Merry Christmas Ya Filthy Animals!

Greetings Loved Ones 

This week was pretty much a big party not goona lie. The work was slower this week due to the holidays and the fact President Badger told us to take Christmas Eve and Day off. We also had exchanges for a day and a half. Then we had ZTM from 8 am till about 5 pm. So we were a little crunched for time this week. But it was a lot of fun and we were able to find a few new investigators that have a lot of potential! 

So I'm just goona talk about Christmas and stuff since that's been where most of the excitement has been this week. So Christmas Eve was pretty dope, President Badger told us to take the day off. So we spent most of the day in Des Moines, we got to ball with the Missionaries in the Des Moines zone then we went to the Mission home and the Badgers made us an awesome lunch and we got to hang out with them and play games for the whole afternoon. The Badgers are so great. They love to hang out with us and have fun, they even played "What are the Odds?" with us it was so funny. 

Christmas day was pretty awesome, Chris Brima was confirmed which was great to see another awesome person come into the fold especially on such a sacred day like Christmas! We spent most of the day with members. I got to skype my awesome family as well which was great. I loved it!

I'm grateful for the Christmas Season and all the blessings it brings. 

I love you all!

Merry Christmas!

-30 Degrees and We are Still Baptizing!

What's up everyone? We had another Good and Cold week here in good ole Ankeny!

First thing's first, we had another awesome Baptism this week! Chris Brima was Baptized this Saturday! It was the best! I love Baptisms they are such an awesome moment to be apart of. Especially with people that you have come to know and love like Chris. This past week was super stressful leading up to the Baptism but we were able to overcome a few logistical problems (nightmares actually), but it all worked out in the end. Chris was able to get to the Church and some how is tiny little African body survived the blizzard and -15 degree weather. This baptism was really special because of how the ward came together to help Chris. The Ward has gone through some crazy stuff in the past few months ex: a New Bishop, moving to a new Stake, the formation of a Brand new Stake (Because of member numbers growing so fast (Shout out to all us IDMM Missionaries ;) ) and a ton of weather related emergencies they had to deal with. But despite all the craziness we were still able to get Chris baptized by his awesome fellowshipper Brian! 

Chris will have to wait to be confirmed until next week though because Church was canceled yesterday! Apparently no one wants to go to Church when it's -31 degrees and there is a State Wide Frostbite Warning... so we had to stay in the apartment for 6 hours yesterday. I swear I was about to catch cabin fever. 

Another cool thing that happened on Sunday was we got to drive 45 miles west to Perry, IA so I could interview the Hermana's investigator. She did great and it looks like everyone in our Zone will be baptizing this transfer which was our goal for the Zone! 

Other than that this week has just been a lot of knocking on doors in the frigid tundra. President Badger just came out and said he doesn't want us knocking doors when its below 0 degrees...so I guess we won't be knocking doors from December until March? Lol should be interesting to see what happens with that. I personally am starting to enjoy the cold, everyone lets us in to at least tell us we are insane for being outside! 

We'll I hope you all have a great Christmas (honestly almost forgot that's this week) I love you all! Hope it's a great one!

Elder Milligan

What's up everyone?!

If I could sum up this past week in two words it would be FREEZE-FREAKIN-ING. Literally so cold, it's been so crazy. The weather took a nose dive the past week, Ankeny has turned into a frozen tundra lol. The high on Tuesday was -13 degrees. It was so cold our car radio didn't spazzed out and stopped working, so we had no music for like 5 days. Then our car battery died and we jumped it. (Got to tell the member about my famous "Jumper Cables" story, shout out to Liv D!) and our radio started working again, blessings! We also had our first big snow storm, we got about 5 or 6 inches on Saturday. It was snowing all day it was crazy, but it didn't matter because we were inside the church watching a beautiful BAPTISM!

That's right, our awesome investigator Nicole entered into the waters of Baptism this past Saturday and it was too cool. Nicole is awesome I haven't talked very much about her recently, she's a super busy lady (she's a baker and the holidays are killer for her) so we only get to see her every so often. But she is really nice, her husband Shawn is a less active member and she's been meeting with the Missionaries off and on for the past 12 years. So she's been through a ton of missionaries but about a month ago she reached out to us and we decided to try and help her make the next step towards her savior by being baptized. We just really clicked with her and when we met with her she decided she wanted to finally be baptized and become united with her family. We are so excited for her and family to begin growing closer as a unit and become fully active members in the ward. We have seen a lot of growth in the Sherman family in the past few weeks and it's a true testimony builder to witness. Her baptism was great, even though the hot water went out half way through and she got baptized with half freezing water on a -10 degree day :). 

I've really grown a testimony of working with members and just always having faith that the Lord will provide us with people to teach. Ankeny is such an interesting place to serve, the Ward is so great, and the members are so missionary minded, it's the dream ward. But the Area is just so hard to find people to teach, everyone is either a super rich and thinks they have everything they need, or they live in North DM and are super down trodden and hard to keep up with. But something I've learned is if we keep working hard everyday Heavenly Father is going to bless us for sacrificing our will to align with his. That's probably the most prominent lesson I've learned in my time in Ankeny is that when I want to do things my way, the baptisms and the lessons and the investigators don't come very easy if at all. But if I follow Heavenly Father's game plan the work goes so much better, and my experiences in Ankeny are a good example of that, when I first got here I thought I knew how to be a good missionary and I thought I had all of these great ideas to turn the Ankeny area around. But it wasn't until I scrapped all of those ideas and started relying on the spirit that we were able to baptize these 4 amazing people that we were led to by Heavenly Father. 

More exciting news, we have another baptism this Saturday, my little bro Chris Brima is getting baptized! I'm super pumped for him he's the cutest kid ever, I can't wait to adopt black kids! (and live in Arizona where it's never -13 degrees!)

Pics:

1 Nicole's Baptisim, I swear I was happier than I look. That was right before I sneezed hardcore.

2 Nicole and her Fellowshipper Bro. Black ​

Thanksgiving and Such

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! 

The past two weeks have been pretty crazy and fun! We had transfers on Monday because of Thanksgiving and all of that good stuff. But Elder McCain got shipped out to Hamilton Illinois so I got to pick up my new companion his name is Elder Barber! He's from Alpine Utah and he's pretty sweet. He plays college golf at UVU so he's pretty much a stud. He's been out 3 months and just got done training so he's pretty fresh. 

So I missed a week of writing because weird p-days and junk but there hasn't been too many crazy things going on in Ankeny. Most of our stories come from Des Moines because I like working there a lot more than in actual Ankeny (cause white people are mean to me) but we have some exciting events coming up. 

So a few weeks ago we had a the wife of a member of the Ward text us and say that she wants to be baptized! Her name is Nicole, she's very nice. Very private and quiet so we have just been kind of helping her get ready to be baptized. But her date is for Dec.10th! Her interview will be this week which she'll pass easy. We are very excited for another baptism here in Ankeny 2nd South! 

We also have another investigator on date named Chris. He is the brother of the girls we baptized last transfer, he wants to join in on the fun and he's baptismal date is for Dec. 17th! His birthday! What better way to celebrate than washing all your sins away?! lol. 

So we are pretty pumped for the Ankeny area right now! Lots of good stuff looking forward to helping 2 more souls come closer to Christ in the up coming weeks! 

Alright because I know my mom is going to pry for detalis here is what we did on Thanksgiving 

So the night before the ZL's slept over at our place and we woke up and went to IHOP and then we went to a members house and chilled and played games. We got to see a little bit of of Sam Bradford choking against the Lions so that brought me some inner joy. Then we had dinner at the Duersons house, Sister Duerson is my favorite, her name is Yolanda and she's from the Philippines and she always yell's "Elder Milligaaaannn!" whenever I say something sassy to her. She's the best. Then after the Duersons we went to another dinner at the Church held by a big family in the 1st ward it was really fun. We ate so much Elder Barber threw up in the middle of the night! (I didn't even wake up, bad companion status). Lol but it was pretty fun even though I didn't get to be with my fam. I definitely felt grateful for them even though I didn't get to spend time with them!   

Alright I love you guys

Happy late thanksgiving/ Early Christmas?

America

God Bless America am I right?!

What's up everyone? This week was so good! We got a new President and we got to see three amazing girls get baptized this week!! Two of my favorite things! This week was pretty crazy, Iowa is a pretty big state in the election process so it felt like there was Political garbage being thrown around all week. So it was kind of hard to find people that wanted to talk about anything other than Trump and Killary all week. This week definitely taught me a lot about patience and charity as our super liberal investigators vented about how evil trump is lol. Definitely had to hold my tongue a few times.

That's not important though, the important thing that happened this week was Larverta, Larvetta, and Faith were all baptized and confirmed!! It was the best day of my Mission I swear! It was so good to be with the girls on their big day, I had the opportunity to baptize Larverta and Faith as well as confirming Larvetta. It was an awesome experience and the spirit was ridiculously strong!

The night after their Baptism the girls and their family had us over for dinner and it was lit. They hit the quan, and did the whip. They taught us how to "JuJu on the beat" (I feel like an old dad trying to stay cool when I say that) and they also sang a bunch of Bruno Mars and Wiz Khalfia songs for us hahaha. It was so fun. The atmosphere was just so joyful and fun I loved it so much. The African food wasn't half bad either...surprisingly. Well That's all I got folks. I hope you are all enjoying life. 

Love you guys

Beggars Night

What's up family? The week here in Ankeny/North Des Moines has been pretty fun. We had a lot of stupid things happen this week but we've just been finding the humor in them. For example on Tuesday we had to take our car in because it was being stupid (classic Chevy) and the car dealer ship was way out of our area and literally in the middle of nowhere. So we got stuck at the random Chevy dealership for like 4 hours with nothing to do. It was super frustrating, but what can you do I guess. 

The work was still really good this week. We found 5 new investigators that are looking pretty solid. So that's way exciting. We had a big bummer this week though, Madi's mom officially closed the door on baptism in the foreseeable future. Her mom came to Church this Sunday and Madi even bore her testimony and it was soooo spiritual! I don't know what else we gotta do to get through to this woman!!

So that whole situation is frustrating, I don't think I've ever wanted to get someone baptized as I do with Madi. We've been pulling out all the stops too, like I've never tried so many different things to soften someone's heart! But anyways Madi is great she will be getting baptized, it's just a matter of when. 

On the positive, my African babes are doing GREAT! They are so awesome, the twins got up and bore a tag-team testimony on Sunday and it made me soooo happy. I literally love those girls so much they are the BEST. They're doing so good we moved their baptism up to November 12th! So we should be baptizing all three of the girls in a few weeks! So awesome. I'm pumped. Most exciting thing that happened this week was... my investigator in CR Jasmine got Baptized!!!! I was bummed I couldn't go back for it. But I'm so excited for her, she is the best. I can't wait to see her again.

Nothing too funny happened this week, Yesterday was beggars night. So everyone trick or treats for two hours from 6-8 the night before Halloween that way on Halloween all the parents can go get wasted and not have to worry about spending time with their children. Iowa :)

Love you Guys, Miss you all!

Jake

Welcome to Des Moines (it's been waitin' for ya!)

What's up everyone! Hopefully someone gets the T-Swift reference I slipped in the subject line lol.

 

So this week was awesome, like really really good. This area was Dead at the beginning of the week. Our only investigator on Date was our girl Madi. But outside of that we had no one. But that's all changed now! This week we found two awesome African families,they are so cool! One of the families came to church and we have a date to baptize their three daughters; Laverta, Larvetta (12 year old African twins, brutal.) and their little 8 year old girl Faith. They are the cutest little African kids I've ever seen. I literally can't wait to adopt black children. They are going to be baptized on November 19th!

Our investigator Madi is doing pretty well. Her mom is still being a hindrance in the whole baptism process but we have a lot of faith that she can be baptized on the 12th of November. Please pray for Madi, she's so awesome and wants nothing more than to be able to be baptized!

A lot of funny things happened this week and it was really easy to find happiness in the work this week. One of my favorite things that happened this week was that our African family came to Church! Yesterday was the primary program which is always fun to watch, but it was even better this time because the Primary President came up to the younger african kids and invited them to come up and participate in the program! They gave them parts to read and everything! I was blown away at how well this ward does at fellowshipping new comers. I love the ward here it's like an actual fun, loving, real Ward that you'd find back in the West. I feel really at home here it's great actually having fun at Church and at member dinners lol. 

My new Comp Elder McCain is really funny, he's like a female version of Hermana Annie Johnson, totally granola, tree hugger, kind of Liberal. But really chill and funny. We also just found out that two girls we kissed at College are roommates now so that's building our comp unity as wel. Lol.

Hope everyone has a great week! Love you guys!

Jake