Elder Erb - Missionary - Boston, Massachusetts Mission

Saturday, August 24, 2013

Jun 4, 2013

6/4/2013

Hi family and friends,

It’s transfer week again and I'm sorry to say that our zebra companionship of awesomeness is now coming to an end. ElderB... is going to be serving in Charlestown Massachusetts in the area where the movie "The Town" is about. For those that are counting, this is my 3rd companion that has left in the past 3 months. The reason I bring this up is because all the members are thinking that I'm way too tough on my companions and they keep having to get traded out for new ones.:D

Last week I mentioned how we are working with a less active family named the G...s to help them with home teaching. Since then tons of less active people have been moved into our path to the point where you could say that the Lord is throwing them at us. The other day we were going about doing missionary stuff and we get a call. The call is from an inactive member named T... who we have never met before asking us if we want to go eat with him sometime. We, being eager and hungry missionaries, jumped at this opportunity to both be fed and to meet with this inactive member. T... is an awesome guy who is in his mid 20's. He is one of those people who would give you the shirt off his back if you asked for it. He told us that it is time for him to start coming back to church and that he would like to take us golfing on one of our "P" days. After we warned him that we were not good at golf, he reassured us that it was ok because he is bad at golf too.

Another example of people being thrown into our path recently is the less active recent convert that we waited outside the door for about 3 weeks ago for 30 minutes. As I explained, it was one of those times when everything went right until the very end when we ended up not seeing her. Since then we have gone to see her about 4 times without being able the find her at the appointments we had set. On our last attempt we went back with the member that we had brought and were talking about things and then all of a sudden he says that he should call a Sister in an area nearby to say goodbye. This was because he remembered he did not have this sister's number after she got transferred and that she was going home soon. Eventually we got ahold of her and they started talking and it came up that we had just come back from trying to meet with Sister M..., the less active, with no success. And then a miracle happened, the Sister we had called was the Sister that led Sister M... to the gospel. She then asked us for her number and made an appointment with Sister M... for us and the Sisters to meet her together tomorrow. This time we did get to meet with Sister M... and she was happy to see us and she wants our help in bringing her back to church.

Well I am running out of time to write but I thank you all for keeping me, and the other missionaries in your prayers.

Elder Erb

May 28, 2013

Hi,

Another week gone in a flash. The time goes by so fast now I fear that next thing I know I will be done. Luckily someone reassured me that I was still Y... on my mission when we saw some RM's from this mission at the temple yesterday. It made me feel like I was still Y... because they were both missionaries that had been released before I had gotten here. Which brings me to what I learned in the temple this time though. It seems that every time I go through I learn something new and this time it was something I can talk about so I would like to share it. I learned how little we know and how much we may never know in our earthly existence. Along with this I learned that this is ok. This was exactly the thing I needed to learn because as my companion and I have been helping others to teach and share what they know about the gospel, I have caught myself in the trap of going over in my head all the things that they are doing wrong and could be doing better. I started to think in the temple about how our Heavenly Father must look upon us. Despite how little we know compared to Him, I could never imagine him pointing out all the mistakes we make. Instead I can see Him encouraging us and always waiting patiently to give advice when and as we seek for them.

With this topic of me not understanding things, we went and saw the G... family, our Spanish speaking family, this week. As I may have explained before, we are helping them start family home evening. It was all in Spanish. :P I think I counted a total of 13 words that I understood. Luckily my companion was able to understand the lesson and help me to answer when I was asked questions. It is also helpful that we are there so that we can help the parents know what things should be different that most other members would consider common knowledge. The family home evening night, despite the fact I did not understand anything, was amazing and fun. And I got to try an interesting new food that was really good and I will make again. It is called "crazy corn", it is where they put fry sauce, ketchup with mayonnaise, on the corn and then cover it with Parmesan cheese. My companion and I ate 5 ears of corn. :D

Luckily I was able to give back to my companion with his mastery over the Spanish language when we went to go see a man named A... with a member. A... is from Ghana and Elder B... could not understand him at all with his heavy accent. I could understand him fine though and it felt good to be able to be giving back to Elder B... for a change. A... is a less active member that actually served a mission and has a strong testimony of the church. Luckily A... is super nice and funny and isn’t easily offended. I felt like I could be very blunt with him and we could still have laughs afterwards. Hopefully I will be able to tell you about something cool we did next week because he said that he likes us and wants us to come back on Saturdays to do stuff with him.

Well that's all the cool stuff that I can remember from this week. Sorry I can't remember everything from the week. Thanks so much for all of your support and prayers for me in this cause.

Elder Erb

May 21, 2013

Hi again,

It’s been a great week this week. So now that the sun has come around it’s getting warm... really warm, maybe even too warm at times. This is great because it just so happens that people in New England get a lot nicer when the weather is warmer. We went tracting this week and almost every person we met greeted us and listened to us until we were done. Unfortunately people still say the common phrase "I'm all set" no matter what the weather is like. Now that things are warming up, more opportunities for us to help people have also arose. An example of this is when we helped a member in our ward move. We had a huge turnout of members and even some less active members come to help with the move. Funny story about the move is about a member that we brought with us who we have been working with for a while. So because I misunderstood the time that we were going to start the move at, we ended up an hour off schedule. Now for those that have helped move you might be thinking well coming an hour late to a move is fine. This is true, except we showed up an hour early! Luckily they were mostly ready for us and it went fine, it was just kind of funny when we showed up and no one was there.

While I'm on the topic of this member we brought with us I would like to talk about him. His name is Bro. G... and he is the father of the Y... nine year old girl who was baptized not to long ago. We have been working with all of them trying to reactivate their family, and have been successful. As of a couple of weeks ago they are officially active members, Yay! The reason I am talking about them this week is because we have been seeing them a ton after Elder B... got here. This is because they all speak Spanish as their first language and we did not have much success in communicating with them before now. But because of our zebra companionship of awesomeness, we are now working with them to get family home evening happening in their home every week and helping them to read their scriptures every night. We also have got to know Bro. G... very well because after he helped us with the move he thanked us and asked us if he could get us some food and then if we could hang out with him for a while. We ended up spending most of the day hanging out with the whole G... family. To explain what a zebra companionship is, it is a companionship where both the elders speak different languages.

Well I don't have much else to talk about so I will just finish with some random funny stories this week. The first one is about a recent member who has over time become less active slowly. We decided that it would be a good idea to go and see her. When we did we could not go in because there was no male in the home and so we rescheduled an appointment and got her home teacher to come with us. So everything was good and the member came on time and we all knew what we were to go over and all the stars were aligned just right. Then we knocked on the door and her son answered and said he would go get his mom. Unfortunately this is how the story ends because we sat there for 30 minutes waiting for her. The funny part was when the member we brought said that he thought he saw her around the corner and then duck and hide.

Next funny story is about my companion during our district meeting. So we meet once a week as a district to train and collaborate. Our District Leader thought it would be a good idea for us to role play some problems we have when we visit with members. The best part about it was that Elder B... and I got to be the members with one of the sisters in our district. We decided that Elder B... would be a hyper 7 year old, the sister would be his aunt, and I would be an 80 year old man. With a set up like this what could go wrong? :P We got really into our roles. I was completely deaf and the missionaries had to yell at me to hear anything. Elder B... at one point in the lesson slowly started to tip over on his chair and we all watched as he slowly crashed to the floor. This awesome experience was a testimony to me how by the weak things the Lord works miracles among the world. I hope you all let the Lord work through your weaknesses and trust in him with all your heart.

Elder Erb

May 15, 2013

Happy Mother’s Day!

So yesterday all the missionaries were given the great opportunity to speak with their families. That goes to show you how important Mother’s Day really is because the only other day we get to call home is on Christmas. Now that I have been in the mission through this grand holiday, I can see the huge reason of its importance. During the wonderful talks given this Sunday on the subject my mind was turned to the scripture of Alma 57:47-48. For those that are not familiar with this scripture it is talking about the 2,000 sons of the Anti-Nephi-Lehi's who took up arms against their enemies to defend the rights to liberty and protect the oath that their fathers had made with the Lord. During this point in their battle with the Lamanite army, while they were leading them into a trap, they felt impressed to turn back and enter into a situation that would put their lives in danger. Despite the fact that they were all in their youth because of their great faith in God and in the faith which had been taught to them, by their mothers, they went to the aid of their Nephite brethren. From the faith that they showed in this circumstance and the zeal they had in obeying the words of their mothers as a result of this battle none of the 2,000 sons were killed during this battle because they knew that the Lord would protect them as their mothers had taught them, and they had faith in the words of their mothers.
These youth understood what it meant to "honor your father and mother". And to honor them does not only mean to listen to them, but it also means to bring honor to them. I have been thinking about how applicable this is to everyone as we need to bring honor to our parents who are in heaven. Sorry that this email was a little preachy I guess it’s just because Mother’s Day was just yesterday and the feeling hasn't worn off yet. I love you all and hope that you had as good of a Mother’s Day as I did.

Elder Erb

May 6, 2013

Hola familia y amigos,

How’s my Spanish? There is a reason I ask and I will get to that in a moment, but first I need to start off by saying that it has been a crazy week. I guess the Lord decided that I needed more practice driving and the reason I say this is because I have mostly spent the entire week driving really long distances. And, on a semi, related note I have good news and bad news. So the bad news is I am not training anymore ;C because my greenie had to go home for a while. Now that the bad news is out of the way, on to the good news. So the good news is my new companion Elder B....

Elder B... is a very seasoned missionary that will have been out for a year in a week. The reason I asked how my Spanish was is because he is a Spanish elder who is from Honduras. He is super awesome and funny. I feel a little bad though because he got taken out of the Spanish program to be my companion. I told him that if he teaches me Spanish then he will get back into the Spanish program.

This past Saturday Elder B...'s Spanish was really useful in the baptism of V.... V... is a nine year old girl who speaks both English and Spanish fluently. The reason my companion’s Spanish helped was because her father who was performing the ordinance does not understand English very well. It really helped to calm him down when my companion was able to speak with him in his language.

Alright now it’s time for a random funny story we just had. Because of all the driving that had to be done we are now drastically over on our car mileage for this month even though it is only the sixth day of the month. With this in mind, we decided to do some street contacting, which means we were walking around talking to people on the street. While we were doing this, some guy calls to us from his window and tells us that he wants to talk with us about religion. We go to his door and he knew exactly who we were. This is strange because everyone mistakes us for the Jehovah's Witnesses. Anyway the first thing he asks us is about how we as a religion view gays. Now you might be thinking that it all went downhill from here, somehow it did not, but it turned into a good discussion about God's plan for us and we talked about a lot of key doctrinal points. He said that he likes the things that we said and that we should come back some other time to talk with him. I hope that he meant what he said by liking the message, instead of just liking the messengers.

Well thank you for supporting me in the cause as the Lord’s servant. I thank you for your prayers concerning me and my companions in this work. I hope that you can all have this same joy as you spread the gospel in your own areas.

Elder Erb

April 29, 2013

Dear People of the real world,

As I explained in last week’s letter, I now have a new companion who is fresh out of the MTC. His name is Elder C... and the first thing I have to say about him is... He is a stud! I am supper fortunate to be a trainer to a greeny that has a desire to be here and has the ability to learn as easily as he does. Greeny is a new missionary, I felt like I should explain this because I heard that they refer to them by different colors in different countries. I now see and understand how the new missionaries are different than the ones that have been out for a little while. He is like a sponge and is absorbing knowledge like crazy right now, kind of like a baby does. Elder C... is luckily not one of those missionaries that thinks he knows everything and trusts in my experience... which is kind of a scary thought actually.

Speaking of scary thoughts, because I am a trainer by default, I am the driver. I have not driven in 6 months! On top of that my first destination in the car was to travel back to Manchester Connecticut from Belmont, Massachusetts. This was a testimony to me of the power of prayer. During the drive up to Belmont we got to pass through my old area. It was weird because I still remembered everything and where people lived and I kind of missed the area. I think the reason I felt this way was because after spending all my time, energy, and talents serving them, I was blessed with charity for the people in the area. Unfortunately it always seems like you don't realize how much you love something like this until it is gone.

Alright I'm done talking about my old area, now to my current area. When Elder C... and I finally got back we did not have anything planned and so we did what any hungry missionary would do and looked for a pizza place. Because we are very short on miles for this month, we decided we should walk and in the process got lost. Let it be known that us getting lost was completely my fault and not poor Elder C...’s fault. Anyway, in the process of us being lost we happened upon some interesting people. We ran into a lady looking for an ice cream shop that was as lost as us. We got to talk to her about who we are and the church a little. We ran into a less active member who greeted us warmly and told us if we ever need his help he would be there for us. And then, last but not least we ran into a guy who is married to a member and goes to church every week with his wife and kids. We just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Funny how missionaries always do that. He flagged us down so that he could use our phone to call his wife. We got to talk with him for a while and he is a super nice guy that loves his family. We talked about his religion and ours until his wife came and he told us that we should come by some time.

Alright I have one last funny random story before I go. So we received a name of a less active member that has not been to church in years from a member after this super amazing spiritual lesson we had that I will probably talk about next week. So that night we went and visited her. We knocked, she opened the window to see who it was, I waved and said "Hi". Then she did not answer. We decided we should go back the next day anyway just because it was late when we stopped by, we happened to catch her as she was heading out on the back of some dudes motorcycle. They stopped, pulled off their helmets and we introduced ourselves. This is how the conversation went;

she said,"This is my fiance."

he said,"No I'm not."

she said,"Yes he is, we have been engaged for two weeks."

he said,"No we haven't."

she said,"We have been seeing each other for 6 years and that we have had a rough time lately and we are getting back together for the first time in a couple of months."

he said,"That's what she thinks."

Now this went on for a really long time and we decided that before we become their relationship councilors that we should leave. We laughed about this so hard later, we must have come at the worst possible time ever.

Thank you for all of your support for me out here. I love you all.

Elder Erb

April 24, 2013

Hola family and friends,

So nothing much has happened here. You know except for a bomb going off and harming people in the Boston Race! Luckily none of the missionaries got hurt even though there were many of them down there at the time, including our Mission President and some of his family. You might be asking, "Well how did this affect you all the way down in Connecticut?" We, along with the rest of the mission were assigned to stay inside and not do anything. This was sad because we love doing missionary work, but we took advantage of the situation and decided that there is strength in numbers so we camped out at our zone leaders’ house for the day. During our down time, I managed to read through the book of Alma, Heleman, and most of 3 Nephi. I never realized how many hours there are in a day.

I let transfers sneak up on me again. I am not leaving, my companion is. In his place I am going to be training a brand new missionary. After I got over a couple of mixed feelings of astonishment, nervousness, and fright, I decided that I should let my father, or trainer, know that he was soon to be a grandfather. I realized after being away from my trainer and with other missionaries that I was a very hard missionary to train. It is similar to the feeling most people get when they have been away at college or on their own for a year and then realize how much their parents have done for them. It is very fitting how we relate to one another in the church and on the mission by names that are found in the family.

Oh yeah! That reminds me, I'm officially old now that I'm 20. I would like to thank everyone that remembered my birthday. I say this because I almost forgot it myself and would have if the Sisters in our district didn't surprise me with a cake the day before the 12th. For all those that were worried if the letters and packages got to me by the 12^th, I will put your minds at ease by telling you that they did get to me, on the 13th. It was actually really funny, because I didn't get any letters or anything the 12th, and then got 5 letters and 3 packages on the 13th.

I thank you all for your prayers and thoughts toward me. I am sorry that I do not have more to talk about this time. I love you all and want you to know that this transfer I have learned more than anything else that putting your faith in the Lord will never let you down.

Elder Erb