May 23, 2016

Dear Parents,

It is amazing all that Emily is accomplishing in her new area.  It is so good to hear that KML was baptized.  Too bad Emily didn't get to go back for the baptism.  When we baptized KMJ, the Elder who did a lot of the work with him got to come back and do the baptism.  It was a very similar situation actually.

 

We are still just finding people in this new area.  The "B" family are still doing fairly well though.  They didn't come to church but are still meeting with us and have lots of support.  We have a lot of meetings this next week but should still be able to do lots of finding.

Once again, not a long email.  

Love you,

Elder Stapley

May 9, 2016

Dear Parents,

 

I've been transferred.  My new area is the Bellevue 1st ward.  Its like a suburb of Omaha and we actually have a chunk of south Omaha in our area.  Elder Duerksen and I whitewashed the area and we knew very little about it. Fortunately we had both served in this zone before and knew enough to get started.  I took a picture of a map of Bellevue and we used that to locate our apartment (thank goodness Elder Duerksen had been there before) and then we spent the rest of the day just sort of wandering around Bellevue trying to find our investigators.  I get lost fairly easy but Elder Duerksen is somehow even worse.  We decided that getting lost is probably what we are going to remember best about this transfer.  Fortunately, he has a good sense of humor.

We have an appointment with a family tonight.  They are good friends of a member couple who have been helping the missionaries teach them.

They are our best candidates for baptism right now and by all accounts are way prepared.  I'm excited.

Most of this last week was just us trying to get in contact with everyone the missionaries had been working with.  We got lost a lot.  Bellevue, I'm pretty, sure was drawn out by a 3 year old.  Whole lotta squiggly lines.

Sorry I'm out of time.  Happy Mother's day, Mom. 

Love you all!

Elder Stapley

April 25, 2016

Hey family,

This week was a bit slower.  There just weren't a lot of people who were able to meet and we didn't find any new ones.  We had fun though.  It was trainee takeover week so Elder Roos led all the planning and teaching.  We would help him out when he needed it though.

We had two exchanges and then a sleepover with some rural elders in preparation for stake conference.  We didn't get near enough sleep and I am so flippin tired.

So last week I made a point to write things down that I wanted to share with you but I didn't do that this week so this email will be disappointing.  Hmm... yeah my companions can't think of anything noteworthy that happened this week either.

So how do we want to do the Mother's day call?  What times will Emily be available?  

One of the things people tend to struggle with is keeping the Sabbath Day holy.  If we look at the commandment of keeping the Sabbath Day holy as just a list of do nots then it can be difficult to be properly motivated to keep the Sabbath holy.  In my mind the do nots are given to us because of the hardness of our hearts, to keep us from being distracted from the true purpose of the Sabbath: "For verily this is a day appointed unto you to rest from your labors, and to pay thy devotions unto the Most High." (D&C 59:10)  There are so many things we are asked to do or are prompted to do that we don't normally have time to do.  We have responsibilities for church and callings, family history work, missionary work, personal and family scripture study.  There is so much that God expects us to do and he gave us time to do it.  As we actually keep the Sabbath day holy we are blessed so much.  No excuses people!  Rant over.  Seriously the more we actually try to live  God's commandments we are blessed with the understanding of how much sense they make.  In other words a testimony.

Love you all,

Elder Stapley