Twister

What's up fam? I hope you all had a good week! This past week in Waverly has been pretty interesting to say the least. We had a pretty good week this past week but also have run into a number of people who don't exactly fit the friendly Iowan stereotype. I don't think I've ever run into so many anti's in one week! But luckily we had the privilege of educating quite a few of them on what our faith is all about. :)

The past week has been awesome teaching wise, we taught De'Angelo and unfortunately we found out he "Smokes that Green" occasionally... But whatever, I know he'll overcome it as he gains a greater testimony of the Gospel. But he told us he believes in the Book of Mormon and wants us to come to his Family Barbeque and teach his whole Family! So we're pumped for that!

We haven't met with my home girl Sister Kerr this week, she has been gone visiting Church history sites with President Kerr (She's so Golden I can't take it). We will meet with her tomorrow and set a baptismal date with her! I'm so pumped!

 We taught a ton of first lessons with people this week and got some solid return appointments so hopefully we will be able to get some more investigators next week as well.

My favorite thing that happened this week was going on exchanges with Elder Tekarika, he's one of my favorite Elders in the Zone. He's from the Kiribati Islands by Fiji and has Learned three different languages while out on his Mission! He's hilarious and he doesn't speak English super well but we always get along. The funniest thing happened, I was driving us to an appointment out in the boonies and we all of a sudden get a tornado alert! Literally the most excitable I've been on the mission, I was so pumped. Elder Madsen called and we were yelling through the phone to each other about how we're finally going to see a tornado. And meanwhile Elder Tekarika is just flipping out like "Whas Tornado?! Whas Tornado?!" in his accent it was so funny. I told him it was like a hurricane but on land instead and he got all freaked out and was like "Elder am I goona die? Elder are we goona die??" It was hilarious. But sadly we never saw the twister, it touched down by some other town not even in our area :(

So I have run into a ton of bashers on my Mission thus far and I've decided to start keeping a list of all the funny lies and stories they try to hit his us with; here is what we heard this week: 

Anti Mormon Lies of the Week:

1. The Church owns Coca-cola (Not true,  also confusing as to why that would matter)

2. The Church owns all the Vegas Casinos and Strip Clubs (This guy was drunk I think, so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt)

3. Brigham Young killed everyone he came across as the Saints trekked across the plains. (Yeah they were in Great shape, definetly all strong enough to go out and commit some murder when they weren't starving and freezing to death. Oh and no dates, times, places, or names could be provided for some odd reason :( )

All joking aside this week was great. It was frustrating at times when running into people who feel the need to try and tear down others faith in Christ. But I know that the Church is true and that Heavenly Father loves each and everyone of us. And no amount of bashing and hate can take that away. 

I hope that you all have an excellent week, I love you all and hope you enjoy the start of your summer! Go share the Gospel!

Elder Milligan

Elder Tekarika and I on exchanges

Rehearsing for my role as Satan in the primary Reader's Theater. Somehow Madsen got to read Christ's part.

Thinking of You

What's up everyone?! I hope you all have had a great week. This week was one of the more interesting on my mission thus far. A lot of awkward and funny things happened but lets get down to the spiritual stuff first. So Elder Madsen and I have been workin our bootys off this week, we have been super busy and were able to teach quite a few people. The most exciting thing that happened this week however was that we got a new investigator, her name is Jennette! Except we call her "Sister Kerr" because she happens to be our new Branch President's wife! #GOLDMINE. We are really excited to teach Sister Kerr, she's one of my favorite people in the branch, she comes every week and is one of the most loving people I've ever met! She is super solid and already has a testimony of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon, and she already lives each one of the commandments to the fullest so really it's just the commitment she's been scared of (sounds like someone else I know ;)) but we can't wait for her to be baptized and be able to enter into the Gate! Her and President Kerr are like our grandparents out here they super kind! I love this lady so much I even ate "rubar and strawberry pie" for her. But yeah we are stoked for her and for all the faith she has shown in her conversion process, she even approached us about taking the lessons not the other way around!

Another awesome experience was we taught our Less Active Kevin, he has been struggling with trying to overcome his alcoholism and he let a friend he made in rehab move in with him. So we stopped by the other day and taught both of them and the spirit was really awesome! We read from the Book of Enos and talked a lot about repentance. It was great, and Kevin's friend is now an investigator.

Alright now for the funny parts of the week; to start off I had the opportunity to go on exchanges with Elder Baldomero, one of our Zone Leaders. He's a character, he's from Hawaii and is super deadpan and sarcastic. So you can never tell when he's being serious or not. But we had a lot of fun in Cedar falls, we taught a crazy friend-family-group thing and they were crazy. We started off teaching one guy, then another guy showed up and the other one left, then a girl showed up and started talking to us, then the second guys wife showed up. Basically we were't really sure who we were teaching at any certain point so we were kind of just talking to anyone who would listen. But it was really funny, we were there for two hours and I had to pee the whole time and was just trying to invite them to be baptized so I could get the heck out of there. Then during the closing prayer, I'm saying it and a little boy who belonged to one of the guys we were teaching just beams me in the face with a little plastic basketball and I was trying so hard not to laugh. It was definitely one of the crazier lessons I've had.   
I hope you all have a great week and that you find opportunities to share the Gospel! I love you all!

Elder Milligan

PS We moved this week to a better apartment! Our new address is 123 1st Ave. NW Apt #2

My First Frat Party

How's it going everyone? I hope you all had a great Mother's Day and that you all told your Moms how much you love them! I know I definitely love and miss mine and it was great to be able to talk to her and the rest of my amazing family on Sunday! Past week in Waverly has been pretty awesome! Elder Madsen and I have been trying to spend as much time outside as possible because the weather has been awesome! We have been doing a lot of finding the past week, trying to get in doors and share the gospel with people and we have had a lot of success in the past few days. One of the best parts of it being warm and sunny outside is that Waverly comes alive when the sun is out! All we have to do is walk down the main street and there are tons of people out and about, so we have done a lot of street contacting recently. One of our favorite activities is to go and walk around sorority and frat neighborhoods because people are always out on their lawns chillin, like the other day we talked about the restoration with these three bros who were just sitting on a couch in the middle of the lawn lol. They might have been a little under the influence but they were really nice and invited us to "come thru" whenever we wanted haha. 

This week we have been trying to meet with De'Angelo and Amy regularly to keep them focused on their baptismal date. But De'Angelo got the flu and Amy has been working a ton so it has been hard, especially since they live about 15 miles from Waverly. But one of my favorite things about De'Angelo is that he'll call us all the time. Usually at night when we are in for the day and he just checks up on us. He's convinced some one is going to rob us because he thinks Iowa is dangerous lol (I think he's got serious PSTD from living in Chicago) but we always have good talks about his baptism and what it means for him and his wife and he gets really hype. It's great to see him get so excited about this awesome decision he's making!

So we've had a lot of funny experiences with people this week as per usual. But one of the more memorable ones was with our potential investigators Brittnay and Gregg, they are a nice couple and they have twin daughters who are about five or six. So we were over at their house and they were telling me about their daughters' dance recital they had just been at. Brittnay was talking about how cute they were and all that jazz and was like "Girls show them your dance you did!". So these two little girls get up and and their mom turns on the song "Blurred Lines" and these little girls just start dancing to this song. And their dances moves are a little too "mature" for six year old girls in my opinion lol, but the whole time my companion and I are just trying not to laugh and look at each other. It was pretty awkard, but hey they are pretty good dancers!

Another experience we had was we were walking down "Frat Row" on Sunday night and there was a large gathering of college kids and the tunes were bumping so we thought we'd just walk by and see if we could start a conversation with anyone. i think we got invited to come to the party like 20 times, everyone we talked too was like "Well I'm actually headed to this party, but you guys should totally come, it's supposed to be pretty lit!" As tempting as it was we decided a frat party wouldn't be a good place to try and preach the Gospel so we had to pass lol.

Well I hope you all have a great week, I love and miss you all keep doing your thing. Go share the Gospel!

Love, Elder Milligan

We Wrecked the Sube

What's up everyone?! I hope you all had a bomb week. Elder Madsen and I's first full week together has been one of the funnest of my Mission thus far! We have been teaching a lot of people and have had some pretty funny experiences. We have definitely received a ton of help from the Lord as we have been trying to blow this area up (spiritually). 

Over the past Month and a half we have been working with our Investigators De'Angelo and Amy. They have always been interested in the Gospel and have loved having us over to discuss topics related to Jesus Christ. However they haven't been progressing very much and they weren't keeping commitments, but that all changed over the course of this past week! So Elder Madsen and I went to visit De'Angelo Friday night and we talked to him about the Priesthood and baptism for quite a while, then at the end of the lesson we invited him to be baptized again and he got really excited and accepted the invite with fervor! We were pumped, then on Saturday we stopped by again and taught Amy as well, Amy is very quite and reserved. But we extended the invite to her as well and she got really excited and said yes as well! It was a huge testimony builder to me of how the Lord blesses us for our efforts. We have really been pouring our hearts and souls into trying to help Amy and De'Angelo progress towards baptism. We had been praying and fasting a lot for the Lord to help us get two people on date for baptism this week and through him we were able to accomplish our goal! We gave them a Baptismal Calendar with certain commitments and dates for lessons on it to help keep them on track to make their date. I've never been so pumped about Missionary work as I have this week. Even though the weather here is the most depressing thing ever and has more mood swings than the girls of Eagle High Class of 2015, nothing could bring us down this week. Yesterday it was 40 degrees and was pouring all day. Like I've never seen so much rain in my life, some of the streets in Waverly were flooded after an hour! But we loved every minute of it, and plus a lot of people let us in when we walk up to the door in our soaked and now see through short sleeve shirts, because they feel so bad for us lol it's the best. 

A lot of funny things happened this week. Most notably was Elder Madsen wrecking our car... Just kidding it's not wrecked, we just tore off the mud guard on accident. Elder Madsen was driving through a neighborhood and we hit this bump (The roads here are complete trash, thanks Obama) and we just hear this grinding noise. So we pull over and I open my door and the mud guard from under the tire swings in and lands in my lap! It was so funny. Luckily we called our vehicle coordinator and he sent us to a shop and it will cost like $25 bucks to fix. And we didn't even get an aggressive driving on the Tiwi lol. 

Another neat experience this week was Elder Madsen and I got together with a member and made a plan to start a family history class at the Waverly Library. We are pretty tight with all the Ladies there and they agreed to give us their conference room for free to teach the class in! We even got an add in the Newspaper, we taught the class on Thursday and about 14 non-members showed up it was a great opportunity to help them learn more about family history and plant some gospel seeds! The class went well enough that we decided we are going to do it for the next 6 weeks, we are pretty hype about it.

Well I hop you all have a great week! And that you all have a Happy Mother's Day! Special shout out to my mom Kerrbear! I love ya and can't wait to talk to you on Sunday!

Elder Milligan out