Monday, October 29th 2018

 Sorry about not having an E-mail sent last week, so I will update you on the Last 2 weeks!

Update of last week!

We had District activity last week. ItIt'slways fun doing wholesome recreational activities with the other missionaries in our district. The problem is, we don't have any sisters in our district so the activities lack creativity. But hey, pizza and basketball isn't so bad.

We also had Zone Conference last week. The theme of this zone conference was how can we help people make and keep commitments. The biggest take away for me was to not only help people understand how to keep the commitments, but why they need to keep the commitments, and help them to want to keep the commitments. You do that by first teaching them the doctine and the why behind keeping the commitment, bearing testimony frequently, then promising blessings, and also sharing personal experiences.

There is a man in our ward who was baptized a year ago and for the first couple of months after his baptism he was active, but in the past couple of months, he has not been active. He has come the past few weeks to church, and reached out to us and told us that he would like to start up the new member discussions again. We went by and taught him the first lesson, and then afterwards we helped him clean his house.

Update of this week!

We visited a lady in our ward this week who has been living in a rehab center for the past couple of months because she had a stroke which left her with no feeling from her waist down.  I actually knew her grandkids, because they were living in the last ward I was serving in. This sister is amazing, she tries to talk to everybody in the rehab center about the gospel. While we were getting to know her, one of her nurses walked up and asked how she was doing.  She introduced us to him, and we told him that we were missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. He is from the Philippines and he remembers talking to some of the missionaries while he was living in the Philippines.  He expressed some interest in learning more about the church, so we exchange information and we are now teaching him! 

One day while we were tracking this week, we walked up to this one house and we heard some banging in the garage.  I look to my companion and said, " Is there a blacksmith in the garage?"We knocked on the door, and the lady that answered quickly expressed her disinterest, she was closing the door, and I said, "WAIT"! The door stopped closing.  I then asked her hesitantly if there was a blacksmith in her garage. To my surprise, she answered yes. Her husband owns a fordge and anvil and other tools. She asked if we would like to see, and of course, we said yes. We spent the next couple of minutes looking at the knifes and armor that her husband has made. Even though they were not interested, it was still nice to get to know them and show interest in their lives.

There is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints that is living in Virginia, and he has a friend from work that he wanted to share the gospel with, so he sent him as a referral, and it just so happens that his friend lives in our area! We are so grateful for all the members that send us referrals It is something that I'm definitely going to try to be better at when I get off my mission.

This week was our Ward's Trunk or Treat. They asked me and my companion and another companionship in the Ward to be the judges for the costume contest, and the best trunk contest. There was also a chili cook-off. I know of no other organization that can produce more chili than that of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

I was talking to a brother in the ward this week and I told him that I grew up in the tri-cities, and he told me that he had a brother in law that taught Seminary in the tri-cities. I asked him what his last name was, and he said Paul! BROTHER PAUL!!! He was my seminary teacher for freshman and sophomore year of high school. It is definitely a small world in the Church.

We were walking in a neighborhood a few nights ago that was less than decent. It was after dark and while we were walking we heard a man across the parking lot yelling at us on a bike. Nothing he said was coherent, and he started riding towards us. At this point I already had an escape plan, but instead, we decided to talk to him. He got off his bike and shook our hands, and we started to talk with him but he pointed to his ears and was shaking his head, implying that he was deaf. That's when my companion jumped in! My Companion is almost completely deaf without hearing aids and he is assigned as an ASL missionary. So they started talking in sign language. We got his information and we sent him as a referral to the ASL companionship. We still don't know why he decided to come up to us that night. He didn't see us signing, and it was too dark for him to see my companion hearing aids. Probably the Lord's doing!

The gospel is definitely true here in Maryland!

Elder Dallin McKay Spurgeon 

Monday, October 15th 2018

Hey There! 

My new Address is 4665 Prestancia Place Apt.104 Waldorf,  M.D. My new area is huge! I will send you a picture of the boundary. My new companion is Elder Howes! He is brand new to the mission. He was originally called to serve as an American Sign Language missionary, but our mission president wants him to be trained in English, because there is a lot more work to do in English, and he wants Elder Howes to have some experience before he is moved back to ASL. Elder Howes is hard of hearing so he has hearing aids to help, but even then his hearing is not perfect. He mostly reads lips, but his preferred way to speak is in ASL. I took 2 years of ASL in high school so I am using as much signing as I can, and Elder Howes is teaching me more. 

The White Plains Ward is huge, there are about 900 members in our ward with about 300 active members. We are covering the west half the ward. We were also going to cover a YSA ward, but President changed his mind. I met Elder Howes at the Temple visitor center, we had lunch with the mission president, and we went off to our new area. The first 2 days were pretty crazy. White-washing an area has its Pros and Cons. The 2nd day after being together with Elder Howes, we had a missionary training for new missionaries. The crazy thing about this transfer and the next transfer is the mission is receiving over 20 sisters. The Elders are now outnumbered in our mission. There are multiple zones in our mission that are just sisters. 

My mom asked me the question, what do you do for dinner when you don`t have a dinner appointment? Answer: Leftovers! Most of the time members will give us leftovers from dinner we had with them, but if we don't have a member dinner or leftovers, we find a Chick-fil-a, or a Cafe Rio, or we make our own meals, which mostly consists of crock-pot pot stuff with microwavable vegetables. 

Since the ward split up into two areas, the Elders in the other area have been updating us on the members and investigators we received in our area. They told us about an appointment they had set up in our area, with a family that just moved in from Northern Maryland, and the husband was baptized about a year ago. We go to the appointment, and the family they were talking about was a family that was in my first area!  I was like, Julio! It was so good to see their family again, and I'm so excited they are in our ward! Julio, us, and some other members in my first area would often go trail riding together. Good times. 

Church was awesome! I loved standing near that entrance to the chapel and introducing myself to everyone as they walked in. This is my first time being in a ward that's shared by other missionaries. Our Ward Mission Later is incredible!  He is the most excited man I've ever seen about missionary work. The White Plains Ward has a lot of potential, probably because half the ward is part member families. It should be a great couple of months here! I'm assuming I'll be here until February. 

WORK HARD! PLAY HARD! PRAY HARD! 

Elder Dallin McKay Spurgeon 

Monday, October 8th 2018

Hello everyone!

General Conference was just the best. So far on my mission, there has been a lot of changes and clarification in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It will be something I will always remember.  It has been a regular good old week of missionary work here in Southern Maryland. We found a pink toilet, we went to a high school football game, we got a call from my mission President telling us that I am going to be transferred. He asked me to go to the White Plains area and also cover the Waldorf YSA ward and train a new ASL missionary. My companion right now is going to stay in the Calvert area and he will also be training another ASL missionary!  ASL missionaries are on a different program than the English missionaries so they come in part way through the transfer. I'm not sure what my new address is, but I will let you know ASAP. By next week's email, I will be in a different area with a different companion, so until then God be with you. 

Oh yeah! one year down, one year to go! That is really weird to think, holy snap, this is so weird, what the heck, oh boy! Well then, I love you guys so much it has been a great year and the next year is going to be even better!

Exciting times!!!

Elder Dallin McKay Spurgeon 

Monday, October 1st 2018

Hello All Creatures of our God and King!

We went to D.C this week with a recent convert named Ian! He has lived here his whole life so he knew his way around. It is always so fun going to the city because we add to the diversity. Members will always come up to you and say hi, which is super fun. It was a little rainy and about 65 degrees out when we went, which is a contrast to what it has been, but it was nice because there was nobody there. The line to see the Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, and all the other National Archives was only about 10 minutes long. We went to the Holocaust Museum which was super intense. The American History Museum had a lot of stuff about church history. It was funny to stand next to it while people walked by. They looked at us, then at the exhibit, then back at us, then back at the exhibit, and we were like, yeah, it's us, any questions?  

This week was also the Calvert county fair. We went one day. I love the fair so much. The food, the rides, the animals, the shows, the produce contest. It's everything you could ask for cram packed into one location! I usually never make any purchases at the fair, but I walked past a stand and something caught my eye. So, I purchased what would be my very first ever spray paint shirt. Picking out the design was a challenge, but my final decision was the classic dolphin love picture. My Companion was not very supportive of the picture I chose, he thought it was a picture meant to go on girl shirts. He wanted me to get a monster truck or something like that. 

TIME FOR THE MOST MINDBLOWING STORY!

Last October I entered into the MTC. A couple weeks into the MTC I found a little green magnet on the ground, and I thought how fun would it be to hide this magnet somewhere around the MTC and when my friends or family are in the MTC I can tell them where it is and then they can find it. I ended up hiding it on the underneath part of a fire hydrant. I was telling this to some members and my companion sitting next to me was like, WAIT!!!, The fire hydrant outside of Building T3, and I was like yes! HE FOUND THE MAGNET!!!!! 11 Months after I hid the magnet, he found it! He told me he was just walking and for some reason decided to stick his hand under the fire hydrant and he found it!! He put it back and thought nothing of it. Me and him, and the members were all freaking out. It was the craziest thing! Anybody about to enter the MTC, feel free to visit my magnet, but please keep it where it is. 

Love you all!

Elder Dallin McKay Spurgeon