Week 65--October 13, 2014

Family and Friends,

This week has been very good! Things are going pretty well with all of our investigators. Corona is treating us well, and things are finally starting to cool off a little bit. That definitely makes biking up these Corona hills a little bit better. It is hard for me to believe that I have already been in the Circle City Ward for 9 weeks.

Our Investigators, We met with Kassie a couple times this week with a priest in our ward, things are still moving along very well with her even though she didn't come to church this week. She told us yesterday that she is set on getting baptized on Sunday no matter what. The only thing that could possibly hold her up is some of her friends. All should work out for her and she should be baptized on Sunday. Then there's the Villa kids... They are a different story. Out of the 5 kids we are working with, only 2 of them are really being supported by their parents in getting baptized, so there are some struggles there. Fortunately Albert Sr. (Grandpa) is helping us work with the parents, so hopefully everything works out with them.

We also got to go to the Redlands Temple this past week. It is always awesome to go to the Temple and feel of the spirit that is there. I definitely received some much needed guidance. It truly is a blessing to be able to attend the Temple 

This week will be a fun week, among many other things Elder David F. Evans of the Seventy, and Director of the Missionary Department, is touring the mission on Tuesday and Wednesday. My Zone will be attending a Conference on Wednesday at the mission office in Riverside. I am really looking forward to it. It's always really cool when General Authorities tour the mission, so I am excited for that. 

Now, as the subject of this e-mail says, The Challenge. I have a Challenge for each and every one of you who read this. Regardless of where you currently are in the Book of Mormon, I want to challenge you to either as a family or individually to Read the Book of Mormon from Cover to Cover between now and Christmas. Each of you get a new copy of the Book of Mormon and in the Front cover write some questions that you have that you want Heavenly Father to answer, and as you read think about the questions that you have, and I promise that Heavenly Father will answer them. I will do this too, and I want to hear from you guys on how your reading is going, Especially my family. I hope each of you takes this challenge, I know that whatever questions that you have that Heavenly Father will answer them.

I Love you guys,

Elder Bangerter

 

If anyone reading this wants a copy of the Book of Mormon, please let me know and I'll get you one.

Sharon 

Week 64--October 6, 2014

Dear Family and Friends,

It has been a great week as always here in Corona, Everything is going very well for me and Elder Schoonmaker here. A lot of stuff has been going on this past week. We had quite a few meetings.

Among the meetings we had we had a weekly district meeting, we had interviews with President Mullen and a special screening of meet the mormons, and General conference. Our Interviews were a little different this transfer, First we shared our favorite scripture out of a reading assignment we were given, mine was Alma 31:35 -"Behold, O Lord, their souls are precious, and many of them are our brethren; therefore, give unto us, O Lord, power and wisdom that we may bring these, our brethren, again unto thee." This scripture is part Alma's prayer before he goes to teach the Zoramites. Then the other unusual thing that happened in interviews was that President Mullen asked to see our planners and go over them with us. That was a pretty humbling experience, as President got on me a little bit about my planner. It was good for me though, and he gave me some excellent pointers to use my planner more effectively.

During interviews President Mullen showed us the Church's new Movie "Meet the Mormons." All I can say is that I would recommend it to anybody and I would encourage Everybody to see it if at all possible. The movie is very good and follows 6 individuals who are members of the church, and it shares each of their stories. There are "the Bishop," "the Coach," "the Fighter," "the Candy Bomber," "the Humanitarian,"  and "the Missionary Mom." Each of their stories are very good and I got choked up in many of them, Perhaps the one that meant the most to me was the Missionary Mom, maybe it is because I am a Missionary right now and it reminded me of my Mom, but her story touched my heart, because I have personally seen people go through the things that she went through leading up to her son serving a mission, and I know what the sacrifice is to serve a mission. Needless to Say if any of you have the chance to see it, Do it! It truly is an amazing movie.

General Conference was really good this weekend. I enjoyed all of the Talks and I was most definitely uplifted and edified by Conference. The Talks that I really enjoyed were both of President Uchtdorf's talks, and President Eyring's talk Sunday morning. I also really enjoyed Elder Bednar's talk Sunday Afternoon. I hope that Everybody got a lot from Conference.

Well this week is going to be another busy week. However the thing that I am most excited for is Going to the Temple this Thursday.

I Love you guys,

Elder Bangerter

Week 63- September 29, 2014

Well this transfer has started off really well! Elder Schoonmaker and I hit the Standard of Excellence this week. We got a lot done this week and picked up some new investigators, which is exciting.

We are teaching quite a few people, and a lot of them are progressing very well. First we have Kassie. Kassie is a young mother, and she was being taught several months ago but we recently started teaching her again, and she is on date to be baptized on October 12. Then we are teaching the Villa family in the ward. It is a complicated situation with them but the Grandpa is a member, and 5 of his Grandchildren want to be baptized, so we are working on making that happen. If everything goes well we could have 6 baptisms this month.

Sister Hustad was confirmed in church yesterday. Everything went great and she is doing awesome.

So the Church is coming out with a new movie called Meet the Mormons, it will be shown in theaters around the country starting on October 10th, The movie will be a great way of sharing the gospel with our friends in a non threatening way. As missionaries we were instructed to stay away from the places that the movie is being shown, because the movie is not for proselyting, but it is for the members to use to show friends, and to help clear up misconceptions that many people have about members of the church. My Zone gets to see it at a special screening on this Friday, but I encourage everyone to go see it! 

That's about it for the week,

Elder Bangerter

Andrew also broke his glasses this week, so it's been an adventure trying to get him a new pair!

Sharon