Park Rock? What a week!

Man what a week... Last Thursday, during the early morning, me, Elder Walker, and the Lexington Park Elders all went to do some service by helping set up some big canopy tents for an event called "Park Rock," it is a concert like Warped tour except not as big of bands. Anyways, we did this and in return we wanted to be able to have a booth at the concert so that we could talk to people about the gospel, well we eventually figured out that about 90% of the audience would be teenagers that came for the music, and the rest would be security guards, not very good odds of finding new investigators... But it was still fun, and they bought us Breakfast and Lunch, so we didn't make it out of there too bad haha. Also, that night we had a lesson with Sara, I don't know if I have told you about her or not before, but she is in her late 40's/ early 50's, and she retired so that she could take care of her mom full time. She was raised Catholic, but is open to the idea that there could be prophets in the America's, she has been meeting with missionaries for about 4 months, but she can't ever come to church because she is always taking care of her mom. Me and Elder Walker took about an hour that day to prepare a lesson for Sara about prayer, because in the Catholic church, most of their prayers are just recited and not very meaningful. One of the biggest things we try and get people to do is read the Book of Mormon and pray about it to know if it is true. Sara had been doing the reading part, but not the prayer part, so we did a pretty neat scripture chase with her and made her understand the importance of prayer. It was awesome to see how she started to understand what we were saying, we pretty much laid it all down for her and told her that if the Book of Mormon was true, then that means that Joseph Smith was a true Prophet, which means that our church is true. She took it very well and told us that she would put it too the test! So that was very cool, unfortunately she can't meet with us this week, so we are going to have to wait until next week to see how it all goes, hopefully I am still in this area!!

Lexington Park had a baptism this last Saturday, and it was a very neat experience! It all went really really well, Elder Deklerk performed the baptism, and it was so cool to see how happy Marsha was after it was all said and done. I don't remember if I told you guys, but she quit drinking and smoking all within about 3 weeks, she is such an awesome lady! Unfortunately the Brennan's were not there... in fact we couldn't even get a hold of them, but I know he is busy, he is an attorney and has about 5 active cases right now I think, plus he was going out of town this weekend too. I am not too worried about them, we have another appointment with them next week, and I am excited to see how they are doing! A really good thing happened this week though, we had a Less-Active, Part-Member Family at church on Sunday! They had a decent time I think, I guess we will find out when we go and see them later this week though.

I had my first exchange this Monday with Elder Deklerk, it was way sweet, he is the DL, and a very good missionary. It was good for me to see how someone else does things. Well transfers are next week, I can't even believe I have been here 5 weeks already, it doesn't even feel like it has been half that yet, but they have a saying here, Hours feel like Weeks and Weeks feel like Hours, I probably wouldn't even have a clue what that means unless I was out here, but it really is true, the last 5 weeks have absolutely flown by. The good news is that it is more than likely that I will be staying here for next transfer, so hopefully I won't have to get used to another area all over again. Well I love you guys!!! It's always good to hear from you!! And as always, I miss you!!

- Elder Schaap

Dinner with the Members

Elders Schaap and Walker

Photo by Jeffrey Borgholthaus

Brother Borgholthaus sent me this picture yesterday via email. He's in the Patuxent Ward with the Elders, and they had the missionaries over for dinner at their home Sunday night. He took this picture and said he always enjoyed receiving pictures of his son when he was on his mission, so he thought that Sister Walker and I would enjoy this. How thoughtful! I love it! It's so nice to know there are great people like Brother Borgholthaus looking out for our missionaries!

-Marcie

Welcome to Patuxent!

Hey everyone!! I made it to D.C.! The flights sucked, but what do you expect when you leave at 1 in the morning? We got to D.C., and the airport here is huge!!! It has a train in it! haha but our luggage got lost because our layover in Georgia was too short for them to be able to get it into our flight to D.C. When we first got here, we went straight to the Temple, and I have to say, all of those pictures I saw of it, definitely didn't do it justice, it is unreal how pretty the Temple here is, definitely my favorite. I tried to take some pictures to show you how amazing it really is, but you all know how good of a photographer I am... After that however, Pres and Sister Matsumori let us sleep, thank goodness, I think I got a total of maybe an hour and a half of sleep on our flights, but I slept well in the mission home, so it was way nice. Other than that though, on the first day here we just went over some random stuff about what we should know, and things we need to learn about the area here. Sister Matsumori made some awesome food for us too, spare ribs for dinner, and this morning she made a breakfast casserole!

Well I am an official missionary now, I didn't really count it at the MTC, but I am now! My trainers name is Elder Walker, he is from Spanish Fork, he doesn't know our cousins though. He is a pretty cool guy, and I think he will be an excellent trainer. The area I am serving in is called Patuxent, I think it is the 2nd most south area in the mission. It is very nice here, there is definitely a lot more trees and things here than I thought there would be, I thought it would be mostly city, but it really isn't. Oh, the humidity..... SUCKS!!!! Holy cow, it is bad, haha one of the kids that drove with us back from the mission home had his glasses fog up as soon as he stepped out of the car! All those people that were telling me that it is way humid here were definitely right. Hmm... I don't really know what else to tell you, the Matsumori's had all of us new missionaries do a session at the Temple with our trainers, so that was a pretty cool experience, we live within walking distance of the church, and there is a Five Guys and a bakery very close as well. We are about 2 hours from the mission home, so I won't be seeing much of the Matsumori's for a little while probably. My companion tells me that we get fed by members nearly every night, Score!! Well I still have to unpack tonight, it is weird, I am really here!

- Elder Schaap