The Lord Prepares the Hearts of Men (But more often Women)

This week I had the opportunity to go and be with Elder Fritzche in Willard. He is a super cool dude, or elder, but mostly dude. Anyway we went and saw 2 investigators while I was with him. The first lady we saw (who's name I forgot, so her name will be Bertha), was Bertha. Elder Frizche hadn't seen her for a long time and and they hadn't covered much with her. We started off with the Restoration and by the time we got to prophets she went on a tangent about how God needs to call prophets, "that how he did it in the past, that is how he will do it now, I am so glad you guys talk about prophets, no one does out here, do you have a prophet?!" said Bertha. Yeah that was pretty cool. The other lady we saw (her name will be lilou) Lilou. Apparently in their last lesson they talked about the Plan of Salvation, Lilou said, "I don't believe in just a heaven and a hell, it doesn't make sense if god is a just god, he has 3 places for people to go depending on their works, that is how I believe so you can take it or just leave." So they took and, and Lilou wants to be baptized now.

Anyway, other than that things out here have been doing pretty well. Unfortunately we didn't have any one at church yesterday. But we do have a few new people that we are setting up good appointments with. One guy named Laton is going to be marrying a girl in the ward so he wants to take the lessons. He is 20 and he asks a lot of good questions. We have gone over the plan of salvation and the Gospel of Jesus Christ with him. We are not sure how long he plans on staying in town for so were not sure if we get to baptize him here or not, more on that later. We are also going to be meeting with one Ted Britz tonight, he has been coming to sacrament meeting a few times and now he has determined he wants to take the lessons. Hyrum Jessup and his wife are still doing well, we watched a talk by President Monson with him, they liked it a ton. Well that is about all for this week.

Man I never thought I would have so much interaction with the FLDS and the
RLDS faiths here. We pretty much see and talk to them on a daily basis.
This week we talked to a guy who was previously RLDS and is now just
floating. He told us the story about how the RLDS renounced the Book of
Mormon and how that made him resign from the faith and just float. He meets
together with a bunch of other people who felt the same way as he did. He
says the 1/3 of the RLDS faith resigned when that announcement came out.
Apparently their prophet said that the BOM is just a historical record
and it is not to be used as scripture any more. I guess that is the
price to fit into the christian community. It is all very interesting
to hear all of this from a member of the RLDS faith, we always hear
second hand about all this stuff but it is cool to get it all first
hand.
We also taught Hyrum J. this week, who is FLDS and we went over

the restoration with him. There was alot of kids in the room at the
time so he wanted us to focus more on them then him, since he pretty
much already has a testimony of the Book of Mormon and Joseph smith.
Hyrum is a super nice guy and is very sincere. It will be fun to
continue meeting with him. Well anyway things are going great out

here, not too much new, other than it has been raining a whole bunch
here. I can't wait to get back to the dry climate, I like that so much

better. Well thanks so much for all the prayers and the love, only a
while longer.

Another Week in the books. Man I forgot how annoying shot gunning an area can be. I am just now starting to feel like I know what is going on in the area. Thankfully the members here have been super supportive and helpful in getting us situated. The previous bishop, Brother Bliss, met up with us on Tuesday and took us out literally all day. He picked us up at 10am and then took us home at 9pm. We saw so many people, it is hard to keep track of it all, thank goodness for GPS units. I would be so lost out here with out it. Lots of back roads here that the GPS doesn't label right so it cant find the locations using address's, but it does have other ways of saving locations so in the long run it does help.

     Well to those of you back home this will surprise you a lot, have eaten Mexican food more than half of the we have had here. And half of those have been at a Mexican food place called Enrique's. We literally ate there 3 meals in a row this past week. it was epic. Other than that things here have been going great. We are having a baptism on Saturday. Her name is Whitney  and she is awesome. She was out of town all week and we didn't get to meet her until Saturday, But that was also the day she needed to get interviewed so we had members pick her up and take her to Springfield. She is only 17 and didn't have a car so we did that. then on the way back we made the baptismal program. On Sunday we went over the restoration, plan of salvation, and gospel of Jesus Christ. We just asked some broad questions and she would tell us all about each point perfectly. She is great. I just wish Elder Robinson and Baxter (the one who found her) were able to be here for the baptism.

Well I love you all and miss you. thanks for the prayers and all you do for me.

So here I am, back in Missouri. Serving only in Missouri and Kansas the entire duration of my stay in the Oklahoma, Tulsa Mission. Who would have thought it?

So Stockton is a pretty sweet area. The ward here is super nice and surprisingly large. We have about 200 people showing up to church, and the building is pretty big for how old it is. We have been spending most of our time figuring out the area and stopping by lots of members and trying to get in touch with our investigators. We have 2 with a date to be baptized but they are both oddly out of town for the next little while. Other than that we have lots of other great potential investigators from members. There are a lot of part members families here that are interested in having us come over and teach the gospel. We even have dinner with a family tonight to teach the husband after dinner. I am super exited to get a handle on the area and start working with the members.

So I got to baptize D. Shaffer on Wednesday before I moved to Stockton. We had much of the Independence ward attend that baptism and best of all, I only had to dunk him once. Elder Densely got to baptize Tabitha right after I did. It was such a sweet experience to see two people come into the church from people I tracted into. I am so glad I got to see that through. Also I hear that Sister Hodnett set a baptismal date for the 10th, that also makes me supper happy to hear. Well other than that I don't have a whole lot to report on, just plugging along.

Thanks for your love and prayers. <3 

So transfer calls came in Saturday, I am going to be transferred to Stockton Missouri, and I will be serving with Elder Johnson. Not sure really about either of those two things, other than I hear that Stockton has lots of FLDS there and the population is about 1,800. So it is going to be a step down from Independence population wise. But I have to say, as much as I loved Independence I will be glad to go work at least one more area. Stay strong until the end. But because of the transfer there was a few things that needed to happen before I leave, like baptisms.

Once the Shaffer family heard I was leaving they really wanted to get baptized before I left, so Sunday morning we planned the whole thing. They will be baptized Wednesday night at 8. That also means yesterday we had to get every thing in order, so we filled out the baptismal records and got the district leader out here to do the interviews all in one day. Yeah kind of crazy. Sister Shaffer said, "I think this was God's way of saying, stop dragging your feet and get baptized." So they are both very eager to get in the water. Yeah lots of fun.

Also on Sunday we had all combined for third hour and the focus was missionary work. And the whole theme of the meeting was, the Shaffers, and how great they are. Don't you want to find more shaffers to join the ward? Then do missionary work. We even had some members bear their testimonies about their work with the Shaffers. So they feel pretty loved, and possible freaked out, but we will focus on the first. I got to bear my testimony too, it felt so good to be speaking to a bunch of people I have come to love and know. People who I have labored shoulder to shoulder with. I will sure miss Independence, but everything has to come to end.

I will send pictures of the baptism next week. I will fill every one in on Stockton next week. Have a good one, lots of love!

--
Love Elder Rasband

The Work Rolls On!

The Work Rolls On!

So I am sure that most of you know about the special world wide broadcast we had for missionary work. Well if you didn't watch it you should because it was great. Anyway it talked a lot about the work and how  the work is going to be evolving here in the next year or so. Its too bad that I will be missing a lot of the changes but that is ok.

So we had 2 new investigators show up to church yesterday, both of them were member referrals. It was so cool, one was from the Gilsons. Their land lord's daughter is a member so she wanted to see what we were all about. Her name is Mary, we will try and work with her in a bit but I think she really enjoyed church. We also had the Estradas bring a friend from work to church and he participated in class. I hope he had a good time, we are having dinner with them on Wednesday so that will be good to get some insight into josh. Mark came to church alone this time and we got him to say the closing prayer for gospel principles and he did a great job. So we finally had a lesson with Mark and his family, Mark was put off from the church because of the things he heard about our church from the history channel. After a while we were able to show him he has heard all about the church from every one but members of the church. That opened his eyes. Both him and one of his daughters agreed to take lessons so that is good to hear.

So Duk.... Duk was supposed to be baptized this Saturday we have hit some bumps. His girl friend is back in the picture. The first time we showed up with her there she came to the door and handed us every piece of church materials we ever gave him. We are kind of the reason she got kicked out of the house so we thought she was just trying to scare us off. She seemed a little to happy to hand us the books. The next time we came over duk came to the door and told us he can't join because he doesn't believe in the spirit world because it contradicts the bible. The last time this happened it was because he couldn't quit smoking. We are pretty sure he is just looking for an easy escape and with the drama of having his GF back in the house he just wants a break. She is getting out of the house on the 3rd so hopefully we will be able to address his concerns then. He doesn't want us in the house right now because his GF just hates us.

The Shaffers are doing just great, didn't come to church yesterday because Tabitha has a bad ear infection that caused her to go to the ER Saturday morning at 4. So we pray she gets better. 

Well this letter is pretty long so I will end it here. Thanks for your love and prayers. stay classy!

Sorry it has been a little bit since I wrote, just had a lot of letters to get to last week. So this week we had a pretty exceptional week for sacrament meeting attendance. We had 9 investigators show up to church. 6 of them were ours and 3 of them were the sister's investigators. Yeah things are pretty good out here. So a quick account on all the investigators, first off we have Sister Hoddnett. The Hoddnett family is a part member family. The dad was baptized in Utah and Sister Hoddnett was not baptized out there. She just has a lot of questions that most other people couldn't give her answers that satisfied her but she said she was willing to go through he lessons again. She likes to go pretty quick and deep so I can see how most other people would have a hard time teaching her because it can be hard to keep up with the fast paced lessons. In two lessons that each took about an hour and a half each we finally were able to get through the plan of salvation and she loved it. She is very receptive to spirits and all that stuff so talking about the spirit world was great for her, and being able to do work for the dead made her so happy. She said she could always feel so much strong spirits around the temples and now she knows why.

We also have the Shaffers, they are doing great as usual. On Sunday we had a lesson about ghosts, because they asked about it and, why not? They are getting so close to baptism, it is so cool to work with them.

Duk is being a Duck. We have not been able to see him at all this week so we are not to sure how he is doing, but he is scheduled for baptism on the 29th, we hope we can get that to work out still. But last we checked he is free from smoking.

We also have the Jamison family, they are relatively new, they showed up to church twice now, we have not been able to teach them but they have just loved church and are super exited to take the lessons, more on them later.

We also started working with a guy named Axel. Axel got into some trouble lately and he feels like the Lord humbled him and that he had his eyes opened and he wants his life to change now. so we are working with him to get back on the right course. Man we are getting so blessed here by so many people to see and help, we can hardly keep up with all of it, mostly because of mile restrictions. We have used 700 miles this month already and we only get 1100... so not sure how this is going to work out. Well I thank you again for all your prayers and love. Only 101 more days until I am home, not that I am counting.

Love The Bandit!