Opposition In All Things

Hey guys :)

I had a fantastic week this past week, but it was also one of my hardest. It seems like for every great and exciting thing that happens there is an equally terrible one.

We were gone for most of the week on exchanges (Tuesday morning through Friday night), but--surprisingly--a lot occurred. Tuesday, while I was in Winder with Elder Jones, Elder Whitehead and Elder Koopmans gave our investigator Star a baptismal date of February 26 and she accepted it. That was kind of surprising, but very exciting news. 

When I was in Winder we went over to an investigator's house for dinner. She is getting baptized next week and is an awesome convert. The missionaries tracted her just as she was thinking about ending her life, and now because of the Gospel she is an incredible, happy person. I had more fun at that dinner than any other time on my mission I'm pretty sure. We were just talking about Tom and Jerry and Rocket Power and for whatever reason we all just started laughing super hard and kept laughing for the next ten minutes! After dinner we taught her a lesson on enduring to the end and fighting temptation. It was very spiritual. I was so glad to be able to hear her testimony, to see the strength she has gained, and to see the person she has become. It was definitely a good time in Winder.

Wednesday morning I went down to work in Monroe because Elder Whitehead had another leadership conference. Even though the missionaries in Monroe didn't get transferred last week, they had some very important changes because the area was split in half and now Sister Missionaries are serving in the same ward as them! It bums them out because they lost their car and the investigators that they were working with mostly lived on the other half of the ward. One of the missionaries hasn't got a bike yet, sooooo we walked everywhere...! I was pretty tired haha, it takes 30 to 60 minutes to get to and from each appointment, and we only worked with the ones who lived close by. The good thing about no longer having a car is that you run into more people. On Wednesday alone I picked up 12 potential investigators for their area! So even though not as much work can be accomplished without a car, we still had a good time. We were able to get a few rides with members to the appointments far away, and we were able to talk to lots and lots of people about Jesus and the Gospel!

Elder Whitehead and I met back up again in Winder on Friday evening. He and the zone leaders had a really good time at the leadership conference. They learned lots of facts and were re-taught many different doctrines and principles for missionary work. One thing that they learned is that the Atlanta temple will be opening up on May 3! Or somewhere around then. We (the missionaries) will be able to participate in the cultural celebration the day before its dedication, and we will also get to help with the open house. It has been closed for forever, but it's super exciting that the temple is opening again.

Anyway, we got a ride back up to Kernelia with Brother Cutchshaw. That was good and bad I guess. We were able to talk to him a lot about his family and the church and whatnot. It was tough, but good, idk. We learned a lot and we have a lot of sympathy for the guy. He goes through a lot; we just want them to be happy and have the gospel. And... Good News, they came to church on Sunday!!! They stayed all three hours, which was super good. Haha, the Primary President came up to me and said, "All those kids you brought to Primary are loving it!" (referring to the Cutchshaw children and another lady who brought her kids to church on Sunday).

Good things that happened this week: Star got a baptismal date, we have been given many many awesome referrals, the ward loves us, E.W. learned a lot at leadership meetings, I was able to do walking missionary work in Monroe and spend some time in that area.

Bad things that happened this week: We haven't seen some of our most awesome investigators in weeks. We weren't able to work in our area all week. Star found some Anti-Mormon information and now is super confused. We are super confused at what we shoud teach her. We've been kinda depressed since getting back to Cornelia. Elder Whitehead said he didn't sleep at all last night because he was so stressed (haha, poor guy, he stresses all the time.)

Missionary work is super hard and trying. After the past few days, which have been super great, but so trying, I have decided I want to read more from the Book of Mormon, the New Testament, and Preach My Gospel. And I've been doing that. I know that we need prophets here on the earth and I love hearing from them. The Ensign is probably my favorite thing ever. I read half of one each day haha. Right now the prophets are telling us to do missionary work (see the Ensigns from Nov. 2010 to current for more information) and I am glad to serve the Lord in that way. God will alway give us miracles if we are doing all that we are supposed to do. He has been sending so many miracles our way; we love it.

Oh, one more thing I just remembered. Our ward mission leader, Brother Sandercock, got released! I was pretty bummed about that. He is such a dedicated and hardworking man. We are excited for the new ward mission leader. He's a good friend, but he's gonna need some help haha :) The assistant ward mission leader just barely got home from his mission a couple months ago so hopefully the 4 of us combined will be able to do some gnarly good work.

Follow the prophet, he won't lead you astray. Yeahhhhhh, love you.

Elder Mikey Caplin

Livin' Large

Hellooooo! and I love you.

 

Yesterday we were visiting a less-active member to wish her a happy birthday, and I saw a bit of home on the news. Fox did a little piece about the popularity of "Skouching" in Utah. Skouching is where you put skis on the bottom of a couch and ride it down a snowy mountain! I thought it was hilarious when I saw it on national TV. It instantly reminded me of that one time when Jordan and his friends and I saw an old couch on the side of Goosenest and chained it to the back of our car and brought it home. We put sleds underneath it to go skouching in our backyard. We rode it down our tiny little hill like maybe 3 times and then just left it in the backyard for a couple weeks until we disposed of it. Hahahha, gooood memories :)

 

Lets see, what happened this week. Well, today we just got back from a member's farm. We had fresh milk from the cows and pancakes for breakfast, helped him build a dam in his creek, and played around with his cows.

 

One of my goals for the Cornelia area this transfer was to get the ward missionaries more involved. Two of them are recent converts and some of the others are still in high school, so we want to help them learn how to make the gospel and missionary work a good part of their lives. We had a meeting with a few of them on Wednesday night. We led a discussion, referring back to their responsibilities found in PMG, and asked them what they thought that we could do to help the work. It was pretty awesome letting them make the decisions. They decided to talk to one person a day about the Gospel, to hand out mormon.org cards, to make mormon.org profiles, and to learn the missionary lessons a little better. We were very impressed and are super excited to be working with these fellas!

 

We had prayers answered this week when we met with the parents of the Cutchshaw family who we have been working with. We've wanted to help them progress and knew that it wasn't possible without the support of the parents, so we decided to have a meeting with just them while the kids were at school. We wanted to kind of figure out how they feel about the church and their kids getting involved with the church. We were really nervous about how it would turn out, so we prayed a lot and planned a lot for our meeting. It was incredible--they brought up every single point that we had planned on covering. They asked us if we could move in (jokingly) because they love feeling the Spirit that comes into the house when we are there. They said that they know that the church is truly restored (they have been going off and on to the Methodist church because of mere comfort), and that they have been praying about getting fully involved with the ward again. Anyway, I know that God helped both us and them. I know that our planning was definitely led by the Spirit. It is just incredible to see things come through and see the Lord help people out for the better. We were soooo pleased with how the meeting went and it just pumped us up a lot haha.

 

We did a bit more Spanish work this week. We had a member in the ward come translate for us haha and tomorrow Elder Koopmans is coming up to teach some lessons.

 

We are pretty sure that our investigator Roy is MIA. Ever since we went to see him a couple weeks ago and he was too drunk to open the door, we haven't been able to get a hold of him and it's a pretty sketchy situation. We used a ton of miles this week driving up to Toccoa hoping to find him home. The blinds next to his front door were open, we could see inside, and the only difference from a few weeks ago when we saw him there is that all of the beer cans are now empty. We called the Sheriff to have him go check on him, but they never called us back. That's kinda scary-- we've been praying that he is all right.

 

Work is going all right here in Cornelia. We are wanting to get better at scheduling appointments and teaching full time all the time. The Lord has blessed us with some great investigators to work with. Now we need to do better at getting in with each of them regularly and helping them to not be lazy! haha. The ward is great, they take good care of us, Elder Whitehead and I make a good team, everything is going all right. We are working, progressing, serving, having a good time, learning. I still can't believe that we are going to be companions for 6 months haha, I think it's hilarious.

 

Happy Birthday Ma, I love you!

 

Ya'll be safe, sorry I didn't have anything more exciting to report on.

 

Yours truly,

 

     Elder Mikey Caplin

Transfers!!!

Hello Hello Hello!!!

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day! Haha, it wasn't celebrated too much here in Habersham County, but we went down to Commerce to hang out with the district before departures (transfers).

Which brings me to the surprise we received for Transfers. Both Elder Whitehead and I are staying together one more transfer! At first I was extremely confused and downtrodden. I was confused because this means that I will be spending at least 7 1/2 months in Cornelia, that's over a quarter of my mission! I was also confused because Elder Whitehead isn't leaving either, which means at the end of this transfer we will have been companions for 6 months--that is extremely uncommon! If any two missionaries have to be companions for that long it should be us, because we enjoy each other and work well together. Sheesh, I almost don't even really know what anything is like outside of Cornelia and Elder Whitehead!

Sunday after church I went down with Elder Jones, one of the Zone Leaders, for an exchange because his companion Elder Koopmans needed to do some Spanish work up in our area. So I spent the evening working with him in Winder and was there for the transfer information as well. I'm glad that I was there to hear the information. Haha, like no one in our zone moved. Two other missionaries have been in their areas as long as I have and we were all wanting and expecting to move and none of us did! Anyway, it took me a few minutes, but now I am excited for this next transfer.

I think that God wants me to stay here to learn discipline. I think he wants me to work twice as hard as before. I know that I can make tons of progress with the ward council and missionary work here in Cornelia and I know that there are two youth and two recent converts that I can help work towards serving full-time missions. Elder Whitehead and I have done a lot together; we know each other super well and can get along great. I think that God wants us here longer because we have good relations in the area and there is more work for us to do. When we first found out the information about transfers, for me it was confusing, but then I thought about it, and prayed about it, and then I just got fired up (that's a good thing ) as all get out. :)

We were given two blessings this week. The missionaries in Commerce gave us two referrals that are superrrr awesome. We called one of them on the phone and it turned out that she knows one of our other investigators and was excited to hear that she would be going to the same church as her. The other one showed up at church on Sunday and brought his wife with him. The Relief Society has beed doing awfully good at helping our female investigators and we are loving it.

Last week was pretty boring because we got trapped with the snow and ice, but there are good things happening here in Cornelia. We are excited for the work that we have, and are even more excited to generate more missionary work :)

I know that trials and confusions will always come in life, but I know that God loves us. If we actually BELIEVE what the scriptures say, trust in God, and just freakin go for it that it will all be all right. I love that conference talk by Elder Wirthlin, or whoever it was, "Come What May And Love It". I know that God can and wants to help us love and embrace whatever comes. I know he has provided the way for happiness.

I hit my 6 month mark on Friday, I can hardly believe my mission is a quarter of the way over. Thank you for everything that you do, family. I love you. Make me proud.

Elder Mikey T. Caplin

Oh yeah and P.S. I ordained one of my friends here in the ward, a recent convert who is my age, as a Priest on Sunday. That was a pretty cool experience and I was happy to be able to do that for him. Also the movie "Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration" rules fyi.

Snow Storm in Atlanta

Hey guys!

Sorry it has taken me so long to write you! It snowed a little bit here in Georgia and then it froze over and so the whole state shut down! The library and schools have been closed all week, and we haven't been allowed to use our car. Thankfully a member picked us up and is letting us email--that is why I am writing you now. :)

Sooooo, we have for the most part spent the past few days stuck indoors. It is super boring haha. I've read a lot, we've done some cleaning and cooking. We shoveled our neighbors' sidewalks. We walked to the closest member's home twice. We walked to the grocery store twice. Our Bishop picked us up yesterday so that we could go see a lady. Elder Whitehead rigged a DVD player to play audio over his portable speakers. Hahaha, now we can listen to church DVDs. That is basically all that has happened this week.

Updates from last week!

We had a 5 day exchange with a missionary up here in Cornelia, so there were 3 of us for a little while and then E.W. left for a different exchange, so I drove us around those two days.

We had an awesome lesson with Jeremy last week. We taught the Law of Chastity and it went really well. The lessons are enjoyable because he has such humble, stong faith. His answer for every question he has is, "Well, I guess I had better ask God." And he always does. 

When we saw Jonathan and Sabrina last week we received quite a treat. The last time we had taught them was in December and we had taught the Law of Chastity. They are unwed and living together with a one-year-old-son. Their wedding date was set for October, and they thought that since they were in love and planning on marriage that they weren't breaking the Law of Chastity. We taught them that lesson and promised that blessings would come from obeying it and asked them to ponder and pray about it. When we came back this week, almost a month later, Sabrina said that she had felt convicted and so they decided to get married on Friday instead of 9 months in the future! Haha, we were very surprised, but very excited that their date jumped forward that much that quickly.

We felt like we should go see two less-active Hispanic brothers in the ward, and so we decided to do that on last Thursday. We didn't know either of them or anything about them, so we were so excited by the results of our visit. It was just Elder Roberts and me (the missionary who was here on an exchange). He is going to Brazil on his mission, but his visa is taking a long time so he is temporarily serving here in Georgia. 

The two brothers who we went to visit don't speak very good English, so it was difficult trying to communicate with them. I tried to remember Spanish from high school and E.R. tried to convert his Portuguese into Spanish for them to understand. Anyway, we visited them for a few minutes and then one of them asked us if we wanted to go talk to his neighbor who used to take the lessons from the Spanish speaking missionaries.  We went next door. I was trying to ask (in Spanish)  if they had read the Book of Mormon and if they believed it was true. The less-active member who took us over then took over for us and ended up teaching them a lesson on temple marriages that can last for eternity. We were blown away but loved it of course. The less-active member invited the couple to go to the Spanish-speaking branch in Athens with him next week and volunteered to drive them down there with him.

Overall we were just blessed with many miracles and surprises and I am thankful to God for that. We have been struggling to get any members from the ward to make Mormon.org profiles and on Sunday the Gospel Doctrine teacher came up to us and told us that he and his daughter both made profiles and we hadn't even talked to either of them about it. It was superrr great :)

Have ya'll been to the mormon.org website yet?? I hope you have made profiles and linked them to your facebooks...

Anyway, love you so much, talk to you again soon! Just keep livin!

Elder Mikey Caplin

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!!!!

 

I hope that the celebrations were safe and enjoyable :)  I had tons of fun here in Georgia. I am really really really starting to love the South. Haha. The tradition for New Year's in this neck of the woods is to eat Collard Greens and Black-Eyed Peas. By eating this on January 1st and its preceeding eve, you anticipate a great new year full of Dollars (the collard greens) and Cents (the black-eyed peas). It was lots of fun eating super southern meals full of those two entrees, grits, pork, mac-n-cheese, potatoes, and cobbler.

 

This week was all right I guess. I am ready for a change in the mission field. As much as I love Cornelia. I am ready to move on to new areas, investigators, work, etc. On Monday (last Monday, the reason we weren't able to Email yesterday is because the library was closed for the Holiday) we went to go see a couple people and I got superrrrr sick. I assume I got food poisoning, because I was up all night long emptying my stomach. Haha, being sick without mama nearby to take care of you is definitely one way to start missing home.

 

Tuesday I went on an exchange to Hartwell to spend time with working with the missionaries from there. Their area is struggling a little bit so it was a good opportunity for Elder Whitehead and me to help them work on a few things like time management, etc.

 

Lots of appointments have fallen through lately. Haha, I'm just kinda getting over the area as a whole. It was a bit of a disappointing week. We had a great meeting with our ward mission leader. We as a mission are trying really hard to get our wards involved in the missionary work so that it becomes their work and we are simply the servants in theirs and the Lord's hands. The Cornelia ward is awesome, we just have to slowly change a few things to make things even better so that people are more fully converted to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Our meeting went well-- we talked about what we can do as a team to simply help the ward our in their missionary success efforts.

 

Thursday night we had an interesting experience. We had a priest from the ward take us to go see an investigator in Toccoa. Our investigator had decided to start celebrating the New Year a little early I suppose, because when we got there he was too drunk to unlock the front door. He is in his late 50s, a real southern boy. He kept saying, "Come on in....come on in." He just couldn't understand that the deadbolt was not permitting us to open the door. After a few minutes of him trying and telling us to come on in it just became comical so we left to try back another time. I love the adventures we have as missionaries.

 

Unfortunately on Sunday I had a terrrrible migraine so it was another unhappy uneventful day. I lost it (my headache that is) by about 8 oclock when we went with a member to go see Bruce, who says to tell you all "hello." I just saw him here at the Kernelia Library returning some books.

 

Yesterday we had a fun fun P-Day at the church in Commerce with most of the other guys from our zone. The weather has been absolutely beautiful lately. Right now it is 59 degrees and sunny outside.

 

I love you so so so much and am loving my mission as well. Take care, be good. Prospero Ano Y Felicidad!

 

Elder Mikey Caplin