03/30/2015

03/30/2015

From: Ronald Adair <ronald.adair@myldsmail.net>
Sent: Monday, March 30, 2015 6:39 PM
Subject: Weekly letter to family and friends

Dear Family and Friends,

So some crazy stuff has happened these past two weeks! Last Saturday the Chessmore's were out of town and Elder Beazer and I had to be midwives for their pregnant goat! We actually helped pull the baby out! It was way cool. We now can milk the mother goat and its milk tastes good! An investigator of ours again took us ice-fishing one night for a bit. We had a good number of eel-pout sitting out on the ice and all the sudden this eagle starts flying around us and snatches up one of the fishes and flies off with it! Crazy! 

Now for some awesome missionary work related items:

We keep having these two investigators come to church! One is a woman and her two young daughters and it's apparent that she has been feeling the Spirit. She particpates in discussions at church and she  is progressing swiftly. We also have a less-active older lady that is coming to church after a long while and she is working with her less-active sister and another member on doing geneology and temple work for their ancestors! The Sister missionaries in our ward are just amazing and one of their investigators, whose family are all members, has decided it's time for him to be baptized! And this man's brother, who is one of our aforementioned investigators and also the one who takes us ice-fishing, has been in a similar situation where his family are all members and yesterday he came to church in a white shirt and tie! Woo hoo! The Sisters have also been working  with this other guy (we will just call him Greg) who knows the Church is true but doesn't know if God is real. He has severe PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) and asks SO MANY good questions at church and with the Sisters. Yesterday in Gospel Principles class everyone was giving input on receiving answers to prayers and helping answer Greg's questions and concerns. Our recent convert Bro. Stacy who also has PTSD was being amazing and explaining to Greg that even though he was emotionally and spiritually numb for a long time after his realease from the Air Force, the Spirit was still able to bear witness to him of the truthfulness of the Church with a warm peaceful feeling. All of the sudden a member of the Bishopric, Bro. Westlund who is a spiritual giant, who was sitting down stood up and said, "I was called to come in here and I'm actually not sure why, but I have something to say." He walked up to the front of the room and went on to bear his testimony and told Greg that he knew that God would manifest Himself in one way or another to him when he was ready and that he would know that God existed. So powerful. People had tears running down their cheeks. So then there was a baptism for an 8-year-old after church. I was asked to give the opening prayer. After the baptismal service was over, the Sisters came up to us and told us about something that Greg said during the baptism. He told them that during my opening prayer he decided to say his own prayer to God, and suddenly he had an overwhelmingly warm and peaceful feeling that God was there listening to him. We ate refreshments and talked in a group with Greg and the Sisters and he told them that he wanted to get baptized on April 12th! INSANE!

So yes, it was an eventful few weeks...but stay tuned because we aren't finished yet! 

I haven't told anyone this yet but our mission is splitting:( The magnificent President Anderson and his equally magnificent wife will being returning home in July. The mission has decided to move headquarters and the mission home to a more central area in Bismarck, ND. We are losing two zones to other missions and gaining one. Depending on where I am to serve this next transwer I could be in the CO, Fort Collins mission; the MT, Billings mission; the NB, Omaha mission; or the ND, Bismarck mission.

It's transfer week and we got a call from the mission office telling me that I am being transferred to Williston, North Dakota (so I am in the Bismarck, ND mission)! I am sad to leave Cass Lake, especially at such a baptismally booming time, but I am excited to experience my second area on my mission! I have met my new comp Elder Wright before already and he's such great missionary and a really nice guy! I will be living in a house with him and two other Elders, one of which is from Costa Rica and I've heard is hilarious and way cool, and the other is Elder Walker my mission Grandpa (he trained my trainer Elder Wendell so in mission lingo he is my grandpa)! I will dearly miss the people in Cass Lake and Bemidji and I am so very privileged to have served here.

Anywho, that's the scoop from my mission! I love you all!:)

03/16/2015

 From: Ronald Adair <ronald.adair@myldsmail.net>

Sent: Tuesday, March 17, 2015 10:13 AM
Subject: "Weekly" letter to family and friends

Dear Family and Friends,

Hello everybody! Goodness it has been ages since I have sent a mass email! I'm sorry and I will try to do better! I will basically just go through all the interesting things that have happened to me the past several weeks!

So Sister Meneely in our ward and I have made some cool connections in the past couple of weeks. I asked her what she did as a profession before she retired and she told me that she was a clothing designer. I then told her that I might want to design clothes someday and she just got so excited! She pulled out two big scrapbooks of her designing experiences and it was pretty cool! Then the next week she was telling us about how she has a grandson that plays pro baseball and played at BYU, so I told her that i was going to play ball at BYU and she almost collapsed! She told me that the Lord would bless me in baseball because of the time I have devoted to serving a mission; hopefully she's right!

The other week Elder Beazer and I visited a man we have been working with and he was preparing some liver to eat so I asked if we could try some since I had never tasted liver before. Haha I wouldn't really recommend the taste of it to anybody;) On the way back into town from his house we came up to a big flock of wild turkeys! It was pretty cool! 

Two or three Mondays ago Elder Beazer and I planned a district p-day so we could all go ice-fishing and bowling together (Elder Wilkinson, Elder Merkley, Sister Park, Sister Haycock, Elder Beazer, and me). Elder B. and I went out on Lake Bemidji and hacked away at the ice with an ax for an hour and then once we got down 3 1/2 feet we decided to take a break and go meet the Elders and Sisters at the church. We all went back to the hole and Elder Merkley and I got the rest of the way through the ice with an ice chisel. We had brought soda and chairs out there and once we finally made it through the 4 feet of ice we realized the water was only a foot deep! Not suitable for fishing!

Last week at church we four missionaries were asked about 5 minutes before sacrament meeting started to give short talks on the core beliefs of the Church. I talked about charity and I think it went well. The Bishop's 2nd counselor announced who would be speaking and he mispronounced 3 out our 4 names! Haha! 

Elder Beazer and I helped serve food at the Young Women's new Beginnings night and that was pretty fun.

Bro. Chessmore, Elder B., and I gave little Tyawni, the Chessmores' youngest son, a mohawk haircut while Sister Chessmore wasn't home and we kept it like that for a few days!

We had a huge bonfire at the Chessmores' and also cut down a 60 foot tree!

The past two weeks the temperature has gradually risen to the 60's! It's glorious! All the snow is gone too.

We had to switch cars with the Devil's Lake Elders because they kept getting stuck in the snow so now we drive a Chevy Cruise.

We went fishing with an investigator and I caught an 8 1/2 pound eel pout! And Elder B. caught one that had only one eye!

The Chessmore's goats are pretty stinkin' pregnant so I hope they give birth soon!

Last week we went on exchanges with the Bagley Elders so I spent a day and night in Bagley with Elder Wilkinson. He is such a boss missionary!

A few weeks ago we had Zone Training Meeting in Grand Forks and it was amazing as most ZTM's are! One of the main focuses was the "Because He Lives" initiative which starts officially on March 28th. Because He lives is an Easter video about how we can all be resurrected and come back to our Father in Heaven because of Christ. I exhort everyone to watch the video when it comes out on HeLives.mormon.org or type in #BecauseHeLives and show it to others. To get excited and prepared for it, watch the video that the Church produced last Easter called Because of Him. It is a magnificent video.

I love you all:)

Elder Adair