Following impressions

MAN!

How did the time fly so fast! can you believe how soon I'll be home? It’s weird. How'd your week go ya'll?

Its been all good here. I gave a talk in church on Sunday. It was on judging others. It went really well.. its nice to have it over with though ;) haha

This week we've been having a lot of meetings. I've been training the new office couples, the Jahns and the Talberts on a bunch of things they need to know before I leave.

We went out working with president one night this past week.. It was so sweet.

This past week, I got an impression to call some random guy that we had talked to a while back, African American, and his name is T. We had contacted him in passing, and he recognized us as missionaries but didn't seem terribly interested. But he was so polite and so nice it was crazy.. any way, we had bumped into him a couple times after that and it was the same situation until one day where he seemed very upset… as we approached him he told us how everything was going down hill in his life, how he had no job, how his fiancé was making bad choices and it felt as though she was going to leave him along with there son they had together, he said that the future looked dark and that he had no clue what to do. We talked and testified about the atonement and about the Plan of salvation and he said someday he'd like to learn more about it but that wasn't the time… anyway I called him the other day and when he answered he said: " how did you know to call me?" I then told him that I had felt a prompting that he needed someone to talk to. His voice then slowed down and he started to cry softly. He said, how did you know to call in the exact moment that I needed it. He then explained that his burdens in life were getting too heavy. He said he needed god in his life, he said he was willing to do anything to improve the quality of his life and become a follower of Christ. I talked to him about so many aspects of his life and how the gospel would bless him.. and that most of all it would bring him the peace he needed now more that ever before. I taught him over the phone about the atonement of Christ, about his plan of salvation and happiness for us, I taught him Christ’s doctrine and then I told him: "Tyrell.. If I told you of a way to find peace, joy and happiness in your life right now, would you do it?" he said of course. I proceeded to tell him that that night, he needed to kneel in prayer, and with faith, plead with our heavenly father to grant him peace in his life, and grant him forgiveness for his mistakes and sins and then I felt prompted to promise him that if he did this, he would feel heavenly peace and he would feel the love that god has for him..

The next night we brought president to a scheduled appointment with him. he didn't want to meet in his house so we went outside.. He had the biggest smile I had ever seen on his face and tears of joy...He told us: "it works". He said he knelt in prayer, and offered his whole heart before the lord. He felt the greatest pain for choices he had made, and because of life's circumstances at the current time and he told us as he pleaded, suddenly, he felt a large hand rest upon his shoulder, he said it was warm and familiar, and when the hand lifted, so did the burdens he had been feeling and the guilt of his sins and mistakes.. it was so powerful to me, and I knew that it was true, because I, on my mission have felt that hand on my shoulder before.. in some of the toughest moments, where I didn't think i could last much longer.. I have felt a hand rest upon my shoulder and it always takes away the burden and the pain that I have felt.. I was amazed by what this humble man taught us, and then we proceeded to each him many principles of the gospel. Suddenly he became the most humble, submissive, interested child of god that I have ever taught on my mission. his heart was open, and he was sensitive to the spirit.. there were so many distractions all around us, and yet, we didn't even notice them... He is ready for the gospel and loves it.

Our second lesson we came back and he had already read almost the 1st book of Nephi (exactly what a missionary wants to hear when they come for the return appointment) and he had read the pamphlet. I asked him If he would prepare himself to be baptized by proper authority and he readily agreed. He is amazing. I want to see him baptized before I leave! I hope we can find more time to teach and prepare him!

Anyway, that was my amazing story for the week. Karol hill is one of our other African American investigators; he has a scheduled baptism on the 4th of June! We're still praying that will happen! There are lots of good things going on! I love being a missionary and I sure am gonna miss it… this is the life!

Hope all is well at home! love y'all so much!

Stay righteous!

much love,

~Elder Holman

Another Crazy Week

Hey everybody!

How's everyone? Good I hope.. things are great here..

Its been another crazy fast week for me.. I love those.. :) We stayed super busy..

We've been doing a lot of projects. We've been moving a ton of missionaries out of apartments and into new ones.. We went and got the new missionaries.. They were all a lot of fun to see. That never gets old.. going to the airport and seeing all the new elders, nervous and excited.. haha They are all so cool..

Thursday was transfers and we had a pretty hectic day... Lots of traveling. I've spent most of this week in the car... haha There is such a high need for cars in our mission that now our assigned vehicle is the Transfer van ( Penelope the Polig rig) haha... fun fun! We took all the going home elders to the airport yesterday. For the first time it hit me. I'm going home really soon... it didn't make sense, and felt kind of weird haha so I pushed the thought out of my mind. I'll think about it when I get there haha.

Yesterday one of the elders waited at the mission home for his family to come pick him up and we were there when it happened! It was so sweet... haha alright that kinda made me trunky haha. They drove a big old RV there. I think they own it and go camping a lot. But it was fun to see a family reunite! I'm fine with Flying home though.

I don't have to much to report.. I've just been working a lot with the Jergensens, preparing for zone conferences and stuff.. Editing videos, making slide shows, etc. I'm staying really busy... This month is just gonna get really crazy.... Keep praying for me, because I'll need your prayers more now than ever. Elder Paulson and I have a lot of training to prepare for.. We have several meetings we are in charge of organizing and putting together. Its gonna be fun, but tiring haha...

I have a lot to get done today, so sorry my email is scattered with info and short!

I love you all tons!

~Elder Holman

May 14th update

Here we are again..

I am exhausted right now for some, so if this letter doesn't make sense or sounds strange, you now know why.. I've been on the road a ton today! UGH! haha.. its fun.. But it just drains ya. Today we went down to muscatine, IA! WoooHOOO! For 2 baptisms of people that I taught back in the day :) Maddison and Abby! I'm so happy they are finally getting baptized. We tried to get it to happen while Iwas there but there were to many complications with there step mother.. but now it seems her heart has softened, and she supported them in their decision to be baptized and to be followers of christ. It was a very spirit filled baptism and it was so fun to be a part of and to see all my favorite members from muiscatine again! too much fun! We had a really good lunch after that too. Other than that, this week has just been chuck full of driving. When they call you to be an AP they pretty much just call you to hit the road haha... oh my goodness.

On tuesday and Wednesday I went to the Nauvoo temple.. It was beautiful as usual. You'll never guess who I bumped into and just in time too.. Sister Sally Brinton! Ah, she's so amazing! It was so fun to see a familiar face.. in fact as we pulled up I was like.. man she looks familiar and then thought nothing much of it.. then I got out of the car and she started talking to some of the missionaries and Asked If they knew me.. they were like .. YA! He's right there! t was so crazy! we were like... NO WAY! haha I guess they were doing some temple trips before sam leaves on his mission.. I think they said he's going to russia?? How excting for them! she told me that Lindsay is preparing to go on a mission. Good for her.. She will be so successful! all the missionaries/Investigators will fall in love with her and she will baptize like crazy haha.. But ya anyway.. Cool! I love it when stuff like that happens.. It's a pretty dang small world.. even in the mission field. :)

Thursday and Friday were transfer Planning.. What a sweet experience. The spirit is so rich and so fun to experience as we carefully decide where the lord would have us send each missionary.. It was once again a great experience.. We truly felt guided as to where each missionary should go and who his comapnion should be.. We recieved quite a few strokes of inspiration. Fun experience.

Tonight will be crazy.. I'll be on the phone all night! Wish me luck.. I'm calling all the copmpanionships about transfer doctrine! Whose going and who is staying! haha :) this should be fun.

It was so good to talk to ya'll on mothers day! I love hearing your voices! Its good to hear that you are all doing so well.. :) I can't wait to see ya in a 6 weeks.. man thats gonna go by fast.. I'll be seeing ya in no time.. ITs gonan go really fast for me.. because I will be going on stop the entire month of june.. I am doing training meetings, driving all over the mission, doing specialized exchanges , leadership meetings, zone conferences, etc. If I come home and sleep for 3 days without saying a word, you'll know why.. I am so tired! haha.. Its a miracle that I am walking around... I've never been so tired in my life and yet somehow god grants me the strength i need in order to continue forward.. I love it!

Grandma Judy send me a sweet talk! be sure and thank her for it for me.. It gave me a great knew perspective.. especially in relation to my current circumstances of coming home.

Well.. I have a long night ahead of me! I love you all! good luck with your musical number! I'll pray for you:)

The book is blue, the church is true ;) Love ya!

~Elder Holman

Letter from April 30th

Hey everybody,

How ya'll doing? Great I hope. I'm feeling pretty sick right now actually... really congested, bad allergies and such. I had a throbbing headache last night and my head feels like its about to explode! Other than that things are good! :)

Its been a rather average week… nothing too exciting. In fact a little bit boring. We had staff meetings as usual, made a ton of calls. We had one full day of work that was nice this week since we haven't been able to do that in ages! We have one really promising investigator. His name is K H. He has a baptismal date is for the 28th of May. He's making a lot of good progress and he knows the gospel is true! He's a nice guy.

I went to Iowa City this week for exchanges, which was a lot of fun! The zone Leaders didn't have a lot planned.. so we did a bit of tracting. It was sweet though because we found the most awesome 18 year old ever. His name is E. In the first 3 minutes of our contact he didn't seem to promising but all of a sudden he really opened up and we ended up having an hour long conversation on his doorstep about the gospel. He was intrigued by the end and wants to learn as much as he possibly can. We gave/explained the book of Mormon and he was way excited about it! He'll get baptized for sure. We also gave him a mormon.org card and encouraged him to check it out. I think that’s something that would be fun for all of you to do too. Maybe you can do it as a family night activity. Create a profile on mormon.org. Its a great website and its getting a lot of hits from investigators. We had a sweet dinner that night with an old man who was converted to the gospel a couple years ago.. he was so funny and has the most sincere testimony ever!

The next day we went to Cedar Rapids for a district meeting. It was a great one! The spirit was really strong!

Hey I got the DVD for MADD! It was really good! Mom and Dad, you two are naturals! You should be movie stars!! haha, the kids were all really good too! Fun stuff! I just fast forwarded through all the stuff and stopped it when it got to our family! Pretty good stuff :)

I was rather sick yesterday. It was kind of a boring day… we helped move some missionaries out of an apartment and such, we went to a couple appointments, and came home.. I really wasn't feeling well, hopefully I recover soon!

I hope everyone at home is well. I miss you all tons!

I'll be talkin to you in a week. Do you want me to use skype? or should I just call you.. I guess i'm fine either way… just let me know! Pretty exciting :)

Write me back!

Love,

~Elder Holman

April 23rd update

Hey,

Hope you're all doing good! It seems that you've had a busy week. ya'll went on vacation right? thats pretty cool.. L.A.? Hope you're having fun if you're still there! :)

Well, its been another busy week.. which I'm glad when its busy, I love having something to do.. the toughest times on a mission are when you have nothing planned to do.. and then the only solution is tracting haha.. fun fun!

So this past week was extremely similar to that of last week. On Monday we had a staff meeting that lasted quite a while.. those things get long sometimes haha... and then we always have hours worth of stuff to do after because of all the information in the meeting..

That night we went and visited the coolest kid in our branch, He's a recent convert, hes from Africa, named innocent, learning English and already wayyy good. He has amazing stories from Africa.. he has been here a couple years I believe. The stories he tells me and the pictures he shows me, make me want to go over there and help out so much.. it is such a sad world over there ;( So many people dying from disease, There are like packs of murderers that go into town and kill and rape everyone, their government is outrageous and corrupt. its so sad. he wants to go back someday and become a leader there.He wants to change the government so that it is much more like Americas. This kid is amazing. He had visions of Africa where an angel came to him and told him he needed to go to America, and he didn't even know what America was.. He didn't even realize it was a country. After his father and brothers were murdered, he decided it was time to follow the voice he had heard. He came to Americaa and he said he knows that the whole reason he came here was so that he could become a member of the church. He said that god led him to Iowa. he also said that he had a vision of himself holding the title of Elder someday. He is 19 and married, so he can't go on a mission.. but I believe he will be a church leader someday, no doubt. His testimony is amazing. He has almost finished the book of Mormon.. This kid is incredible. I love him.

Tuesday and Wednesday were crazy again.. We had leadership training meetings here in Des moines.. They went really well. We did our training again on the Role of the Holy Ghost in conversion. It went really well.. The spirit was really strong. I really enjoy doing presentations and training in front of lots of people, The only tough part is coming up with what to train them on.. But its always a good experience.

On Wednesday night we traveled up to Iowa City to drop all the missionaries off, and then the following morning I traveled down to muscatine Iowa! what a good place! I didn't get to go visit anyone unfortunately, we were on tight schedule as we were moving some Spanish missionaries from muscatine to Iowa city. Apparently there is alot of good Spanish work going on there, so we moved there furniture up to Iowa city and came home late that night.. I was so exhausted.. in fact I still haven't fully recovered.. I have rather big bags under me eyes haha, and I would really enjoy a nap right now..

Yesterday, we did alot of random stuff.. including getting haircuts for free! yay! Elder Paulsons dad met some guy who says he'll give us haircuts for free.. he does a great job. And he gave us front row tickets to a baseball game last night.. so we went and we took innocent. it was so cool.. the announcer announced us as we walked in! A big welcome to the missionaries from he church of Jesus Christ of latter day saints! it was sweet.. good game too.

And know I'm sitting at desk, my eyes are really tired and I could use a nap.. haha Today Is my p-day. We're gonna go eat some lunch and go shopping and then go to a few appointments with some people we don't know yet. then later on tonight, I'm gonna go to see a baptism that Elder Evans is having. Apparently there are very few people coming ;( So that should be fun.. and then I'll come home.

Ever since becoming an Assistant more stories are rather boring, you'd think they'd get more exciting, but I'm not out in the field as much as I would like. Hopefully I can do a little more work out in the field before I come home, but we'll see. Lets see.. I will see you in..... 69 days, but whose counting? I'm not! it's too tough to remember anyway.. haha

Well, I love you all tons! hope you're having a great week, talk to you in a week! and then I'll talk to you "FOR REAL" the next week :)

Much love,

~Elder Holman

April 16th :)

Dearest Family!

How are you, Well I hope. Remember last week how I said if I had another week like that one I'd go crazy and lose all my hair? well.. this week was crazier.. haha and yet somehow I still have my hair and at least a portion of my sanity haha. so .. miracles still do occur :)

Although I have been extremely busy, it has also been a very fun week. STRESSFUL, but fun :) On Monday we had a office staff meeting that went 10 hours too long haha.. We talked about leadership training meetings and Zone Leader Council and the arrangements we needed to make in order to get a lot of missionaries here. I was a head case haha.. It’s tough because Neither Elder Paulson or i have done this before, because we were white washed into the area, and all AP References have gone home at this point so we had to start travel plans from scratch haha.. What a pain. but we got through it.

The next day we were up bright and early! We had a Zone leader Council where we talk about everything going on in the mission, mission updates, rules and regulations, a bunch of random stuff, and then Elder Paulson and I did a training on President Uchtdorfs Talk: Your Potential, your privilege.. It was a really good training.. the spirit was pretty strong. Sister Jergensen talked about being a disciple of Christ.. it was really inspiring. She put the statement on the board: By this shall men know that ye are my disciples... by your language, by your actions, by your image, by your cleanliness, etc. By your love for one another.. It just made you think that there are so many more things entailed in that statement of love one another and the manner in which you show that love. President shared with us an amazing talk by elder Holland in the MTC. It was brilliant. I love Elder Holland. He is my modern day apostolic hero. :) He talked about Peter becoming a Chief apostle and the president of the church after Christ left and the moment where he became that man.. he went from a man of little understanding and much questioning to The authoritative position of the church, and he who received all Revelation regarding it. It was an amazing talk... I'm gonna try and get a copy of it.

That night we went on a quick exchange, and an elder who served in this area prior came with us to show us around and introduce us to several people. It as a lot of fun. I really like my new area.. It’s kind of ghetto, but that's okay.. that's where all the humble people are :)

Wednesday and Thursday were just crazy beyond all reason! We had leadership meetings about the fundamentals of preach my gospel almost all day both of those days. The first day I conducted and the second day we did a training on the role the Holy Ghost in conversion.. It went really well.. Elder Paulson and I are starting to work a lot better together I think.. Because of lack of time, most of our training was based on inspiration and guidance from the holy ghost, but it was super spiritual. We asked them to take a moment and reflect on their "Conversion story". and then we had a few share, and we pin pointed the areas where the holy spirit was in there conversion and the role he played.. we then related it to Book of Mormon converts.. like Lamonis father.. such a sweet story. We talked about our role as missionaries, the Holy Ghosts, and then the investigators in conversion. We also talked about the proper way to cultivate an environment for the spirit using book of Mormon missionaries like the sons of Mosiah. It just ended up going really well... The crazy thing is it starts over this next week for the other half of the mission! Another headache on its way haha ;) We have a lot of travel plans to make, a lot of housing and working arrangements as well.. Busy Busy! But I love it. I lay down each night and wonder where the day went! Time has been going by quite quickly for me as of late... I think It's a sign that I'm working hard which makes me very happy and is very fulfilling :)

Yesterday we spent most of the time planning.. it was a long day.. we ordered pizza cuz we were so hungry.. that was the first time I’ve done that my whole mission.. and I messed up my "diet".. I've been trying to eat healthier.. and have been. Since I hit 190 I've lost 12 pounds.. I'm hoping to get to 20 in the near future.. so we'll see.. I exercise a lot and try to eat less calories, or more healthy calories. :)

I hope all is well at home! I miss you guys! but I'll be calling home in a couple weeks, so you'll hear from me soon enough! I already got my phone call with Star which was awesome :)

Love you all tons! I appreciate your prayers, I can feel them, and they boost me up! I love you tons.

Much love,

~Elder Holman