Week 5 One Month Down

So the Flonase got here on Thursday, and I've never been happier to shove something up my nose and inject stuff into it. I'm not really worried about a sinus infection anymore. On Tuesday, I was blowing my nose every five minutes. Yesterday, I blew my nose, like, twice. So it's better.

And the other package came on Friday, which was very exciting. I had just told Elder Denham a couple days earlier that I wish we were able to afford Nutella, and lo and behold, Nutella was in my hands and it was miraculous. Actually, I had been doing pretty darn good on keeping my food in the apartment healthy until Friday, but that's okay. I'm using the Nutella on wheat bread, and I'm rationing the candy and Oreos, so it's all good! Men are that they might have joy, and sugar can definitely bring joy. I'm also really enjoying the USB drive I got. There are some interesting choices on there, but it's mostly appropriate. I'm not sure how much Elder Denham enjoys the Muppets or the old school Disney soundtracks, but I've had to listen to his Christian rock the past few weeks, so I don't really care.

All in all, even thought the work technically got harder, I felt much better this week. I was feeling happier, I had the spirit more, and the days went much faster than the previous week. So that was good.

Elder Denham is district leader, so on Monday night, he went on exchanges with the Concho elders. Concho is to St. Johns as Levan is to Nephi. Anyway, that left me with St Johns' Spanish speaking elders Monday night and all day on Tuesday. I'd say only about a third of the people they visit speak Spanish, but it sure was awkward when we were talking to Spanish speakers. I kind of just sat there, minding my own business, and the people we were visiting would see that and have fun teasing the gringo that can't speak Espanol, but it was still a fun day. 

Wednesday we did a lot of cleaning, which is good because our fridge smelt like a wet fart from Satan. We found some nasty green meat and some purple provolone cheese in there, so that was fun. Needless to say, it smells just fine now. That night, we also picked up one of the zone leaders from Snowflake so he could go on exchanges with us for a day.

So Thursday was spent with Elder Buckley. I was also in desperate need of a haircut (I'm sure I had the longest hair in the mission, if not the entire missionary force), and Elders Denham and Buckley gave me a hard time about not just taking a pair of electric clippers to my head like most of the missionaries here do. I have my dignity though, so I made us go to a barber. The barber here is only open on Thursdays, so that's why we weren't doing it on P-Day. The barber takes a freaking 2 and a half hour lunch though, so we had to go to like, a beauty salon that charged me an embarrassingly high amount of money. Also, I learned you have to tip haircutters, so that was weird.

Nothing too exciting happened the rest of the week. We've been trying a lot to find new people to teach since none of our investigators are progressing, but it's hard to find new people too. But last night, we visited a family and had them go through their Facebook friends for referrals, and we got TWENTY FOUR new referrals, so hopefully at least a couple of those work out. We're aiming to get a baptism before September 15th when Elder Denham leaves, so we better get to work.

That sucks about the Subaru. But Provo Beach sounds fun. I've heard a lot of good things about that place. I was excited to hear about Tag's call to D.C., and apparently Ryan Hatfield was called to Virginia, so that's also awesome. Good luck on your student teaching, Mom and Aaron!

And remember that the church is true. Because it is.

Week 4 "Down to the Valley"

Sounds like a super cool week for you guys, what with a surgery AND a family picnic! I don't know why you didn't send pictures of Dallin's date though so I could rate her on a worldly scale. That's disappointing.

I'm pretty sure it would be okay to send Grandpa's talk. We listen to talks on drives sometimes, but they're all from apostles and general authorities. But all of those apostles and general authorities knew and loved Grandpa, so it's gotta be okay.

So yeah, I heard about Robin Williams on Tuesday morning, and that day was all downhill from there. Okay, I'm kinda sorta maybe half-joking and stuff or whatever, but it was a harder week than my first couple.

We've been teaching a lot of cool people this week. We've got Matt and Gloria, an unmarried couple in their 60's. Matt was baptized as a kid but has been to prison and stuff. Gloria's not a member and just arrived four months ago from North Carolina after she and Matt met on the internet. They've both been coming to church and have good testimonies, but they need to get married and give up their 20 cigarettes they each smoke every date. They're cutting down on smokes, but they supposedly can't get married until they move all of Gloria's stuff back from NC, which apparently is super expensive to do and they can't afford to do it right now. Most of the stuff she said she has to move here, though, sounds superfluous and I don't even know how any of it would fit in their little trailer home. A king sized mattress? 3 big screen TVs? A bunch of fancy furniture (apparently, Gloria's recently deceased husband was quite well off)? So... they've got to make some sacrifices, cuz we can't spend a lot of time on non-progressing investigators.

There's Madea Moreilles, a 40 year old married mom who we're teaching in a member friend's home. We showed her the Restoration video, and she clearly believes everything. The spirit was super strong, but when we asked her to be baptized, she said no. She doesn't feel like a good enough person with the grudges she's holding from her past and stuff, so that sucked. She still came to church though, so that was good.

Mario's staying strong. I don't think I mentioned that his dad doesn't want him to be baptized until he's gone to church for a year, so that's no good, but we're trying to speed that along. Anyway, we accompanied him to mutual on Wednesday where we played ultimate frisbee, so that was fun.

We taught a lady named Kristina (sic) Schwabb this week. We visited her last week and she invited us to come back because she enjoys hearing about other religions and finding out how much they align with her own. We were hoping to teach her and her whole family, but it turned out to just be her, and she was ready with her bible and a notebook for notes. It could have gone well anyway, but the member we brought with us kept trying to give real evidence that the Book of Mormon was true in the bible, and that led to some serious bible bashing between Kristina and our member. The spirit just kinda flew out the window. But we're going back there this week (with a different member).

On Thursday, we taught some seminary classes. The seminary teacher here heard our talks last Sunday and enjoyed them so much, he had to have us visit his classes. It was really fun, and it was great to see the expression all of the senior boys' faces when I told them I had been in seminary just 3 months ago. A lot of them realized they need to get their lives together.

 On Friday night, we drove down to the valley (where Nephi has "up north", St. Johns has "the valley"). One of Elder Denham's past converts was receiving her endowment in the Mesa temple on Saturday, and we got to go with her. That was super awesome to be in the temple where Grandma and Grandpa were sealed and to see how grateful people are to the missionaries that taught them. We stayed the night at some other elders' apartment in Scottsdale, and I met a guy serving here from Tuscon. He admitted that he was quite mad when he opened his call.

 So those are some of the things we did this week. Mom, you may have gotten a text last night with a picture of me and Elder Denham. A member (I can't remember her name) likes to take pictures of the missionaries here and send them to their parents. She had her teenage daughter send this one though, and we told her the caption to put with the picture: "Swag."

I love you all and hope you have a fantastic week!

Here's the crawdad I caught on the camping trip

and me and Elder Denham sucking them brain juices out

Week Three -- St. Johns AZ

So first thing's first; my companion's name is Elder Denham with an E. Denham. And he's a really cool guy, and we're getting along very well. I actually found out yesterday that he's only got five weeks left in the field, and I'm his last companion. He didn't want me to know that, and he would never tell me exactly how long he's been out, but we were going through a packet of letters he got from his ward's primary kids and one of them said, "See you in September!"

 

Anyway, in just my first week in St. Johns, I've had a lot of classic missionary experiences. We taught a couple lessons that went very well, and we taught a couple lessons that could have gone better. We've got investigators that are having a hard time sticking to the word of wisdom and/or the law of chastity, so that's fun stuff. We've contacted referrals that seem genuinely interested in learning about the gospel. We've gone street contacting and been told to scram.

 

There are a lot of members in St. Johns, but also plenty of non-members and recent converts to be working with. What I quickly realized is that most of these people, member or non-member, are people that I never would have cared to hang out with back in Juab. Most of our investigators are covered in tattoos and piercings, and a lot of their homes smell like cigarette smoke or mold. And the members are mostly all very small-town, blue-collar folk who don't seem to get out much.

 

Through it all, I've been thinking of two people whose examples I want to follow. The first is Dad. I've always been impressed with (and, admittedly, at times embarrassed of) Dad's ability to talk and become friends with anyone. Dad just doesn't care about wealth, social status, or, um, smell. When he would take me home teaching, there were some families that I just plain wanted to avoid. Dad, though, would go on in there with his head held high and have a nice, friendly conversation with everyone in the house. He would make them feel loved and needed and would let them know they had a friend.

 

The second person is pretty obvious. It's Jesus Christ. He didn't see a leper or lame man only to turn around and pretend like He didn't see the guy. He went and served them. He loved them as much as He loves everyone else.

 

So with Dad and Jesus in mind, I've been meeting with the people of St. Johns, working to be as friendly and loving as I can be. Luckily, it's working. I love going around this town meeting people and hearing their stories. There are some real odd ducks, but the odd ducks of the world deserve the gospel just as much as I do.

 

The camping trip was a lot of fun. I wish I had remembered to bring my camera with me today to send pictures, but I guess that will have to wait. We went to Big Lake, and it's beautiful up there. We left at around 10:00 AM on Friday morning and spent most of the day fishing. Nobody caught any fish, but we had some fun catching crawdads. Together we caught five, and one of them was caught by this guy (I'm pointing my thumbs at myself right now). We took them back to camp and boiled them. I was okay with this, because I figure my opportunities to eat weird food in Arizona will be limited. So we broke them in half, ate the tail meat, and then the fun part was in sucking out everything from the head. You will get to see that picture next week I suppose, if I remember my camera. That night, we taught the Plan of Salvation to everyone around the campfire. Then Elder Denham and I slept out under the stars because I had joked that we didn't need a tent and I felt too awkward to take it back when Elder Denham jumped at the idea. So go me. It's okay, we were plenty warm, and the moon was beautiful. The best part is our investigator kid, Mario, had a great time and says I earned his friendship, so mission accomplished.

 

We left camp at 8:00 Saturday morning and then spent the entire day serving out in "the 40's". There are 40 acres of nothingness surrounding St. Johns, but I guess a few people are daring enough to live out there. We helped a potential investigator named Louie move from lot to another, which involved moving a freaking shed and digging out his ginourmous water tanks. I've had easier days, but Louie was extremely grateful and not only promised to take us to dinner sometime, but he also came to church the next day to hear me and Elder Denham speak.

 

Our talks went very well. We were assigned to talk about missionary work, so I told John Holladay and Ruth and Arvo's missionary stories. Then I told the stories of how I chose to go on a mission and opening my call (the same stuff I covered in my farewell talk). I closed with some of the lessons I've learned so far on my mere 2 1/2 weeks in the field. Elder Denham spoke about member missionary work. Anyway, everyone was telling us all day afterwards how great we did, and I even had several parents tell me how glad they were that I was open about once not wanting to serve a mission because their sons are struggling with the decision right now.

 

So that was this week. I love the field so far, and it's a hundred times better than the MTC (and I liked the MTC). I love you all. Remember, as Elder Denham would say, the book is blue, and the church is true!

First P-day in Arizona

So it turns out we do get a p-day this week, which I'm totes excited about, because the past few days have been cray cray! (Don't edit any of this 21st century lingo out of the blog posts. I want people to think I'm hip.)

After waking up at 2:45 AM Monday morning (I wanted to wake up at 3:30, but my roommates were jerks), we were shipped off on a bus to the SLC Airport for an 8:30 flight to Phoenix. I hadn't even been out for 2 weeks and it still felt super weird to listen to songs in the airport McDonald's that weren't hymns.

President and Sister Sweeney were waiting for us at the Phoenix airport, and yes, when we were got outside, the first thing we noticed was that it is H-A-W-T hawt in Arizona. Luckily, the church is true and is able to afford vans with very good air conditioning.

Our first stop was the Mesa temple. President Sweeney had some snacks for us, but I was very disappointed when I pulled a water bottle out of an icy cooler to find out it was one of those midget half-sized bottles. I drank 3 of them. Since the Mesa temple is where Grandpa Arvo and Grandma Ruth were sealed in, and it was the one-year anniversary of Grandma passing away, it was a very cool sight to see. Of course, we only went inside of the visitors' center, which has a lot of the same stuff as the Salt Lake vistiors' center, including a Christus.

Then we had lunch at the mission home (southwestern food, of course) and went over various legal forms and whatnot. Then we split up and got to do some real-life proselyting with some of the experienced missionaries. I ended up in Pierce Park with Elder Dunn, who is a very awkward soul, but in a funny, hipster kind of way rather than an embarrassing, agonizing way. The very first people I ever proselyted on my mission were this absolutely plastered drunk couple who were splashing each other at the drinking fountain. I don't remember the woman's name, but the guy was named Raoul, and he started out friendly, saying "It's our Mormon friends! The Mormons were very kind to me while I was in jail and while I was in prison." (this is all in a mumbled, slurred, Hispanic accent, by the way). The girlfriend saw we had free pamphlets about the restoration and excitedly took one from me. But then Raoul went off the rails trying to grill us about the conflicts in Islamic countries why excommunication is okay, and trying to tell us that God hasn't spoken to anyone in over 2,000 years. His girlfriend got fed up with it and ran off to make sure their puppy was okay. It felt like we were talking to Raoul for forever, and it sucked because all of this questions made no sense (even though he thought he was super smart), and we could barely tell what he was even saying. His girlfriend came back though and said she read the whole pamphlet and wanted to come to church though. Elder Dunn gave her a card with the mission office's number, and I gave Raoul a Book of Mormon because even though he said he's read from it, he didn't have a copy of his own. Anyway, for the rest of the night, everything smelled and tasted like his beer breath, so that was nasty. Pretty crazy for a first real missionary experience.

We didn't really talk to anyone else in the park. We tried talking to some teenagers, but they told us to go away, and as they did so, smoke came out of their mouths and we realized they were holding joints, so...

But Elder Dunn assured me that our time in the park was not usual at all. Most people are sober and very friendly he said. We stayed the night in the mission home and met at the church the next day to meet our first in-field companions.

My companion is Elder Dunham, from a town about 20 minutes south of Pocatello, so he's my second Idaho companion in a row, and he's actually a really cool guy. He's been out 18 months and obviously knows his stuff when it comes to missionary work. It seemed everyone we saw at the transfer meeting had to tell me that I was getting the best companion, so I'm really excited.

We are serving in St Johns, Arizona in the mountains where it is about 20 degrees cooler than Scottsdale, so there was much rejoicing when I found that out. St. Johns was a four hour drive from the mission home, and there are seriously fields of cacti on the way. I've never seen so many in my life. Then it all turned into pine trees at some point, and that's nothing new. St. Johns has a population of about 4,000. We drive a car, and apparently most of the work here is all referrals, so this is a great place to start out.

I also found out that we are going camping Friday night with the boy scouts to help convert some fourteen year old and we're giving talks in church on Sunday, so those are some interesting ways to break a new guy in.

I don't have a new address to send mail to, because the mission home will forward it all to St. Johns for us, so if anyone wants to mail anything (which is always lovely), they can send it to that Arizona Scottsdale Mission address.

I guess that's about all I have to say for now. I attactched picture of me and President Morris, since we're related and all.  Then, you know, pictures of the temples. I'm pretty proud of that one with the flower.
 

 

I love you all, and remember the church is true!

<3 Elder Holladay

Here's picture of my MTC district at the temple. From left are Sisters Webb and Lower and Elders Baumer, Rosenbalm, Carr, Ashcraft, Swaner, and Holladay.

Then there's one of mine and Elder Allred's name tags

 

 

 

 

My camera died before I could get one of me and Elder Denham though, and I haven't charged it. Next week!

and a sweet view of the mountains we saw on the drive to St. Johns last night.

Week 2 Off to Arizona!

We got to talk to Sam on the phone this morning while he was at the airport waiting to board his flight.  It was awesome to hear his voice!  He is super excited to get working in Arizona and is grateful for all of the e-mails he has received from his friends.

Surprise E-Mail Sesh at the MTC Today‏

Samuel Holladay

8/02/14

Surprise! You're probably wondering why in the world I'm breaking the rules and writing you on a day that is most definitely not p-day. Well, the branch president told us to clean our laundry before we leave Monday morning, and the computers are down here in the laundry room, and everyone else is writing e-mails, so... I mean, I assume it's okay...

But it's great to open my inbox today and find 3 times more new e-mails than there were on my actual p-day Tuesday. From what I've read, I'm gathering someone posted a status or two on some sort on a form of social media telling people to write me, which I'm truly and totally grateful for. Especially the ones from girls ;)

I don't have a whole lot to update since Tuesday, except that Elder Adam Allred arrived at the MTC on Wednesday! Not only did I get to see him as was taking his first walk through campus, but I found out he's in my zone! Seriously, his room is 3 doors down from mine! So we're seeing each other a lot, and it's super fun.

I did experience my first real bout with homesickness last night when I remembered Guardians of the Galaxy came out (LET ME FINISH) and I realized my midnight-premiere-with-my-high-school-buddies days may be over. Also, I don't get to stay up late talking to Brigham, dissecting the movie with him. The good thing is that I know my purpose here, and I ain't giving up that easily. I have work to do in Arizona, and I'm gonna do it.

So that's it for now. I may or may not get to e-mail you in the next week. Keep the faith, everyone!

<3 Elder Holladay

Also, Elders Holladay and Allred say, "HAPPY FRENCH FRIDAY FROM THE MTC!!!"

And just Elder Holladay also says thank you for the fabulous package this week! As I was sharing the brownies with my zone, Elder Allred saw them and said, "Awesome! Momma Holladay always makes the best brownies!"

Well, those brownies were not homemade, and I don't believe he's ever eaten a brownie made by Mom in his life. In the off chance that he did, I guarantee those ones came out of a box anyway. But the ones you sent were delicious and everyone loved them! Thank you!