Following Footsteps

Elder Taylor is coming to take my place in Tulare. We had transfer calls this week and I am following the footsteps of Elder Speer, Elder Perkins, Elder Call, and Elder Oliver and going North to Merced. I'll be a Zone Leader there with Elder Gray. It should be a lot of fun. They are completely taking out the Tulare Sisters, so Elder Thornton and Elder Taylor will cover the whole of Tulare. Elder Taylor was trained by Elder Perkins. 

This week I went on Exchanges with Elder Derbidge. It rained down in the Lindsay, but it was a pretty fun exchange. I got to do another Baptismal interview. I had another one on Wednesday as well, and I could have easily had more baptismal interviews, but some people drank coffee.

We had another crazy week as far as work goes. We found 11 new investigators. I'll miss the team up structure that exists in Tulare. It helps things be more productive.

On Friday we went to a wedding for a pair of the Sister missionaries' investigators. It was the first time I've actually seen people get married I think. We got some strawberries from the Zone Leaders, actually from Brother Chandler in Porterville. They were good. 

Elder Frausto is killing it in DC. He has already had some baptisms. 

We randomly had a former investigator named Kennedy come to church on Sunday. 

I have really been focusing on helping my investigators see why the gospel of Jesus Christ is important for them on a personal level. In my studies I have been studying all of the scriptures related to Jesus Christ Atonement Through. It has been neat to learn more about his Atonement.

I really loved being a Zone leader, and I loved all of the opportunities to minister to my district. Now I will be able to minister to district Leaders instead.

This Sunday we are having a combined MLC/DLC meeting with Elder Brent Nielson, the director of missionary work and a 70. I am super excited.

I'll tell you how the Merced is.

I'll miss the old Tulare and all of the dairy stuff over here.

Love,

Elder Keeley

picture April 24th

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Exhange Temple interview and Easter

​​I had a good, and extremely full week this week. On Monday and Tuesday I went on exchanges with Elder Derbidge, we set five baptismal dates together. We taught our family of four and set a baptismal date with them. The biggest obstacle with them is how busy they are because of Sports. They are receptive, but hard to catch, and it is hard for them to go to church on Sunday. We also set a baptismal date with an investigator named Pablo. Elder Thornton and I contacted him, and then Elder Thornton and Elder Derbidge taught him, and now Elder Derbidge and I taught him. He had read all the way through to 1st Nephi 7, which is actually pretty good.

 On Wednesday we had the Temple trip, which was wonderful, and then an exchange with the Zone leaders in the land down under. Porterville. We went on a home teaching split with the Stake President where we visited his home teaching families with him. In the evening we teamed up with Brotehr Chandler, but only taught one more lesson.

 On Thursday I went on exchanges with Elder Mendez. I worked on Stewardship reports and did a baptismal interview. We're going on another exchange next week.

 On Friday I finished the rest of the stewardship reports. We saw the Assistants and Zone leaders. We had a pretty slow day after that. 

On Saturday we found a golden new investigator named Danielle. We set a baptismal date with her. She just moved in and was looking for a church when we showed up the first time. We found her with Brother Hamilton a while ago. 

We had a boatload of less actives at church on Sunday, and a few less active families. We took a Priest out with us after church so that he could "eat like a missionary." We had a Big Tongan family have a missionary return home. On Easter everyone has a BBQ, and they like to share with the missionaries.

Love,

Elder Keeley

Picture 4/17/17

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Zone Conference, Exchanges and Snails

I had a pretty good week this week. It started off with a good exchange with Elder Maas. I went to Lindsay, and we tore it up. We found a lot of new investigators and potentials. All of Lindsay is on fire.

On Thursday we had Zone Conference in Hanford. I saw Sister Robison from Caruthers. It was a great meeting. We learned more about the importance of working through members, and teaching about the Sabbath day effectively. We talked more about Sacrifice. 

on Friday I went on Exchanges with Elder Matienzo. We had a pretty good time. We focused on finding for most of the day, and we had some decent success as well.

It rained a lot while I was on exchanges with Elder Matienzo, and there were snails everywhere at every house. I don't know where they all came from, but it was crazy. 

We taught some interesting people this week. We taught one man that believes that Christ is coming three main times, and that he has already come the second time, and is the leader of the congregation that he attends. 

Elder Alfredo made it to DC and is already doing some great work.

On Saturday we participated in a stake Just serve project for Billion graves. We went to the Cemetery and took pictures fo different graves there. I had a hula Hoe, and I took care of any weeds and Mole Hills. It was lots of fun. Billion graves is really cool.

We were able to teach Junior this week again. The biggest hold up for his baptism is just finding a day for when everyone in his family can be there. They are a pretty busy family. Something happened recently though, so we should be able to help him be baptized soon. It's been long enough for him. When he prayed last time, all he said was thank you that I can be baptized. 

He is pretty cool.

It was a pretty good week all around, but we're working to get more people to church.

Love,

Elder Keeley

Picture April 10th

Snails

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Finding, DLC, Conference and more.

I had a really busy and spiritually powerful week this week. I also had bad allergies the whole time. I started my week with an exchange with Elder Maas. We were able to find two new investigators and biked around everywhere. We talked to a lot of people. We also teamed up with Nick Hamilton. It was good. Then we swapped Elder Maas out, and Elder Thornton and I teamed up with Matt Cox. We decided to set a goal to find 3 new investigators during the evening. We found 2 and a half, and a bunch of potential investigators. an 11 year old came in at the end of a lesson, but we didn't count him yet. 

On Wednesday I went to DLC with Elder Sullivan. It was a really good one. We learned about Tad R Callister's consecration devotional principles. It was powerful. 

We came back to Tulare and ate dinner, then biked over to MCM. Elder Thornton went on a split for MCM like usual. Tim and I then went to Lindsay and interviewed Gabriel, one of the Lindsay's investigators. He got baptized on Saturday after priesthood session. MY whole Wednesday was a meeting.

On Thursday we did some more biking. WE found a cool investigator named Justin. It was super windy all day long. We actually teamed up with Mike for a while. We went on a split with Brother Hepworth for an hour. On Friday we kept biking. We taught Henry. He had a non member Brother move in with him just barely.

I had an interesting epiphany today as I was taking a power nap while listening to the missionary broadcast DVD that we had. Elder Bednar talks about the scripture that says the power of godliness is manifest in ordinances. Without the ordinances it is not manifest. He was pushing towards inviting everyone to be baptized, but it really applies to church as well. Church is generally the first place where investigators are able to witness an ordinance performed by proper priesthood authority. It is the first place where Godliness is manifest unto them. For the investigators to know if this is the True Church of Jesus Christ, they must go to the church, and witness the Sacrament. I will seek to apply this teaching.

We didn't watch any conference on Saturday besides Priesthood session. We spent the time finding  and trying to teach. We only had one investigator watch conference this time. 

On Sunday We watched Conference and found a big family to teach as well. I really loved this conference. I liked all of the talks. My favorite ones were President Eyring's talk in Priesthood session, and the L. Whitney Clayton's talk, and Elder Rasband's talk, and President Monson's charity talk.

We ended up with 12 new investigators for the week. That's the most I've had so far.

Love,

Elder Keeley

4/3/17 picture

I caught a lizard.