Lots of answers to prayers,

Hello from Kentucky!
This week was a great one. BIG stress reliever and lots of answers to
many prayers. Let's see, where to start...
Well first off, our mission tour with Elder Zwick was cancelled:(
Elder Zwick has to be in Salt Lake for something, I'm guessing it's
because of the passing of Elder Perry, he was very close to him. But
it's ok, we were able to see him quite a bit in the past 2 weeks!
Alvin Davis is set to be baptized this Saturday! I can tell he has a
lot more desire and drive to join the church. Little background on him
if you didn't already know. His Fiancé is a member and she and her
family are from Corbin, that the last ward I was in! And I knew her
and Alvin before I came here! So, the baptism is going to be in Corbin
and we'll be able to go there for the baptism on Saturday night, spend
the night with the Elders there and then go to church and I will be
confirming him a member! It's going to be great. Y'all would love
Alvin, he is such a funny guy. Super awesome. He played on the UK
football team when he was in college. He's a big guy! I'll send a pic.

We have a new investigator named J____ S_____. The Georgetown Elders
have been teaching her for a month or so and they handed her over to
us because she wants to come to the YSA here in Lexington. Georgetown
is only like a 20 min drive. So, she is super solid and she is getting
baptized the next Saturday on the 20th!
We have an investigator named R_____ N_____, he is from Nigeria.
Missionaries have been working with him for about a year. Soon after I
got here we dropped him because he would not keep commitments. But, we
picked him back up about a month ago and he's been coming to church
and keeping commitments. We invited him to pray about being baptized
on the 27th of this month and he said he would. He came to church
yesterday and after gospel doctrine was over he turned to us and
started asking us what time his baptism would be at and we asked him
if he had prayed about the date and he said he did and we asked how he
felt and he said he felt good! So, he's gonna get baptized on the
27th! What a blessing and miracle. We could never get him committed to
a date before.
At church there was a non-member girl named Layne who has been to
church a couple times in the other ward and she wanted to come to the
YSA and she is SO solid. Some other missionaries have taught her once
but since she is college age and is going to come to the YSA she will
be taught by us.

Here's a funny story for ya. So the other night we were at Alvin's
place for a lesson and then we helped him do some service for his
neighbor and after we were done he wanted to take us to dinner down in
the Hood of Lexington haha so, here we are with this big black guy
driving in the ghetto of Lexington and we went to this place called
Krispy Krunchy Chicken. It was so good haha straight up soul food.
Everything was deep fried. We bought so much fried chicken and honey
butter biscuits. Wish y'all could have been there. It was quite the
experience. And yesterday after church we went to his house and him
and tori made us dinner. We had grilled salmon, potatoes, corn,
watermelon, pineapple and fruit punch. Such a great dinner. Praise the
Lord, he is so good to us.

Whew! Lots of typing with my 2 thumbs on my iPad! Going to play ball
with Alvin today at the church. He's going to do some drills with us.
I am now down to 195 lbs haha!

One big thing I learned this week in my studies. The Book of Mormon
Reminds us of things we constantly forget. We as humans are very quick
to forget things. The word remember or remembering is found in the
Book of Mormon approximately 158 times. Obviously it's here to REMIND
us of what we already know. And the word "forget" and the phrase "not
remember" is found approximately 25 times. This is why we must
constantly read from its pages or else we will become and the Nephite
and Lamanites and "forget the Lord [our] God."

We are trying to become as big as hulk in our gym haha

The UK library, where we teach a lot of our lessons.

A giant rug thing on the wall in the library.

iPad's! New companion

Hey family! 

So, I am writing this email on my new.......IPAD! And it's awesome. Feels so weird to have technology Now but it is already helping the work out a lot. 

So let's go through the week. It was definitely good but at the same time it was pretty rough:

Tuesday we drove to Louisville for transfers. Some of the missionaries leaving the mission were pretty hard for me to say goodbye to. Some of them were pretty close friends and it's like having to say goodbye to your family again! My new companion is elder Russell, he's a good guy and we are getting along and he's a dang hard worker. He's only been out for just under a year haha so it's nice to have a young missionary! On Tuesday evening we had a long Stake coordination meeting that we had to go to, but it was a good meeting and I always receive a lot of insights.

On Wednesday we had to take a missionary to the doctor at 10:30 to get a check up on his knee and then at noon we drove to Louisville again to go to the additional iPad training. We walk into the church building next to the mission office and at the front of the chapel there are tons of boxes and inside those boxes are iPads. It was awesome. The meeting was just for the zone leaders in the mission and there we were trained on how to set up the iPads so that we could then take the rest of the iPads back to our zone and distribute them to the missionaries and train them how to set them up properly. So for our zone we had to take back 37 iPads and cases. Just picture that in your mind. 2 Mormon missionaries driving in a car and in the trunk there are basically 40 iPads. Thats a lot of money haha the church and the Lord have a LOT of trust in us. 

So now the goal was to distribute the iPads to the missionaries. So we broke it up into 3 different trainings. We had 2 different trainings on Thursday and then on Friday we had the last one. The districts within our zone would just meet where they usually have district meetings and we would drive there. The trainings took anywhere between 2 and 4 hours, depending on how fast the wifi was haha. We had to take the missionaries step by step through all the set up and getting everything working right. But gosh I felt like Santa Clause walking into the church with boxes of iPads and then giving them out to the missionaries! I did actually find a Santa hat and I wore it when I walked into the room where all the missionaries were. It was super funny! 

Maggie's baptism unfortunately didn't happen. She texted us this week and said that she wanted to postpone and that she needed some space for right now. So that's all we've heard from her. That was enough to break someone's heart. It was hard to hear that after working with someone for so long. But we have Hope and we are trying our hardest to keep the discouragement down. Elder Zwick told us, in one of the trainings he gave to the mission, that's it's ok to be discouraged for a little bit but you have to get over it quickly. And so that exactly what we've done. 

On Friday we FINALLY had time to sit down and plan out our transfer and set our goals that we want to accomplish in the next 3 months in this area. We set goals for how many baptisms we would have and we made plans as to how we could make this transfer different than others before. As we pondered for quite some time the words of a great missionary that just went home this transfer came to mind. Before missionaries go home they give their "words of wisdom" in the transfer meeting. This is what this Elder said: 

"To sum up a mission in 3 words:

Faith, Hope and Charity.......

Faith, because you can`t let your attachment to the past outweigh your confidence in the future.

Hope, because staying strong while sailing uncharted seas in not possible without the anchor of the Lords promises. 

And above all, Charity, because this work is never about me and it is never about you, love God and love those you serve.

Have faith and Hope that as you exercise Charity and lose yourself in the service of others you will find yourself.

Remember that if you never let go of who you were, you will never discover who you are and who you can become."

These words penetrated my heart and I felt the spirit as I read over them again and again. We knew that this is what we were going to work on so we could help more people come unto Christ. Since we have set that goal we have had experiences where we really had to work hard at  exercising Faith, hope and Charity. But gosh, those really are the 3 most important attributes we can have! To get through all of the opposition we are going through you HAVE to have Hope. And to really be a true missionary you HAVE to have Charity. 

On Saturday we finally had a day where we didn't have to take care of Zone Leader business and we could work all day! So, we decided to hit the bikes! In a matter of 2 hours we talked to 45 people and gave out 7 copies of the Book of Mormon. Man that day felt SO good! It was hot and sweaty but we felt great! 

Sunday we had Stake Conference and Elder Zwick was there again. He has been to our mission so much. Last we he was here for the iPad training, he was here this weekend for conference and he'll be here next week for our MLC and another mission conference. I guess he just loves Kentucky! He had a very close and personal connection with Elder Perry, so when he passed, it was very hard on him. He talked a lot about him in conference. It was so cool! 

That was pretty much our week! Let me tell you, a mission is not easy. Sometimes it causes a broken body, other times a broken mind, and sometimes it even causes a broken heart. But what I learned this week is that God uses broken things. 

   "It takes broken soil to produce a crop, broken clouds to give rain, broken grain to give bread,  and broken bread to give strength. It is Peter, weeping bitterly and broken Hearted, who returns to greater power and Strength than ever."  And it has been my broken Heart, body and mind that has driven me to seek Heavens divine help. And I have found it. 

I love you all!!!

Elder Eastin

Sent from my iPad

A view from my desk

LOTS of Pictures

Pictures from a long time ago:

New Pictures:

Good morning everyone!

The great state of Kentucky wishes you Peace and Blessings! It's a great day today and the weather is awesome right now. We started the day out today with basketball at 6AM for an hour, then studies and now we are at the FHC at the church emailing. 

So, we got a call from President this on transfer call day.... and he asked for Elder Trost. I am staying here in UK singles for most likely the rest of my mission! We'll see! Elder Trost is being transferred down to Richmond to open an area and to train a new missionary. That will be his dying area. I am super excited to stay here for another one! My new companion is Elder Russell. Never met him haha but I've heard he's a great missionary.

On Wednesday night we drove to Louisville to spend the night and then we went to the iPad training with Elder Zwick (of the seventy) and Brother Hemingway (head of missionary Proselyting in the church). All the missionaries in the mission were there and it was an awesome meeting. Elder Zwick is such an awesome guy. SO spiritually powerful! A lot of the training on using iPad's was actually pretty spiritual and I learn a LOT. We got to spend from 9-1 with Elder Zwick. During one of the 15 min breaks all of the missionaries were outside the chapel talking and going to the bathroom and I was still in the chapel and I got to talk to him personally for a few minutes. It was really nice. We did not receive our iPad's there but the Zone Leaders in the mission are going to Louisville on Wednesday for additional training where we will pick up all the iPad's for our Zone and train our missionaries on what we learned and distribute them to the missionaries on Thursday and Friday! Its going to be so nice to use iPad's. Only gonna have it for 3 months but it will be awesome!

This last week was a little better as far as appointments not cancelling. We had 5 set for Tuesday and 4 of them cancelled or weren't even there for the appointment. But, we did get to see Jordan a few times this week so that was great! We watched Meet the Mormons with her at the church, had a lesson at the college Gardens and we also saw her at City BBQ and ate there with a few other missionaries and her. She has been super busy with work but she is doing good! Still working on Baptism with her! :) 

Officially hit 21 months last week. That was nuts... Only 2 transfers left...

We set a baptismal date with Alvin for the 13th of this next month. Idk if I have told you a lot about him but his Fiance is a member and he used to play on the Kentucky Football team. Hes a big guy! Also Maggie should be getting baptized this coming Saturday so please pray for her!

Goona go hit up Costco today with our boy John from our branch. Costco has good food and its cheap! Then we are going to Ball some more and just hang out today!

Love y'all lots and lots and lots and lots!

He loves his mission; A Poem he wrote

Happy P-Day!

Just got done playing some of the best basketball I have had on my mission! We had a lot of guys today at the church and we balled hard. The humidity here is killer right now and I feel like I just jumped into a pool. Everything just seems so moist and wet. Its been raining the past few days and now the sun is out and the humidity is super high.  

This past week was kinda rough! Everything just seemed to fall through. We did decide to bike one day and of course the day we chose it started to rain a lot. But we did get about 45 mins of riding in and met a bunch of funny people. Brought back memories of the good ole days back in Newburg Bike! The next morning I noticed that my back tire was flat... Thats my first flat tire on a bike in my whole mission. Pretty good track record haha. Dang glass all over the place on the sidewalks. 

We are looking forward to this coming week. We have a lot of set appointments right now so please pray that they dont fall through haha. This thursday we are going up to Louisville for the iPad training with Elder Zwick. But who knows when they will actually give out the iPads.... Heck, I'm just starting to not care about the iPads haha I can say that I did missionary work the good ole fashion way! Knockin doors and talking to people on the streets! 

This week we went to City BBQ for our branch Presidents wife's B-Day party. There was tons of food and it was a great time. We got to see Jordan for the first time in a while which was awesome. 

We went to the monthly fireside last night and it was really good. The spirit is strong there. While I was listening I wrote this Poem thing haha odd I know,

  Called for 2 years to a foreign land

  My Confidence was as stable as the moving sand 

Sweat stained, cold, frozen or tired

We still press on cuz our word is inspired

Soon all the days become hot as the refiners Fire

And it to top it all off some guy calls us a liar

But over time my spiritual eyes develop to see

That the Lord is shaping me into what he wants me to be.

Running low on time. 

Love my mission. Kinda hate I only have 3 months left. Definitely bitter sweet.

I love you all!! 

FEAR and Mission Blog and pictures

Hello!

Heres something cool I heard this week about FEAR. 

Fear

Everything 

And 

Run

or

Face

Everything

And
Rise

I choose the second one haha thats what the plan of the gospel is about! Facing our fears and rising!

It was so great to see and talk y'all yesterday! Skyping is awesome. Can't believe that it was the last one on my mission! I remember my first one, I was a big sob haha and now this time I didn't even cry at all! My mission has made me a rock when it comes to crying haha I just don't that much anymore! It's kinda weird. 

So today at 10:30 we are going to the Lexington Legends baseball game! They are only single A but it should be fun! And hopefully after the game we will still have time to play basketball around 2 or 3! And then as always we have FHE with the branch at the church. Thats always fun. Last week we had a Friday night activity at the church with the Branch and we did Tie-Dye shirts! So I brought one of my short sleeve dress shirts to tie-dye! I have PLENTY of them so its ok haha it looks pretty awesome. It's orange and blue spirals. I'll send a pic next week! Then after the activity we walked down the road to the campus gardens. It was really fun! Ill send some pics of that.

This last week on thursday we had Zone Conference. It was awesome. I conducted the meeting so that was fun. Zone Conferences are always fun. Every week I have forgotten to tell you all about the mission blog. Sister Brough has a blog of a lot of the things that go on in the mission! Check it out! gklmbrough.blogspot.com  This will give you a look into mission life a little better. Im in some of the pictures too so thats good!

Next week we are going to Louisville for a mission conference where we will receive training for iPads! And they have finally arrived to the mission so we will get them shortly after the meeting. Hopefully within a week. Apparently they can't give them out during the meeting. Its weird. It is going to be soooo nice to have them!

Not too much else to say. Maggies baptism is coming up on the 30th so we are excited! And we will work with Jordan this week to see when we can get her baptized! Pray super hard for her! She is going through a lot right now.

Love ya,

Alma 32, testimony most valuable thing you have

Hey fam and friends!!

Im not really feeling like typing too much today haha

This last week was a great week and I learned so much about Faith this weekend! We got to watch the YSA devotional broadcast last night and it was about growing your testimony and Faith. It was awesome! Study Alma 32 really deeply and it will help you realize that you have more faith than you think you do! I also listened to a talk by Elder Holland called "Lord, I believe" and it is so stinking powerful. I learned that we must never abandon the faith we already have because of things we do not know. We must hold on to that which we already know and have faith in the things in which we cannot yet see. Its not just all about the knowledge that you have but its your Testimony thats most important. What you know by the spirit to be true is more important. My companion told me of an analogy of a cruise ship. There are many wonderful things on a cruise ship, but you many come across a bad movie or play on the ship. Does that mean the we jump ship completely because there is one thing we didn't like? Of Course not. It's like the church. The church has MANY great things to offer. But the church is operated by humans and sometimes we make mistakes. Doesn't mean we "jump ship" because of that one thing. Hold on to your Faith, whatever it may be. It is more valuable than all the knowledge and riches of this world. Your testimony is the most valuable thing you have.  So strengthen that testimony by reading the sciptures, praying everyday and attending church AND the temple. I can't tell you how much I miss the great blessings and feelings that come from the temple! Take advantage of the amazing blessing it is to have a temple nearby in Rexburg! God probably put the temple next to our neighborhood in Rexburg because we need it the most! We can simply walk to it if we want to. 

I look forward to Skyping this coming sunday on Mothers day!:) Can't wait to see you all. This will be the last time we Skype before I come home!! Crazy!

Love you all so much! Have a wonderful weekend!

PS> heres some random pictures.    

 Saw an F-150 in the middle of the highway on fire. That was crazy.

Bought some new basketball shoes, they were sorely needed.

Bought Meet The Mormons at Wal-mart! We are watching it for FHE tonight with the Branch tonight! Its made by the church so we can watch it haha.

And a random pic of Elder Trost.

Busy week in UK Singles and testifying of First Vision

Hey family and Friends!

This was another awesome week in UK singles. We were busy every single day with appointments at almost every hour of the day! We had one day where we only had 15 mins for lunch and no time for dinner haha good thing we have Taco Bell!:) We did however have one day that was super slow and it didn't help that Elder Trost and I were sick. We were so out of it all day haha but we still had a lesson with Jordan that night at the Branch Presidents house and that made the whole day great! Having a great lesson and feeling the spirit makes any day good!

So, Jordan is getting baptized this coming week on saturday at 5. And its going to be done in a pond out at Kelly Farms. The owner of the pond is a member and he is letting us do it there. I will send pics of the pond with this email. 

But let me tell ya, Jordan has such GREAT faith. She has been feeling overwhelmed with things these past couple of weeks and wanted to push her date back a couple of weeks. (in her shoes I would also feel a little overwhelmed so we understand how shes feeling) But during a lesson Joseph Smiths experience in the Sacred Grove came clear into my mind and we shared that with her. If you recall, just as he began to pray he was overtaken by Satan to try and stop him from praying and to stop all of the millions of wonderful things that would come from just his one prayer. But, by calling upon God he was delivered from Satan. We applied this to her and helped her realize that Satan wants to stop her baptism because there are going to be thousands of wonderful things that come from her baptism. And because of her great Faith in the Lord she committed to be baptized this coming weekend. None of these awesome things happen because of us. They come because of the spirit and the love of God!

Maggie is still doing good. She is getting baptized on the 30th so its getting a little closer! We meet with her a couple of times a week at the library and have lessons and read out of the Book of Mormon. 

We had the Branch talent show this week on friday night. It was pretty fun. They had Elder Trost and I be a part of a skit that someone wrote. It was kinda funny and cheesy. We just played the part of being missionaries. Most of the other talents were piano songs or singing, but they were super good! It is SO fun being in a young single adults branch! 

Honestly I don't know why God is so good to us. Personally I don't really deserve these wonderful blessings. Honestly and truly "I stand all amazed at the love Jesus offers me, confused at the Grace that so fully he proffers me" 

Oh how wonderful he is to me.

Much love,