Monday, March 26, 2012
March 26, 2012
hey everybody!
wu's- this week i watched my first hockey game. we went to jack
wu's playoff game to get to the finals and they won. 10 year olds
palying hockey. it was quite fun george was very into the game and
just kept on asking who had the puck and who scored it was nice. even
though we were only able to stay for like 30 minutes it was still fun.
this sunday the wu's got confirmed elder sommerfeldt confirmed them
all. (by the last one his voice was out of breath and sounded really
funny.) it was a very amazing experience for the whole ward to watch
them become members of the church. george is starting to enjoy
primary. but he only likes the singing time. he loves the sister that
plays the piano. so he is starting to enjoy coming to church a little
more he just has to get used to it. because he doesnt like new things.
last night george called us on his moms phone and asked us to come
over every night this week to play bop-it with him. he went through
each night specifically to see if we had time to see him. it was quite
funny when his mom figured out that he had called us.
Millers- this week the millers got confirmed as well. brother
hampshire confirmed them.(he is the 93 year old guy that comes out
teaching with us) it was a really amazing experience. it was
wonderful.
Kira- this week me and elder sommerfeldt had an amazing experience
with kira. we went and taught him a lesson and asked how he felt
during the wu's baptism. he said he had felt the spirit really
strongly. (this was the first time he had admitted to us he had felt
the spirit.) he said he believed everything and wanted to be baptised
but he couldn't because his parents wouldnt support him.(his parents
in chinia were paying for his school.) he has done a lot of study in
the church and has read the whole gospel principals book. so we told
him to skype his parents that night and tell them that he had made the
decision to be baptised and if they would support him. we told him
also to make a list of how the church has helped him. and tell them.
his parents said they would support him. this sunday he was BAPTISED.
we had a chinesse elder come to our ward this week and kira was
baptised in chinese. it was an amazing experience. it is cool to think
that the holy ghost can work in any language! it was wonderful our
ward loved it. our ward is now on fire. and are all super excited to
do missionary work.
derek- is still progressing slowly he is just waiting for his
girlfriend to come around. but we will be meeting with him this week.
and trying to get him to come to church.
haha yeah it is good that sister jones is e-mailing you. she is
kind of like a suragate mother out her. she is really nice and i love
going out there. she helped us a lot with our baptisms. she planned
refreshments, and printed the programs. her and her husband do a lot
of us missionaries and we are really grateful for them.
thats sweet that katie got first runner up! i bet becca hates that
because she is super competitive. and katie did better then her. haha
Zach is pretty smooth with the ladies. i bet kandis enjoyed seeing you
guys i am glad you invited her over i am pretty sure she told me she
wanted to see you guys just didnt know when she could come over.
kandis lovces zach probaly even more then me. she is only dating me so
that she can spend time with him. Of course kandis looked good! she is
my girlfriend! tell katie good luck in her next competition form me.
what stores are here is brantford. we have a walmart, and a zheurs(
its very simular to albertsons) i have only eaten at three resturants
they are Wendy's, A&W i had a good rootbeer float, and subway.
oh yeah i kind of got food poisoning last week. but i am good now!
i am loving it here in brantford- the mission is going great.
i love you all (Grand-parents, aunts and uncles, john jan austin
Caitlyn becca kandis katie ben jake matt james and even zach (even
though he is trying to steal my girlfriend!)
March 19, 2012
MARCH 19 letter
hey everyone my mission is going amazing. this week has been such a blast.
Taylors- me and elder sommerfeldt went to the indian reservation.
with terry and judy taylor. it was way fun at the res we taught about
4 lesson and were able to learn about some native american stories
those were pretty cool. the taylors are and amzing couple they are
both half natvie american and they are kind of like are mission
grandparents here. brother taylor said that he really liked me he said
that i could just attract people to me. he said that he quite enjoied
being with me and that he would like to spend the whole day with us.
it was really nice to meet this couple.
miller family- this week we taught the miller family. it was quite
an amazing experience because deanna didnt think she would be ready
for baptism by april1st and she wanted to move her date back. we were
able to talk to her and told her she was ready to get baptised this
week. and amazingly she agreed. we still had to teach her son matthew
all the lessons so we met with them like 4 times this week. deanna is
a very shy person-even more shy then kandis! she doesnt like to show
her emotions at all. but this week while we were teaching mathhew we
bore our testimonies and during mine she started to cry it was quite
and amzing experience. at the end of our lesson matthew asked me to
baptise him. it was super awesome. this sunday the millers werent at
church at the begininng me and elder sommerfeldt were really worried
the devil had gotten to them. so we drove over to their house. when we
got there their car was there so we knew they were home. we rang their
doorbell and they didnt answer for awhile. matthew came to the door
and we realised that they had slept in this morning. and his mom was
still getting ready for church. we were relieved. after church we had
the baptisms. out of all of them me and matthew had to go first i was
super nervous that i was gonna mess up! (this was a big deal because
our bishop, stake president, and mission president scott and his wife
were there.) but i did everything perfectly i was nervous up until
matthew came out of the water. when he came up he had the biggest
smile on his face! thats when the spirit overcame me. it was powerful.
wu's- this week we met with the wus a few times as well. they came
to church on time. and were all dressed up and ready for church even
george. it was really sweet. this week in church george was amazing he
actually participated in singing time. it was sweet. oh also as a side
note this week we watched george play the piano it was amazing he can
play some hard songs he learned by listening to his sister play and he
memorizes the song in his mind. his sister is in a level 4 book. after
i had baptised matthew i was standing at the back of the font all wet
and watched all the wu's get baptised. they were baptised by brother
de jong. it was amazing the spirit was so powerful there.
derek- this week we ran into him and his girlfriend twice just
walking around downtown. this reminds me of how i used to be with
kandis all the time. but also we got his girlfriend to realize that
mormons were actually normal people. derek is a great investagator he
really understands and believes all the things about the gospel we
taught him the word of wisdom and law of chasity. he already does
these things... he is like perfect.
kira- kira is another chinese investagator. he loves learning he
has already listend to al the lessons and read the whole gospel
princapals manual. he has been to church the last three weeks. but one
problem is that his parents want him to wait to get baptised. in the
chinese culture whatever the father says is final.
so while i was talking to elder sommerfeldt the average missionary
baptizes 2 people a year.......and that 20% of the missionaries
baptize 80% of the people. i was shocked at this. i was like people
are goona be pissed at me. he was like yeah you have had more baptisms
then you have had weeks. hahaha this is our neew joke we share with
everyone. hey those picture that sister jones sent you you should send
those to everyone.i am having a blast out here all is going amazing! i
hope everyone one at home is doing great. i love hearing from
everyone. love elder strobel
hey everyone my mission is going amazing. this week has been such a blast.
Taylors- me and elder sommerfeldt went to the indian reservation.
with terry and judy taylor. it was way fun at the res we taught about
4 lesson and were able to learn about some native american stories
those were pretty cool. the taylors are and amzing couple they are
both half natvie american and they are kind of like are mission
grandparents here. brother taylor said that he really liked me he said
that i could just attract people to me. he said that he quite enjoied
being with me and that he would like to spend the whole day with us.
it was really nice to meet this couple.
miller family- this week we taught the miller family. it was quite
an amazing experience because deanna didnt think she would be ready
for baptism by april1st and she wanted to move her date back. we were
able to talk to her and told her she was ready to get baptised this
week. and amazingly she agreed. we still had to teach her son matthew
all the lessons so we met with them like 4 times this week. deanna is
a very shy person-even more shy then kandis! she doesnt like to show
her emotions at all. but this week while we were teaching mathhew we
bore our testimonies and during mine she started to cry it was quite
and amzing experience. at the end of our lesson matthew asked me to
baptise him. it was super awesome. this sunday the millers werent at
church at the begininng me and elder sommerfeldt were really worried
the devil had gotten to them. so we drove over to their house. when we
got there their car was there so we knew they were home. we rang their
doorbell and they didnt answer for awhile. matthew came to the door
and we realised that they had slept in this morning. and his mom was
still getting ready for church. we were relieved. after church we had
the baptisms. out of all of them me and matthew had to go first i was
super nervous that i was gonna mess up! (this was a big deal because
our bishop, stake president, and mission president scott and his wife
were there.) but i did everything perfectly i was nervous up until
matthew came out of the water. when he came up he had the biggest
smile on his face! thats when the spirit overcame me. it was powerful.
wu's- this week we met with the wus a few times as well. they came
to church on time. and were all dressed up and ready for church even
george. it was really sweet. this week in church george was amazing he
actually participated in singing time. it was sweet. oh also as a side
note this week we watched george play the piano it was amazing he can
play some hard songs he learned by listening to his sister play and he
memorizes the song in his mind. his sister is in a level 4 book. after
i had baptised matthew i was standing at the back of the font all wet
and watched all the wu's get baptised. they were baptised by brother
de jong. it was amazing the spirit was so powerful there.
derek- this week we ran into him and his girlfriend twice just
walking around downtown. this reminds me of how i used to be with
kandis all the time. but also we got his girlfriend to realize that
mormons were actually normal people. derek is a great investagator he
really understands and believes all the things about the gospel we
taught him the word of wisdom and law of chasity. he already does
these things... he is like perfect.
kira- kira is another chinese investagator. he loves learning he
has already listend to al the lessons and read the whole gospel
princapals manual. he has been to church the last three weeks. but one
problem is that his parents want him to wait to get baptised. in the
chinese culture whatever the father says is final.
so while i was talking to elder sommerfeldt the average missionary
baptizes 2 people a year.......and that 20% of the missionaries
baptize 80% of the people. i was shocked at this. i was like people
are goona be pissed at me. he was like yeah you have had more baptisms
then you have had weeks. hahaha this is our neew joke we share with
everyone. hey those picture that sister jones sent you you should send
those to everyone.i am having a blast out here all is going amazing! i
hope everyone one at home is doing great. i love hearing from
everyone. love elder strobel
Monday, March 19, 2012
March 12, 2012
hello everyone! last week went amazing. we met all the standards of
excellencce. which means were excellent missionaries. here is an
update on all the people we are teaching.
p.s. me and my companion are only taking like half of a p-day
today so that we can go visit the wu's and deanna and matthew. we are
visiting them today because president scott is coming tomorrow to go
through the baptism interview questions with them.
brother de jong he has a conference talk for about anything. he
also has perfect hair. it is really funny. he used to be a stake
president so he is a really awesome mission leader and really helped
us with the wu family. he is from sweeden. but moved to canada when he
was a little kid. he is a really serious guy and kind of reminds me of
president turley...
wu's- so we went over to the wu's house with our ward mission
leader. he was able to talk to amy wu about his family and how him and
his mom were the only ones form his family that were baptized. this
was what amy wu was really worried about family issues of the rest of
her family that arent baptized. he was able to really connect with her
because he was able to explain with his own life experiences to
explain a lot to her. at the end of the lesson she said a prayer and
thanked heavenly father for sending brother de jong for helping her
with her problems. also today we are going over there to watch a video
with them. (and brother de jong) the video is called on the way home i
think.... we have a lot of appointments with them this week because
they are planning to get baptized this sunday march 18. how awesome it
is that they were willing to change to come closer to christ. here is
another story about the wu's we were teaching them about the law of
tithing and how you have to pay 10 percent of your increase. at the
end the asked us well what if we want to pay more than 10 percent and
sometimes 15-20%. that is just to show you a little more about how
amazing the wu's are.
millers- this week the millers came to church it was the second
time they came to church. this week while deanna was in relief society
this old lady got taking about the catholic church she said it was the
great and adbominable church, and the whore of all the earth. so we
were pretty freaked out about that. but that not all that happened.
her son matthew who is 10 was in class with duncan. duncan is a little
mentally chalenged (or as people say here one fry short of a happy
meal) and he had a freak out in matthews class and started banging his
head against the wall and kicking and punching all the kids. his
teacher who is a little lady who is 63 and has cancer. took him to the
ground and pinned duncan down so he couldnt hurt any of the other
kids. mathhew our investagator took his phone out and flimmed the
whole thing. so after this eventful day at church we went over to
there house. their date was set for april 8th and deanna said that
april was kind of busy. so we talked to her about her baptismal date
and she decided on the date of march 14... since she has only been to
church twice we told her we could do it the week after. so her and her
son matthew are getting baptised march 21st. we also were able to give
both of them blessings i had the oppertunity to give matthew a
blessing. his full name is matthew joesph isiah miller smith.... with
a name like that holy cow he is amazing.
next is Derek. we taught him the doctrine of christ this week.
(faith, repentance,baptism with athourity,holy ghost, and endure to
the end.) this lesson was really powerful he couldnt quit looking at
the diagram i drew. after a little while he said he couldn't deny it.
that was powerful he said he couldnt deny that this was true and that
the book of mormon was true. the only thing that is bothering him is
that his girlfriend is of another faith and doesnt like the mormon
church to much. he is telling her this week that he is hearing the
decussions from us.
phil Waulbourne. phil's wife is a less active member of the
church. and his son alex who is 10 heard the disscussions and was
baptised last transfer with elder sommerfeldt. but we have been
teaching him the past two weeks. he is really excited about the
church. and his wife just figured out she was pregnant.
Elizabeth Fowler- she dropped and doesnt want to hear form us
anymore. she just isnt ready.
here is another cool story. while we were contacting people
downtown this lady came and talked to us. she told us that joesph
smith was burning in hell because he was and adulturer. she told us we
were both going to burn in hell for spreading a false gospel and a lie
from a nut. she kept dissing our church and wouldnt listen to us at
all. she was trying to convert us to ehr church and at the end of her
dissing us all we said was thank you for strengthing my testimony that
joesph smith was prophet. she told us that we had a demoned spirit in
our ends. elder sommerfeldt was pretty fired up and said to someone
like you the holy ghost would seem like a devil. then this random guy
asked us a question he said if you have killed someone are you going
to hell? we told him that it was not up to us to judge and it was god
who judges. the crazy lady said of course their going to hell. this
guy said a long chain of profanities to the lady and said that some
guy raped his daughter and he killed him. he just left after
that........ as we were finishing our talking to the lady she said she
was going to follow us around everywhere we go and convert the people
back to the truth. crazy thing is she did follow us for quite awhile!
hahaha
next after last p-day our basketball had a tumor in it. it was a
really old basketball. on the drive home the sticthing in the
basketball started popping out. while on our drive back to our house
the basketball exploded in our car! it was as loud as a gun shot. it
was really funny we thought someone was shooting at us on the highway.
last week we also went on splits this was the 2nd time ive been
on splits already. this day i was senior companion because we were in
my area. i was with elder wooding. he is from england and has been out
for a year and a half. he was a super funny guy and we had a blast.
so my week was a ton of fun. it was really nice hearing from
everybody. and thank you for all your prayers and support. i love
hearing from everyone.
1. so could you send me my line of authority.
2. send me my retainer.
3.oh who all are you sending my E-mails too.
4. what is colten starrs mission address?
well i love you all and i lover hearing about how all you are doing
tell katie congrats on the cheer, ben should be pretty excited about
march madness soon, just tell everybody i love them.
Nicholas Strobel
excellencce. which means were excellent missionaries. here is an
update on all the people we are teaching.
p.s. me and my companion are only taking like half of a p-day
today so that we can go visit the wu's and deanna and matthew. we are
visiting them today because president scott is coming tomorrow to go
through the baptism interview questions with them.
brother de jong he has a conference talk for about anything. he
also has perfect hair. it is really funny. he used to be a stake
president so he is a really awesome mission leader and really helped
us with the wu family. he is from sweeden. but moved to canada when he
was a little kid. he is a really serious guy and kind of reminds me of
president turley...
wu's- so we went over to the wu's house with our ward mission
leader. he was able to talk to amy wu about his family and how him and
his mom were the only ones form his family that were baptized. this
was what amy wu was really worried about family issues of the rest of
her family that arent baptized. he was able to really connect with her
because he was able to explain with his own life experiences to
explain a lot to her. at the end of the lesson she said a prayer and
thanked heavenly father for sending brother de jong for helping her
with her problems. also today we are going over there to watch a video
with them. (and brother de jong) the video is called on the way home i
think.... we have a lot of appointments with them this week because
they are planning to get baptized this sunday march 18. how awesome it
is that they were willing to change to come closer to christ. here is
another story about the wu's we were teaching them about the law of
tithing and how you have to pay 10 percent of your increase. at the
end the asked us well what if we want to pay more than 10 percent and
sometimes 15-20%. that is just to show you a little more about how
amazing the wu's are.
millers- this week the millers came to church it was the second
time they came to church. this week while deanna was in relief society
this old lady got taking about the catholic church she said it was the
great and adbominable church, and the whore of all the earth. so we
were pretty freaked out about that. but that not all that happened.
her son matthew who is 10 was in class with duncan. duncan is a little
mentally chalenged (or as people say here one fry short of a happy
meal) and he had a freak out in matthews class and started banging his
head against the wall and kicking and punching all the kids. his
teacher who is a little lady who is 63 and has cancer. took him to the
ground and pinned duncan down so he couldnt hurt any of the other
kids. mathhew our investagator took his phone out and flimmed the
whole thing. so after this eventful day at church we went over to
there house. their date was set for april 8th and deanna said that
april was kind of busy. so we talked to her about her baptismal date
and she decided on the date of march 14... since she has only been to
church twice we told her we could do it the week after. so her and her
son matthew are getting baptised march 21st. we also were able to give
both of them blessings i had the oppertunity to give matthew a
blessing. his full name is matthew joesph isiah miller smith.... with
a name like that holy cow he is amazing.
next is Derek. we taught him the doctrine of christ this week.
(faith, repentance,baptism with athourity,holy ghost, and endure to
the end.) this lesson was really powerful he couldnt quit looking at
the diagram i drew. after a little while he said he couldn't deny it.
that was powerful he said he couldnt deny that this was true and that
the book of mormon was true. the only thing that is bothering him is
that his girlfriend is of another faith and doesnt like the mormon
church to much. he is telling her this week that he is hearing the
decussions from us.
phil Waulbourne. phil's wife is a less active member of the
church. and his son alex who is 10 heard the disscussions and was
baptised last transfer with elder sommerfeldt. but we have been
teaching him the past two weeks. he is really excited about the
church. and his wife just figured out she was pregnant.
Elizabeth Fowler- she dropped and doesnt want to hear form us
anymore. she just isnt ready.
here is another cool story. while we were contacting people
downtown this lady came and talked to us. she told us that joesph
smith was burning in hell because he was and adulturer. she told us we
were both going to burn in hell for spreading a false gospel and a lie
from a nut. she kept dissing our church and wouldnt listen to us at
all. she was trying to convert us to ehr church and at the end of her
dissing us all we said was thank you for strengthing my testimony that
joesph smith was prophet. she told us that we had a demoned spirit in
our ends. elder sommerfeldt was pretty fired up and said to someone
like you the holy ghost would seem like a devil. then this random guy
asked us a question he said if you have killed someone are you going
to hell? we told him that it was not up to us to judge and it was god
who judges. the crazy lady said of course their going to hell. this
guy said a long chain of profanities to the lady and said that some
guy raped his daughter and he killed him. he just left after
that........ as we were finishing our talking to the lady she said she
was going to follow us around everywhere we go and convert the people
back to the truth. crazy thing is she did follow us for quite awhile!
hahaha
next after last p-day our basketball had a tumor in it. it was a
really old basketball. on the drive home the sticthing in the
basketball started popping out. while on our drive back to our house
the basketball exploded in our car! it was as loud as a gun shot. it
was really funny we thought someone was shooting at us on the highway.
last week we also went on splits this was the 2nd time ive been
on splits already. this day i was senior companion because we were in
my area. i was with elder wooding. he is from england and has been out
for a year and a half. he was a super funny guy and we had a blast.
so my week was a ton of fun. it was really nice hearing from
everybody. and thank you for all your prayers and support. i love
hearing from everyone.
1. so could you send me my line of authority.
2. send me my retainer.
3.oh who all are you sending my E-mails too.
4. what is colten starrs mission address?
well i love you all and i lover hearing about how all you are doing
tell katie congrats on the cheer, ben should be pretty excited about
march madness soon, just tell everybody i love them.
Nicholas Strobel
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
March 5, 2012
hello every one i am doing great and am loving my mission it is a blast. wu family-elder sommerfeldt found them before i got here. they are doing great jon wu is ready to get baptised and is waiting for his wife to be ready. george the blind kid is 7 he is pro at the bop it toy. he maxed out the score at 999 times without messing up he is an awesome kid. everybody in the ward loves them and is fellowshipping them. the wu family were suppose to get baptised on march 11th but we had to push back their date to march 18 due to a probelm with the baptismal questions.
Kira we found on the street. he really loves the family home evening with the ward singles. he is from china so he is starting to wrap his head around god. but he is loving is time at church and is really feeling the spirit. We also pick up three new investagotars this week all of them young single adults one is named derek he was super receptive to our message and already has a felling that the book of mormon is true. he asked us a lot of questions about us. he wants to do everything god tells him to. me and elder sommerfeldt got the feeling that he wanted to serve a missioneven though he isnt a member of our church yet. also we picked of two ysa girls they are both really religous in theirnondenominational church because it has a youth group. we told them about our young adults group and they are really excited to come visit it and to visit our church. Just kidding we got 4 haha we taught this girl named eunice. her dad is a pentacostal preacher and has congregations here and in england and in africa so he is gone a lot. she is a pretty proper black girl who didnt really know what she was meeting us but she said she just felt like she needed to. we gave her a book of mormon to read and she said if she knew it was true she would get baptized. we explained to her how had that would be with her family, but she said that if it was true that they would just have to understand. she has a strong spirit about her.Yeah we have a microwave but i havent used it yet. every morning i eat eggs for breakfast and then i just usually wait and eat at someones home that night. all the other elders that are in our district are super jealous that we get feed a lot. cause they only get fed once or twice a week. My ward is absolutly awesome there are about a 100
people there each week. except for this week we had 8 investagors at church it was crazy we were running around the whole time trying to meet with everyone! during church we gfet there early to greet all; the members and to try to get to know them. President and sister scott are super awesome sister Scott really liked the picture of our family!she really liked me because i was really good with her grand kids that were there. also i had an interview with president Scott he is a great man he is a great leader an a great example.Elder Sommerfeldt might be related to jenifer Tucker ha ha isn't that crazy! he is awesome we pretty much have the same personality. we get along really well! we are working hard and are working every minute of every day. we had about 30 lessons last week with investagors and less active members. ha ah also he is terrible with directions same as me but he has a gps in our car. i think i need to get one of those. is becca using that one she got for her birthday maybe you could send it to me...? yeah i am staying really warm i havent even used my big coat yet i just wear gloves and my rain coat and i am fine. um yeah you should send me hard copy ones so i can keep them.So just last night i was out street contacting and i met this man named tim. he really opened up to us and told us about is life story. he said that well he was gone to war in afganistan his wife had left him and moved on to another man. so when he got back he didn't have anywhere to go to and his kids still loved him but not his wife so it was awkward there. also he lost his job he was suppose to go back to. he was comtemplating one night and went for along walk. he went on a bridge and was disscussing with god everything that had happened in his life. he was kind of praying and asking god why all these things had happened to him and if he could please hurt any less. he put hishands on the railing of the bridge getting ready to hope over the edge he looked down and inbetween his hands were the words in white paint HURT LESS. it was at that moment he said he was overcome with a feeling of joy. he said that the only time he really felt like god was there is when he went on these walks. we explained to him that it wasthe holy ghost. and told him if he would talk to the missionaries that he would have that feeling again. he really wanted that feeling and asked how long it would take and if he could have that feeling forever. it was then there on the street that we told him joesphs smiths first vision. he was touched. for some reason we asked if he was on one of his walks and he said yes. it was an amazing insidentice but the story doesnt do it justice. he lives in kingston which is out of are area but we gave the missionaries his number in kingston. Also i thought this would be funny to tell you but there is this 93 year old member that always comes around with us to are teaching appointments. he is really awesome and is in excellence shape he moves around like he is in his 20s he is super funny to see driveing his car becasue he is really short. haha but i really like him and he helps us teach a lot. he has a ton of wisdom he shares a lot of life stories that us missionaries dont have because we are only 19.
tell everyone i am doing wonderful! and i am loving it here me and my compainion are rocking it we are doubling the standards of excellence! and doing better then every one else in our zone! i love you all! andenjoyed reading the whole familys e mails. sorry i didnt respond backto everyones. love,elder strobel
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