We have a baptism coming up for John and Cece this Saturday. We just had their wedding last Saturday at Brother Weaver's barn/furniture store. They have been making a lot of progress and I can tell they are ready for baptism because of their willingness to keep the commitments we extend to them.

We went to the temple on Tuesday. I regret not going more before my mission, but I am glad I got to go so soon after coming out to Ohio. It was a good experience and will probably be Elder Hill's last time going to the temple on his mission unless we get an investigator to do baptisms for the dead.

I think I forgot to tell you about the welcome I received when I first got to Danville. The Mount Vernon Elders (Snyder and Janson) hid a bunch of dominoes in our house and left a sign that said "have an EXTRA nice transfer." The word EXTRA was replaced with a pack of extra gum. We have been looking for these dominoes for a while and just found the final one last Wednesday. Since we found them, Elder Hill wanted to repay the favor and hide them in their residence so he did thaton Thursday while we were on exchanges.

We did exchanges again on Thursday. This time I stayed in Danville and Elder Hill went to Mount Vernon. Elder Anderson came with me and since this is my area I get to drive. I haven't driven a car in nearly 6 weeks and it was kind of a weird experience. I also had to take the lead more in planning and teaching, so it was a good learning experience.

We have a taser in the residence that Elder Hill bought from a member having a garage sale. Elder Anderson is silly and asked me to taze him when we were on exchanges. He didn't like how the video we took turned out, so he asked me to taze him again in the morning. I think there may be something wrong with him. Elder Snyder also tased Elder Janson during the first week I was here. I would have thought missionaries would have more sense than to want to inflict pain on themselves.

I got to do some family history work for a few hours this week. I didn't like it at first since I wasn't really sure what I was doing. All of the branches of the tree were complete on FamilySearch except Grandpa Ron's parents. It kind of shocked me since he is so into family history work and compiled that 1000 page book on our ancestors. I found a 1940s census record that had his parents and siblings on it. The reason things weren't linked up is Grandpa Ron's record was showing up as "Ronald B Livingston" instead of "Ronald Burnell Livingston." I enjoyed trying to fix the holes in the family tree. I am surprised it wasn't all done with all of the members we have in the family. I saw that Kevin and Kathy have done a lot of the work for that side of the family. I also found a set of great-great-...-great grandparents from the 1700s on the Livingston side that were first cousins. That was kind of funny to find. Their names are James Livingston and Christina Livingston if you wanted to look them up in FamilySearch.

Now for the Q&A :)

Are you on your bike where ever you go?

I actually haven't had a chance to ride my bike. Elder Hill is missing a part that keeps his front tire on, so we have been driving everywhere. It has been kind of convenient not having to bike through all the rain we have been getting. Tropical Storm Bill affected us last Saturday and we got several inches of rain in a few hours. Some lawns looked like swimming pools. We have received either two or three flash flood warnings on our cell phone.

Will you send Elder Hill home from Danville? Will you leave the area when you send him home or will you have someone there before you transfer out?

We will likely stay in Danville for the full 12 weeks of my training then Elder Hill will go back home to Idaho. After he leaves I am guessing that I will stay for at least one transfer before I get moved somewhere else. I hope they don't double out this area, there are a lot of investigators that are making slow gradual progress and I wouldn't want that to be lost.

How are you enjoying the members? How many members do you have there on Sunday?

The members are great. Apparently Danville is one of the better areas for getting fed by members. Nearly every weekday we have a meal scheduled with a member. All of the food is home cooked too. We had a "Linger Longer" at church this week, which is the equivalent of the "Munch and Mingle" at the YSA ward in Lehi. There was quite a bit of food and nearly all of it was cooked by the families that used to be Amish. We usually have 60-70 people at the group (the one that meets at the wood shop) and around 40ish meet at the Mount Vernon Ward building. It is kind of interesting having a ward that is split like this.

Do they have you busy at church as missionaries?

We don't do that much extra in church. We switch off teaching the Gospel Principles class every week for Sunday School. Other than that it is just a normal church service.

Love you all.

-- 

Elder King

Ohio Columbus Mission

We made strawberry jello with bananas and whipped cream (which we made ourselves from mixing heaving whipping cream, sugar, and vanilla) for John and Cece's wedding. Elder Hill had never made jello before.

Outside the Columbus Temple

A bird pooped on me after we tried knocking delivering cookies to a less active family.

Picture of the Bridge of Dreams in Brinkhaven about 2 miles east of Danville.

Elder Hill and I baked some cookies to take to investigators and less active families.

Elder Anderson getting ready to leave after exchanges. He packed his bag with a bunch of EmergenCs  that were sent in a care package to Elder Evans forever ago.

On Wednesdays, every other week, we have a softball game over in the Troyer's field. There are horses that are normally in the field, but they just move to beyond the outfield. We try to invite a lot of the less active members and investigators that would not normally come if it was just a church event. By getting people to be more involved in the community it helps to fellowship re-activate/fellowship people to coming to church more. The mission president has asked that we do not participate in playing any sports since it is not our P-day. This gives us a chance to talk to people that show up though.

After the softball game, we went to visit a new investigator named Chris. He has really impressed us with his curiosity about the gospel. Only two days after inviting him to read the Book of Mormon, he read all of 1st and 2nd Nephi. He spends more time reading the scriptures in a day than we have, so it has been interesting trying to keep up so we can discuss his reading progress with him. Chris is really open minded and I feel like he is going to be baptized eventually.

Chris told us a funny story about how he used to be in the band in high school playing the clarinet. One day, during a concert performance, he brought his harmonica. Part way through the song he changed to playing the harmonica instead of the clarinet. The conductor started having a furious look on his face since he isn't facing the audience, but he couldn't stop the musical number because it would look bad. So he just was fuming the entire time and Chris was able to play harmonica in a school performance. Afterwards he was kicked out of the band, but Chris says it was worth it.

We did some more hauling hay. This time we were unloading it from the trailers instead of loading it onto the trailers. We stacked the bales in a barn that had zero ventilation. We were all breathing the stuff. It is a good thing none of us have allergy problems. Every few minutes we would have to leave the barn to get some fresh air. By the time we were done, there was hay covering us from head to toe (look at the picture of me after I took my watch off to see how covered we were.) For the next 1-2 days Elder Hill and I were finding hay after blowing our noses.

 Softball in the Brother Troyer's field

A wooden toy rocking motorcycle in Brother Weaver's furniture store. 

Some handmade amish dolls and quilt made in Pennsylvania. This is also in Brother Weaver's store.

0131 Elder Hill up in a trailer of hay as we helped Brother Weaver haul the hay into Brother Troyer's barn.

This was on June 12th, the first night I actually got to cook. I made curry of course.

 Livingston avenue over in Pickerington at Karen's Baptism.

On Wednesday we got our iPads. We have not really been told what to do with them, we just have them now. We try and share Mormon Messages on them, but other than that we don't really use them for much. We have been told we will eventually get to use Facebook on them to contact investigators, so I guess I will have to make an account again. We don't have WiFi in the residence though, so we have to drive over to the elementary school a few blocks away to mooch off their WiFi.

We have been doing a lot of service this week. Thursday I don't think we taught a single lesson; we were just too busy helping others. Thursday and Friday we spent 4-5 hours each day helping the Shores move. They didn't really have everything packed up and ready to move out so we kind of had to sit there and wait for work to do sometimes. We had 4 other elders from our district there helping too, so not a lot of missionary work was getting done in that time. The other service we did was weeding at the Hochstetler's for a few hours and digging out some sod for flowerbeds at the Danville Commons apartment complex behind our residence. We also helped an older lady switch the beds between her guest and master bedrooms. Both beds were king size beds with large wooden frames.

The amish families have had a stomach flu going around and my companion caught it Saturday. He threw up in the middle of the night but okay by morning. I caught the flu too yesterday (Sunday) and threw up at 1AM and again when I woke up at around 7AM. We weren't able to go to church because I didn't want to get anyone else sick and I had no energy. I think all of the service we did Thursday/Friday weakened us so that the sickness effected us more.

We also helped an amish family move some hay bales into their barn. A lot of the amish families want nothing to do with the missionaries and will turn us away if we show up on their door, so it is good we got a chance to serve them. We are hoping this turns into an opportunity to teach them later.

Thank you for sending your emails this week. I have enjoyed hearing from you. I hope you like the pictures I have sent and I will try to continue taking pictures so that everyone at home can see the fun experiences I am having.

MTC District at the temple

 I found King Road just a few miles outside of Danville.

Helping an Amish family move hay bales

Helping an Amish family move hay bales

A giant chair outside Brother Weaver's furniture store

Some pictures of our residence.

Dear Family,

I forgot my camera at the house so I will have to send the pictures with next weeks e-mail. I am attaching a couple photos. One that one of the members around here took and one from my companion's camera. I am fairly sure the member took the photo before they knew I was coming to Ohio.

Ohio has been great. I am in the Danville area, it is basically right in the heart of Amish country. I am in a small town where everyone knows each other. The population is around 900 people. We meet in an Amish family's woodshop for church since they are too far away from the main church building in Mt. Vernon.

My companion is Elder Hill. So together we are "King of the Hill". He will be my trainer for the next 12 weeks then he is going home to Idaho. I really like his positive attitude.

We were out tracting a couple days ago and it started to rain. We thought it was light enough rain that we would just keep going. Before we got done talking to the next person, the rain turned into a downpour. We got completely drenched and had to go back home to change before our dinner appointment. The raindrops here are a lot bigger here than in Utah. The attached picture is us right after we got back to the residence before we changed out of the wet clothes.

We had a nerf war for our district activity today. We used PVC pipes as blow darts. It was fun to do an activity together.

First Email

The MTC is not what I expected, it is so much more. I am kept quite busy and do not have as much time as I would like to just sit down for 30min or so to just read the Book of Mormon. Though I feel like a completely new person each day. The spirit here is amazing, everyone on the MTC grounds is required to have a temple recommend and it really adds to the spirit here.

Sharing a room with 3 other elders makes me kind of wish I had my own space again. As I am writing this e-mail I am doing laundry, I never knew how happy I would be to be doing laundry. I am used to being able to do it whenever, but we can only do it on P-day here.

Trust in the Lord, I know he can bring you happiness in life. If you are struggling, there is nothing better you can do than pray. Something that I have learned in the MTC is to rely on the Lord more. We are nothing without Him and it is our trust in Him that turns our weaknesses into strengths. As President Monson said, "when life gets too hard to stand, kneel." I know you can overcome any challenges you are having with the Lord on your side.

I had a chance to sing in the MTC choir yesterday. If anyone had said I would be singing in a choir a week after entering the MTC I would think they are crazy. My experience here has been amazing, I wouldn't give it up for anything in the world. Time seems to move slow, but not in a bad way. As missionaries we somehow pack 3 days worth of tasks into a single day. We will teach an investigator in the morning then by dinner we will be making comments like "We still need to teach Adam, right? Its been a few days." It is hard to believe I have only been here a week, it feels like it has been 2-3 weeks already.

I love you and hope you all are getting along okay without me. I feel kind of bad that I don't think about family that often while here and everyone else is getting homesick. I still care about you and still pray about you, I am just losing myself in the Lord's work.

My District

(top row from left to right) elder van slyke, elder crapo, my companion elder mitchell and myself.  .
(bottom row from left to right)sister beebe, sister wolf, sister hill and sister hammond.

P-day at the Temple

Elder Crapo

This is elder crapo trying to finish off some of the brownies that were left from the sister missionaries.

Aaron's First Letter to Us

Dear Family,

I do not have much time to write, but I will try to include as much as I can. The MTC has been keeping me busy, I am surprised how much can be done in a single day. I hope the family is keeping up okay without me. Do not worry about me. I am busy and tired, but happy to be learning and serving. My testimony has grown so much in the time I have been here and it has only been a few days. I am realizing the importance of relying on the savior and teaching by the spirit. Elder Mitchell is my companion. He is a very upbeat person. We work well together and help each other keep the spirit. I can tell we are going to work miracles together. I am excited to press forward in the work of the Lord.

Bagels,

Elder King