Drugs, Shoe Fetish, and Witchcraft

It's been an interesting week, to say the least. I'm still trucking along here in West Valley, I'm glad I stayed because I love the members so much, but a little disappointed that I didn't leave, I'm getting a little tired of the Granger Stake, it's just so tiny, there's not a lot of work to do! We have had a few more referrals this week, so hopefully things start picking up. Conference weekend, what a time to be a missionary in the Salt Lake City mission! I have tickets to the Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning sessions. We have an investigator we are trying to get to conference. He's a black Muslim man from Africa. He wants to know about prophets and is very curious. He is very sincere when he asks us a question. Anyways, we have two tickets for him for Saturday afternoon, and he is trying to get out of some plans he already made for the weekend. Our mission president promised us that if we get our investigators to conference, and they see the prophet with their own eyes, they WILL get baptized! Getting him to conference for us is a TOP PRIORITY! Hopefully all works out and he will be able to come! The companion and I are still getting along, he is getting better about wanting to work hard and focusing on the work. My new leaders are interesting. Our new zone leader goes home after this transfer, and so being as trunky as he is, being a leader is not too important to him right now. And my new district leader is a short kid from Peru, who carries around a toy light saber with him...yup. It's a very interesting zone right now, to say the least! They are both nice though, I'm sure we will get along.

The highlight of the week would have to be our random phone call from Adam. Adam calls us out of the blue, asking if we are the missionaries, we say we are. (We met this Adam the following Sunday at church, he is not all there if ya know what I mean) He then begins to confess all of his sins and desires to know from us what he should do. "I'm really into drugs, which I know is a sin. I also have a pornography problem, but I also have a fetish with women's shoes and I wanted to know if that is like witchcraft or what, cause that's like devil stuff, and I'm ready to throw my shoe collection away, but I wanted to know first how bad it is." "Well, Adam, first off ALL of those things are very bad, you are right, witchcraft IS like devil stuff, don't do it anymore. Secondly, you need to talk to your Bishop about these things, you don't need to tell us all the bad stuff you do, ok?" "Oh, really? Oh ok, I will do that, but do I really need to give up the shoes?" "....(giggle giggle) yes Adam, you need to throw them away (shhhhhh stop laughing Elder!) will you do that?" "Yeah I will, thanks Elders, see you at church!" (Click). "Elder Burkard? Yes Elder Warczak? ...I am NOT shaking his hand on Sunday!!!"

We didn't stop laughing for minutes! With all the drama of a missionary life, there are moments like this one that make it into your journal that you will tell time and time again for the rest of your life! Wherever you are Adam, thank you for providing my week with a little humor. I'm typing this in the Family History Center, across from Temple Square. I am truly grateful to be here in Salt Lake. I think I'm over the weirdness of being so close to family and friends. I'm sure I will see some friends at conference this weekend, but I'm not focused on that. I get to hear the prophet and twelve apostles speak, I get to hear what my Heavenly Father wants me to do right now! I cannot wait! I know the weeks after conference I will be all jacked up and pumped to do missionary work, I just hope I will be able to keep that excitement alive and not lose it.

After this weekend it's a suit jacket everyday for me until next conference...I really hope the sun goes away, if not I will surely die! It's still so hot, it's been 90 this week! I can't walk around in a jacket! So I need everyone to pray that the sun stays down, maybe I will give Chanticleer the rooster a call from "Rock-A-Doodle" and tell him not to crow, that should do it right? Haha I'll survive, there are missionaries in the jungles everyday, I can handle wearing a jacket. I look forward to writing next week and telling you any fun conference stories I experience. All who read this better watch it, even if you're not a member of the church, just do it! Take care and be safe, until next time!

Elder Scotty

*editor's note - we watched "Rock-A-Doodle" all. the. time. as kids. So sorry if that doesn't make sense to any of you, but the Warczak kids all got it!

Transfers Time!

So this is the last week of the transfer, has it already been 5 weeks??? My guess is that Elder Burkard and I are staying together here in West Valley. President Winn I think is trying to keep missionaries in one area longer so that they get to know the area and members better. Who knows, I could be somewhere new in the valley come next week, but my gut is that Granger and I have a few things left to discover together. A little history about my area. We have the Bangerter clan here, the same that Governor Bangerter comes from, and whom Bangerter Highway is named after. Granger is also the home area to Pres. Eyring's father, Julie Beck (who's childhood home I walk past all the time) and another sister general authority...a Sister Thompson?? I don't know the women too very well, sorry all my sisters out there!

We're getting more investigators now, new move-ins and things like that. The weather has been great, walking is not such a workout anymore! Funny story for you all from this pass week: We go to knock on a man's door that one of the wards had asked us to check on, an in-active man who has not been assigned a home teacher. This man is heavily overweight, and tells us that he's not interested in home teachers, and coming back to church either, because his feet are all messed up and he can't get to the church building (Which is RIGHT across from the street from his apartment mind you!). He goes on telling us how he is depressed and he has medical bills to pay and life is so hard and woe is me! I tell him that I too have had my share of medical bills, and am a cancer survivor. He doesn't give it a second thought, he goes on talking about how bad life is and that nothing will fix it. We promise him that coming back to church will lift him of these burdens, but he says he tried that once before and that it didn't work, and with a winner attitude like his I am shocked that it didn't! Haha so any who, as we're walking away I am fed up, he talks about his med bills one last time and I turn around and tell him, "Oh really? You have a $1000 ambulance bill and a $700 hospital bill? I had $10,000 x-rays and pet scans, and $30,000 chemotherapy bills for each round of chemo I had...and I had 14 rounds!" Needless to say he was speechless. I felt good saying it, did it help him out in any way, probably not, but oh well :)

Well, I gotta get running, take care everyone and talk to you next week!

Elder Scotty

Today is a Good Day

First and formally, I would like to apologies to the cougar nation, especially my older sister who kindly corrected my attitude regarding BYU. I thought I was sad when BYU beat UW, but when I thought about it later that evening, I was actually happy. I do love BYU, since I'll be going back there I need to represent it well, even amongst the utah red all around me. So again, I am sorry, I will speak no more evil!

We had Daisy's baptism this past week. I would send pictures of that but the guy that took them doesn't really know how to hold a camera steady, so I don't have a good picture of it. So I thought I would send you pictures of my apartment (and I think my mother would like to see how I'm living these days) It's not a bad apartment, we keep it pretty clean. My desk is the one that has the pictures on the wall in front and around the desk. The big wooden one has been there since the apartment was donated to the church for missionary use...back in 1990! The thing is covered with signatures and drawings from missionaries all the way back to that time. So where did Elder Warczak sign? I didn't want my name to be lost amongst all the others, so I went where no one else had! I think it's a pretty fine little drawing. It's definitely the biggest one of them all, so for another 10 years missionaries will see that and say, "Hey, that Elder Warczak must have been a pretty cool guy" or they'll draw horns on my turtle and write their name over mine and Elder Warczak will be lost to the ages! Hahaha oh well, I had some free time one evening when missionaries had to be inside by 6pm (for some holiday I think, Pioneer Day maybe?)

Today instead of going to the temple Elder Burkard and I met with a couple with this senior missionary named Elder Dehyle. He does marriages, and couples that aren't, he gets them married! So we met with this couple this morning that have been together for 10 years and have 2 kids, but never married. The wife is a member, not active but wants to come back. The husband really likes us and is warming up quickly to the idea of joining the church, he's already been to church twice. Elder Dehyle got in there and said it to them straight, "God can't bless you right now because you're living in sin. When you get married, blessings will pour out upon you." They had talked about getting married before, and the girlfriend said all she needed was a ring! After that Elder Dehyle took them to get their marriage license! Within 2 hours, a couple decided to get married after 10 years and this weekend the Bishop will marry them! YAY FOR MARRIAGE!!!! Once that's out of the way, we will begin teaching the lessons to the husband and preparing him for baptism. It was a really cool thing to sit in on as Elder Dehyle talked to them, the spirit was really strong. This is definitely one of my favorite experiences so far on the mission.

Conference tickets went out today, we're going to be calling all the bishops and stake leaders trying to get tickets to each session. Since we have to stay on temple square all day I might as well see each session live rather than in another building! I am very excited for conference, being a missionary, I feel like I will appreciate it more. The transfer is almost done, only 2 more weeks to go! The first transfer seemed to last forever, this one has just whizzed by me! We found out about some move-ins coming soon, all non-member people moving in with active members. The work will be picking up again this week! After a slow couple of weeks, we're being blessed with more investigators. I know blessings come our way as we do things the Lord's way, and are obedient, no other way will work. I really like a quote by Elder Neal A. Maxwell, "If in the end you have not chosen Jesus Christ, it will not matter what you have chosen." It's true, if we don't do things His way, no other way will work for us. We may think it will, or for the time being things may be alright, but in the long run if we have not chosen the way Christ has told us to go, faith in Him, repentance, baptism by someone who holds the priesthood authority of God, receiving the gift of the holy ghost by that same authority, and enduring to the end and keeping his commandments, nothing else will get bring us true joy and everlasting happiness, and allow us to return and live with our Heavenly Father for all time and eternity.

AHHH what a good day, I'm so happy right now. Things are looking up! Keep the faith everyone, and if you're not a member of the LDS church, talk to the LDS missionaries. Locate them through an LDS friend of yours or online at lds.org, and have missionaries come to your home. They're doing the exact same thing I am, inviting others to come unto Christ, helping them receive the blessings of baptism, and joining the one and only true church of Jesus Christ. What can it hurt? Invite the missionaries over, and find out what it is that people like your friend Scotty Warczak are doing. You'll be surprised with how good you feel when you meet with them and they talk with you about Christ. Ask them about that feeling, and they'll explain to you what it is.

I love you all, thank you for everything! Until next week, and remember...the church is true!

Elder Scotty

Summer is OVER!

The summer is coming to an end, and you couldn't find a happier person than me about that! My forehead and the top of my head have been red for the past month! Come on hair, I NEED you back! This past weekend we had another baptism, Shelly. It went well, I performed her baptism and confirmation the next day at church. Sorry I have no picture of it, I forgot my camera! BUT we have a baptism Friday evening for Daisy, and she's part of a big Samoan family, so you know I'll take plenty of pictures. We had interviews with President Winn this week. A new thing he's doing is interviews and zone conferences every quarter, rather than every transfer, so getting to sit with him one on one is definitely a rarity. He's such a great man, we talked about my performance and what I want to work on to continue to improve. He told me to read "The Infinite Atonement" by Brother Callister, so I just picked that up yesterday and am excited to read it. Elder Burkard and I are still getting along great, he's a lot of fun. Our biggest thing right now is quoting funny movies, but our zone leaders asked us to pick something "worldly" that we are to give up. Elder Burkard and I both picked movies, so we've been trying to get better at that. We still do it all the time, we can't help it, but we're getting better at it. All of our new investigators are all kind of shaky, no one is really solid. After this weekend it will probably be a couple of weeks before we baptize again. It's tough in West Valley, especially the Granger Stake. The stake is either apartments, where people come in and out all the time (Many who come to the church for financial help, and so aren't very interested in religion) or it's all older homes, with retired people and very few people to teach. It's tough right now finding. Especially in Utah! Knocking on doors and talking to people on the street is ineffective everywhere else, but here in Utah, NOTHING comes from it. Every one is either already and active member, an in-active member who has hundreds of excuses not to come back, or they are not a member and have absolutely no desire to meet with us, and if they were interested the church building is right across the street from them or they see us walking every day and so they would come find us if they really wanted to. Needless to say, finding activities are tough to plan. We depend heavily on the members for referrals. Utah is still the greatest place to be, wait, Utah, SALT LAKE CITY is still the best place to be! Where else do the missionaries get to go to the temple once a week? Where else do missionaries have access to a place like temple square to take their investigators and see films about the gospel? Where else do you have the church leaders all around you 24/7? Yeah, I have no problem saying it, this mission is simply the best. All the anti-mormons we run into everyday don't have any affect on all the wonderful things we have here as missionaries. I'm even turning into a Ute. YES, I said it! For every BYU fan here there are at least five Ute fans. Red flags fly everywhere here, stickers on every bumper, and red shirts on every person in the street we talk to. And with that said, I'm totally cheering for UW this week against BYU (GO JAKE LOCKER!), I'll be sporting off my purple tie! With what BYU athletics is doing right now, I am somewhat upset with my cougars, I feel so bad for the rest of the athletic programs who have to, in my opinion, downgrade, because the football program wants to try and keep up with Utah and the rest of the country.

Next week I promise pictures and more spiritual things to write on, this week has just been tough with trying to find new people to teach and with other things going on. I received more mail from family friends this week. It is honestly such a burden lifter every time I get mail from a friend. After a long week, when I get a letter of encouragement, telling me to keep up the good work and that prayers are coming my way, it instantly takes away any bad feelings I'm having, and anything that's bothering me doesn't bug me so much afterward. Thank you to everyone for helping me become the person I am, I won't let any of you down and I promise to continue to be the best missionary I can be.

Elder Scotty