WEEK #35 - Castle Rock Zone

Hey everyone! Happy Easter yesterday! Hope you all ate lots of candy.
On Monday, we went and hiked Castlewood Canyon State Park with Elder J. Smith and Elder Rumsey from Elizabeth. It was way fun. We went into the park from a different entrance this time and then hiked all the way back to the dam. It was a pretty nice day and was about 70 degrees and sunny. We kept hiking past the dam and saw a couple of wind-eroded caves that were decently big. When we got to the caves, we looked at our watch and realized that we were going to be late to dinner! So we literally ran the 3 miles back to the car wearing boots and jeans. Elder Tibbitts was looking a little dehydrated and so we got him some water that was in the truck. We made it to dinner about 15 minutes late, but they weren't mad about it. We then went to the Farnsworth's and had a good time teaching their little kids. Our last appointment was with the Etchells and we had a great lesson. They look forward to having us over, especially now that they have a daughter serving a mission in Norway. It was a great night.


On Tuesday, we had a Specialized Training, where the Assistants and President Rehm came up to Castle Rock and taught the zone. We were instructed further on working with the part-member families and unbaptized children. The Assistants instructed us on contacting referrals from members and from Church Headquarters in an effective way. It was a good training and Elder Tibbitts did a good job conducting the meeting. Also, the vehicle coordinators gave us all surprise vehicle inspections, and our truck was pretty muddy on the outside from Pday. If you get marked with a 'dirty' the vehicle coordinators park your car for a day as punishment. So we decided to park on Wednesday. Right after Specialized Training, we went on exchanges with the Spanish Elders. I stayed in the Plum Creek Ward with Elder Cluff and Elder Tibbitts went with Elder Taylor. We did a couple of stop-bys and no one answered their doors. So we then went and visited a couple more people. Same result. We had dinner with the Pierce family and then had good lessons with the Graves and Grat families. We were walking to the Grat house when a car saw us, slowed down, stopped, rolled down the window and yelled "HEY MORMONS, COME HERE!" I was thinking oh great, here we go. So I said "Nah we're good." But then I heard Bishop Rolfson's voice say, "No, actually, come here haha." So we went over to the car and there was Bishop and Brother Young laughing. They said they couldn't resist and then talked to us for a little bit. It was a fun night.
On Wednesday, we woke up to heavy snow falling. We went and shoveled the driveway for the family we live with, the Kumpfs, and then  shoveled another driveway before we called it quits for then. The snow was coming down faster than we could shovel it! We decided that it was best to have all the missionaries park their cars and not drive in the blizzard. So Elder Cluff and I went and watched some of the old church videos that we have while it just kept dumping snow.

As we were calling people to set things up doing extra studies, we got a call from a Brother Rudd, who lives in Colorado Springs. He said that he was coming back from work in Denver, and that I-25 had complete shut down because of the snow. Many cars were sliding off the road and getting stuck. He said that all the hotel rooms were booked as well and that he had no way to get home. So he called us asking if we knew anyone in the ward who could house him for the night until the snow stopped. We talked with the Kumpf's and they were totally willing to help him out. He made it about 200 yards from the Kumpf's driveway and then got stuck in the middle of the road. He was driving a front wheel drive Hyundai and it kept getting high-centered on the snow. So we shoveled him out and he was able to plow through to about 50 yards from the driveway. So what we had to do was shovel a path wide enough and low enough all the way to the driveway so he could make it over there. It was a long process, but he was finally able to zoom in to the driveway. We were completely on house arrest for the rest of the day because it just kept coming down and coming down heavy. We couldn't exchange back because of the weather, so we ended up just watching a couple more church videos with Brother Rudd , studying some more, having dinner with the Kumpfs, and then staying another night. The good 'ol Colorado blizzard ended up giving us about two feet of snow in one day.
On Thursday, the roads were clearing up and Brother Rudd was able to get out and make it home to the Springs. We were able to make it over to the Spanish apartment and exchange back in the morning as well. We met with Sister Snow, the Primary President, and discussed the unbaptized children over 8. We got some good insight on the families and identified the best fellowship family to help them as well. We were supposed to have interviews with President Rehm starting at 10:00am, but with the weather, they were pushed back to start at 1:30pm even he was a little late with the traffic coming up here from the Springs. Our interviews were scheduled for 4:00 and 4:15. The interview went really well and we had a good talk. President thanked me for my leadership and thought that I was doing pretty well overall. It was a good compliment. We finished interviews and then headed over to the Young's for dinner. Brother Young apologized for heckling us earlier, but we just laughed about it.

We finished the night with great lessons at the Bjorks and the Robinsons.
On Friday, we went to district meeting and had an Easter-themed district meeting. The lesson was about finding people to teach and so, for an object lesson, Elder Jolley, the district leader, went and hid Easter eggs around the church. So we went on a little Easter egg hunt and that was pretty awesome. We then went to Bonneventure and tried to understand what all the crazy people were trying to say to us. We didn't get to play bingo this time, which was a real bummer. We went and saw the Olers at 5 and had a great lesson there. Then, we drove out to Sedalia to have a lesson with Kelli at Sister Alvarez's house. She lives underneath the Conoco gas station in Sedalia and so we were able to cram into the living space there and have some authentic home-made enchiladas. It was a great lesson and it's so exciting to see Sister Alvarez, who was recently less active, get excited about going to the temple again. We will probably get to go with her in April.
On Saturday, it was snowing again, but it wasn't sticking to the roads. We were able to meet with the Relief Society President and discuss the part-member families. We prayerfully identified one family who would be most receptive to having the missionary lessons and also identified an active member or family of the ward who would serve as good fellowship for that family. It was a great meeting and great discussion. We are so blessed to have a great ward that is focused on missionary work. We also worked on our Easter Sunday talks and added stuff to make our talks better. We didn't have any evening appointments either because of women's conference.
On Sunday, the Kumpfs made us German pancakes for breakfast and they were pretty awesome. Later, we went over to the Secrist home for lunch and a lesson.

Easter brunch

Following that, we met with Brother Kendall to coordinate for a little bit. We showed up to church and had our talks all ready. We invited all of our investigators to come and hear us speak, and Noe actually got to make it! Because we were up on the stand, he sat with Brother Kendall and his wife. Elder Tibbitts was first and his talk was on Faith and Hope from the Resurrection. He did a really great job. My talk was: He is Risen, a testimony we bear each day by how we live our lives. The final speaker was Brother Kumpf and he gave a great talk. Afterwards, we got a lot of compliments from the members and stuff. We talked to Noe and he said that we did a good job and that he liked it. He had to leave right after sacrament meeting, but we invited him to watch General Conference with us next week. He said that he would be interested in watching it! We went and gave a less active member a blessing after that because he has back surgery coming up, so we went with the Elders Quorum President and all to help him out. We had a good rest of the day at church and had dinner with the Smiths. Later, we had a great lesson on temples with the Hess family and then met with Bishop Rolfson and his family to coordinate and to have a lesson. It was a great Easter and I wore the awesome Easter egg socks I got from home all day.
Love you all and have a great week. Remember to prepare well for General Conference!!

Love, Elder LaRose

Kyler.larose@myldsmail.net

CURRENT ADDRESS:
4438 Buena Vista Ct.
Castle Rock, CO 80109


MISSION OFFICE ADDRESS:
4090 Center Park Drive Ste 4
Colorado Springs, CO 80916

WEEK #34 - Castle Rock Zone

WEEK #34

Hey everyone! It's been a great week!
On Monday, we went to a park and played football again. It was fun because Elder Tu'ifua played rugby in high school in Tonga so he was having a good time. We played that for most of our pday and then went and had dinner. We also had another lesson with Kelli at Sister Howland's house and that went really well.
On Tuesday, we went and shoveled horse poop out of the stalls again, but this time the hay triggered my allergies. Usually I do pretty well over there but I kept sneezing and my nose was running. So for the most part, I just sat outside the barn and got some fresh air. The sneezing and stuff faded away pretty soon after we left and so I popped an allergy pill and we were all good. I just have to remember to take some with me next week. After that we went and got lunch and went to an appointment that we had set with a potential investigator. We were going to meet at the church building and have a lesson there, but after a while, he didn't even show up. :( We then drove to Elizabeth, Colorado and exchanged with them. I stayed in Plum Creek with Elder J Smith who has only been out for about a week. The exchange went awesome and we taught a lot of lessons that night. We even went over to a part-member home and gave the nonmember wife a blessing. That was really neat. Hopefully we can continue to work with her:)
On Wednesday, after our studies, I was able to take Elder J Smith tracting for the first time. So we hit up the Pines apartments and actually had an all around experience. We met one guy who was somewhat promising and said to come back on weekends, we met a mother, Renae, who invited us back on Friday, and then we met a crazy lady who was telling us all about how dumb we are for being part of a church. She said weird stuff like "We are all the same thing just vibrating at different frequencies! You, me, this door, are all the same!" She tried to combat our help by saying "I am plugged into the universe!" Yeah. It was pretty weird but we had a good laugh about it afterwards. Next, we went to Task Force and helped out all the people there. We met back up there and exchanged back. Dinner was with the Olers and they actually know Elder Tibbitts and his family pretty well so they were excited to have him over. We then met with the MacGills and the Wassons to wrap up the night. The lessons went well and I have been using the cup visual that Mom sent to me:)
On Thursday, we had to hit up the computers to track everything that the stake does in preparation for our stake meeting. It was St. Patrick's Day and so Elder Tibbitts and I put on everything green and then took pictures of everything green that we came across that day. It was pretty funny. 

Later that day, we met with Brother Jones, the High Councilor over missionary work in the Parker South stake. He always gives us ice cream when we meet and is pretty fun to work with. We went to dinner at Cafe Rio and had a tasty meal there. We then met with Noe after that and had a good discussion on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We talked about how he felt at the baptism he attended and asked if that is something that he would want for his own life. He knows that we perform baptism correctly but he said that he didn't want to "step on his own baptism" thinking that he would have to disregard everything good about his baptism. We talked to him about how it's there to add to his faith and that we don't want to take away from the life that his previous baptism has led him to live. We ended on a good note but we are hoping for the best with him.
On Friday, we got snow dumped on us and spent the morning shoveling driveways. We headed to district meeting and had a good lesson. Afterwards, we had a mini snowball fight and so I hopped in the truck and drove over to some snow and had Elder Tibbitts pack a couple snowballs. We then sped past the other missionaries and unloaded on them. We did the drive by shooting a couple of times and Elder Tu'ifua was able to sneak one back at us through the window haha. It was great. Then, we went to Bonneventure and played bingo with the memory care unit. And I'll tell you, this was no ordinary bingo match. There were two old ladies who both didn't know what they were talking about to get into a cat fight. One of them was just saying random stuff and somehow, the other was taking offense to the gibberish and was cussing out the first lady. Elder Tibbitts and I were unsure what to do and luckily some of the other workers just separated them. We then went out to Sedalia for our dinner and evening lessons we went to the Wells for dinner and then to the Pettingills for a lesson. We saw some elk about 300 yards from the Pettingills house with one small bulk with them. I got a picture of them, but it was getting dark.
On Saturday, we went and stopped by Renae in the afternoon and she let us in! We taught her about the Plan of Salvation and she was pretty interested! So we set up a return appointment with her and are looking forward to teaching her more! New investigator! We had dinner with the Nielsens and had 'hog dogs' which is a hotdog bun with a hotdog, pulled pork, and barbecue sauce and it was great. We met with Brother and Sister Rolfson that night and had a good time with all the little kids there.
On Sunday, we woke up early to go to Parker for a missionary correlation meeting with the Parker South stake. President Rehm was there as well and we were able to better coordinate the missionary efforts between the stake and the mission. After that, we were going to do the same thing with the Castle Rock Stake, but that meeting was cancelled. So we had just enough time to drive home and grab a snack before we went to Ward Council. After that meeting, we had church! It went pretty well and we had some people we didn't know show up. For dinner, we went back out to Sedalia again and had a good time out there. Maybe someday I will live out there, it's beautiful.

Thanks for all the support and have a great week!

Love, Elder LaRose

Kyler.larose@myldsmail.net

CURRENT ADDRESS:
4438 Buena Vista Ct.
Castle Rock, CO 80109


MISSION OFFICE ADDRESS:
4090 Center Park Drive Ste 4
Colorado Springs, CO 80916

WEEK #33 - Castle Rock Zone, NEW COMPANION

WEEK #33

Hey everyone! It's been an awesome week!
On Monday, we went over to a members house and had a barbecue. All the other missionaries were invited and so that was fun. After that, we all went and played football. We did a bunch of trick plays and I caught a bunch of passes and made some interceptions. Afterwards I was super sore. We had a fun dinner and lesson with the Greenhalgh and the Pappenfuss families, where Elder Mogle played the ukulele for the last time in the ward.
On Tuesday, we woke up and loaded all of Elder Mogle's stuff into the truck and headed down to the Springs. We went to the stake center down there and I got to see a bunch of different people. I got to see Elder Tallman, Elder Hawkins, Elder Tu'ifua and Elder Schilling!

There were some confusions with all of the travel arrangements and so it took forever for everyone to get ready to go. I met Elder Tibbitts and helped him get all of his luggage into the truck. He seems like a pretty funny guy!



Elder Tibbitts and I

We had a good drive back up to Castle Rock and there were 2 other mission vehicles that were following me because they had no idea where they were going.  We had dinner with the Flores family and that was good. After that, we met with the Arochos and had a great lesson about the Book of Mormon. We are seeing progress with them and are hoping to help them back to church.
On Wednesday, we got to go to Task Force and it is always fun there. I bought a pretty awesome 4th of July tie for dead cheap there too. I got to see Elder Tu'ifua again because he is now in my zone and actually in the same district as me! It's great to see a familiar face and everything:) That night, we had a lesson with Noe and taught him about the Plan of Salvation. He has been taking the lessons more out of interest in what we believe than out of a desire to grow spiritually. This lesson got him thinking though, he really liked the concept of the whole plan and we are beginning to see growth with him. The lesson went longer than we had thought and so we had to cut dinner with the Ward Mission Leader, Brother Kendall, a little short. We had another good lesson with the Nielsens and then were hoping to make it to bishop's house to meet with Clint. Clint told bishop that he was stuck in traffic so we were forced to cancel that appointment.
On Thursday, we met with Kelli at the library and had another good lesson. It is pretty neat to be there for her and to help her build her testimony back up. We did some weekly planning after that and then drove to Sedalia to meet Brother Polson. We got a media referral a couple of days earlier and saw that the address was about 50 miles from Castle Rock, but still in our area. Brother Polson offered to drive us out there to go and contact that referral. So we hopped in his car and made the long trip through the mountains. We got down to the South Platte River and followed that a little ways to a cluster of cabins on the riverside. It was beautiful down there!

The referral out in the boonies

We finally found the cabin and knocked on the door. Nobody was home, but we left the bible that they had requested on the doorstep. We decided to leave a Book of Mormon as well, with our phone number and a brief testimony written on a pass along card. Hopefully they come across those books and start to read the Book of Mormon too:) as we were leaving the cabin, this huge Great Dane and a puppy Dane, appeared from nowhere around this corner. It scared the poop out of Elder Tibbitts and the first reaction he had was to put up his hands and say "... Listen!....." I was too busy laughing to be scared and the dogs turned out to be friendly anyway:) It was pretty funny though. So we made the drive back and then headed back into Castle Rock. We decided to look at our potential investigator form while we had some free time and there were a couple of people there that said they might be interested in meeting with us. We decided to call the phone numbers to see how many of them had given us fake numbers. Turns out that not a lot of people did! We were able to set up 2 appointments from the first 3 phone calls we made! That was super awesome. We had dinner with the Bishop's family and then went over to meet with Brother Gann. It was an awesome day:)
On Friday, Elder Tibbitts decided to experiment with his breakfast. You know the water flavor enhancer Mio? Yeah he put that in his eggs. And then wrapped it in a burrito. And then ate it. And then suffered. Haha I think he thought it would have the same effect as bacon and syrup, but turns out it didn't.

eggs and mio

We then went to district meeting and had a good time there. We got another media referral for the Carters so we tried to make contact with them and they weren't home. We had dinner with the Farnsworths and they are pretty awesome. It was a pretty good night.
On Saturday, we were asked to go and give a blessing to a member of the sister's ward. We were able to help her with that and she was really grateful for us. She even took us to Applebee's for lunch! It was nice to get to know her and nice of her to take us out. So the Canyon Ridge ward was having a baptism that afternoon, so we decided to shoot Noe a text and see what he was doing. We invited him to the baptism and he said sure! It was a great experience for him and he got to see how baptism takes place! Bishop Rolfson was there at the baptism too and he asked Noe what he thought. Noe said that he thought that we followed the word more exactly and did baptism correctly! That was awesome! The spirit that is at a baptism is truly powerful. That spirit definitely testified of the truthfulness of what he was witnessing. After the baptism, we went and tried to contact the Carters again. We were able to meet Katrina Carter and she said that she and her husband had just moved in and would love to have us over to teach them! That was so awesome and we are excited to be meeting with them soon. For dinner, we went to the Keilers and had bagel pizzas:) they were pretty good and are something that I want to try to make sometime haha:)
On Sunday, we thought we had switched out clocks for daylong savings time, and so when we woke up at 6:30, I looked at the clock and it said 5:30. So I went back to bed for another hour. Come to find out that the clock I looked at doesn't automatically change to daylight savings time and so I actually slept in an extra hour! I felt pretty bad about that haha. We met with Brother Kendal and the Ward Missionaries to coordinate and then went to church after that. Church was really good and we got to learn a lot:) For dinner, we went to the Crabtree home and had some good laughs. We then went to the  Snows and he gave us some people to go and see as well as some ties of his:) I now have so many ties, it's pretty crazy:) We finished the night by meeting with Bishop Rolfson to coordinate our missionary efforts with the ward.
This week was a wonderful week and we are so blessed to have been part of the miracles we have witnesses this week. I love you all and keep in touch!

Elder LaRose

Kyler.larose@myldsmail.net

CURRENT ADDRESS:
4438 Buena Vista Ct.
Castle Rock, CO 80109


MISSION OFFICE ADDRESS:
4090 Center Park Drive Ste 4
Colorado Springs, CO 80916

WEEK #32 - Castle Rock Zone

WEEK #32

Hey everyone! This week went by really quick! And Happy Birthday to Keldon this past week!!!
On Monday, we went over to one of the member homes in Castle Rock and had lunch there. We went down to their basement and played ping pong and foosball. We started a ping pong tournament and I went undefeated:) yep, putting in the practice after institute really payed off:) that night we met with our investigator Kelli at the relief society president's house and had a fun lesson on the 10 commandments. We used all the hand signals to help everyone out haha.
On Tuesday, we went to the Horsepower ranch to shovel more poop out of the stalls. They seemed especially stinky this time. It was a good day though. because It's the end of the month, we were busy at the computers doing zone and stake paperwork.

stats

For example, we have to collect information about how many meetings the missionaries have had with their ward mission leader and other leadership people, we also have to collect and figure out how many miles each of the companionships drove for the month, and how many of those miles are reimbursed for different reasons. It's a little frustrating because we want to get it all done fast, but some missionaries don't answer to texts or calls very well. We had dinner with the Snow family and I'm gonna say this again, but they are super chill and funny and we love going over.
On Wednesday, it was Keldon's birthday and that's awesome;) We also woke up early to drive to the Springs for the March Mission Leadership Council. It was good to see everyone again and to talk with Elder Tallman and Elder Clancy. The meeting was really long, but we had good training. President Rehm instructed us about the importance of using the Book of Mormon when we teach. The Book of Mormon is so essential to gaining a pure and strong testimony. He also gave specific counsel to our zone, and emailed us a document that has some ideas of how to help the missionary work move forward in the Castle Rock and Parker South stakes. It talked about how everyone has people to look for. Either The Lord will lead them to us or He will lead us to them. Hopefully we can all take that to heart and let it work in our own areas. We drove back and made it in time for dinner with the Karren family and then had a good lesson with the Pierce family after that. On Thursday, we were going to meet with Kelli in the morning, but she called in saying that she had bronchitis, and it sure sounded like she did. In the afternoon, we got a call from Elder Searing, who is the man over Just Serve and the service projects that us missionaries go to each week. That's another responsibility that we have is to make sure that we are looking for opportunities to use Just Serve and to sign missionaries up for projects later on in the future. After the meeting, we met with the Sister Training Leaders in Parker to discuss what we learned in MLCs and to formulate a game plan for Zone Training. When that was done, we drove back and met with Noe Hernandez again! He was super welcoming and we had a good talk. From what I can tell, he just likes us coming over to talk. But if we keep meeting with him and bringing the spirit with us, then maybe he will feel the desire to learn more. Before we left, we briefly introduced the Plan of Happiness and he said that he was curious about what we had to say about  where we came from, why we are here, and where we are going after we die. So hopefully he will find our message to be true:). Dinner was dropped off to us and we had some good pasta to fill our bellies.
On Friday, we had our Zone Training! We talked about the importance of the Book of Mormon and how we can effectively use it in our teaching. We did an activity where everyone wrote down 2 questions of the soul and put them in a bowl. We drew the questions out of the hat and everyone needed to find the answer to the questions in the Book of Mormon only! It was cool to see because every single question of the soul was and can be answered in the Book of Mormon. We also discussed the importance of planning and how much more effective your day is rather than busy. Being effective is like using a rifle to hunt elk. If you use your scope and make sure your target is clear, then you can make the kill shot. Using a shotgun at long distance to kill an elk is not going to be effective at achieving your goal, but it might destroy the sagebrush 10 feet in front of you. It was a good training and we felt really good about what we conveyed to the the zone. After Zone Training, we went to Bonneventure, but no one was out and about so we went home a little earlier. We met with the Hess family and after our lesson with them, we took their son, David, with us to our next lesson with Brother Dazey. For dinner, Elder Mogle and I were on our own. Elder Mogle went to Chipotle, but I wasn't feelin it so I waited for him to go through the line. Well, it turns out that somebody, we don't know who, paid for his meal! That was pretty cool. For me, we went to Qudoba and I was expecting to go through and get my own stuff, but another member ended up paying for my meal too! So Elder Mogle and I got our meals taken care of at 2 different places! What a blessing it was to us. After dinner, we went to the MacGills and they are a little crazy which makes for some good laughs. For example, Sister MacGill said, for some weird reason, "everything in this house is from a garage sale!" And then Brother MacGill says after a pause, ".... Well I'm not!" It was pretty funny:) we ended the night with a quick lesson at the Glancy home. Some of the kids were sick and so we made sure they got time to sleep. That night, President Rehm called us and told Elder Mogle that he would be getting transferred! We found out that he is going to be going to Pueblo to train a new missionary in a new area! He is really sad to leave, but is excited for the next adventure in Pueblo.
On Saturday, all of the missionaries, bishops, and ward mission leaders of the Castle Rock stake met at President Lindsey's house for breakfast and a meeting. The meeting went well and there were a bunch of spiritual experiences shared. Besides the one about someone's scoutmaster pooping on the trail while they were hiking as little scouts. Yeah. That one threw me off. Afterwards, we went to go see a baptism of one of the 8 year olds in our ward. That was pretty fun:). We met with Ammon Gatrell right before dinner and had a good lesson. Dinner was with the Bays and Brother Gann and they are 2 of my favorite families. We had homemade smoked ribs which were heavenly:) we then went to the Shifflet home and then the Bishop's home after that.
On Sunday, we went to PEC before church and had a good discussion on how to help the missionary work. Testimony meeting went well and Elder Mogle bore a good testimony for his last Sunday in the ward. For 2nd hour, we went and helped Bishop Rolfson introduce the primary theme for the month to the junior and senior primaries:) the theme was listening to the prophets and so bishop had Elder Mogle and I come in and play some primary songs on the ukulele while wearing grass skirts and Hawaiian shirts:) the kids loved it and bishop thought it was great too:) it was a great time.

After church, we went and had dinner at the Gatrell home. We had another lesson with Kelli at Sister Howland's home and then wrapped up the night with our coordination meeting with Brother Kendall. It was a good night! I'm going to miss Elder Mogle and hopefully I get a companion just as great:)
Love you all and have a great week!
Elder LaRose

Kyler.larose@myldsmail.net

CURRENT ADDRESS:
4438 Buena Vista Ct.
Castle Rock, CO 80109


MISSION OFFICE ADDRESS:
4090 Center Park Drive Ste 4
Colorado Springs, CO 80916