ELDER OLDROYD: Gladys Knight!!!

I have gotten along with the Ward a lot! This past Sunday was the first Sunday at our church building because the prior week we had Stake Conference! There wasn’t too many people because everyone was sick! The weather is starting to change here, and the first week of school kids are sharing germs and all that good stuff. Number wise, we have 497 members in the directory, but we have an average of about 110. It would be so wonderful if we could have at least half the amount of members coming to church, we would have more missionaries in this ward. There is a lot of work to do!

There is a dog that I kept playing with every now and then. The dog wouldn’t leave my side haha. His name is Diesel, and it’s a bull mastiff!! Such a beautiful dog that slobbers and all that great stuff. I think I want a dog like this one. Well tamed, super friendly to everyone, even other dogs. He is only 2 years old and he is 150 pounds!! haha Can you believe that!? I was trying to push him but he was solid as a rock. I didn’t know Brother Clark was really taking a video haha I thought he was taking a picture of me cutting wood. But I love cutting wood, its great work and I find it relaxing and satisfying when you cut the wood!

This week we have had sooo much fun tracting… haha. But we found new people to teach and we also committed 2 more people (Sunny and Jim) to baptism. Sunny is super prepared, she has been reading the Book of Mormon in the past and she has a really good friend who unfortunately is a less active. But she accepted to be baptized and we are shooting for October 4 as of right now. Jim is a friend of our investigators named Tim haha. We went over there to teach Tim and his friend. Jim was there and sat in on the lesson. We taught the Restoration even though Tim as heard it but it was a good refresher and we committed Jim to be baptized on November 1. We also have Tim scheduled for a baptism date for October 4 as well! But he needs to quit smoking and drinking coffee. We also have an investigator named Nichole and she is just awesome! She has a desire to get baptized, she doesn’t care when it is but just when she is ready. It was supposed to be for this Saturday but we need to push it back maybe for the 4th of October as well! Nichole is married to a less active named Shane. They have recently got married but they both have kids. Shane is trying to quit smoking but seems like he can’t for some reason. Obviously the addiction is hard, but it’s great that he is taking the steps or at least has that in his mind. It’s very hard for Nichole because she wants to progress in the Gospel but her Shane is not ready and not living how he is supposed to. So that’s hard for her, as you could imagine. But those are our investigators with baptismal dates. This area is good and man I’m working Elder Jensen so hard haha. He told me that he wanted to work hard for the last 5 weeks of his mission and so we have been working! We knocked on a lot of doors this week. We had a ton of doors slammed in our faces this week, specifically Friday. Nobody wanted to learn more or receive their salvation by proper authority haha. That’s bold I know, but that’s how Elder Holland puts it. There is not one other church that has even a particle of the proper Priesthood Authority. It was a great week though.

Elder Jensen and me have our apartment to ourselves, which kinda sucks. It’s so much better having more people in the apartment. But it is what it is. So this Friday and Saturday we have Gladys Knight and the “Saints Unified Voices” coming to Akron on Friday and Cleveland on Saturday! It’s nothing but a Missionary Fireside and it’s going to be amazing!! Gladys Knight (who is a member of our church since 97′) directs this Grammy award winning choir and it’s supposedly phenomenal! They have been doing this for 12 years and Cleveland and Akron have been requesting for the choir to come for 3-4 years now and they are finally coming! It’s going to be amazing. President Vellinga called us and asked us if we would like to help set up and pass out stuff to people in line getting ready to get in the Stake Center for this wonderful cause. So long story short, there are only 12 Elders helping set up and what not.  We are going to be there from noon to 11 P.M. haha and then we have an hour and a half drive home. Then the next day (Saturday) we have a booth being set up at a “Johnny Appleseed Fair” and we will be proselyting at our booth and preaching the Gospel. It will be great and then the following Wednesday we have Elder Teh (Quorum of the 70’s) coming to our mission with his wife to speak with us. He came to our Stake Conference when I was in the Akron Stake in Ashland. He is amazing! And then the following week we have General conference. We have some busy important things coming up in the next few weeks. It’s wonderful!

Well I gotta go I love you guys and I hope you have a great week! Oh also we are having our P-Day next Thursday. So I will talk to you next Thursday! Love you!!

Love Elder Oldroyd