Monday, April 21, 2014

21 April 2014

Dear mom,

This has been the craziest week. Easter Sunday was amazing, the ward
had a suprise baptism of a young woman who has been coming to church
for over a year who was only kept from joining because her parents
wouldn't give her the permission to be baptized. But since they gave
her permission to join the millitary she was able to then join the
church of her own free will without her parents being able to stop it.
MIRACLE!!!

With all the excitement for Easter, bishop Maughan made some special
picture invitations for church for us to pass out to our investigators
and less active members that we go visit. It has a picture of Christ
knocking on the door and a message about Christ on the back. They were
pretty cool. We passed out a ton of them. In all the efforts we had 1
investigator come and join us this Sunday. So he got an extra special
Sunday to attend because he saw the confirmation of marissa, and got
to hear both the bishop and the stake president speak in church on
eater of all Sundays to attend. Services were amazing.

We also ate dinner with Joseph smith for Easter dinner. Joseph smith
is our elders quorum president. He is the funniest EQ president that
I've meet. That's where the picture of me holding two giant teddy
bears comes from.

We had a district blitz on Saturday where we all split up with members
to go invite as many less active members and their neighbors as we
could find to come to church using the invitations that bishop made
for us to pass out. In total we had 20 companionships going out to
contact people it was pretty intense and fun.

We have had so much fun going around this week. It has been stormy and
raining every day for the last week straight. We've found seemingly
elect people and those who only wish to cause us harm. So it's been
exciting. I went on my trade off with elder Clark and people just
plain hated on us all night long. we spent the night just laughing
because we realized that people were just fulfilling the prophecies
about the true followers of Jesus Christ being persecuted for what we
try and share. We talked about it in gospel principles how Christ
didn't bring peace but a sword ( of truth ). people don't like to be
told that they are wrong so they revile us when we bring them exactly
what they need.

It sound to me like you are going to have a fun summer. A busy summer
too. Have fun. I know we are going to have fun here.

Our ward mission leader is awesome, he is also a smith, but not
related to Joseph smith EQ President. I have noticed that in almost
every ward I've been in there have been some interesting family
relationships. Our ward mission leader here is pretty cool. And he is
of top of everything. Seeing as how we just switched leaders things
are moving along nicely.

They say pictures are worth a thousand words. So here are 5 pictures
so there's another 5000 words for you to read. Love y'all

Sincerely,
Elder Ogilvie

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

1 April 2014

Dear mom,

First of all this week is transfers. And they are kicking me out of
Gainesville :(. Now I am going to the beach, Jax beaches to be exact.
So now I am attempting to pack up all of my stuff which is
surprisingly a lot.

So this week has been really crazy. We found an investigator that has
had some pretty interesting experiences with god. We also were
teaching a lesson out on the front porch of this investigator when a
member looking to move into the area came up to us in the middle of
the lesson, and stuffed $100 bill in the front pocket of elder
Mellor's white shirt and walked away before we could properly reject
it. The crazy part is that the next day we were working online at the
front office of our apartment complex, when this member came up to us
& introduced himself.

This has also been one of the hardest for getting anything done, or
feeling like we accomplished anything. All of our investigators have
gone done disappeared. Where they went I do not know. People and their
agency, it's making us look bad :).

This was our fast Sunday so there wasn't really any specific topics
that got discussed. We did do a lesson on prayer for gospel principles
though. It has happened many times since I've been out here where
prayers were answered in ways I never expected. So think about a time
when you got an answer to prayer  that came in a completely different
way than you ever thought it would come.

President Craig gave us the challenge to read the Book of Mormon again
in 90 days. This just after I finished reading it and had moved on to
studying conference talks. So here we go again.

I'm looking forward to going to general conference in the new area.
Hopefully I will be able to get to know the new ward fairly quickly.
I'm sure it will be fun seeing as how I've not actually served in
Jacksonville yet.

You can expect a box to come your way this week, I'm sending home some
books and things I don't need and or want to carry around any more. I
just dropped it off at the post office so it should arrive on
Thursday.

I'm glad to know that everyone is well back home. Enjoy general conference.

Sincerely,
Elder Ogilvie

Love y'all