Who-hoo!! - 11/30/15

Hola Amigos!

I am glad to hear that everything is great at home! Everything is great out here too. We only taught 4 lessons this week though and we had to walk everywhere on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. But we are all safe and no-one was hit. :) But the lessons that we taught were pretty awesome. One in particular was with a lady who hasn't been to church in several years. For some reason she opened up to us about all of her problems and poor experiences that she had in the Church previously and we were able to really teach with the spirit and were able to invite her to come to church again. She didn't come, but I know that we accomplished our purpose and we brought the Spirit into her home. We are looking to have a super busy week this week and we are really looking forward to that! We also got a baptismal date for an Investigator's son. If it all works out he will be my first baptism! He seems super promising... fingers are crossed! We did unfortunately have two Investigators drop us this week. But our pool of promising investigators is growing so that is all we can really ask for!

This week we have had Thanksgiving 7 times! We had two on Thanksgiving, 3 on Friday, and 2 on Saturday! I love Thanksgiving as much as the next guy but.....

Anyway, we still had to work on Thanksgiving, but we didn't want to knock on any doors for obvious reasons. We also tried to set appointments in advance but also for obvious reasons we didn't get any. So we didn't really teach anyone on that day. :( But we tried! I got some pretty pictures that I will send. Some are filtered though but it is still super pretty out here!

It is most likely that me and my companion will be staying together to finish out my training. We won't find out for sure though until this Saturday. We did get our car back, but the AC was making a funny noise, but it solved itself so yay! We have Patricia back!

Anyway, My time is short this week, I promise it will be longer and more detailed next week.

I love you all,

Elder Ciminski

Heyoo!! - 11/23/15

Hey guys!

It is getting seriously cold out here! Mom, I wear your scarf everyday and it does keep me warm! We got some rain yesterday and it warmed up to a toasty 46 degrees, according to the car. I'm not in Arizona anymore!

Anyway, we had a slow week. We had a lot of appointments fall through so as of Thursday, we had taught one lesson. But I went on exchanges with the Zone Leaders this week (my companion is District Leader BTW) and I learned a ton about how to be a stronger teacher and how to talk to more people. I already started to apply what I have learned and my companion says he has noticed a difference, so yahoo! It is so cool to look back and see how much I have changed! For example, at first I struggled to complete the 3 hours of scripture study each day, but now I am starting to appreciate it more and I am starting to see the blessings that come from it! But during the exchange my companion and the zone leader were on fire! They taught several lessons and got two new investigators! They also met with a current investigator and he tells me it went well.

Our ward mission leader underwent heart surgery last Monday. He said it was a hairy experience but he pulled through. Apparently they messed up his time and there was no anesthesiologist. So a nurse put him under into a "twilight sleep" so he was awake for part of it! Ahhhh!! And on top of all of that they said he shouldn't run more that 6-9 miles at a time now. FYI, he is a toned down version of Brother Goold.  He likes running endurance races and marathons. But the surgeon said that to his wife and not him so he doesn't know what to think because his doctor didn't mention anything about it! But we still had coordination on Thursday and we got new names of people to try and visit. So we will hopefully start getting more appointments and have less time where we don't know what to do!

Sorry the email is so short this week. We mainly did a lot of tracting and trying to visit people but a lot of them weren't home and the others weren't interested. We really hope that it picks up next week (this week we are pretty tied to home since the sisters can't give us a ride anywhere (mission rules) and we can't find any members who can either) so that we can increase our lessons! Can't convert anyone without teaching lessons!

With oodles of love,

Elder Ciminski

Here we are after companionship study.

A picture of our car and beautiful Virginia.

My companion.

Me and Virginia

Hey!! - 11/17/15

Hey, sorry I didn't email yesterday, we had a training with Elder Arnold so our P-day is today this week.

Our area is really starting to pick up! We taught 9 lessons last week and have several more planned for the upcoming week. Some are not progressing, but others are progressing. And we have our first baptismal date for Jan 2! We have another investigator who wants to get Baptized but can't for a few months. He is awesome though and loves God and the Gospel. He brought his son to Church on Sunday and we might start teaching him too! It is so cool to see the work progressing. We also gave a couple blessings this week. Both were really cool and we could feel the spirit there. We went on exchanges this week. I went with another elder to their area. They had several awesome investigators there that I wanted to take home! But we will find ours soon, I just know it!! But other than that we are having less time to tract which is a really good thing because that means we are getting more appointments. And the ward is awesome! The bishop is super supportive and keeps giving us names and we also have a really cool new member couple in the ward. They are just so cool and took us out for dinner last night. They love to talk and are so funny! But they both have super strong testimonies and are just great people.

Speaking of dinner we heard about the Terrorist Attack in Paris last night. Awful thing. But we just have to put our faith in the Lord and continue on with our lives. These kind of things are going to happen, and it sucks, but we cant let them drag/slow us down.

At the training yesterday we received a lot of instruction on how to be better missionaries. Both me and my companion received "spiritual chastisement" and promptings on what we can improve in our own lives. He also said something really profound. It was something along the lines of:

"If you leave here and don't have a takeaway and don't go back to your area and change something about yourself for the better, why did you go?"

I totally botched I know it but y'all get the gist. It doesn't just go for big meetings either, but meetings like sacrament meeting too. I would like to encourage you all go to every church meeting that is supposed to be spiritual in nature and get one thing that you are going to improve on from it, and to act on it. I know that I will be doing that and I thought that I might invite y'all as well.

Anyway, I am loving the area! It is beautiful and the people are great! Tons of diversity! I don't know what else to say about it. But I am constantly thinking of y'all and hope that all is well! I love and look forward to y'all's emails every week! Keep them coming! And thanks for the package! We both are loving the popcorn and cookies! I need to find a cheep pair of gloves here pretty quick, its starting to get cold! Wool socks too. Heber said that AZ is still beautiful so I am a bit jealous!! lol. We are losing our car next week so please pray for us while it is in the shop. It isn't safe to bike around here so we will probably be on foot. Virginia needs more sidewalks! Like 200% more. So just prayers that we will still be able to work and have success would be much appreciated.

With all of the love in the world,

Elder Noah Ciminski

The view of a naval shipyard from Bishop's house. 

A quick story.

So we were raking leaves for an older guy (who is an Investigator and his even older mother) during exchanges and 2 things happened.

So he was playing the radio real loud for a while and we were listening to "worldly music" (like Meghan Trainor and Ariana Grande) my companion got the idea to give him the Book of Mormon on CD that he had in the car for him to play, and he played it! So instead of Adele blaring on the street it was Nephi! Pretty cool!

And you are probably wondering about the squirrel. The mother (who just loves watching the squirrels "chase each other and play" in their big tree) found this big guy on the side of the road in the gutter. It was my job to pick him up (with a shovel - don't worry mom :) ) and put him in the leaf pile to be picked up. It was just kinda cool because he totally could have been sleeping.

Hello!!!!! - 11/9/15

Hey y'all!!

This week has been awesome, but before I start, I do read every email that comes to me, but I may not respond to everyone individually. Just wanted to get that out there. :)

We were able to teach our lesson and it went well. They all were there. Only one seemed to pay attention though. We could tell that he was feeling the spirit and that he may have believed what we were teaching (the Restoration). We invited them to be baptized!!! They all said no!!!! The reason was that they were all baptized by their grandma years ago in her church. BUT, they said that if they come to a sure knowledge that what we are teaching is true they will be baptized, so that is really awesome!

We are starting to go through the area book more thoroughly and as a result we have several appointments this week! The work is starting to pick up and it is cool to see the area progress! There is just us in our apartment and there is also a set of Sisters in the ward. The Ward Mission leader is 100% supportive of us and he helps us a lot and really lets us lead. We will be eating Thanksgiving at their house most likely. The ward is awesome and totally missionary minded. In the program is always several missionary things, including the ward goal. We are making a lot of visits to members to invite them to church. It is really fun and my door approaches are improving a lot too!!! Yay!!

On P-day last week we went and walked around Windsor Castle park and downtown Smithfield. There was no castle. We were disappointed. It is instead a plantation thing. Still cool and really pretty though. It has been raining off and on the whole time I have been here. I like it except when we decide to tract! It hasn't been that cold until yesterday. 70's and 80's the whole way. But now we are in the 50's so I am starting to get cold! And we are loosing our car for three days! Some previous missionaries "drove it in a field" - So now we have to get it repaired. We aren't going to use our bikes though because the roads are super narrow and there is literally no shoulder. We will have to get rides from members and spend a lot of time entering people into the GPS and tracting Eagle Harbor, where we live. We just keep telling ourselves it will build character. :)

Me and my companion are continuing to get along swell. We are also helping each other improve ourselves and to become more Christ like. We are both on a sarcasm and negative comments fast this week... 5 hours in and doing great so far! Mexican food just isn't the same here, BUT I DID FIND MRS RENFROS SO HALLELUJAH!!!! I am stuck with Tostitos to eat it with though... you can't get everything I guess. ;) I also did get Mary's letter and I loved it, made my day. We are only allowed to write letters on P-day so I will be sure to write one today.

In Elders yesterday we had a lesson about Emergency Preparedness and we had a spiritual "slap", if you will, to get our 72-hour kits in order, so we will be starting that this week. Apparently ice storms and the accompanying power loss are problems here so me might even end up using it!

I really do appreciate everything and for all of the prayers. I love reading your emails and everything that is happening at home.

With massive amounts of affection and love,

Elder Noah Ciminski

Downtown Smithfield

Heyo!!!!! - 11/2/15

It is pretty rockin' out here. Here people are spread out but still connected to the big city, which makes it cool. I love it out here. Downtown Smithfield is obsessed with pigs. Pig bumper stickers. Pig statues, Fat/smiling pig ornaments. Grandma Ciminski would love it. There are also so many colors and trees and road kill. Lots of road kill. Apparently people eat it here. We have had one meal so far and it was pizza hut, so nothing horrendous. We are a mixture of rural and urban here, We have pockets of surburbia-style neighborhoods and the big plantations that still grow cotton. It is cool to see all of the history out here. You still have the sprawling plantation manors surrounded by former slave homes, both of which people still live in. It is interesting to see the dynamic.

My companion and I are new to the area so we don't know anybody! We have been tracting a lot and we have met some new people we may teach. So far all we have done is service for both of them. But I am excited to get to teach my first lesson soon! My companion is awesome. The ward is super supportive. I have been blessed in this area. We have met two pretty cool people. Technically three. The first is a lady we have done some service for. She is super talkative and grateful for our help. We also met two other ladies.  We have a lesson set for tomorrow night for the two of them together which I am excited for. We did meet with a member who has two of the largest, cutest, and nicest German Shephards that I have ever seen! Each weighs well over 100lbs and both think that they are lap dogs. They reminded me a lot of Casey!, albeit a bit more active. We are tracting a lot though since we don't know anybody. We have made a few contacts and have gotten a new investigator, but it would be nice to actually meet and teach some more people.

Speaking of people most people here are really nice and I am loving it.

Our area is huge so we have a car. A 2013 Toyota Corolla that apparently a previous Elder drove into a field and as a result the car has sustained "serious structural damage" We are taking it to a bodyshop tomorrow to get an estimate. But other that that our apartment is really nice. 2 bedroom 2 bathroom and on the first floor.

But other than that there is not much to report. My companion got Sillyputty in his hair this morning. We got most of it out though. And what he was thinking I don't know. But we get along great.

I love you all and even though I may not respond to every email, I do read everyone!!

With oodles of love,

Elder Ciminski

One of the many pigs.

A cool house on main street.

A cool street.