E-mail 10/15/2012

Hello Super fantastic family!
What an awesome week! I love it here! I love serving the Lord! I love you!
You should have seen the surprised look on my face when the mailman knocked on the door and handed Elder Briggs package, who then handed it to me. I thought "What am I doing getting a package?" I opened it and knew as soon as I saw the contents that you had sent me a little bit of conference breakfast. There was a lot of peary stuff in there. I don't know if I had ever seen so much "pear." I know I had never heard of pear juice before, which, by the way, has a strong after taste. I shared the cobbler with Elder Briggs. He approves. Thank you!
We have been teaching a lot. We are starting to teach four children. The parents are not interested in the church, but they want their kids to learn about it and start going to the different activities. We are all for it. We taught them the Restoration using cups, knives, spoons, and forks. They enjoyed it. We had fun doing it too. only a little bit though. ;)
We had a lesson with Donna. We brought Brenda (who called Mom earlier.) During the lesson she grabbed her hand and held it, she looked into her eyes and bore powerful testimony. It was powerful. The Spirit was very evidently there.
   We went to the Indy track this last Monday. I included some pictures here, but I am going to send most of them in a separate E-mail. Hope you enjoy, because I did.
We had a really great week! The members here are taking care of us. I am loving it here! May the Spirit be with you!
Elder Durrant

Edna and Elder Durrant

Edna and Elder Brigg

Indianapolis Motor Speedway
Hall of Fame

Cool cars

How fast do you think it can go?

Let's go for a ride

Elder Anderton and Elder Durrant

Elder Lyman and Elder Durrant

Elder from zone and Elder Durrant

Elder Harris and Elder Durrant

Box from home

Elder Durrant, are you going to share?

Can you see me?

Can you still see me?

Boy, that was good!

Don't forget to be careful.

E-mail 10/08/2012

Hello Stupendous family!

This has been a crazy week. We have been busy with a lot of meetings, teachings, and missionary work in general.

Conference was amazing! What a blessing it is to have a living prophet on the earth today that receives revelation for us to help make our lives better. What a wonderful announcement about missionaries! I think it is awesome! I am excited for it, even though it doesn't really apply for me. I think it's a good change. However, the sister missionary announcement was a little troubling. It is going to be harder now finding a wife, because all of the women are going to want to serve missions. ;) It will be good, don't worry I fully support the change.

Have I said how much I love the summer? Well it's winter, (actually it's fall,) and it's freezing! I am glad that I still have some of my warm cloths and lots of hand warmers. I like hand warmers. We have a lot of them. It's crazy how missionary work changes with the seasons. In the summer people are outside, you can meet with people on there porch, they are happier. In the winter you go to peoples houses to find them, you now meet inside buildings, such as the church, and the other percentage of people are happy (note that this percentage is very small.)

We met with Donna twice this past week. She is a funny lady. She is in her seventies. Spunky is a good word that describes her. She loves our visits. She keeps telling us how she looks forward to going to our church the forth Sunday. She is a funny lady.

We had a lot of meetings we had to go to. We ended up going to transfer meeting because an Elder in our district finished his mission and went home, so his companion needed to be with someone, so he was with us. I love meetings, but you go to over ten hours of meetings in a week the first thing you want to do is go teach or tract or just do something, anything. We did have a good meeting Friday where the Zone Leaders trained the whole zone. That was a great meeting. We discussed prayer. Prayer is very special.

Being a missionary is awesome! I love you all! May the Spirit be with you!

Elder Durrant

E-mail 10/01/2012

Hello Good looking family!

This week has been super busy. But I was gone for our busiest day. I was in Green Castle. In Indy 3rd we had appointments from the beginning of the day until the end of the evening. It has been really non stop, so it was nice to go to Green Castle. It is a small town, so not a lot goes on, but we spent some time on Depuaw campus talking with the students there. It was a lot of fun. I enjoyed it.

We met with a lady, whose name is Ruby. In our second lesson with her we invited her to be baptized on November seventeenth. She said "That's my birthday." We were like "no way! that is awesome! So, are you doing anything on your birthday?" "No." She said "I never do anything on my birthday." "Well how about you get baptized on your birthday." She accepted. How cool is that to get baptized on your birthday?!

I am so excited for General Conference! It is going to be so awesome hearing the words of living Prophets and Apostles. We are planning on having several people watch conference.

We biked a really far way away a few days ago. It took us about an hour to get there. We wanted to go from one neighborhood to another, but the only way was to go a mile or so all the way around. We didn't want to do that so we took a short cut. If you recall I have not had a lot of success with short cuts. This was no exception. Even though it was only a few yards, it was a wilderness. There were a few trees, a small stream, and a lot of tall weeds and shrubbery. It took us twenty minutes to get through it, so it didn't save us any time. We also thought we were standing in poison ivy, because neither one of us had seen it before and weren't sure what it looked like, but we didn't get a rash, so it wasn't the dreaded plant. Maybe I'll eventually learn the art of short cut taking.

I LOVE being a missionary! You are all awesome! Thank you for being you! I love you! May the Spirit be with you!

Elder Durrant

E-mail 09/24/2012

Hello glorious family!

This has been a crazy busy week. It has cooled off a lot.

I went to a leadership meeting on Tuesday and among learning much about how to minister the gospel, President Collins taught us about math. More specifically about trigonometry. He was teaching us a principle and he was proving his point by teaching us about math. The Gospel is like math. The basics are the arithmetic + - x etc. Complicated math is just a combination of the basics. With Trigonometry you are just trying to figure out a triangle. So not only did he teach us a lot about the gospel, but he taught us a lot about how to do well with math. I thought it funny, because he had asked who liked and disliked math. His response to those who disliked it was "That's because you don't understand." It was a good meeting. The following day in district meeting I basically just replayed, through proxy, what President Collins taught us. It went well.

We had interviews on Thursday. They went well. Sister Collins taught us about eating healthy. She told us to eat more fiber. She asked us, we were in a group, who knew what fiber is. She explained to us what it is and what happens if you don't eat enough fiber. She told us a story of a missionary who was in pain for three days because of it. It's a good thing I eat oatmeal...occasionally. ;)

I went on exchanges to Plainfield with Elder Hoffmann. We had a great exchange. When I got back there was a massive, heavy box waiting for me. I opened it up to behold the wondrous treasures inside. I beheld delicious looking pears, pear jelly, and energizing "Eternal Gatorade." I also beheld some hot looking peppers, which I am a little afraid to partake of, for fear of severe burning of my sensitive tongue. Many other things I had seen which cannot be written at this time.

The story about the "flippen car," I thought was funny that you sent that to me. Greencastle is in my district and the day that that happened those Elders texted me and said they had been the cause of a car wreck. My first thought was "oh no! My Elders are dead!" But I called them and they recounted the story. They were laughing the whole time. It has been the center of a lot of conversations. I will have to show those Elders the paper you sent me.

James and Julie came to church and they brought their two daughters Jasalyn and Lilly. They love church. They are becoming ever more excited to be baptized next month. We are very excited for them. They are seeing the blessings of the Gospel in their lives and they are feeling the Spirit.

May the Spirit be with you!

Elder Durrant

Pictures 09/17/2012

The Restoration is the only way!

Elder Judkins

in the apartment

in the fridge

Yea! three golf balls stacked on top of each other!

funky picture

school parking lot

He has a horn

Who is that?!

Say St. Ann five times fast

That's cool, in-spite of itself.

(God wants full custody
not just weekend visits)

You can't see me

We are in range. Fire when ready.

E-mail 09/17/2012

Hello Glorious family!!

This has been a great week! It has cooled off a lot. It has been great for biking. We are so busy I sometimes wonder how we are able to keep up with everything. We are teaching a lot of people. We have meetings to go to. And people's lives to bless.

One of our investigators, Donna, came to church a few weeks ago and loved it so much she said she will be coming every fourth Sunday. She is super funny. She is in her seventies. She loves our visits and is getting excited to come to church with us. We also told her about conference, now she really wants to go to that. It is amazing to see how people get excited over something I have had my whole life. To be able to listen to a modern day prophet I had taken for granted. People who have never even heard of a living prophet naturally want to hear what he has to say. I am getting very excited for conference.

We met with Jim this week as well. He is our "eternal Gator." He was feeling very sick, he had a stuffy nose, scratchy throat, and a headache. We offered to give him a blessing. In his way he accepted. We did so. We decided to go ahead and have the lesson only we would keep it short. Not five minutes into the lesson he improved a little bit. By the time the lesson was over he was completely healed. So much even that when we went outside he offered to give us a ride home and I wouldn't say he was leaping, but he had a lot of energy. That was really cool to see. Hopefully he will use this experience in his progression towards baptism. We love Jim.

I gave a baptismal interview this week. It was to a nine year old. She was nervous to death. I worked with her to get through it. By the end she was opening up more and more. She was baptized Sunday and had a great experience.

I love the members here! They are so awesome! This is the best ward in the best mission! Members go teaching with us, give us rides, and we have dinner with them.

James and Julie are doing so good. They came to church for the third time. They love it. We showed them the baptismal font and they got more excited for their baptism on October twenty seventh. They are getting to know the members. They are learning a lot. We are very excited for them.

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

Elder Durrant 

E-mail 09/10/2012

Hello Wonderful family!

This week has been awesome! It has been crazy! And we have been busy!

We met with James and Julie and their daughter Jasalyn. They were referred to us by a member. They don't have a lot of experience with religion, however they have been prepared by the Lord to accept what we teach and to be baptized. They have come to church twice and loved it. They tell us that when they come to church and when we come over they feel good. People at church are very friendly, they went up to them and welcomed them. They agreed to work towards the twenty seventh of October to be baptized. They are an awesome family!

Bro Dave who was baptized last month spoke at why I believe. He has a really good story. He is a super funny guy. Avery also spoke there. There was another little girl that spoke; both children bore simple pure testimony about the Holy Ghost. It was very precious.

So...Friday night it rained really hard. When we parked at our apartment I didn't realize that I parked illegally...so in the morning when we went outside to go to an appointment, our car was not there. I first thought it was stolen, then I looked where I had parked...It was right in front of a handicap sign. During the night they had come and towed it away. It took us a little while to get it back, but we did. So you are probably laughing really hard right now about this; you're probably making up jokes about how they should have let me park there because I am mentally handicap, but that's ok, I know you love me. :)     P.S. Don't let Mom put this part in the ward newsletter.

It has been a great week. People are coming unto Christ. Preparing for baptism. And I am loving it all!

May the Spirit be with you!

Elder Durrant