Birch Family Blog

Hello yea the library is closed today but we got permission to use a member’s computer

Things are going ok here elder Vincent lost his voice so for the first part of the week I had to do a lot and since he is the district leader I had to do the district meeting for him and that really helped me getting over my quietness. We got another person with a baptism date but her’s is a little iffy but I guess we’ll see and we were looking at some former investigators and found someone we felt like we should visit the previous missionaries said she had a lot of drama but when we got there she was very surprised and just kept saying this is so weird because apparently early that week she was struggling and had a lot of hate for her ex which was why the previous missionaries said she was a lot of drama. So she was very excited to see us it’s amazing to see how the Lord prepares people like that so were are very excited because everything she wants to change goes right along with the gospel .

Well the weather here is REALLY wired it in the 50′s today and two days ago it was in the 30′s…

we are slowly see more success in this area which is super exciting but this might be my last week here…. transfers are Thursday and they usually move the trainer out of the area but Elder Vincent just became the district leader and we have only been together for a transfer so I guess we’ll see what happens

Love Elder Birch

Hello

It is so nice to hear from all of you guys and it’s nice to hear that the deacons are getting big again.
This week all our appointments fell through but we had a media referral and she seemed very excited and wanted to come to church before we could even sit down with her so we were a little afraid because Fast Sunday may be an overload and the gospel principles class was on Exaltation and that made us a little worried but when we met with her later that day she said she love our church and REALLY love the gospel principle class and before we could ask her anything she asked us what she could do to become a member of our church so we mentioned baptism and went on with the restoration then started the baptism invite and before we could finish it she said “yes yes yes oh a hardcore yes!” and that surprised us just how ready she was and we have a date on the 21 of January which is pretty nifty I think. oh and also this week Elder Vincent had a district leader training in Independence on Friday so Thursday night we went to Manhattan to get the other district leader to drop me off with his comp who happened to be my MTC comp so the zone leaders had to go on exchanges with us so all Friday I was in Manhattan and I was learning a lot for the zone leader I was with and then on Saturday we went to Hayes which took a awhile to get so this week we really didn’t do a whole lot but at least it ended with an awesome new investigator

Well write you next week
Love Elder Birch

Hey sorry for it being Tuesday day again the library was closed again….

I’m doing great I’ve finally not really really scared to go tracting as much as I was and this last week it was the best week I’ve had so far in my mission the work is slowly getting back which is awesome. And it’s weird some of the investigators we had before elder Vincent all of a sudden are really either progressing or starting to tells us the really problems that are preventing them from wanting to be baptized. And the weather here is kind of crazy on Saturday it was like 20ish then on Sunday and Monday it was in the 60s or 70s and today it’s in the 30s again….oh and the person oh keeps sending you pictures is sis. Smith

well that’s all I can think of right now

Love Elder Birch

Hello and sorry the library was closed yesterday…..

It was nice to hear from you all Sunday. It sounds like everyone is doing great. Oh and we stayed at the member’s house till like 8:30ish. Elder Vincent thought it would be a good idea to practice my door approach on members like the ward mission leader’s family because I’m getting pretty stupid scared when it comes to knocking on stranger’s houses and for some reason I still get stupid scared when I do it with members…. but last night we tried with the ward mission leader and his brother who is visiting and after a bit of practicing it got a little better. He had a talk with use on methods and the reality of what we are doing and when doing door approaches. It helped calm some of my nerves hearing that and when we were leaving to go home he said how proud of us he was because on how much we want to do missionary work and how much were are trying to do to make it work.
There’s some sort of bug that elder Vincent has that is making him pretty tired and now I think he gave it to me so that’s a plus Oh and the weather here was wild yesterday. It was about 45ish and today it is about 20ish and on Christmas it was about 32ish so its pretty crazy weather out here.
And I did get the card and letters grandma sent me and I think my favorite gift was the pillow case that you all signed

well that’s all I can think to write this week
Love Elder Birch

Hello Everyone

I’ve been meaning to ask you but i keep forgetting I’ve been getting some wicked migraines and I was wonder if we had anything at home that could help because they REALLY SUCK….

Oh and Elder Vincent is really awesome we get along great!

Tracting is going ok yesterday Elder Vincent had me do a house by myself and afterwards I asked him on a scale of 1-10 1 being a door slammed in my face and 10 being baptized on the spot he gave me a 2 and I would agree I’m learning I really don’t know how to talked to people but it’s getting easier so hopefully I’ll be able to be to do at least a 5 while tracting and I also get super scared while doing it and I can’t get myself un-scared so maybe with more practice I’ll get better and less scared.

I don’t think we have a Christmas party but we do have zone conference on Wednesday!

I don’t know what time I’ll be calling so it will just be a Christmas Surprise!!!

Oh and Sadie have you had a seminary teacher name Brother Headlen because his parents are in the ward I’m at and wanted to know I think they asked him if he had you and I think that he said that he did so I was just wondering.

Oh and Nate what did you do while tracting and just talking to other people?

Next week I’ll send you a picture of the area I’m covering so you can see it.

And apparently we are far enough away from the mission home that they just need elders for district leaders and zone leaders because in my district there are two sets of sisters and two sets of senior couples so I don’t really see a lot of other elders which is fine I guess.

Oh and thanks for these great gifts you sent I’m excited to see what’s in the rest of them and I will send Sunny a thank you card.

Oh and dad I only get to stay at church for 3 hours because only one ward goes there just, thought you would like to know

well write you next week
Love ELDER BIRCH

Hello Everyone!
I got a new companion; Elder Neitzel’s 2 years were was up. So my new companion is elder Vincent he’s from West Jordan and he’s been out 6 weeks longer than me so we’re both kind of new at this. Well we are meeting with the ward mission leader because the previous companionship (Elder Neitzel and Elder Mitchel) dropped about 15 people and that concerned the ward mission leader and it ends up that this area used to be on fire that Elder Neitzel hurt his ankle pretty bad the first week he was here and the work slowed way down and it ends up that when I got here Elder Neitzel started to do more which was good but now I guess it’s up to Elder Vincent and I to get it going again so wish us luck .
I’m excited and i can’t believe I’ve been out 2 months already and I am a little scared for how fast the rest of my mission will go.
I’m learning soooooo much since I’ve been out here and I’m excited for the rest of my mission.
The only hard part is just opening up and talking to people. Elder Neitzel and I never really did much tracking so I don’t have much experience with that and I still get very nervous going up to random houses but I’m slowly getting over that and Elder Vincent is really pushing me to do that.
The weather is starting to get really cold so I guess that’s ok but it is an all car area because it’s so huge. I think the furthest areas are about an hour or so away and it’s kind of funny because Elder Vincent just came from one of the smallest areas where I think it took about 20 or 30 minutes to go from one side to the other and this area shocked him.
Well I’m trying to think of what else to say about how everything is going but that is just about the gist of it and hopefully we can get this area back up and running.

Oh yea we yet to see a referral but it ends up the address was bad and the person didn’t know about this referral but I have some pictures from where the referral was supposedly.
Oh and here’s a Buddhist temple that a Thai Buddhist guy is going to in about March and he wants a Thai BoM. Here is also one of those never ending roads

Well write you all next week.
Love Elder Birch

1. Have you heard anything about a mission Christmas party? I have not

2. How was your week? Anything fun and exciting? Try anything new and different? This week seemed to go by very long but quick somehow. on Saturday we had to go to independence for a progress meeting on how the 12 week program is going and half way through that i started to not feel so well and i felt worse on the 4 hour trip back to Salina… then around 4 the next morning my comp started to throw up so we were both sick on Sunday YAY…. oh and Thursday when we went to Darleen & Junior they were telling us about their son who lives in Farmington was telling them how it was like a hurricane there how the power went out and street signs blow down so i got a little worried about you guys but i knew you would be safe and it is nice to hear that you guys were

3. How cold has it been there? Does it get colder than home? It does get pretty cold thanks to the humidity and the wind…. but the coat we got helps a lot

4. I loved your story about the couple you visit! Sounds like they take good care of you! they do and they just love us i think it was like two weeks ago it was Juniors B-Day and he wanted to take us out to eat with him and he was soooo happy that we did

well write you next week
Love Elder Birch

1. Did you get the envelope with the cord and medicine? Yes it made it

2.How is the training going? What things are you learning? Training is going great I’m learning LOTS I’m most learning the 5 lessons and the fundamentals of missionary work.

3. Did you get the thanksgiving card? I got the card it, was funny and cute. We haven’t gone anywhere yet but we are planning to go to this frozen yogurt place that my companion likes.

4. How are the people you’re teaching? We are actually running out of people to teach. We might have one or two that are kind of progressing and everyone else is at a standstill….. oh but the is a couple that have had missionaries for about 15 years and she has a very strong testimony of the church but doesn’t want to get baptized without him but this last week we’ve made some progress with him on Tuesday. We just asked him some questions about how he felt about the church and the BoM. then on Friday we went back and it ended up that she was poking at him a littel bit while we were gone which was awesome so we were able to go more in depth about some stuff. I guess that she was just waiting for some more missionaries to try to get him before she would help! Oh, then on Sunday we had a member come with use who was kind of aggressively bold but for about an hour and a half we went into detail about the great apostasy which he dons’t believe in. The whole lesson was super great and we are excited to see what happens next. Elder Neitzel keeps telling me that I must really have needed to be here because I’m helping a lot of stuff to happen I guess.

5. Do you have a lot of contact with your mission president? You should tell them that Larry Nelson is in your home ward and that they are great friends…if you want.
Do you email him every week? I do try to email him every week but sometimes I forget and I don’t really have a lot of contact with him

6. Tell us about your typical day. Start to finish. Well we wake up at about 6:30 take turns taking showers and stuff. We trade off every other day. We begin personal study at 8 and then at 9 we begin companion study then at 11 we either have lunch at our apartment or go to some investigators house for lunch then we try to go to some appointments which usually fall through…and try to find new people to teach which hasn’t been going too well then we have dinner at usually at 6 at some members home which usually last about an hour to an hour and a half depending on the people. After we that we go and try to find someone to teach and go to appointments which also usually fall through. Then at 9 or 9:30 we head home for daily planning then we get ready for bed then usually at 10:30 we sleep

7. Tell Sadie Hi. HELLO SADIE!!!!!!!
8. Tell Nate hello too HELLO NATHAN!!!!!!

Oh and that scripture you sent me dad my comp has shared with me a lot so thanks for the reinforcement on how important that scripture is.

Oh and I think I forgot to tell you last week I had my first baptism. His name is Steve and we didn’t know he was deathly afraid of water so his baptism took a little longer than we thought. About 2 1/2 hours just to get him fully under so that was exciting

Oh and the pictures are of the Kansas city temple and everyone who came out with me
Elder Neitzel and Me
my zone
and Steve’s Baptism

Oh and I’m interested to see those pics of uncle Rob’s area

Well, I’ll write you next week,
Love Elder Birch!!!

1. How are you doing? I’m doing fine I’ve told to not take anything really personal so I’m doing ok i am just getting over a tummy bug which kind of sucked my comp made me stay home for a day

2. How is it with your meds? there doing great!
Is it working for me to get them and mail them or do you want to try filling them yourself? i like that you sending them

3. You mentioned you get extra time in the morning. Is that because of your brain disorder ? no i get an extra hour because of this twelve week program they just started i think 2 months ago

4. Do you need anything else that I can send with the package? oh there’s a CD that my comp has its called “Lower Lights” its some folk hyms

5. How is your money holding up? Have you used your debit card for anything? I’ve used it to by a pillow and big blanket and some cards.

6. Do you know what your plans for Thanksgiving are? we actually are having two thanksgivings one on Wednesday and then on Thursday so I’m excited

well its getting pretty cold here colder than i thought it would be because of the humidity i guess well write you next week

Love Elder Birch

1. Did you get our Greenie package? Yes i did and thank you very much for it

2. How did it go with Stacey? She wasn’t home every time we’ve tried but its ok

3. Tell us about your days. Are you waking up ok and is your alarm clock making your companion crazy? No he has a pretty good alarm so I use just my light and we don’t start the day until about 11ish because I get an extra hour for comp study and then we usually go to Darleen and Juniors they feed us and give use candy bars they really like the missionaries then we usually go to some appointments we have but lately they have been falling though…… but oh well. Then we have dinner and go to some more appointments that usually fall though as well

4. Do you have dinner appointments most nights? We have dinner appointments almost every day and that cook book would be great

5. Are you still good about taking pictures? i was going to ask you if you could send me that cord for the camera because I guess I forgot it…. and yes I’m taking pics

oh and I’ve been told that its best to send the packages and letters to the mission home apparently

the weather he has been off and on with rain but it is usually very very windy