Elder Jason Schauers serving in the Minnesota Minneapolis Mission: Less Active Branch Mission Leader

Hey everyone,

It was a pretty good week. I'm not sure if I have told you this yet. But our branch mission leader is less active. Just something that is funny. Also our new second councilor is also less active. We will see if he becomes active from this new calling. Kind of funny how small branches work.

Monday- We went and hit golf balls at the range, which was very fun since it was the first time in about three months I've hit a golf ball. Later we mowed pennies lawn and did other things for her around the house.

Tuesday- We got the flu shot. Then we taught Cece. We read to her the talk from president Monson from the priesthood session about the word of wisdom. She liked it a lot. She has smoked less so that is good. We will continue to help her quit smoking. When we were leaving she yelled to us saying, “hey you guys stay young cuz health problems sucks." So I responded, “Hey love the word of wisdom and then they will go away". She just stared at me shaking her finger ha-ha. She is pretty funny.

Wednesday- The Grand Rapid elders came to Aitkin cuz one of them had a birthday and wanted a Sister Piecek cake ha-ha. She makes everyone cakes and loves to feed us. It makes her day. After we eat we mowed and lawn and prepared her garden for winter. While mowing small snowflakes started snowing. It was pretty cool. After, we went to President Franz house and helped them pack their home. We kind of had to restrain ourselves from pulling stuff out of the trailer because we didn't want them to leave. We also played monopoly and I won again. I'm 4/5 right now.

Thursday- We went to Crosby and were able to get in contact with a potential investigator that we have knocked on his door twice a week since I've gotten here. And he was finally home. We also met with a less active who would probably come to church more if she didn't have work on Sundays. We meet with her like every other week. Then for dinner we went to the Ronos. She gave me my birthday packages that my mom and Megan sent. She told me to open Megan's up and once I did, the package was ripped up. They said the mail man didn't put the package in the package spot, so their giant don't ripped it open and eat all my beef jerky. But Sister Rono nicely replaced it. After we met with Kyle and showed him the patterns of light video about receiving prompting from the Holy Ghost and recognizing who it was from.

Friday- My birthday. It was actually pretty good, I had low expectations for mission birthday, so I think that helped make it better. After weekly planning, we went to DQ for lunch, and got a five dollar lunch which comes with an ice cream Sunday. And then they accidentally made another ice cream Sunday. So they gave us another one for free. It was pretty great. For dinner we went to the Crowther’s and had a good lesson with them. The husband is the second councilor, and he is also less active, so we technically got a less active lesson. After dinner we drove to Grand Rapids to carpool to Duluth for stake conference and zone interviews with the president.

Saturday- We had a district meetings and during the meeting, we would get pulled out to have an interview with president. Nothing too exciting. But that night we went to the adult session of stake conference. They asked us to sing in a missionary choir. It sounds really good. It was really cool, cuz we kind of had a stacked line up of speakers President and Sister Forbes (my mission president), President and Sister smith (temple president), and A General Authority came. He is a 70 from Canada named James E. Evenson. He gave a great talk, and he is an awesome guy. He talked about all the talks from general conference, it was super cool how knowledgeable about the scriptures he was. That night, we all split up and worked in Duluth. Elder Harper and I went and visited a less active who I have met the last time I was in Duluth. We talked about the importance of setting goals and not making excuses to not achieve them. It went well.

Sunday- We attended stake conference and it was really good. After, we got a ride back to Grand Rapids, and we had dinner with the GR missionary’s mission leader. And played three flags up with the little kids. We met a family who is a mix of less active and non-member. Showed them the video about forgiving others. They accepted it very well.

Well it was a pretty crazy eventful week this week. The gospel is true. We had a person come up to us this week and ask if we are Mormons. He seemed nice at first, but then he asked us if we studied the Book of Mormon and its history. He then said, if we truest studied, we would know that it is all false, and that we have been fooled. We didn't say anything to him, but I was thinking later about how a man who goes around trying to tell other they are wrong, must not have much joy in his life. The gospel brings true joy, that I'm very grateful to be able to be a part of. I have two questions for people who try to bash the Book of Mormon. 1) Have you read it? 2) Have you prayed with a sincere heart to know if it is true? If you have done these two simple things, you cannot come and tell anyone that it is not the truest book on the earth today. The Book of Mormon is true, and I invite all who reads this to read and pray to know if it is true. Even if you already have, you will get the reassurance answer that it is true. No young man who has a 3rd grader education could have made it up. It's not possible. It's is true, and I'm grateful for it.

Have a great week.

Elder Schauers