May 20, 2013
Good morning
family!
It was great to read your letter and it sounded like you had a
great experience with the Kenleys. I’m
glad you got a little taste of what I had experienced for 8 months. Their
son spoke in our ward yesterday; he is the 1st councilor in the stake
presidency here. He shared a funny story that reminded me of Elder
Kenley's stories. I am so glad that you finally got to meet Keaton
Stewart. He is a funny guy. I was glad to have him as my trainer. I
am jealous that you guys get to go to the temple with the Kramers. That
will be so cool and I’m sure they will enjoy it. We won’t even have to come back and tour my
mission because you will have met everyone that I have associated with by the
time I get home.
This week, nothing too
terribly exciting happened. We did have our first lesson since I arrived
in my new area. It was with a 19 year
old girl that has been investigating the church for about 9 months. Her
mom and brother are members but she is still trying to find out if it is right
for her. We taught her about the Holy Ghost and we shared a Mormon
message called “Patterns of Light”. If you haven't seen it I advise you
to watch it. She enjoyed the video.
She also shared a good experience that she had. She came to the realization that she needs to
pray more often and not just in times of need. We will be going to see
her again this week.
Our ward mission leader
has an exchange student from Venezuela that is staying with them until the end
of the school year. We went over there
twice this week and I practiced Spanish with him. He is a cool
kid. The first time we went over, he and I talked about his experience
here and about his country and the different things that he like to do.
He comes from a very educated family that is Catholic but he is not religious
himself. Our ward mission leaders’ wife was smart though and told him
that I would like to practice the missionary lessons with him. When we
came back the next time we started with a prayer, I taught the first lesson and
he paid close attention to the information and to any errors that I made.
I had him ask me questions so I could practice answering common questions that
people have and then I closed with a prayer. It was a win-win situation,
he got to hear about the restoration and I was able to work on my
Spanish. I don't know if he is very interested but next time we will go
through the plan of salvation and maybe that will spark his
interest.
Story-
Wednesday night we had
dinner with a family from the ward. He is a recent convert and she is a
returned missionary. They are
awesome! They now live outside of our new area but they still invited us
to dinner. The other missionaries were going too but we decided that it
wasn't super far so we would bike to their house for dinner. Big
mistake. We start our journey to their house and I started speeding off
because my bike is a little faster than Elder Stevens’ bike. He told me that he would yell out when I needed
to turn because I didn't know the way. Well I got too far in front of him
and couldn't hear him anymore. I ended up going all the way down the hill
when I was supposed to turn close to the top of the hill. Well, Elder
Stevens stayed up at the turn until he realized that I had gone way too far. So he took off looking for me. There
was a fork in the road and I took one way and he took the other so now we were
both separated from each other, breaking the rules, and I had no idea where I
needed to be going. So, I start going back
up the hill searching for Elder Stevens. We finally found each other after I asked a
mailman if he had seen another biker go past. Once we found each other we
figured we would still be able to get to the members’ house from the bottom of
the hill it just wouldn't be as fun. So, we started our trek up the first
hill which wasn't too bad but then we got to the second hill and it kept going
and going so by the time we got to the top we were both sweating like no
other but, we were close and there was only one more little hill to go. I
went first because I knew the way from that point on. I got about 200 yards in front of Elder Stevens
and when I looked back he was standing next to his bike. I rode back and
found that he had tried riding over some orange construction fencing and it
caught his gear shifter and ripped it off. The bike was completely
broken. We chained the bikes to a nearby tree and the other missionaries
came and got us.
After dinner the other
missionaries took us to the church and from there we called one of the members
with a truck and he came and picked us up. We started telling him what
happened and he told us “I'll do you one better than just pick up your broken
bikes. Why don't we go to Kmart and
we'll get you some new bikes”.
We said, “No, we don't
want you to do that. Our bikes just need
repairs”. But, he was persistent. He ended up taking us to Kmart and getting us
some brand new Schwinn bikes! I couldn't believe it I don't think I have
had a new bike since I was 11 years old. These bikes are awesome and we
feel so much safer riding them then those other bikes. Both the brakes
work and the back wheel doesn't twist into the frame like the last bike did.
We feel so blessed to have received new bikes. In the last few days that
we have had them we have put them to good use and my legs have never been so sore.
That is pretty much it
for my week. I love you family!!!
Elder
Mouritsen
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