Week 12 - Colly Creek

Hey Y'all! Tudo Bem!?  This week was pretty good. We were able to stay busy and teach a lot of people. We were almost out of miles in our car, so we had to walk to most of our in-person appointments. That was a fun experience and included two different threats by some people in the neighborhood. So fun times🤙🏻 Wednesday we were getting gas, and some guy came up to us and told us that he had been looking for the missionaries for years and hadn't been able to find them, and he said his name was DJ. So we made an appointment and he said his kids would be there also. So we went to the appointment and found about 20 kids there! Only 8 were his, but most of his nieces and nephews were there too. The oldest was about 15 and the youngest was a couple months old. And his wife was pregnant. Then as our lesson progressed we found out that he and his wife were members, as well as all of his siblings, and his parents. And none of the kids are baptized but all want to! We are bringing 13 Book of Mormons next time. He is from Micronesia and his Mom translated the Book of Mormon into their dialect of Micronesian for the church! Also they said they were the second family baptized in Micronesia and had lots of callings and were super active, but when they moved to America, they went inactive and couldn't find the church. They said we were the first missionaries they have seen here. They also requested a Micronesian Book of Mormon and sang "God be with me till we meet again" in Micronesian. It was honestly the best!  We also ran into some super drunk homeless people in the park. They started praying and yelling loud and screaming their sins Jesus! And the rest of the world. And then they started getting inappropriate and lightly threatening us, so we got out real fast.  This upcoming week is also transfers!  I am not going anywhere, but my comp is! So next week I will have a new comp. It's super exciting and fun to meet new people! I don't know who it will be yet, but I find out Wednesday.  This week I was reading in 1 Nephi 8 and I loved the message of the Iron Rod. The Iron Rod is the word of God, and it is what guides us to the fruit of the tree of life. It is what we need to hold onto to eventually become like our Heavenly Father. I know that if we hold onto the scriptures, and sincerely try to draw closer to God. It will happen.  And now it's time for pictures! Yay!  1. A nice little sign I saw at a service project this week  2. A story board we drew this week for one of our videos Hope it makes sense  3. Elder Walden and I! He is great companion!  4. A funny video our district leader made this week. Its some highlights of this last transfer. There are a lot of inside jokes, so if you have any questions about it, just email me. I hope you find it funny. Also the song that is playing during it is the best! It is called Steve by Alec Benjamin This is all for this week. If you have any questions or just want to talk, shoot me an email.  Love you all!  Elder Sant

 

Mission Email

 

Dear Parents,

 

It was a great week in the Kansas Wichita Mission.

 

We completed training and interviews. Your missionary learned about teaching with boldness, repetition, and extending clear invitations, including bold invitations to baptism. They learned about the importance of teaching “baptism and receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost”. They learned about the “pipeline”. You can ask them about that.

 

We learned from them the ways that they are finding people to teach. They are searching names on Facebook and sending messages to those who respond to their friend request. They are serving so many people. We are waiting for them to ask us if they buy a lawnmower can the mission reimburse them for it?! They are delivering cookies – one district calls this “cookie miracles”. They are talking to people in Walmart, the walking trail, and the park. They are talking to people while they fish on p-day. They are creating Facebook groups. They are joining Facebook groups. They are contacting previously taught people. You’d be so proud of them – they call people on the phone! They are advertising on Facebook classified to hand-paint scripture covers, deliver a singing telegram, bring them a free copy of The Book of Mormon. They are washing the windows of businesses, they are painting benches in local schools, they are having car washes. They are teaching members and asking for their friends to teach.

Aren’t they wonderful?!

 

We are having success with our advertising on Facebook. Our ads have generated 8 referrals and 86 people who have responded personally to what they saw about baptism, the Word of Wisdom, connecting with God, and how to strengthen their family.

 

We have 527 – 1399 people visiting our mission Facebook pages every day. Our missionaries are using the lessons from Preach My Gospel as their content in creating posts and videos. Truth is being taught on Facebook.

 

Covid update:

We continue to wear masks and keep social distance.

Missionaries are not allowed into homes of members or non-members.

They continue to be allowed to teach lessons outside and wearing masks. Otherwise their lessons are taught using technology.

 

We were able to attend the Oklahoma City temple this past week with our first group of missionaries who entered the mission field unendowed. Thank you, parents for your help in making this a special day for your missionaries. Currently, we have two more trips planned for the 9^th and 15^th of September.

 

Transfers happen this week! We are saying goodbye to Sister Denieka Bowden, Sister Anna Petersen, and Sister Taylor Strock. We will miss these wonderful Sisters. We will welcome 13 missionaries, tomorrow afternoon.

 

Thank you for supporting your missionary.

We love them.

Sister Ernst

Week 11 Colly Creek

Oi Gente! 

This week was pretty good. It was a lot of working hard and trying to teach people. My comps concussion went away! Yay! So we were able to start driving around again! That has been really good. 

We also had interviews with the president! It was so good and went so well. Pres Ernst is the best! 

Today for pday we played some more ultimate frisbee and went roller skating again. This time our whole district came. Sometimes some missionaries dont come cause they live almost 2 hours away, but they made it this time, so that was cool. 

A cool scripture I read this week was 1 Peter 1:7. It says "That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ" I love how the scripture says that our trials are more precious than gold. I have noticed that I tend to ask why we have certain trials, and we have those trials so that God can make us rich. We grow from these trials, and they are more precious than gold or money or any other worldly possession. We are given trials to grow and the trials we have gotten through often shape us into better people, closer to Christ. 

Picture time! 

 

 

 1. The whole district at the skating rink!

 

 

2. A Bat that we came across. It was just napping and so one of the elders poked it with his keys and it opened up all big like that and then started flying around. It was honestly pretty scary  

This is all for this week. Let me know if there is anything we can do for ya! We can do some lessons with home, so if you want one just shoot me an email 

Sincerely, 

Elder Sant

Mission Email

 

Dear Parents,

 

We have had a great week teaching, training, and interviewing your missionaries in the Garden City, Salina, and Topeka Zones. They have shared stories of miracles in finding people through their hours of service. Not only are they bringing the church out of obscurity in their communities, but hearts are being softened and people are willing to listen to their message.

 

Interviews will continue this week with the Wichita and Derby Zones.

 

Also, we will be taking our first group of newly arrived missionaries to the Oklahoma City temple to receive their endowments this week. The temple controls this schedule and your missionary will be reaching out to you when they have been scheduled to attend. There is not a distribution center in Oklahoma City so you will need to make sure that you help your missionary get garments ordered and shipped to them prior to their assigned temple day.

 

Many of you have reached out and asked what you can do to be a part of our social media missionary work. Thank you for asking. Below is the member missionary Facebook effort that we started implementing last week. Ask your missionary what their area Facebook page is called and follow these easy steps. We would invite you to send one of the videos or postings from our Facebook page to 5 of your non-member friends and invite them to read or watch it. It’s so easy to do missionary work in this way and we can reach those people that we couldn’t reach before.

 

Please include in your message to them our hashtag which is #openarms. When someone clicks on the hashtag it will take them to our openarms page which is a library of our Facebook postings.

 

Thank you for your support.

We love your missionary,

Sister Ernst

 

Week 10 Colly Creek

 Oi! Como Voce Esta? 

This week was pretty good. My Companion had a concussion all week! Remember the ultimate football and roller skating on Monday? Well he biffed it at the skating rink one too many times. And he slipped while playing football and another elder tripped on him. Those two combined put a number on his head. So he couldn't really do anything all week. I will put pictures at the bottom. 

He is also the only elder in our apartment allowed to drive so we have been struggling getting to appointments, and even teaching in general. It's tough, but we figured out how to make better videos, and we studied A LOT. and it was a good week. we found new people, and rescheduled a lot of appointments for this upcoming week. If he gets better by then. I am confiednt that he will. 

We also have church in person this upcoming week! Yay! We get to meet more of the members. Yay! 

Earlier this week I was reading in Alma 39, when Alma is giving advice to his son, Corianton. Coriantion did somethings he should not have, and Alma justifies what he did, and then says "This was no excuse for thee, my son." I love this because it is such a great reminder for all of us. Sometimes we justify the things we do because others are doing it, or because they told us to, or any number of reasons. But we should be saying "That is no excuse for me" instead. God knows us and loves each one of us. He won't give us anything that we can't handle. It will get hard, but we can do it. We can accomplish all that He tells us to do. 

Now it is time for pictures, Yay! 

1. My companion in bed. This was him all week. 🤙🏻

(Last one)  Some videos of us messing around figuring out video editing and such. It was pretty fun. I was trying to work with my comp in the video. 

2. A cat that stops by our house every night. It snuck in once. But it just comes by and sits outside our door every night. And sometimes meows loud at us. 

If you have any questions about what I do or what I believe or anything please email me with them. 

Sincerely, 

Elder Sant

Acreditar. Amar. Fazer.

Mission Email

 

Dear Parents,

We said goodbye this week to Sister Kylie Beutler. We will miss her.

 

Zone Conferences are completed and what a magnificent experience to meet together with your missionary, their companion, and zone.

 

We will begin interviews and training tomorrow. We are so grateful that we can meet in person.

 

No changes in our Covid Phases in Kansas, nor in missionary work policies.

 

Please join us in our hashtag efforts. Join our group “openarms” and see the inspired videos and posts that are being created by our missionaries. Share these on your personal Facebook profiles, and with your non-member friends. Our social media missionaries have decided to ask the missionaries to create their videos/posts around the principles taught in Preach My Gospel. This is a way for our non-member friends to “hear the lessons” as they receive our Facebook messages.

 

Our social media work is moving forward in miraculous ways. Join us!

 

Thank you for your prayers and support.

We love your missionary.

Sister Ernst

Week 9 Colly Creek

 Oi Oi Oi! Tudo Bem!? 

This week has been pretty great. There have been so many miracles! To start off the week we decided to make cookies and drop em off to people who were taught by missionaries in the past, but haven't been taught in a while. So my amazing mom sent me our family chocolate chip cookie recipe. Without looking at it, the other elders and I deicide to double the recipe. We quickly learned that was a mistake. We didn't have a bowl big enough, along with about half of the other things needed. But a couple of trips to walmart later aand we had it all made! 17 pounds of it. No joke we made 17 pounds of cookie dough! It was pretty great. We also had to get a 5 gallon bucket to finish mixing it all together because we could not fit in any bowl we could find(We cleaned it out thoroughly before mixing in the bucket). We ended up making something like 160 cookies! It was Awesome! and the people loved it and we got 5 new people that we are teaching from it! Its great! 

Sooo we were pretty busy the rest of the week with meetings and dropping off cookies, and lessons. But busy is good! We also did some service throughout the week, so thats also a plus! 

We also had Zone Conference, which is a big meeting with all of the missionaries in the Topeka area. It was amazing and I learned so much there. We also spent a day in Emporia Kansas because one of the leaders that I stay with had training, and we werent gonna drive back and forth multiple times so we just worked from Emporia KS. That was pretty fun and pretty copol to work with the Elders down in Emporia. 

Again, everyone we are teaching is progressing and we would appreciate prayers. They are great people and everyone loves God. 

So we also helped some people move in above us, which was nice to be able to meet our neighors and do some service! But sunday nuight after a lesson we came home and saw a couch at the bottom of the stairs. We were confused, but we asssumed it wass the people upstairs. So we went inside and, through our open window, we hear peeople grunting and struggling with the couch. So we assume it is our neighbors and we go out to offer to help, and we see some of the elders from the area next to us! They immediately bolted and ran in a circle so we caugh them. They were trying to trap our door, cause the deck area in front of the door is about 4 square feet. But we caught them and had a good laugh and moved the couch(which they found on the side of the road) to the patio area of our apartment complex. No one has said anything yet, so I guess it stays. Also today we got breakfast, played ultimate football, and rollerskated as a district. It was really fun! 

So earlier this week I was reading a scripture in 2 Timothy 1:7. It says "For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind." It is such a great scripture! God does not want us to have fear, but he wants us to love all people. We wants us to use what power we can, and with a sound mind, love all of those aaround us. he wants us to serve and uplift each other, not bring each other down. I know that as we strive to love all of those around us we will draw closer together and to God. 

Now it is time for pictures! Yay!

1. Me mixing the 17 pounds of cookie dough in our tiny kitchen 

 

2. The finished product. 17 pounds of the best cookie dough on earth 

 

3. My companion, elder Walden, and I at the skating rink. 

 

 

4. Cool clouds of Kansas

 

 

5. More cool clouds 

 

 

6. The missionaries caught trying to move the couch in front of our door.

 

 

7. Us big chilling after moving the couch to the patio. 

 

 

8. Our district at the skating rink! Woo hoo

This is it for now! Till next week, 

Elder Sant

Acreditar. Amar. fazer.

Mission email

 

Dear Parents,

 

It has been an inspiring week as President Ernst and I were able to meet with the missionaries in the Salina and Topeka Zones. Rumor had it that the Governor was going to move Kansas back to Phase I, which would have prevented us from meeting together because our zones are so large now. She didn’t make that announcement!

 

Zone Conferences in the Wichita, Derby, and Garden City zones will take place this week. Watch the Kansas Wichita Missionary Family and Friends Facebook group page for photos. Sorry that they all have their masks on.

 

We want you to know how proud we are of your missionary and how they are coming together and working to find, teach, and baptize which is their missionary purpose. It’s incredible to think about how many different missions all of our missionaries have served in, but they are united to be successful here. Their hearts and desires are focused, and they are serving and working hard. They talk about their different missions, and we encourage them to, but they are one in purpose for the benefit of the work and the people and their Savior Jesus Christ.

 

How timely is our Come Follow Me chapters this week regarding the Army of Helaman. That is how President Ernst and I feel about our missionaries. They are an army and they are moving forward with strength and determination.

 

Thank you for supporting and encouraging them. The work is hard. Finding is a challenge. They are trying whatever means they can to contact people and success is coming.

 

Thank you for your efforts to help us on our Facebook and hashtag work. Who would have ever thought that we would be asking you to help us in this way?

 

They are still able to teach family and friends from home. Especially your non-member family and friends. We hope that this will bless you as well as your missionary.

 

Thank you for your prayers. This is a marvelous work.

Sister Ernst

Week 8 Colly Creek

Oi! Tudo Bem!? How have you guys been? 

It has been a really good week and it has flown by! So fast! But its been good. We had a few dinner appointments this week. They were all with hispanic families. So my spanish has been getting better. Portuguese is at a stand still, or at least it feels like it. Maybe I'll start saying "Hola, Como le va?" I don't  know if that is right, but that is what I was told by Elder Lloyd and Cherrington and their spanish textbook. 

We have still been teaching a lot of people, but we have also had a lot of appointments that canceled! Yesterday we had like 6 appointments, and 3 of them canceled. But we still manage to stay busy. We do a lot of contacting people and tried to find service opportunities, but have found very little. 

Connie is doing great. She has a strong testimony and still deathly afraid of covid. Jeff Ard was hard to get in contact this week. And ya boy brandon was pretty great. We had a long conversation with him and it was pretty good. Please pray for all of these people to draw closer to Christ. 

We also did a cooking with missionaries! We learned how to make fry bread! It didn't turn out great and there was lots of smoke. But it tasted good. 

Today for our p-day (preperation day- a day to get ready for the rest of the week and to be a tourist/have fun in your city) we got together with our district! We played volleyball beach volleyball! On a sand court. It was really fun! It ended when our district leader (DL) whispered to me "I'm going A1" and then turned around to try to spike the ball and pulled a Scott Sterling! He jumped to spike it and jumped straight into the ball. With his face. It was pretty great. He got a nose bleed, and we tried to find something to plug it in the park, so we were running around a park barefoot(cause we were playing in sand) and I am sure it was a site to see. I personally loved it, but I didn't have a bloody nose. Hahaha. We then went to the zoo. Most of the animals were asleep or nowhere to be found. The zoo seemed empty of animals. Probably the most interesting thing was a flying beetle that surprised some missionaries. It was not in an exhibit though. That was it. It was a super fun day overall. And the zoo was great. 

So a great scripture that I read this week was 3 Nephi 11:10-11. I love how Christ refers to himself as the light and the life of the world. I know that when I turn to Christ I can feel His love for me. It sometimes only takes saying a simple prayer, or reading the scriptures. He will give us light and life in this ever darkening and heavier world. 

And now it is time for pictures! Woohoo! I think that they are pretty blurry but 🤷🏻‍♂️ 

1. Elder Lloyd and the fried bread. Final product! 

2. Me playing a game with matt during our call earlier today. 

3. Our district with the ZL's at the zoo! There was a monkey big chilling on the hood of the truck we are in.

4. The rest of the pictures are animals at the zoo! The tiger in Topeka was not nearly as good as Mike down in Baton Rouge(obviously) hahaha 

With much Love! Also sorry for the late email. Hopefully it will be earlier next week. 

Elder Sant 

Acreditar. Amar. Fazer.

Mission email

Dear Parents,

 

It’s been an amazing week in the Kansas Wichita Mission!

 

We are seeing miracles in the work and we have more people on date for baptism, and others that could move to baptism than we have had in quite some time.

Would you please unite your prayers with ours this month for the 22 who are on date for baptism and another 13 people who are moving closer to making a covenant with their Savior Jesus Christ and being able to receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.

 

We have recently assigned 4 Elders who are fulltime Social Media Missionaries who we hope will become referral generators. Missionaries around the mission will have opportunities to work on committees for live events, Stories, and member outreach, that we will host using our mission Facebook pages. These Media Missionaries have created a mission hashtag that you can use to help promote our posts and videos. It is #openarms.

 

Watch for opportunities for you to spread the teachings of Jesus Christ, principles of truth, and messages of hope that our missionaries are sending out via Facebook.

 

Our missionaries continue to teach a majority of their lessons in their apartments using technology.

Many of them are teaching a large number of lessons each week. They are seeing the benefits of technology.

 

Our Church leaders call this time of Covid a “Divine Reset”. These are true words and the work is moving forward.

 

Thank you for your support, help, and prayers.

We love your missionary!

President and Sister Ernst

Shawny Ernst	9:04 PM (2 hours ago)
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