SDSU YSA: Traffic Ticket

Hmmmm.... So how should I say this.... well I guess there really is no good way to say it... So.... I got my first traffic ticket! Tadaaah! yeah... so I am going to use my credit card for that so watch for that bad boy to come through... It is only $105 so not too bad for a CA ticket! remember, I LOVE YOU!!! :)  The cop actually really didn't want to give me a ticket because "I'm not from around here and no one was in danger" but he had direct orders from his authorities that he couldn't give any more warnings on that specific road. So his hands were tied... but he was a pretty cool guy! we talked to him about religion and stuff so that is a plus! :)

     

This week wasn't too crazy or nothing (other than my ticket...) but on a good note the Lord did provide a tender mercy and allow us to eat corned beef and cabbage on Sunday!!! It was nearly as good as Anna's! I don't know what I would have done if I didn't have some sort of Irish/green food for St. Patrick's Day.  It was really good though and made my day! just thought I would tell you! haha 

     

It is so good to hear that you are doing ok! Did you tell dad that you went and got surgery because he didn't mention anything about it in his short note to me! haha It was kinda funny because I read Dad's email before yours so I was all thinking that nothing was really going on and then I read yours and I hear about your experience going to the hospital and getting surgery and how you have been out for a few days and it was quite the contrast! haha I thought it was funny.  But at least you had Ryan and Jenny to take care of you! 

     

The coolest miracle we had this week was what happened while meeting with one of our new investigators this past week.  So recently the Institute on SDSU campus, where we have church and teach a ton of our lessons, got re-keyed and we don't have a new key yet. and in order to meet with a single sister in the building we need another adult male there.  and it was really cool  to see how everything lined up so we could have this lesson with her because it was incredible.  So we were able to arrange to have the institute open so we could get in and we had a guy to come with us lined up but last minute he had to cancel because he had other things he needed to do so we were there frantically trying to get anyone of the guys from the ward to come be with us so we didn't have to meet outside.  We texted one of our members who we had never taught with before but that we are pretty close to the only bad thing is that he lives like 20 minutes away and we needed him sooner than that.  So we wait a few minutes and he texts us back and said, "I'll be there in 10" So he shows up and everything works out perfectly.  We started teaching and it was a great lesson! We taught her the Plan of Salvation and it really helped answer a lot of her questions along with some questions our member had! After the lesson we were talking and we got on the subject of baptism (not an accident... :) ) We had talked with her for a while the week before about it and she wasn't too sure but she told us that she knows she wants to be baptized but just isn't sure when.  We both kind of chuckled and said that we could help her with that. haha We set her goal for late April. But wait! it doesn't end there for her story! So, she wasn't able to make it to church last week because she was up in Orange County visiting her family and we were hoping to invite her to a fireside where a bunch of Recent Converts share their testimonies, there are musical numbers from the missionaries, and our Mission President talks.  This one was to be completely in Spanish and she was the first person we could think of that spoke Spanish so we invited her! she texted us back and told us that she might go but that she was still with her family at the time. We gave her the address and she never texted back. Well, as we were waiting, hoping she would come walking up, and there she was! She had a great time.  It was a super cool experience with her this past week.  

Hopefully this week keeps pumping out the miracles even though it is "finals week" at SDSU.  Get feeling better and know that you are in my prayers! 

Love,

Elder Ethan John Rowbury

PS if you want another crazy story, check out Kyle's letter this past week... I got a story from him that is completely nuts... so yeah, jsyk (YSA work is increasing my text language vocabulary. good luck with that one! haha)

SDSU YSA: Of Course We Remembered!

Of course we remembered! We would have never heard the end of it if we walked into the Marine Corps Recruiting depot (where the future marines do boot camp) late to church.  It was pretty funny this week though while we were there.  Basically, these boys have to be the most disciplined men in the world so they have to go through some of the hardest training in the World.  So We were walking down one of the hallways and we see this platoon of men and they are all standing against the wall. They are trained to not make eye contact with any of their superiors unless specifically told to do so.  Also they have to greet any visitors they see with a loud marine "Good Morning Gentlemen!"  so we were walking down this hallway and all of these men were yelling Good Morning to us as we passed them. It was a really unique experience! But yeah, if we had forgotten to set our clocks forward and walked into the palace of discipline it would have made for a humiliating morning! haha

     

Elder and Sister Holley are the best! I miss them SO much! They were some of the office missionaries and were just the most awesome neighbors ever! They actually just live in American Fork so I plan on seeing them again.  Elder Holley was the Fleet Coordinator for all the cars in the mission and was famous for some of his catch phrases such as, "DON'T DO THAT!!!" when talking about trying to squeeze between a car and the curb when turning right or putting bags/boxes on the car.  I had them sign my "signing journal" (the closest thing we get to a yearbook, where we dedicate a journal to have people to sign and put pictures in) and everything! They are just great!

     

This past week started out really slow.  We had only taught 2 people in 2 days but luckily Wednesday we had probably the craziest lesson of my mission. For weeks now we had been hearing about this John kid that had been hanging out at the institute.  He even went to the classes.  But for whatever reason we had never been able to catch him at a good time to teach him and add him as an investigator.  So we go there to have a lesson with Mitch and we found John there playing ping pong with him, so we snatched the 2 of them and took them to our office to have a lesson when John just starts laying into us with a ton of anti-mormon questions.  We found out that he had been going to this "mega church" down the road from his house which is famous for it's anti-mormon teachings.  Normally in this situation things usually get a little crazy and contentious but for some reason we both were just calmly answering his questions and trying to explain to him that if he would let us speak we would be able to answer all of his questions. This continued for a while until he asked the question, "Do you believe that I am saved? I mean, I do. But do you think that?"  and our hearts sank because that same question is asked to some missionaries in one of the training videos we have and the investigator gets upset that he was told that he has to live the commandments and be baptized by proper authority as well as have faith to be saved.  They answered his question but they didn't handle the situation very well so it was just one of those awkward moments. So we hear him ask this and are afraid that it will end up the same way.  But we began to simply bear testimony of the the Restoration and that through the proper Authority we can be follow the example of Jesus Christ and be Baptized.  It was amazing because after we finished explaining it was quiet for a moment.  Finally he broke the silence and asked, "How do I get baptized?" It was silent again and the Spirit was stronger than anything I have felt before.  He spoke up again and said, "I believe it is true. All of it. Joseph Smith, The Book of Mormon, all of it." He began to smile. We asked him how he felt and he said he felt good and we explained to him that it was the Spirit because what he had just said was true.  We set him with a Baptismal date in April and he was super excited. after we left we saw Mitch later that day and he told us that John wanted to be baptized sooner! haha It was one of those moments I will never forget.  And as an update he came to church with us on Sunday. 

     

Speaking of Sunday, we had another CRAZY miracle! It all starts on Saturday night.  That day for whatever reason it was give Elder Reece and Elder Rowbury referrals day or something because we got about 5 of them from different sets of missionaries and they were all super willing to learn.  So we called the last of them that night. Her name was Rocky. I was driving so Elder Reece was on the phone and the conversation that I could hear was weird because it sounded like he was having to really be careful and gentle to help her understand that we were nice people and that we wanted to help her. It took 15 minutes to be able to get her to give us her address so we could visit her. She was really suspicious that we were two young guys who claimed we were from a church and wanted to meet with her at her home which, when I thought about it, is a little bit crazy that we ask people to let us into their home just from that information.  But eventually we were able to assure her that everything would be ok and that we would be sure to bring a girl from the ward with us who had served a mission as well.  We also needed a man to come with us because we can't be in homes with just girls in it unless we have an adult man with us so we invited her brother who had just gotten his mission call.  Well, turns out that the members also had an RM friend from out of town who wanted to come as well! So here we are, just this army of people coming to teach this poor girl who was already a little skeptical of having us come by.  But It was really cool because she was totally fine with it! It ended up working great because the 2 RMs did a lot of the question answering and friend-shipping and we were able to basically just sit back and teach.  She loved it! At the end of it our members asked if she wanted to come to church which started in 30 minutes and she accepted so they all changed into church clothes and came to church right after our lesson. THEN they invited her to dinner that night because they had signed up to feed us that day as well! and guess what. She accepted! As a side note, they had asked me what food I had been missing on my mission because their parents love to cook and I told them a good Sunday Roast... and they did it!!!! It fell apart and everything! haha and while at dinner we taught another lesson and she loved it and had a great time! In total she spent 9 hours kickin it keeping the Sabbath day holy with this group of Mormons she had never met before in her life.  Later that night she texted us and told us how grateful she was for the time she spent with us and that she looked forward to meeting with us next week.  Member missionary work at it's finest!  It was so cool how all of her concerns about not fitting in and meeting all these new people were solved just by having someone to be her friend.

     

Anyway, this week was pretty nuts! We added a ton of new people to teach and saw some incredible success. It was a great week. :)

Love,

Elder Ethan John Rowbury

PS: I hope you enjoyed the long email. I guess I had a lot to say this week! haha

SDSU YSA: Pancakes Galore

Mom,

I got the package you sent! Thank you!!! we haven't made the brownies yet but sometime in the near future! I had a good birthday! Our members took us out to lunch and dinner. We took a few pictures and had a good time.  

The next day we went to eat with a young man that got his mission call the day before and another member of the ward. The problem was that we get to his place and he tells us we are going out to eat, and to be nice, he offers to drive us in his jeep.  It was pouring rain outside and we get to his jeep and see that it had no doors on it... we hop in anyway and ask where we are going and he says olive garden which is on the other side of our area and we had to go down the freeway in this jeep without doors! It was really fun but needless to say it was really cold and wet! haha but it sounds like you had a good time being pampered in California! haha.  

We had a really cool experience this past Sunday! Being in a YSA ward we have the benefit of every fast Sunday we do something called "break the fast" where we get together and have a big ol' potluck and it is amazing! So this months theme was breakfast for dinner! So we ate a ton of pancakes and delicious food and there were a lot of leftover pancakes and with us being the missionaries we are automatically the default leftover takers.  Elder Reece and I aren't too fond of leftover pancakes either so we throw a bit of a fit but they finally made us take them. So, we have this GIANT pan of pancakes and we throw it in our car for the rest of the evening until we get home that night.  

So we were going around trying to see who we could go teach Sunday night and we get to about 8:45 and it is about time to start heading home when Elder Reece remembers the pancakes in the trunk.

He tells me, "We are going to find a homeless person to give those pancakes to."  

Then started to tell me which direction we needed to go to find this person who needed the pancakes rather than just having us drown ourselves in syrup.  We get to this street that neither of us had ever been on before and we see this lady walking out of an apartment complex.  So we stopped the car and told her we have the craziest most random question for her and asked her if she wanted the pancakes.  

You could tell she needed them when she started to get a little emotional.  She later goes on to tell us that she was just on her way to a pay phone to call someone to see if they could bring her and her three daughters some food.  It was an answer to her prayers.  It was a really cool experience to see how we were led every step of the way so that we could be in the exact right spot at the perfect time.  We got her info as well and she accepted to have the family ward missionaries to come teach her at her house.  It was amazing.

That is my crazy story for the week! Can't wait to hear from you next week!

Love,

Elder Ethan John Rowbury