February 25, 2013

Dear Family and Friends!

Honestly i don't know where to start right now. My whole life out here has taken a 180 degree turn. Also i got a call about a package Saturday so i am going to be getting it tomorrow at our zone conference. Allie i hope you had a amazing birthday and man i wish i could see yours and Derek's house. send me some pic's of it!

So Wednesday i moved into my new house in Orem and man is it the ugliest/oldest basement i have ever been in. haha On top of it i don’t think the carpets have been cleaned or even vacuumed for ten years or more! The have a really bad smell to them and every time i get out of the shower i try to tippy toe into my room and put socks on as fast as i can so i dont walk on the carpet bare foot! There were 3 baptisms scheduled with i got in this area and they successfully happened Saturday. It was a great feeling to come right into a area and have baptisms. It boosted my energy and desire up more and made me have a very positive look on this area, which is something that i need because now that those people were baptized they are literally only teaching 4 other people and that is it! Soo our teaching pool it tiny and we have a lot of work to do looking for new people to teach. This area is also at least twice the size or more then my last one and we cover 5 stakes and and 2 Spanish wards so this last Sunday we went to 2 churches back to back. it was great and we have about 4 correlation meetings a week which are kinda pointless right now since we only have about one person to report on at each correlation meeting.

I have a very funny story to tell you guys that happened Thursday night this week. My companion and i were visiting people so i could meet the new people in this area and we went by the Martinez family who had 2 kids that got bap. this last Saturday. I was sitting there talking with the mom and getting to know the whole family for a little bit and met Andrea who is 12 and Kevin who is 10 who were getting baptized this up coming Saturday. We were there for about 20 minutes and we my companion started asking questions about the there baptism coming up and he asked them who they would like to baptize them. The 12 year old girl Andrea says "well can anybody i want baptize me!?" And of course we explained that she could have anyone she wanted as long as they are a male that has the priesthood. Well right after we got done explaining she immediately stands up and points right at me and says "I want him to baptize me! " Well you can imagine the look on my face as i was shocked to death because i had only known this girl for 20 minutes or less! On top of it i felt a little bad since the missionary that had been teaching them and i came in and took his place, we are really good friends and we were in the same district together in the MTC. I tried talking her out of it and suggesting Elder Hill should do it since he had been teaching her but she was not going to change her answer, so this last Saturday I got to baptize Andrea Zulema Navarro Martinez. It was an amazing experience and I feel like that it is now my responsibility to look after this girl and make sure that she is always active on the church for the rest of her life. It was a very humbling and touching experience for me and am still wondering why this girl wanted me to baptize her.

Last of all i want to talk about my new companion Elder Arnett. He is from Louisiana, has about 3 months left in his mission, and is twice the size of me. He was state champion in wrestling 3 years in a row and lets just say you do know what to be on his bad side. To start he does not like talking to much, so our first day together not too much was said but things have been getting a lot better. We do have a car in this area, so i am not walking anymore, but my companion drives and just in the last 5 days we have almost been in 3 accidents. Oh and also he listens to the radio in the car (mostly the country stations) and lets just say you do not tell him to turn it off. So it looks like for the next transfer or so i might be having to deal with that and he does not like doing planning at all and doesn't care at all about what other people think. So looks like i am going to be in for the ride this next transfer and I hope i make it out alive! haha Also it is soo funny to hear him speak spanish because he has a thick south accent when he speaks English so he sounds really funny when speaking Spanish and the Latinos always give him weird looks when he starts talking. haha

That is everything major that has happened and i feel like i am going to be relying on my prayers a lot this transfer but in the end i am still excited and know that i am going to learn i lot from this transfer. I am so grateful for your prayers and i love you guys soo much. Have a wonderful week in the nice warm weather!

Elder Breinholt

P.S. I have been going to the gym every single morning since we have one right down the street from us and hopefully i will be able to get rid of my chimpmunk cheeks!!

February 18 2013

Time for change!

I felt really bad about not having a letter for you guys last week and I will try to fill all of you in on what's been going on lately.

I don't know if you remember me telling you that this transfer is only 5 weeks instead of 6 so today I got my transfer call and... yes, my time is done in this area and I am leaving. I am sad of course, because I will miss a lot of people but I am not going too far away. I am getting transferred to Sharon park in Orem! My companion is going to be Elder Arnett and from what I have heard he is a really good guy. I could just feel that I was going to change areas and that the Lord needed me somewhere else. I won't lie, I thought I was going to be a trainer this transfer but, President reminded me again today that he wants to use me to help uplift others so maybe one day I will have a son out here on the mission.

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Valentine's day and mom thank you for the goodies! You guys can send me any kind of goodies you want now because I am going to have a gym every morning in my new area. This area the past two weeks has been really good and we have been teaching more less active lessons than almost lessons to investigators, just in the last two weeks we have gotten 3 families to come back to church and it has opened up the doors for us to start teaching some of their kids that were never baptized. I have really seen more importantly then ever how important it is to teach less active members.

Also we had something amazing happen that I wanted to tell you about last week. Hopefully you remember the De La Rosa Family and how everyone in the family was baptized besides the mom. Well a miracle happened where the mom has a friend "Dulce" and her daughter living with them from Mexico. One day we went over there and started talking to her friend and she was interested about learning more right away, so we have been teaching them for the last couple of weeks and the mom has been sitting in on every lesson with her friend. It's amazing how the Lord works, since the mom wouldn't hear us out at all and now that her friend is interested she actually wants to learn more too. In my eyes this friend is a answer to many prayers.

Besides that we have found a couple more people to teach and are still planning on having two baptized at the end of the month. I can't think of anything else to say right now, but my head is still kind of going crazy thinking about my new area right now.

The hardest thinking about being in a area for too long is that it is so hard to leave and I am just hoping that I will have enough time tomorrow to say goodbye to everyone. I was shown once again though that God has a great sense of humo,r because I said yesterday that the one place I don't really want to go to is Orem and of course that's where I'm going! It's like the time I said, I don't want to serve a mission in Utah and then I got called there! ha-ha, but look at me now. I love this mission and I know that I will probably love it in Orem. I want to congratulate Derek and Alli in getting their house finally, and mom and dad with having another anniversary! I love you all and I want to hear how Coles farewell goes! Good luck Elder Stechnji and I know you will do great! Have a good week everyone and preach the word!

Elder Breinholt

February 11, 2013

Dear Family,

Well if you guys want to know of the worst thing that could ever happen. I was just about done typing my letter this week and all of a sudden everything I was typing just got erased. I feel horrible and I wish I could just re type it all for you again, but I don't have any more time. But I just want to say that Young I love you and I am proud that you made the right choice. Cole I am so excited for you to be up here soon! Cheyenne, that is awesome that you got your patriarchal blessing and always read it for guidance. and last dad I can't believe that mom out worked you with that trainer on your vacation! ha-ha its all good but the church is true and I love you all. I am sorry you can't hear about my week, but just know that is was really good and I saw some big blessings come through this week.

Elder BREINHOLT

February 4, 2013

Feliz Cumpleanos Papa!

By the sounds of it, you guys gave dad the best surprise party ever! That is so awesome and you ever thought of having the cop call and be there was a genius! I would have never thought of that! I wish I could have been there to see it all, but it's all good I guess.

I don't know if you remember me saying that I am done with the snow, but it came back to bit me in the butt this week! It snowed for two days straight here and the snow was deep! It is melting faster than it did before but I found out that it's pretty fun riding a bike in a foot and a half of powder. I just tried to visualize that I was snowmobiling and I got my own thrill out of it. ha-ha, My companion was hilarious to watch as he tried to ride in the snow. Just imagine a 250 pound Mexican riding a bike in the deep snow, I can't even count how many times he fell. The best one, was when we were trying to ride through these big piles of snow on the side of the roads and they were pretty soft to where you could just plow right through them. My companion was ridding as fast as he could into one and half way through he hit something hard in the middle and he FLEW over his handle bars and landed on his face! ( luckily he landed in the snow.) I was laughing soo hard though!! I love my companion though. He might say some weird things in the middle of a lesson sometimes and think he is a gangster from Cali, but he has a soft heart.

With teaching this week we had a wonderful lesson with Izabel Cruz who I have been teaching since I have been here and it was the first time I had ever seen here cry in a lesson. she is so ready to be baptized, but she just doesn't feel like she is herself because she says that sometimes she is just lazy and doesn't feel like going to church or reading every night. She doesn't realize that all of that is normal! ha-ha She had a boy friend though that is a member and was a horrible example to her and also broke her heart so that is another obstacle we are trying to tackle. She is going to meet with the Bishop of our ward this week to talk to him about it and get these feelings off her chest. We ended up dropping another investigator this week though. The worse part about it was is was a 10 year old girl! We have been teaching her for a month and a half and she is just not understanding anything we tell her. She has ADHD and said that she would love to be baptized, but she can't even comprehend the meaning of faith and won't give us any response back when we ask her a question. I honestly don't want to baptize a little girl if she doesn't even know what she is doing. We finally told the mom that she just needs to talk with her daughter about it all and call us when this week if she has agreed or not to work with us as we teach. Hopefully it can still work out in the end...

That is all the info I got for you peeps back home for now. Mom, Dad thanks for the sweet pic you sent me and be save out there on the slopes. I hope all of you that had birthdays last month and got my letters. But please pray for my investigators and especially Izabel Cruz, Maria De Los Angeles, and Hermana De la Rosa. I love you all!

Sincerely,

Elder Breinholt

January 28, 2013

Como esta mis gorditos, Jan 28, 13

This week was full of teaching and crying people unto repentance. I gave a talk in church yesterday and actually didn't mess up once with my Spanish so I felt pretty good with that. I talked about the atonement because I have been trying to get this ward more involved with doing missionary work. In Preach My Gospel, it says that as you come to understand the atonement your desire to share this message will grow and you will want to share this knowledge with others more. So that was my main focus on what I talked about. I closed with a scripture in Alma 38:9, that I have really come to love. As I have reflected on the life of Jesus Christ and thought about all the amazing things he did for us; and this is crazy to think, that if you just took the atonement out of his life, his whole life would have been meaningless for us. But the suffering that he went through the day before he died in the Garden was the most important thing. I don't know why, but that just really hit me this week as I was reading through Alma.

Things are looking a lot better with our investigators, but we still have a lot of improvement to make. We have one lady that wants to get baptized, but she needs to get a new job so that she can come to church. I think we found her one this week though, we just have to make sure she wants to do it. I have been so a lot happier lately, and have had a lot more confidence with teaching as I don't worry about the language and just talk as the Spirit directs. I have really grown to love teaching and I find it kind of fun talking with others and telling them new things that they have never heard before from a scripture or just being in a lesson when the Spirit is strong. It does get frustrating sometimes when people have doubts and they just can't get over them, but at the same time that's what makes it fun, and it makes you think a lot more and want to go out and read the scriptures more so that you can expand your knowledge.

Anyway I'm great, warm and enjoying everything. Sorry I totally forgot to tell you about seeing Elder Jacksons dad! He is a really nice guy and it was fun to be able to go out to lunch with him. We shared a lot of good stories and I hope he didn't say I was looking to fat. I'm trying to work out in our house in the mornings, but it's not the same as going to the gym. It stinks that I'm stuck at home, because if I want to go to the gym I have to pay 20 bucks a month and my companion doesn't want to pay that either.

DAD! I can't believe I'm missing your big 50! Man I have to make sure I do a lot of activities with you when I get home before you have a walker or something! ha-ha I'm kidding sorry that was rude. I just ran into Parker Schwartz here at BYU today, he went to Gilbert high and I use to run with him at Greenfield Jr. back in the day. He just got home from his mission from Texas and is up here going to school.

Well, you all be strong this week and stop praying for the snow if you could. I'm sick of it. ha-ha I love you all!

Elder Breinholt

P.S tell Brittany congratulations on the call. One of my favorite Elders out here is from Atlanta, Georgia and he is awesome. They only have the accents more in the South, but they still do love fried chicken so watch out! Also tell Stephen and Cole to write me!

January 14, 2012–6 Months

Six Months! Jan 14, 13

I finally it the quarter mark in the mission and I got to burn one of my ties! It was a fun experience and I did it with an Elder I was in the MTC with. Mom I thought I told you that I enjoyed everything from Christmas. I don't really know what to do with the bowls and cups so I bet the people we live with will like them! ha-ha Also tell Susan Haviland thank you for the cereal and letter. I am definitely going to write Hayden too! I also got those ear muffs the other day and man they help a lot!

Things are changing up here in the mission with transfers this Wednesday and I have been thinking of ways I can improve some of my weaknesses and pick our area up some more. I am staying in my area again for another transfer and my new companion is Elder Ruiz, who I have met before and I am excited to work with him! I know that if we work really hard these next couple of weeks we can definitely have baptisms by the end of the transfer. This transfer is only going to be 5 weeks long though so we are going to need to work our butts off. I think this transfer is going to help me a lot though since I am the only one that knows the area and it will give me a good opportunity to step up and take the lead on some things. Elder Cerberus my companion is going to be a zone leader though so I am happy for him since he has been trying hard to be obedient and achieve that.

This week with the work we not too much has changed. We brought the bishop over to one of our investigators homes that we have been trying for forever to baptize and they go to church all the time, but just can't commit. I think that visit was good for them though and this Sunday especially because a lot of members in the ward really made them feel welcomed. We have a guy named Mario who we are hoping will get baptized within the next month but he still won't come to church so we will have to work with him more but we have a good relationship with him now. The only thing that was a little sketchy was that our investigator that gets off parole in February and wants to take his own time with the discussions, his wife told him that if he doesn't get baptized that she will divorce him...soo that wasn't good. The one thing he didn't want was to feel pressured into getting baptized so that almost killed it for him, but we had a good talk with the family and I think everything will be ok.

Last night I got the chance to hear from Dieter F. Uchtdorf at a fireside and I learned a lot from his talk. It was all about finding the truth of things out for yourself. He talked about how too many people in the church rely on the church leaders and have so much trust in them that whatever they say must be right. In the world especially on the Internet now, we can get our hands on a lot of information and some of it is true, some false, and some false with a little truth. The best way to learn for yourself is to be cautious and let the Holy Ghost dictate what is right and true. That is just another wonderful tool of the Holy Ghost, that we can feel it if worthy what is right or wrong when we don't have the evidence right there when we need it to prove it.

I learned something this week about gifts. Not real gifts but gifts from our Heavenly Father. There are so many gifts that we can have in our lives that are available to us. We already have them but we just need to seek for them and pray for them in our lives. Like the gift of patience. some people say that they just weren't born with patience, ha well you have it you just need to seek and pray for it and be worthy to receive it. I love the opportunity that I have right now in my life to learn so much and to practice and work at a lot of things. I feel like there is always one thing big that I learn every week and it usually comes from just reading the scriptures and discussing it with others.

Dad I hope that your voice gets better and I didn't know that it was so bad. I have been meaning to get letters to all you that have birthdays this month. Craig's happy late birthday and I hope it went well. Kristin, Derek and Dad happy birthday to you all and I can't believe that my dad is going to be 50 this month! man that's old! ha-ha I'm just kidding but I love you all and if you have time go online and watch the broadcast of that fireside.

Take care!

Elder Breinholt

January 31, 2012

Happy New years Eve! Dec 31, 12

Well I must say that it was really good talking to you guys. Sorry if I didn't say too much to some of you, I was just soo tired that morning and for some the room I was in was freezing and I was shivering the whole time. But you all sound great and I am soo glad that you guys are happy and enjoying life. The rest of Christmas was great and it was nice to be able to talk to big D before the night ended even though he was half asleep! ha no just playing. So to tell you the truth I am really jealous that you guys are snowmobiling right now. The snow is amazing this year and it just keeps coming down. How are the new sleds though? There can't be too much of a difference then the last year models. oh also I met a guy Sunday morning I am trying to remember his name but he has been snowmobiling with us up at Daniel summit before and he bought K hill in Showlow from dad and Tyson like 6 years ago. Anyways, he is awesome and was just called by the stake to start working with us missionaries more so we are going over to his house next week to think of some new ideas we can do for the missionary work in the stake.

Well I am going to get my mind off of snowmobiling before I go crazy! So the only thing new with our investigators is that we put someone on date for the end of January and he is pretty much golden. We just need him to start coming to church more and we should be ok. The problem is he just has a really bad back so sometimes he just lay's in bed all day because it's hard for him to get up. Our church is changing times to one o clock in the afternoon so hopefully now he will have enough time to get up and go. A really cool thing happened when we were knocking doors Friday night. We went to this one house that we have been trying to contact for a while now and this older man came out and recognized who we were. He started telling us that this past week he went and saw the Salt Lake temple and that it was the most beautiful thing he has ever seen in his life. He said after seeing it he walked away with the best feeling and told himself that he wants to be a member of whatever church that is. ha-ha pretty crazy right!? Well the upset to it is that he is only here until January 10 and lives in Mexico so we got his address and are going to turn it in to the mission office so that they can contact him down there. On top of that we had another later that isn't a member that came to church. She is just here for the holidays and lives in Chile. She told us after church Sunday that she really enjoyed in and wants to learn more the time she is here. The best part is that she is here until the end of February so hopefully we can get her baptized before she goes back to Chile!

I am crossing my fingers this month and am hoping that we can start preparing more people to be baptized since we just got done baptizing all of our other progressing investigators. With transfers coming up in just 2 weeks it is going to be interesting to see what happens and to see if I stay or my companion. I hope that all of you are being safe this week and enjoying the great snow without me. I can't lie and say I don't miss that stuff because I miss it a ton! After calling you guys I missed you a lot and really wanted to be with you guys but it was still a very neat experience to talk to you guys after six months and hear Avery and Logan talking! But I'm all good now and back to the work. I love you all and am glad that you guys have so many great opportunities to grow closer to each other. have a great week!

Elder Breinholt