It has been a good week in Manistique, we had three investigators attend church this past Sunday and Dianne is still doing her part in preparing for her baptism on August 31st.

On Tuesdays we have District Meeting and normally Elder Thompson and I drive straight home because of how much time DM take away from our day. This past week we had splits or exchanges (which ever you want to call it), I stayed in Marquette with Elder Shurts while Elder Thompson drove back to Manistique with Elder Whicker. Being in Marquette was a great opportunity to get a taste of missionary work outside of small town Manistique. Elder Shurts is a cool guy and he introduced me to his and Elder Whicker's "golden investigator". This investigator completes all his commitments and then does extra, he shares his testimony all the time to his family and he is super excited for his baptism in August. He is so cool and he wants to leave for a mission. Splits ended well with Elder Thompson and Elder Whicker arriving an hour late at the exchange spot.

On Friday, Elder Thompson and I decided to walk to the furthest most point of Manistique and hopefully meet a few families out there who are potential investigators. We met with two of the three but weren't able to give a full lesson, and then while we were tracting we found one new family. This sounds all nice and simple but let me add a twist to what otherwise seems like a normal day in the field. It was raining so hard that visibility was down to 200 meters and our umbrellas were so soaked that they were dripping water through the fabric onto our heads. The puddles were sometime 50 feet in diameter and several inches deep. There were floods all over town and we heard stories of people pumping water out of their house because the water level had gotten too high. It was a crazy day and so Elder Thompson and I decided to end a little earlier than usual not only because of the rain but also because the lightning was getting closer to town. We were able to enjoy hot chocolate.

That’s about it for now, our number of investigators has doubles over these past two weeks and we are giving more lessons now and doing less tracting which is always good for our legs.

Thank you, Love

Elder Luymes

Splits with Elder Shurts

Artwork at the Marquette Elder's apartment. #saywhat?



Oh Joy! Tracting in the pouring rain.

 

Dear Peeps,

What!?!? we got our eternal investigator Dianne to commit to a baptismal date on August 31st. Dianne is a crazy lady who lives out in the forest and is often barefoot and has little "critters" such as ducks, chickens, geese, and bunnies. She has the smallest house in the world that she likes to call her castle, and she has no running water, one hour of electricity a day, and no toilet. Dianne likes to live off the grid for what she calls "health purposes". She is decently familiar with the Bible and will only listen to the Book of Mormon on CD. She says her eyes are too bad for her to read the print in the scriptures and yet she does well when she reads the Ensign Magazine we gave her. Dianne is far too complicated of a person to even attempt at explaining in writing. Regardless, she has attended church 9 times, and I am the one who extended the invitation. Another cool thing about her baptism, because she hates cars, she will possibly be baptized in Lake Michigan instead of in Marquette because the drive is too far for her. If we can get this baptism approved by President Cutler then this will be one epic baptism.

This past week I had what is called first six week training, it’s for people like me who are still in their first six weeks of being out in the field. We drove Wednesday night to Oshkosh and stayed with the Hmong speaking Elders. But no one bothered to tell them that we were staying with them, so when we arrived at 10pm. we had to wake them up. The funny thing about their apartment was that the door frame to their bathroom was only 6 feet tall. Well, I’m 6'3'' and the door frame came up to my eyes. It was really funny and I have a picture of it. The training meeting was on Thursday and it was great because I got to see all my MTC friends. We swapped stories and had a great time.

Do you remember last week when I told you the story about the three teenage girls and the cupcake??? Well, we had a lesson with one of them on Sunday 7/21/13. Her name is Josie and she had been reading the Book of Mormon that we gave her, so we went over what she had read and answered her questions. Then we answered her other questions that weren’t Book of Mormon related. It was a really great lesson and we made another appointment for this coming Wednesday. Elder Thompson and I strongly feel that she has genuine interest in the gospel and we think she too might be ready for baptism on the 31st of August. We are going to extend the invitation for her to be baptized this coming Wednesday.

That’s it for this week everyone, I love you, and hope all is well for you.

Elder Luymes

 

Helping around Diane's "Castle" with her critters.

Really glad I don't live here!

Celebratory treat we made ourselves because Diane
committed to be baptized.

 

Hello friends, family, and everybody else,

This week has been very good to me and Elder Thompson. We were able to re-establish contact with a few people and some of them have been reading the Book of Mormon (to our honest surprise). It has been amazing for me to see how some areas of the neighborhood we receive a positive greeting, while in others we will get nothing more than a "not interested" through the door. Elder Thompson and I are always praying and looking for those areas that we will feel are best prepared for our message.

The two most exciting things that happened this week are:

1) This has been a very spiritual week for us; we have been able to learn by the spirit at what seems like an accelerated rate. During our companionship study we discuss what we have each learned and then we learn from each other about a wide array of gospel topics. One of the members here has had a lot of great experiences and he has been able to teach us a lot of things as well.

2) Yesterday while we were tracting, a car stops next to us and three teenage girls yell at us "who are you". I replied "were the missionaries". We walked over to their car and we ended up talking with the three of them for almost an hour. We gave them two Books of Mormon and two pass along cards with our missionary phone numbers on it. We made it very clear to them that we were not eligible for dating and that prank calls would not be tolerated. But we did encourage them to call us if they ever had any questions about the Book of Mormon or our beliefs. Most of the questions they asked us throughout the hour were where are you from and what do missionaries do? They did ask a few questions about our beliefs. But this is where the story gets really interesting: as Elder Thompson and i were getting ready for the next day (back in our apartment now) we received a call from one of the girls asking if we could meet them and the local pizza place (we live right next to it). So we went down stairs and the three girls were there with two giant cupcakes, they said that we were cool guys and they wanted to give us a gift. So...Elder Thompson and I enjoyed two giant cupcakes last night.

That’s all folks, until next time :)

Love, Elder Luymes

 

Yooper Castle ???????

 

Rewards of my labors

 

Our local chapel for our "twig"

Hello from Yooper-ville :)

This was a very interesting week, on Tuesday we drove to Marquette, MI to have a District meeting, and on Tuesday afternoon we drove to Green Bay to spend the night with some Elders down there. On Wednesday we met the new Mission President and enjoyed a wonderful lesson from him about how the Gospel blesses Families and how this should be the focus of our message to people.

There isn't much of a Fourth of July celebration here in Manistique. Elder Thompson and I did a lot of tracting and we were sore, tired, and hungry all day. But our efforts were successful; we met new people and re-established contact with some other people that Elder Thompson had known from previous months. Then came the fifth of July and we were blown away by the number of people we saw. It was as if the town of Manistique had boomed in population. We saw the tail end of a children's parade, and so we decided to do street contacting for the first time in Manistique history. FYI: Manistique is part of the Germfask  Township area, and has been open since October 24, 2012. I'm the fifth missionary to be here. Continuing on, we thought the fifth was impressive, the sixth scared us!!! There was a big parade with marching bands, and the whole police force was out marching along with the firemen... we found out that the police here have two snowmobiles and the town of Manistique sponsors a RACE CAR. We had a fun day and enjoyed the firework celebration (not really, we could hear them from our apartment).

Sunday was great but we don't fast on the first Sunday of the month here because the ward does a luncheon, we fast on the second Sunday of the month. Things run a little differently around here, in case you didn't know already.

All in all, we are working hard, having fun, learning, and working towards getting our group to becoming a branch. Our church attendance yesterday was an all-time record of 32 people!!! Attached are a few photos, including the light house where we jog to every other morning. It’s a little over a mile away from us.

Love
Elder Luymes

 

Manistique's Race Car in the parade.

Our landmark lighthouse that we jog to.

 

Hello from Manistique Michigan!!! I'm not even serving in Wisconsin right now. I'm in the U.P (Upper Peninsula) where the people are known as Yoopers!!!

My mailing address is:

207 1/2 S. Cedar St. apt.2
Manistique MI, 49854-1415

NOTICE!!! Please send boxes and letters by USPS only!!! It makes things a lot easier, and they will get to me faster that way.

I met my new mission president at the MTC but I have not talked to him here in the field yet. We drive down to Green Bay on Wednesday to have a zone meeting, and meet the mission president.

We don't have a ward, or a branch, we have a twig of about 20 members. And church gets televised to us from nearby Marguette. There are only 8 missionaries in the whole UP and this area is considered the favorite spot to serve during the summer months, I’m pretty lucky. The weather here has been really good, it rains every day for at least an hour. It’s mostly cloudy, and the temp. Is around high 60's or low 70's. It can get humid but it hasn’t been too bad.

Flying to Milwaukee was a mission on its own. Our bus came an hour late picking us up at the MTC west campus. Then we arrived at the train station at the same time as the train did, this meant that we only had 5 minutes to board 29 missionaries and all our luggage. We barely made it. Then when we arrived at the airport we found it empty. And after a few minutes did people start to show up and help us check on our luggage. Then we got to the gate and found out that our 1am plane departure had been delayed to 3am. This meant that we would miss our connecting flight in Atlanta. But we did eventually get on the plane and we did get to Atlanta. We had a 2 hour lay-over there and we boarded another plane to get to Milwaukee. We were supposed to arrive in Milwaukee at 9am Tuesday morning, but instead, we got there at 12. We had to rush our orientation and we finally got to our hotel at 10:15. On Wednesday morning we met our new companions, introducing: Elder Thompson from west Jordon Utah. He has only been on his mission for three months and is two months younger than me. He hasn’t done any college yet but he wants to be a pilot. He played soccer, football, tennis, and did competitive dance in high school. He and I get along really well and we have fun together.

There is so much more that I wanted to tell you but that will have to wait for another email. As for pictures, I have plenty, but I’m on a computer that doesn’t have a USB port, so you will have to wait till next week.

Love Elder Luymes



New missionaries arrive in Milwaukee, WI

Elder Thompson from West Jordan UT