Hey mom and dad!
It was so great to talk to you yesterday! I loved seeing your beautiful shining faces. And im so excited for you to go on that trip! When do you leave and when do you come back? I want pictures ya hear??
On to the next year. My baptized and confirmed goal for next year is at least five. I'm hoping to get more. Our upcoming baptism counts for this year. I can't believe i get to baptize him. I'm so excited. I will send you pictures for sure!
Gees i dont even know what to say! We had a great week! I'm sad this is our last week together (Elder Buhler and I) But it has been so great to work with him. we have seen countless miracles. Miracles literally everyday. I have loved serving with him, but I'm glad we are both young on the mission so we will be able to see each other quite a bit later on. Maybe we will serve around each other later on.
Today for p-day we are going to play some basketball i think. I'm super excited. I need to get out there and just run and run till i drop.
This last week in Gridley is going to be like that. Work until i can't work anymore. I'm pumped. I gotta make this last week count!
I wonder where i will go. I will let you guys know next week. Hopefully i know by then.
I still can't believe i have a baptism this week. It is so unreal. I'm just not used to it i guess. Also we picked up a new investigator two weeks ago and this past Friday we taught the gospel of Jesus Christ and commited him to baptism for January 21st. It was crazy! I'm used to it taking seven months! But the Lord prepares people in different ways and on a entirely different time table.
I know that Heavenly Father has a plan for every person i teach. I love that i get to help Him fufill His plan. I love being God's instrument. The same God who created our spirits. I love that I'm working side by side with Jesus Christ, the Creator of the world. The only person who could perform that Atonement. With Him all things are possible. Who wouldn't want Jesus Christ on their side? I do. I need him. I can't do anything without His help. Together They give us power to do all things that we must do. I know with surety that we can't access these powers from on high unless we pray and not just simply praying, but fervently and pleading with our Maker. If we want to use the Atonement, we have to prove to our Heavenly Father we deserve its healing powers and to Jesus Christ that we were worth the suffering. I love Them both in ways I can't really describe. They live. They love us. And i love them.
Have a wonderful week.
Remember that just because Christmas is over doesn't mean that Jesus Christ wasn't born :) Still think and ponder about what He has done for us. It still amazes me the circumstances He came down to. What a true testament of His humility.
Love you all!
Monday, December 26, 2011
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Man alive, I love my mission
Hi mom!
I cant believe we have a baptism coming up!!! The Lord has blessed us so much for our efforts! I feel so spoiled! I cant wait till the thirty first! It still seems unreal to me though.
I also cant wait till next Sunday. That will be so weird to Skype! So we are going on at one our time, which means..two your time. Hopefully everyone will be there. or whoever can. At our members house that we email at we come and use two computers and i always call him on Skype and say we need to practice for the big day so right now we are practicing what we are going to say while emailing. It is really fun. But i really am excited.
I opened all my presents :) sorry about that i just couldnt wait!! I showed the pictures to like everyone, and Sister Pratt. She liked them. I loved them and the GPS is like amazing!! Its so nice. and everything else is so cool! The pen is really nice Dad, thanks papa!
Anyway i have seen so many miracles this week. We are doing the Stop Smoking Workshop with a couple of people and they truly are doing great. They are putting their 100 % trust in the Lord and they are seeing the blessing from it. I love watching them grow and their testimonies of this restored gospel. I love the gospel so much, it is so interesting and so powerful.
Elder Buhler and I talked and we are going to do everything we can to be exactly obedient. We need all the success we can get and that is only through living the law of obedience. We are getting blessings already by going out of way to be obedient. We are having happier days. The amount of disapointing things isnt decreasing but our attuitude towards them is improving.
Man alive i love my mission. It has been the biggest blessing in my life. Im so lucky to be out here. I will most likely get transferred on Jan. third. I think wherever i go i will be homesick for Gridley. I have come to love every bit of this place. I used to want outta here so bad! Heavenly Father has a bigger plan for us all. I know it. I cant deny that i know it. I will miss the people. Dang its going to be weird!
Anyway we have a half p-day today and we get the rest on Thursday. We go do a Santa run on thursday. That will be in Yuba city.
I better go, i wish i had more to email about but all we are doing now is just cranking out the less-active lessons. We are getting Bill ready for baptism. Cant wait! make sure you remind me to tell you about his baptism on sunday. Dont forget. I love you guys so much! I love the Lord incredible amounts. I would literally be no where without his Atonement. Let us not take that for granted. Use it daily. Not just in the repenting process but in everything. Have a great week! talk to you soon!!!!
Merry Christmas. Dont forget the real reason of Christmas!
Elder Simons
I cant believe we have a baptism coming up!!! The Lord has blessed us so much for our efforts! I feel so spoiled! I cant wait till the thirty first! It still seems unreal to me though.
I also cant wait till next Sunday. That will be so weird to Skype! So we are going on at one our time, which means..two your time. Hopefully everyone will be there. or whoever can. At our members house that we email at we come and use two computers and i always call him on Skype and say we need to practice for the big day so right now we are practicing what we are going to say while emailing. It is really fun. But i really am excited.
I opened all my presents :) sorry about that i just couldnt wait!! I showed the pictures to like everyone, and Sister Pratt. She liked them. I loved them and the GPS is like amazing!! Its so nice. and everything else is so cool! The pen is really nice Dad, thanks papa!
Anyway i have seen so many miracles this week. We are doing the Stop Smoking Workshop with a couple of people and they truly are doing great. They are putting their 100 % trust in the Lord and they are seeing the blessing from it. I love watching them grow and their testimonies of this restored gospel. I love the gospel so much, it is so interesting and so powerful.
Elder Buhler and I talked and we are going to do everything we can to be exactly obedient. We need all the success we can get and that is only through living the law of obedience. We are getting blessings already by going out of way to be obedient. We are having happier days. The amount of disapointing things isnt decreasing but our attuitude towards them is improving.
Man alive i love my mission. It has been the biggest blessing in my life. Im so lucky to be out here. I will most likely get transferred on Jan. third. I think wherever i go i will be homesick for Gridley. I have come to love every bit of this place. I used to want outta here so bad! Heavenly Father has a bigger plan for us all. I know it. I cant deny that i know it. I will miss the people. Dang its going to be weird!
Anyway we have a half p-day today and we get the rest on Thursday. We go do a Santa run on thursday. That will be in Yuba city.
I better go, i wish i had more to email about but all we are doing now is just cranking out the less-active lessons. We are getting Bill ready for baptism. Cant wait! make sure you remind me to tell you about his baptism on sunday. Dont forget. I love you guys so much! I love the Lord incredible amounts. I would literally be no where without his Atonement. Let us not take that for granted. Use it daily. Not just in the repenting process but in everything. Have a great week! talk to you soon!!!!
Merry Christmas. Dont forget the real reason of Christmas!
Elder Simons
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
The trial of your faith
Such a good week!!
So first i will start off with the training we had down in Citrus Heights. Wow! That's about all i can say. I learned so much about the Atonement, and how we MUST use it in our finding, teaching, and every aspect of missionary life. It the central theme in our church. They really helped us all understand our purpose better. I love what they said about waking up in the morning: "at 6:30 you wake up and show the law of obedience and at 6:31 we show the law of sacrifice and get going to exercise" That is always how it is. Sometimes it makes no sense at all why i have to exercise. I bike a thousand miles a day usually! But i still exercise because Heavenly Father put that in my path to see how much i want it. It takes sacrifice but the blessings from it are far greater than the worth of getting myself out of bed and exercising. I love the sacrifices i get to make on my mission. They ALL result in an abundance of blessings. They also said at the meeting if we truly understand our purpose we will double the amount of people we have in the pool for baptismal dates. So we had zero. But double of zero is one right? :) I was a little down. But i figured if (and these guys are from SLC, that were teaching us) they promised it, we could do it. So the next day we had our "do or die" lesson with the deaf investigator, and we watched the Resoration DVD and let me just tell you the spirit was there. Everyone could feel it. No one, absolutely no one could deny that this Church is the Church that Jesus Christ set up personally and under His direction. And i said "our purpose is to teach and baptize, we have been teaching you for months, i have been personally teaching you for seven months, and missionaries have been teaching you for over twenty years, are you ready to be baptized?" and he said..........he said... ......he said...."yes its time." I about...cried..you know what i think i did. I could not believe it! It truly testified of the truthfulness of the scripture "And now, I, Moroni, would speak somewhat concerning these things; I would show unto the world that afaith is things which are bhoped for and cnot seen; wherefore, dispute not because ye see not, for ye receive no dwitness until after the etrial of your faith" We did not get this baptism until after the trial of our faith. It really took so many tears, and sweat (biking there), and days upon days going hungry pleading with the Lord for this miracle to happen and I'm happy to say he will be baptized on December 31st 2011! I still cant believe it! It is so nuts! AH!!! I love this guy, and I'm so proud of the journey he has been on and where he is now. He will not regret this decision. AH! So yeah! we had lots of blessings this week! I cant believe it. But everyone pray hard for my investigator so he can make this date. Please.
But it has been a really good week. My leg is basically almost better. I love this work. I love the Lord.
Elder Simons!
So first i will start off with the training we had down in Citrus Heights. Wow! That's about all i can say. I learned so much about the Atonement, and how we MUST use it in our finding, teaching, and every aspect of missionary life. It the central theme in our church. They really helped us all understand our purpose better. I love what they said about waking up in the morning: "at 6:30 you wake up and show the law of obedience and at 6:31 we show the law of sacrifice and get going to exercise" That is always how it is. Sometimes it makes no sense at all why i have to exercise. I bike a thousand miles a day usually! But i still exercise because Heavenly Father put that in my path to see how much i want it. It takes sacrifice but the blessings from it are far greater than the worth of getting myself out of bed and exercising. I love the sacrifices i get to make on my mission. They ALL result in an abundance of blessings. They also said at the meeting if we truly understand our purpose we will double the amount of people we have in the pool for baptismal dates. So we had zero. But double of zero is one right? :) I was a little down. But i figured if (and these guys are from SLC, that were teaching us) they promised it, we could do it. So the next day we had our "do or die" lesson with the deaf investigator, and we watched the Resoration DVD and let me just tell you the spirit was there. Everyone could feel it. No one, absolutely no one could deny that this Church is the Church that Jesus Christ set up personally and under His direction. And i said "our purpose is to teach and baptize, we have been teaching you for months, i have been personally teaching you for seven months, and missionaries have been teaching you for over twenty years, are you ready to be baptized?" and he said..........he said... ......he said...."yes its time." I about...cried..you know what i think i did. I could not believe it! It truly testified of the truthfulness of the scripture "And now, I, Moroni, would speak somewhat concerning these things; I would show unto the world that afaith is things which are bhoped for and cnot seen; wherefore, dispute not because ye see not, for ye receive no dwitness until after the etrial of your faith" We did not get this baptism until after the trial of our faith. It really took so many tears, and sweat (biking there), and days upon days going hungry pleading with the Lord for this miracle to happen and I'm happy to say he will be baptized on December 31st 2011! I still cant believe it! It is so nuts! AH!!! I love this guy, and I'm so proud of the journey he has been on and where he is now. He will not regret this decision. AH! So yeah! we had lots of blessings this week! I cant believe it. But everyone pray hard for my investigator so he can make this date. Please.
But it has been a really good week. My leg is basically almost better. I love this work. I love the Lord.
Elder Simons!
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Aren't prayers amazing?
Hey mom and dad!
This week has been crazy, so we get to share a car with the Liberty Ward Elders, we get it three days a week and they get it four days. It already has boosted the people we see and the success we are having at finding people home later on at night.
So we had another lesson with our Deaf Investigator. Man that was stressful. I wanted to rip my hair out. He keeps pulling up crazy excuses why he shouldn't get baptized right now. So this next week we are going in and doing a "do or die" lesson with him. He needs to be baptized, if he says no we are dropping him until March or something. But i probably will be transferred by then.
We had a lesson with our twenty two year old investigator. (his wife is a member) I want him to be baptized before i leave too. He will be like the perfect member. I think we have dinner with him tonight. He is really cool. I lost my planner and pen this week so that has been more than frustrating. I lost my good pen.
We had a lot of less active lessons this week, i love that work. We were over at one of their houses this week and the wife said the closing prayer (and i have been working with these guys for six months) and her prayer was one of the most beautiful prayers i have ever heard. Her testimonoy has truly re-sparked and i was crying during the prayer, but luckily no one saw me. But the prayer amazed me. Aren't prayers amazing? Sometimes in my moments of weakness i forget to really think about what a prayer really means. Who we are actually talking to. And the true power behind it. A prayer is a simple gesture that can go further then we humans can comprehend. We talk to God. The Creator of our spirits. The Father of all. We as humans can ask Him for anything we want. (we can ask but it must be the will of Him for the prayer to be answered) I love the doctrine behind prayer. It is simply a miracle. Heavenly Father loves us so much. How do we know if the Book of Mormon is true? We pray about it. Prayer is how we know and find out the truth of all things. I don't know if I'm making any sense but i love prayer. I may not understand HOW it works but i know it DOES work. I have seen many miracles only thru and by prayer. Let us all pray more often and always have a constant open communication with our Father who is in heaven.
Elder Buhler has been sick this week but he is doing better. We are still loving each other's company. He is such a cool kid.
My mission gives me so many blessings, i just need to look for them and help those around me find them. I love you all, I love the Lord, i love the eternal and everlasting work.
Love,
Elder Simons
This week has been crazy, so we get to share a car with the Liberty Ward Elders, we get it three days a week and they get it four days. It already has boosted the people we see and the success we are having at finding people home later on at night.
So we had another lesson with our Deaf Investigator. Man that was stressful. I wanted to rip my hair out. He keeps pulling up crazy excuses why he shouldn't get baptized right now. So this next week we are going in and doing a "do or die" lesson with him. He needs to be baptized, if he says no we are dropping him until March or something. But i probably will be transferred by then.
We had a lesson with our twenty two year old investigator. (his wife is a member) I want him to be baptized before i leave too. He will be like the perfect member. I think we have dinner with him tonight. He is really cool. I lost my planner and pen this week so that has been more than frustrating. I lost my good pen.
We had a lot of less active lessons this week, i love that work. We were over at one of their houses this week and the wife said the closing prayer (and i have been working with these guys for six months) and her prayer was one of the most beautiful prayers i have ever heard. Her testimonoy has truly re-sparked and i was crying during the prayer, but luckily no one saw me. But the prayer amazed me. Aren't prayers amazing? Sometimes in my moments of weakness i forget to really think about what a prayer really means. Who we are actually talking to. And the true power behind it. A prayer is a simple gesture that can go further then we humans can comprehend. We talk to God. The Creator of our spirits. The Father of all. We as humans can ask Him for anything we want. (we can ask but it must be the will of Him for the prayer to be answered) I love the doctrine behind prayer. It is simply a miracle. Heavenly Father loves us so much. How do we know if the Book of Mormon is true? We pray about it. Prayer is how we know and find out the truth of all things. I don't know if I'm making any sense but i love prayer. I may not understand HOW it works but i know it DOES work. I have seen many miracles only thru and by prayer. Let us all pray more often and always have a constant open communication with our Father who is in heaven.
Elder Buhler has been sick this week but he is doing better. We are still loving each other's company. He is such a cool kid.
My mission gives me so many blessings, i just need to look for them and help those around me find them. I love you all, I love the Lord, i love the eternal and everlasting work.
Love,
Elder Simons
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