Baptism!!!

Hello everyone!

Shane got baptized on Saturday and it was such an amazing day!! Because of covid, we could only have 10 people there in total. My companion and I gave talks and Shane was able to be baptized, confirmed, AND ordained to the Aaronic Priesthood. The Spirit was so strong and Shane said he wanted to do it again haha. He has really come so far since we first met him and seeing the change in him has been incredible. We had a zoom testimony meeting yesterday and Shane shared his testimony with the whole ward :,). We are so proud of him.

We also had a special zone conference this week over zoom with Elder and Sister Ringwood! They talked about preparing for General Conference (which I'm SO excited for) and also finding our own personal mission within the mission.

Other than that it has been a pretty normal week with lessons, member dinners, and other missionary stuff.

Have a good week and make sure you all watch conference this weekend!!

Love, Hermana Megan Young 

Pictures:

1. Shane's baptism

2. Sister Smith and Sister Young

Intercambios!!

Hola!

Wow I have some good stories to tell this week!

First, the title of my email means exchanges in Spanish. We were able to have exchanges in person with our Sister Training Leaders this week which was SO FUN! I was with Hermana Torgesen who I love so much!! We had such a great time together. Our STLs are serving in a Spanish ward so I went there and was able to have my first real lesson in Spanish! I said the prayer and was able to explain about the Book of Mormon and share my testimony about it!! I couldn't understand everything the lady said but I got the main points so that was good. I was also able to practice texting and calling people in Spanish. We made cookies, root beer floats, and German pancakes together and just had fun talking and getting to know each other better.

Ok next thing! I woke up to Sister Smith walking to the bathroom and assumed it was time to get up so I got out of bed and started praying. Then Sister Smith was like "Sister Young, what are you doing? It's 2:30" hahaha. And that isn't the only time I've gotten up thinking it was morning but it's actually the middle of the night. 

One night as we got back to our apartment, there were a bunch of groceries left outside our door. We went around the apartment building knocking on doors and asking if they were theirs. Nobody claimed them and one of our neighbors said he would probably throw them away if they weren't claimed by morning. We texted some members and asked it they had left them for us but we were never able to figure out where they came from. The weird thing is that there was some black tea with the groceries so we are super confused because we don't think somebody would leave them for us since we don't drink tea. Since we are missionaries with limited money and we didn't want all the good food to go to waste, we just decided to take it and we are going to give some to other missionaries too. Definitely very weird and mysterious.

Alright this is probably the craziest thing! As we pulled into the church parking lot yesterday for church, we saw this guy wearing super weird clothes trying to get into the church building. We were like "Can we help you? Would you like to come to church?" and he sat on the ground and started crying and told us all about how he died on the cross and came back to life in 1993. We are pretty sure he was super drunk. Anyway he came into church and was making quite a scene haha. He kept trying to get up and walk around. Sister Smith was trying to keep him under control because I was playing the organ and the Elders were doing the Sacrament. During the talk he was waving his arms and saying "amen". I was trying so hard not to laugh. After the meeting he was just saying super weird stuff to us and everyone in the ward was so confused. 2 members of the bishopric drove him home because he said he needed a ride and we have no idea how he got to the church because he lives pretty far away. But later that day, as we were driving, we saw the same guy wandering shirtless on the street yelling. Pretty crazy but it made for some good laughs.

Shane is getting baptized this week and is still doing awesome! We are so excited!

Love you all!

Love, Hermana Megan Young 

Pictures:

1. Chocolate milk with Sister Smith last P-day

2-4. Exchanges with Hermana Torgesen!

5-7. Pictures by some fun walls in Morrison (just outside of the Red Rocks park)

Snow And Sunburns

Hello everyone!

The weather here in Denver has been pretty wild this week! It SNOWED on Tuesday and Wednesday. It was so cold and it made me want to go to Ecuador really bad to be warm. We listened to Christmas music which was pretty fun. But then it got super hot again and we got sunburned at our outside lesson with Shane yesterday. 

Other interesting things from the week:

- We had interviews with the mission president 

- Shane is still doing well and getting ready for his baptism 

- We dropped everything and went to Shane's house to burn the rest of his cigarettes so he can't smoke anymore (it was his idea)

- We started teaching 2 new people this week and they are both named John 

- We thought Sister Smith had covid but it was a false alarm

- We made some cool videos for Facebook

Have a good week everyone!

Love,

Hermana Megan Young

Pictures:

1-2. Snow in September 

Shane's Getting Baptized!!

So at the beginning of this week we were a little discouraged because we weren't really teaching any solid, progressing people. At the beginning of this transfer we felt impressed to make a goal of 2 baptisms this transfer which seemed crazy because while we have come close a few times, this area hasn't had a baptism in over a year and my comp has been here for over 6 months. We've been working on building our faith and praying frequently for our goal of 2 baptisms this transfer.

Well.... on Tuesday, Shane (who we found and taught but then had to pass off to YSA because he's 23) messaged us and said he would prefer a family ward over YSA and told us he wants to get baptized as soon as possible!!!!! So we get to teach him again! Sister Smith and I were so excited haha we were jumping up and down and dancing around like crazy people. When we first met with Shane he told us he was a satanist and that he would never get baptized. We kept feeling like we need to go back and keep teaching him though. We later found out that he had been trying to scare us away and that missionaries hadn't come back a second time in over 10 years. Apparently he almost got baptized when he was 12 but then the missionaries who were teaching him got transferred and the new ones didn't follow through with it. It has been truly incredible to see the transformation in Shane since we first met him! He is a completely different person! He is working on quitting smoking and he came to church yesterday and even fasted! His faith is so strong and he wants to go knock on doors for us and hand out copies of The Book of Mormon (we cant go tracting or street contact right now because of covid). Anyway we are trying to convince him to serve a mission! He is looking forward to being able to go to the temple too! We just love him so much and we are so proud of his progress! His baptism date is September 26th.

So we are now working on finding our next solid investigator that we can baptize this transfer. We worked so hard all week to find new people to teach and didn't really see any success until Saturday and Sunday. We have a lot of new people and potential now so we are super excited! Also our whole mission has been struggling to find people to teach and since we have found success, President Rees asked us to give a training to the whole mission!

Oh also I hit my 3 month mark this week so that's cool. 

Splitting the ward with the new Elders is going well and I just love our new district:). We had combined district council this week which is basically like zone conference because the whole zone is there but not the mission president or his wife. We are focusing this month on working with members and teaching more effectively and we did some fun role plays and had some good training there.

Also if you are ever looking for new music, try listening to the Portuguese youth music on the Sacred Music app. My comp and I recently found that there are some bops on there even though we can't understand what they are saying haha. 

Life is good here! It has been super hot recently (like around 100) but apparently this week it's supposed to snow so that will be interesting.

Pictures:

1-3. I straightened my hair which is a rare occurrence so I had to take some cute pics hehe

4-5. After combined district council