March Madness

Ya know, the super bowl and college basketball should be time off for
missionaries, trying to catch people home and available is quite
difficult! On Saturday my companion hit the front left side of our car
bumper with the post of our car port. You may be thinking, "Elder
Warczak, weren't you standing behind the car backing him? Why did this
preventable accident occur in the first place?" Listen, I am
completely innocent of this! He was pulling out slowly and straight,
then all of a sudden, he turned the wheel right and the left side came
swinging around in a matter of a second. What could I have done? There
was no time to even mumble off a small cry of warning! He thought he
cleared the post already and made an evasive manuveur that failed. I
was completely and utterly...helpless :)

Our mission president's wife called this morning. She had a question
she has had since the beginning of her and President Winn's mission,
that she knew I would have the answer to. The question was, "How can a
missionary wreck a car, when their companion is behind the car backing
them?!?" Ohhhh gosh. I pleaded my case, my companion even took full
blame in the accident report we filled out for the church. But she
wouldn't believe me! She awarded Elder Herbert and I the "dumbest
companionship of the week" award...an award I gladly accepted, knowing
in my heart I was free of any guilt.

Transfers are this week. I have that gut feeling like I'm leaving to
go to my final area of the mission! It's exciting to know how close I
really am to the end of it,  i have had so much fun and learned so
much. Leadership training last week was different for me. All the
trainings were ones I have had before, multiple times. I looked back
in my study journal during one of them, to find notes from 11 months
ago on the exact same thing!! I felt extremely old, and it was hard to
get much out from the trainings. With so many new missionaries, I
guess we have to go over things again, but boy was it hard for me
hearing them all again for the third time.

We've found some good families this past week, the work will go well
in this area.
I'm counting the days down until conference, because then I'll be able
to wear short sleeve shirts and no suit jacket! HAZAAH!

Keep it real, see you all in 12 weeks and 2 days! Hahaha!

Love,

Elder Scotty

A Prepared People...Finally

My companion and I have seen many trials the past two weeks. No one we were teaching was really sticking with us for more than a lesson or two. It was hard to find them, but even harder to move on and find someone new. This past week we met a man who just moved into the area with his wife. She is a member of the church coming back full swing into activity, and he has been thinking about joining the church himself the past few weeks. We knows it's true, it not only makes perfect sense to him, but he knows the feelings he has about it all come from his Heavenly Father! I am pumped to work with him!

We spoke yesturday in the ward where the "crazy woman" incident took place last week. It was not as eventful, but I'm pretty sure the spirit was there in greater abundance :)

On Saturday the BYU Singers came to Evanston for a concert. It was a refreshing thing to be a part of. I'm used to listening to only Mormon Tabernacle Choir and church hymns, so hearing something new like that was such a treat for me, especially choir music. One of my best friends Laura Turner was in the choir, but she could not be involved with it this semester as she is student teaching right now. I was sad she wasn't there. Ohhhh well.

The sun is shining, and this week I'll be down in Salt Lake for leadership training. That's always a good time. A funny side note, I've written six letters to good friends of mine; three of them are members of the church, three of them are not. I have received three letters back. Can you imagine who they were from? Yup, all three letters were from my non-member friends back in Washington. What did I learn here? That it's official, Mormons are the worst pen-pals :)

LOVE,


Elder Scotty

Two New Salt Lake Missions, a Baptism, and the Most Akward Sacrament Meeting Ever

The church news announced this past week the creation of eight new missions around the world. Two of them will be right here in Salt Lake City. The Salt Lake City West and Central Missions will take affect July 1st. The central mission is coming entirely out of the Salt Lake City South Mission, so we are not affected by that. The west mission is being created from our mission. West Valley and Magna will be it's own mission, a staggering 16 stakes! They will have eight missionaries in each stake: two sets of english missionaries, one set of spanish missionaries, and one senior couple. Missionaries in our mission will be re-assigned to the West mission, about sixty of them. Our mission will take in around thirty stakes from the Ogden Mission, including fourty missionaries from that mission. Now our mission will go up through Bountiful, Utah, which includes the temple there as well.

 

Since I go home before all this goes down, I'm not thinking about it much. My group is the last to go home before the change happens :)

 

Many missionaries are upset though, the thought of being in a new mission with a new mission president is not a fun one. The first presidency and quorum of the twelve apostles feel that this is the direction that missionary work will go. More missionaries in smaller areas where they will work more closely with the ward councils, stake presidents, and members to do missionary work. Pretty much my entire mission will be part of this new west mission. The Granger area, where I spent a year, and the Magna young single adult stake.

 

Our baptism Saturday went teriffic! Sister Portillo was beaming, and felt an overwhelming feeling from the Holy Ghost, she is truly converted! That family is almost complete now, only one has not yet decided on baptism. Wonderful family, one that I will be staying in touch with over the years.

 

Church yesturday was interesting, to say the least. We attended a sacrament meeting in the town of Hoytsville. Saturday was the high school junior prom, and so at the church many young men were in their tuxedos, and the young women in their dresses. One of the girls just became a Laurel. The bishop had her come up and he announced it to the ward and congratulated her. Her dress was a very nice one. The dress had no sleeves on it, but thick straps. Her legs were covered all the way, as it was a big poofy dress. Definitely not one to make one think, "wow that's pretty immodest". So the meeting goes on, and the sharing of testimonies begin. A few into it, a woman gets up to the pulpit. She is visiting for the day, her young nephew in the ward was baptized on Saturday. After she introduces herself, she begins to single out this poor girl and her dress, saying it was "very innapropriate, and that she could not feel the spirit at the beginning of the meeting when she went up to the front". She continued to say how she would never let her two sons view anything where girls were dressed like that, and that this young girl's parents and young women leaders need to talk to her and let her know that it is not alright to wear something like that. She was sorry if she offended anyone, but she reiterated that this young woman was out of line with the dress she was wearing. The bishop stood up RIGHT after she ended her comments and said, "Please remember to keep our comments focused on Christ, and not be judgemental towards others". Oh baby, the spirit was GONE the moment that woman began her attack. Members got up and tried to lighten the mood, with funny stories and good testimonies, but the spirit never came back. The very last man to share his testimony was the superintendant of the school district, who knew the girl and her family very well, and defended them boldly. He stated that he wasn't speaking by the spirit, and you could tell, he wanted to correct this woman and let her know that what she did was not alright. He did a very good job of it, I was impressed. Turns out, this girl is adopted from Romania. Her mother is battling breast cancer and almost died. The entire ward has worked with the family and loves them dearly. Even before I learned this after the meeting, I was livid. I was going to get up and share my thoughts when bishop jumped up and said his comment. Members, after the closing prayer was offered, marched right up to this woman and in a loving way told her what she did was completely out of line, and told her what this girl's family is going through. Still, the woman wouldn't budge, and defended her comments. I have never felt more awkward in my life than I did in this meeting. It's members like this that give the church a bad rep here in Utah. Self righteous ones that have the "holier than thou" attitude. Many girls we saw that day had dresses with straps. None of them were ridiculous, I thought all of them looked beautiful.

 

That's my week, man was it an eventful one. I hope everyone else had a chill week, free of crazy ladies who think they've already had their calling and election made sure :)

 

Until another week!

 

Love,

 

Elder Scotty