E-mail 12/19/2011

Hello awesometastic family!

You will not believe what happened! We got transfer calls and I have been zooming all around this past week. I got transferred. Guess where I got transferred to. It is super crazy.

My new companion is Elder Knowles. He is from American Fork, in Utah. He is so awesome! He knows who Kyler is. They went to school together. He is a Marine. He is showing me all the ropes of being a Marine. How to march, how turn while marching, how to stay in line while marching.  Just really everything about marching.  Can you believe that he is my first Utah companion?

The members here are really awesome.  Most of them are from Utah.  Does that give you a hint of where I'm at? In Sacrament Meeting there were at least one hundred and twenty people.  Elder Knowles says that normally there are one hundred and fifty. This is so weird being in a big ward. I just came from a place where they peaked at sixty on a good week. I have a lot of adjusting to do. Most of the members here are young families who are students. Which is why most of them are from Utah. They transferred here from BYU. There is a lot of work to do.

Elder Knowles is showing me the ropes and I am slowly getting to know my way around.  We have so much to do that we have to be careful not to overlap. The members are really great.

Ok, ok, I'll tell you where I'm at.   Are you ready?    Bloomington!    I am in the Clear Creek Ward.  There are three wards here and one branch. 

We have a lot of investigators. One of them, whose name is Peter, came to church and pays tithing. I haven't taught him yet, but he seems like a great guy. We are teaching him Tuesday.

I haven't been here long, but I already love it here!  The people are great, the climate is nice, and they have hills! Finally I can put my hill biking muscles to use! It has always been really flat.

I love being a missionary! I love it here! I love all of you!

May the Spirit be with you!

Elder Durrant

E-mail 12/12/2011

Hello wonderfully awesome family!!

This week has been awesome!! We got transfer calls this morning. Being a missionary is the best!

This past week we have been doing a lot. We stay busy everyday. If we don't have an appointment, than we try stopping by someone. If we don't have anyone to stop by than we find people who will meet with us. The other day, we planned to go to certain homes and talk with them. Most missionaries despise this form of finding, which isn't the most effective finding tool. My companion wasn't really happy to go and do this, but what happened is that after we finished talking with several people some of which were really funny to talk with, he became really happy and the time flew by. Attitude is everything. I'll tell you about some of the people we talked to which were most funny. One guy as he open the door part of it fell off, so as we talked to him he was fixing it. My companion taught him about eternal family and asked if he wanted to be with his family forever. His reply was "not today." He thought we asked can we teach you about that. That was funny. One lady had nine Christmas trees. Another person opened the door and said "you're Mormon, we're !@#$%^&(their religion). we're not going to talk." then they closed the door. We had a good day.

Oh, I'm getting transferred. I find out where I go Wednesday.

I am not going hungry that's for sure. People are feeding us left and right. I have fully enjoyed serving here in Plymouth for these past six months. Oh I got a bucket of coal. It was coal candy. I love being a missionary and serving the Lord! I love you all! May the Spirit be with you!

Elder Durrant

E-mail 12/05/2011

Hello glorious family!!

This week has been awesome! We have been busy busy.

Me and a few other missionaries had a meeting in Fishers, close to Indianapolis, where we learned how to be better missionaries. We were there for two days. About sixteen hours of training. It was so awesome. I got to drive through my old area, and stayed just west of it for the night. It was cool to see things that were so familiar.

We are still teaching Sis Pat. She has kept all of her assignments and meets with us  faithfully every week, minus a few exceptions. We invited her to several church activities. If she keeps going to church functions and reading from the Book of Mormon she will know that it is true. What she does with that is up to her, but we are here to help her in her progression.

We are also working with a guy, whose name is Bro Steve. He enjoys talking with us and says to us that he is one of our tougher cases. He smokes and drinks. He is a good guy. We talked about repentance with him and invited him to repent of something.

The weather here has been moderate. It snowed once and was gone the next day. It has been in the forties. It is weird to be in December and we haven't had a real big snow storm. When it did snow it was slushy and we biked in it for about twenty minutes. Our shoes and pants were soaked all the way up to our thighs. My coat had spatters all over the back. It was a sweet ride! So much fun! I love being a missionary!

We helped our landlord "Uncle Bob" stack wood at his place. I am now an expert log stacker, we went really fast. They would split the huge logs into smaller pieces, we would then take them and play building blocks with them. It was fun.

You are all awesome! Enjoy this happy, non-stressful, anti-perfect, holiday season! ;) Merry Christmas! May the Spirit be with you!

Elder Durrant

E-mail 11/28/2011

Hello wonderawesome family!!

I feel so fat! I have eaten so much! I'm huge!

This week has been awesome! The members love us so much that they feed us a lot. You know what they say The quickest way to a mans heart is through his stomach. If you like someone you give them food. Before I tell you in this e-mail how many Thanksgiving meals we had, tell me how many you think we had.

Our branch President told us the other day he was sitting on his back porch when he saw a deer about two hundred yards away. He had his gun so he aimed at it, compensated for travel and wind, and fired. A second later he hears a thud and the buck goes down. He his it right in the organs and it went strait down. He was so amazed by that shot. It was and eight point buck(points meaning how many poky things are on the horns, the more there are the bigger it is) about two hundred and twenty yards away. I love our branch President.

We had three thanksgiving meals. yea, I told you I was a pig. One was Wednesday night the others were the next day. It was really good food. At the Wednesday night one there was a Chinese women who was visiting and everything fascinated her. She had never seen a turkey before. She also had never seen mashed potatoes. Her excitement made me more excited to eat. Someone told us that we would be the same way about Chinese food. At restaurants it is American food prepared in Chinese ways. In China it's Chinese food prepared in Chinese ways. Our next meal was with an investigator family. They are a great family. They took a picture of us sitting on their recliner with a plate full of food. I will have to see if they will send you the picture. Then we went to a members home and they had tons of food. They had cooked three turkeys. They also had four boys. Then we had pie at another members home. It was a really great day. We had a good time.

We chopped wood for our landlord the other day. Elder Brezenski was a machine going at it. We didn't even remove a finger or toe, or head. ;)

Also, that family that I mentioned several weeks ago, one of their sons came to church on Sunday. He really enjoyed it. The Sunday school class was getting rowdy and talk about other things. In the middle of all of that he said "I thought we were supposed to be talking about Jesus here." I thought it was very cool that he would say that. He knew why he was there. He is a very smart kid.

I love you all! May the Spirit be with you!

Elder Durrant

 

"The cure for stupidity is pain. when it hurts bad enough you'll quit, if you live." Pres Hinsdale

E-mail 11/21/2011

Hello Wonderful family!!

Oh what a beautiful morning, oh what a beautiful day! I have a wonderful feeling, everything's going Gods way!!

This week has been awesome! We have been doing lots of good. I love being a missionary!

We are still teaching Joann. She is starting to read the book of Mormon. If people will read the book of Mormon they can't help but be converted. If an investigator stops coming to church, or is not progressing, it is usually because they have stopped reading the book of Mormon. The same goes for those who are members, if they stop reading then they are more likely to fall away, or be offended, or whatever. They are starving themselves spiritually. I've thought about it, if you have to feed yourself three or so times a day to stay alive, does the same go for your spirit. Are we eating healthy? Are we working out? oh, happy thanksgiving!

We had dinner at a members home and just as we finished a bat started flying around. It was so awesome! I had never seen a wild bat like that before. It scared the mom and all the kids ducked under the table.

Oh oh! cool story! God works in mysterious ways. He uses do-nuts. So, While I was on exchanges we were driving around. We prayed to see if we should drive to a far away place, we didn't. After a little while we stopped at a gas station. We both got out and started filling. They were selling do-nuts two for a dollar. My companion said ok guess how much the gas will cost and the loser buys do-nuts. I guessed ten dollars lower than he did. He got it right on the dot, not even a cent off. Well he used the restroom, he wouldn't have bought donuts, I wouldn't have if I were in my own area, but I did. While we were standing in line a kid in front of us looked at us and asked "are you agents?" When it was our turn the guy at the register asked us who we really were. We told him. Him and his buddy talked with us for a while and wanted us to come by later and talk with them. The donuts were good, too. ;) It's crazy what happens when are going about. I love it!

I love you all!! May the Spirit be with you!

Elder Durrant

E-mail 11/14/2011

Hello Awesometubulous family!

I love being a missionary! This has been an awesome week! I have done a few things that I have never done before.

I'll start with this one first, for the second one the squeamish better close their ears, The senior couple that is serving here, Elder and Sister Stith, taught me how to knit. Yea, how cool is that! I am knitting a rag right now. obviously it looks spectacular. Don't worry, I'm not getting all girly now. Just because I'm knitting and baking and cooking doesn't mean you can't talk to me, it just means when I get home you'll be able to taste my fabulous food. One of my companions gave me an odometer for my bike. so far I've put fifty miles on it. I love biking!.

Ok, now this is the part where you plug your ears. One of our investigators shot a deer, and I touched it. I touched a dead deer! I thought it was going to bite me or something. Well, they started skinning it. I've never seen an animal skinned in real life. They let me help. I used the knife and skinned part of it off. I tried to convince them to make me a hat out of it, I'm not to sure they will. Ok, I'm done, you can unplug your ears. I also burned a tie. So the conclusion is that Elder Durrant is still not allow to touch a knife or fire, oh snap.

We had our Zone Conference this week. I love Zone Conference! We were educated on health and safety. We were educated to be a sun, not a moon. We were educated on how to set goals. lots of good stuff. You probably want to know what the sun and moon has to do with anything. Good outstanding missionaries are suns. Missionaries who are less diligent are moons. When you put a sun and moon together the light from the sun bounces off the moon and makes it look like a sun, so when you put too moons together, it's really dark. It was a really good conference. We have a very obedient mission.

I taught at District meeting. It was really good. I think so. I am in an awesome district! I have an awesome companion! I love being a missionary!

We are doing much good. We are striving to help people make covenants with God. We are striving to be good missionaries, to build trust with people and truly manifest that we are servants of God. May the Spirit be with you!

Love Elder Durrant

E-mail 11/07/2011

Hello stupendiously awesometastic family!!

In light of my lack of information in regards to everything about my new bike, here is it's most wanted listing. Big and skinny, green skin, blue eyes, runs really fast with a slight limp, carries someone on it's back where ever it goes.

Ok, ok, here is what it looks like. It is green and blue, mountain bike style with no suspension, don't remember what that's called. How about I just send a picture, there we go that's a good idea, yea I'll do that.

This week has been awesome! We had Stake Conference. It is warm. and we are loving it!

At Stake Conference they reorganized the stake presidency. Elder Lynn Robbins and Elder David Cook came and did that. I went to my first(I believe it's my first, unless my memory fails me) adult session of Stake Conference. It was really awesome. The Chicago Temple President was there, the Mission President, and the Stake President. How cool! The three prong mission of the church is to perfect the saints, to redeem the dead, and to proclaim the gospel. Each leader of those efforts was sitting on the stand.

We are teaching someone who's name is Fish. He likes to talk. We brought a member with us and he helped him to understand our message and you could tell he felt the Spirit. How we found him was remarkable as well. We were walking from one appointment to the next, and he was working on the roof of a house. He had come down and was doing something when we walked by. We opened our mouths and started to talk with him. He said we could come by his house later and teach him. He told us that normally he works on the roof all day and if something needs to be done on the ground he sends one of his workers, but that time he came down. Because of that small and simple means we were able to talk with him and come back and teach him.

We were at a members home helping to lay boards for linoleum, when the sister whose floor we were working on came over with a friend and said "who wants to teach him more about the Mormon Church." I looked at my companion and the thought I had was which one of us was going to get up and shout "I will." It is always nice when people come to you to be taught.

Here is my mormon.org profile:

http://mormon.org/me/6VR8/Durrant/

You are an awesome family! Love you! *Hugs and kisses and all that mushy stuff.

May the Spirit be with you!

Elder Durrant