December 23, 2013 Merry Christmas..."ponder about the gifts that the wise men chose to give"

Merry Christmas everyone,

     I don't know where everyone is that I am sending this too, but here in Connecticut it is in the 60's and raining so it will probably not be a white Christmas for us.  The weather around here changes so fast, last week we got snowed in after we went on a large Christmas temple trip.  It was a fun experience because just like when we got snowed in by the huge snow storm last year, we got to once again have a giant slumber party at some of the Elder's apartment in Massachusetts.

     Since I last emailed, we have seen a lot of little miracles that have been very fitting for this time of year.  Most of them being finding people that have decided that it is time for them to come back to God.  An example of this being our friend J’.  We had not met with J’ for quite a while and would call him on a regular basis to try to set up an appointment.  This had gone on for about a month until just last week when he called us and told us about how he had a little trouble and that he had fallen away from God a little bit. 

     He then said that it was time for him to come back now and that he was ready for us to help bring him closer to God again.  This time of year has also been a great time of finding for us as we have wandered the streets looking to do the Lord’s will.  We have found many members that have lost their way in search of it again and also we have found new people willing to hear the message we have to share.

     Like always we are cutting wood for people so that they can keep their houses warm during the winter.  Well I guess word got around because one of our members offered our services to her non-member friend.  We gladly accepted the opportunity to get in some good service and help out her friend.  We spent most of the day working with him.  In that time, I think we built a pretty good relationship and we asked him if his member friend had told him anything about the church.  He said that he has had questions in the past and that they had talked about it a little.  It felt so natural when we asked him if he would like to learn more.  He said that he would like that some time and he would also like to see us again to help him with his wood.  Hopefully we will have more to say about our new friend S’  in the future.

     From here I would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and ask you to ponder about the gifts that the wise men chose to give to the new born king.  I would also like to thank everyone that sent me a package this Christmas I have never received so many packages at once, and it made me very happy to see how well all of you knew me by the things that were inside.

Elder Erb

2013 12 09 "Dear Missionary Men"

Dear people,

    There is a saying out here in the East that goes like this, "If you don't like the weather, then just wait."  We have felt a little of that this week when out of nowhere we had temperatures in the high 50's.  It has hardly even snowed here so far.  So we had a little extra time on one of the warmest days of this week and went around trying to find some members the ward has not seen in a while.  Don't worry, I am getting to why this is all important. 

    Now if you had to guess, would you say that there would be people home at around noon on Thursday?  I didn't think that we would find anyone either but in fact every single house we checked at we found someone home, who was willing to talk to us.  I learned a little bit about having faith that the Lord will put people in your path when you are doing his work.

    So forgive me if I am retelling a story that happened in the past, but I can't remember if I wrote about it yet.  We ran into a member that had not been to church in over a year.  He told us that he was busy then because it was Halloween, but that he would like to have us over for dinner so that we could talk. 

    Well we came by for the time we set up to meet and we found something that in all of my time as a missionary I had never found before.  It was a letter taped to his door, on the front of which read "Dear Missionary Men."  The letter said that he was sorry that he had to cancel on us like this but he did not have our phone number or any other way to get a hold of us.  We thought it was really cool and kind of him to leave a note for us because most people just cancel without telling us or forget that we had an appointment. 

    Well we set up another time to meet with him and he decided that we should meet December 4th.  Now I do not think that December 4th is a special day but for some reason everyone wanted to meet with us on that day at 6:00 pm.  Elder Graff and I soon realized that we had a problem, because there was a ton of people that wanted to meet with us around 6:00ish on December 4th. 

    When missionaries have this problem they are allowed to split up with the members so that they can get all the work done they need to.  We had about 4 of these splits/hand-offs.  In the midst of all of these splits something amazing happened that we did not learn the significance of until Sunday. 

    A member named Brother Ax’ was going to pick me up from Brother Ay's house, the member we took to teach J’, to take me to visit the member who had left us the note.  He was already late and was about to turn back and go home when he decided that he would look one last time. 

    Just a little before this scene, Elder Graff and I realized that he might have a hard time finding the house and we should go stand outside and flag him down off the highway.  We were not out there long before he found us and we were able to go our separate ways and have an amazing night in several different places. 

    The member explained to me that the experience he had with us was nothing short of a miracle and that I do not understand the thoughts that went on in his head as he drove around lost looking for us.  Brother Ax’ then said that as he prayed for help, he found us there on the side of the road the very moment that he closed it in the name of Christ.

    I think I have talked enough about that story, and I can gladly say that the lesson with that member was worth the trouble and we will probably visit him again soon with Brother Ay. 

    I would now like to talk a little bit about what happened in a different lesson we had with the Creamer family.  Last time we talked about "who Jesus Christ is" and at the end asked them to pray.  When we went to follow up with what had happened we found something that was more shocking to them than to us. 

    So Sister Creamer had told us before that she did believe that Jesus was the son of God, but her son did not.  We asked him if he did what we asked and he then said, very confused, "I prayed to know if the things you taught last time were true, before I did, I did not believe it was true.  But when I prayed I felt that it made sense." 

    Those were not the exact words he used because he had a hard time explaining what he felt.  We had the wonderful opportunity then to testify of the Holy Ghost and how he is a person who can answer us in many different ways.  One of which is by bringing peace to our minds like the peace that he felt.

     I am glad that I have the chance to be here doing the Lord’s work.  I hope that I will never forget the joy that comes through service to my brethren.

Elder Erb

11.25.2013 Greek Gods, Atheism, Catholics & Wicca

Nov. 25, 2013

Hi Family and Friends,

There have only been a couple of days since my last email so there is not a lot to talk about.  Most of the time we have been helping people move or raking leaves.  It seems to me that the leaves do not stop falling until the snow finally falls which is disappointing because we have to keep raking the same yards over and over again because it hasn't really snowed yet.

We did have the opportunity to meet with the C’ family since my last email.  The C’ family is awesome.  Side tangent time, out here in the East there are a lot of Italian people, and there is a simple rule whenever you go over to an Italian person’s house.  The rule is: they will feed you, and you will eat it, otherwise it is offensive.  

I first learned this rule after we visited an Italian woman early on in my mission.  We had already had two dinners for one reason or another and then we stopped by this woman’s house.  And of course as the rule goes we had to force down a third huge dinner.  Luckily now that I am a little wise in my age as a missionary I did not make this mistake with the C’s.  

Every time we walk into their house we hear, “hopefully you came hungry”, which is soon answered by an "always” from the two of us.  We had a good lesson with the C’ family this last time because it was the first time we actually started to teach something.  We had just barely gotten them to agree to take the missionary discussions on our last visit with them.  

My companion and I agreed that before we started the lessons that we should have an opening lesson about "Who Jesus is."  We felt this because all of the members of this family all have different religions and none of them really know anything about Christ.  It was amazing to me to see how willing they were to accept the things that we told them about Jesus and the things that he did for us.  I felt that they were all listening to the things that were said and that they truly would pray to know if the things we taught are true.

Something that I think is a great lesson from this is that you never know who will be interested in the gospel.  The member that introduced us to this family did not think that this would have ever gotten this far.  Despite this, in her desire to fulfill her role as a member missionary, she simply invited them to a ward activity. 

Never did she imagine this family whose current religions are Wicca, Catholic, atheist, and the worshipping of Greek Gods would ever be interested in the gospel, let alone take the discussions from the missionaries.  Now the family gets excited for our visits with them, and tells the member all about what we taught them.  You can never tell what the Lord has in His plans.

Elder Erb

11/21/2013 Thursday "I would not give it up for any material possessions in this world"

Hello again,

     Man I am starting to slack on sending out emails every week.  We have just been very busy lately helping the other missionaries get around.  Since I last emailed, we have found 5 new people that are interested in the message that we have for them.  I realize that it has been a long time and there is a lot of stuff that I haven't talked about.  I am going to try to help you catch up so forgive me if I write about something that I have already written about.

     To start off with, the Asian couple that we were teaching left and moved to Washington D.C., which is just a couple of hours out of our mission boundaries.  

     We have been teaching J... more though.  I would like to take a couple of lines and thank the member that we brought with us to teach J....  We were trying to find someone that would get along good with him to bring to the lessons and I felt impressed that we should bring Brother A.  

     When I told my companion, who is still Elder Graff, at first he hesitated at the thought, but in time it grew on him.  As for how the lesson went, it was a total success.  Brother A is not a very deep thinking man but he has a testimony of the Gospel and as he talked about what he knew to be true the spirit filled the room.  It was funny, because he then started to talk about some things that would be rather strange to a person that knew as little about the church as J... does, but it did not matter because the spirit was there so strongly that there was nothing that Brother A... could say that could have ruined the atmosphere.  

     We asked him then if he would be baptized if he came to know the things were true and he replied, "while Brother A... was talking I felt something warm inside me, and I believe the things he said."  Even a semi-seasoned missionary like myself had a hard time keeping his cool until after the lesson.

     From this experience I learned how important it is for the members to go out with the missionaries.  While I am on the topic of member missionary work, we have had something very strange happen to us that I never thought we would run into.  

     So you are probably thinking that those members that haven't come to church in a while probably would not be doing missionary work.  Well apparently this is not the case, because 2 of the 5 people I talked about at the beginning were found by such members.  I cannot relay to you the strange excitement that comes when you get a call from a member that has gone astray and they say, "I have a person that I want you to teach and I want you to help me come back to church so that I can help them."

     Which leads me to the next person I wanted to talk about, G....  So the member that found him is named Brother F., and Brother F. has not been to church in a long time.  But he made friends with G. after Brother F. fell out of a tree and was recovering in the hospital.  He called us up and told us that G. needs our help really bad and that he knows that he needs the Gospel in his life.  When we met G. we soon realized what the problem was.  

     So for anyone that does not know this, missionaries tend to have this strange spirit about them that makes anyone that is talking to them realize what the Lord wants of them and why they are falling short.  Now I am not going to explain everything that is wrong with our good friend G. but I will say this, he is like a man who has lost God in his life.  

     He spent his life searching after the things that he thought would bring him happiness, but he lost it all in a second and now we are trying to help him find out what will really bring him happiness.  Now G... is not and was not a bad guy, in fact he is a great guy who is wealthy, has a nice house, has a nice car, and yet all those things no longer bring him happiness.  Because there is no makeup of material possessions in this world that can bring someone lasting happiness, only the Gospel can do that.

     I am not going to try to fit anymore in this already giant email.  But I am grateful to be here helping these people and that I have the opportunity to be a tool of the Lord’s.  I can honestly say that I would not give it up for any material possessions in this world.

Elder Erb

11/18/2013 Waiting for a message

We haven't received any message from Elder Erb for a few weeks now.  When we do, we'll post it!

10/28/2013, Tuesday. Service, Service, Service and Teaching

Oct. 28, 2013

Hi people,

     I am alive although I haven't written an email the past couple of weeks.  Our P-days have not been ours for the past couple of weeks.  A lot of stuff has changed since I wrote last, hopefully I can remember some of it.  To start out with I can explain why our P-days have been so busy.  We got a brand new car recently because it was time for the church to sell the other one.  It is a 2014 Toyota Corolla, and it was awesome when we got it because we got new miles for the month as soon as we got it.  This has affected our P-days because we have had to drive around some of the other missionaries now that we have a ton of extra miles.

     Funny though, with all these extra miles, I had to bike anyway.  I went on exchanges the first day we got the car and went to Warwick which just happens to be a biking area.  It was fun to bike around because it always made me feel accomplished at the end of the day.  Unfortunately it was while I was in Warwick that we were going to meet the Asian couple again so I did not get to see them this time around.  They are doing very well though and they learned about the power of prayer.

     Most of what I have been doing for the past couple of weeks is helping people get ready for winter which includes chopping wood, cleaning up fallen trees, splitting wood, and of course raking thousands and thousands of leaves.  We spent 8 hours raking the leaves off one person's lawn.  I am not sure if I mentioned this last fall, but I never realized what a chore raking leaves is until I came out to the east.

     We had an innumerable amount of those small miracles this week that testify of our loving Heavenly Father’s role in this work of salvation.  So many that if I were to write all of them, you would probably not read this email because it would be so long.  But I will talk about one.  A man called us up last week and asked us if we could come and bless his home.  We honestly had no idea who this man even was before we met him.  After we blessed his home by the Holy Priesthood which we hold, we taught him about the simple truths of the restoration.  He said that there was a lot to take in and that he would have to pray to know if it was true.  And we promised him that he would come to know of the truth if he had the desire to follow Christ.  This man’s name is J____  and I will probably have more to tell you about him in coming weeks because he called us back after the appointment and told us that he wants to meet with us again and learn more.  I know that our Heavenly Father led our new friend J_____ to the church and that all the other small miracles that we experienced these past couple of weeks have been because of His infinite love for us, his children.  I thank you for your prayers concerning me and those that I teach.  And I know that Heavenly Father has blessed me because of those prayers.

Elder Erb

10/25 No words and an anniversary

We haven't heard anything from Elder Erb since we posted his last letter.

On another note, just yesterday morning, 10/24, Elder Erb began the second year of his mission.

Thank you for your prayers and support and letters!