Sept 22, 2013

hello family and friends!

i'm so grateful for your love and support! it's been great to hear from a lot of you. My heart is full this pday.. i love you guys and i hope you're all doing so well! so my momma wants me to just do away with the questions for a while. hopefully i'll be able to cover the bases i want too without the questions.. it's going to take some effort on my part i guess.. :P so here's for my week!

last pday was lame! we played basketball for a little bit then we sat at the apartment all day. we played millionaire monopoly and ate way too much candy. the good news is that i got all the missionaries that were playing monopoly to help me finish off my junk food. thank goodness.. pants are fittin' tight these days. we had dinner with the benecke family that day.. sister B is awesome. She loves organic stuff and always makes really healthy, really tasty meals. way good!

In district meeting this week we talked about obedience. like.. why beat this dead horse? oh wait.. it's not a dead horse. obedience is so important! our recitation for this month is the scripture in the D and C that states (i should know the reference.. dangit. ) there is a law irrevocobly decreed in the heavens before the foundations of the world.. upon which all blessings are predicated. when any man receive a blessing it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated... clearly i don't have it memorized. but it was a great reminder of the importance of obeying even the little things. we all need lots of blessings! like who couldn't use a little more blessings in their life? think about where you are at with obedience and maybe find something you can work on.. that's what our DL challenged us to do and as we strive for obedience we should watch for the Lord's hand in our lives! he will bless us for it.. there's a law in heaven about it so.. he's gonna do it. :)

we weren't super busy this week.. we had a lot of weird weather.. rain and wind. and it's been kinda chilly! i got to break my cardigan out :) i love that! but it was kind of restricting for us on our bikes. if we show up on somebody's porch soaking wet why on earth would they let us in to ruin their furniture? we did a lot of studying and preparing for appointments that we had set for the days. we had a lesson with Shane again this week.. he's doing awesome. we're having a hard time getting him to read the BoM but he's super busy and his GF isn't nearly as into it as he is. he lives in another ward.. i think i said that already but i'm sick of it! we have had so many people we've been teaching that haven't been in our ward boundaries. i tried to explain the situation to shane but he didn't want to deal with other missionaries or whatever. we are going to move some more wood for him this friday. oh yeah! he had us move some wood for him last friday. that was one thing that we did that was different. we went to a town called silver springs kinda by his house .. i dare someone to look at silver springs on google earth. literally the middle of the desert! we were stackin this wood with the wind blowing like crazy... my eyes within one second would get caked in sand! like i would blink and it was almost like a wind shield wiper moving it all to my eyelid. so fun.  haha. anyway the reason i brought that up is becuase we are going to help him get the rest of his wood on friday and we are going to involve the missionaries from his ward as well. oh we had another service project too.. this woman named shirley has been investigating the church for a while but hadn't had the missionary discussions.. we have taught her all the discussions and she lives with a member but there are some things that will need to occur of course before she can get baptized.. anyway she teaches kindergarten so on friday she asked for some help in her classroom. she didn't have any kids that day and she needed help hanging things from the ceiling and cleaning the fish tank and stuff. so that was fun! gosh rambling on for days.. anyway!    so the work has been slowing down a little with the change in everybody's schedule going back to school and work etc. loving it though!

yesterday in sacrament meeting a young man gave his farewell talk. it was pretty cool.. he is a theatre kid so he's super good at entertaining people .. he talked about all these experiences in his life that could have been the end of him.. but that the Lord has blessed him and kept him around through some crazy things, maybe so he can help some people via serving a mission. he'll be a great missionary! he's going to denver south, speaking spanish and he's going the mexico mtc. what i wanted to bring up is that his dad also spoke. his dad is a real soft spoken guy but very intelligent and pretty personable when you get him talking. he spoke on the talk by brad wilcox that is in the ensign for this month.. his grace is sufficient. i hope everyone that has a copy of the ensign took the time to read that one.. it's awesome! sometimes we get too wrapped up in our "works" and don't focus enough on what the savior did for us. "we don't earn heaven...we learn heaven" we are here on earth to learn the things needful of us to feel comfortable in the presence of God. many people think that obedience is a way of controlling us or it's a way for us to earn our way back.. the Atonement is a gift. the analogy Wilcox gives in the talk is a lot better than anything i can come up with but wow! it really puts it into perspective that our savior loves us.. and it is IN and THROUGH the atonement that we are able to return to live with Him... not by how good of people we are. just something to chew on. I loved it.

well this is a long email and kind of just about nothing. the last thing i'll include this week is an insight i came across in a book called "our living gospel" by Wendell Rich. the book was in the free stack at our church's library.. it's the 1966 aaronic priesthood study manual. so legit! but here's what caught my attention concerning faith.

"Faith is forward looking. the face of faith is turned toward the future. in fact, faith reaches from the past, through the present and into the future. here faith transcends knowledge because knowledge necessarily centers in the experiences and observations of the past. knowledge is backward looking, while faith is forward looking. through faith, the truths and experiences of the past become the foundation of the goal and the objectives of the future. knowledge brings the past into the present. faith, active in the present, looks into the promise of the future. " pg 70 Our Living Gospel, Wendell O. Rich

how cool is that!? faith and knowledge are (or can be) two different things. i love that line in green.. it is through faith that what we know can be the foundation of what we want to accomplish. so rad!

well my friends. this is what happens when i'm left on my own to come up with somethin! a whole bunch of random thoughts. i hope everybody is doing well at home. i Love and miss you all, and pray for you often! I'll be in Fallon for another 3 weeks or so, i hope to hear from some of you, all of you soon! s/o to Sister Liz Green.. she served here in Fallon and had to go home for medical attention. pray for her recovery! :)  i received mail from her this last week. she found the blog already.. hope you're doing well verde! 

that's all for now. thanks for your support! until next week my friends!

elder stooooz sykes 

a baptism!

what's up fam and friends?! so no questions this week.. hopefully i can come up with something decent to fill you all in on the work here in Fallon!

well, this week was good. One of our investigators was baptized on saturday! his name is Gaven, 19 yr old student. He's an awesome kid and i'm really excited for him. I'll attach a photo from his baptism.

So we've been focusing on helping Shane and Crissy a lot lately. Shane is the one that works right in front of our house. he's the best. we taught he and Crissy the plan of salvation on our porch yesterday after church. he is really receptive to the things that we teach and Crissy is still trying to find out of God is real. We invited her (both of them really) but mostly her, to read the book of mormon and even try to pray and with time her faith will grow and she will come to know that God has a plan for each of us and he loves us! it's been so rad to see them make little changes in their lives. for the most part they don't even realize they are making them. Shane is just solid. they have a lot of things to work out before they get baptized but it will be rad to see where they came from to where they end up. we love em'!

Other than that we've been contacting a lot of the Less-Active names on our ward list just trying to build relationships with them and help them. working with less actives is almost more difficult than non members because these people have a past in the church and they still turned away from it! We've been trying to figure out how to help a lot of them and it pretty much just boils down to Church, Prayer, and scripture study! with those three components you can't get off the path. well in you go at those sincerely of course! it's interesting to see.. it's not easy for anybody to stay faithful in the gospel.. adversarial forces are working hard all the time to get us to step away from the love of our father in heaven! it's tough. but those three simple things are the antidote to overcoming the trials and temptations that come our way. i know it to be true! :)

so i don't have a ton of time left.. one last thing i wanted to make mention of was an article i read in the ensign about gratitude. There was a 16 yr old girl who, for an english class i believe, made a list of all the things she was grateful for. she counted her blessings, literally! her list ended up being over 1200 things she was grateful for and the article goes on to describe that when we are looking at all of the ways God has blessed us in our lives we see that we aren't in need of much more. I thought it was interesting because Mom asked me the question about gratitude a little while ago then i was able to receive further insight from that article and from the spirit! I started a list of things that i'm grateful for. very specific! i'll add things that i'm grateful for to my list as they come into my mind, but i've committed to writing down at least one thing each day that i'm grateful for. the great thing about making a list and counting your blessings is that the spirit of gratitude lingers in your heart! when we notice the hand of the Lord in our life, we notice that he is intervening on our behalf.. it strengthens my testimony that he knows me and loves me! and he has the same love for all of his children. he desires to bless us and wants us to be happy. so anybody that reads this, give it a try! just make a list maybe for FHE or just whenever.. but make a list of every thing you are grateful for. spend some time on it and think about all the ways the Lord has blessed you and try and tell me he doesn't love you! :)

welp errbody, i hope you all have a great week this week. I love you all and i pray for you often. we'll talk to you all next week!

if anybody wants to say hey, my email is Joseph.Sykes@myldsmail.net and my address is 4348 Reno Hwy, Fallon, NV. 89406

hope to hear from you soon. :) 

Labor Day Letter!

Happy Labor day fam and friends! hope you all are firin' up the bbq's and all that labor day stuff. so first thing is first, i'm not being transferred! i thought for sure i was out of here but i think the Lord has work for me to do in this part of NV. let's get to the q's!

DID YOU GET A NEW COMP?

nope, still with E. Shaw. 

ARE YOU BEING TRANSFERRED?

...nope. 

WHAT WAS THE BEST THING THAT HAPPENED THIS WEEK?

We had a chance to really teach this super rad guy named Shane. He works at fast glass (the company we live right behind) and we got to know him a little bit by getting the mail for him. he's super outgoing and just wanted to be friends with us from the start. well over the past month or so we have helped him with service.. he owns a couple manufactured homes in a trailer park and he had to do some evictions.. so we helped him clean out the trailers. also helped him do some glass work for another one of our investigators (small world) so anyway that's kind of how we've gotten to know him. it's been awesome. he loves to bbq too so everytime we help him we get hooked up! :) so i'm just rambling.. but this is the good part. on saturday E. Shaw had some serious muscle cramps in his back/shoulders.. he's a tough kid but the pain was super intense for him. so i went on splits with another elder (so we could still work) and we went to shane's house. we had some fun with him at first.. shot some hoops and he talked me into getting on his quad.. i know i probably shouldn't have but he called me out! so i hopped on for a minute :)so we were there for about 30 minutes and then we started the first discussion! super, super receptive to what we had to say. he and his GF crissy are solid, solid people but they've seen some hardships in their life and don't look to God for help at all. the great part about sharing the gospel is it isn't something we have to convince people to believe. we explained the power of the book of mormon, where it came from.. and how they can know for themselves that God is our loving father in heaven and that he knows us individually! prayer and reading. they both accepted the invitation to read and to pray. it's going to take time for them, i know it. but i'm excited. so we left, invited them to church and they all showed up! shane crissy and the kids (his and hers) there were 5 people total. we were also teaching gospel principles class yesterday and our assigned chapter was 15.. the lords covenant people, but we only had a few members in the class (2) and i figured we could get some more responses from the investigators if we taught the lesson on prayer again.. so that's what we did. anyways i keep rambling on.. long story short it went well but i would have never expected all this change to be brought about in them so quickly. we'll keep you posted on their progress! 

HAVE YOU CHALLENGED ANYONE FOR BAPTISM?

Yes! we had aimee set for baptism but she backed out at the last minute.. she took a long break from seeing us and she came across some more unfavorable material and had more questions. so she's on the brink. but we have a baptism set for september 14th. his name is Gaven. he is 19 and has been dating a girl in our ward for a while. he has taken the missionary discussions multiple times and has been coming to church for a year and a half on and off. a few weeks ago we visited with him for the first time since i've been in the area (so it's been a while since he's had contact with missionaries) anyway we talked about tithing and the law of the fast. he then told us out of nowhere that he's been thinking a lot about baptism! so we had another meeting with him, talked about the priesthood and some other random questions he had and he decided it's time! the unfortunate thing is that he lives in another ward boundary so getting his records into our ward is going to be tough/impossible. we are at the stake presidents house to email right now (because the library is closed and we ate dinner with him last night, he said we could come here)  he says it's next to impossible without pretty strong reasoning. so we'll see! but he's being baptized either way. 

WHAT WAS THE SERVICE YOU DID THIS WEEK?

we moved some 120 lb tanks of water for the stake president and that's all i can think of! on the agenda, we are going to help shane build a deck for his nana on wednesday. i'm telling you guys.. ive learned more on my mission than i would have ever imagined in regards to housework and yard work.. sprinklers.. you name it i've done it on my mission no joke! 

DID YOUR MISSION PRESIDENT MENTION YOUR BYU REFERRAL?

he hasn't said anything to me about it yet but i'm going to ask him in my weekly email that i send after this one. :) 

WHO DID YOU GET MAILBOX LOVE FROM?

this week i got mail from dad! and from sam and sadie, grandma sue and grandpa monte. oh and Don! i need stans address whenever someone gets a chance too. :) 

WHAT DOCTRINE HAS STAYED IN YOUR MIND THIS WEEK?

i've been in helaman a lot this week so i've been thinking about the gadianton robbers! it's crazy how parallel things are in the book of mormon to now. it is definitely for our benefit! 

HOW MANY PEOPLE DID YOU TEACH THIS WEEK?

this week we taught 15 lessons.. which is pretty average. it's hard the week before transfers to stay focused, plus we had some medical setbacks. but still had a chance to help some people. we had a less active lady call us because her daughter was going to have a baby and she wanted us to give her a blessing before going into labor. that was cool. other than that just some of the same people that we love! 

DO YOU GO AROUND ASKING FOR SERVICE OPPORTUNITIES? yeah! we go around asking two things at every house. 1. "do you know anybody that would benefit from the message of the restored gospel?" and 2. " is there anything you might need an extra couple sets of hands for?" always! we have been doing a ton of service work and elder Shaw and i both really enjoy that part of being a missionary. 

DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH WE LOVE AND RESPECT YOU?

..i think! maybe? 

HOW HAVE YOU SEEN THE HAND OF THE LORD IN YOUR LIFE THIS WEEK?

absolutely! especially with Shane! it's apparent he has been prepared for a while and the timing is just right. this is the Lord's work and i know he is preparing the way before us. all missionaries really! 

HOW HAS YOUR TESTIMONY BEEN STRENGTHENED?

Seeing the Lord bless the lives of the people that we have been working with. we really love the people here and we pray for them all the time and it's amazing to see the Lord's hand in their life, helping them through hard times. 

WHAT DO YOU KNOW FOR SURE?

i know that the book of mormon has been given to God's children in the restoration of the gospel for our benefit in these latter days! i know that there is great power in the scriptures, i'm so grateful for them and for what we can gain from them. just further evidence that God is literally our father in heaven and he loves us so much! 

WHAT DO YOU NEED FROM US THIS WEEK?

hmm. i don't think i need anything! i would love more photos though. :) and i was going to ask my dad to send me some of my running shoes. bout to start getting in shape again! our Stake President is a health nut and he's really got me excited to eat well and exercise. someday i'll save some missionary money and buy a pair of nike frees to run in.

so fam and friends! this has been another solid week in fallon. i'll be here for another 6 weeks minimum so if you're sending mail it's the same address it's been for the past five months! 4348 Reno Hwy Fallon NV 89406. also, i've been out for 6 months now. is that blowing everybody elses minds' too? i can't even believe i've been out that long. after this transfer i will have been in fallon for 6 months. so crazy!!! things are good here and i hope and pray things are good for all you peeps i love wherever you are. Have the best week and seek the Lord!

-Elder Sykes