Super Missionaries

Funny: Finally scout camp planning paid off. We were asked to do a little skit for the baptismal review for the Tuba wards. What did we do? Superheroes! We became the super heroes Faith, Hope, and Charity (and Knowledge). We taught the kids about the diabolical plan of Satan to prevent us from living with God again. Thankfully God sent Jesus to show us how to get baptized and for the superpower of the Holy Ghost. It was super fun, took me back to them good old days, 8-year-olds and me think at the same level.

Spiritual: It's garden season baby! There are so many miracles that come planting gardens with people. We spent a lot of time this week with a shovel out there tilling gardens by hand. We did it for an older gentleman and it was great to see his attitude change. At first, he was almost hostile but by the end there were tears in his eyes of how grateful he was that someone would help him. We were able to set up a return appointment and now his whole family is interested in our message. Moral of the story, never underestimate the power of a few well-placed carrots and peas.

Where I am at: Up here in Tuba we have had short sleeve weather. However, when I was down in Polacca we received about 8 inches of snow. It was nice to see that water still can fall from the sky. We have had a great week and are excited for this next week. We have a lot of appointments with new people and finally have more than a day and a half to work together. I hope you all have a great week and stay warm.

Love ya
Elder Black 

Miracles of Miracles, Wonders of Wonders

Funny: The irony of the release of the communication change was priceless. We were in zone conference and they had just finished going over the email policy for the mission and had started talking about things that cause stress on missionaries when President Ackerman stood up and read aloud the letter from Salt Lake. It was possibly the funniest timing for the letter.

Spiritual: We had a great lesson with a lady who we thought was a member. We were trying to get her info so that we could find her record. Well she told us that she was baptized in the lake that dried up many moons ago by a preacher from a protestant church. It was a great answer because we had prayed a few minutes earlier that the Lord would put someone in our path who is ready for baptism. It was another example that God's hand is in this work.

Where I am at: I am sure that by this time you will have all heard much about the communication change so I will tell you my thoughts when I call 😉. This week was absolutely incredible. We had an incredible zone conference and a great week of finding! Tuba City is such a great place and the people here are so nice. We also got a dusting of snow this week. Not enough to actually mean anything but it was still fun to experience what the rest of you experience as we walked around in our short sleeve shirts. Well I hope you all have a great week sorry these emails have been a bit short. We are going to the Grand Canyon and are leaving soon.

Love ya'
Elder Black

President Nelson's Devotional

Funny: We had an escort when we were walking to the church for the special devotional on Sunday night. He was 5 and had a very funny attitude. We complimented his new shoes and he told us the proper term was his "fly kicks" and they were also his speed shoes which proceeded to show us how fast he can run. Haha, he also told us his name was Theodore but once we started calling him that he told us that Theodore was his not in church name, it was actually Henry and since we were in the church, we were to call him Henry. It was my favorite walk into church yet.

Spiritual: This week was a memorable one that was filled with many spiritual experiences. One that I loved was the broadcast with President Nelson. It was fantastic but the best part came after. We had a family we were teaching there and they expressed to us afterwards that that didn't understand most of what was said (the Abrahamic Covenant and Gathering of Israel is kinda complex) but told us that they could feel a power that came off of President Nelson as he spoke. What a great testimony builder that even though people might not totally understand the message, the Holy Ghost will still testify of its truthfulness.

Where I am at: We have had a blustery week and i know that I will be feeling sand in my hair for a long time. It has been fun to walk around in the stiff wind. The work down here is doing great! We met a lot of new people this week and we are chuck full of appointments. This upcoming week should be another good one. We have zone conference and interviews coming up and we are excited to learn how to be better missionaries. Hope y'all have a great week!

Elder Black 

Culture and Sheep Slaughter

Funny: It is interesting to see the cultural difference it here. We were helping clean a lady’s car and her cousin drove up. They started talking and eventually one of them said "I'm hungry, do you want to go get something to eat?" The end result was that they decided to go slaughter a sheep and have a cookout. The funny part was that they were discussing it with the same tone of voice as if they had decided to run down to McDonalds and pick up some burgers. What a great place this is!

Spiritual: The Native American people are blessed with some incredible spiritual gifts. Their culture of close families and remembering their ancestors is so very strong. We had several experiences this past week where as we shared a message you could feel the presence of their ancestors in the room and several of those we were teaching told us later that their ancestors came either in a dream or in a vision and they bore testimony that the message we are sharing is true. It is a powerful witness to me that the Plan of Salvation is real.

Where I am at: Life is beautiful! We have been enjoying the 50 - 60-degree weather and have been doing a lot of walking. We had a bit of another slow week but we are once again fired up to go out and do the work. We got the numbers from our last month’s goal. The mission goal was to baptize 40 people a month and last month we had 36 which is a big improvement from a few months ago when the mission average was 20/month. This upcoming week we have a lot of appointment set up with new people and some people we haven't seen in a long time so it should be an exciting adventure.

Love y'all
Elder Black 

Born the Boy of the Corn

Funny: This week we got to go down to Polacca for a baptismal interview. While we were down there, we met a man who was convinced that our souls were actually represented best by vegetables. After some discussion he determined that my soul vegetable was black corn. A member thought it was so funny that he got me a piece of black corn. So now I will forever be known in Polacca as Elder Black Corn Boy.

Spiritual: The Lord works in mysterious ways. We finished a lesson and we were going to evaluate it but for some reason we drove to a random street to evaluate there. As we were evaluating a kid knocked on our window. He told us that his mom was home and that she wanted to meet with us. We had a great lesson and as we were walking back to the truck, we saw a group of kids playing ball and so we challenged them to a game, after we smoked those 12-year-olds in ball they told us that their aunt had met with the missionaries a while ago and wanted to meet again. We set up an appointment and finally got to evaluate those lessons. It was amazing!

Where I am at: We had zone conference and interviews this week. I have found that the longer I have been out the less I know. The focus was on finding and on building the faith to see miracles. It was a great conference! We also have had a crazy week. It seems that on those weeks that we the missionaries get on a spiritual high those in the area get pounded by Satan. We had a week that was filled with helping those we are teaching to see that they can overcome whatever it is that they are struggling with.

Page Party

Funny: We had a lesson with a member family and their kids crack me up. We were talking about the Word of Wisdom. We used the acronym of CATTS to describe what we should not take into the body (Coffee, Alcohol, Tea, Tobacco, Substances) after we had taught them, we were reviewing and asked them what they remember about what CATTS stands for, one young boy raised his hand and said it was: Coffee, Alcohol, Tea, Tobacco, and Sandwiches. Personally, I had always wondered why Subway tastes so good and now we know why.

Spiritual: We had a baptism this week! It was great! The kid we baptized was 9 and very energetic. It was fun to see him get so excited for the baptism, I don’t think I will ever have anyone who will ever again get so excited that he will go under again just because it felt so good the first time. It got us excited to do missionary work even more than we already are. It is now an inferno of motivation, experiences like that are some of my favorite.

Where I am at: We got to take a trip to Page this week! There was an old man who had a broken stove door and smoke was pouring into his house, so we grabbed the door and got the permission and then headed up to Page. It was fun to be back. Not much has changed. We stopped for lunch at the famous RD's, when who walks in the door? Elder Hunt... the look on his face was priceless. Other than that, it was a good week. We found a lot of new people and everything is going well!

Love ya'
Elder Black

Happy and Hopi

Funny: I finally got to go to the Hopi reservation on an exchange! It is by far the most interesting place I have ever been to in my life. It is situated all on the mesas and there are these ancient building stacked on top of each other. While we were there we met a man who claimed that he was traditional so he couldn't believe in our church. We asked him to explain a bit about what his traditions are and he proceeded to tell us about the white brother who came and visited his ancestors and taught them their traditions but then after he left the people traveled up here to the mesas and they met a monster who told them that they could live on the land but some of their traditions would have to change. He told us that he was not interested in following the monster's traditions but that he was waiting for the white brother to come and correct the false traditions. We almost wanted to laugh at how close he was to finding the truth. We were able to give him a Book of Mormon and testified that it does have the answers he is searching for. This story really isn't super funny but I thought it was interesting and worth writing about.

Spiritual: we had a ton of miracles on Saturday. We had our senior couple drive us out to Tonalea which is about 30 minutes into the middle of nowhere and then you turn right and drive for another 15 minutes. We went to go visit an online referral we had received. We got lost for a few hours but after some lucky guesses and asking some locals we finally found her. She is incredible, she had met with missionaries a few years ago and has been prepared by the Lord, we invited her to be baptized and she accepted. We then went to go see if we could find a member family that was hidden away behind a hill. We went to where the address looked like we knocked on the door and a guy who was not who we were looking for opened the door. He had been taught a year ago but somewhere in the midst of the change of transfers he had been lost. He had missed the missionaries but because he had no phone or way of contacting us he couldn't get back in contact so he had watched the BYU sacrament service on BYU TV every week for the past year. He also accepted a baptismal date. It was miracle after miracle that day!

Where I am at: The blessings are flowing on the rez. As a mission we set a goal a few months back of having 40 baptisms a month. We have never before been able to hit that until now. This month we are looking very very good. We are going to have 2 baptisms in our district this next week and that will make 10 in our zone this month. The best part about this is the culture change that has happened. When I first came into the mission the rez was a place where bad missionaries were banished because there they couldn't do much harm. Now the rez zones are the power houses of the mission. It is so fun and exciting to be a literal part of the Lamanite people blossom like a rose. What a great time to be a missionary! In other news we are doing great and are looking forward to another week in the best place in the world.

The bread thing is peko bread, imagine ash and paper put into an edible form