Elder Bowen Visits!

This week was great!   All of the Zone Leaders met at the Moore stake-center for our meeting with Elder Bowen, of the Seventy. The meeting was very motivating. He expects a lot out of us.

      Elder Bowen came the next day to inspect our CLEAN apartment.  President Taylor came the morning before and joined us for companionship study. It was great!  He wanted to inspect our apartment before Elder Bowen came.   He told us that Elder Bowen was going to check everything, even our planners and also the area-book.  But when Elder Bowen came the next morning with his wife and President and Sister Taylor, they just looked in our closets and cabinets and bathrooms and then talked to us. It was awesome!   He asked us some questions and he taught us about the importance of keeping our apartment like the temple; in good, clean condition so that is can be a place of revelation during planning and studies. A place that that keeps us apart from the world.   It was cool. Then he gave us each a hug, but it wasn't like any usual man-hug. It was like he was my Mom or my Grandma. He hugged us for a long time.  The spirit in our apartment was SOOOO strong and you could feel the love radiating off of him.

     The next day we went to Norman where we had Mission Tour Conference. It was sweet. Elder Bowen gave a 4 hour training without any notes. All he had was his ipad (scriptures).  He was very bold with all of the missionaries.  He was not afraid to call anyone out.  That is exactly what our mission needed. There are lots of missionaries who are starting to slack off. Mostly because there are so many young missionaries in our mission.  And there are going to be way more young missionaries added soon. The zone leaders are responsible for the growth of each missionary in the zone. We have to hold them accountable to help them all rise to their potential, to become leaders so that they can train or be a district leader or replace us.   I had an interview with President Taylor this morning and that is pretty much all that we talked about.

      We had a baptism this Sunday!! His name is Andy. He is a funny guy. He just recently started dating this girl like 5 days ago and she sat in on a lesson with Andy and also came to his baptism. Now SHE wants to be baptized!!!!     We have been focusing on working through peoples "networks."  The people who are interested in the gospel have friends. (A lot more friends than we have.) So we work through the people who have connections.  like Andy and his Girlfriend. We just need to be sure that she is converting for the right reasons. 

     I'm excited for Thanksgiving. We will be playing in a Turkey-bowl with President and Sister Taylor, their sons and some other nearby missionaries.   It will be fun.  

       We are Improving a lot in working with the ward and the branch. Good things are happening!

                           Love Elder Shumway

New Missionaries!

 When I first arrived in the OKC mission, there were 114 missionaries. When I was still a newer missionary, we moved from 114 to about 124 missionaries.  When I was in Norman, there were some inspired changes made where President Taylor split the mission from 5 zones to 8 zones. He thought that it was better to have less people in each zone so that the ZL's could have more personal ministering opportunities with missionaries in their zones and more proselyting time in their own areas. 

 Little did he know that there would be a flood of 86 new missionaries coming to our mission between Dec 2012 and March 2013. 

  But now President Taylor is relying on the Zone Leaders to help figure out where all these missionaries are going to go. We need 43 new areas to put them in. 43 new apartments. 43 new phones and we need to decide which companionships will have cars / who will have bikes and  which new districts will be formed! 

 It is pretty crazy.  Good things are happening but it is going to be hard work trying to work it all out smoothly.  The mission will have doubled since I came here. We will have about 216 missionaries in the OKC mission by the end of March or April.     I think the Lord is hastening his work.

        We've been working hard with our investigators. Some of them have dropped us and don't want to continue taking the lessons. It is always sad when they do that.

        This transfer ends on Wed. Elder Ali'ifua is getting transferred to Wichita Falls, TX. The same area I served in.  On Wed I will be getting Elder Hanes as a new ZL companion. I know Elder Hanes very well. He was a spanish speaking missionary in Norman when the tornado hit. We helped do clean-up together.  I'm going to miss Elder Ali'ifua. He has taught me a lot. He goes home in about a week and a half to sign his scholarship to play football at Utah State.  You should look for him on TV next year!

       

                  My address is:         2204 S Santa Fe #201

                                                    Moore, OK   73160

-Love Elder Shumway

General Conference

SO... is Tanner going to go on a mission right after high school?  That is the craziest thing I've ever heard announced in General Conference. Is Sheralyn going to go on a mission? Or is she going to get married?

       I loved Elder Eyring's talk in the Priesthood session. It helped me know some other methods of helping others as a leader.  I also loved Elder Hollands talk. He always uses the Bible and I think that is awesome!

       I recieved permission on Saturday to go to the baptism of one of the investigators I had started teaching in Norman.  She was the investigator we had that had a tornado go right through her apartment comlpex. She also had to wait for her LA member boyfriend to get divorced and active and married to her.  So it took a long time.   Since I was with Elder Guinto until now.   

When I showed up to the baptism, I noticed that my name was on the program to give a talk on baptism. No one had told me about that. Hahaha!   but luckily I had studied repentance and baptism in PMG that morning.  I gave a nice, short talk before she was baptized.   

I loved my short visit in Norman. I was able to see many of the great members in the Norman 2nd ward. I love that ward.   I was able to talk to Brother N. I helped his wife get baptized when I was in Norman.  I love that family and I could see the Love all over his face when we recognized each other.  It gave me a small glimpse of how the Gospel brings people together in unity. Especially when you work hard together to help someone make changes in their lives, repent, and follow the Savior's example.   Our mission has been focusing on finding and baptizing families and future families and I feel very accomplished because Brother & Sister N. just had a baby girl. He showed me pictures of her. It was AWESOME.

       Elder Ali'ifua and I are having a lot of fun together. He goes home in about 6 weeks so we've got to work hard for the last bit of his missionary life.

       The weather has cooled way down. It is actually cold now. This morning there was Ice on the windows of the cars.  

       I've been sick for the last couple of days too. It's not fun.  Hopefully I get over it soon. I think this is the first time I've ever been sick on my mission though.

      

    -Love Elder Shumway

       I was transfered to Moore OK. It is a city that has been nailed by many tornadoes  Including the famous May 3rd Tornado. This city is blended in with the South part of the growing Oklahoma City.  Elder Ali'ifua and I are the zone Leaders for the South Zone. Elder Ali'ifua is Polynesian and the most MASSIVE elder in our mission. When he goes home he will play football for Utah State. I think we will have fun together.

     Our mission has emphasized finding Families and future families. When Elder Callister came and gave a training, he said "Go to the mini-vans!"   We focus on finding families and future families.  We cover a ward and a singles branch. The family ward starts at 9 and we leave a little early to go up to Midwest City where the singles branch starts at 12. I've never been to a singles ward or branch before. It is super fun to be a missionary there.  We had a baptism yesterday in the singles branch. It was great! 

       A cool miracle happened on Saturday. We returned a missed call from an unknown number Saturday night while we were planning. Andy, the young man on the other end of the line said to us  "I'm thinking about converting."   We were shocked to hear this. People don't just come to you and ask to get baptized. You have to go out and find them. So this was a huge shock to us. We invited him to church and arranged a ride for him. The members of the singles ward are great member missionaries.  Andy came to church and stayed for the baptism afterwards. We called him that night to ask him how he liked church and he said that he loved it and that it was better than any other church he had ever been to. We felt like we should set a baptism date with him over the phone right there....so we did.  He has a baptismal date for Oct 28. The Lord Has blessed us.

               Love Elder Shumway

Happy and Working HARD!

I've been a lot happier while on my mission. I've found lots of joy that comes from the "little" things in life. You don't have to listen to cool music to be happy or drink beer or do whatever people do nowadays to be happy.  I don't do any of those things and I'm the happiest I've ever been! It's cool. 

   

If we apply the principles of the doctrine of Christ, we can change our desires to be more similar to the Lord's. This happens through the power of the atonement. If you live the gospel, you are happy. We should never let our agency take over.  One cool thing about living the doctine of Christ is that it brings OUR will in line with the Lord's will. Plus we are blessed as we do these things. I think I've been blessed a lot.  

      Elder Cobbley and I have been working pretty hard. We've been having lots of success. We have been inviting more people to be baptized and now we have three baptismal dates set with people.

       

   There was a cool thing that happened yesterday.  Each week we do a planning session for the whole week ahead of us. We set goals in faith and make our plans to achieve those goals. So last Thursday we set a goal to find 4 new investigators. By the time Saturday ended, we had found four new investigators but when we planned for Sunday, we didn't want to set a goal to find zero investigators so we planned to tract so we could find one. 

   

     So we were tracting yesterday and were having a hard time talking to people. (There were some NFL games on that people are more interested in.)   We were just walking down the street trying to feel where we should go to accomplish our goal.  We each had a prayer in our hearts looking for direction to find this person.   As we walked down another block, we saw a car in a driveway that stuck out to both of us. Elder Cobbley jokingly said  "This house will be our new investigator."     So we knocked on the door. A large, old man came out and immediately knew who we were.  He called us his "Mormon friends." As we talked to him, we found that he had almost joined the church when he was younger but didn't because his Grandpa, who he was living with at the time wouldn't let him.    We prayed with him and we have an appointment to come back and teach him.

       .....And we were able to meet the goal we had set for that day.

      I think it is a cool story. There is a lot to be learned from it too.

Love,

Elder Shumway

A Wild Week

 Just last night we knocked on a door and a lady answered. We did our door approach and then she asked "Are you part of Mitt Romney's campain?"   Of course we told her no, but then she just turned around, walked back inside and shut the door.  Ya, we get political feedback every now and then. I think usually the people who don't like Romney always bring it up.

   This week is a lot cooler than it has been. It's a nice 96 degrees out. I never thought that I would think it was cooler.  I miss the good old 60 degree weather in Oregon...with some nice, sprinkly rain. I could use some of that sometime soon.

    Our zone had four people baptized on Saturday. It was awesome!! Zone leaders report numbers every Sunday night. Things like how many new investigators found, less actives at church, baptism dates and who was actually baptized.  Last night I was talking to the spanish district leader about the baptism dates in his district. He told me that one of their dates had dropped because one of their investigators broke up with her boyfriend who is also an investigator. No one knows where she went. Mexicans get in family arguments easily. She must have told her family something bad about him, because some drunk Mexicans drove by him a couple nights ago trying to shoot him. He got shot all the way through his shoulder. He is still alive, and he still has a baptism date.   But Satan is trying to get him.  It's a crazy story huh?

    The south side of OKC is super ghetto. There are a lot of gangs there and trigger-happy Mexicans.   Only a tiny bit of the south is in our area.

    On Friday night we recieved a call fron the assistants telling us that there was a lady in one of the hospitals in our area who wanted us to give a blessing to her step son. We showed up and met her in the ER waiting area. Her son had been involded in a car wreck. The car he was in swerved, rolled 6 times and was hit by a semi.

 We had to wait two hours for the doctors to let us know when we could go in to see him. Finally we were able to see him and give him a blessing. His head had been damaged so badly that we weren't allowed to put our hands on his head. It was a sad sight to see. He was very bloody and had lots of wires and stuff hooked up to him. he had a bolt (like the one frankenstien has) going into his skull.  We put our hands on his arm and gave the blessing.

 His Mom has been texting us and updating us on his health. He went through seven hours of surgery the next morning and the doctors said it was unlikely that he would live, but he is still alive and now they are saying that he might walk out of the hospital when he's better.  Isn't that crazy?!

  

   Love Elder Shumway

Military Church

  This week we had an LTM (Leadership Training Mtg)  Tues through Fri. It was from 9 am to 4 pm each day. I learned a lot!!!! It was fun because I was able to see E Naisbitt and E Lott and all my other real close pals in the mission. I am so proud of Elder Lott. He  has been trainning for the last three weeks and I hear that his greeny is super solid. Maybe I will be a great-grandpa soon.  

During the four days of the LTM, Elder Lott's greeny (E Apadale) was running the area in Norman where I served. He was with another new missionary who had been out for about 8 weeks. Together they set 3 new baptism dates in the four days we were at the LTM!

    On Saturday, the Assistants came to pick me up. Each Sunday the AP's go down to Fort Sill army base (just north of Lawton OK) to teach lessons to the members and non-members on the base. They have a sacrament meeting in a big classroom on the base. I went this week to help them teach. E Fransen also went with us. We spent the night at the Lawton ZL's apartment and on Sunday morning we went to the base. 

  It was a cool experience. They have a sacrement meeting that is way laid-back. The group leader (like a branch pres.) wasn't able to get a video to work for the spiritual message of sacrament meeting so he called on us missionaries to give talks! We had like five minutes to think of what we wanted to talk on. I gave my talk on Faith, based off of Alma 32: 21 & 27and James 2: 15.  I felt good about the talk when I was done, especially since it was imprompu.  

After sacrement meeting, the four missionaries each taught a class on our own. I taught the third lesson about the gospel of Christ.  The lesson was very hard to teach to a bunch of non-member army dudes...and they all looked the same with their camo uniforms and buzzed heads. It wasn't the best lesson I've had.

After church there was a baptism for two of the soldiers. I conducted one of the baptism interviews for one of the soldiers. We watched them yell and march in the heat over to another building where the Church of Christ has a nice chapel and a ghetto baptismal font. I was asked to give another unexpected talk on baptism and the Holy Ghost before the baptism. Then they were baptised in the weirdest font I've ever seen. It wasn't even below ground level. It was raised.   Then they were confirmed.  It was a cool Sunday. I enjoyed going to Fort Sill and I will probably go again. 

   

    I hope y'all are doing good.

                -Elder Shumway