Hello everyone!

Once again, emailing on a Saturday. Last week of the transfer so that’s how it goes. It’s still weird to me, and all our investigators wanted to meet today and we had to tell them we couldn’t…
but that’s okay we’ll see them soon.

Anyway, this week was great! We had some great lessons with members of the church present to be friends to the people we teach. The missionaries eventually will always leave, but the members can stay and help them feel comfortable and loved.

Angus is progressing toward baptism and is planning on coming to church again tomorrow and loved it last week. He’s been reading in the Book of Mormon and believes it’s true. I guess a movie came on on TV during the week and actually was talking all about how the Book of Mormon came to be and about the Nephites and Lamanites…. what the heck where did this movie come from?? He took this as a little push from God showing him the truthfulness of the book, which is awesome.

Sarah has been reading from the Book as well, but we were supposed to have a visit with her yesterday, and we arrived and she wasn’t there, so we called, and it turns out she was having a very stressful day, forgot our appointment, drove to the woods and just started walking in the middle of nowhere. So when we called she had no idea how far out she was and we had to reschedule, but that’s okay. x) Glad she is still solid and is reading and praying.

Just had a lesson with Latanya this morning, she accepted a copy of the Book of Mormon and her sister apparently used to read it to her years ago when her sister was meeting with the missionaries! How cool is that?? That’s preparedness if I ever saw it.

For my friends and family who are confused why we focus so much on the Book of Mormon, part of it is because SO many people here already have and read and believe in the Bible, and so do we! But we are trying to add to that faith and knowledge they have, and we know the Book of Mormon comes from God, and that He has provided it as a second witness of Christ and His Gospel.

We got our transfer calls yesterday..

Elder Whitesides and I are staying in Battle Creek
Our district leader is leaving, and I am going to be the new district leader (AHHH HELP ME)
We are losing one of the cars, so we and the other Elders will be trading weekly… :/

I’m very excited for this change that’s happening, and also a little nervous. I know that as I rely on God, not myself, that all will be well and we will see much success and this district won’t go up in flames… x) (Proverbs 3: 5-6)

I love you all and hope you have a wonderful week! Thank you all for what you do for me and for others, because what you do for others really is service to God in the end.

Elder Breinholt

My Old District in Oscoda:

Hello everyone! How are all my friends and family doing this lovely day?

This week I have learned a lot about listening to the still small voice. You’d think I would have and should have probably picked up on that more in the last year, but hey, better late than never I suppose. ;P Anyway, there were many experiences throughout this week in which Heavenly Father was testing my spiritual ears in listening to the tiny whisperings of the Spirit. And I’m serious when I say tiny whisperings, because they were so small and they are so easy to just ignore, but that little thought that comes into your head for a split second telling you to do something good–It’s not always just a random thought from your mind. I believe that more often than not, it is a prompting from God. They can be very easy to push aside or make excuses for, but for example as we were getting into the car one night about to head home, I had this tiny little feeling for just a split second saying “you should talk to that guy over there.” I noticed a man out on his back porch smoking, and he lived on a street we had already knocked a few days before. Instantly excuses start flooding into my head such as “It’s late and we’re supposed to be home soon.” “We probably already talked to him and we’ll just be bothering him again.” “He doesn’t seem like he’ll be interested.” etc, etc, etc. But I took the keys out of the ignition and said to Elder McGuire, “I have a feeling we should talk to that guy over there, to which he responded, “well then let’s go!” This man showed interest in coming closer to God, and he probably wouldn’t have been reached for possibly another year by missionaries in the future.

There were many other cases throughout the week similar to this for which I don’t have time to write. But one other thing I wanted to talk about is that Angus, our top investigator, went to church yesterday! The Scovel’s brought him and he stayed the whole three hours! It was so great! You could definitely tell that he felt the spirit throughout the meeting, and has a strengthened resolve to read more in the Book of Mormon and Bible. He is on date for baptism and if all goes well, he will be baptized on my birthday, September 24th! I know that it has been the prayer of members in this ward that has caused many of the miracles we have seen this past week, and I call upon you as well to add these people into your specific prayers

Angus & Family
Sarah & Family
Latanya & Family

I do this not out of boasting or selfishness, but because I have a testimony of specific prayer. Prayer. Truly. Does. Set. Things. In. Motion.

I love you all so much! I hope you have a wonderful week! We will continue to work hard and do our best but I hope you will, too!

Love,

Elder Breinholt

Hello Everyone!

We had a very exhausting but exciting week!

Half Mission PDay was awesome. I was with and around a bunch of my favorite people, and right now seeing as I’m halfway through my mission, this is the point when I know the most people. It’s all downhill from here while many of the ones I know will be going home in the coming months. But we all had lots of fun playing water games!

Elder Whitesides

I think Saturday was the most spiritually exhausting day I have had in my entire life. We did a few hours of service starting in the morning. It was for an investigator named Rudy, along with his brother Reuben, and we were helping them do renovations on a home they bought years ago which was pretty much run down.

Elder Dunn

Later on in the day, we taught a woman named Missy, who we were led to yesterday while doorknocking. Turns out she has been preparing to be a traveling minister for years, so we butted heads on almost everything that was said. She was very focused on physical proof and direct evidence through things like Joseph Smith’s specific actions and knowing where the gold plates are today. Elder Whitesides and I were very focused on faith, and testified constantly under the beating sun in high humidity, for two hours. FINALLY she accepted a copy of the Book of Mormon skeptically and has begun reading. I felt dead tired after that lesson and Elder Whitesides said he got a huge headache from all of it. But it doesn’t there! God really through another curve ball at us that day, because later one of our investigators asked us to come by and so we did, and to our surprise, his father was there as well. As it turns out, his father has ministered for YEARS and had many of his own ideas on scripture that he is steadfast in and talks non-stop. Once again, in the end he did accept hearing more of our message and finding out whether the Book of Mormon is more of God’s word, but I felt like I did not even have the strength to breathe deeply afterward.

Elder Johnson

I’m grateful for Christ’s atonement, and I’m grateful God has provided that we can partake of the sacrament, representing Christ’s body and blood. It sounds super weird to those who don’t know a lot about it, but it’s a way to remember all that Jesus willingly suffered for us, so that he could understand our pain and help us through our toughest trials, and once I partook of the sacrament yesterday I felt fully replenished.

Elder Liu

I love you all! I hope you have a marvelous week! Stay safe and be strong! Fear not for the Lord is ever at your side.

Elders Reese, Wharton, Whitesides and I picking beans for a man who’s anti mormon! 🙂 or at least he was. 😉

Elder Breinholt

Hello my beloved family and friends!

Many great things happened this week and I experienced a lot of tender mercies of the Lord. 🙂

Up to the beginning of last week, we had practically no investigators. Lesson after lesson after lesson had fallen through, but this week, things just seemed to work out and go according to our hopes, even if not necessarily exactly according to plan.

One of my favorite meals I’ve ever had – Greatest Salad Ever

We picked up five new investigators and two of them were set on coming to church yesterday. As it turned out they weren’t able to come because of other circumstances, but we will get them there. What matters is that these amazing people are taking steps in coming closer to Christ and it’s such a blessing to be a part of that. We encountered two younger men who are staying with a member here temporarily. They are self proclaimed missionaries, traveling the country to spread what they believe about God and reality. As we talked, at first I felt that maybe I have not been doing my best, or that there are better ways to go about spreading the Gospel than the way that we do it, but I have been pondering, praying and studying about this; my conclusion is that it is good, and even necessary that there are those who simply go around spreading the word, but that is not necessarily the calling Elder Whitesides and I have right now. We are here to bring others unto Christ through faith, repentance, baptism by proper authority (John 3:7 ; Ephesians 4:5), and receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost (Acts 19: 1-6). We aid people in doing this and we’re there every step of the way. Satan tries to get in the way of this beautiful work, and he does create circumstances from which people’s path to God’s ordinances are blocked. But brothers and sisters I am grateful for opposition. I’m grateful for the pain we go through and endure because without it we never would be able to understand true joy, peace, and happiness.

Elder Whitesides chillin’

If you guys could include a few people in prayer, I know it would help them:

Pat, Sue, and Robert – a lovely family, and Pat is now in hospice. It’s been hard on the others.
Angus – Believes in the message of the Restoration, so Satan is trying to pull harder than before.
Patrice – Has an awesome young family and wants to come back to God.

This week we have a half mission P Day which is going to be awesome and if I don’t take tons of pictures there you all have the right to be very mad at me. 🙂 But yeah I didn’t take a lot this week so, sorry…

Love you all so much! Stay strong! Have a wonderful week!

Elder Breinholt

Hello everyone!

I feel the need to start this letter by iterating that we are not meant to live in a world like this. We live in a dark, cold, dreary world when we look at all the adversity there is around us, and the things that people do around us, and so much more. But we must endure to the end, we must keep pushing through, and leave behind the things of this world and prepare to live in a better world, one in which we are meant to reside, with our Father in Heaven and Jesus Christ, and our families.

Me and Elder Reese

This week has been pretty rough. There has been a lot of stress and difficulty, and there were a lot of times I felt alone. This work is hard. I don’t know the area, I don’t know many of the people still, or where things are, and it wasn’t until this morning that we were finally able to go and officially shop. All I’ve eaten for the past two weeks is pizza, hot dogs, and taco bell! That’s pretty much all that people seem to eat here in Battle Creek! Haha but it’s alright I made sure to buy some healthy food. It really does help to keep one happy.

The paper that revealed who my son was on the big day! 🙂

About four days of this week we were on trade-offs with Either the district leader or the zone leaders. So I haven’t even really had my son with me very much! But we are working at developing his confidence. He’s better at being a missionary than he thinks, but he tries to just give awkward situations to me because I “know what I’m doing.” Let me tell you, I do not know what I’m doing. Probably never will. We just have to rely on God for this work to happen. For example, we seriously worked out butts off trying to teach this week. We keep picking up cool potentials and setting up tons of lessons with them, but every single lesson we had planned last week fell through and we did HOURS of knocking on doors because of it. Almost got bit by a pitbull actually. But yesterday a member brought a lady to church who he thought my be interested. Turns out she used to meet with the missionaries when she was 16, and now has been feeling that she wants to be baptized and join this church. God sent a miracle, as He saw that we were working our hardest throughout this week, and he sent us one of His precious children to bring into the fold.

Elder Reese and Elder Whitesides eating giant Chicken breast

I know the message we share is true. I know it through the power of the Holy Ghost, through constant prayer and study. I know it changes lives, even if you already have a strong belief in Christ and try to follow him. I love you all so much, and it is time for us to go but stay strong, keep pushing through, and even if you don’t see a miracle at the end of the tunnel, we at least know that we will inherit a beautiful life with our Savior if we will endure to the end. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Me and Elder Reese

Elder Breinholt