Craziest Week of My Life

Alright this week was straight up insane. By far the craziest week of my mission, probably my life too. There's so many things that happened this week I probably won't be able to write about them all without this turning into a novel. But I'll try and sum up everything that has happened this week accurately. I'm just goona jump into it. 

#1 

So on Tuesday it was a pretty fun day we worked a ton and found a really solid guy named Nathan Gapo, he's from the Congo. We are going to teach him with our Recent Convert Tresure who's also from the Congo and speaks French fluently. I'm excite, Trey is a great member missionary, and he's only been a member since June! But anyways we got a call from a member who is from Sierra Leon, he invited us over to have African food... Safe to say we were kind of nervous, I personally felt kind of cheated I thought I was safe getting called to Iowa. But since I've been in CR the only people I talk to are Africans it's crazy haha. But we had a nice meal of Cassava Leaves (Peanut Butter, Potato Leaves, Goat, Pork, Jalapenos, Habaneros, Sardines, Bones, Some kind of sticks and Rice. We ate it all though, I'm not sure how I just took a bite and drank their African Soda and repeated about 30x. Heavenly Father Knows how to challenge us :) 

#2

So Elder Madsen and I were on exchanges and we were teaching our new Investigator Tauheed. He is a cool kid, he's in college and plays basketball. We also found out he deals. Like drugs. So we were teaching the Plan of Salvation and he kept getting texts and stuff and was super distracted. So he gets up and excuses himself for a second and starts rummaging around with this plastic bag and he sits back down and says "Y'all ain't cops righ?" and I'm just like "haha..no?..." and he's like "Y'all act like it some times...haha just playin mahn!" and I'm just like nervous laughing looking at Madsen like what the heck is going on. Then his friend came in and took the baggie and left "Something" on the counter for him. So I got to see a live drug deal up close and personal this week! Stay tuned next to hear about our Word of Wisdom lesson this Tuesday at 3:00! :)

#3

So I don't know if word travels all the way to the West but Cedar Rapids is actually flooding. So we have been evacuated out of our area and are living south of Cedar Rapids in a town called Ely. So the rest of this transfer will be interesting to say the least. The members are really cool, they just moved from Nampa and they are super familiar with Eagle. It's kind of like being home it's weird. But we spent the last few days Sandbagging houses and doing service for people in our neighborhood. The River is supposed to be 31 ft higher than what it normally holds, so that means our house will probably have about 5 ft of standing water in it when it crests tomorrow morning. So yeah it should be crazy but we are safe! Our city was on ABC breaking news though! 

#4

Ok last Crazy thing, we got in a car wreck. Elder Madsen and I were up front and Esplin and Jackson were in the back. But we were at an intersection and we had the green and a guy ran a red light going like 40 and we T-boned him and he spun out and hit another lady who was turning so he took out 3 cars in all. The ZL's truck is wrecked pretty bad. But we're happy he didn't T-bone us or else Jackson and I might have gotten pretty messed up lol. But once again we're safe and grateful no one was seriously hurt.

So that's all the crazy stories in short form. We had Zone Conference this week that was pretty cool! Our investigator Alex is still wanting to be baptized, but his brother is trying to block it so we will have to figure things out with him. 

I hope you all have a great and safe week! Love you guys!

Hey Man, you gonna get baptized?

Hey Everyone! 

This past week has been a roller coaster but it ended on a high note so I'm grateful for that! We have been meeting with some pretty solid people recently and they are all progressing very nicely. The week started off pretty rough, I got pretty sick and the Mission Nurse made me go into the urgent care and I found out I had another sinus infection like the 3rd one I've had on the mish lol. Then the Walmart Pharmacy refused to give me the prescription. So for a majority of the week I was pretty dead. But we still got out and worked and we received a ton of blessings from it! We taught our investigator Jasmine and committed her sister to baptism as well. She lives with her 3 sisters and all their kids in this tiny apartment, hopefully we will be teaching all of the sisters and their kids that are 8 or older. 

The biggest blessing we recieved this week was our new investigator Alex! Alex is 12 and he's the cousin of one of our Recent Converts Ettiene. He's a way nice kid, he asked his cousin to bring him to Church so he could learn more. After sacrament I went up and started talking to him, and I knew we had to invite him to baptism so I was just like "Hey Man you goona get baptized?!" and he was like "Haha...yeah!!" so we are going to teach him and his date is for October 8th :) 

Along with that it was a pretty good week, we found some new people that seem genuinely interested which is cool. I don't really have any funny stories from the HOUSE because whenever we're home I'm usually asleep within 5 minutes haha. 

I love you guys! I just realized I opened my call over a year ago! That threw me threw a loop haha. God Bless guys!

Jake 

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.

Bruh, You Wanna Peg

This past week was pretty busy which is always good! We were able to get a lot of work done and we found a few people that seem to be pretty solid, so things are starting to look up! We found quite a few people that have a ton of potential and are willing to schedule set appointments and not be super flakey which is always awesome. 

This was our first week without a car in about 7 weeks so it was a painful transition back lol, we walked probaly a good 20 miles this week. But I actually enjoy walking sometimes and having time to myself to just walk and think. It's also great for finding new people because everyone is out walking around. A perfect example of this is our new Investigator David. we were walking home Sunday night and we walked passed this Mexican restaurant and this guy came walking out and I just said Hi to him and he offered us a peppermint so we just started walking down the side of this road with him. The whole time we taught about the Restoration and how God has restored the Priesthood to the Earth, and David just ate it all up! He was a super nice and humble guy, then things got interesting. So we're finishing up the lesson with David, just grabbing his contact information and stuff. Then I see this long haired hippy guy j-walking across the street towards us (So since I've been on my Mission I can spot the bashers a mile away and I could tell from the start this guy was finna bash.) anyways this guy jumps into the conversation and tries to give David a card for his church and all this stuff. He introduced himself as a "Youth Pastor" (sounds like a cheap ripoff of Young Men's President if you ask me) for some random Grace Junkie church. But anways he basically tries to get David to come to his Church instead and tells him that we don't believe in Christ. But David basically told him to swerve to it was awesome, he told us he call us and gave us the bro handshake ;). But the poor pastor tried to bash and made himself look pretty silly. 

Altogether it was a fun week, we got a new ZL living with us, Elder Madsen he's really cool! So the house is lit every night now haha. I'll send some videos of our nightly adventures. 

some funny things that happened this week:

#1 We were walking after we talked to the basher and this guy is on a bike across the street and yells "Jehovah's Witnesses go home!" and I yell back "We're Not Jehovah's we're Mormons!" . I thought it'd be funny if we go talk to him. So we walk across the street and he is with some random lady and they see us coming and the guy is like "Oh (expletive) we gotta go" and the lady hops on his pegs and they rode off lol. It was pretty funny.

#2 We were walking around these ghetto apartments and we told these little kids we had to go cause we had to walk a long way. Then this little kid who can't be older then seven is sitting on his bike and he just looks at me and says "Bruh you wanna peg?" I started laughing so hard, the kid's bike was meant for like a 3 year old, that would of been a funny sight to see. 

Well I love you all, have a good week! Shout out to all my friends in the MTC!

Jake

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.