Baptisms, a famous WW2 Veteran, and Snakes… Oh My!

Hey Fam!!

What a great couple of weeks this has been! Alvins baptism, now

justice's baptism on Saturday and then we have another baptism this

coming Saturday! It's going to be so miraculous! And Layne is set for

the 18th of July!

Justice's baptism was a great one. Her dad was baptized when he was 18

and then was less active for most of his life. Missionaries found him

and his family and they baptized the mom and son this February.

Justice was a part of another church and didn't want anything to do

with the Mormon church. But over time she became more curious and she

began going to church with them and she wanted to go to the YSA. And

now she got baptized by her dad and then she asked me to confirm her!

That is one of my favorite things to do! There is a great spirit

during a confirmation.

Well it's sad to say that I have 8 weeks left...:/

Oooooooooh so we had some super cool stuff happen this week! We went

on exchange with some elders and I went to Paris with Elder Asay.

While there we were walking down this street and we saw this old guy

working on his truck and so we went up and talked to him. Come to find

out he is a really famous world war 2 veteran and that he was one of

the first soldiers onto Utah Beach on D-Day. He invited us inside and

told us tons of stories and showed us pictures and old war stuff. He

just got back from France where he is honored there every single year

and he's a hero to them. He's on the news and in the papers all over

there when he visits. It's crazy! So, I got a picture with him and got

his signature!

Also, that night we went to a members house for dinner and after we

ate they brought out their pet...... Snake. 4 ft long Boa. The hairs

on my neck stood up when I saw that thing. They finally got me to hold

it. It was actually pretty awesome to hold and was a nice snake.

Finally over came that fear. I still hate snakes....

That's all for this week! Love ya!!

Elder Eastin

A Baptism and down to single digit weeks

Hey Fam and friends!
Well it's been a typical pday. Lots of basketball. It's getting really
humid so we just sweat bullets. So, like I said, Alvin got baptized
this weekend. And he was here today playing basketball with us. It was
just us 3 playing ball. He's really hard to play against, he's super
good.

So this weekend on Saturday at 5 Justice is going to be
baptized. She is really cool and loves the church a lot!
And Layne is an 18 year old who knew a few members of the church and
they brought her to the church a few times and now she's meeting with
us and loves the church and its teachings and is super excited to get
baptized!
Romain is a 23 year old from Congo, Africa. He is getting baptized on
the 27th and he came to church this Sunday even thought he got 4 hours
of sleep the night before. I think he's pretty committed! He said that
he's excited for his baptism!
Let me tell ya, when you set a prayerful and an inspired goal and you
make a plan to work towards it, the Lord provided the way for it to
happen. I wish it would have set goals like this my whole mission! God
is good, amen? Amen. Praise the Lord. (There's a taste of Kentucky for
ya)
A missionary told me that I'm into the single digit of weeks left....
Wish he wouldn't have told me that. :(

Love yall!!
Elder Eastin

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