QUICKIE

Don't have much time, here's my short email to president:

 

"Hey President!

 

I wanted to express thanks this week to you for being in tune with the Spirit to bless me with Elder Diaz as a companion. I am very grateful to him for the things he teaches me and just how teachable he is. It was great to have him here while Elder C-Breezy was going through things, because he didn't ask any questions at all, and he just goes with things. I also have learned from him the importance of record keeping. You'd think I would have learned this more in the beginning of my mission, and I didn't totally blow it off, but he has taught me so much about records. One of the biggest ways we've been able to win back the trust of the Red Leaf Ward has been through our progress records which are always neat and clean and thorough. Elder Diaz has truly been able to teach me that this is a part of the work that we do--and it's not secondary in any way.

 

We were able to teach 20 lessons again this week! I know the Lord helps us so much as we try to do so, and we see the blessings that come. We have taught 20 lessons consistently the last 3 weeks, and we have found more than 3 new investigators each of these weeks. We have been able to establish more trust and let the ward know that we work hard and are able to do a lot of work each day. Yesterday our Ward Mission Leader told us to keep up the good work and that he's heard nothing but good from the members about us. He says the ward council loves us, and just yesterday Elder Washburn told us the Relief Society president likes us as well, which I wasn't sure she did. Things are going well.

 

We were able to see miracles happen this week. The number one miracle being our bishop's wife talking to and setting up the Busch family to meet with us again. And not only that, but to set them to be baptized. We also met with them today and they are set to be baptized on Nov 17. Our bishop's wife is amazing, and it just is a testimony to me of the power in missionary work that the members hold."

 

I love you family. I love the work. 

Love, 

Elder Logan Bryan

Another Cool/Crazy Week

Hey Family,

Sounds like you guys have been busy! We have too, which is a blessing. 

So, it's amazing to be a missionary! We had a mission meeting this week with ALL the missionaries in our whole mission! It was to talk about the announcement, our mission goal of 100 baptisms in the month of December, and conversion as missionaries. It was a great motivator to me and a great call to repentance to be better for me. I know it had a profound effect on many missionaries just because of the Spirit I felt there. Man, how I loved the thoughts shared by our leaders. I especially loved the thoughts shared by Elder Washburn and Elder McKay. I am continually reminded every time I see them how very blessed I have been to be companions with not only some of the best missionaries I think there are, but some of the best people I've ever met. I feel undeserving of these blessings.

Elder Washburn, Logan, and their posterity--4 GENERATIONS!!!

This week was a little crazy for me in Red Leaf, but we still saw miracles happen and we saw great results in our key indicators. We still have a ton of room for improvement though. I went on an exchange with Elder McElroy and Elder Wall in their areas, but it worked out well. I was out of the area two days plus most of the day on Tuesday, so I felt a little bit out of it, but Elder Diaz did a great job in helping the work progress with the help of Elder Belnap, and Elder Pickering. The exchanges were good.

Alene, Paul, and Shantele Lucero we taught a couple times this week and finally got a member to come with us. It was a very cool lesson, and Paul was itching for his mom to stop talking so he could start reading the Book of Mormon--pretty cool!  I have felt much more responsibility the last few weeks, and I feel that I cannot let the Lord down. We couldn't find Cody this week and his phone is not working. Lakthong is a very humble Cambodian guy that I strongly feel will accept the gospel. He is just so humble and so willing to do what God wants. We are meeting with the Mussos tomorrow and we are meeting with the Martins sometime this week. Everyone is doing well. And there should be many more miracles to report next week. I love you guys. I love the gospel. How great is the calling to preach it to the world! 

Love,

Elder Logan Bryan

Elder Diaz and his Birthday Cake

Semana de Milagros

Well my family,

My how my testimony has grown of committing ourselves to the Lord and His work.

So last week I told you we were committing to get 20 lessons every week. It happened this week, we had 15 going into Sunday and then we taught 5 lessons yesterday, and it was great!  Every day we have seen miracles this week. Day after day they came.

Tuesday--we contacted Alene, the teaching record we had received from the elders in Longmont. We taught her and she was so humble and accepted to be baptized in the beginning of November. She also said she wanted to do this as a family--she has a 19 year-old son and an 18 year-old daughter.

Wednesday--We had a pretty good day full of setting up a booth at the community college and talking to a ton of people--a few of which were prepared which was awesome! (One of them was Lakthong who we just taught about 10 minutes ago.) (Another was a guy named Ian who I talked to for a long time and he told me how he knew God was forgiving, but he still felt sometimes he questioned if God could forgive him of some of his past.  I testified of the atonement and of baptism, and he accepted willingly and enthusiastically to be baptized!  We referred him to the zone leaders in the Denver North Zone where he lives).  We had to run home to grab my suit because we had a meeting that night with the Stake President, and when we pulled up to our house, there was a guy sitting alone on a bench at the park across the street.  I felt impressed to go talk with him, and we did, and asked if we could teach him a lesson that would help him, and he told us we could.  His name is Cody, he just moved here a couple of months ago from Indiana starting life over. His little brother died at the age of 2 years old, and that has been hard for him. We tuaght him the restoration and also a little bit of the plan of salvation. We asked what he would be willing to do to make sure he could live with his little brother in heaven again.  He said he would do anything, and we invited him to be baptized, and he willingly accepted!

Thursday--I was on exchanges with Elder Washburn, so Elder McKay and Elder Diaz were in our area and were able to teach a hispanic guy named Pedro and set up a return appointment with him, and it was a miracle.  Also a little miracle and tender mercy for me was to be able to work for a few hours on campus in Greeley with Elder Hernandez again in the middle of my exchange with Elder Washburn--Long story, but tender mercy.  I got to see Sam Munson, it was great!

Friday--It was a long day, and at 8 at night we tried a part member family that we had tried the last 2 weeks to visit, and they let us in, and the mom and brother aren't members. Crystal and Anthony Musso. We taught them and they committed to read and pray about the Book of Mormon and about  coming to church and taking the sacrament.  Random lesson, but it was good and we were able to teach them and invite the spirit into their home in a chaotic time for them.

Saturday--We were able to stop by the Martins for a short time and share with them some lessons learned from General Conference. They were kind to us, and invited us back to teach them the next day. We also had dinner with Rachel and Eric Mills, the family we ran into by accident when we had the wrong address for dinner. They are great, and I think eventually they will progress

Sunday--Great day at church, and we were able to teach the Martins again which was miraculous in that Katey's concerns came out and we strengthened our relationship and our trust with them. The night before, Katey had stayed up all night basically reading every conference talk because she couldn't sleep because she's pregnant. If we wouldn't have stopped by the night before, she wouldn't have done that. IT was a great lesson. We also taught Alene again, but this time with her two kids!  Paul is her son, and he really wants to come to church and learn and progress as a family.  Her daughter Shantele is not so gung-ho, but they both agreed to try it out and let us teach them as a family. It was awesome!

So all in all, we taught 20 lessons, and found 6 new investigators to teach this week!  It was an amazing week. I KNOW the Lord is watchful and loves us and knows us. I know that this is His work. He is just waiting for us to sacrifice our will to achieve his.  He loves His children, and we need to love them as well. I am finally beginning to learn how to be successful out here.  I need to truly and completely and deeply "forget myself and go to work."  It's incredible and awe-inspiring and testimony-building to see what Heavenly Father can do and how much He can bless us.  It's amazing to see in myself and in others conversion taking place in our lives.  It happens, we just have to work at it and let it work in us.  I LOVE the gospel.  It is SO true.  God IS a God of Miracles. 

Love,

Elder Logan Bryan

General Conference was AMAZING

Elder Diaz and Me in the Car!

Well my Awesome Family,

I loved General Conference!

Dallin, you're going to be such an amazing missionary--whether at 18 or 19, I know you'll be the best missionary I know. There are going to be so many blessings from this new announcement and age change. I am so excited to see it happen.

This week was a good one, but also a hard one.  It's ok though, because the good days wouldn't be as good without the hard days.  I feel like we were definitely guided this week.  I have been discouraged at the end of each week looking back and seeing the key indicators as low numbers and lots of zeros.  I made a commitment to Elder Diaz that we wouldn't have another week where we get less than 20 lessons. I'll commit to you as well. I have a strong testimony that when we do that, and are working hard and teaching, miracles happen.  Elder Washburn and I saw it happen in Buffalo Ridge; we saw many baptisms come from just simply going out and working.  And it is then that the Holy Ghost becomes our guide, when we put forth our faith and exercise it everyday in order to receive conversion every day of our lives.  I loved General Conference.  For some reason President Eyring's talk from Priesthood Session inspired me almost more than any other.  I loved what he said about seeking the Lord's guidance to recognize and discern the spiritual gifts that have been given to those who we have stewardship over.  He will let us know, and at that point, we can build them up and help them get a vision of who they can become.

The work this week was alright as far as what happened in Red Leaf.  There WILL be miracles that happen this week.  I fasted the past two Sundays for guidance in General Conference and also for the missionary work here.  I truly believe and know that miracles are going to happen.  We have such a solid day lined up today.  We are having dinner with ward missionaries, then we are having Family Home Evening with a Part Member Family where we are going to boldly invite the nonmember wife to be baptized, and we are meeting with a referral/investigator that we were given from Longmont with our ward mission leader, and we are going to invite her to be baptized as well.  I know the Lord is guiding the work.  We met this past week with Katey and Ray, a Part-Member family as well.  It wasn't the greatest lesson in the world, but I think she will be baptized as soon as she has her baby, which is at the end of the month.  I know the Lord will help that happen as well.  We also met with a 17 year-old investigator, Dylan.  He wants to be baptized, we just need to get him some active YM fellowship.  There has been a recent convert that is 17 that has gone inactive already in just 3 months.  The ward is a little gun-shy about baptizing YM now, but I think if the ward gets involved, and if we make sure they get involved, then that miracle willl happen as well.  We have lined up to meet this week with another part-member family where they have unbaptized children, and I strongly feel we will be able to see those kids get baptized as well.  There are miracles that are waiting to happen, and I think they were waiting for me to develop enough faith and drive.  I have it, and I feel like I am truly going to become the best missionary I can be at this point in my mission.  I can feel the Lord helping me to give my "whole soul."  It hasn't been easy, and I feel like I've failed at it previously at points in my mission.  But it is worth it, and I'm not going to let it slip.  I love this work.  I love it with all my heart and I know it to be completely true.

I know the Gospel and Church are God's kingdom and doctrine once again restored to the earth.  It's amazing.  It's because He loves us.  If we can just let our faith work in us and be grafted to our souls, we can become converted and truthfully respond to the question from our Savior, "Do you love me?" with a resounding and unshakeable yes.  IT is our gift to give, the only one we truly have to be able to give.  Let us give it fully and completely--with our whole souls.  He will help us, He will make up the difference.  He "will never forsake" us.

Love,

Elder Logan Bryan

Week 1 in Westminster

Hey Family,

Ours was a pretty good but pretty hectic week. There were a few people that the previous elders were teaching that were hard to get a hold of, but we finally have made contact with most of them. We met with the ward mission leader for 2.5 hours on Tuesday, and again yesterday we met with him for a long while going through the ward list. We also met with the Bishop on Thursday night, and he is on board for missionary work. The whole ward is basically returned missionaries--including many of the women in the ward. It's interesting to see why they haven't had as much success in this ward, and I'm not even really sure why, but we hopefully are going to turn it around. The only disheartening thing about meeting with the Bishop was that he only invited us to go to one ward council per month, and that's the 4th Sunday ward council--so we won't be going to one until Sunday of week 5, Oct. 28th. Kind of a bummer.

We taught Dan and Linda this week, which were investigators that were being taught by the last elders. They had a VERY strong relationship with the previous elders, and I know it was hard for them to have them leave and have us as the new missionaries. We taught them on Wednesday with the bishop's wife, and it went well, but Linda told us at the end not to ask her so many questions, and niether would agree to say the closing prayer. They were set for Oct. 20th for baptism. We were supposed to have another appointment with them right now, Monday at 11, but they called us this morning and requested no more "home visits" which was really sad. They said they have some things to figure out because he may be taking a job in Idaho, but I asked them if they would still read and come to church and he said they were still going to do that "as of now." He said they probably wouldn't make their baptismal date because he might have to go to Idaho on the 17th of October. It was a really disheartening experience. I know they know it's true, but I think they took the missionary transition very badly. I don't know what we can do. We feel as if the ward who knows them very well is going to make the difference there.

We had a couple of cool experiences this week where we were in the "wrong" place according to what we planned to do, but in the right place according to God. We had a dinner with a family whose address wasn't updated on our records, so we knocked on the apartment door, and the lady who answered wasn't the lady who had set up dinner with us. She looked pretty taken aback, and we kind of told her we had the wrong address, but then gave a tracting approach, and she said that she was LDS. She was carrying a newborn, and said she hadn't been to church in a long time, and that her husband who wasn't a member probably would not be interested in hearing what we had to say. We asked if he would be willing to meet us, and she said that he would be ok with that. We got her phone number, and she said we could stop by at any time. Pretty cool! Her name is Rachel.  We were also tracting after not being able to see the people we were going to in this apartment complex and we knocked on one door and a guy stepped out named Garrett. He told us that he was actually baptized years back, but hadn't been to church in a long while. We asked him if that was something he would like to get back into, and he said he would. So we have his address and he told us his schedule, so we told him that that was why we were there, to help people grow closer to Christ. So that was another cool experience...hopefully we'll be able to meet with him this week.

I love you and miss you a ton. I know the work is God's, and He lives, as does His Son. I love the gospel that can provide us peace in times of trial. It is the Good News of Christ. 

Love, 

Elder Logan Bryan