Singing in the Rain/Snow! -January 25th, 2016

What's up everyone! 

Another great week! This week we were all over the place! First we started off by having our P-day on Tuesday because of MLK day so that was a little weird for us but I hope y'all enjoyed the break and spending time together! 

After our Tuesday P-day we had interviews over in Birmingham with President Hanks on Wednesday which were great. He's such a great President, spiritual giant, and huge role model (figuratively, and literally haha) to all of his missionaries. It's been a real blessing to be able to have him as my mission President for the first half of my mission. 

Along with interviews, on Wednesday we also had the opportunity to watch a Missionary broadcast from a few of the Leaders of our Church. It was a great broadcast and I learned quite a bit about how to best accomplish the work of the Lord in our area. 

The rest of the week was spent teaching, finding and trying our hardest to progress the work in our area. And guess what! It actually snowed! It snowed in Alabama! haha it was a month late but it was still pretty cool! Thursday, Friday, and Saturday were all very cold and rainy days and on Friday it actually ended up getting cold enough to snow. Granted it wasn't a lot but it was still snow! 

Which explains the subject of this letter and connects it to the picture I attached! Haha some of you might not know about the play "Singing in the rain" but the picture is of me trying to do my best impression of the play while we were tracting in the rain/snow haha:) Good thing nobody drives while it's snowing in Alabama or this picture would have been a lot harder to get... 

Anyways, I love all of you and I hope y'all have a great week! 

Sincerely,

Elder Honn

"Those who know do, those who understand, teach." -January 19th, 2016

Hey everyone! How y'all doing?

This past week was really good! It felt pretty long but we were able to stay busy the whole time so that was awesome.

We've been really blessed this transfer to be able to teach quite a lot. Which has been amazing and I've learned a lot from it. Hence the title of this letter. This week we definitely accomplished our responsibility as missionaries to teach!

We had a couple experiences teaching this week where the spirit was just so strong that I'll share.

The first was with an investigator named Alyssa. We brought the Sisters with us to help fellowship her and make her feel more comfortable and it went really well! The Sisters connected so well with her that we were able to have a really good time together. And when the lesson came (we actually did the lesson in a fast food restaurant haha) the spirit was so strong. The Sisters are very good teachers and missionaries and did a really good job bringing the spirit into the lesson even when we were in a fast food restaurant. It was really perfect too because as soon as they started teaching, the whole restaurant kind of got quiet and peaceful, it was really cool.

The second experience was with another investigator named David, who the Sisters have been teaching. Elder Shurtz and I took a member with us and the spirit was so strong the whole time we were in his home. Everything we taught, David was just loving and eating it up. David's story is very amazing and he has made leaps and bounds of progress in coming closer to Christ in the past couple of years. Anyways, while we were teaching we asked the member to share his testimony and conversion story and it was very touching. It went along perfectly with the lesson and even had a lot of similarities to David's story. So at this point, the spirit was just so strong. Elder Shurtz and I both recognized it and invited David to pray and ask his Father in Heaven if these things were true and if he should be baptized. He agreed and said a beautiful prayer. After the prayer we all took some time to listen to the prompting of the Holy Ghost and then we extended the invitation of baptism to David and he agreed. He said he still isn't sure on an exact date but that it will be soon! Such an amazing experience!

I'm really loving Talladega and all the people here. This past week was really great and I'm really excited for all this week has to hold! 

And I hope you all have a great week as well! 

Love, 

Elder Honn 

Steadfast in Christ! 

Pic: Service for an investigator! We replaced all of her wooden fence pole. They had become rotten in the ground and about two feet had broken off into the ground so we had to dig them up, pull them out, and replace them. This wouldn't have been too bad normally except for the fact that we were dealing with Alabama red clay which is basically cement when its dry. So with this piece in particular, we had to douse the ground in hot water to even be able to wiggle it. And I just ended up getting on the ground and using every ounce of muscle in my body to pull this out of the ground. It took quite a while and became personal so when I actually got it out, I was pretty happy:) 

Coming Closer to Christ Every Day -January 11th, 2016

Hey! I hope yall had a good week! 

This week was good! Elder Shurtz and I are getting a long really well and have been able to do some good work. I've said this before but he's a really good missionary! He has so much personal motivation with everything in life and is also a very good teacher. So put those together and you get a very solid missionary that I'm very happy I have the opportunity to serve with and learn from. 

Talladega is doing very well as well. We are still doing a lot of less active finding which has been really good. We've had some amazing experiences from it and have seen some success! 

Other than that, it's just been a regular week!  We had Zone training this week which was good and after zone training we had a pretty amazing experience that I'll share real quick! 

But before I do, i want to explain a thing we do in the great ABM. In this mission we have this thing called Emmaus experiences. If any of you know the story of Emmaus you will probably understand and if you don't then I invite you to open up the scriptures and learn for yourself. The story is in Luke 24:) But basically an Emmaus experience is when we realize and notice a time when Christ was walking with you. So in this mission we always try to notice these experiences in our lives and share them with other missionaries regularly in meetings.

Anyways, we had just gotten some food after the meeting and decided to do some store contacting. We walk into this store and instantly a worker starts talking to us. We end up talking to this guy for like half an hour and during this time he expresses how he has really been wanting to come closer to Christ and has been trying to find a way to turn his life around for a while. He said that when he saw us come in the store it was like a sign from God that he was doing the right thing. As he went on to tell us about his life it was amazing to hear all the things he had gone through and how he developed this desire to be closer to Christ and live a better life. And at the end of our conversation, there was a little bit of silence and he just started smiling and asked us if we were even real. At first we didn't understand and said of course we were real and he responded with saying that we couldn't be real and that we had to be angels because of how much he needed us at that time. Amazing! 

Sadly, he didn't live in our area so we gave his info to the other Elders for them to teach him and hopefully they will also be playing basketball with him today! That was such an awesome Emmaus experience for me and I was so grateful for the blessing that heavenly father gave us of connecting our paths and letting us help this awesome guy. 

So yeah, that was one really cool experience we had this week that I thought I'd share with y'all. 

And along with it I'd like to extend the invitation to everyone to try to notice those Emmaus experiences in your own life and notice when Christ was walking with you. I know that if you do, it will strengthen our testimony even more and that you relationship with Christ will become so much more personal. 

I love you guys, and hope you all have an amazing week! 

Love, 

Elder Honn 

Steadfast in Christ! 

The Best Way to Spend New Years Eve -January 5th, 2016

Hey everyone!

I hope y'all had a great week and Happy New Years! I hope everyone had a fun night and was able to stay safe.

My New Years Eve was amazing. We had a baptism on New Years Eve at midnight! It was such an awesome experience. His name is Brother Anderson and he has been investigating the Church for a while and finally decided to get baptized. He wanted it to be special and unusual so he chose to do it new years eve. And what better way to start fresh than being reborn on New Years Eve, right?

So the service started at 11:30 and he was baptized at 11:55. The spirit was so strong the entire time and he and his family were so happy and were just glowing the whole night.

I only taught him once so I had nothing to do with it and was transferred here when he already had a baptismal date but it was a huge privilege and blessing to be able to be part of such a beautiful thing. And to be able to witness someone taking such a major step in their life to come closer to Christ.

On Sunday, I was also able to stand in on the circle and confirm him a member of the Church and give him the blessing of the gift of the Holy Ghost. It was all just such an amazing experience and I'm so grateful for the opportunity I had to participate in it all.

This church is SO true. It's amazing how much happiness, joy, and comfort the gospel brings into peoples lives. It's such a beautiful thing.

Other than that, our week was really good. We've been able to stay busy and have had the blessing of being able to teach quite a few people! Talladega is awesome and I'm loving every minute spent in this area. There as so many good people here!

Anyways, sorry this email wasn't the longest but I don't have a whole lot of time today. I hope y'all have a great week though and I'll talk to you next Monday!

Love,

Elder Honn

Pics: Good ole Alabama sunsets! And Elder Shurtz and I rocking the 2016 glasses! haha that picture was taken at like 1:30 in the morning so we were deep in the durp zone!

I'm also waiting on someone to send me the pictures from the baptism so I'll get those to y'all as soon as i get them!:)

The Holidays! Plus Tornadoes... -December 28th, 2015

Hey guys!

How was everyone's Christmas? I hope you all had an amazing week:)

My whole week was awesome! The Christmas spirit was real and we were able to do some really good work; visiting/finding less actives, teaching lessons, and doing some awesome contacting. 

Christmas Eve and Christmas day were a whole lot of fun too. It didn't really feel like the regular Christmas I'm used to but it was still really great! Christmas Eve we spent most of the day with a couple less active families and finished the night having a lot of fun at a members. We had an awesome dinner, played some fun games, then re-enacted the Nativity with their whole family. The elders were wise men (of course) and had one part haha! It was a lot of fun though and we ended the night singing some Christmas songs. 

We stayed with some other elders that night and set up some lights and our humble Christmas tree on top of a trash can covered with a white blanket. I'll include a picture, it was pretty cute. 

In the morning we woke up and took turns opening all our presents and packages. It was a lot of fun and we had a really good morning. After that Elder Shurtz and I headed to a lunch appointment we had where I had the immense opportunity to talk to my amazing family;) That was awesome! It was so cool getting to spend time with y'all and get caught up. I love y'all! After that we went over to another members home and ate some amazing lasagna plus some fantastic dessert. 

The rest of the week was pretty busy too which was great. 

Oh yeah, something I forgot to tell y'all about Talladega. The Helen Keller School for the Blind and Deaf is actually right down the road from where we live! So there are quite a few deaf people and people that know sign language around this area. So I've actually been able to practice and try out the sign language I learned from school! It's pretty rusty but it's coming along! There's even a deaf foreign exchange student from Africa staying with a family in our Branch. He's sixteen and we've been hanging out with him a lot and I've been able to try to speak to him in my broken ASL haha! It's been really cool though! 

Haha oh yeah, like the title of this email says, this whole week has been filled with tornadoes down here in Alabama. The warnings started at the beginning of last week and are actually still going. There was an 80% chance at the beginning of last week and it's been continually going down. A couple hit some areas around Alabama but none have been super close to Talladega so we've been safe so far! On Christmas Eve the warnings were pretty high and we were staying with some other Elders so we setup our "safe room" in the laundry room downstairs (they didn't have a bath tub downstairs so we had to improvise). One of the Elders we were with, his name is Elder Svenson (from Canada), he's hilarious and the whole time we were getting everything ready he was running around screaming "The Tomato is coming!" I honestly don't know why I found this so funny but I was dying!

Anyways, we've got a busy week planned ahead of us and I hope y'all have an awesome week too! And a Happy New years!

I'll talk to y'all next week:)

Love, 

Elder Honn

Steadfast in Christ

Pretty bad picture quality.... but this was our Christmas setup!

Merry Christmas From Alabama!! -December 21st, 2015

Hey everyone! Merry Christmas week! 

This past week has been very busy! As my mini email a couple of days ago said, I have been transferred to Talladega, Alabama! Which is down south by Birmingham. So far it's been a lot of fun and we've already had some amazing experiences and seen success. 

My new companion is Elder Shurtz. He's from Orem, Utah and has about four months left in his mission. He's awesome and we actually have a lot in common. We're really close already and it's only been less than a week! This is going to be an awesome transfer.

So a little bit more about Talladega. We are actually in a branch and there are maybe 40 people that actually come to church. There are a lot of less active people but the members that do come are really awesome and supportive of the missionaries. 

Talladega is kind of a dying city. A while back it was a pretty popular city but over time it's just become pretty run down for random reasons. We cover quite a lot of country, a couple cities, and quite a lot of projects. So a pretty wide variety of people as you can imagine! 

I'll also have a lot more basketball to play here too, which is just amazing. Haha this morning three other elders and I woke up at 4:30 to drive down to Birmingham to play basketball with some other missionaries at a baptist church. I was thinking we'd just play around and stuff but this was the biggest church I have ever seen. The courts were the size of the YMCA courts and it was serious competition. Haha the six of us were the only white guys there too so it was pretty funny. But like I said the competition was real! There were multiple guys who played college, and even one who played in the NBA for a couple years. I'm pretty out of practice so it took me a while to adjust to the competition but it was so much fun!

Oh yeah, I have been absolutely loving the 12 days of Christmas y'all did for me. And can I just say how much I appreciated the Christmas tree from everyone. It was very touching and definitely made me feel loved. Y'all don't understand how much that meant to me. The presents have also been a lot of fun to open up every day, my family are just so creative!

I'll attach a picture of the tree in my new house:)

I'll also attach a picture of our mini house that we stay in here in Talladega. 

Also, as far as talking this Christmas goes, I'm pretty sure that google hangout will work. I'll just have to figure out how to set it up and make sure it works. I will do that and also find out exactly what time I will be on and I will let you guys know within the next couple days:) I cant wait! 

I'm still learning more and more each day and my testimony of this church continues to grow. I absolutely love this church with all my heart and I know it is the true church of Jesus Christ. And no matter how many people argue or disagree with me day to day, my testimony is unmovable. I love being able to serve the Lord all day everyday and I know that there is nothing else that would be better for me to be doing at this time in my life. 

I love each one of you so much and hope you all have an amazing Christmas week!

Love,

Elder Honn

haha a couple more pictures! This was at our branch Christmas party this last week. A kid won a package of stick on mustaches and wanted us to wear them with him. It was hilarious and we had a pretty good time with it:) I was German and Elder Shurtz was Hispanic! Haha the sisters even joined in on the fun too!

First Transfer! -December 18th, 2015

Hey guys!

I'm just shooting this quick email to y'all to let you know the news! I tried to get on yesterday but my email wouldn't work...

So I have been transferred to Talladega, Alabama! It's down by Birmingham and it's famous for the Talladega Speedway which is a huge racetrack. Pretty cool! So far it's been pretty different from Monte Sano which is what I was expecting. Our area is pretty big and we cover quite a few towns. I've already gotten to play some basketball in the ghetto too! We didn't get to play for long but it was pretty fun:)

Anyways, my new address is:

203 Mary street

Talladega, Alabama 35160

I'll let y'all know more about everything on Monday!

Love you guys,

Elder Honn