My First White Christmas! (Estes Park wk#12)

HI Everyone! 

Hope you had a Merry Christmas and have a Happy New Year this week! Crazy that 2014 has come and gone. I saw an email earlier today about making New Year's resolutions. I somehow didn't think of doing that yet even though I hear nearly all of them are given up on after a month. 

Christmas was great! This was my first White Christmas (as far as I remember). It started snowing at ~10am and was steady the whole day. I love it when it snows here because usually that means it isn't crazy windy. I had a great breakfast and dinner with two families from church. I am so blessed that it worked out! I was very well fed. Also, I had the opportunity to Skype my family! It was really awesome and nice to talk to them kinda in person and hear that they are doing well!

We have been meeting with this young couple (Camden & Amanda) 23 and 24 years old for nearly 2 months. He hasn't come much to church for a while and she is an investigator. A few weeks ago we finally were able to persuade Amanda to close in prayer. She literally said, "this is dumb" in the middle of the prayer! It finished and turned out to be an ok prayer. It was real at least! Then a few days ago we were teaching a lesson at their house again and invited her to pray to close. It was AMAZING! It was ~5 minutes of genuine real prayer. It was one of the best prayers that I have heard! They have been praying together before bed a few days a week recently. I even found out that she had a prayer in this past week that brought Camden to tears! That is extremely exciting to really be helping people develop a prayer relationship with their Father in Heaven. It is the best!!!

Merry Christmas! (Estes Park wk#11)

Hi everyone!! :)

Another week as a missionary has come and gone! When I left for the library today it looked like it was going to be a beautiful bright sun shining day (with 2 inches of snow on the ground). Then it blizzard for a bit while being in the library. And now it is just very lightly snowing. It has been fun to learn how to drive in the snow! Elder Schenk being from Idaho has been nervous a good amount, but we haven't died! AND at this time it looks like I'll be having a White Christmas! I don't think I have ever had one before! I'm excited.

So a couple of things for the week. First, I got to go to Theodore's baptism a few days ago on Saturday! I was a part of teaching him when I was in the Bison Ridge ward a few months ago. It was pretty sweet to be there for that as well as see a couple people form that area. It was also exciting that Brother Mortensen (Ward Mission Leader) notified me a bit before the service that I was going to be briefly sharing something during the "intermission" part where the people in the baptismal font (Theodore and the one baptizing him) get dried off and changed. He didn't tell me until he introduced me what I would be talking about. It is always a somewhat nerve-racking to talk without any real notification, but it tends to work itself out. He asked me to share part of my conversion story/testimony/feelings about the baptism. 

I have to say, I LOVE the Holy Spirit. It is the most amazing thing ever. I love being able to be called upon to share and actually feeling thoughts/feelings/impressions come to me. I can REALLY feel my words guided and directed my the Spirit. I recalled things others had said and added my testimony to what they said and added some of the things that have been on my heart recently. The best part was that after I talked to this young couple who are living in Laramie, Wy. They drove Elder Harper down with his comp from Laramie because Elder Harper was asked to baptize Theodore. It turns out that she is not a member of the church and he is and is a return missionary. They both really appreciated what I said. I know that God is behind that. It may seem "coincidental" that they just moved into the Spring Creek ward in Laramie or that Elder Harper is serving there or that I got permission to go to the baptism or that they happened to be the ones willing and able to give the missionaries a ride from Laramie, but I know that it isn't. It is God's hand in our lives enabling people to be placed in the lives of others at just the right moment!

The other thing that REALLY hit me this week that I never TRULY considered was the amount of people who have nowhere to go or no family that loves them or no family at all for the holiday season. There are two ladies in their 60s that we talked to yesterday who both expressed SERIOUS concerns about their Christmas/holiday season. One asked us, "do you know if anyone is visiting people on Christmas from church?" because she will be by herself for the first time on Christmas. The other has expressed multiple times about really sad situations in her life that has caused her to be quite broke and without family/friends. It made me think of a scripture, James 1:27 "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world." I am understanding that more as a missionary. I have noticed that even more in this area as we spend time with widows in this area or with others who have no/little family. It is EXTREMELY sad to me to hear the life situations of some of these people who can't afford to see their family or don't have family that wants to see them. Whatever we can do to reach out to them and let them know that they are loved and that our Heavenly Father knows and loves them personally helps. Last week I was REALLY nervous about Christmas, we had no idea where we would go! But this week as I have realized that others are in that same situation and that we can be each other's family on Christmas! :) 

I hope you all have a Merry Chirstmas! I REALLY invite you to reach out to someone this season. It will likely help more than you know! You can bring a lot of joy to others this time of year as you think especially of those who don't have family or many friends. 

Elder Jeff Campbell :)

Christmas is in the air! (Estes Park wk#10)

Hi Everyone!

First, I can't believe we are already halfway through another transfer. When we were planning for week 4, Elder Schenk and I looked at each other in disbelief. Time sure flies by. I thought earlier today… "What have I done this year? Serve a mission… serve a mission… yep." I can see how if people work a job for a years that they just fly by! I'll be 24 in less than 3 months!! That's so weird. But ya. Definitely enjoying the time, it just goes by fast!

I don't think I mentioned the Christmas miracle that we had a bit ago! Though it may even get better… we shall see. Elder Schenk a few weeks ago was saying how he wanted a Christmas tree and to decorate for Christmas. All my years in college, I never really put any effort into decorating my room since I was just going to my parent's house for Christmas. Probably, my house wouldn't be decorated at all as a missionary. But Elder Schenk wanted it! And lo and behold a few days later we were having dinner with a family from church and I mentioned about trying to figure out a Christmas tree. She said her mom passed away and left her with the Christmas tree! So she went to get it in the garage and came back with a black plastic bag. The tree was 2 feet tall! So… not exactly what we were hoping for. BUT we did get a little Christmas tree. :)

THEN I mentioned how we got this little Christmas tree and Elder Schenk would really like a bigger one to this other family from church 3-5 days later. None of their family is visiting them for Christmas; they are traveling to their children's house. They are in their 70s and decided not to bring out their big Christmas tree, but instead brought out their 3-4ft tall tree. After a discussion about this tree that they had (and them saying how much effort it would take to put it together) we persuaded them to let us have their 7 ft tree this holiday season! It is awesome! I attached a picture of the two trees. We haven't decorated it yet… hopefully we will today! It was a lot easier to put together than we were told; it only took about 15 minutes. 

THEN I mentioned this story at dinner a few days ago and the husband said he can go cut one down on some property in Estes and drop it off at our house! So we might end up getting a real tree! We will see what happens. Elder Schenk and I never got on our knees and prayed for God to manifest a Christmas tree in our life. However, we did have that prayer in our heart. I was the one to bring up the idea of the tree even though it wasn't something I really wanted that much. But I knew that Elder Schenk did so we were trying to figure it out. Some of you remember the story I told before about Tostitos and how they appeared in my life after I really wanted to buy them from a store, but resisted. They actually reappeared! A couple from church gave us 2 bags and salsa because we ate at a restaurant once together and I ate SOOOOOO much chips and salsa it was crazy. I definitely have a sure testimony that our Heavenly Father loves us and cares about us. He continues to show Himself to me in the little things. He cares even about the little things in our lives. I am so blessed to know that He comes through and helps us. :)

In terms of missionary work this week, all the people we have been working with - Marie, Amanda, Sabrina, Chris, John, Jayson, and Evin - are all moving forward to some degree. It is really awesome to be working with people that actually are interested in knowing for themselves if this is true and are interested in changing their lives for the better! The best missionary experience for the week was in teaching Marie and the Smith's home. Wow. The Spirit was among the strongest it has ever been in a lesson. Marie said herself that she knew she was being taught by the Spirit and Sister Smith said this was one of the most powerful spiritual experiences she has had in a lesson (she is in her 60s and has been a member of the Chruch her whole life, so she has heard this message before!). It was most powerful when Elder Schenk shared the First Vision, when Joseph Smith saw Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ when he was asking which church to be baptized into. Marie visibly was affected by it. I am SOOOO grateful that we have the Spirit; how else could 18-27 year olds (the majority younger than 21) be charged with growing the church? The Spirit is the real teacher. It is our responsibility to be worthy and willing to allow the Spirit to teach the people the Gospel. It is awesome. :)

I hope you have an awesome Christmas! It's only 10 days away! Coming up fast. We have a calendar we sing songs and read scripture from every day in December before Christmas. It is crazy to see the days go by. 

Elder Jeff Campbell

--> One other cool thing, the Aidyn and Owen were ordained to the Aaronic priesthood yesterday at church! They are growing well in the Gospel since they were baptized 4 weeks ago.

Everything is Clicking (Estes Park wk#9)

Hi everyone!!

I don't know if you have experienced this before (I hope you have), but this week everything just seemed to click. Specifically what I'm talking about is the results at the end of the week. Since Elder Schenk got here just over 3 months ago, there has been a LOT of hard work being put in here. The results are really starting to come! We had about 15 people that we are working with that are either not members or less-active members of the church that made it to church this week!! We were ridiculously excited for that.

The biggest miracle of that was that 3 specific people came that we had been working hard to facilitate coming for 1-2 months. Two of them are Camden and Amanda. They have been meaning to come for a couple of weeks and we were finally able to facilitate them coming! The other one is Marcy who has a SUPER bad back and is on oxygen. Every week for months she hasn't been able to come for one reason or another, but she came!! We helped her get into her wheelchair and get to church and take her home. AND she came to our dinner that night with her fellowshipper friends the Hiney's. This was the most I have seen her out of her house and it was AWESOME! (We watched a video "Only a Stonecutter" with her on Saturday. That might have helped. It is about a guy who was called to be a stonecutter on the Salt Lake Temple who walked 22 miles to get there Mondays and 22 miles back on Fridays. After a number of years of doing this, he broke his left leg below the knee, got it amputated, and a year later resumed his calling - walking 22 miles 2x/wk with a peg leg to work on the Temple). I felt inspired as well in that video! 

Definitely my favorite thing as a missionary is helping people really make progress in their life. It is EXTREMELY fulfilling to have people really start to grow and change and move forward in their lives as a result of your help. Obviously it isn't all about me, and as I've learned since I've been out here, very little is about me! Most any missionary could be here and meet with people and have the same things happen here. I just happen to be one of the two that are here right now when people are ready to hear the Gospel. But I love playing that small role that we are given - to teach and invite people to take action in their live in love. 

It is crazy though that I spent about 6 months in the same ward in Loveland without this progress. I felt like we were working hard, but not many people made any significant improvement with our help in the Gospel. I don't know exactly what we are doing differently, maybe focusing more on really helping people take action? But I'm just humbled to really be seeing changes in people's lives!

Also, I found out who my great-great grandparents are! My dad's mom's dad's parents. It took quite a while to finally find a record that connects my great grandfather to his parents. The record was indexed improperly - it had him as a unique entry even though he was 15 years old and right below his parents on the census! I haven't had a chance to research much - only 1x or so per month for maybe an hour. But I'm excited that I'm starting to learn a little about my ancestors. (Although it is pretty likely that someone I'm related to already knows this stuff and I just need to find the research that has already been done instead of doing it myself!)

It's sure exciting out here to be working with people that are excited about missionary work and building up a new branch in Estes! Being with Elder Schenk is still a blast.

Have an awesome week! Check out christmas.mormon.org for a short 3 minute video about how HE is the gift this holiday season. It isn't about the presents, it is about THE present of Christmas. :)

Elder Jeff Campbell

Happy Thanksgiving! (Estes Park wk#8)

Hi Everyone!

I had a couple things from this week I wanted to share. Something I learned about myself, something I learned from the scriptures, and some of the missionary work that's happening. Hope you had a great Thanksgiving! (I attached a photo of it).

There was one thing that I learned (or was reminded of) this week that I really didn't anticipate learning, that I don't like to lose! Through a series of awesome events last week, we met a nice girl who hooked us up with board games. This week we played Sequence. And Elder Schenk beat me 4x in a row in a day (and I still haven't beaten him). I was not excited about this… especially since in one of the games I was sooooooo close to winning. I punched the extra mattress in the other room to get out some frustration and then in another game after he beat me I just flipped the board over at him. Not really a Christ-like way to play a game!! So I have prayed and reflected a lot about this. The thing that I learned from this experience (that somehow escaped me before) is that I'm not entirely control over the outcome of things in my life! In this case, it relates to competitions or games. In board or card or video or sport games, if you are competing against someone else, you are not in 100% control over the outcome. They have their free-will that you can't control. Maybe they are really good at the game! Maybe they got lucky! Either way, we aren't in total control. For some reason I was under the impression that I should win every game/competition I'm in. Turns out even if I do everything right, I could still lose! So I refocused. All I can control is that I do the best that I can with what I'm given. I will play to win, but am now accepting the fact that I can't control the final outcome! So that was a good thing to learn - now I actually have to implement it! Didn't realize how much of my emotions rested upon winning random things!

Other thing I learned this week from reading the Book of Mormon. Alma 49&50 records Captain Moroni leading the Nephites in battle against the Lamanites. It is very interesting when you liken it to yourself and see us as the Nephites and Satan as the Lamanites. Satan likes to attack us in ways that he has succeeded before. In the scriptures, the Lamanites chosen leaders of their armies who were Nephi-dissenters because they knew the historical weaknesses of the Nephities the best. However, Captain Moroni knew they would attack their weakest points so they fortified like crazy the cities that had been captured before. The Lamanites were shocked when they saw that the former weaknesses were now strengths! In a battle at one of those cities, over 1000 Lamanites died whereas zero Nephites died. Then after that war, the Lamanites retreated. However, Captain Moroni was not satisfied with simply a victory. He took his army across the plains and expelled all the Lamanities from the areas that were Nephi lands. He "cut off all the strongholds of the Lamanites… [and] did seek to cut off the strength and power of the Lamanites from off the lands of their possessions, that they should have no power upon the lands of their possession." In likening it to ourselves, there are strongholds of the enemy in our lives - mistakes or tendencies that we have that are not Christlike. While we aren't negatively affected often by these small character defects in our lives, they will come back and be attacked if we don't fortify them now! I love to read the scriptures and have the unfolded for me so that I can see how the counsel can be applied to my life!

In terms of missionary work this week, we multiple positive member present lessons this week. We are finally gaining traction with Camden and Amanda (who we met 3 weeks ago) and even have a new investigator. I love to work with people who have a sincere heart (what to know the truth) and have real intent (will act on the answer they receive). We talked to Amanda this week about that and she said, "yes! I have that." And I Chris is still excited to be baptized and coming every week to church. That's great. We thought that it would be a walk in the park teaching Evin (an 11 yr old brother of Owen & Aidyn) because he claimed to want to be baptized. Then he told us how God is boring and how what he watched in the "Finding Faith in Christ" movie (depicting the biblical account of Jesus Christ) was impossible. And he thinks praying is dumb. Haha. I forgot how challenging it can be to work with barely interested kids! It is humbling - and I needed that more than I thought I did.

Have a great week!

Elder Jeff Campbell :)