Again, I missed this one too! I forward on to everyone in the contact list but I guess I was forgetting to post. I apologize! This is his report on General Conference October 2012.
October 8, 2012
Hello there everyone!! I really hope you had a chance to watch conference this past weekend!! Holy Smokes can you believe it??? 18 yrs old for boys and 19 for girls!!! When I heard that I seriously was freakin out and didnt know what to think! haha anyway I will talk a little bit more about conference in just a little bit!
So this last week went really well!! So monday and tuesday nothing too exciting happened but on wednesday we had a zone meeting! There were two men that came in from the proselyting division from Salt lake city and talked to the leaders of the mission on how to triple our baptizms!! That was what our zone meeting was about and it was all stuff that was like oh well Duh.... but no one ever thought of it before! haha so that was a good meeting:) After the meeting I went on an exchange with one of the zone leaders to chapel hill:) well instead of going to UNC campus we went to duke and I got to teach a lesson to a guy in the Duke Chapel!! Pretty neat huh?? haha crazy story though.. when we were on our way there we were driving on a small 2 ln highway.(kind of like highway 89) So we were driving and next thing we know we see this car in the distance slowly swerve into our lane and started coming head on with us. We saw that and just got into the right lane but as we did that the car followed... I was for sure we were going to slam head on!! Elder Christiansen (Zone leader) slammed on the breaks and at the very last second this woman swerves out of the way and barely misses us!! Luckily for us there were no other cars on the road, in the middle of the city pretty much in mid day... Wow can you believe that!! The lord was watching over us there, thats for sure!! haha so thats my crazy story of the week! So that night I ended up getting really sick and I got maybe an hour of sleep! I was sweating and had a fever and sore throat and everyting... yea no beuno!! (if your wondering, I have been learning some new languages out here) haha but anyway so that was pretty much all that happened on that exchange!!
The next two days until conference werent too productive cause I was so sick and just feeling like crud! But saturday I was just fine! So saturday was conference day and my favorite talk was Elder Neilsons talk about "if you have a question, ask the Missionaries, they can help you!!" haha oh that was so good I loved it! We went to a members home for dinner that night and he is still really young! married 2 years maybe... haha anyway he is sooo funny he was telling us all of his mission stories and I laughed so hard at them! He took us to Preisthood session afterwords! It was an all around great day!
Now onto sunday!! This day was the highlight of my week... You may be wondering why I waited till last to tell about it... hmmm well I guess I dont have a real answer for it other than its how it fell in order this week... I dunno!! haha anyway so I had a great study on sunay morning! I read in Alma 26 and this is where Ammon is seeing the blessings of being able to bring the lamanites into the gospel! As I read that I pondered my blessings I have in my life and what the lord has done for me! I never realized how much he has done for me until I read this and really pondered my blessings in my life! He then goes on to say in verse 12, "yea, I know that I am nothing; as to my strength I am weak; therefore I will not boast of myself, but I will boast of my God, for in his strength I can do all thing; yea, behold, many mighty miracles we have wrought in this land, for which we will praise his name forever." This whole chapter hit me hard that I need to be better and give thanks to the lord more for what he has given me! Dont overlook the small blessings in your life because sometimes its the small blessings that mean the most to us! I know that with the power of our Father in Heaven in me, I will be able to accomplish the things that he has sent me here to do in North Carolina!
Now moving on to the later part of the day! Sorry almost done... haha So we went to Brother Mcdonalds house to watch the first session of conference and we watched it with Katharine as well!! Wwwhhooooaaaaa wasnt Elder Holland just amazing as always!! Wow he is so powerful! haha anyway so after conference we taught Katharine the first discussion and invited her to be baptized! As we promised her the blessings that would come from living this gospel and being baptized she smiled and looked at us and said "yes I want to be baptized!!" We were so stoked i was just so happy!! So for now we have the date set with her for Nov 3:):) We are going to be meeting with her 2 times a week till then to get her ready! :) Now not only is that going good but Brother Mcdonald is making a huge turn around in his life as well! He has taken his ear rings out and is beginning to live the gospel righteously again! He told us that he couldnt have done it without us! Just the whole situation of how we can across him and met Katharine... Just an absolute blessing!!! :)
Well I Hope all of you have a great week!!
One of my new favorite qutoes: "Remember, you always stand taller when your on your knees!"
I love and miss all of you!! :)
Elder Betker!! :)
Monday, October 22, 2012
A Solid Investigator...
Hello everyone!!
Mom's Note: Sorry Guys! I didn't realize I had missed one til I posted today's and saw there weren't any others for October! Here is the one from last week and the totally funny pic of him in a top hat?
October 15, 2012
This past week in NC has been really great! It was a little slower week but really nothing to complain about! :) We had two lessons with Katharine at Bro. Mcdonalds house. The first lesson we taught her was on tuesday. We taught her the plan of salvation and she understood that really well! She has been reading everyday and is already on page like 150!! And she is retaining everything that she is reading too so thats great! Thursday we taught her the Doctrine of Christ (Faith, Repentance, Baptism, Holy Ghost, and Enduring to the End) She is really excited about getting baptized. And Brother Mcdonald is coming back way strong into the church as well. haha we saw him and Katharine at Stake Conference this past week and he bought himself a new set of scriptures and a new suit! haha he is such a stud! He is actually driving us to durham today for our pday cause its one of the elders bdays in our district and we are limited on miles so we are all going to go and just have a good time today!
We are still working on finding new people to teach! this last week we found quite a few potentials that seemed interested that we are going to go back and see tomorrow and hopfully start to teach them! Although things in our area are kinda slow again we are feeling so blessed for the things that we do have right now! One solid investigator is better than none:) haha so in stake conference our mission president and his wife came and spoke to everyone about missionary work! It was such a solid talk about having the members more involved in missionary work! Believe it or not, well in our mission at least, 83% of our baptisms come from member referrals or part member families so they are continuing to stress the importance of having members involved in missionary work!
Oh my Gosh so this last week I probably had one of the worst meals of my life. Not that the food wasnt good but the environment was just... I cant explain it.. Trashed! So this sweet old lady wanted to feed us from the ward so she had her non member daughter and son in law come pick us up. (i dunno if we were even allowed to ride with them or not...) haha so first of all there car just smelled like smoke and it was nasty. So we got to the house and there was just junk and trash thrown all over the place!!! Then we get inside and the Member had made us chicken pot pie which was really good, but the daughter and son in law were just gross and burping!! haha yea it was just not a very spirit inviting environment! I now know why people stress the importance of getting a good eduction!! So we dont have to live in that kind of an environment!! I felt so bad for the old lady cause the others were just rude and she was a sweet old lady! so elder hansen and I shared a great message with her and brought the spirit into her life again! I know that probably sound rude of me to say that stuff... Oops! haha but yea..
Well thats about all for this last week, it was just a great all around week! Just a quick side note... At stake conference I got to meet Coach Dorince (however you spell his name) He is the head coach for the girls soccer team and UNC and also a former womans USA soccer coach! He coached Mia Hamm and is very famous!! and also Stilman White, the basketball player for UNC.. (ask Bruce if you dont know who he is.) He just got called to the Ogden UT mission!! Pretty neat huh? haha
Love to you all!
Mom's Note: Sorry Guys! I didn't realize I had missed one til I posted today's and saw there weren't any others for October! Here is the one from last week and the totally funny pic of him in a top hat?
October 15, 2012
This past week in NC has been really great! It was a little slower week but really nothing to complain about! :) We had two lessons with Katharine at Bro. Mcdonalds house. The first lesson we taught her was on tuesday. We taught her the plan of salvation and she understood that really well! She has been reading everyday and is already on page like 150!! And she is retaining everything that she is reading too so thats great! Thursday we taught her the Doctrine of Christ (Faith, Repentance, Baptism, Holy Ghost, and Enduring to the End) She is really excited about getting baptized. And Brother Mcdonald is coming back way strong into the church as well. haha we saw him and Katharine at Stake Conference this past week and he bought himself a new set of scriptures and a new suit! haha he is such a stud! He is actually driving us to durham today for our pday cause its one of the elders bdays in our district and we are limited on miles so we are all going to go and just have a good time today!
We are still working on finding new people to teach! this last week we found quite a few potentials that seemed interested that we are going to go back and see tomorrow and hopfully start to teach them! Although things in our area are kinda slow again we are feeling so blessed for the things that we do have right now! One solid investigator is better than none:) haha so in stake conference our mission president and his wife came and spoke to everyone about missionary work! It was such a solid talk about having the members more involved in missionary work! Believe it or not, well in our mission at least, 83% of our baptisms come from member referrals or part member families so they are continuing to stress the importance of having members involved in missionary work!
Oh my Gosh so this last week I probably had one of the worst meals of my life. Not that the food wasnt good but the environment was just... I cant explain it.. Trashed! So this sweet old lady wanted to feed us from the ward so she had her non member daughter and son in law come pick us up. (i dunno if we were even allowed to ride with them or not...) haha so first of all there car just smelled like smoke and it was nasty. So we got to the house and there was just junk and trash thrown all over the place!!! Then we get inside and the Member had made us chicken pot pie which was really good, but the daughter and son in law were just gross and burping!! haha yea it was just not a very spirit inviting environment! I now know why people stress the importance of getting a good eduction!! So we dont have to live in that kind of an environment!! I felt so bad for the old lady cause the others were just rude and she was a sweet old lady! so elder hansen and I shared a great message with her and brought the spirit into her life again! I know that probably sound rude of me to say that stuff... Oops! haha but yea..
Well thats about all for this last week, it was just a great all around week! Just a quick side note... At stake conference I got to meet Coach Dorince (however you spell his name) He is the head coach for the girls soccer team and UNC and also a former womans USA soccer coach! He coached Mia Hamm and is very famous!! and also Stilman White, the basketball player for UNC.. (ask Bruce if you dont know who he is.) He just got called to the Ogden UT mission!! Pretty neat huh? haha
Love to you all!
Christ is EVERYWHERE!
From Mom: As you will read... Spence is doing great and enjoying the work! These are just a couple of the pics he sent this week. :)
Support him by sending letters to the Mission address and then he'll receive them at different times. He loves getting mail!
Hello everyone!!
So I dont really know where to start with this letter so I guess I will start with last monday after I wrote! So Brother Mcdonald picked us up on monday and we went shopping at the mall in Durham cause we dont really have much here in mebane and he bought elder hansen and I new ties! Then he bought us dinner at a way good burger place kind of like 5 guys and was really really good!
We had two lessons with Katharine this week and she is doing really well! still wanting to be baptized onthe 3rd so thats good:) I had the joyous opportunity of teaching her the Law of Chastity:) haha oh that was fun! haha jk it wasnt really as bad as I had thought! :) She has definitely been being prepared by the lord for us! She had pretty much been living all the commandments other than drinking tea and not doing things on sunday and now she is doing really well with them so she has been a huge blessing in our lives! We are teaching Brother Mcdonalds 9 yr old daughter and wants to be baptized as well so we are going to set a date with her this week when we see her! :)
On wednesday we had an exchange with the Durham 4th ward elders! i went to durham for the night and we had service planned for ALL DAY LONG!! now your probably thinking, hey service is always a good thing right.. ahah I thought so too till I was taking off and reshingling a roof for 7 hours! haha oh that was a fun day! that is pretty much all that we did that day cause the service took all day long! :) Gotta love service! But I learned how to re shingle a roof properly so that was good! :) now I know how to take one off and put it back on:) Im set;)
So saturday and sunday were really good days for us! This is when the miracles of the week started to come into play! So saturday Elder hansen and I were just out and about and we got a call from a self referral we had been trying to contact for a few weeks and he said that he wanted to be taught the lessons so we are going to see him tomorrow:) Then at church after sacrament meeting there was a little girl who is 9 yrs old and cousins of some girls in the ward and she came up to us and said "can you teach me what I need to know so I can be baptized?" So that was a huge blessing and we are going to start teaching her next week as well! Then after church we were talking with some ward members and they saw some former investigators that were being taught a long time ago in our area by some other elders, and they had a baptismal date and everything but it just didnt happen... the members were friends with them and they talked to them and they want to get taught again so we will be teaching them next week as well! :) Just the past few days have been filled with blessings! :) The Lord is blessing us and our area!
So just a quick few funny things that happened to me this week, so monday i got slobbered on by brother mcdonalds huge dog that weighs 150 lbs! (In the picture!) We picked her up from somewhere in durham and she rode in the back on the way home after p-day last week and I got the honors of sitting in back with her! Then we were out on an exchange with brother Nelson and we were in the backwoods of flippin no where... He needed to turn around and got stuck in the mud so elder hansen and I got out and pushed him in the mud and we got filthy! And last but not least, we had a member deliver pizza to us for dinner one night and I was looking at the sticker on the front of the box and it said, "your pizza experience was managed by christ!" haha (in the picture)
So yea pretty much thats how my week went and I am looking forward to another great week here in the mission!! I love you and miss you all! :)
"When God speaks and the man obeys, the man will always be right!" - President Monson
Love you!
Elder Betker!!
Monday, October 1, 2012
Smiling again!
From Mom: Oh what a difference a week makes! I'm grateful my sweet boy has an amazing attitude to pull him through the rough spots. Thanks for all your prayers, love and support... they paid off!
Hellllllooooo everyone! :)
This week has been a much better week than last! Although we did have to drop all of our investigators we had from before because they werent progressing or keeping appts, we have a new solid investigator named Katharine! So the story with her is actually I think a miracle that we have been waiting for. So Brother Mcdonald (Huge burley guy with massive black beard and bald) is the less active we found the other week if you remember me talking about him. So we invited him out to church and he came but he brought a young lady with him.... This is when we first met Katharine. So for the past three weeks we have had a meal with them every week and they have been coming to church every week since. Katharine told us yesterday that she is wanting to take the discussions!!! :) We were so excited when she said that cause we hadnt taught her up to this point but she had been coming to church every week for the past 3 weeks! So we have dinner then an appt with her and Bro Mcdonald this week:)
That was the main event of the week pretty much but there was alot of other pretty cool miracles that we had throughout the week as well. So we had an exchange with a member of the ward this past week and we went to see this lady who was a referral. She lived about 20 min in the middle of flippin no where!!! Dont ask me how we found the house cause the gps couldnt even recognize the address but we found it. haha so we got there and the house looked abandoned.. and this man walked up to us from the shed behind us and scared us half to death!! We asked if the lady we were looking for was home and he said she had moved to Colorado! We then started talking to him and we shared with him about our message and everything and he wanted us to come back and teach him so that was a blessing as well!
I had an exchange with Elder Cole and Elder Lopez on friday this last week just for the day because the leaders had a leadership meeting! So we rode our bikes around in chapel hill and we placed 3 copies of the book of mormon and got 2 return appointments for later this week! Unfortunately it wasnt in my area but hey, at least I can say I did something right? haha But yea Chapel Hill is amazing! I love riding on campus and talking to the college students there! I actually had my first bike accident that day! We were riding back to the Apartment and we were cruisin down this HUGE hill!! Elder Cole decides to slam on his breaks to talk to this lady and as he was doing that i realized what was going on so i slammed on mine and stopped but Elder Lopez wasnt to cautious of what was going on and slammed right into the side of me at the bottom of the hill!! Luckily I wasnt hurt and my bike was okay so were all good there! haha
Church on sunday was so good! The spirit from the testimonies was absolutely amazing!! I am really thinking that the spirit that was felt in sacrament meeting is what made Katharine want to take the discussions! It was just overwhelming I loved it so much! So after church we went to the kitchen at our building cause some members said they left some left overs for us in the fridge. We got there and I kid you not, probably a 2 weeks suply in sandwiches, 6 gallon size bags of fruit, a 54 piece box of rice crispys, a box of oreos and then some other goodies as well!! we are stalked for a good 3 more weeks!! :) haha it was great!
Well there is really no other news here from last week! things are really starting to pick up again! I will be sure to let you know what happens with katharine!!
I miss you and love you all!
Elder Betker! :)
Hellllllooooo everyone! :)
This week has been a much better week than last! Although we did have to drop all of our investigators we had from before because they werent progressing or keeping appts, we have a new solid investigator named Katharine! So the story with her is actually I think a miracle that we have been waiting for. So Brother Mcdonald (Huge burley guy with massive black beard and bald) is the less active we found the other week if you remember me talking about him. So we invited him out to church and he came but he brought a young lady with him.... This is when we first met Katharine. So for the past three weeks we have had a meal with them every week and they have been coming to church every week since. Katharine told us yesterday that she is wanting to take the discussions!!! :) We were so excited when she said that cause we hadnt taught her up to this point but she had been coming to church every week for the past 3 weeks! So we have dinner then an appt with her and Bro Mcdonald this week:)
That was the main event of the week pretty much but there was alot of other pretty cool miracles that we had throughout the week as well. So we had an exchange with a member of the ward this past week and we went to see this lady who was a referral. She lived about 20 min in the middle of flippin no where!!! Dont ask me how we found the house cause the gps couldnt even recognize the address but we found it. haha so we got there and the house looked abandoned.. and this man walked up to us from the shed behind us and scared us half to death!! We asked if the lady we were looking for was home and he said she had moved to Colorado! We then started talking to him and we shared with him about our message and everything and he wanted us to come back and teach him so that was a blessing as well!
I had an exchange with Elder Cole and Elder Lopez on friday this last week just for the day because the leaders had a leadership meeting! So we rode our bikes around in chapel hill and we placed 3 copies of the book of mormon and got 2 return appointments for later this week! Unfortunately it wasnt in my area but hey, at least I can say I did something right? haha But yea Chapel Hill is amazing! I love riding on campus and talking to the college students there! I actually had my first bike accident that day! We were riding back to the Apartment and we were cruisin down this HUGE hill!! Elder Cole decides to slam on his breaks to talk to this lady and as he was doing that i realized what was going on so i slammed on mine and stopped but Elder Lopez wasnt to cautious of what was going on and slammed right into the side of me at the bottom of the hill!! Luckily I wasnt hurt and my bike was okay so were all good there! haha
Church on sunday was so good! The spirit from the testimonies was absolutely amazing!! I am really thinking that the spirit that was felt in sacrament meeting is what made Katharine want to take the discussions! It was just overwhelming I loved it so much! So after church we went to the kitchen at our building cause some members said they left some left overs for us in the fridge. We got there and I kid you not, probably a 2 weeks suply in sandwiches, 6 gallon size bags of fruit, a 54 piece box of rice crispys, a box of oreos and then some other goodies as well!! we are stalked for a good 3 more weeks!! :) haha it was great!
Well there is really no other news here from last week! things are really starting to pick up again! I will be sure to let you know what happens with katharine!!
I miss you and love you all!
Elder Betker! :)
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