February 22nd, 2016

Dear Family,

In District Meeting, I learned a lot about how to work with members
and help them see value in their own testimony. We can help members
discover who they know that could benefit from hearing their
testimony. I also learned that we invite members to keep the same
commitments as investigators, but we add in ways to help them fulfill
their missionary purpose as members. They can hold FHE with a friend,
invite a friend to a baptismal service, and invite a friend over to
watch the Restoration DVD. I also like how some missionaries shared
that they invite the ward and ward council to join in prayer for
investigators. This helps them be invested in the work that is going
on in the ward.

Members have been able to go out with us a couple times this week and
I have been able to meet more less-active members in the ward. I
noticed some people were more friendly and welcoming to us when their
home teacher stopped by with us than when we just came by on our own.

I found the best snack food ever this week: Veggie Straws. They taste
like potato chips and are much cheaper and healthier. You can find
them at Costco in a giant bag for $6. A senior couple in the office,
the Hartung's, have a Costco membership, so they offer to order stuff
for us every few weeks. I am going to miss that when I leave to a new
area.

Thursday, we helped a couple move their stuff out of a storage unit.
When they were looking at their options for a moving truck they found
a tiny horse trailer that was cheaper than a U-haul truck. We helped
clean out the horse trailer then loaded it up. We had most of the
district there to help us.

I taught Elder Winkler how to solve a Rubik's cube the other day. He
picked it up pretty quick. Now he is a little obsessed with it. He
also has a mirror cube that he has been playing with. I miss all the
cubes I have back home, but I know they would be a distraction out
here.

We were able to create backups for all of the office computers. I
Wrote a backup script that automated the process. It was fun to get to
do some programming again. We found a lot of old documents, excel
files, training videos, and other documents from several years ago.
They are taking up a lot of space and don't look like they are being
used. We left them in the backups for now, but in the future it may be
worth sorting through them and weeding out useless files.

Since the switch to AT&T, we have been trying to collect all of the
old Sprint phones and are down to 42 left that we still need to
locate. Our plan is to follow up with each set of zone leaders the day
before their zone conference and ask them to remind their zone to
bring the phones. It has been kind of frustrating that we didn't get
most of them back during this week of zone conferences. We can't send
them back to Salt Lake until we get all of them and missionaries just
aren't getting the hint that we are serious. The next time we will get
a chance to collect phones won't be for a couple of months, so we are
really banking on this week to collect phones.

Sunday we had Ward Conference. The members of the stake talked about
the atonement and how it applies to everyone. In priesthood meeting,
President Bons taught using the New Testament phrase "when thou art
converted, strengthen thy brethren." He asked us to ponder how each
step of our conversion (faith, repentance, baptism, etc) helps us to
be able to better strengthen our brethren. As we are further converted
ourself, we learn how to bring someone to that place too. As we climb
mountains, we can help lift others up.

Last night we had dinner with the Rappleye family. They showed us a
Jello cookbook that had tons of recipes that included jello. There
were your typical recipes like fruit salad and pudding desserts, but
there were also a lot of strange ones. Tuna Jello salad, Jello
Gaspacho (which had vinegar and tomato juice in it), and Jello garden
salad (with radishes and lettuce) were included. Also there was a
three pepper Jello that had different colored bell peppers in it.
Probably the weirdest was a recipe for Jello guacamole and Jello
tortilla chips. Let me know if you want any of these recipes, I
wouldn't recommend any though.

--
Elder Aaron King
Ohio Columbus Mission

-President Daines got up on a snow plow truck to take our photo at
zone conference and I drew him holding the Ohio flag.

District Meeting