Miracles

Eric's mission is going really well! He has a new mission president who he's getting to know, and he's had some interesting experiences with dogs, tracting and service. This week he sent home this story about some converts he baptized last Saturday:

"So [convert 1] and [convert 2] weren't a referral, they weren't found off of tracting, they basically were dropped into our laps from the very hand of God. They walked right into church our of nowhere, and after doing a contact with them to find out more about them, well they were looking for a church to join and loved their first experience at church. They came the following tuesday to YW and RS activities and loved it! but they wouldn't accept a date to get baptized (we did always have the date of the 24th in our minds to encourage them for.

After the next week came and went (they missed church) we talked to them on tuesday again, and this time, after teaching the second lesson, they decided that it was time for them to get baptized, they both accepted a date for the 23rd of July.

[convert 1] had an accident and couldn't get baptized that day, but she is very strong, and after seeing her daughter get baptized she's ready as ever to get baptized this coming week!"

Keep sending letters to the mission home. Eric loves the mail!

Garden of the Gods

I know it's been a while... chalk it up to having a baby. Anyway, Eric spent P-day at Garden of the Gods, which looks to me like a huge park made up entirely of rocks. He also took pictures of some graffiti he thought was cool. Here is what he had to say about it:

now i'll let you know about what i've been up to...

so on thursday morning i went to the temple with president pfile and 13 other missionaries, and it was a great experience...we started out byt splitting up into a few groups and doing some other stuff. the session was great, i felt the spirit amazingly strong.

that was great to think about the love and the warmth that we're all going ot feel for eternity if we live up to the commandments and covenants that we've made and agreed to live...

so after president took us all to the cafeteria and got each missionary a steak dinner. we went back to the mission home and had a fireside it was great, it was a long question and answer session, where he told us about life, about the gospel, and about getting married.

then we went to bed and had another great fireside the next morning (which ended in a testimony meeting). there's nothing that i want more than to go back and just sit in the temple and learn the mysteries of the gospel, that are so readily availible as we sit and ponder the truths that we learn.

hmmm......

lets see.......

another cool thing, is that my companion and a couple of other missionaries went to Garden of the Gods this morning before email...thats why i'm here later than normal....

it was really cool, and so i'll send you come pictures now.

Also, Eric is always looking for people to write him and who he can write back, so don't hesitate to send him letters, especially if you're a cute girl! Here's where you can reach him again:

Elder Eric Eyre

4090 Center Park Drive

Colorado Springs, CO 80916

Lately

Here are some letters from the past few months:

Hey everyone, how are you all doing??????

sorry that i'm emailing on a saturday, and it completely throws off your schedule, but as monday is labor day, and we have no way to email on monday becasue everything is closed, we were sent to email today instead.

I have one quick fun story from a week or so ago, that i had forgotten earlier:

we were out tracting the other day and this indian family came to the door, so we offered service, and they let us in, it turns out that they thought that we were government checking up on some kind of legal residency status, and wanting help with their healthcare, well. . .we cant do anything like that, as we have absolutely no weight when talking with governmental stuff, so we jsut told them to have a nice day, and if they needed any help with stuff that i do know how to do to let me know.

...

Hey everyone, since i haven't gotten a letter of questions for this week, i'll just try to tell you what interesting stuff has been going on lately.

yesterday at church, the pianist was there!! so i thougth that i was off the hook for playing the piano, but she dissappeared after the 3rd hymn, so the choirister just started the closing hymn anyways without piano, it was horrible!! in fact, it was so bad, that half way through the second verse the zone leader came over and asked me if i could go up and play the last verse, i hadn't practiced the hymn at all, but any piano was better than none, so i went up, and was able to start playing to start the 3rd verse and end the song, it was entertaining, to say the least.

Garden City is really pretty nice, the people here, for the most part, keep their mean, big dogs tied up, so i don't get chased too much by them, and there aren't any hills, that is also a fantastic benefit, especially since I don't have use of a car at all this transfer.

hmmm, what else would you all like to know??

alright, here's something that i've been studying lately, its been really pretty good:

Humility and Pride are interesting concepts to study, really there are many different things that we could study, doctrinally, and everything else, but the best things that we can work on and improve is ourselves. We have a responsibility and we should have a desire, to come to be more like christ, (there was a talk once by Elder Henry B. Eyering, that talks about the 3 things that and investigator needs to be converted to the Gospel, the first is they need to know without a doubt that it is ony through the savior Jesus Christ, the second is that they need to have the desire to make covenants with God, and the third, is they need to have the desire to become more christlike, my developing the christlike atributes found in the scriptures). In the book of mormon, (don't remember exactly where, or the exact wording in English) it says that the atonement is applicable to all those that have a broken heart, and to no one else can it satisfy the demands of justice. In the Guia, it says that a broken heart means that we are humble, meek, and willing to submit to the will of the father. but if we are not humble, it means that we are proud, Pride, i nthe Guia, is defined as: the lack of humility. simply put if we are proud, we are not qualified for the blessings of the atonement, and we are proud if we aren't humble.

its really interesting, becasue we need to constantly put our pride in check, (but really as pride is simply the absence of humility, humble ourselves continually). When we are comfortable with our circunstances we are then losing humility, it has happened to me many times this past transfer, becasue i wasn't very humble, and my companion isn't very humble either, I would get frustrated with him, but thats just becasue i was proud, its something that simple, becasue every negative emotion or reaction to the things around us comes from us not being humble, we can avoid a large amount of these feelings if we just remember christ, focus on him, and forget about ourselves. But we need to constantly work on it, if we don't we will be frustrated almost all of the time, its really like filling a cup that has a hole in it, we can humble ourselves a lot in certain circunstancias, and we thing, "alright now we're good" but that hole drains out the humility, and we're left proud again, so we need to be constantly renewing our humility, if we do, we will stay unimaginably more happy, and less frustrated, becasue those little things that make us feel like everyone around us are completely incompetant don't matter, we realize that we are nothing also.

...

yes we have run into many strange people this week. We were talking with this one guy who was completely drunk, and didn't knwo what he was talking about, i just talked to him for a little bit and then i told him how late we were to an appointment, and that we had to go.

another guy that we met the other day was a very weird situation: we were tracting, adn one of the last doors we knocked (after not teaching one person for 2 hours) a man opened up and said "hey guys come on in!" i thought alright great lets teach him. we walk in and we introduce ourselves and he sais "yeah i know, we're christian in this house, and this is a gay home..." We believe that christ died for all of our sins, and this isn't a sin." . . . . . . . . . .

. . .

. . .

so he told us how he was raised a member from the time that he was born until he was 12. and we politely excused ourselves to go back to tracting or go to talk to someone else. it was definately one of the weirder things that have happened during my mission.

one more weird story, that i'll tell really quick.

we were driving to a dinner a few days ago, and we were just driving along, and this red car kindof cuts us off, well, the one driving, just changes lanes and keeps driving (driving past tehm pretty quickly) and it turns out the car was full of 4 college age girls. . . they start yelling at us to slow down (kindof flirting with the driver) and we just keep going ignoring them, well they drive up along side of us really fast, and as we look over to see them, one of them has mooned us!!!!! we weren't sure really what happened, until another 5-10 seconds had gone by, but htey zoomed past us right as the road turned into one lane. we kept going and as we get to the turn, they turn and yell out the window "hey, follow us!!" needless to say, we pulled a joseph and just ran, they turned, and we zoomed off straight to a dinner. . . that was another of the weird things that happened this past week.

yay for missionary work!!!

...

So this week i popped my tire, my companion and i were riding over to visit a couple of people, and i had just gotten off the phone with a member to see how everything was going, and as i hung up, and put the phone in my pocket, i heard a pop, and a loud hiss, i immediately knew what had happened, and to my absolute joy upon dismounting my bike, there was the 3 inch nail sticking up through the bottom of my tire and poking out through the side wall, i was very lucky that it didn't hit the wheel or damage the rim, becasue that would be pretty bad, i still would be stuck on foot, or borrowing a bike again.

There was a pretty easy solution, however. We went back to the apartment and i checked under the couch, where i had put those super skinny street bike tires after blowing one of them out. I grabbed the one that still worked, and i threw it on the bike, as a temporary fix, its been working alright.

There was another funny one from this week. We were leaving a dinner with another couple of Elders, and on the ride, i turn around just in time to see one of the missionaries hit a cat with his bike. Now cats are tough to get, they are pretty quick, and this one was no exception. i saw this cat get hit from the side and then before this missionary could roll over it, it slid out from under the tire, and ran to the other side of the street. I don't particularly like cats, but it seemd to be ok, so we just kept on riding. . .and laughing.

This week was a week of miracles, my new companion and i found 2 new investigators with dates, and they seem very solid, and so we're going to go work with them and their families.

This Sunday was very very hectic, with all of the changes here, I have now become one of the most fluent speakers of both English and Spanish, so it become my responsibility this sunday to translate. It was my first time translating to spanish during a sacrament meeting, it was interesting, and i had my companion translate the opening and closing prayer, it was an overall good experience, but translating classes can be more difficult becasue people start rambling about past experiences, and when you're talking about the Word of Wisdom, you can only imagine what kindof stories come up: stories from being shot, to driving log trucks, and a lot of repetition in a class like that. so the translator begins to feel like a broken record. If any of you have any translating tips, i would really appreciate them.

It's Been A While!

Not because Eric hasn't written any letters, but because I've been lazy. So here's the latest:

Hey everyone,

This has been an interesting week, My companion has one more week in
Dodge City, and then he goes back to Montana, so i guess the city got
interesting for him so that he would never forget it.

First, we got chased by what we think was a rabid dog. We were
tracting down in a culdasac in the southern end of town, and
everything was going great, we had found someone that wanted to listen
to more of the Gospel, so we went to the next door and a dog started
barking and getting really angry with us, now this isn't irregular for
us, we get barked at by little chiuahuas every day, but this was a
larger german shepherd, and he wasn't happy, so my companion didn't
notice, and kept knocking the door, so i had to tell him that i felt
that the dog would attack us and that we should leave, he looked at
the dog for the first time, and then agreed that we needed to leave.
Our car was a block or 2 away so we started walking, and the dog
followed us all the way back to the car, circling us with 2 of his dog
friends following watching the show. we took off our backbacks and
used them to keep the mean dog away, because he was coming in close
enough to bite us. and shortly before getting into the car, we
started to see foamy saliva dripping out of the dog's mouth. It was
an exciting adventure for the morning.

Later that day we had another interesting thing happened. We were
driving to an appointment and it started to rain really hard, like
really really hard, so we put on our jackets and went up to the house,
Elder Groesbeck had seen some greenish clouds out in the distance, but
i just thought that it was some sky poking through the storm. It
turns out that that greenish area was actually a hail storm, and that
day during our lesson a tornado touched down about a quarter of a mile
away from the casino out on the edge of town, we didn't even hear the
sirens go off because we were in a basement apartment and were
teaching a lesson at that time.

Another cool thing that happened this week is that it was Elder
Groesbeck's Birthday, so the branch president the other elder's in
town and the branch president's family all came over and woke up Elder
Groesbeck by singing very loudly Happy Birthday to him right before
his alarm went off. We had planned it out and i had unlocked the door
just a little bit earlier, he was way shocked to find Elder Guzman and
Elder Chaparro singing to him in his room that early int he morning,
then we had a nice breakfast that the Arkell family prepared for us,
Elder Groesbeck had a good Birthday overall.

The last thing that i'll share with you all today is about a miracle
that we saw this week. Brother Molina, who we taught and baptized
last transfer wanted to share the gospel with his Grandkids, so he
invited us over to have classes with them and share the gospel. so we
went over and taught 6 of his Grandkids, it was great, we showed them
the restoration video, and then answered their questions (which
quickly deteriorated from the gospel to "why does my cat bite me?" )
. then we got a call on Elder Groesbeck's birthday (saturday) and
found out that one of the kids wanted to get baptized and that his dad
said that it was ok with him, it was a fantastic day. We went over to
his house and taught the rest of the lessons to him and his younger
sister and he got baptized the next day.

well i've shared with you the exciting stuff from my week, If you have
any questions send them to jeanine, or Dear Elder them to me ,and i'll
answer them the next chance i get, (at this point, please send all
Dear Edlers to the mission office, i probably won't be in teh Avenue P
Address much longer becasue when Elder Groesbeck leaves at the end fo
the week i'll be moved into a different appartement to have a new
companion.

I love all of you and want you to remember where you came from, and
where you have the potential to go. (the presence of God). Know that
i love you, but that its not even a fraction of how much God Loves
you.

I'll be waiting to hear from you.

Elder Eyre

p.s. the second picture is of the view from our window in the morning,
the first is the Ruanos (older couple) and the Molina Family (in the
middle) then,of course me,and elder Groesbeck (on the end)

New Address

Eric has requested more letters. Yes, I'm looking at you, person who hasn't written him one letter yet. Eric has also requested that you send his letters to the mission office where they will be forwarded to him, wherever he is. This way, you won't have to keep track of when he moves (because he'll be doing that a lot). Here is the address where you should send his letters (addressed to Elder Eric Eyre):

4090 Center Park Drive
Colorado Springs, CO 80916
United States

If you still want to send him letters on Dearelder.com, that's even easier! All you have to do is deposit $10.00 on your account, choose "Colorado Colorado Springs" from the drop-down box, and write your letter. Each letter will cost 45 cents (basically the cost for a stamp) and they will print it out and mail it for you. So what are you doing reading this blog!? You should be writing Eric a letter!

First of many from Dodge City 2nd Branch

Hey everyone,

I'm am out of the MTC and into the field! Its wonderful to talk with
real people and to walk the streets and really to just be in reality
again. The language is a slight barrier, there are a lot of people
from Guatemala here, and they speak quickly, and its fairly difficult
to understand at times. But i wouldn't trade this opportunity for the
World!

Things are going well here, My companion is nearing the end of his
mission, and he can't believe where the time has gone, and for this
reason, we're working hard every day, last night, when we finished
planning, i didn't even make it to the bed, I crashed on the couch,
until my companion woke me up at around 10:20 and had me move to my
bed!!

We teach on average about 3.5 lessons a day, and talk with about 20-40
people that we just see on the street, but its never enough, we've got
to keep going, find better ways to talk to people, and understand what
God wants us to do to use our time most effectively.

I have spent 3 days in Dodge, and we have done more that i thought
would have been possible while in the MTC, So everyone knows, i would
like all mail to be sent to the mission office and then they will
forward it to me, in whichever area i happen to be in. Dad, i didn't
get my bike, but the people that you ordered it through lent me a
loaner for a little while until it comes in, then we'll see how i can
get it from them, as i am in a different state, haha, i'm in a
different time zone!!

I would like to share with you what i've learned over this week, Time
is Short, and this life is the time for men to prepare to meet God
(citation required Jeanine please fill it in for me [I think he means Alma 12:24 or Alma 34:32]) We will work
hard, and that is wonderful, but time really does fly, before any of
us know it i'll be done with my mission, and when i come back, i hope
that all of you will have done something while I'm gone. Find
something that will change you life or the lives of those you care
about and do it! Share what you know and allow others to grow. This
life isn't a contest, we will only grow as much as we allow others
around us to grow. share your knowledge, share your experience, love
those around you, we're all brothers and sisters, children of our
loving Heavenly Father.

I love all of you, and I know that you're doing whats best for your
future, and for yourselves right now.

Please write, i haven't heard from anyone since leaving the MTC!!

I'll Talk to you all soon

Elder Eric Eyre

Almost There!

Hey everyone,

I'm back this week, and there is a bunch of new stuff going on.
First, i am no longer allowed to speak any english during the day,
during any of my classes or during any meals, so its been going fun

My district is now the oldest district in the zone, and we have been
anxiously awaiting our travel plans (which should come on friday!!)

We have been teaching the lessons entirely in spansih for the last
little while, and Comprehension is going through the roof, especially
when we spend a lot of time just talking with the native speakers.

We have taken to drinking sangria senorial on monday nights (since its
basically our friday night) day before P-day. which is fun. We have
been doing well as a district, growing close and getting things done.

So everyone knows, i get Dear Elders around 4 o'clock, but its a rule
in my branch that we can't open any mail until that night when we get
back to the room, so don't worry, i'm not blowing off studying to read
letters and stuff.

K so a quick spiritual thought for everyone,

I want everyone to know how important The Atonement is for me in my
life. Jesus Christ suffered and died, taking upon him the pains of
the world (emotional and physical) he suffered so greatly that he
begged the father for that responsibility to be lifted from Him, but
he didn't give up(which He could have) He accepted the pain, because
he knew that only through Him would we be able to return to our Father
in Heaven. He took upon Him the pains, the sins, all of the
sufferings that we would have to face...we have a best friend, that we
can to in our darkest moments and ask for help, we have a companion, a
comforter that we can lean on in those times when we think that no one
can empathize, when we think that no one can understand. If we go to
Him with the sincerity of our heart, and with real intent, and with
faith in Him, we can recieve the assistance that we so deperately
need.

Y para concluir, Estoy muy animado por esta oportunidad que tengo para
aprender el idioma de Espanol. Yo se que si tratamos a seguir las
mandamientos de Dios, podremos regresar a su mansion en el reino
celestial, y no podriamos tener las oportunidades de esta vida, y las
bendiciones de la Expiacion sin su ayuda, y sin su gran amor para
nosotros.

I love all of you, and hope that you're all doing well

Please send me DearElders so that i know whats going on.
Elder Eyre