November 23, 2015

Hello Everyone!
The highlight of the week has definitely been Tamisha. She got baptized yesterday! We worked with her all week and she actually ended up quitting her job so she could come to church. She is incredible and will be an amazing contribution to the church. It was Elder Andersen and I's first baptism so we didn't really know what we were doing. It made things really stressful because I had no idea what we needed to be doing for it to all work out and neither did my comp.

As for the rest of the week I honestly forgot what happened oops. I know on Tuesday I went with Elder Wright into the YSA area which was a lot of fun. We met a lot of interesting people too. With their area they cover about half the mission so I got to see a lot of things I haven't before. We tracted in the hood which was a lot of fun because we get the funniest looks, and everyone thinks we are the police. We ate at a hole in the wall restaurant that one of the YSA members wanted to take us to. It was really good! but elder wright got sick the moment we got back to my apartment to exchange back,so maybe I just got lucky.

Wednesday I don't remember a whole lot and I left my journal in the apartment, but Thursday Elder Andersen had a doctors appointment in Cleveland which is 40 minutes north of where I am. We got to see a little more of the mission which was again super cool. what I realized though is that I am currently serving in an island of wealth. This area is very very very nice compared to the surrounding areas I got to see this week. Summerwood is starting to feel like home and I am loving it, which probably means I will get transferred soon, oh well. I will go and do. Anyway that's all I have for this week, I will try and take better note so I have a good story or something to tell for next week.

love yall

Elder Biesinger

November 16, 2015

Hello everyone!
Well its been another one of those weeks. This area is a roller coaster one week we will have a lot of lessons and everyone is progressing and then the next week we will have 2 or so lessons. This was a two or so lesson week, but it wasn't all that bad we still worked hard so its okay.

Tuesday was zone conference which was really nice. There was lunch and the Spanish wards made it for us so of course it was awesome tex mex! It was also nice to just sit back and learn and be taught for a day.

We had the opportunity to do some service this week, which is actually really hard to find around here. We helped a guy named John load a moving truck. We tracted into him Sunday night and he said "hey Mormons! some of yall helped me about a hundred years ago" and then told us a story about it before we ever said a word. He is a really nice guy. Anyway we went back to help him move later in the week and one of his neighbors was there, the neighbor was rather embarrassed because he had yelled at us and told us to get off his property sunday night, before we met John. John told him how nice we were and it was super funny because he felt like an idiot, he then hurriedly went back to his home before we really got to talk to him. too bad.

We had an interesting lesson with a guy named Leo. His drunk cousin was there and it was really funny we would be teaching Leo and Jose (his cousin) would cut in but Leo would try too keep him under control. it was really funny I promise, you just have to have been there.

The highlight to the week though was on Sunday. TAMISHA CAME TO CHURCH!!!! she has Sundays off now and you have to come to church twice to be baptized. We had the 22nd scheduled for her baptism and we are still going to try and make it work. If she comes to church we are all set! She could be baptized by my next email home! We are super excited, it's been since spring that this ward has had a baptism, which is pretty long for the mission.

Well that is pretty much it for this week, kind of exciting kinda hard, such is life.
love you guys
Elder Biesinger

November 9, 2015

Hello everyone,

Well this week has been kinda crazy! last Monday it started off with one of the Elders trying to make some food in the church kitchen and set off a smoke alarm that called the fire department.... so much fun was had. It took us forever to get the alarm turned off but when they were doing it Elder Dean and I played basketball with a few of them which was fun. But the building representative wasn't too happy with us, understandably, but its all over now so we are good.
The other highlight to the week is that I have another new companion! Elder Dean went home but should be back in a few months, but for now I am with elder Andersen who is still in training. So I am training which is super weird because I don't know what the heck I am doing, but it will all work out. To tell you a little bit about him, our personalities and who we are are not the same, not even close. So getting along has been a struggle, at least for me. I feel bad for Elder Dean, I liked him a lot, but he needed to go home for a while.
There hasn't been a lot of cool stories with investigators this week. We do have one less active youth who has invited his friends to play basketball with us and take lessons so we have been doing that and trying to reactivate him at the same time. Tamisha is still hanging in there and doing really well, but she keeps getting called into work and its been super hard.
sorry that the letter is shorter, this week has just been super crazy and jumbled.
love yall
Elder Biesinger

November 2, 2015

Hey everyone!
So this week I didn't write in my journal a whole lot (that's where the email comes from really) because I have been trying to get more sleep to fight of this stupid cold. So my email won't be too long.... maybe.

So I did get a new companion his name is Elder Dean he has been out 15 months, he is from San Diego. He is a pretty cool kid and this should be a good transfer I am excited! When he got here he was sick and because I have to be with him 24/7 I eventually got sick. I don't know what it is, but it sucks, nothing too bad just a nuisance.

We started the week out super good Tuesday or Wednesday I think we had an awesome day! We were out tracting trying to find someone to teach and the time we had scheduled for that was up. We were supposed to go do less actives that the bishop asked us to go do, but as we were heading out I just really did not want to go do that. I cannot explain the feeling, but it felt to me like the biggest waste of time to go do bishops list (it isn't) and that we needed to find an investigator right now before we left the area. We biked around and a park caught our interest. We went over and looked around and I noticed that there was a man sitting on the slide. Normally I feel so awkward about going and talking to people out of the blue, but I knew we needed to talk to that guy. So we did, and it was so easy and not awkward even though it went about the same as other contacts(does that even make sense?). We got talking and long story short, he is going through some trials in his life right now and had been praying to God for help all day.

I did not think that the spirit was leading us that day. It just felt like we were trying to be good missionaries, but as I look back it is easy to see the influence that the spirit had on us. It changed how I felt about things and about the work it was odd, but really really cool.

Saturday was a lot of fun! We went and played ultimate Frisbee in the morning with some members and non members and halfway in it started to pour, but we kept going because it was so much fun! When it was all over we biked home and the water was halfway up the tire most of the way home which again was super fun and there was lightening everywhere. When we got back the the apartment the assistants had text everyone to stay in and it wasn't smart to go out (oops our bad). It rained and flooded for a good amount of the day, we went outside and it was up to our knees in the streets but it all drained out by late afternoon. We had to go in early on Saturday because of Halloween, but we went and bought candy to hand out first. We thought it was perfect people knocking on our door for a change!!! We might get some missionary work done! Not one person came to the door that night... so now we have bags of candy we are trying not to eat because the struggle to keep weight off is already hard enough.

Well that's about it for this week. Remember earlier when I said it might be short? yeah whoops I guess my memory was better than I thought.

love you guys
Elder Biesinger

Jacob is like really?? Ok next pic ha

Silly Elders

Lake Houston

Jacob and Elder Dean

October 26, 2015

Hey everyone!
first off i am staying in Summerwood and Elder Hobbs is leaving.  I will get a new companion, or companions (there is a good chance of a trio in our district.) but yeah I am excited for a change! but also I think I might personally knock every door in this area. but oh well.

So this week was so much better. The hard work and perseverance of the last 2 weeks paid off! We taught 13 lessons this week which is almost triple what we taught the last 2 weeks combined. The members helped us out a lot too, because when we have a lesson set they will give us a ride and go with us so we could avoid the rain. The rain is nuts here I didn't know there could be that much water in the sky! We would be out on our bikes and drenched in seconds. and you can't really wear a coat because if you wear a coat you will be drenched with sweat, if you don't you just get drenched with rain. So yeah its fun.

One of the best things this week is we were biking home one night and this super drunk guy calls to us and wanted us to come talk to him, so we did. He turned out to be a Jehovah's witness, but I am pretty sure he wasn't practicing because he was at a birthday party and JWs don't celebrate anything. but anyway he gave us some really good bbq and talked to us about... stuff... it was super funny. He was like "I'm not going to lie I have been drinking all day". Which was pretty easy to see. He also told us he would come to church but that's if sober him remembered. That was a really fun night. The rest of the week was just normal missionary work stuff, we got the chance to do some service and we biked in the rain yada yada. There isn't a whole lot of excitement in summerwood it really makes you realize why you are on a mission, and it's not to to see the world and have funny stories to tell about drunk people (which is good), its really to spread the gospel, and that's about all there is to tell about here.

Wally and his family are still investigating slowly but surely. Tamisha did not get baptized yesterday, she is great when it comes to studying and learning and wanting to change. She has a sincere desire, the only problem is that she works weekends. There has to be at least one hold up right? We are also teaching a guy named Marcus who hasn't progressed at all since we got here so we were going to drop him, but instead the lesson ended up being super powerful and we hope that he has that sincere desire now. Well, that's about it! see you again next week!

Elder Biesinger

The Zone..Jacob and Elder Hobbs didn't get the shirt memo

Jacob and Elder Hobbs

October 19, 2015

Well I don't know what's up, or what we are doing wrong, but this week was even worse as far as the work goes. We could not seem to get anyone to set an appointment, so we did a lot of tracting which is always fun, but even then out of the 100+ people we talked to not one of them became an investigator. but oh well. This is the last week of the transfer, so we are going to try and achieve our goals, then after that one of us will most likely leave,
I can't wait for a change honestly, it seems like this last week was months not days. 

Since we didn't have all that many lessons I don't have a lot to say about investigators, we haven't seen the Mendozas or Wally and his family this week, the lessons we had were newer people.

Funny story though, its kinda funny I guess. So on Wednesday we found some gluten free cookie mix in the pantry that one of the sisters left there, so we decided to cook it. We mixed it up and the batter tasted pretty disgusting so we added some stuff until it tasted good, mostly sugar, some other spices and such, but anyway we made the batter taste better, but it was too runny to make into dough balls. So we poured it into a bread pan, because that's all we had! Well it didn't cook to well, but we were going to eat it anyway. We had some ice cream that a member brought so we threw some of the hot dough and ice cream in a bowl and ate it, thinking the ice cream would cool it down enough to eat... well it didn't, and it stuck to the roof of my mouth. I now have a nickle sized sore on the roof of my mouth and it really sucks to eat just about anything. So that's what I have going on right now. First world problems for ya. 

The ward down here is having a trunk or treat party this weekend so we have been trying to use it as a way for people to come see that the Mormons are normal, but the first two people we talked to about it told us that we should not be celebrating the devils day and they couldn't believe we were doing it on the church grounds etc. So now instead of people thinking that we are weird they think we are devil worshipers. Such is life in the bible belt. 

There really isn't all that much more to tell. Elder hobbs hit a traffic cone and did a front flip, he was okay. so I can laugh because it was "flippin" funny. get it? I think I'm funny and that's what matters, so sorry if you don't think that's funny.

anyway it was a rough but fun week, Texas is great! 

Elder Biesinger 

Waiting for a train to pass with Elder Hobbs

October 12, 2015

Oh man this week was rough. We had some days that were really good, but we had a few that flat out sucked. Days were people just canceled all day long. We would confirm an hour before and then get there and they were gone, and that's how it was all day. We went to do service for one lady in the corner of our area, so we changed into jeans and such and rode down there. We called before we left and she said to come. So we went and when we got there she had left, didn't say why, We called and she just said that she had made other plans. So we rode back, wasted 2 hours of our day. It's like thanks lady we had nothing else to do! Yeah it was a bunch of stuff like that this week, but oh well.

There where a few good parts though! Wednesday I went on exchanges with the ZLs into the ysa area. They cover about half the mission! It was fun, but super hard because it is an exact age group. So we went tracting at a college in kingwood which was super interesting haha. We talked to some very confused and interesting people. Crazy beliefs, and of course they know everything to know about life and God! But oh man it was pretty fun and I got to get off the bike for a day, which was nice. 

Oh yeah my bike is fixed, so that's all good, it cost like 10 bucks so bike werks ended up being nice to us.

One day after a canceled lesson we saw some guys playing basketball and Elder Hobbs wanted to go play so we did.... there is reasons that I am a wrestler, but it was fun and we gave them a run for their money! But even better they are investigating now! super awesome.

So as far as investigators go, the Mendozas decided to look up the church online/ there son gave them anti. and they cancelled the baptism again! yaaaaay, so now we have kinda just dropped them for a while. It's frustrating and I wish I could make them understand but I can't. We are still going to work with them, just a little less. 

Tamisha Javier is doing great! She came over to a members home for fhe last Monday and she is going to come to bishops house tonight. She is also having her friends come and listen to the lessons. She is great! We are still shooting for the 25th for baptism, but she has work on Sundays and we might have to push it back so she can come a few more times, but that's okay because she is doing so good. 

Wally and his family are still investigating, progress is slow because their beliefs are so dear to them and this is all new, but they understand our message and what it means and they are slowly coming to.

That's about it for this week! Not too much excitement

Elder Biesinger

Found a turtle tracting, I promise I have lost weight even though it might not look like it😂