Email from Elder Lofthouse 7/29/13

Hello again from the California Fresno Mission (a.k.a. The Best Mission in the World)!

Can you believe it's almost August already?  I can't believe how quickly time passes and yet how much happens in that time.  

Anyway, we had two baptisms yesterday!  Sorry, I don't have pictures today because I forgot my camera.  But N's two kids, M and L were baptized, and I just know she's going to follow soon!  The sad news is that all the other baptisms in our district fell through.  We had a possibility of 7 baptisms that day and only had 2.  However, those other five should be baptized within the next few weeks.  

I love Madera!  There is way more Spanish spoken than English here.  The English elders refuse to tract because there are so many Hispanic homes.  In my other areas, you could tell if a neighborhood was mostly Hispanic or mostly white based on the quality of the neighborhood (the Hispanic people were generally in the poorer areas).  But here, it doesn't seem to matter what the neighborhood is like, you're bound to find lots of people from Mexico.  It's so much fun!  And I love having six missionaries in the same ward.  We see each other every day.  When you're in an area where it's just you and your companion for miles, it can get kind of boring.

The truck that the English elders and us four Spanish elders share got hit by a drunk driver a couple nights ago while it was parked in front of their apartment.  It's out of commission for awhile, which means we don't have a car for preparation day today.  But we should be able to work something out with the sisters and use their car to go shopping.  I feel bad for the English elders though, because they have a huge area and now they have no car to cover it with.

Well, things are going great!  I'd just like to close with a scripture I read this morning, Doctrine and Covenants 101:35-37 says basically that if we are faithful through all kinds of persecution and endure all things, even death, we will be partakers of eternal glory.  "Therefore, care not for the body, neither the life of the body; but care for the soul and the life of the soul."  Now, that doesn't mean don't worry about your health, do whatever you want with your body.  But we should be far less concerned about our mortal lives than we are about our eternal lives.  Thinking of stepping into the arms of my Savior, clothed in Celestial glory always puts things into perspective for me.  If we endure faithfully through all kinds of trails, one day we will be able to say, "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness" (2 Timothy 4:7-8).  "For in this world your joy is not full, but in me your joy is full" (D&C 101:36 

"And that same sociality which exists among us here will exist among us there, only it will be coupled with eternal glory, which glory we do not now enjoy" (D&C 130:2).

Just imagine enjoying Celestial glory with your closest family and friends!  Won't that be worth every pain, every disappointment, every struggle, every heartache?  Hold fast to your faith, whatever the future brings!  

I love you all and hope your are having a wonderful time!  And remember, "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him" ( 1Cor 2:9).  

Elder Lofthouse

Email from Elder Lofthouse 7/22/13

This was a great week!  We had Specialized Training on Wednesday (a.k.a. Zone Conference) and it was so uplifting!  We talked about leaving and following up on commitments, teaching people, not lessons, how Christ is both the Father and the Son, eternal marriage, and a bunch of other great stuff.  And Sister Gelwix is amazing and hemmed a pair of my pants for me!  She is so great!  And I got to sight-read a piece of music for our zone's musical number.  That was interesting.  Sister Guzy has a beautiful voice though, so I think that made up for my mistakes.  I really can't believe how often I'm asked to play the piano, whether for musical numbers, sacrament meeting, or baptisms.  This is actually the first ward I've been in where I haven't played the piano for sacrament meeting.

  The best part of the conference was probably the last part though.  Each time, the incoming missionaries and the departing missionaries share their testimonies.  It is so much fun to see the contrast between those who are just starting and those who have been completely changed by two years of faithful service.  It makes you reflect on who you were when you came in to the mission, who you are now, and who you want to be when you're giving your final testimony.  Elder Kahuhu, one of the assistants bore his testimony as he is leaving soon.  He is a convert to the church, and from what I've heard had a rough life before he found the gospel.  He is one of the greatest missionaries I've ever met and he literally talks to EVERYONE about the gospel (It took us about 20 minutes to get in to Hibachi grill once).  He said, with tears in his eyes, "I know that Jesus Christ is our Savior.  That's the only things I have a testimony about.  Jesus Christ.  My life is proof that the atonement works."  It was so powerful.  That's why I'm here as a missionary.  Because the atonement works!!  I want others to taste of the joy I've tasted and to become like Elder Kahuhu and so many others who have been completely transformed by the Atonement of Christ.

We had a baptism yesterday.  Have I told you about O? O is an amazing man.  He's not a member, but he goes on team-ups with us, attends church every week and he knows the Book of Mormon is true.  But his less-active wife has various fears when it comes to marriage and we still haven't been able to resolve them.  So until he gets married (or moves out), he can't get baptized.  But their ten year-old daughter, M, was baptized yesterday.  At the baptism was an investigator that the other Elders had just given to us because she moved to our area and she had kind of halted in her progress towards baptism (otherwise they would have just finished teaching her since we're all in the same ward).  Well, her kids were there too, and her daughter G said after the baptism that she wants to get baptized... next week!  She's about the same age as M I think.  And her older brother said he wants to too.  And a member friend of N's was also trying to convince her to do it too, and she said maybe.   And we already have a pretty solid baptism (a man named A) set up for next week, so that's a possibility of four baptisms!

Often, I can't explain some of the miracles and blessings I receive, and this is one of them.  But miracles do happen, hearts are changed, and as long as we are striving to live faithfully, God always steps in to take care of the rest.  

I've mentioned "The Easter Project" that we started in March, which is reading all the references in the Topical Guide that refer to Jesus Christ (such as Jesus Christ, Davidic Descent of or Jesus Christ, Savior).  Well, we have about a month left and though I've kept up with the reading, I haven't been getting very much out of it.  So last week, I resolved that I was going to get the very most I could out of the last month of the project so that I could experience the mighty change of heart that President Gelwix promised we would experience if we would do the project.  I have grown more in my love of the Savior in the last week than I had in the whole rest of my mission.  I have never felt the Spirit so often in my life as I have tried to make the Savior the center of everything I do.  I have so many thoughts and scriptures I could share with you right now, but I just don't have room or time.  I urge you to study about the Savior.  Ponder His sacrifice and how it can change your life.  He loves you so much.  I do too!  Make Him the center of all you do and you will come to know Him as He is.

I love being a missionary!!!!!  It really is training for the rest of your life.  I have already been changed so much by it and I'm not even half-way done.  If you have the opportunity to serve a mission in the future start preparing now!!  It will be the best choice you ever made.  But you do have to be prepared.  It's hard.  It's a refiner's fire.  I know a lot of missionaries who have gone home for various reasons.  But if you are prepared, a mission will be the greatest two years for your life.  You will learn and grow so much.  

I look forward to the day when we meet together in the Glorious Kingdom of our Heavenly Father and our Savior, Jesus Christ.  That day WILL come.  Stand firm, press foward, and have a firm hope that one day will receive eternal life.  I know we can do it if we rely on Him.

Love you!!

Elder Lofthouse

Email from Elder Lofthouse 7/15/2013

I still can't believe how much happens and how much changes from week to week.  I can never write about everything that happens in one week, and I don't even know if the things I include will even matter next week.  We'll probably be focusing on different people, doing different things, etc.

This week I had the best zone meeting I've ever been in.  Usually we all complain about how long they take and how we don't really get much out of them anyway.  Well our zone leaders are completely inspired as are many other missionaries in our zone and we all learned so much.  Or maybe it was just me.  But it was so uplifting and then President Gelwix stopped by towards the end and he talked to us about Priesthood power.

One of the things we talked about in zone meeting was Elder Anderson's talk from last conference, "It's a Miracle".  He said, "I promise you, as you pray to know with whom to speak [about the gospel], names and faces will come into your mind.  Words to speak will be given in the very moment you need them. Opportunities will open to you.  Faith will overcome doubt, and the Lord will bless you with your very own miracles."  Pay attention to those first two words.  "I promise," spoken by an Apostle in General Conference.  That is a promise you can trust.  We knelt down as a zone, Elder Castaneda, one of our zone leaders, offered a prayer, and then we stayed on our knees for about 2 minutes and just listened and felt the Spirit.  Names and faces came to our minds.  We do this in members' homes.  The only time that it hasn't worked was when the phone rang right after the prayer and we didn't have quiet time to just sit and think.  

I promise you that Elder Nelson's promise will be fulfilled.  If you are willing to accept whatever answer the Lord gives you, when you pray sincerely and with faith to know who to share the gospel with, you will see faces and names, and by the power of the Holy Ghost and the right to revelation that you have, you can also know HOW to share it with them.  The Lord is hastening His work!  Elder Perry said in a meeting with the Mission Presidents of this area of the world (so I heard this from President Gelwix) that that hastening is NOT the increase in the number of missionaries nor the increased focus on missionary work.  The hastening refers to the second coming.  When we say the work is hastening, we mean the Second Coming is hastening.  It is soon!  I know it!  This is the time to prepare to meet God, and this is the time for us to help others to do the same.  Be bold, but be loving as you reach out to our brothers and sisters.  Don't lose sight of how amazing this work is!  You are a part of it, a vital part, whether you are a full-time missionary or not.  Pray for missionary opportunities, pray to know how to share the gospel and who to share it with, and just serve everyone around you with love, no matter what.  

I love you all!  I wish I could adequately express my thoughts and feelings on this subject through an e-mail and with the short time I have.  I know that this church is true and that these are the latter-days.  I know that Heavenly Father loves us, that Jesus Christ is our Savior, and that this work is their work, not ours.  It will move forward unhindered until it fills the whole earth, no matter what, but we can help speed that process up.  We are here to prepare the earth for the Second Coming!  Don't falter!  Don't give up!  There are great things to come!

Love,

Elder Lofthouse   

Email from Elder Lofthouse 7/8/2013

Elder Morales, Elder Hernandez, and Elder Lofthouse

Well, this week was really interesting.  Oh, and surprise!  I'm e-mailing on Monday now, because in my new area we have a Family History Center.  But my new area isn't Tulare.  I got moved a few minutes north of Fresno, to Madera.  Which is an interesting story.

Fist of all, I did get to go to Elder Hernandez's farewell.  I'll send some pictures.  I got to see a bunch of members from Atwater, including D!  She's doing so great!  She's a primary teacher now, and she got a spiritual confirmation that she needs to serve a mission and is planning on doing so in a year and a half.  Woohoo!!  

I got up the next morning and finished packing the few little things I had left to pack.  I got a call from the zone leaders.  They asked about the farewell, how it was, and then asked if President or the Assistants had talked to me before we left.  I said no.  Then they told me that I was going up to Madera to be with Elder Crawford instead of going to Tulare and that I would be getting a ride with Elder Peltzer and Elder Morales (who are training) to a stake center in Fresno, where I'd get a ride the rest of the way.  A few minutes later the assistants called and said, "Actually we need you to camp out at the mission office.  We have an unexpected missionary coming in, and a few transportation things to work out, and we still aren't quite sure who's going to be who's companion.  Elder Crawford will be there too."  

So, Elder Crawford and I got to hang out at the Mission Office all day and watch all the new missionaries come in and do there paperwork and things like we did on our first day.  But we were super bored just sitting there for hours and hours, because President and the assistants were too busy to talk to us.  Finally, at about 5:30 they decided that we were going up to Madera together.  Why couldn't they have just stuck with that decision in the morning?  Oh well.  We still got to teach two lessons that day, and one of them was one of the most memorable lessons I'll ever have.  Lets just say that the person we were teaching drinks quite a bit.

Anyway, I love my new area.  We have six missionaries in our all-Spanish ward!  And the ward here is so great!!  The members are so focused on other people and are so willing to help out.  It's no wonder they've been growing so much and they have six missionaries now.  They just opened up a new area last transfer and our goal is to get yet another set of missionaries in the ward.  And guess who opened up that new area?  Sister Poston!  Yet again, we're in the same district!  And it is so much fun to have dinner with six missionaries every day.  This is going to be a great transfer!

My companion is Elder Crawford.  He's from Virginia, played lacrosse, went to BYU-Idaho, and is just awesome.  He's 6' 4" and I feel super short next to him.  He works really hard, wants to be obedient, and he is a lot of fun to be with.  

One more interesting experience:  Our most promising investigator was named R.  He really wanted to get baptized, and all we really needed to do was get approval from the bishop to baptize him.  Because he was living with a woman, but they weren't a couple, she was basically his caretaker (he had diabetes, was missing a leg, and had other health problems) and President said we could go ahead and baptize him if the bishop was okay with it, because they weren't really breaking the law of chastity.  Well, we got a call Friday morning that Roman was in the hospital.  We borrowed the sisters' car and drove over there to see him.  We got into ICU, and he wasn't looking too good.  He had a lot of machines hooked up to him and he wasn't responding to anything.  We said a prayer (because we were pretty sure they would have gotten super mad at us if we'd tried to put our hands on his head) and left.  Our first stop afterward was at his roommate/caretaker's house, Er.  She had just barely gotten off the phone with the hospital.  They said that his brain was dead and that all that was keeping him alive was life support and that his doctor from Fresno was coming up to confer with the doctor at the hospital and pretty much just make the decision to pull the machines.  It was super sad.  He didn't have any family, just E.  She said that the best part of his day was when the missionaries would come over and his greatest desire was to get baptized before he died.  She now wants to get baptized too, because she knows that's what he would have wanted, and so we've started teaching her.  It was a really interesting day.

Oh, and the 4th of July was fun!  We weren't allowed to be out after 6:30 unless we were with an investigator or member, and we could stay out late, but had to be in bed by 10:30.  We went to a member's house, ate hamburgers and hotdogs and watched fireworks.  I forgot my camera, so I don't have any pictures.  Sorry.

All in all, it was a pretty crazy week.  A  lot of things happened.  And my e-mail is already so long, but I wanted to share a thought real quick.  I was reading in Mormon 2 today.  In verse 18, Mormon says that "A continual scene of wickedness and abominations has been before min e eyes ever since I have been sufficient to behold the ways of man."  In verse 15 he says, "I saw that the day of grace was passed with them, both temporally and spiritually."  That was in 345 A.D.  In that year the Nephites were already clearly pretty wicked and "thousands of them [had been] hewn down in open rebellion against their God."  In verses 21 and 22, the Lamanites again come upon them and Mormon knows that they are on the verge of destruction.  But they fortify the city of Shem, "that perhaps we might save them from destruction."  Well, guess what?

They did.

The Nephites had been so wicked at that time, that Mormon had been forbidden to preach repentance to them.  10 years after the above victory, God calls Mormon to finally cry repentance unto the people (Mormon 3:2).  And it wasn't for another 30 years after that that the Nephites were finally destroyed.  To me, this shows just how much God wants His children to repent.  He waited and waited and waited and gave them chance after chance after chance, even after Mormon judged them passed the day of grace, God gave them another 40 years.  Only Satan will ever tell you that it's too late for you to repent.  Heavenly Father wants you back.  He's patient and loving. Don't be afraid to turn to Him and find forgiveness.  

I love you all!

Elder Lofthouse

Email from Elder Lofthouse 7/2/13

Transfer calls came on Saturday.   Elder Morales is going to train here in Lindsay!  I'm moving to the next town over, Tulare, with Elder Hancock, so we'll still be in the same district.  It is kind of sad to leave an area after only 6 weeks though. 

Following the usual pattern, since my e-mail last week was long, this one will probably be pretty short.  We've been teaching with members quite a bit this week, which has been great.  There might only be a few strong members here, but they sure are willing to help.  I'm going to miss working with them.

Hopefully I'll be going to Fresno tonight to go to Elder Hernandez's farewell.  The rule is that you have to have an investigator going and have member transportation.  Well, last night, thanks to Elder Morales, we've found both.  M's mom is going to come with us and one of Elder Hernandez's converts (the only person he ever baptized from knocking doors) and his family.  Hopefully it goes through!  I love that Elder and can't wait to see him again!

Church was really full on Sunday.  It was kind of weird, because several of the active families were on vacation and we only had two investigators there.  The rest were either visitors who'd just happened to be in the area that morning, less actives who were coming to church for the first time in months, and one lady who just moved here from Idaho.  It was great to see all those less-actives come out and to see both the English and Spanish sacrament meetings filled up!

Well, I hope you all have a wonderful week!