Ice Storms and Baptisms and Quarters - Jan 29 - 2013

Everybody!

 

I just had the song "Move Your Feet" by Junior Senior jog my memory. You should go listen to it because I can't and won't right now. :)

 

How is life for you? My life is going great! The last few days have been kind of gloomy here in Des Moines. Weather-wise that is. Gayle was Baptized on Saturday! It was a beautiful service! Elder Hess had the opportunity to baptize her! It was the first time he has baptized someone. It was beautiful and the Spirit was definitely there! Due to an ice storm, the Bishopric of our ward cancelled church yesterday, so she will not be Receive the Holy Ghost until this upcoming Sunday in Sacrament Meeting. For all of you who recognize, Gayle fulfilled one of her steps in the Gospel of Jesus Christ on Saturday and will fulfill the next step this Sunday!

 

It was really weird to not have church. The last time I can remember church being cancelled was when we lived in Oregon, when severe ice storms there cancelled church and school for a week! Especially as a missionary it was pretty odd. But we worked anyway. Running to catch busses and sliding on the ice. Neither of us fell yesterday though! *knock on wood*

 

We got a mormon.org referral via text this week. A referral is when someone tells us we should go see a specific person. Whether or not they are interested or not we don't know, but it is exciting to have someone tell us to specifically go and see someone! When a person goes to http://mormon.org/eng/, they can visit http://mormon.org/missionaries and fill in their information to request the missionaries to come over to teach them about the church. Anytime someone does this and the person lives within our area that we serve in, we receive their information in a text. It is amazing how the church uses technology to further missionary work! We had someone refer themselves using mormon.org. We called them, set up an appointment and visited them. His name is Michael. He is a prepper. Someone who prepares for the future by assembling food storage, water storage, and guns. He is part of a group of people here in Des Moines that all prep. They all took a different preparation book to read and to bring to the next meeting the share what they learned from the book. His book was the LDS prep book. He was so impressed he wanted to find out more about the LDS people. He visited mormon.org and asked us to come. He is an intelligent man who had a lot of quesitons about organization of the church. He was open to reading and praying about the Book of Mormon and had an open mind. It was awesome!

 

With church being cancelled due to the ice storm, the members needed to know about it. The Bishopric called the auxilliary and priesthood presidencies, who called the people in their organizations. A kind of built-in phone tree from the way Jesus Christ has organized His church. We were walking past another church around 1pm and they had a piece of paper with the words "Church Cancelled" in blue marker taped to the door. I wonder what those people did when they found out they had no church. One of those trivial examples that adds to my testimony that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the only church on earth with the Fulness of the Gospel. We preach to follow Jesus, and to follow him Exactly. Everything that the church is about centers on that belief. Because it is His church, Christ set it up that it would be no other way.

 

I love you all and hope that all goes well for you. And by the way, I hit my 6-month mark this Friday, on February 1st. Can you believe I have already served 1/4 of my mission? I sure can't! I've got a lot of work to do in an increasingly shorter time. Even though you may not be a full-time missionary, I testify that you can share the Gospel with someone, no matter where you are, and it doesn't matter if they are a member of this true church or not. Everyone needs kindness in their lives. Good things come from God. So be God's hand in someone's life this week! I'd love to hear what you did for someone else and how it made you feel! After all, "when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God" (Mosiah 2:17, Book of Mormon). We are to be happy, and that is what God wants for us!

 

Love you!

Elder Zachary R McKenzie

Iowa Des Moines Mission

    D&C 6:34, 36

Doubt Not, Fear Not.
Faith in 550 for Christ in 2013

Below Zero and Baptism - Jan 22 - 2013

Hey All!

 

I first want to apologize for not writing last week. I replied to emails from my parents, wrote my Mission President, and thought I was good. As soon as I logged off the computer I realized I had forgotten that, but it's ok, because I can repent.

 

So let's see... The last two weeks. Des Moines busses are great. The brand new DART (Des Moines Area Regional Transit Authority) bus station was newly finished around Thanksgiving. The old missionaries never used the busses because their area was small. Right after Thanksgiving 2012, the Stake realigned their different ward boundaries. Before the change, this area was the Des Moines 7th Branch (a branch is a smaller version of a ward), the smallest unit (ward or branch) in the stake. Then, the boundaries changed to a geographic area, so each unit represents the city boundaries. Now it is the Des Moines Ward, the biggest unit in the stake. We have over 570 members on the ward list. Our average sacrament meeting attendance is about 150-175. Needless to say, many don't come. :( But anyway, the busses are great because they cover pretty much our entire area, so they come in handy on the weeks we don't have the car.

 

Last week we did have the car. The mission got 5 new cars earlier this month and our area was blessed with one of them. So Elder Hess had the pleasure of driving a brand new 2013 Chevy Cruze as we worked last week.

 

The other day, I looked at the thermometer and it said -3 degrees fahrenheit. Needless to say it was cold outside.

 

We are experiencing miracles here in Des Moines. Our investigator Gayle is getting baptized this Saturday! We were worried about pushing her to be baptized on January 26th, after we hadn't been able to meet with her very often because of lack of contact and she was sick. So we were going to schedule her to be baptized for February 16th. Then, as we were planning for the week, on January 18th, we came to the step in Preach My Gospel that says "Set goals and make plans for investigators with a baptismal date." In District Meeting on the 17th, we were talking about our district goals and if we were on track to reach them. The other missionaries in our district (a district is a group of 4-10 missionaries, one is called as a district leader to lead the group) were talking to us about how we needed to help Gayle be ready for baptism on the 26th. This troubled us for the rest of the meeting. We talked about Gayle, then we decided to pray as neither of us knew the answer. After we prayed we pondered for a minute, then we talked to each other. We realized that we were fearing what others would think, we thought we would be pushing her to be baptized on the 26th, and that she wouldn't be ready. But as we talked about it, we realized that it was the Lord's will to have her baptized on the 26th. Elder Hess had the distinct impression, "This is my daughter." It was a really neat experience.

 

Neither Elder Hess or I have planned someone to be baptized, so we didn't know where to start. So we turned to Preach My Gospel. We planned what we needed to do each day to help her be ready. All of our plans hinged on our appointment with her Friday afternoon. She called us a couple of hours before to tell us she was sick. Feverish, vomiting, the whole nine yards. We asked if we could come over and give her a blessings. So we cancelled the appointment and brought the senior couple that came with us a little earlier than originally planned. She thought we were just going to pray with her, but we explained what a priesthood blessing was and gave her a blessing of healing. After we gave her the blessing, we were talking and we brought up that the Lord wanted her to be baptized on January 26th. One of Gayle's concerns was that she hadn't progressed enough. So we took our teaching record and plotted out everything she accomplished and when. It was really neat to see. She accepted the date of January 26th. It was a miracle!

 

One of the rules in the Missionary Handbook (additional rules that missionaries have to follow) is one of safety and respect. Missionaries can never be alone with a woman unless she is at least 65-years-old. We can go visit them if we have a man of at least 18-years-of-age with us. Considering that Gayle lives alone, this is sometimes hard to find someone to come with us. On Saturday, the ward had a temple trip to the Winter Quarters Temple, a 2 hour drive from Des Moines. The people we had planned to go with weren't available. What were we going to do? Aung to the rescue! Aung is origially from Thailand and is begining the process of his mission papers. He is awesome! He is always willing to help us and spends 10 hours a week with us teaching. And then he helps out the assistants too! But he came. We were able to teach Gayle The Gospel of Jesus Christ (the points are the Doctrine of Christ I'm always writing about). It started out like a pretty normal lesson, but then we asked some inspired questions and the Spirit entered the room. It was one of the most, if not the most, powerful experience of my mission thus far. In her closing prayer, Gayle said, "thank you for all of the questions that have been answered tonight." The Spirit was definitely there. The scripture D&C 50:22 definitely was fulfilled.

 

We had set our companionship goal as 1 baptism in January. We didn't think we were going to achieve it. Then the Lord stepped in and told us that our goal was His will. When it is the Lord's will, we must do it! Miracles in goal setting!

 

More miracles are happening every day. I am excited to hear from all of you! I am also very excited to tell you all how the baptism went!

 

Love,

Elder Zachary R McKenzie

Iowa Des Moines Mission

    D&C 6:34, 36

Doubt Not, Fear Not.
Faith in 550 for Christ in 2013

Diversity and the New Year - 1-7-13

Hey All!

 

My first full week in Des Moines was great! Elder Hess had the flu, so we stayed in Tuesday and Wednesday. We have a set of DVD's all about the Doctrine and Covenants, so I watched those as he slept.

 

I played basketball my last full day in Kirksville on P-Day with the 4 missionaries down there plus some of the young men. It was a lot of fun. Took me back to playing for hours after young mens back home. But later in the week my right pinky felt the same as my left pinky did when I broke it in 5th grade. So I called our Mission President's Wife (who we call for health concerns) and she told me to just buddy tape it. It doesn't hurt too bad, I'm not even sure it is broken, but better safe than sorry.

 

So who thought that Des Moines, Iowa, in the middle of the United States, would have people from all over the world? I sure didn't. When I got out to the mission field. I was told some missionaries were learning to speak Marshallese because there are a lot of refugees from the Marshall Islands in that city. Then I come to Des Moines. I have met African people from Sudan that speak Arabic. Some Africans from Egypt, Tanzania, Eritrea, Sierra Leone, and Ghana. I have met Thai people from refugee camps in the state of Karen (pronounced Kuh-rin). It is crazy. I have heard the languages of English, Swaheli, Arabic, Karen, and Spanish. What a city!

 

We began teaching a Karen (Kuh-rin) family that we met by knocking on their door. They were very friendly and they invited us in. The parents and 2 of their 3 daughters, one was late 20s, one was 20 or 21. The youngest could speak English and she told us they had just moved from St. Louis to Des Moine a few days ago, so we set up a return appointment where we could come with a translator, a 19-year-old Karen (Kuh-rin) boy from our ward. We taught the father the next day about prophets to help him understand authority as they had been baptized into a baptist church before. The father and his wife came to church yesterday. Aung, the Karen (Kuh-rin) translator picked them up. Then the rest of his family came and Aung's father sat next to the investigator father and they started talking. They knew each other! They were from the same refugee camp in Thailand. What a miracle! They said they will need time to discuss about being baptized, but they are a wonderful family.

 

I had a wonderful study this last week on Elder Richard G. Scott's talk from the April 2012 General Conference. He spoke on enhancing our ability to receive spiritual revelation. I invite you to read this talk and to learn something new! I sure did!

 

Love from Iowa,

Elder Zachary R McKenzie

Iowa Des Moines Mission

    D&C 6:34, 36

Doubt Not, Fear Not.
Faith in 550 for Christ in 2013

End of 2012 - 12-31-12

Greetings!

 

We reached our mission goal of 400!!! It is truly a miracle as we weren't on track as of Friday. But the assistants called other missionaries, told them by the spirit that those people were meant to be baptized in 2012, and it happened! When it is the Lord's will to do something, you do everything you can to do it, and after all that you can do, he will do the rest.

 

So I am officially out of my first area, you are probably wondering where I am now and that. Kirksville is wonderful, but I am no longer there.

 

My Second Area is...

 

 

 

Drumroll please..............................................................................

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Des Moines Ward in Des Moines, Iowa!!!

 

My new companion is Elder Michael Hess from Alpine, Utah. He graduated from Lone Peak in 2010. He is the smallest of my companions standing at a short 6'3". He was MTC companions with Elder Peterson, who I just was transferred from being companions with. He began his mission in Hannibal, Missouri and has been in Des Moines for 6 weeks. We live in downtown Des Moines!

 

The Assistants to the President also serve in this ward. Two of the Office Senior Couples also go to our ward. My new district has 8 Elders and 2 Sisters, therefore being the same size as my previous Zone. I am so excited to serve in the biggest city in the mission!

 

The ward here is 567 members strong and is at least 2/3 less active members. There are 157 Prospective Elders, men who should hold the Melchizedek Priesthood but don't. There is a LOT of potential in this area and there is a lot of work to be done. Elder Hess and I are very excited to get going!

 

The member we ate dinner with yesterday is the older sister of one of the awesome members in Kirksville. It is such a small world! The boundaries of this stake were just reorganized in November, so the callings are just starting to go in. The Bishopric is awesome! This area went from the smallest branch in the stake to the biggest ward. So we have our work cut out for us.

 

This last week it was wonderful to talk to family and say bye to the amazing members of Kirksville and to celebrate my first Christmas away from home. It was weird, but I know I'm supposed to be out here so it's all good.

 

Our mission goal for next year is 550! It'll be sweet!

 

Love from IOWA!

Elder Zachary R McKenzie

Iowa Des Moines Mission

    D&C 6:34, 36

Doubt Not, Fear Not.
Faith in 550 for Christ in 2013

Last Week in Kirksville - 12-22-12

Hey Everyone!

 

Sorry for the two short emails in a row, but sometimes things just work out that way. I am getting transferred! I love Kirksville and I'm sad to go, but when the Lord speaks through His servants, I have to listen. I don't know where I'm going, you'll find out where I am on December 31st. But things have been good for the past two weeks.

 

I did get the flu a week ago, but it only lasted a day, so I wasn't out of it for too long! One of the Assistants to the President came and worked with us and helped us teach. It was really neat and it was cool working with a missionary of that caliber.

 

One of our investigators is a senior in high school and he asked us if we would go to his choir concert, so we did. It was really weird because it reminded me of so many things from the last 10 years. It was set up like my Rosemont Ridge concerts up in Oregon in the gym with a choir set up on one side and a band one on the other. They band played "A Christmas Festival" which is a song I played in band in high school. So it was neat.

 

I love you all and I want you to know that the Book of Mormon is a wonderful book and I have a testimony of it and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. God is wonderful even though life is hard sometimes. I am very blessed to be serving Him. I love Christmastime and the wonderful gift He gave us, and how we get to celebrate how He did everything for us and we can always be getting better and closer to Him.

 

Merry Christmas!

 

Love,

Elder Zachary R McKenzie

Iowa Des Moines Mission

    D&C 6:34, 36

Doubt Not, Fear Not.
Faith in 400 for Christ in 2012

Last Email before Christmas! - 12-17-12

Hey Everyone!

Another week in the field, it's hard to believe I've been in Kirksville for almost 4 months now!

A week ago Monday, one of the Assistants to the President (AP) came down to work with us in Kirksville to boost the work. It was awesome seeing and working with a missionary who is so solid in his understanding, his teaching, and his testimony and how he is so humble about it. I want to strive to develop the qualities he showed so I can become who the Lord needs me to be.

I am about to be kicked off the library computer. Sorry!

Bye! 

Elder Zachary R McKenzie

Iowa Des Moines Mission

    D&C 6:34, 36

Doubt Not, Fear Not.
Faith in 400 for Christ in 2012

Christmastime is Here - 12-10-12

Hey Everyone!

Isn't Christmastime great? It is arguably one of my favorite times of the year. The spirit that goes on during this time of year is wonderful.

Our Mission President gives us 1 hour a week to spend on the computer other than emailing time. We call it "mormon.org time" because we get to go acquaint ourselves with mormon.org and other church websites. This last week I visited mormonchannel.org, a website with audio and video put out by the church. There was a new video called "O Come, Emmanuel." If you know me, you know I love The Piano Guys. The Bible videos the church has been putting out recently are also very cool. It was awesome to be able to listen to a Christmas song by The Piano Guys. It brought joy to my soul. :)

We went on exchanges in Quincy, Illinois this last week with one of the sets of Elders there. They had an appointment set up that I went to with the other pair's senior companion. The appointment was with a Part Member family who was also a Former Investigator of the church. This was the first time that this Elder had gone over there, as the Investigator was dropped right before he arrived. We were going to ask her why she stopped investigating the church and have a nice visit. We went over there, exchanged pleasantries, then they told us they had an announcement. She wanted to be baptized! It was awesome, so we talked over the Baptismal Interview questions and she is getting baptized next week! It was a unique experience and one that neither of us had experienced before. It was really cool!

Our Mission President and the senior missionaries in our mission have counseled us to have a lesson in the church called the "Church Presentation." We use pictures, and the building itself, to teach the first lesson. It is really neat and the spirit is very strong. We taught this lesson with the family of the old Bishop of the Ward. He has 4 children at home and one at school, ranging from ages 9 to 19. It went really well and was really neat to get the members involved with our efforts as missionaries. We are going to teach it again tonight to some Ward Missionaries and as well to a Part Member couple we have been working with. 

The youth in the church are awesome. When you have a solid youth, especially one that is preparing to go on a mission, it is great to get them involved with teaching. We are starting to incorporate the two Priests that are in their senior year of high school. We hope to help them prepare and get some good experience. Take advantage of anytime you are able to work with the missionaries!

To finish, I also finished the Book of Mormon for the first time in probably 4 years, as well as for the first time on my mission. I read it in about exactly 3 months. It is a wonderful book and I want to invite all of you to begin it again or to at least continue where you are reading. Incorporate it into every single day of your life, it will help you in all aspects of your life. Read at least a verse, a column, a page, a chapter, or more each day. I promise you that you will receive blessings in your life because of it!

Enjoy the Christmas season! And reach out a helping hand whenever you have the chance. People don't always need money or stuff to be happy. A smile will go a mile. It will make someone's day. A friendly "Hello!" will touch more lives then a dollar will. Love is the solution. After you love, then you can offer a helping hand.

My two favorite scriptures of the week. 1 Nephi 7:4 and Moroni 8:16. Let them touch your life and you will touch someone else's.

Love,

Elder Zachary R McKenzie

Iowa Des Moines Mission

    D&C 6:34, 36

Doubt Not, Fear Not.
Faith in 400 for Christ in 2012

4 Months Out! - 12-3-12

Greetings!

I am now officially 1/6 through my mission. As I look back I can hardly believe it has already been that long! Elder Clarke, when he toured the mission, he told us that "your families deserve to have more thought put into your emails home each week." So I have been taking notes on what I am going to write about, so today and now on might be a little longer emails. Maybe, maybe not. I don't exactly know. But, you are all important to me and I love you so I will give you the report that you deserve.

I had 3 things happen this week that were crazy.

1. We were on exchanges and knocked on a door. We were greeted nicely from the lady behind the door (which didn't happen a lot that day), and then she asked us if we wanted to come inside (I was hoping for an offer of food) and use her phone to call home. I was dumbfounded by the odd request and wasn't able to say anything, luckily, my companion said we don't do that and she said she had heard it was something we would like to do. I was shaken up for awhile after that and it threw me for a loop. It was bizarre!
2. We called a week and a half ago to set up an appointment to go and talk to a less active member of our ward. Our appointment came up and they welcomed us in and we sat down. We asked why he hadn't been to church in awhile and he said he hadn't regularly attended since he was 15 or 16 (he is in his late 20s now, married, with two kids), and he said he quit believing that mumbo-jumbo then. We asked why and it was because some doctrine his Sunday School teacher wasn't found in the bible and it was all downhill from there. About two years ago he became atheist. He is a very researched Anti-Mormon now and I hope no one with faith comes in contact with him. The interesting thing is that his wife is a strong Christian and they attend church as a family every week. It shook me up a lot and I was questioning my faith in Christ. But after some studying and prayer and watching the Preach My Gospel DVDs of other missionaries and their work and testimonies helped me get back on track. If you ever come across Anti-Mormon literature or people acting that way, the Spirit leaves very quickly and no one feels good afterward, avoid it if you can. 
3. I wave at cars when they drive by and people usually wave back, but I got flipped off. It wasn't the first time I have been flipped off and kind of put me off a bit. It isn't nearly as dramatic as the other two things, but I like things that come in 3 :)

Crazy week! I wanted to let you all know that I participated in "No Shave November" as a missionary. I got my haircut on October 31st. :)

Sister Rogers does something really cool back home. Whenever someone speaks in church, she brings them a treat later that day with a little note of how she appreciated what was said. I've wanted to do something like that ever since. So I have decided that from now on, when I get to a new area, I will start doing this.

When I was little, my Mom always took us kids to rest homes with the Relief Society, or just to visit people. It helped me see the love my Mother has for others, family or complete strangers, and to love those who may be lonely or hurting or not able to express themselves as they would like. We visited a sister in the ward with a bedridden husband and we were able to go in and say hi to him and it was wonderful to have had those experiences early in my life.

God is in the details of our lives, and we are able to give the gift of Gratitude this season. There are two practice I have learned in previous years that help me to be thankful.

1. Gratitude Journal. Something I learned from LDC (Leadership Development Conference put on by the Red Cross). It is to buy a cheap, composition notebook, and write the date and three things you are grateful for every day. It helps you look through the day and find something good about it. Sometimes it's hard, but it helps
2. Gratitude Rock. Something I learned from the movie "The Secret." Take a small rock, from a special place or from the road, and then put it in your pocket. Every time you touch the rock when you reach into your pocket, you have to think of something that you are thankful for. 

To do these things, especially when accompanied with the messages we heard from the First Presidency Christmas Devotional about gratitude, both in giving, and in graciously receiving.

I love you all and Have a Merry Christmas Season! 

Elder Zachary R McKenzie

Iowa Des Moines Mission

    D&C 6:34, 36

Doubt Not, Fear Not.
Faith in 400 for Christ in 2012