Out 2 Months!

Hello family and friends! Officially been out for two months now, and am currently while typing this sitting on the bust next to a black guy who I thought was speaking a different language, until I heard the words, "maybe Saturday or sunday" and just realized he is in fact speaking english....... 

Anyway another slow week out here in the VRM (Virginia Richmond mission) 

Tuesday-We tried a lot of potentials with no luck, spent a lot of time on the bus. Also the busses have been incredibly unreliable this last week. Also today was district meeting. 

Wednesday-We had interviews with the mission President and it was super awesome, President is the coolest guy ever. After that we spent the rest of the day going to appointments that fell through.

Thursday- We had another lesson with Patrick and he got into some super deep stuff like the king follet discourse while we were gone. He had a ton of questions about who was God's father and why does Joseph Smith say God was once a man when the bible says he's without beginning and without end and without mother and without father. Deep stuff. Stuff that were not really qualified to answer. He also asked about Kolob, no idea what he researched while we were gone haha. But we'll see where our next lesson with him goes. 

Friday-unsuccessful "finding" attempts, we got told off by more than one old baptist lady.

Saturday-the highlight was the AP's randomly stopped in that night and took us out to dinner at Red Robin, yum, and they paid. It was a cute date. That's pretty it.

So yeah still slow. But doing good 

Elder McArthur 

 

 Nature

The Bridge to Terabithia

 District Meeting

P-day

Bike Crash:)

Hello Family and friends!

Monday night we had a Facebook chat video lesson, (like FaceTime), with Helen. We talked about the gospel of Jesus Christ and at the end we invited her to be baptized and she accepted, and she was in tears. a super awesome lesson.

Tuesday we met with a guy named Patrick, he is from Jamaica. He believes in the Bible, but not a particular denomination, however he follows the bible 100%. He is super smart with the bible so it was a bit intimidating, he was a referral from the YSA sisters and they met him maybe 3 days before we did. When we met with him I asked him how far he got into the Book of Mormon and he said through Alma and skimmed the rest of the book. And he was STUDYING, not just reading but cross referencing etc. he said the minute he finds something in the BOM that contradicts the bible he's gonna kick us out and were still here so.. we'll meet with him again this week.

Also Tuesday I crashed my bike, I’m prone to these kinds of things.... I’m 100% fine but I bent the gear changer thing on my bike and now only half the gears work..... nice.

Wednesday we had exchanges with the District leader, so I went out to his area, Rivannah, with him. His area is huge and it is the BOONIES so it was mostly driving down super awesome windy twisty backroads that just made me wish I was driving a focus RS really bad, but the country is super pretty, rolling hills forever and the leaves are starting to change color which is awesome. 

Friday we met a guy named Linwood, he believes in the bible but says organized religion is meant to just control people and for money, He then proceeded to tell us what Mormons believe in. So we taught him the restoration and what we actually believe in and he said, "i dig it" and that he relates to Joseph Smith in that he too is searching for the truth. No return appointment but we'll stop by later this week.

Saturday nothing happened. 

Met a whole bunch more crazies on the bus this week. A guy named Tiny, who was incredibly high, it was almost impressive how high he was and still able to somewhat function, kept asking us if we had girlfriends, in much more profane and vulgar ways than that, it was awesome haha. Oh I love public transportation.

Thanks for the support 

Elder McArthur

Our investigators Jose A and Jose B!

1 month!

Hello Family and Friends! I have now been in the field almost 1 month and the time has flown. I'm sure it will slow down evenually haha I hope not. 

This week was a lot of the same as last week, we tried to contact a lot of people and no one was home or was interested. We did a lot of service chopping wood and raking leaves though. Pretty much every morning we go chop wood or rake leaves with Robert. Robert is about 60 he's a black guy and has only been a member for about a year, his favorite thing to say is he is a member of the RESTORED gospel haha hes super funny. 


We had 2 lessons this week and we took him with us to one of them, he fell asleep about half way through and started snoring! So I said "Robert! (to get him awake) how did you come to know the Book of Mormon is true?" he jerked awake and he ended up bearing a super powerful testimony about the book of mormon and at the end he read moroni 10:3-5 to Earl our investigator and when he finished reading he stood up an yelled "Amen! I Testify!" in his aweome accent haha he's the best, we take him tracting with us too, he just hangs out with all the Elders. If Every member was as excited about missionary work as Robert the whole world would be converted.

Conference! conference was awesome!, I think this is the first time in all of my 18 years of conference sessions I didn't fall asleep. Not even once. I watched all 10 hours and didn't fall asleep. 


My favorite talks were Elder Oaks talk on saturday about the family proclamation, it was awesome and makes me realize how lucky we are to have that knowledge. I loved the quote someone else gave from Elder Oaks that says "salvation is personal, but exhaltation is a family matter" or something along those lines.
The next one was Tad R. Callister's talk about the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith. Holy cow that talk was awesome! And the last was Neil L. Anderson's, this was my favorite, about how conference is inspired directly from Christ and that what they're telling us is what Jesus wants us to hear. 


Also between sessions on sunday we had a huge potluck with all the members who watch conference at the church with us and after that we have a Joke/ story class before the last session, some elders started it a few years ago and its been going on in this ward ever since. the kids love it haha we all put our names in a jar and the kids pull draw names and if they draw you you have to go up and tell a joke or a funny story to the whole class. the called me and my joke was, "What did one ocean say to the other? Nothing they just waved" har har har yeah that was the best I could do......

In other news, it's finally decided to be fall around here and I'm excited! It's getting colder and colder which means no more sweaty bikerides, but also means I'm going to freeze my butt off haha I'll let you know in the spring time which is worse, the cold or the heat. 

Thanks for all the love and packages and letters! You guys are the best I love you alll. 
Elder McArthur  

Our zone between sessions of conference

District meeting shenanigans 

Last P day's hike

Sucess!

SUCESS! Just kidding.... but hey now you're reading this sooooo. you have to get to the bottom of the email for the exciting bits, so you gotta read the whole thing to get there, or i guess you could skip it and go straight to the bottom....Agency at work. 

This week was a whole lotta nothing. We have no progressing investigators, so we pretty much tried to contact all of our potential investigators every day. Because we're on bikes it takes a good portion of time to get around and we probably end up biking between 8-10 miles a day. 12 on good days, or bad..... depends on how you look at it. and most of it is uphill, because as i have learned, there isnt a flat stretch of ground anywhere in Virginia and our apartment is literally on the highest point of ground for miles.  so coming home every day is quite the chore. There are no mountains also, at least by Utah standards. just rolling hills. imma have huge quads when i come home

Anyway so we pretty much knocked doors and rode our bikes, we found one man named John and had an awesome discussion with him on his doorstep about the afterlife and such. and we gave him a Plan of salvation pamphlet and set a return appointment. when we went back we were stoked, one because it was something to actually do, and 2 because he had a ton of notes and marked up the pamphlet. most of his questions dealt with the restoration so we ended up teaching that instead of the PloS and he seemed really wary, we tried to set another appointment at the end and he said he'd call us instead. which pretty much is the polite way of saying i dont wanna talk anymore. its been about 5 days since then and we havent heard back. soooooo

With no one to study for I've just been reading the Book of Mormon every morning and it's been awesome, my personal testimony of its truthfulness has really increased as well as my understanding of it. One thing I've been doing is reading along with the institute manuals open on gospel library so I can reference things when i don't  understand something and it has been awesome.

thursday was zone conference, the highlight of the week! our mission is now authorized to use facebook! so everyone add me as a friend! im just under Kayden McArthur on there. and if you know anyone living in charolettsville who could use the gospel......... set me up so we actually have someone to teach haha..... so the topic of zone conference was using facebook to further the work, i still dont really know what to do with it(facebook) yet, but were working on it.

Sunday we tried to go tracting because we have nothing else to do, but it turns out there was a huge benefit/charity concert at UVA because of the events of August 12th (the riots) so Justin Timberlake, Ariana Grande, Coldplay, and Dave Matthews band are performing, plus some other famous people I can't remember, we biked down past the stadium and literally a BILLION people were flocking to the stadium becuase it is a FREE concert. RIP to us, what a time to be a missionary. we were too early to hear/see anything cool, but fun to think all these famous people are in the same town as me right now lol. And also UVA beat Boise State so go Cavaliers to all the Bronco haters out there. Jk I don't really know anything about college football rn so that could be a good or bad thing 

So thats pretty much it...... very exciting I know, but hey no one said it'd be easy. Also shout out to Sarah McArthur for the dope postcard, thanks! but yep I'm still alive and well kicking around in Charolettsville, I know the lord and the spirit will lead us to those who they have prepared, it just takes time. 
Love you all!

Elder McArthur

Sugar Hollow Hike