Miracles in a Small Town

Hello this week,

This has been a pretty good week! We weren't able to teach too many lessons, but we did have some good experiences! We were able to teach Willy this week, we taught him the plan of salvation, and he really liked it. He was so in to what we were saying, and then he started crying at one point in the lesson. It is was neat to see him as he learned about his purpose here in life. That was something that Willy had a lot of questions about and he loved the lesson because it answered so many of his questions. I think next lesson we will invite him to be baptized again and we will see what he says. 

This week at church, we had a big turn out! There was a lot of people there, and a bunch of them were less actives. We had really good lessons in all of our classes too! In Sunday School we teach the gospel principles class, and the past two weeks we have had 1 investigator, a couple of less actives and one of the less actives has been bringing his non member wife to church. Yesterday we talked about scriptures study and the less active, his name is Shayne, was talking about how his wife just keeps reading the Book of Mormon and the Bible. Then  after the lesson I guess President Erickson was talking to Shayne and his wife and his wife asked about getting baptized!!! Its so exciting! Hopefully this week we will go over and start teaching her and maybe set a date for baptism! 

Its amazing how the missionary work in these small little places continues to move forward. You would think that in a town so small that there wouldn't be much success or much opportunity for missionaries, but I keep getting amazed at how much potential there is in small little towns. I am so grateful to have been able to serve in these small little towns, it has really helped me realize all of the miracles that God is capable of performing! All we need to do is pray for them and then work for them and we will see so many miracles in our lives!!!! 

This week should be an interesting week, it is almost Elder Burnettes last week and hopefully he will be able to finish off strong. We also get transfer calls this week so I will find out Saturday who my new companion will be! Thanks for all your love and support! I am so grateful for all of my family and friends. I love each of you! Have a great week! 

Love Elder Farnsworth

Short and Sweet This Week.

This has been a pretty good week. We found a new investigator this week. His name is Willy! He is a little Hispanic guy, and he is pretty neat guy! We went and taught him the first lesson, and he loved it. We talked about baptism, and he told us it was something he would think about so that was really exciting! Willy was a potential investigator before I got here. They found him playing basketball. He has come to church like 3 times and he is super involved with the branch. He actually stayed after yesterday and sang in the branch choir! He is a great guy and I really think that next transfer he will be baptized so that is exciting! Other than that this week was okay. We did have a couple less actives come to church yesterday and we had one bring his non member wife so were hoping to set something up and start teaching her too! I am so glad that things here are starting to move forward, its a huge relief!!!! 

My companion is doing better. He is trying to stay obedient and keep working. He is a really good person and I do like him, but holy cow he is just not wanting to be a missionary! 

Anyways I love you all! I hope you have a great week. Thank you for your prayers and support, they really do help!!!!!! 

Love Elder Farnsworth

Warroad, Minnesota

This week has been so much better than the last 4! My companion is still really struggling but we were actually able to do missionary work this week and see some success. 

I was thinking a couple days ago that I really haven't told any of you that much about Warroad and what its like here so I guess I will tell you a little more about it here!

Like I had said before Warroad is a really small place but there is a whole bunch of other places in our area along with Warroad. We have a city called Roseau and a city called Baudette, and there is a whole bunch of little towns in between. So we cover a lot of ground here, its about a 20 minute drive to Roseau and 30 minute drive to Buadette in the opposite direction. We have members spread through out the whole entire area, so we have to plan day trips if we want to go to Roseau or Baudette. That took awhile to figure out and we wasted a lot of miles in the process, but now we know haha!

The members here are so so good! A whole bunch of them are from Utah and Idaho and they all moved up here to work at the Polaris plant here. A lot of the members are engineers and they design the snowmobiles and the fourwheelers or side by sides. It's pretty neat! All the people here are really out doorsie people and they all love to go ice fishing and just normal fishing! I really do love the people here, all the members are super nice and I get along with them really well! There are five families in particular that are great, the Ericksons, the Nelsons, the Dorows, the Johnstuns, and the Menloves. They are so good to the missionaries, and they all have little kids that are super funny!!!! It makes me sad because I am already getting super attached to these people and then I will just have to leave again!!!

Anyways, this was a good week, we were able to teach 4 lessons, we taught 2 recent converts and 2 less actives, and we actually had a potential investigator come to church. We got all of his info and hopefully we will be able to meet with him this week. Thank you all for your prayers and support, they have really helped this week! Only three more weeks and I will get a new companion and then we can really get hard at work! 

Love you all and I hope you have a great week!

Love Elder Farnsworth

A New Year

Hello everyone,

This week for me has been pretty rough... my companion is just full of problems. But I will  just start off talking about our week. We didn't really do anything exciting. The early part of this week we mostly just read the Book of Mormon and tried to finish it by the new year. New Year's Eve was really lame, we didn't even have a dinner appointment, and we had to be in by 9 o'clock anyway so that was dumb! Then New Year's day we didn't really do too much either, we went sledding for a branch activity but only the branch president and his family came. There wasn't really enough snow to go sledding so it was kind of a bust! A couple days later on Saturday we got a ton of snow! 

We also had exchanges with the zone leaders, I got to go with Elder Brown so I was super excited about that! While the zone leaders were here they were supposed to figure out more about how Elder Burnett is doing. Long story short, Elder Burnett almost got sent home. President Thomas called and yelled at him and he talked to me and now I'm pretty much like police man and if he does anything wrong I have to report him. Its a really cruddy position to be in because I really don't want to be the one to send Elder Burnett home but I also have to be loyal to President Thomas and I don't want the work here to get held back because of him. Needless to say it was not a fun weekend. I just hope that we can make it through the next 4 weeks with out any more problems.

That has been the condensed version of my week.  I hope you have a good week!

Love Elder Farnsworth

Christmas Week

Hello again this week! 

I can't believe that Christmas is already over... where in the world did the time go? I cant believe that I have been gone for 6 months too, its so crazy how fast everything goes by!

My first Christmas out in the mission field was definitely a good one. It was so good to talk to all of my family. I am so thankful for the love and support that my family has always given me. I don't know how I could do this without their support! After I talked to my family on Christmas we went over to a members house and ate dinner with them. Then after dinner we were able to watch the Lego movie, it was pretty good. It felt weird to be able to watch a real movie again... I felt like I was breaking the rules or something haha! but our mission president lets us watch any PG or G rated movie on Christmas, so it was ok!!!

Other than that this week has been pretty slow. It was hard with the holidays, but I am hopeful that this week the work will pick back up. Our mission president challenged our whole mission to read the Book of Mormon all the way through starting on Christmas and being done by New Year's Day. At first I thought this would be impossible, and I was skeptical as to if I would even get anything out of it. But as of now I am in Mosiah and its amazing the things that I have learned and put together reading it that quickly. I know that the Book of Mormon is true!!!! It has helped me so much and it gives me so much direction in my life as to what to do. I am so grateful to be on a mission and I'm thankful that I get to share this message with other people! I love this work!!!

I hope you all have a great week and have a fun new years!!!! Love and miss you all!

Love Elder Farnsworth

Moving Day

Well the day has come.... I have to leave Melfort. We got our transfer calls on Friday afternoon and now I am being transferred and moved to War Road Minnesota! Back to the mother land haha! I have so many emotions over my transfer call, I'm really excited to go to the states and serve, but I am so sad to be leaving Melfort. I have grown so close to the people here and it really does feel like I am leaving home and leaving my family again. There are so many people here that I have grown close to, and there is so many activities that I will miss doing here. I think this was one of the best places for me to start out my mission. I feel like I have learned so much in the past 6 months here. I will definitely miss it! 

But now its on to War Road. I guess War Road is actually even smaller than Melfort... i didn't really know that was possible haha! War Road has a population of 1500 people and there are a couple little towns around War Road with like 3000 people. I have heard that I will be doing a lot of driving there. It is about 30 minutes to each city, so that will be interesting. I also get a new companion, his name is Elder Burnette and this will be his last transfer before going home. I am so excited to get there and start working! 

Other than that our week was pretty boring, we were able to teach a couple of less active and recent convert lessons, we also taught the family that we found last week. We were able to teach them twice this week and both lessons were really good, they asked a bunch of questions and they seemed to be really interested.

This week I had one of the most amazing experiences yet. On Thursday night Jordan called us and he sounded pretty worried. He asked if we could meet him and Erin at the church to give him a blessing. He asked me to give the blessing and I was really nervous. I gave him a blessing, and I can honestly say that I have never felt the spirit that strong before. I know that priesthood power is real and I know that it can bless our lives. I am so grateful that Heavenly Father has given this power to bless the lives around us and also to bless our own lives.

I am so grateful for the time that I have been able to serve in Melfort. Everybody always say how much they love the people in the areas they serve and how hard it is to leave them, I now know exactly what they mean! It is SO hard to leave, but its amazing to know that there are new experiences and new people to love! 

I hope everyone has a great week! Love you all! 

Love Elder Farnsworth

Here are some pictures of places and people of Melfort.

 Melfort Welcome Sign

 The Vera Family

They are from Chili and would feed the missionaries every Friday.

 The Ethiers

Sister Ethiers is a recent convert.  Bro. Ethier is the Branch Mission Leader.

 Benton Froc

 Jordan & Erin

The Turner Family

The Praskis

The Atwoods - aka Grandma & Grandpa

Miracles

This has been a pretty good week! We saw so many miracles in our area this week, I don't even know where to begin!!!

So on Tuesday Elder Schollars and I did the unmentionable... we went tracting. We didn't have much to do and we had to fill up our time so we went and tracted. We tracted in the ghetto area of Melfort and we actually had quite a bit of success! we found a family out of it and also a single guy that is in his 20s. So in all this week we found 5 new investigators!!!! That's unheard of in Melfort! 

We were able to teach them all, we taught them about the birth of Christ, and we had really good lessons with them all, it was a huge blessing! It was crazy because this whole transfer we have been praying for a family to teach and then just like that a miracle happens and we found a family! It's so amazing to know that Heavenly Father truly does answer our prayers! 

Also this week we were able to teach Elizabeth. It was a really good lesson! The spirit was so strong. She actually really opened up to us and she told us how much she loves having us over and she said she loves the branch, but she said she isn't ready to commit yet. I really admire her, I have never had so much genuine care for a person before. All I want for her is to get baptized and to start progressing in the gospel. I really do think that one day she will be baptized, it just takes time, and she really wants to be sure of her decision. Its amazing to see how much she has grown as we have been teaching her. Elizabeth has been meeting with us for the last 5 months and I really do notice a difference in her! 

This week we also had Christmas zone conference on Thursday. It was really fun. We had great talks and we even got to watch meet the Mormons. It was really good! I got all of my Christmas packages and letters and I loved them all! I haven't opened any yet...YET! haha! 

Well I hope everyone has a great week! The church is TRUE! Love you all!

Love Elder Farnsworth