Excerpts from Letter to Parents 3/27/2017

This past week went very well and was a pretty smooth transition. As you know I took over Lakewood and got three new companions. I am very pleased with each of them because they work very hard and understand our purpose. Elder Anderson and I are the zone leaders and we are training Elder Schmidt... not related to the Schmidt's in our family as far as I know, and Elder Fuentes is also part of the companionship. They are all great guys and we are really enjoying it, and we get a lot of work done and spend a lot of our time knocking doors. Elder Anderson is a great help and is very proactive for such a young missionary as a zone leader. He and I are very similar and have a ton of fun! Like last night we were throwing a little football at a can a ton of times in our apartment and had a contest who could hit it the most. It was pretty close but I happened to be on fire and hit it like 8 or 9 times out of 10  haha! 

Other than that we were not able to baptize someone this week which was a bummer... but we are looking forward to the 8th for our solid investigator E to be baptized! He is like a golden referral that we got a couple weeks ago and he has been coming to church for a couple weeks lately. So good things are happening. I am seeing miracles everyday and since I have been here I have seen a lot of seeds planted, however it can get discouraging that we are not harvesting as much as we would like but I am sure that we will see success as we "continue with faith" like they say. Well, there is the update for the week.

 Elder Schmidt, the new missionary, meets his trainers: 

 Sunday Dinner at Sister White's home:

Funny Events 3/20/2017

This week was great and we got our transfer calls! I will be staying here and Elders Stapley and Sutton will be moving on to different areas in the mission. Elder Sheffield also got his visa and will be leaving to Samoa today!!- Sure going to miss that guy! Anyway I will be staying here in LAKEWOOD and getting Elder Anderson as a new zone leader and we will have Elder Fuentes and a new missionary in the companionship as well. It is going to be a blast and I am excited to be training again! It sure will be a good amount of stress because I am going to be the only one who knows the area for at least this first week haha.

Funny Events:

• On Sunday I was showing Elder Sutton a wrestling move and smacked my elbow on the kitchen counter! It hurt way bad at the time and hit me directly where my funny bone is. I remember walking over in the kitchen and saying to myself how bad that hurt when all of a sudden I woke up on the ground wondering why I was lying down on the tile! Elder Sutton just stood there laughing way hard because he had watched me just take a dive backwards and pass out on the kitchen tile leaned up against the dishwasher, he thought that I was joking until I "came to" and asked how I had gotten there, and how long I had been there. Of course, I was only out for about 5 seconds lol. But what a weird experience, and quite ironic that in all my time of contact sports I never have passed out, but one good shot to my funny bone and I was out! No need to worry though because I was completely fine.
• Then earlier in the week Elder Sheffield jumped off of a balcony into a nearby bush so that was pretty funny. He came out with minimal scratches haha!
• And last but not least, we ran into a man named Blaine who is not totally all there. But he was way excited to go to church and wanted to come out so we got him a ride to church. Turns out he wasn't very into the whole church thing and wanted to go home before it even started so that was lame.. but at least he tried haha! Oh and needless to say he showed up in a very velvet black dress on Sunday so that was interesting.

Well I hope that you all have a great week and enjoy the Spring weather!!

Elder Bullough

It's a Beautiful Day! 3/13/2017

This week was a blast and it went by super fast. We had a ton of meetings that kept us pretty busy. Elder Sutton and I had the opportunity to go to a stake mission preparation fireside for all of the youth in the stake. We were invited to go help answer questions that the young men had about serving a mission and how they can better prepare to serve. It was a ton of fun to be with all of the young men talk with them about how I had made the decision to serve and what it has taught me. They also had pie afterward so that made it even better! Hahaha.

Anyway Elder Suttton, Sheffield, Stapley and I have been companions for about 5 weeks now and this next week will be the end of this transfer cycle, meaning that some of us could potentially get transferred. This whole transfer we have been working and praying and fasting and working to find someone to teach about the restored gospel and baptize. And Wednesday we got a referral from our Spanish missionaries for a man named S. The interesting story is that they were knocking doors in our area trying to find people to teach when they came across S and he invited them in and they gave him their phone number and a Book of Mormon. He called them the next day and said he had been reading the book and wanted to learn more. So they told him that they would send us over and we would be able to answer his questions. That day I called him and Elder Stapley and I went to go meet with him. Turns out he and his wife loved what they learned from the Book of Mormon and asked us if they could become members of the church! As you can imagine both mine and Elder Stapley's facial expressions had probably dropped to an "awh" as we replied that they could. We went back throughout the week and taught a couple more lessons and then both S and his wife came to church this week and are excited to be baptized this week. We will be focusing on teaching them a little more this week as we prepare them for this next Sunday, and if all goes well they will be the miracle that we have been working and praying for! 

Love you all and have a great week!

Pictures of a Service Project:

50 foot long vines

God Is In The Details 3/6/2017

This past week we went over to have a lesson with S. I had mentioned before that she had accepted the baptism date of March 10th. Before our lesson with her this past Friday, she had texted us and mentioned that she felt overwhelmed with things that are happening in her life so we agreed to take off the date. Devastated by this news we pondered, what we were going to talk about Friday? If we would take someone with us from the ward? And if so, who? Well after a lot of thought we decided to look through our ward list and find a member to take with us to the lesson that would be able to friendship and answer questions on a personal level. It seemed like we couldn't find anyone and at last desperation we had the thought to call Sister Halmont. Why we had not thought of this person before--I don't know!? It sounded perfect so we called her and she agreed to come with us. And it was perfect. After just a few minutes of us talking together with S, each of us in the room realized that it was the "right match!"

If you can imagine two women in the same room that had never met each other before, but had everything in common from growing up in the same town together to graduating college in the same year at the same college but never knowing the other, that was them! It was incredible and each of us were amazed how inspired this meeting was. The best part was that each of them understood one another because they grew up in the same religion both having either parents or grandparents being well-known ministers in that church. Both Elder Sutton and I had no idea of either's childhood or which college they went to or even their religious background. This was a match made in Heaven. I am sure that it was refreshing for S to know that God was sending the right people her way and the answers that she is looking for at this point in her life.

Well I hope that you all have a great week!
With much love,
Elder Bullough

Here is a cool picture that was painted on a wall that I thought I would share with you all: