Monday, May 28, 2012

Jurassic June is approaching

It has been a awesome week! I am absolutely loving it hear in Corvallis. I will start by talking about some of the people we are teaching. 

We are teaching this guy named Alex in the YSA ward. he is super awesome. He is the boy friend of a recently reactivated member and he has been going to church with her for a couple months, at first he rejected invitations to meet with missionaries but the week before i came this awesome guy in the ward named Thomas, who home teaches his girlfriend, challenged him to take the lessons and he accepted. They taught him once before i came. My first day in Corvallis we had a lesson with him, and we have been seeing him twice a week.


 And this last week we challenged him to be baptized and he accepted and he said he wants it to happen as soon as possible because he is making some important decisions coming up and he wants to have the Holy Ghost with him to make those decisions, so he is going to be baptized on June 2nd! I really like teaching singles ward people, it kinda like teaching a friend about awesome stuff that has blessed my life, and can bless theirs.  

Things are going good with are Chinese investigators. The only problem is most of them are going back to China for the summer, but there are a couple staying around. Xingyu (Ching-you) is one we are working with a lot, we teach him three times a week. He is awesome. He is wanting to be baptized on June 16th but he is really struggling quitting smoking, and another challenge is that he is going home on June 22nd, so we asked Pres. Young if we should try to baptize him before he leaves when he wont really be able to go to church when he is in China. Pres. said that if he is ready we should not hold him back. So we are doing what he we can to get him ready. We work with him a ton. 


This last week we taught him 3 times and we played basketball with him on Saturday. He is such a cool guy, he is way nice and has a really funny. we are also teaching a Chinese guy named Yang, i talked a little about him in last weeks letter, he is doing great, we are hoping to set a date with him this week. Something crazy about the Chinese people we are teaching is most of them are really tall, Xingyu is probably 6 foot 3 and same with Yang, and another one we are teaching Jenhu. I thought that Chinese people were short but these ones aren't. 

So today is Memorial day, and our family ward had a big breakfast, it was awesome, and then after we went Frisbee golfing with the Spanish missionaries (the one we live with.) We are going to Frisbee golf ever P day, Its way fun, I am not very good but I am getting a lot better.

Well this next week looks like its going to be pretty spectacular. On Thursday its my birthday, on Friday Elder Howard and I are going to Eugene for Zone Leader council and its the start of Jurassic June, and on Saturday its Alex's baptism. Well I have to get going, Thanks for all your prayers. I hope all is going well for everyone, I would love to get a letter from any of you just letting me know whats going on in your lives, it would be a great birthday present, even if it comes late. I love you all and remember the church is true!!


Elder Covey
Fearless Via Faith

Monday, May 21, 2012

A crazy but great week

Wow i cant believe that I have only been here in Corvallis for only one week, so much has happened, I really don't know where to begin but i guess i will just start typing and see what comes out. This will probably very disorganized but hopefully i will be able to write out all the important stuff. 

Right now i am in a apartment with the Spanish missionaries Elder Hill and Elder Bravo. Its a pretty small apartment so we are kinda packed in, but its definitely worth it cuz its a ton of fun to have 4 together. This is my first time living with other missionaries and it not being temporary. Its really cool because me and Elder hill served in Medford at the same time, and we became really good friends so its awesome that we are in the same apartment.

We are teaching some awesome people right now, and about half of them are Chinese. There are a lot of Chinese students here and they lots are interesed in learning about religion so its not to hard to pick up a Chinese investigator. Teaching them is a lot different, but its really cool. They all are very open and they are very good at keeping commitments, they always read pray and come to church. 


Progress is definitely slow moving with them partially because it is all so new to them, but also because they are very into the world, and are not Keene on keeping the commandments. One awesome part of it as that every single one of them have had experiences praying, they all say that they feel very good a peaceful as they pray, and they have all gained belief in God. I had one really cool lesson this week with a Chinese guy named Yang. Sometimes when are schedule is pretty packed we will set more than one appointment for a hour of the day, and we do we call splits. Which is we both take some priesthood holder from our ward as a companion and then we both go and teach. So i had already met Yang a couple days before so i taught him. 


They had been meeting with him for a couple months but teaching people who dont even know who God is takes a lot longer so all they had taught him was the plan of salvation and the gospel of Jesus Christ. And when we met with him earlier in the week he was asking how we were different than other Christian churches, so i taught him about the restoration. Its very different teaching with out your companion because you are so use to going back and forth so teaching the whole thing by yourself is very different, but it went really well. I know that i was guilded by the spirit in the way i taught because i taught it in different ways that i ever had so he could understand it. He understood it perfectly, and said he was very exited to keep reading from the BOM and to ask God if its true so that he could know that Joseph Smith was a prophet. 


At the very end of the lesson when i was baring my testimony of t he restoration I felt the spirit stronger than i think i have felt it in any other lesson i have had. It was a great experience and i feel very blessed to have it. It really made me think of how amazing the restoration is. I am so grateful to have the knowledge i have.

Zone leader stuff has gone well, it has been pretty overwhelming but Elder Howard and i have been doing all we can. We spent a lot of time talking about goals and what the Zone can accomplish in the up coming month. As a mission our goal to have have every companionship baptize each month, but right now we are kinda far from that. There are over 100 companionship's and we are getting about 60 baptisms a month. 


We decided that in the month of June we are going to do all we can to motivate the Zone and have the zone have the goal of each companionship baptizing in the month of June. And Elder Howard and I came up with a theme for June to get everyone exited and motivated to baptize in June. we had a lot of different ideas but we went with JURASSIC JUNE! We unveiled it at combined district meeting on Thursday, by running around acting like dinosaurs. The idea of the whole thing is to create unity and excitement in the zone. It is kinda a silly means of doing it, but it has working pretty well, and it seems like all the missionaries are pretty exited. we are already perfecting are dinosaur noises, and everyone is working hard so we can all baptize in the month of June. So this is probably making no sense to you guys reading this but it would take to long to explain it all, but just take my word for it, its going to be awesome and i really think it can lift the Zone.

Well i am kinda out of time, but things are going awesome here! Elder Howard is pretty much the best companion anyone could ask for, we have very similar personalities. We are having a blast and are working as hard as we can. Maybe next week i will do a better job at organizing my letter, so you can have a better understanding of whats going on. I love You all!

Elder Covey
--Fearless Via Faith

Monday, May 7, 2012

The rain has finally stopped!

So for the past little while the weather has actually been nice, which is crazy. I am so use to rainy Eugene that when it is sunny it kinda feels like I'm not in Eugene. It is so beautiful and green here, I guess all those rainy days are paying off.

So we had zone conference this week and during lunch president Young came over and talked to us. He gave us a warning that we could both be transferred. We will get transfer calls on Friday and transfers are the next Monday. Its looking pretty definite that Elder McBride is going since he has been here for six months, and with what president said there is a chance that i could be transferred also, so i guess i will figure out on Friday. Part of me wants to get transferred because it would be a change and i really like change, but on the other hand i don't want to get transferred at all because i love it here, and I especially don't want to leave Mark, he is so close and i am afraid of him disliking other missionaries, but I am very confident that President Young will do the Lords will with transfers and that i will be where i need to be.

It has been a good week, but not too much has changed, I would say most our investigators are about the same, we are really trying to focus this week getting things to progress. I have been doing the Money Mormon May thing i talked about last week and it has been great! I am a slow reader so i am not able to read 16 pages during personal study so i have been also reading during lunch and at nights, it has been a amazing blessing. I am reading it in a new triple combo I got (thanks Mom & Dad) so it is all unmarked and since i am going to be going threw it pretty quick i knew i could not do a ton of marking on this first time threw. 


So i decided that i am just going to box stories with a yellow highlighter, and underline anytime it talked about the Atonement with a red pen. It is amazing to see how much the Atonement is talked about in the BOM, it is definitely the most important thing and it is treated as one... well i am absolutely out of time for today because we are running a little behind, I wish i could write more but i have no time. I love every one of you

Elder Covey    
--Fearless Via Faith