Birch Family Blog

Hello

Q: I need to know that you are still wearing your retainer. You are right? Right?
A: Yes I’m still wearing it the wreck just made a little dent in the wire but I gently bent it back so everything is just fine in my mouth

Q: How are you doing? Sometimes I get the feeling that you are struggling a bit. How are things with your companion? Are you being good and not making him crazy . What’s he like? Is he a good trainer?
A: Oh I’m done being trained now and yea sometimes things do get hard but apparently I’m taking it a lot better than my companion because on Saturday we had a couple of appointments but they all fell though so we had about four or five hours of just trying to figure out what to do because we didn’t have the car and we were about an hour and a half from our home and our dinner was in this area so with nothing better to do we tried some less active members but they all were ether not home or were “busy” so we did some tracting and we were getting a lot of doors closed on us and I didn’t know at the time but my companion was getting really mad and stuff but I was just fine a little tired but fine but after about three hours of this we found a really nice family that when we knocked on the door and said that we have a message about Jesus Christ the mom said that anyone who talks about Jesus is welcomed in her house and it ended up she was watching some move I think it was called Jesus of Nazareth or something like that so that was interesting and after our lesson of the restoration she said that while she was watching the movie she had a thought what was happening in the Americas while Jesus was in Jerusalem and we told her that the Book of Mormon told of just that! And the whole time she kept kind of saying that it was weird that we showed up so after we left my companion was a little more happy.

Q: How is the teaching? Are you feeling more confident? I’m happy to hear about your successes.
A: I’m getting better at teaching and I’m more confident then I was before my mission but I still am working hard on it.

Q: How is your contact with Pres. Keyes? You should tell him that your neighbor is Larry Nelson. Keep writing to him.
A: My contact with him is good we write him every week because if we don’t it shows up on his computer that we didn’t. He apparently told my new companion that I am a good hard worker so that’s good.

Q: How about your journal writing? I know that’s hard for you but even a line or a drawing is good.
A: My journal writing is going ok but getting better.

Q: What’s your typical day like? What about Sundays?
A: It depends, our days are slowly getting more busy which is nice and on Sundays we go to church at 8ish and leave around 12:30ish and after that we go to appointments and stuff like that.

Other than that not much too exciting is happening excepted for the Kansas city temple open house is going to be this April so there a lot of hype about that well write you guys next week

Love,
Elder Birch

I can’t believe that happened to TJ that’s pretty shocking well I hope his family is doing ok.

1. How are you feeling? How are the wrist and your face? I’m feeling much better my wrist still hurts but at least my face is doing ok.

2. What about the bike? Was it one of the missionaries and does it need to be replaced? The bike is ok it just has some scratches and the elder who owned the bike left it when he went home.

3. When you went to the ER did you use mission insurance? Yeah the mission insurance covered it so all is well with that.

4. How was your week? Did you have your baptism yet? How is it going with the referrals? the week has been ok I’ve been kind of sick with some sort of head cold which kind of sucks and we did have our baptism and it went pretty good and we moved to another members house so our address change is 1222 spruce Leavenworth, KS 66048

Oh yeah I forgot to mention in the last emails but we also cover the penitentiary and the military base so we get a lot of different people here in our ward. The bishop here actually graduated at Layton high when his dad went to Hill Air Force base. Well I hope everyone back there is doing ok oh and I did get those packages and I loved them thanks a lot

Well, write you guys next week
Love Elder Birch

Well sorry for it being Tuesday again our Mondays have been pretty hectic but things should get better and this last week has been the most exciting one I guess.
Last Tuesday we got to ride our bikes I got to use the previous missionaries one so we were riding along and started to go downhill and I hit a bump in the sidewalk and fell off the bike and basically landed on my face and so when I got on all fours a lot blood was flowing out of my mouth I was a little dazed and my comp was running up the hill screaming are you ok I told him I was ok nothing too bad happened so we didn’t know what to do because my bike kind of broke so we walked home. It was about 5 minutes away when we got there I washed all the blood off my face and I found out that I had a big gash on my lip and bit the inside of my lip pretty hard a bruised eye lid and just a couple of cuts above my eye. We called the mission nurse and she told use to go to the ER we went there and they gave me two stitches on my lip and looked at my left hand because I hurt a little when I moved it and I ended up that i chipped a bone in my wrist so that was fun. Oh and then on Saturday we had a baptism for a pretty awesome girl she has referred like 10 people to us so far. Oh and I have a pretty bad head cold so my week has been pretty high and pretty low but I’m ok now I guess. Oh and don’t worry mom I have some pictures for you

Oh and happy B-Day Nate

Oh yes I did get your package thanks.

Oh and my new address is
1315 Kansas St Leavenworth KS 66048

My comps name is Elder Eldredge. He’s from Salt Lake City

Oh yea and how is Sadie doing and tell her I really liked her letter and also tell her that I read it right before we went to out ride our bikes.

Love Elder Birch

Well because I don’t have proof of address I only have 15 minutes here at the library so I can’t write a lot
1. So…did you get transferred? Yea I got transferred to Leavenworth Kansas. I don’t know the address so for right now just send stuff to the mission office and my previous companion got Sadie’s letter and is forwarding it to me. This area covers a military base and the one of the largest US penitentiaries so things are pretty interesting and there’s a lot of drug problems here sooo… thats exciting I guess
3. Did you get your suit taken care of? no the last couple of days in Salina were pretty hectic
but we do have two baptisms here lined up.

oh and dad thanks for that thought I have noticed that because so far both of my areas were slow then when we started being exactly obedient things have picked up
well love you all and write you next week
Elder Birch

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