Declare the Gospel with the Sound of Rejoicing!

Que tal?!

Transfers are over. A few Elders have gone and a few new have ones come. We have a new District Leader who is hitting the ground running with helping us fulfill our purpose and we are all preparing to listen to the counsel that Dallan H. Oaks will give to us this Saturday when he comes to our mission. Exciting, huh? :D I'm excited. A little sad as well because I'm going to miss some good missionaries for a while because they are in other areas. Happy to meet new people. And a bit more humble realizing that I have a lot more to work on to really be a good missionary.

All in all, God does not leave us helpless. Speaking of the counsel of General Authorities, we got to listen to a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy, Elder Aidukaitis, come speak to us at Stake Conference. I believe he is the first picture on the list of General authorities that is in the Ensign. He is from Brazil and thus has an entertaining accent and a fun personality. He gets everyone's attention when he speaks and is very inspiring. He spoke to the MTC when I was there actually :)

My companion and I have more investigators this week and are working on getting them to become progressing investigators. A key part in that is using the members and getting them to church. We all know the urge of member-missionary work that is being declared by the Prophet at Apostles so I don't need to mention anything on that, only that they might just be on to something. Who knows? ;)

With regards to important additions to my collection of few personal options that I have as a missionary, I bought a comb today. I have always parted my hair just with water, gel, and my hands, but recently another Elder who has been using a comb to part his hair I was interested in trying it out. It gets the part much more sharp and precise. So far it seems good :) I probably won't use it all the time but at least for the occasion of an Apostle of the Lord I think it might be useful. No, this information isn't anything big but I thought you might be interested in knowing a little bit of the details of my life :D I'm just 'doing my part'. Eh? Ehhh? Get it? You know, I'm doing my-...okay never mind.

I've got to get going but I do oh so love this opportunity we have had to chit-chat a bit :) Placticando un ratito. :)

Con amor,

un abrazo de Elder Vance.

You tell me where the nearest Hispanic wedding is and I'll tell you where you can party hard.

I don't have much time to email this but I want to describe a few interesting things that happened this pat week. 

First! I had sushi for the first time with an investigator. She works at a Japanese restaurant and invited us for lunch. It was actually really, really good! :D

Second. My companion made me laugh and embarrassed himself as he threw a toy on the roof of this family we were contacting and then broke a work bench shelf in half as he tried to climb on he roof to get it. Not too good, but hilarious at the moment! It was an old bench and no one is mad. We are going to go back as Missionaries and actually do some good :/

Third. We had a wedding and baptism this weekend! He had been living with a member for a while and coming to church and they finally got married and baptized. Our branch first counselor baptized him and a member baptized his step son. Then we had a crazy fun reception filled with Hispanic traditions and dancing. Great food and great fun with our investigators who also came! If you haven't been to a wedding of your Mexican friends, well, try going to one. It's quite the experience. They sure do love to party ;P The groom himself was from Peurto Rico but I believe she is from Mexico.

Other than that not much else happened. Well we did almost get scammed by a con artist who seemed very convincing with her sad-story. We had some awesome Zone leaders and members to solve the case for us.

I Love you all. You all probably love me at least a little. We are a happy family and all that jazz.

Un abrazo de Elder Vance

Us after an intense game of ultimate frisbee! I am so red!! (totally was mvp) 

Counting coins and then teaching tithing to our cool investigator Santos, his future wife Nelly and (off the screen) his brother in law Bernardino. Mostly dollar coins and quarters. Probably around $800 in there no joke! (also 105 pennies..I counted)

Yes we did have a baptism. And a wedding. The light was coming in the window but there they are :)

Picture of me and Santos..who is taking a picture of the dancing going on. Silly!

My companion explaining from the white handbook why we probably shouldn't dance with the bride..

Throwing his tie over his head. My investigators are among the contestants.

The elders, Santos(left), Nelly, and Bernardino(right) :) Now they just all need to come to church!!

Hey, I found an exclamation point.--->!

This past week wasn't too different than the many other weeks I have spent here in Georgia so far. Well I guess there was new people and new experiences and new words learned in Spanish and new senses of responsibility. So with that regard it was a whole different week! As they all are and should be :) 

No super new investigators though. This weekend we should be having a baptism for an investigator who was really brought into the church by his girlfriend long before I got here. I guess we are just the lucky ones who get to be at the baptism.

The highlight of the week was, of course, General Conference. For me it was the best Conference I have ever watched. Maybe it's because I am a missionary, or maybe it's because I have a deeper desire to learn about my Savior, or maybe it's because I am learning to recognize the Spirit more and can feel it even more while listening to our church leaders. I think it's all of the above. Many of those talks were answers to specific things that were weighing on my mind recently as I'm sure they were for everyone. I just love General Conference! <----Look. Another exclamation point. 

My companion, Elder Chilcote, and I are striving to be more unified and to pinpoint the things we can do to give more of our hearts to the Lord. As long as we give it our very best we can never fail. Missions are fun. (That was my motivational line for all those who are under the mission age still. ;D Go on a mission! It's worth it. It's worth everything!)

Happy-late birthday to my little brother Jared! He turned nine last week! Yay for God-given bodies and aging processes! :D Miss you buddy!

Con amor y un poquito de queso,

Elder Vance

I Love the People

Another week gone by.

My, oh, my.

My, oh, my.

There was your daily dosage of my poetry skills. Hope you enjoyed. :)

We all know that time doesn't literally move faster or slower depending on what you're doing. But we can pretty much all say that at times in our lives time seems to us to fly by very fast. As a missionary one will find out that the days are long but the weeks are short; the weeks are long but the months are short; the months are long but the years are short; And finally, the years are long and your whole mission goes by in the blink of an eye. In hindsight, time always seems very fleeting. 

I have come to recognize more that the happiest moments I have had so far on my mission are when I am with an investigator or someone I just met and I just feel an immense amount of love for them. Just a couple of days ago we sat down and talked with our investigator and good friend Santos, his wife, and older sister. He is young, only twenty-three, and his child-expecting wife even younger. We taught and talked about the Word of Wisdom with them in the chill, Georgia-night air in front of their apartment. During our time with them I just felt so happy! As I saw them hear and try to understand new commandments and start to come even closer to Christ, I just felt as if I would do anything for them. Anything to help them be happier themselves and taste the real fruit on the Tree of Life. We chatted, we joked, we laughed, we practiced some English (for them) and of course Spanish for us. 

The hardest part about leaving an area and moving on to a different one is always the feeling of missing the people you grew to love. Missionaries, members and investigators alike. But with the hope that Christ brings there is always tomorrow. :)

One awesome thing that we got to experience was an event called 'La Fiesta de los Naciones' or The Party of the Nations. Every year a few hispanic branches in our area get together for food, dancing, and fun. People bring food specific from their country as well as some cultured dances. I got to enjoy some food from Mexico, Peru, and Brazil. There was also Argentina, Nicuragua, El Salvador, aaaaaand America. Of course. It was a blast and a lot of people not belonging to the church came. We missionaries had a table with pamphlets, cards, and DVD's for all those who were interested. Que bueno!

I hope you are all pumped for General Conference this weekend! I know I am! I miss you all and will see you soon ;)

Con amor,

Elder Vance

La Fiesta de los Naciones'

La Fiesta

Brandon's district in a bamboo forest

Monkey

Just hanging around this little casa

Becoming quite the cook!

I Officially Have 80% Spanish

Letter dated Sept 23, 2013

I really don't know how to open these emails. Yes, I could say something in Spanish like 'buenos dias!' or 'como estan?!' but I feel I should switch it up a bit. Maybe I'll just open each email with a line or two about how I am unsure of how to open my email. I like it!

On the quick topic of official news, yes, it's true. I have officially been deemed as having eighty percent Spanish skills. We were just contacting a few guys standing around on their day off. One of them commented that my Spanish was pretty good. He said it was '80%' to be precise. Does that mean I know 80% of all the Spanish words there are? No, that can't be it, I don't know nearly enough for that. Maybe he meant that I sound like I'm 80% Hispanic when I talk or that he could understand 80% of the words I was saying... Well I'll just accept the compliment and leave it at that. :) Now I know what you are probably thinking.

 "Elder Vance, I fear that thy joy in your language skills doth carry thee away unto boasting"

 And I take my response from the words of that great missionary himself. 

Alma 26: 11-12

"..I do not boast in my own strength, nor in my own wisdom..Yea, I know that I am nothing; as to my strength I am weak; therefore I will not boast of myself, but I will boast of my God, for in his strength I can do all things.."

So I give all credit of my Spanish learning to the help of God and the calling He has given me to preach to His children here in this language. I'm really not that good at it still but I will strive to keep learning and improving :)

On another note, I totally crashed on my bike while going down a steep hill. The grass was taller than I thought and my tires slid as I tried to pass a guy walking on the sidewalk causing me to flip onto the ground. I'm all fine and my bike is still good. All I could do was give my companion the thumbs up and laugh at how awesome that must have looked to the cars passing by. Sure, I was a little embarrassed but you just gotta shake it off and keep going. And yes, it was a super busy street too so lots of people saw. ;P

On the work side of things we have been teaching more lessons and planning and bringing to action our plans of talking with more people. My companion's Spanish is improving well, despite his thoughts on that, and we are looking upward as much as we can. We are planning to have a baptism of a brother from Puerto Rico. He has been living with a member and coming to church for a few months and they are finally going to get married and he baptized this October! Hopefully it all works out well :)

I'm excited for General Conference as I hope you are too! I will keep moving forward if and only if you promise to do that same! Well, I'll probably still be here whether or not you decide to keep it up. But I just want to let you know that it's worth it. It's so worth it. :)

Con mucho amor!

Elder Vance

911, What's Your Emergency?

Letter dated Sept. 16, 2013

Como estan?! Bien? Que beuno!

The thought just came to me, I hope my family is prepared for me singing Church hymns constantly for at least the first two weeks after my mission. That will be mostly because of habit. But, hey, there are some great hymns!

My first full week with my new companion has gone by and it's been going spledidly! He loves to clean our apartment a ton and I love to sit and watch him do it. I don't know about him, but I think we are a great team! No, I do my cleaning part too but he does seem so far to be much deeper with regaurds to the cleanliness of things. Voy aprendiendo! ;)

Elder Chilcote and I are doing better at contacting more people and visiting less active members. It is challenging at tiems to try and figure out how to help specific people with there gospel related problems and questions. Especially when yo uare used to only dealing with one specific kind. For example, a less active man in his twenties is dealing with the question of whether God really exists or not. It's different becuase 99% of the time we work with people who already have a faith in Jesus Christ. But it's nice to have to apportunity to pray and study for different people everyday. My companion is great and trying to focus in on the needs of specific people. He teaches me a lot!

Now on the side of intersting experiences we have, last night we were able to have one that involved a small kitten, hispanics and a police officer. Basically we were walking thorugh an apartment complex when we saw a family trying to get a small kitten out of some bushes. Turned out that the kitten was actually inside a hollowed out railroad tie that was used as a wall. It was dark and the kitten wouldn't come out and we didn't know what we could do. So the hispanic family decides to do the best thing and calls 911. What's even better is that because the parents don't speak english and the kids I guess don't like tlaking on the phone, they handed it to me. So I had to explain that our 'emergency' was a kitten who would come out of his hidey-hole. In the end a friendly officer was sent over and basically said that we should just wait for it to crawl out itself. Hah, I felt bad for making him coem over but he was nice about it.

One more thing we were able to do this past weekend was attend the funeral service of the Second Counselor in our stake Presidency here is the Roswell Stake. I had never met him but it was a beautiful service. He passed from cancer that he had been fighting for a year. He was high up in the ranks of UPS so there were many of his co workers as well as family and friedns at the church for the funeral. From everything that was said about him it is easy to have no doubt where he is right now. And for those of you who might still have a little doubt about where he woudl be, well, I'll tell you that he is in the Spirit World continuing the work of salvation with our kindred dead. Never heard of that before? Want to know more?? Mormon.org is a great place to start ;)

I love you all and pray that you are fiding an increased desire to come closer to Christ is your own lives! Until next time,

Elder Vance

Learning the Ropes

Buenos dias!

First off, yes the rumors are true. It was indeed my birthday this past Thursday. I am now twenty! Crazy! I am no longer a teenager!! Haha, but of course nothing much other than the number of my age has changed. ;P Same smile, same hair, maybe a tad taller and possibly a bit better looking. That last one is debatable buuuut we don't need to discuss it now. :)

I am officially a 'father' here in the mission field because I am training a new missionary. My companion's name is Elder Chilcote. He is from Utah and is great elder! He was in the Mexico City MTC for six weeks learning Spanish and still doing his best to learn more. I'm really glad to be able to help him do that. It makes me want to even better at trying to improve too! :) We are setting our goals higher and higher and have the desire to become even better harvesters in Christ's vineyard!

We have a few good investigators and are working on getting more of God's elect to hear the message of the Restoration! Yes, I probably sound like I myself just came from the MTC. A nice little greenie ready to take on the whole vineyard myself. Well I'm excited to be able to work with a new missionary whose head is not filled with false preconceive notions about missionary work or the areas in which we work. I don't like hearing, "Oh, that's a terrible area!" Sure, some areas have higher rates of success than others but the elect can be found in the most unlikely places! did not Moses strike a rock and cause water to gush forth?? From a rock! I don't know about you but a rock is not the first place I would take my cup to be filled. I'd at least try and see if the nearby McDonald's has free water. Hmm, I wonder why the people of Israel didn't do that? I guess we'll just have to find out in the next life!

I hope all is well at home with all of your families. I know a few right now that have severe trials that they are being led to pass through and my heart goes out to them. As well as one piece of advice, turn toward the Lord. There is no other way for lasting peace, just as we have heard many times from the pulpit during General Conference. Onward Christian soldiers! :D

Con mucho amor y un pedazo de pastel,

Elder Vance

Happy Birthday Elder Vance!

Cumorah Branch Elders

Wonder what a missionary wishes for?

New companion and greenie, Elder Chilcote.