Transfer #6

What's up friends?

This week felt like it was never going to end, but it was a pretty good week altogether. The past few weeks have been super frustrating teaching-wise, it seems like every appointment we had fell through. But that's life as a missionary, we were able to find a lot of cool people to teach this week and we still taught a ton of lessons. Despite everyone trying to dodge us at all cost lol. We are still primarily working with all the people I've been talking about the past few weeks. Brother Dawson and Saje both came to Church which is great, we are still working with the Mission Department to get approved to Baptize Bro. Dawson. I'm hoping to hear back from them before the end of my Mission...

On the bright side we set a date with this girl named Emoni, she is 17 and is going to college here in CR. Her date is for October 8th so hopefully we can help her make it by then! We are also trying to work with this guy named Jon, he's been kind of elusive lately but hopefully he follows through.. We should also be teaching this giant Marshallese family on Saturday. 

In other news my 5th transfer is grinding towards the finish line, I honestly feel like I've been a Missionary my whole life. Like people will ask me questions about home and I'll just draw blanks like "Uhh I had a life before this?" it's pretty weird. I feel like I have some straight up Jason Borne level Amnesia about pre-mission life. Anyways, transfers are this week, I'm probably staying cause I'm still a dad. But I'll let ya'll know if anything crazy happens. 

Crazy story for the Week:

Alright this story may not sound very crazy; but for those of you who me well, you'll probably think I'm lying. But anyways the story is: I ate Thai food. That's right Jake Milligan ate weird Asian food. Here's the plot twist; I liked it. 

Alright love you guys, God Bless!

Jake 

What a Week

Hey everyone! This week was a roller coaster for sure. Lots of ups and downs but that's Mission life I guess. We had to drop quite a few people due to them not keeping commitments and things of that nature which is always sad cause they are so close but they just can't quite get there. But one of my favorite quotes I read this week was from Gordon B. Hinckley talking about Missionary work, and I'm kind of paraphrasing but this is the gist: "As Missionaries you are not planters, you are not farmers, you are not salesmen. You are Harvesters, Heavenly Father has prepared your fields and now it is up to you to thrust in your sickle, and harvest souls for God." That quote really struck me because I know we as missionaries are here to find those that have been prepared by our Father in Heaven to receive the message of the gospel. So if people aren't ready to keep commitments and grow closer to God, it's time to move on and find someone else who is ready. 

We are still working with all the Legal issues our investigators are facing right now. But Brother Dawson is still being super faithful and keeping all the commitments we give him so that is encouraging, he should be meeting with President Badger soon so we will know for sure if he can be baptized in the near future. 

Another cool thing was we got an awesome Member referral!!! Yeah it actually does happen I didn't believe it was real either! It didn't come from our Ward obviously but thankfully a guy in another Ward reached out to us about a lady he works with that is interested! Her name is Maria, she's really awesome and really open to learning more! 

Crazy Cedar Rapids Story of the Week:

Sooo this week there was a shooting at the Community College we work at...

Some guy was hold up in his apartment and was shooting at Cops and there was Swat Vans and Snipers and the whole shabang. Pretty intense we took a video of all the cops I'll send it. 

#BLUELIVESMATTER

I really can't remember very much about this week. Spent a lot of time separating the wheat from the tares. But that's part of the job I guess.

I hope you all have a great week, make a Missionary's day and give them a member referral, they will love you forever I promies ;)

Love you guys, God Bless.

Jake

Flash Floods and Gang Wars

Hey Guys, this week was pretty crazy. 

The work was pretty slow this past week which is frustrating, but we still found people to teach and had a lot of fun a long the way. We found 3 really cool people this past week that we are working with the first is a guy named Fabrice, he's a super cool guy from West Africa. We taught him the Restoration and he's supposed to be coming to Church this week so hopefully that works out and he keeps progressing! The second person we found was a guy named Zeb. So sometimes when I'm sick of just knocking doors and I want to find people to go teach I just look through all the old investigators in the area book, so I found this guy named Zeb, and his record was totally full. But it looked like he just dropped off the map. So we called him and he came to Church! We are now teaching him and his family. They are all really awesome, we are trying to figure out some legal issues he has right now. But if everything goes well he should be getting baptized ASAP. The last person we found was a lady named Saje, she's the girlfriend of a cool new member that just moved to the Ward from Philly. I'm stoked to work with her, we are working on getting them Married and then we can baptize her! I feel like a part time lawyer with all these legal issues I'm trying to figure out, I have to call our Mission President every other day it seems like lol.  

Alright crazy stuff:

1. So we had more crazy weather, we were on our way to teach our Recent Convert Kayla at the Library, but as we were driving it just started dumping rain! It turned into a flash flood real quick and we were driving through the road and the water was like a third of the way up our tires it felt like. The video I'll send dosn't really do it justice, I'll give a lot of credit to the city of CR. It may be one of the most dirty cities in the world, but it's drainage system is really well orchestrated.

2. Ok this was insane. So two of the Sister's in my District were stopped at their apartment to take a phone call and when they went outside, there was cops every where and ambulances and firetrucks! Turns out there was a shooting outside their apartment! Pretty crazy! I was jealous they got to have one so close lol. But President Badger told them they are going to have to move in with members so that's too bad for them haha. 

3. On Saturday the ZL's baptized Isiah (the chubby kid that got hit with the truck) we went because I interviewed Isiah and have taught him a few times, so I was pretty excited to see him get baptized. So the thing with Isiah is he is crazy. Like ADHD x1000 when I interviewed him for his baptism he was jumping from chair to chair, and I had to calm him down and get him to draw his answers to the questions on the board so he'd focus lol. But he did not want to get dunked infront of all these people so he was panicking and during the whole lead up to the baptism he was like "Nope I'm not doing it, I can't. I'm not going in." 

So we get him in the font and he's like freaking out so they shut the doors to the font so no one can watch, and they needed me to witness and I walk back there and Isiah is like swimming around the font, so the member who's supposed to baptize him just says the prayer and pushes him down under the water it was so funny. By far the craziest baptism I'll ever see probably.

Ok sorry for the long email. I love you guys. Stay blessed.

Bickin' Back Bein Bool

What's up everyone? I hope you all had a dope week. This past week has been really good, Elder Esplin and I are starting to get a lot of lessons and find quite a few people to teach which is always exciting, especially with a brand new missionary, it's always a lot of fun! Two really cool things happened this week. First our awesome Investigator, Omar from Jerusulam came to Church! He really liked it too, I was so pumped for him to be there! He made a lot of great comments in class too which was good to see. Second I got to baptize an awesome lady Geri, she was working with the Sisters in our Ward and I did her baptismal interview, she asked me to baptize her and I was honored! She's a great lady! 

My mind always goes blank when I sit down to write these emails, probably cause I live in a watered down frat house with 4 other Elders that go crazy on "P-Day eve" and keep me up all night lol. I've been using the list approach lately so Imma stick with that.

1. So I've been noticing this trend, whenever we are in or near the Ghetto, all the ghetto folk will roll up next to us at the stop. So I can here that their music isn't that loud coming up but whenever they stop next to us they are just Bumpin'. Then they drive off and they turn down the music, I don't know if they are trying to mess with us or they just feel bad cause they know I miss my rap. But anyways these two ghetto dudes roll up next to us and start blaring their music and look over at me and I just started vibing to the music and they just lost it, one of the guys is like "Oh (explicit) nahh mannnn!", and he pulls out his phone and I'm pretty sure he took a video. So if any of you are on Vine and see some video of a missionary dancing on the side of the road it's probably your's truly. :)

2. Elder Esplin and I almost died in a crazy micro burst-tornado-typhoon-Iowa Storm. It was probably the craizest storm I've been in to date. Pretty awesome, we were going like 40 down the freeway trying not to crash it was dope. 

3. Elder Esplin and I got hit on by this girl at the Community College, it was his first time being hit on as a Missionary, he got all flustered. So cute. 

4. I lost What Are The Odds and that's why my subject line is the title of a 2chainz song, thanks Elder Davis!

5. I also lost the same game and now I have to use katy perry lyrics in my homecoming talk. So that gives you all something to look forward too in the next year and a half!

Ok that's pretty much all I got, shoutout to my awesome Nephew Parker for getting baptized this past Saturday! So proud of you dude, you're my HERO!!

Love you guys, God bless.

​Add this to the Email I totally forgot! 

6. So we were sitting outside watching the bands play at the bar on Friday night (Lol) but anyways Elder Davis was like "Man you know what sounds good, Pizza." Then we were like what if we just ordered pizza guys? Then this domino's car drives up and we were like "Guy's it's for us watch" (totally jokingly) then this African guy gets out and says he has a pizza for me! Shoutout to the Grieves for coming in clutch and answering our Prayers! I love you Curtis and Andrea!!

Children of the Corn

Pizzaaaaa

The Boys

I woke up in a new Carolla

Hey Fam, this past week in CR has been pretty hectic, lots of meetings and driving and such. We also had a lot of appointments that fell through so that is always really frustrating, but we found a lot of cool new people to teach as well so that has been a big positive. But yeah, tough week. This week we had ZTM which is usually only like 10 missionaries, but since my the zone I'm in is so huge there was 32 of us! Pretty crazy, it was tons of fun. So in ZTM we do these things called "District Leader Reports" basically I just had to get up and give a 10 minute rundown of all the investigators in my District and so forth. But anyways, in big meetings all the Elders play this game where you have to use a random word or phrase in your report. So before I get up I get a text from the AP's who are across the table and Elder Devenport texts me and says your Phrase is "Mighty Joe Young" so yeah I had to work that into my report. ( I talked about the ZL's investigator that got mad at them "He just gets up and starts yelling and screaming, it was like trying to teach Mighty Joe Young ) lol. I also cracked a joke about how they hit there little investigator Isaiah with their truck haha. I don't have very much energy today so Imma just make a list of things that happened this week.

1.Besides all the meetings and flakey investigators; this week has been fun. My boy Elder Esplin is doing really well, he's really hardworking which is awesome. 

2. We met 3 different Muslim guys from Sudan, they were super nice. One guy invited us back for dinner, he said "I'm goona feed you all of my native food!" i.e. goat, lamb, etc. Yeah I haven't decided if we're going back there or not lol. 

3. The last Muslim guy we met tried to make us tea, and I told him no thanks, then he said "Juice and pointed to me, but I thought he said "Jews" and I was like "No, Christians!" and we like "Ahh Christians! TEA!" and I was like "NO, WATER" it was really funny. We ended up chugging this powdered orange juice tang stuff it was so thick I was chewing it haha. 

4. WE GOT A FULL TIME CAR! HALLELUJAH, PRAISE THE LORD, CAN I GET AN AMEN!

    I finally broke down Elder Barnum and he gave us a full time car to use. All my kissing up to the office Missionaries finally paid off ;) 

Well that is about it for me this week, hopefully someone updates my blog so someone actually sees this but it's all good ;) love you guys. God Bless.

Elder Milligan

It's a Boy!

How's it goin everyone? This past week was pretty crazy, my head is still spinning a little bit trying to figure out my life right now. So a few changes transpired this past week. First off I lost my bff/companion Elder Hansen; we got the sad news on Tuesday during transfer calls. However I got some exciting news as well, I found out on Tuesday that I'm "Expecting". Aka I got the news that I would be training a new Missionary, I'm now a proud Father! My traniee's name is Elder Esplin! He's from Sugar City, Idaho (Idaho Boys for the win amirght?) I'm super stoked to train, it's been a dream of mine to get a boy, definitely wasn't expecting one this fast though haha. Also I got called to be the new District Leader in Cedar Rapids as well, but that's not very exciting lol. 

But yeah! I'm way excited to work with Elder Esplin, sometimes I feel like I should still be a trainee but I guess the Lord works in weird ways sometimes haha!

Some other straight up crazy stuff happened this week, probably the craziest was the disbanded my old zone (the Cedar Falls Zone) and combined it with the Cedar Rapids zone. To put this into perspective, our new zone is Bigger than some of the Eastern States lol. It's HUGE! It's about a 4 hour drive from one end of the zone to the other, and now there's 28 missionaries in the zone! Pretty crazy stuff, President Badger told us it's one of the largest Zones in the United States now. Our ZTM meetings are going to be like Zone Conferences now I'm way excited. 

In other news;

My trainer Elder Sjoblom went home this past week, he's back in the real world now.

Luckily I was able to get a 3 Generation picture with My "Dad", me, and my "Son" haha.

I forgot my camera cord today so pics to come. 

I had my first District Meeting as a DL, that was an adventure.

My boy had a hot first day pounding the pavement. It was 101 degrees with 100% humidty. Yikes.

Our Recent Convert Kayla taught someone about the Word of Wisdom while she was driving for UBER. Proud Missionary right here. 

Every single one of my short sleeve white shirts has a perfect out line of the Oakland Temple on the pocket cause I carry my planner in it, and the humidity made a stain of it on my shirt. Thanks Iowa.

Well I hope you all have a good week! Shoutout to my family for sending me pics of going boating with out me, much appreciated ;) I love you all you guys! Keep the Faith, God Bless!

Elder Milligan

Kayla's Baptism

Hey everyone! This week was really really good! Probably one of my favorite weeks I've had on my Mission no doubt. It was probably Elder Hansen and I's last full week together :( so we knew we were going to have to go out in style, and we did our best. 

The Best thing that happened this week was...KAYLA GOT BAPTIZED!!! #HALLELUJAH it was so amazing! Her baptism went of without a hitch, except I had to dunk her twice because her hair didn't go all the way under lol. Just another reason for me to hate pony tails! In all seriousness though it was one of the most spiritual experiences I've ever had to be able to baptize Kayla. She is one of the coolest people I know and I'm so grateful that Heavenly Father touched her heart and made it possible for us to teach her. It was also great to be in the circle as Elder Hansen confirmed Kayla, and as she received the Gift of the Holy Ghost. 

Ok like I said Elder Hansen and I have been trying to work as hard as possible and try to have as much fun as possible before he get's transferred. So we were pounding the pavement quite a bit this past week, our Zone has been struggling with finding new Investigators the past few weeks. So our Zone Leaders challenged everyone to get five new Investigators this past week, which is a decently hard amount, even for Cedar Rapids but we went with it. Luckily through lots of Prayer and lots of knocking we were able to find seven new people to teach this week which was pretty cool! 

Ok so you guys know, I'm all about the funny stories; not saying I'm not about the Spiritual stuff, but I gotta talk about the funny stories they get me through the tough stuff lol.

#1

Okay so we are driving with our ZL's to go see there Investigator (10 year old boy named Isaiah) but we are driving through this Ghetto back ally and all of a sudden we just see this beefy black boy on a bike cut out in front of us and he just gets NAILED by our truck.. by nailed I mean we were going a solid 4 maybe 5 mph but this kid went down. But one of our ZL's Elder Clark is like yelling and the kid stands up and all I here is "It's Isaiah, you hit Isaiah!" The ZL's literally hit their little Investigator with their car...lol. But we all get out and there's this Ghetto black guy watching the whole thing from his balcony and he yells across to Isaiah's house "Hey! They Hit your fat friend! They hit him with the truck!" Dude it sounds bad but I was dying it was so funny. Isaiah turned out to be all good though don't worry, he just scrapped his elbow. But the Cops came later and ran the ZL's ID hahaha. But Isaiah came to Church Yesterday so all good all gravy. 

#2

So the Friday before Kayla's baptism she gave us presents lol, she gave us everything we like so she gave me crazy American Socks (Because I always wear crazy socks, and because I always show her scriptures that talk about how America is the Choice Land lol) and she gave me my favorite candy, and blue powerade. But one thing she included were these thing's called "It Works Wraps" they are basically these things that people wear to get rid of fat, Hansen and I joked we wanted some for our faces. But she actually got us some, so last night Hansen and I put these wraps on our faces to try and get rid out of our potential double chins lol. Pictures to come.

Well Sorry for the Long email, it was a good week though. I love you all! Keep the Faith! Be Blessed! 

Elder Milligan

Trying to get rid of our double chins with some "It Works" wraps.