Year 1, Week 46: I Really Enjoy Teaching in Spanish

This week has been really good! Some cool events happened. We got to go to a funeral for a members Sister. She was a member of the Episcopalian Church so it was at a different church. We had the opportunity to go on exchanges. I was in Waltham with Elder Kennard. He was in my Zone when I first came into the mission so its cool to be back with him. We also had Zone Conference with the Miller's where we were able to say goodbye and take pictures. 

On exchanges we picked up to investigators named C and C! We taught the Restoration and got their contact info. Elder Kennard doesn't speak any Spanish so I just talked. It went well! I really enjoy teaching in Spanish! 

We had a lesson with L and he told us he has now been 20 days without a drink! It was awesome! We talked to him about keeping the Sabbath day Holy and told us that he has taken a second job and has to start working on Sundays. We are working with him and trying to help him get days off! 

During Zone Conference, they talked a lot about sustaining our church leaders. They said to forget about them completely forget about them and that they no longer exist as leaders to us. It was a little sad. I love the Millers but the new President has my complete support with everything! I'm excited to learn from a different perspective.

We helped a member move to a different city. We through a bunch of stuff in the back of the truck and tied it down with ties. I've decided I'm definitely getting a truck when I come home because I want to be able to help people with things and a truck will come in handy! We are helping another member move on Thursday. 

Elder Hilbig is going home. We thought Elder Kennard was going to come to our companionship but he is going to the Portuguese Elder so he won't be with us.

All in all this week has been super good! Love you all! 

Elder Bushman

Goodbye, President and Sister Miller

Photo Credit, Kimberly Miller

Year 1, Week 44: Love President and Sister Miller

Hello Family!! I hope all is well! Your trip sounds like a blast! I'm not sure if John throwing up or peeing in the car is better;) who took cars? Who is all there? I told you that I saw JP Arbon in the MTC right?

Today we are going to be actually doing stuff for Pday. We are going into Boston to play soccer and then basketball. We may just chill in the city after that! It's going to be a party! I probably won't be writing too much today but we'll see. 

This week has been good. We went on exchanges with the Zone Leaders. While Elder Hilbig and I were walking around we found a family from Ghana who was moving out of their apartment. We offered to help and they said sure, so we started moving in white shirts and ties! Let me just say their apartment was pretty bad and I got super, super, dirty. But it was fun to help them! We moved out these huge couches, from the 3rd floor. 2 fridges, and other stuff. It was good that they were getting rid of it all so we didn't have to be too careful. They said that they could use help moving in, but since we had already been there for 3 1/2 hours we told them we couldn't but other Elders could! They also said they would listen to a message so hopefully something will come from that! Other than that, exchanges was a lot of contacting with not much results. We met some super cool people who knew who we were but didn't care for our message. One guy even invited us to chill on his porch with him and eat cheese and crackers. Haha it was cool:)

Elder Perkes and I have a guy who we are planning to baptize on the 15th of July. When he came to church yesterday, he told us that he hasn't had any alcohol for 5 days straight! It was pretty exciting! By himself he has cut down from drinking an entire bottle to nothing! We are planning on teaching him how to overcome his cravings. The mission doctor is in our district and has told us some ways to help him! We are planning on moving his Baptismal date to the 16th or 23rd of this month if he really is done drinking! His name is L. and he is from Brazil. Because of his work schedule and his wife's work schedule we have only been able to meet with him but their schedule changed so we will also be talking with the wife! We are pretty excited. 

We had interviews with President Miller this week. Last interview with him.. It's kinda sad. I love him and Sister Miller. We have a Zone Conference on the 12th of June and that's it. We won't see them anymore... I'm really bummed but excited to get to know the new President and his wife. It will be nice to have a mission President who speaks Spanish though!!

Elder Perkes and I have been getting along really well. It just took a little while to figure him out. So I'm all good! Excited to continue working with him! :)

I hope all is well at home! 

Love you all! 

Elder Bushman

 

 

Year 1, Week 42: Finally Going to Massachusetts

Hello Family! This week has gone by ridiculously quickly!!

First off, transfer news. I am being transferred out of Waterbury and I'm finally going to go to Massachusetts. I'm serving in Waltham which is about an hour from Boston. My new companion is named Elder Perkes. I'm bummed to be leaving Elder Porritt but I'm excited for some change. It was fun serving in Waterbury with Elders Tirado, Neeley, and Porritt.  I've wanted to serve in Waltham my entire mission because that's the closest I can get to Boston until Spanish Elders are put back in. I'm still going to be the District Leader in Waltham but it is a District with me, my companion, Zone Leaders, and Sister Training Leaders. Elder Perkes came out with me but he went to the Mexico MTC. 

This week has been full of laughs with Elder Porritt and I. First off, Tuesday morning Elder Porritt walks over to me and says, "hey, just so you know, I stole some of your body cleanse powder and drank it." With a nervous look in my eye I asked, "how much did you take?" haha, he only took a scoop but it wrecked him pretty good! We were out knocking around 3:30 and he said he needed to go to the bathroom. We head to the church and then go back out to knock. When we get to the street we are planning on knocking, he says... "OK, we need to go home. You can do record inputs while I am in the bathroom." It reminded me of the good ole days of 1 scoop fiber, 1 scoop cleanse! 

We also made a crockpot roast! I made bróccoli while Elder Porritt had the potatoes and carrots that we cooked in the roast. It was mighty fine!! SOOO good! Best roast I've ever had!

We haven't had a whole lot of stuff happen this week. It's been a bummer. All our lessons have been getting canceled and people aren't there. 

We had Zone Conference which was awesome! President Miller gave a super cool talk on what we can do to be life long disciples. It was pretty great! I took a lot away from it!

Interviews were also super cool! President Miller is awesome! It'll be a bummer when he goes home. He is one of the wisest men I've ever met.

On exchanges with Elder Phillipsen on Saturday we had some cool things happen. We were trying to decide what we should do for dinner. All the sudden, I had this super random thought. BDUBS!!! So we went to Buffalo Wild Wings. While there, the waitress took our order and started asking all about us. We told her who we were and what we did as missionaries. She said she wanted to learn more about the church so we got her phone number. Idk if anything will come out of it, but it was still a cool experience. 

We also went to a lesson with an investigator named O. She was too busy to talk with us so we talked to her Brother. He asked us a ton of questions because he knew some about our church. He asked about polygamy, how to gain Salvation, hell and where God lives, the difference between the Bible and the Book of Mormon. We talked a lot about the Book of Mormon and how if he will read it, ponder it, pray about it, and come to church, we will feel happiness and peace. He committed to reading 3 Nephi 12 and compare it with Matthew 5. Elder Phillipsen doesn't speak any Spanish so I was talking the entire time. Because of that lesson, I feel a lot more confident with my Spanish.

D. got baptized yesterday. She was the one that Elder Porritt and I found and then passed to the English Elders. It was a great baptismal service. I had the opportunity to interview her for her baptism. She was SOOO ready. She was practically living everything before we found her except for drinking coffee. She stopped when they asked her to and hasn't had any for the last 3-4 weeks! Super cool and I'm so happy for the English Elders.

Elder Smith is being transferred to Newport, CT. 

Anyway, I can't think of anything else to write. Love you all!! 

Elder Bushman

Year 1, Week 39: Spanish Branch?

This week has been great so far! One of the coolest things that happened was this Sunday. First, some background. Elder Neeley and I were thinking that if we keep the Waterbury Spanish group the way it is going, it will never grow into a branch. We started thinking of what could be an immediate change to that. Our idea was to combine the Southington(next town over) and the Waterbury Group in two and make it a branch. We then heard that President Miller has been meeting with our Stake President, President Martin. We called up President Miller and asked him what happened in there meeting and he just said they were talking about Missionaries in another part of the Zone. Anyway, Elder Neeley left and Elder Porritt came but I've still been thinking about this idea.

Yesterday, Sunday, we had Ward Conference with the Leaders of the Stake present. At the end, the Stake Presidency wanted to have a Spanish meeting. In the meeting they said that their plans are to make us a Spanish Branch in the year of 2018. We will be combining with the Southington Group when that happens. I won't be here for it, but I'm hoping to come back to Waterbury in 2019 and serve here in a branch. Also, kinda cool that my plans fell right in with the Stakes plans! Haha! The members were told that they need to bring the Less Active members back or we won't have enough people to do it. Elder Porritt and I have several people we are working with who have potential to come back.

While tracting, we met a young family named J. and M. (most generic Hispanic names ever). We talked to them a bunch about the Restoration but M. believes that Angels wrote the Bible and we weren't sure how to tell her that men wrote it under the direction from God and then it was changed. We had already been in there for about 45 minutes and didn't have the time to work over all of that. We are hopefully going back this Thursday. They were super nice and could have real potential!

The English Elders have 5 baptismal dates for the month of May. 4 of them used to be our investigators who we then passed of to them. It's pretty cool that even though our numbers are crazy, we still play a major role in the progress of others. I used to feel that if my numbers for the week or month didn't increase I was "failing in missionary work". Not true!

Another day, we were knocking doors and a girl named K. answered. She didn't have time at the moment but gave us her Facebook and said we could contact her and come back. Even though we've had the Technology for about a month, this was the first time I've ever actually used Facebook while proselyting. It was pretty cool. We'll see if she turns out to be anything. 

There is a lady named S. who is a less active. When I was serving with Elder Tirado she would always call and insult us half the time for not making time to talk with her. I talked to President Miller about her. He said to send her home teachers. Yesterday, she left a message for us that she had a friend who is interested in the Gospel and she needs us to teach her. So after 3 months of not answering we finally called her. She was actually super nice and kind. So maybe the 3 months made her do some thinking;) haha!

Not much else happened this week! I will be sending audio as well! Love ya

Elder Bushman

Year 1, Week 34: Jaw Drop

This week has been super good. First, update on our investigator named G. We visited her and her brothers again. 4 children over the age of 8 are listening to our message. Her parents however, are not interested. We now have written consent to teach and baptize them but we are wanting to get the parents involved so they have support at home. We taught them twice this week. We first went over the Restoration again and are working on helping them build a testimony of Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith, and the Book of a Mormon. G. and her brothers have been reading and their comprehension is amazing. We were talking about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and we were talking about the Holy Ghost. We asked if any of them knew who or what the Holy Ghost was. G's answer was, "when the guy was praying to see what his dad saw, wasn't the Holy Ghost the guy who showed him a vision?" jaw drop!! She has told us about Zoram and Laman and Lemuel. It's awesome! She has been able to tell us all about the Book of Mormon. She also was very hesitant to pray in front to of us, but we finally got her to. She texted us out of the blue and said, "thank you for you both, if it wasn't for you I never would have prayed." Just random and out of the blue. It was awesome! We committed G.s and her brothers to all be baptized on the 22nd of April. 4 dates for then. We are hoping to get her parents involved and just make it a family event:) They didn't make it to church because their parents wouldn't take them but we are working on that. They came last week and it was awesome! 

We also reactivated a less active and some of her kids. We had knocked and knocked and knocked to try and get into their house so we could talk with them but they would never let us in. Elder Neeley and I finally were able to talk with them and we had a great lesson. She texted us out of the blue a little while ago and said that she was so grateful for our persistence. It was awesome. 

We have been working with a member of the church whose records were lost so she isn't a member. We went through all the steps necessary to find her records and now we have permission from our mission president to re-baptize her. So that will be happening very soon.

We had Zone Conference this last week. It is crazy how we only have one more Zone Conference with President Miller. I will miss him a lot. I have so much respect for him because of his wisdom and gospel knowledge. He is awesome! 

That was pretty much it. Love ya!

Elder Bushman

Year 1, Week 31: They Literally Yelled, Yes!

This week was pretty long. With Elder Tirado moving to a new area, he basically had to pack up 6 months of stuff and move it. Most of the week from Friday when we found out he was leaving to Wednesday when he left was him packing, visiting members, and stuff like that. We saw so many members and had soooo much food. We had such a long week.

Once Elder Tirado left, we drove to Boston with Elder Porter and Elder Perkes. I came in with Elder Perkes and Elder Porter was with Elder Eaton when I was in Hartford. That was a fun time! I went to the mission home and picked up Elder Neeley. We drove the 2 hours and 15 minutes back to Waterbury and got there around 8. We had dinner and just went to bed.

 

Being a trainer? I literally don't even feel like I am training someone. I think that is just because he is so ready to go. I literally don't even have to tell him that he needs to talk or say, "Alright, its your turn to knock this door." he just does it! So that's super nice! He went to a year of college first so he is pretty adjusted to everything so far. Wednesday was good. I was pretty nervous. Basically, President Miller was like, "So, you are all their first companions. Don't mess them up." Obviously, it was was nicer and he said he trusts us and everything, but I was a little nervous. My comp is Elder Neeley. He is from Washington St. He went to BYU for a year. Works hard and ready to get things done!!

 

We started and just got straight to work. We picked up 2 investigators by the name of M. and O. We taught them the Restoration in Spanish. When we invited them to read the Book of Mormon and pray to know if it was true, they literally yelled yes. I am not even joking. There voices raised and they were like, Claro! That was a super cool experience. We will be going over in the next couple of days to follow up with them. We also met a woman named J. She was talking on the phone and smoking at the same time. We went up to her and just started talking to her and basically made her hang up her phone call so she could talk to us. We started telling her of our unique message and she asked this question. "Literally, there is one God. Why is there so many churches?" we quickly explained the apostasy and why there are tons of churches. She said that it made a lot of sense. She said, "My next question is, what is the purpose of this life?" We quickly flipped open in the Book of Mormon to Alma 34:32 and explained that the purpose of our life is to meet God and that through the Atonement of Jesus Christ she will be able to become clean so she can live in the presence of God again. She said that she had never heard an actual answer to her question. We told her that we can literally answer any question she has and set up another time to pass by. That was a super cool experience.

We met another woman named Eliza. We taught her about the Book of Mormon and what our church is. We set up a time to come back and talk with her. We have met so many people the last couple of days who have been ready and willing go hear about the Gospel. We basically have tons of people scheduled all throughout next week. 

Like Dad asked me, I will record an audio recording about how the mission uses technology different than most people use it at home. 

Love you all!! I will record some more Audio for next week

Elder Bushman

 

Saying Farewell to Elder Tirado

Welcome, Elder Neeley

Writing Home in the Library with the DL's

 

 

Year 1, Week 27: 1/4 of the Way

This week again was the same as last!

Love you much,

Elder Bushman

(Very Funny, Elder. He sent another email later as below...)

Hey Fam!!

How is everything going! I hope all is well. This week was good and super fast! I honestly can't really believe I am 1/4 of the way through my mission. I always thought that I would never leave on my mission. I left. I thought I would never leave the MTC. I left. I thought I would never get to the field. I did. I thought I would never get out of training. I did. I thought I would never make it to the 6 month mark. I have. I feel like I will never learn Spanish! I won't... That is basically where I am right now!!

This week was great. We finally got back in touch with Waddy. His mom just works a ton because her husband is still in the DR. He is coming to American though in March so they want to wait until he is here for him to be baptized. We are planning on continually going to teach him and then re-extend a baptism date at the end of February. We have an appointment to teach him on Tuesday, tomorrow, so we are excited about that! We are hoping that his dad will want to be baptized when he gets here as well.

The Vogel dinners are going to be different from now on. A new rule stating that there cannot be 4 Elders at dinner appointments have now come into play. Since we are a group and the English ward provides over our group, we can eat with both Hispanic members and English members. Just not all at the same time. We now have to have 1 companionship go at 6 and the other companionship go at 7:30. Its not too bad, just weird.

On Wednesday we had a big day of nothing!! Whoo.. So we called tons of people and finally got some appointments set up. We also received a media referral. When we went over her husband answered the door and said that he didn't want the Bible because it was a Mormon Bible. We explained that it was the King James version, just its a "Mormon" Bible because it is the one we use. He was chill after that. We also contacted a lady named Hazel. She was playing one of my favorite Hispanic songs, "Tu Estas Aqui" by Jesus Adrian Romero. We knocked on her door, taught the Restoration, and picked her up as a new investigator!! I basically have that whole song memorized so it was cool to hear coming from her house.

Later in the week we went back to Hazel's house to get back in contact with her but she wasn't home. The floor below was playing super loud Hispanic music so of course, we knocked the house. A girl named Cindy opened the door and we also picked her up as an investigator. We are working on getting back in touch with all of them.

One interesting thing about mission life is this: Elders only have female investigators. Sisters only have Men investigators. I don't know why this is but it is... In Waterbury, our investigators are, Ashley, Tania (got Baptized), Mary, Cindy, Hazel, Isabel, Marcel, Deborah, Sierra, Niyannah, and Waddy. Waddy is male but he is also 11 so we still have to get a male member to go over with us. This is THE most frustrating aspect of missionary work. Anyway...

The English Elders were door knocking and found a Hispanic woman who doesn't speak any English, so they called us and had us set up an appointment over the phone. I talked with this woman and set up the appointment, got her info, and had a conversation completely by myself. Was I proud?? Yes!! Her name is Rosa and she is super interested. Again, Female. We haven't been able to get a guy to come with us yet.

We had Interviews with President Miller this week. Again, super short interview but we had a training given by the AP's prior to the interviews. The training was involving Smartphones. Supposedly, we are supposed to get smartphones soon. Whether or not this actually happens, I have no idea. But it is looking more and more like it. I personally do not want any technology in the field. It is too much crap to worry about. I would rather just go about Missionary work like we have for centuries!

Love you all,

Elder Bushman

Severe Weather - MBM Update

This is just a quick note to let you know all the missionaries in the Massachusetts Boston Mission are well. We are having some severe weather this week and have asked the missionaries to stay indoors today and tomorrow. We will check on each one several times today and tomorrow. We love each missionary and are grateful for your wonderful support.

We are sending this note to 200 families. Please do not reply unless you have a concern. Thank you

President and Sister Miller

Year 1, Week 22: That's a First!

Hey Mom!!

This week has been awesome!! We started the week with a Book of Mormon challenge that our zone was doing. Our zone goal was to place 293 Books of Mormon in a week. Our district goal, which consists of 6 missionaries, was 127. We were a little under half of the entire ZONE goal!! The week started slow because of Christmas, emailing and laundry on Tuesday, weekly planning on Thursday. On Friday night, our district was at 49/127. We had 2 days to place about 78 Books of Mormon. Elder Tirado and I went to work and put out 46 Books in those 2 days. We placed 66 in the week. With the help of the Lord, we met our district goal, 129/127 and our Zone goal of 299/293. That was an amazing experience in and of itself.

On Wednesday we decided to stop by an old media referral. He wasn't home so we decided to knock doors around his house. We went to one house, climbed the stairs and knocked the 3rd floor. A girl opened the door, holding a PS4 remote. I was like, "Hey, we are missionaries from our church, we are in the area sharing a message of Jesus Christ." She kinda looked at me and was like, "I'm not interested." Usually I say, "Alright, well can I just leave you with a Book?" But this time, I some how said, "Is anyone else in the house interested?" She asked and this girl replied that she was!!! She invited us in and said we could teach her anything. We taught the Restoration and it was probably the best Restoration we have ever taught together. She asked questions like, "How come people say that baptism is all it takes to be saved?", "What is the atonement?" and "I was already baptized, why do I have a need to be baptized again?" We started explaining that there needs to be proper authority and how infant baptism is against what we believe and what God has set forth for us. She said that she agrees and was saying how her baptism must not have been ok. When we invited her to be baptized she said, "wait, so I can do that over again?" She said yes and she agreed to be baptized. We asked her when she would be available to be taught again and she said, "How about Friday?" We agreed and left her with the commitment to read 3 Nephi 11 and left.

On Friday we went back and she had ACTUALLY READ??!!! No way, that's a first!! She explained that she didn't understand a lot of the words and things and asked us to explain them. We explained and at the end invited her to be baptized on Feb. 24. The reason her date is so far is (she has some issues to resolve). We left her the Plan of Salvation pamphlet and she said she would read it before our next meeting. She agreed to come to church and said she wanted to take a tour of the building if she could.

On Sunday, she was ACTUALLY at Church???!! No way, that's a first!! We showed her the building and baptismal font and then she attended all 3 hours. During Gospel principles she made friends with several of the young women and then she went with the same young women to young womens. We asked if she liked church and if she would want to come back. She said Yes!!! No way, that's a first!!!

Monday, yesterday, we found out that she had gone with some of the YSA to the church for a game day!! She is also coming to a member dinner with us tonight where we are teaching the Plan of Salvation! I also just realized that Plan of Salvation, shortened, is POS!;)

So far, our other investigators are still progressing. Tania still should be getting baptized on Jan. 11th! She has accepted everything so now it's really just the interview and if she has any other concerns.

New years Eve was spent with the Waterbury English Elders! We did the normal PDAY stuff but then we also played, NO TRUMP and Monopoly Deal! No Trump was full of TONS of laughs:) great game!!

This week we also had interviews with President Miller. Some people were in interviews for like 25 minutes. I went in for interviews and this is kinda how it went...

President Miller: "Elder Bushman, can you pray?

Bushman: *prayed*

PM: "Do you have warm clothes for the winter?

B: "Yes"

PM: "Do you have any questions for me?"

B: "No"

PM: "Awesome! Can I end with a prayer?"

I guess this either means my President Hates me or that he isn't worried about me!!

Anyway, not much else happened this week!! LOVE YOU ALL

Elder Bushman