Senator Dinner

At Zone Conference- Elder Franco and all his mission 'sons'!

   We have had a great week! We have been focusing a lot on making our spiritual thoughts after dinner more effective.  This week we taught the Gospel of Jesus Christ and we saw good results from it!  On Monday, we did one and the members were reminded of two people they hadn't seen in a while, it was great to see!   On Tuesday, we had a great lesson with Jim Button.  A couple of weeks back Brother Rowley, our Ward Mission Leader had the impression that we should bring Brother Rogers with us.  We haven't had the opportunity to bring him, but he was available Tuesday night.  It was great to see that Brother Rowley's impression brought about a great lesson!  Brother Rogers and Jim Button got along great!  On Wednesday, after Zone Conference we went out to Smith Valley and we were able to bring a member to stop in at the Funks,  We invited them to a dinner with our ward missionaries!  The most exciting part of the week was definitely Sunday.  We had planned a couple weeks back to go with the Rempp family out to Smith Valley to visit everyone, but then they had cancelled.  Then, before Sacrament meeting Sister Rempp came up to us and asks us if we were ready to go to Smith with them.  We hurried and asked the Hellers if they could come to dinner as well and they said yes!   We were able to take the Rempps to some new part member and less active families that we had found and introduce them. The Rempps got along with all the families and it was great to see Ward outreach!  We finished yesterday with dinner and a lesson with the Hellers, Rempps and Funks.  It was a super good lesson!  We taught the Gospel of Jesus Christ using parts of 1 Nephi 3.  They were very open and honest and receptive!  We committed them to baptismal dates! We are super excited to work with them towards the 10th of December!

With Bro. Heller and the Funks

   In response to a question from Dad, Elder Jarnagin said this about his growth-  We had a great zone conference this week and it made me realize that I have so much to do and so far to go.  It also helped me make sure and do an inventory of myself to make sure not even a fraction of my efforts out here were lost and went to anything but serving the Lord.  I think that has helped me a lot.   I think that I have grown in character these two transfers and for that I am grateful.  The Lord keeps throwing trials my way, always new, always something I can handle, always something to make me grow.  No one said the mission was easy and I didn't sign up for some walk in the park.

The Greenhouse Thrift Shop where we give weekly service.

Crossing a 'river' to get to an appointment

Nevada Super Moon

Smith Valley

   
   This week has been really good.  Halloween was pretty good, though we had some people try to knock on our door and that was pretty weird.  Tuesday was a great day, we met with a less active family that we hadn't met with before.  It was good to be able to talk with them and discern what they needed!  Wednesday we had dinner with a returning less active family.  It was so cool because they had invited one of their friends to eat with us!  The friend left halfway through, but we asked about it during our lesson on Saturday and they said that they like to invite non member friends to dinner with the missionaries.  They said 8 or 9 of their friends had been baptized because of that!  On Thursday, we went out to Smith Valley to see the Funks again!  They are doing great and are ready to start meeting with us again!  We also met the Smith family who is a part member family.  They are really receptive and have accepted everything we have told them!  It has been a good week!

ps- this is a cat

Digging for 'Confederate' Gold 

A month of posts in one...

Mom got behind... so here are Elder Jarnagin's last month of updates-

Oct 3, 2016- Elder Jarnagin wrote an email for the blog, but for some reason it didn't send and he couldn't find it again.  Here are his pictures from that week-



Boldly (Oct 10, 2016)
This week has been pretty good as well, it has been a bit slower lesson wise, nonetheless the work continues! Tuesday we had a lesson with Nacho and that was good.  It is kind of sad though because he seems to be losing interest in the message.  It is always hard when someone feels that way, that they are fine the way they are and don't want to change anymore.  We had exchanges on Wednesday.  It was kind of hard being there, but I did my best to be positive and love everyone around me and we saw some success!  We had a really awesome lesson with a returning less active on Thursday, Sister Baker.  She has been through a lot of rough times, but is fighting to return to full activity.  We brought some members with us, who we weren't sure would be the best fit.  Luckily, they were great, the couple we brought just showed so much love for Sister Baker which allowed them to be really bold in asking what problems she had and how they can help!  It was a testimony builder to me that when we have real, Christlike love for people, we can be bold with them and they will know that it comes out of love!  Other than that we saw a car crash happen right in front of us and that was pretty spooky.  It has been a great week and we will keep working to make it even better!

Onion Fields

Less Actives! (Oct 17, 2016)
This week has been good, we have seen a lot of success with our less actives! They have been progressing and coming to church! Some specifics were a lesson with a less active named brother Co. He has been less active for a while but this is his third week coming to church! We taught him a lesson on the importance of prayer out of the Book of Mormon. We brought his home teacher and that was super awesome, his home teacher was able to apply the message to him really well! Something I realized this week is how important it is to use our talents and to constantly hone them. This week we tried to find more but it seemed no one was out and when they were they seemed busy or would quickly walk away. It seems like since finding is different here I am a little out of touch. This week we had the chance to set up service with a non profit organization. It was cool to see how much good we can do even just by offering help. It seems like we are always offering to help or serve and no one says yes. It is really rewarding when they accept and we are able to help them improve their lives! PS this is a pic of Elder Stienberg, he is in my district

A family of recent converts had just gotten back from a deer hunt, so we took a picture with it.

Joy in the Work! (Oct 24, 2016)
This week has been interesting. I don't think too much out of the ordinary happened but in every situation I was more happy! I think that I am finding more and more joy in every aspect of the work! We had a surprise lesson with the Sanford family last Monday. We stopped by just to set up an appointment and they let us inside! We had a great time talking about their reading and how that is helping and changing them! All this week we were super excited to be a part of thier progression. Then Brother Sanford called us this morning saying he doesn't want us coming over for a while. We aren't too concerned because this has happened before where he decides to investigate on his own, but it is sad that he doesn't want our help. We had a tough day where it seemed like everything fell through, we ended up walking to try to talk with people and trying to set up appointments. It was tough but because we did that we were able to meet Stan. Stan is the son of a less active member in our ward, he has talked to missionaries before and is decently interested in the gospel. He respects the church for the good that we do. We decided to set an expectation of us showing up every other day because most of our investigators have the expectation the we come by every week. We showed up that Tuesday and then that Thursday and had a good lesson about the restoration and the Book of Mormon! I think my favorite part of this week was our church meetings. Not only was it great to participate in the sacrament but 3 less active members came that had never come before! It was so great to see them there! Some things we have been studying is how to work with members. We have really reached the conclusion that if we want to have success, that will come through the members. We have been trying to show them that we are here for them and I think that is beginning to pay off! 

I was shocked... it was a pole!

The building where the Shurz Branch meets

This dog LOVES sticks!

Chili! (October 31, 2016)

This week has been pretty good, we haven't taught as many lessons as we would have liked but we are doing all we can to invite others to come unto Christ! On Monday Brother Sanford, one of our investigators called us and said he needs time to think and make sure he was doing this for him. That was kind of sad because we probably won't be able to help him progress now but we know he will see in the near future the importance of the restored Gospel in his life!  We were able to meet with Jim Button on Tuesday and that was great!  He has been reading though the standard works and had just started the book of Job.  We decided to read that with him and the lesson turned out very well! I  think the coolest part for me was to see how his knowledge of the scriptures has advanced, it is not old, hard to understand words to him now, he understands it much better!  

On Thursday we had a chili cook off with the ward and that was awesome!  We had been sure to invite people to it in the days leading up to it and out of ten recent convert/less active families, eight showed up!  It was great to see them there, especially because we weren't able to invite some of them so that meant the ward did a great job of reaching out as well!  It was so great to see!  Friday we were studying inspired questions during Companionship Study and we had a lesson with Brother Jackson later that day when we could apply what we learned!  We used questions that were able to open up brother Jackson to help him see the importance of reading the Book of Mormon with his family!  On Saturday we were able to go to Smith Valley and see the Funks again!  They are back in town and we hopefully will be teaching them this week! 

These awesome Elders MADE matching ties last week on their P-day!