and he was able to see that that could have been the devil trying to stop him and he also had a really good dream that answered some questions he had got him even more pumped up for church and when we got to church he was sooo excited he felt the spirit so strong and knew that this is what he needed to be and he made even more friends at church and this one member who kind of had the same story growing up went up to him and just told him how much this is going to change his life and how proud he was to see someone else doing the same thing he did. On the drive back to his house he texted his dad that he came back to church because his dad and him kind of had a falling out when he left the church and then lately he would talk to his dad but his dad would kind of avoid him. It was kind of funny but he told us that if his dad would start talking to him again he would be mad and our lesson in elder’s quorum about forgiveness and that really touched him. After he texted his dad, his dad texted back “that just made my year son” and then asked him if he could take him out for breakfast sometime this week which surprised him because his dad lives in Iowa and after his dad texted back saying I’m sorry that I haven’t been the best dad. All I did was just say a lot of prayers, I’m sorry. That touch him as well and the whole experience is one of the things why I just love being on a mission to help not only bless the lives of nonmembers but also members who need a little help. So that has been the highlight of the week and pretty high up there for my mission

Love Elder Birch

Hello Everyone,

This week went by really slow; we had a lot fall through on us. Our two most solid investigators have bronchitis so we won’t be able to see them for another week and we had some other people reschedule our appointments till after the holidays… but we did get four or five media referrals from mormon.org and one of them we tried calling but no one answered so we left a message and about an hour later she called us back and wanted to set and appointment for this Tuesday which surprised us because that hardly ever happens with media referrals. They usually end up being people who didn’t know who we were and had no clue what we were talking about so we are excited about this one. We also have a lot of awesome appointments for next week so hopefully next week will be better 😀

Oh and I have been enjoying the Christmas gifts and so has my comp.

Oh and tell Sadie sorry for not writing her, I ran out of paper but I will be getting some more today so hopefully she’ll get a letter this week.

Oh and I’m sending home a box with some junk and some Christmas gifts inside.

Elder Birch

Hello Everyone,

This week went really well. We set another person on date this week. She was a member referral and came to church last week and really liked it and likes what we teacher her. We had a baptism on Saturday and I just realized that I forgot my camera today so I’ll send you that picture next week, sorry mom. Oh, and on Sunday right after I confirmed the lady that got baptized we had to go to Maryville which is about 2 hours away so Elder Armantrout could baptize someone who he was teaching there and they wanted him to baptize them. It is really exciting to see all the work being done here and how much the Lord is blessing us.

Thank you for that Christmas box and I was going to ask about the meds because I’m out of them but all is well for now, it’s ok, I’m fine, but sometimes I can tell that some of my comps get annoyed when I’m off them and I don’t realize that I’m annoying them but Elder Armantrout is really patient it’s been really nice.
This week we should be taking care of my pants.
It’s really funny but its almost 70 degrees here it’s pretty crazy, how is the weather there?

Hey everyone,

This week has gone really great. We have four people with a baptismal date and this week. We taught a lot of really good lessons and we finally contacted this one referral and while we were teaching her we learned that she believes in a lot of truths that we teach that a lot of people who are not members don’t understand, like she understands how grace and works work together and during the lesson we asked her how she felt about what we taught her before (Elder Meisenheimer and I briefly taught her the restoration like 3 weeks prior)  and she told us that she felt that we were like the two angles. It was a lot to leave Sodom and Gomorra and how we are her two angles guiding her out of her own Sodom and Gomorra. That surprised us but we knew it is true and during that lesson the spirit was sooo strong and we will be setting with a baptismal date. The area is on fire and it feels like Elder Armantrout and I are really getting along and the ward is super friendly and helpful to us and the bishop is just as excited as we are and everything seems to be going really well.

Oh and this Saturday we will be having a baptism. This lady is from Nigeria and her fiancé is a member but is currently in the Ukraine going to school and she has be investigating for about a month.

Love Elder Birch

Hello everyone

This week was kind of slow but Elder Armantrout and I went through our area book to organize it because it was a mess and we have a LOT of formers and potentials so there is a lot of potential there and it is really great now the ward is liking us compared to when we first got here the bishop seems to have really opened up to us. He is even taking us out for lunch this Wednesday and we are going to start to meet with him at least once a week to talk about the area and the ward with him so that will be great as well. It seems like there is a lot of thing starting to get rolling in this area which is also exciting and Elder Armantrout is very excited to see what will happen.

For thanksgiving we will be playing b-ball in the morning then for dinner we will be going to a recent convert’s house. She was baptized a year ago and has been really solid. She was made the Relief Society secretary within the first 6 months of her being a member so I’m pretty excited to eat with her and she is also a really good cook.

Well write you all next week,
Elder Birch

Hello

Elder Armentrout is a pretty neat elder he is from Richmond Virginia and is really excited to be here which is pretty good 😀 this week was kind of slow because elder Meisenheimer was going home but it was nice because all he wanted to do was work so even on his last day we were out almost the whole day just visiting people but he ended up packing pretty late but oh well 😛 Elder Armantrout just came from Maryville which is a pretty rural town and saw it has been a pretty big culture shock from being there and then coming here into deep city where in some areas you are a minority and he is really enthusiastic about a lot of thing which is mostly good: ;D I can see a lot of good coming from this guy 😀 and its seems weird that I’m going to be here for 6 months, it is twice as long as I’ve have been in any area but it is nice knowing an area when you get a new comp 😀 and I liked Sadie’s costume that was pretty funny and clever 😀 it’s nice to hear that almost everyone is doing good well. Write you all next week.

Elder Birch