MMM: "Matt's Mission Memos"

July 5, 2010

Not much happening here in Battle Moutain.  4th of July was cool.  Not much work done but we went to a bbq and then we went and saw the grand Battle Mountain fireworks show.  It was kinda boring.  I got parts of it on video.

The day before, we had a baptism.  It was a 9 year-old kid whose parents wanted him to be baptized.  He is also autistic and it was my opinion that he didn't need to be baptized, but the family wanted it, so it was done.  Yay.  It was kind of a fiasco because we were debating whether he was going to be baptized or not until the day of.  It kinda just happened and it felt really good.  The spirit was there and it told me that it was ok that it happened the way it did.  I felt afterwards that he could have not been baptized and it would have still been ok.  Interesting situation though.  The family is less-active so maybe this will push them to go back to church.  We are going to start working with the family.

Friday, we went to Reno to see our new mission president.  It was fun.  He is pretty nice.  I wanted to stop by some of my investigators, but we didn't have time and the people who drove us wanted to do other things too.  I was kinda irritated, but I shut up and we ended up having a pretty good time there.

District Meetings are always fun with just me and my companion.  It is weird preparing for it and then just teaching my companion.  whatever.

I wish I could be with everybody back home right now.  It sounds like fun.

Tami, I missed fireworks last year.  We had to be in by 6:00 and Dayton didn't have a show that we could watch from our balcony.  This year they didn't say anything about being in early, so we stayed out and watched the fireworks.  It wasn't too exciting.  We bought some bottle rockets and shot them off and that was fun though.  Roman candles too.

Well that's about it for my exciting life in Battle Mountain.  Until next week on "Matt's Mission Memo's"

-Elder Blakemore

July 12, 2010

Well, we got our transfer calls and we are both staying.  We were both pretty excited.  Sometimes it drives me crazy and sometimes it's ok.  It mostly drives me crazy when we go out of town and have to come back.  It's kinda depressing coming back into town, but its ok once we've been in town for a day or 2.

We went to the Battle Mountain Rodeo.  It was pretty fun.  It takes a lot of guts to get on those bulls.  One guy got trampled and he was dragged off the field.  It looked like his leg was smashed into oblivion.  He was conscious, but he was hurt pretty badly.  It was really scary.

Hopefully we are getting some new investigators this week.  All of the ones we have now are aggravating me.  

None of our investigators are progressing or want to keep commitments.  It sucks.  I read the Book of Mormon and see missionaries like Nephi and Lehi who convert 8000 lamanites because of their faith.  Maybe I'm here so that I can learn how to gain more faith.  Or maybe I'm here to learn what it was like for Mormon and Moroni to preach and still be faithful when none of their people would listen.  Who knows what I'm supposed to learn.  Who knew that a commitment as simple as, "Will you pray for a desire to quit smoking?" would be so hard to follow through on?  From a person that claims to read and pray all the time.  From a person that knows that the church is true.  From a person that was so excited to be baptized.  I understand what it is like to know that I need to keep a commandment and I absolutely do not want to keep it at the time.  I also know that there is no other way to gain eternal life than to keep ALL the commandments of God.  So what do you do?  Pray for a desire.  What happens when you don't even want to do that?  I have no idea.  It reminds me of an adjective often used in the Book of Mormon called hard-hearted.  Everybody suffers from a lack of desire to keep some of God's commandments.  Family, please don't harden your heart and please be willing to work it out with the Lord.  Don't be ridiculous like my investigator.  I'm glad God has the patience to give us all second and third and hundredth chances.  I guess to be like he is and have the charity that he has, he has to expand my patience and expand my love for people.  Family, please keep God's commandments and please pray for the desire to work through the weaknesses of character that each of us have.  God helps us through every step of the process.  Whatever the problem is, give it to the Lord and he will give you a solution.  Follow through on the solution he gives with faith in him and his promises.

Well, I'm kinda out of time.  Battle Mountain is going to receive the crack-down from Elder Blakemore.  I'm happy that I have P-day to hear from the people that I love.  It gives me enough strength to keep going.  I love you all.

CHEERS!