Monthly Archives: September 2012

Guns, Pimps and Weed, Oh My!

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This week was an AWESOME week for us! For starters, we hit 27 lessons this week which ties my record for number of lessons taught in one week. Plus we have an investigator that is on baptismal date for the 30th come to church! We have 3 people on baptismal date right now and 2 of them are really promising. So pray we can have this one on September 30th!

Again this week I found myself realizing just how inner city the inner city is!– haha. I remember all the stories people told me about Detroit before I came out here… and now I’m living in the heart of it! And the funny thing is, after living in it for about a week, you start to just become desensitized to everything. Like on Saturday, we were having a lesson with a member on his porch and we heard “BANG BANG!” maybe 3 or 4 streets over. We all turned to look at each other and then all at the same time we said, “gunshot,” then we resumed with our spiritual lesson. Not to scare you guys or anything, but that stuff just happens everyday out here.

The other day we were stopped at a red light and we saw this group of girls all talking to this guy who was dressed in a really nice suit. Elder Stark goes “wait are they doing what I think they’re doing??”  Add that to the number of people who don’t try to even hide the fact that their smoking weed, and that’s Detroit.

I finally got to meet the whole ward this week and they are pretty awesome. We had about 70 people at church this Sunday which is expected when you have a ward that takes in part of Detroit. We had a new ward mission leader called and he is going to be great. They picked the perfect person for the job and I look forward to working with him. We talked a little bit yesterday about some needs for the ward and we set up a correlation time with him for later this week. We’re going to be starting to do some serious member work in this ward to in hopes of raising our number of referrals and getting more members to lessons.

Well, I’m almost out of time so I better bail. I hope you guys are doing well and having an awesome fall. I hate the fact that the weather is getting cooler, but it’s been nice to work in cool temperatures again!

The Inner city is My Element—Erik letter 9/10/2012

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My first week in Warren was a pretty eventful week and I was really happy with it. This is my first time in the Bloomfield Hills stake so I have now officially been in all four stakes that our mission covers. But I don’t know anybody in leadership or anything in the stake so when we had stake conference yesterday; I had no idea who anyone was! Plus the stake presidency got reorganized yesterday so there’s probably going to be some mass confusion these next few weeks.

We found a bunch of new people to teach this week which was awesome! Of course, it’s not too hard to find people to teach in Detroit, it’s just hard to get them to actually learn and keep commitments! We ended up finding 5 new investigators this week and 13 potential investigators which is almost my record amount of potentials in one week. I looked through the past few months of records for Warren and found that missionaries are only teaching about 2 member lessons a week so Elder Stark and I set a goal to work with members more. I’m happy about that because in Howell I was teaching about 7 member lessons a week and it really helped build our relationship with the ward and secure a lot of referrals from people. Plus it gets us free food!!

We currently have 4 people set on a baptism date and two of those are really really promising. Plus, we had one investigator make the long trip to stake conference which was amazing! We talked to him afterwards and these are his exact words – – “I’m really glad I came today, God told me exactly what I needed to hear.” It was really cool! We have a couple of investigators that are really promising and I’m really happy about the new ones we found this week too.
 
Overall things with me and Elder Stark are going well. I was able to work with him a little bit while I was in Romeo and he was in Rochester but that was almost a year ago now. I was surprised by how much better of teachers we have become and we’ve been able to work together pretty easily. I’ve had to change my teaching style a little bit to fit the city again, and Elder Stark and I have been trying to balance our teaching evenly but overall everything is going well. 
 
So I think I told you guys about the missionary series called “The District” that the church was only allowing for missionaries. Well I just found out they put it online at missionary.lds.org. If you go to the website you have to log in (I think you can log in just with your lds.org username) and then on the right hand side click on “pre-mtc training.” That takes you to a page with a bunch of things that get you ready to go to the MTC and at the bottom is a section titled “The District.” It is a SWEET series that is filmed in the same style as the Office and it takes you through all the things that missionaries do in terms of planning and teaching. The District 2 is the best and one but District 1 has some awesome moments in it to. If you really want to know what it’s like for me out here, these episodes highlight it all. So check them out for Family Home Evening or something. I watch them at least once a month ha-ha.
 
Well hope you guys are all doing well. I’m sad Hanna is gone, but if you look in the Bible dictionary under the Revelation of John it confirms that animals go to heaven too!
 
Love you all!
 
-Erik
 
 
 

Transferred to Warren Michigan!

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So I did end up getting transferred out of Howell and I was pretty sad about it. I really really liked the ward and we had a few investigators that are SO CLOSE to baptism! Hopefully I’ll get to go back for those and hopefully I’ll have a chance to see the ward again. It is nice to get a fresh start in a new area though, and I’ve been around a couple of other missionaries that have loved it. The area is pretty big – about as big as Romeo was – and we cover a small part of Detroit as well. Our apartment is ok but nowhere near as nice as Howells, but I was expecting that. My new companion says it’s a pretty middle class area with a lot of white people kind of like Howell. It sounds like there is a lot of good things going on here right now so I am pretty excited!

My companion’s name is Elder Stark and he is from Alabama (so far I’ve only had one companion from Utah which amazes me.) He used to be in my missionary district when I was in Romeo so I already knew him pretty well. He’s been in Warren for 5 months which is nice because he already knows all about it. I’m glad I get to work at least part of the city again too.

Other than that not to much new stuff is happening. I’ll have more info on the area next week. I’m no longer district leader but Elder Stark is— so I’m still near one. I actually liked being a District Leader a lot, and I hope I get to do it again if Elder Stark leaves next transfer. But that is at least six weeks away.

I’m on the watch for cold weather so I’ll let you know when I need my thermal stuff. It probably won’t be until November. Last year it didn’t even snow until the week before Christmas. I just get nervous because the leaves are already starting to drop out here and in Utah that means it could snow any day!

Well, hope you guys have an awesome week!!

 

-Erik

NEW APT ADDRESS

31355 Mound Rd apt D

Warren, MI

48092