Happy Birthday Kerrbear!!!!

Yo

This week was pretty sick not goona lie. These last couple weeks have probably been the busiest of my entire mission, probably my life actually. But it's been a straight up blast!  The work in the Nauvoo zone is soo sick all the time! There are a ton of prepared people and the ward is great at fellow-shipping the people we bring to Church!

So this week was packed with fun, hard work, and some straight up blessings from the Big Man.

-So this week we were super busy all week. We were in Illinois until about 10:00 pm helping move some missionaries and interviewing their investigator for baptism. When as we're driving home we realized that there was literally no other cars on the road and there was this sign with flashing lights on it that said there was a tornado warning! So we drive through this crazy storm and we get back to Burlington and are running to the apartment and just getting wrecked in the face by hail haha. But turns out a Tornado touched down outside Burlington and almost hit the Hospital but luckily it didn't!!

-This week we had a lot of exchanges, we drove Keokuk for D-meeting, then we drove back up to B-Town for our D-Meeting. Then we had exchanges with Elder Zinn and Elder McCain (Yes McCain my former comp is in my zone now so I get to exchange with him now I'm pumped!) But I was with Elder Zinn and we taught some tight lessons that got us some new investigators that are looking solid!

-We also had Exchanges with the AP's which was tight! I was so pumped to be back in Des Moines that place is heaven. SO MANY AFRICANS! I felt like I was coming home lol. I've decided that I enjoy teaching Africans the most because, I'm not good with teaching white people, I'm not cool enough to teach the Ghetto Black people, but the Africans just accept me for the awkward white boy that I am. But anyways exchanges with the APs was tight. I got to go with Elder Jakubczek that kid is a stud! Afterwards one of the Senior Missionaries took us out to lunch at HuHott which was a tender mercy I love that place and ate like 5 plates. 

-A crazy Miracle happened this week as well. Gundy and I made a comp goal to pray for a Media Referral to come to us so we could teach someone super solid. So we prayed that night and the next day we got a call from a member in RENO NEVADA referring his daughter who wants us to baptize her!!! Literally we were jumping up and down we were so pumped. God is so good. She came to Church this week and is on Date to be baptized on April 15th

-OK this was TIGHT so last week we got a call from President Badger saying that the one and only Russell M. Nelson was coming to Nauvoo for a fireside and he called President and asked him to invite us to his Fireside! So we got to listen to the President of the Quorum of the Twelve speak for 2 hours!!! It was sick, the spirit was so strong when he walked in, you could just feel the love he has for everyone it was dope. 

So this week was pretty freaking tight one of the best on my mish. I love Nauvoo and the City of Burlington. It's the best. 

Okay saved the best for last though!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO THE ONE AND ONLY KERRY MILLIGAN AKA THE BEST MOM IN THE WHOLE WORLD!!! I LOVE YOU MOM! 

If you see her please give her a giant bear hug for me!

I love you guys! 

Exchanges with our Tight APs Elder Jakubczek and Elder Orgil

The Legs Feed The Wolf

This week was a pretty good week for us here in CR. We have been working with a lot of people this week who actually want to learn and change their lives which is always exciting! We have been walking a ton now that we are back in a car share, and despite the fact that walking takes up so much time and can be super annoying it's actually really a useful finding tool. We always have a ton more lessons and new investigators when we walk and just street contact people. 

The work last week was good we found like 5 solid people (2 were found by the Sisters, filthy poachers) but I'm excited to work with all of them. My favorite people to teach are Jasmine and Ashondi. Jasmine is a lady from Chicago who drives taxis, she lost her leg back when she lived in the hood. She's super humble and she has a bunch of cute little kids. Ashondi is another "Chicago Refugee" and she's really open and loves the BOM and is really awesome about keeping in contact with us. We also met this 17 year old girl named Elizabeth, her and her family are from Tanzania! They have like 11 kids in their family and her parents only speak Curundi. So we will hopefully be using our recent convert Louis to translate and work with them. He doesn't speak great English either though lol...

We have baptismal dates for Elizabeth and another lady named Emoni for October 8th. So please pray that they'll make their dates! 

Our Recent Covert Kayla brought her friend to Church yesterday and she said she's really impressed with all the changes Kayla has made in her life and now she wants to be tought as well!

Well nothing too funny has happened lately. But here's a few stories.

#1 So I gave a talk on Tithing the other day in Church, and to be honest I didn't prepare very well. I wrote the thing in like 2 minutes and printed it off at the Public Library. So I'm up there at the pulpit and I go to turn the page and I realize the stupid printer printed the first two pages twice. So I was missing like 10 minutes worth of stuff. So I basically just improvised the whole thing. I think it went pretty well though. 

#2 So yesterday in Church we also had to teach a lesson in Primary. The STL's also had to teach part of the lesson. Funny thing about the STL's everything is always a competition for them. So they were talking all week about how their lesson was going to be way better than ours yada yada yada. So they get up and their teaching these jr. primary kids about the flipping tree of life and stuff! And I'm just like cmon man it's so dry in here! These kids don't care about that! So we got up and talked about Nehpi and handed out treats and coloring sheets. Safe to say we won. Having so many nieces and Nephews really pays off in teaching little kids haha. 

Well that's all I got fam. I love you guys. God Bless.

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

Saturday Night's Alright for Finding

Sup fam!? I hope you all had an amazing week, we had a pretty momentous occasion this past week in that we finally got to break out the short sleeve white shirts..Holla! The weather the last few days has actually been decently tolerable and the whole town has been turnt, like seriously all of Waverly is partying, like people standout in the street and drink and talk till like 3 am, it's kind of weird lol. Another milestone this week was the completion of my first transfer! Only six more weeks till I am no longer a baby! Unfortunately with transfers coming it was time to say goodbye to my homies Elder Henderson, Elder Marte, and Elder Martinson. We went out in style though, on Tuesday night before p-day Elder Henderson called and was like "Yo Elders, do you guys have dinner plans?" (Funny cause we never do. Ever. But it's fine.) And then I was like "Good one Elder of course not!" So he invited us down to Cedar Falls and we ate at Texas Roadhouse for his last dinner in the area. We spent the night at their apartment and the funniest thing happened, Elder Devenport took his mattress and came running into the living room and yelled "Sleepover!" and tried to slide on the mattress on the leather couch and he slid off and drilled the book shelf and knocked over the supply shelf for the entire Zone! It was hilarious, Elder Henderson was so ticked hahaha. 

Missionary work wise the week seemed to be going pretty slow, we had to drop a few of our potential investigators and we were getting pretty frustrated. That was until Saturday night, Elder Sjoblom and I were "Finding" in Waverly and we both got this impression to go to this small town called Nashua that we hardly ever go to because it's so small. We both looked at each other and said it at the same time, it was freaky! So we drove a half hour to this little town and it was insane! We knocked into this guy named Deangleo and he invited us in and told us he's met a few missionaries before. We taught the restoration and he loved it! He and his wife Amy are now investigating the church and it was a huge testimony builder and really showed me that if you continue to work hard even through a long dry spell like the one we had. The Lord will bless you! After that we went to meet with Sherri, and our additional male who was supposed to come didn't show up (ugh) so we just talked in the hallway about her baptism coming up on Saturday. Then her son Quintrell came up to us and said "Hey I've made a decision, I wanna get baptized." It caught us both so off guard we were just like "Heck ya Q!!" we were so hype it was an insanely good night. And a huge encouragement after the rough past few weeks we've had. Well I hope you all have a great week, shout out to my Mom once again for hitting the big FIVE-ONE (I think)! Wish her a belated happy birthday for me if you didn't get too already! 

Loves, 

Elder Milligan 

Feeling the love! Thanks everyone!