12-19-10

Dear Mom,

I have not received any instruction for a specific time to call on Christmas. I will call you in the morning and then set up a time to talk.

I sent you a picture of our "Christmas Bush" we were using before the tree came. I have enjoyed opening a package each day. It has been fun. Elder Frazier opened all of his packages from home already. He spoiled Christmas but I am waiting. I have enclosed other pictures. It has started to get cold but it looks like we will be having a brown Christmas this year. no snow. Just like home.

We worked hard this week. Drove everywhere. Matthew did not come to church this last Sunday. We will have to move his baptism date. We have been very blessed with people to teach. We are working hard in the day to find people and then the nights are filled with teaching. We are off. Have a Merry Christmas and I will talk to you Saturday.

Love Elder Durfee

PS the package is great. Elder Frazier received three thermals. He is very happy and warm. Thanks for passing the message on to his parents.

It has been a eventful week. I am quiet tired and will probably take a nap today. It has been hot lately. 60 degrees with hardly any snow these last few weeks.

We have been making tons of calls and visiting everyone. We have been blessed with lots of lessons and people to teach.

A visiting teacher made contact with the Gonzolus family and found out that the mother was going in for surgery the next day. She wanted a blessing and gave us a call to go by and give her the blessing. The surgery went well and the mom is doing much better after the surgery. The family wants to be active in the church and get their ten year old son baptized. We taught them the first lesson, set the son for baptism on the 31 of December and made arrangements for church. The boys (age 10, 13, 17) came to church for sacrament meeting and the ward party the day before. Heavenly Father did everything to make this happen. We are just hear to teach. Their hearts are already prepared.

We contacted a referral we had received from Church Head Quarters. She lives 19 miles from town. When we called she was interested in meeting with us. She already has a book of Mormon from a friend and has lots of questions. We drove to teach her with our ward mission leader and had a wonderful first lesson. She is excited to read and pray and she even said the closing prayer. Heavenly father has prepared her too.

We have a family in the ward who’s mom moved in to live with them. The mother recently had a stroke and is learning to walk and be self sufficient again. Most of her life she has been anti towards the Mormons but since the incident she has had a change of heart. She has been coming to church, reading the Book of Mormon and watching BYU TV and following along in the scriptures. We were invited to come and teach her. Once again Heavenly Father has prepared the person for the gospel long before we ever arrived.

Many home of the less-active members have been opening up. Some great people have been prepared and are ready to come back to the church. We are seeing the Lords hand change peoples hearts. I love you mom, family you too.

Elder Durfee

12-5-10

Dear mom,

I also watched the Christmas devotional. It was wonderful. We had hot chocolate with pumpkin pie after for dessert. It was delicious.

So I have compiled a Christmas package for the family. Will Celeste and Casey be joining you for Christmas Eve? I want to send them something too.

Lets see… the baptism was wonderful Jackie, Derek and Tori are so special. We had a great turn out from the ward. I heard that we had a hundred people show up in support for the baptism. It was wonderful. The Rydzeski’s dad came for the baptism and even showed up for the confirmation at church. He is such a nice man, fits right in with High Priests. At the baptism Elder Frazier and I taught the Restoration.

We had zone conference this last week. Lots of fun I saw many missionaries that I have not seen in weeks/months. Sister Ely was there she too a lot of pictures. She took a lot of pictures which I am sending.

Thank you for the wonderful package again. I have some pictures. It was a wonderful last week. At zone conference I received a phone call from a member who had someone for us to teach. His name is Jody. All we were given is a name and a number. We contacted Jody by phone. He is needing God in his life, he has gone threw a lot of trials. We told him the church address and he said he would come to church. Sunday afternoon we gave him a call. We haven’t heard form him since. Hope he is ok.

Mom I love you, have a great Christmas. Love Elder Durfee

11-7-10

Dear Family
It has been another eventful week of missionary work. We had an appointment with a potential family Michel and Charlie. We were going to eat dinner with them but when we arrived at their house Charlie told us that Michel was sick in bed. Rats… the adversary is working hard.
We visited the recent convert, Mary. Her husband just came back from working in Brazil. We are hoping that they will now let us come by. We have spoken with the ward mission leader about the lessons. We are going to try and involve the Home teachers in the teaching process.
We visited Sister Lindsay. She called us asking that we come over and say a prayer for her dog that is dying. Afterwards we visited Sister Lindsay’s visiting teacher and let her know what happened.
I have been studying from the missionary handbook and looking up the scriptures. I have been learning cool things about unity, leadership, and teaching two by two. Also I am reading one chapter in the Book of Mormon each night. Marking references to the Holy Ghost this time.
Family thanks for your praises and love, Elder Durfee

11-1-10

Dear Family,
Hello and greetings, I hope all is well. This last week was a good one. We kicked off the week with teaching the Mom of the Ainsworth family in our ward. She had many question, an example would be word of wisdom, what church is like, what’s it like to be a member, and so forth. She said that she is looking for a church. She does not live in our ward but we invited her to come to church. Unfortunately she did not come.
Elder Edwards came to our ward on Tuesday. It was great several doors opened and we even tracted into a man that let us teach him a lesson. He was not interested in learning more but he let us talk to him.
We also taught Sister Hansen (a less-active sister) the “Gospel of Jesus Christ” and she came to church on Sunday.
We had a follow up appointment for the first lesson with Josh. We talked to him on the front porch but he told us that he felt the Book of Mormon was not true. He read bits and parts of the book and was confused about what he was reading. I think he flipped threw the book reading paragraphs here and there and did not really understand what he was reading. I invited him to read it and understand it. We brought a member in the neighborhood to the appointment. Josh might be interested in coming to some ward parties.
Our Ward Trunk or Treat was packed. We had to set up extra chairs in the relief society room because we had so many people. Several less-active actually were early to the activity. We gave out some glow sticks to the kids and made each one ask us something they did good that day. We quickly ran out of glow sticks thought. There were several hundred kids. Our ward mission leader was able to get us the glow sticks for us.
Well I think that this was most of the work. We visited lots of potentials even contacted a referral. It has been great being a part the work this week.
Elder Durfee
Ps what do you mean dad is starting his big Job?
PSS go Lynette that great news!
Psss we have trainings again with president this week. 2 days of it.

10-18-10

Mom,
I am doing wonderful. I keep to a pretty good budget and my needs are take care of. I can spend about 30 dollars a week for food or other personal items. I have found ways to save money. Example, we are to have the car washed once a week. Instead of paying 7 dollars for the cheapest wash, I bought car soap and now wash the car 28 times on 7 dollars! We Wash the car Monday mornings for exercise. So we save roughly 28 dollars a month by washing the car ourselves. :)
Lets see, was the kick off for the 40 day fast. We found someone new to teach. Before Sunday we had five less-active families tell us that they should be at church. We were very excited. None of them came to church but we are going to try and help them come by going and seeing them before church and or calling them before hand. I talked with another missionary, he said that they had 10 less-active at church! That was exciting to hear.
Hmm… we have done a lot of tracting and looking for the Elect. Several doors have opened. With the increase of faith from the members (fasting) we are seeing an increase in people to teach, appointments set up, people answering the phone, and families telling us that they will come to church. The Savior healed and blessed people according to their faith. If they had enough faith, they were healed. There even was a man that had to ask the Savior to “Help though my unbelief” when his faith was lacking. The Members have increased their faith, the Lord has increased the blessings and the work is rolling forward.
Love Elder Durfee

10-11-10

Dear Family,
Hello and greetings, I am doing well. We had transfers today. Elder Regnier and I will both be staying here. We lost a good number of elders in the district. It is hard to see them go. The Lord needs them elsewere.
For fun and entertainment, I cleaned the Kitchen and mop/swept the floors today. It was a dirty job. The sink was piled high with them. I was glad to have it done.
We made contact with Lorence and sister Lindsay. They are rather dificult to contact but sometimes you get lucky. In the middle of the messege we were leaving they picked up the phone and set up an appointment with us. We had no idea what to share with them but the the spirit helped us talk about scripture study and where we want to be in a year. Lorence said he wants to be baptized and sister Lindsy even said that she wants to be a visiting teacher. Now we need to help the Visiting teachers make contact.
Lets see, we road our bikes this last week and got stuck in a rain storm. We rode a good mile before we found refuge in our ward mission leaders home. His wife was great and made us hot chocolate. My left shoe was completely soaked. It was a drenching experience.
This week we started the 40 day fast in our ward. We should eat good. We will be eating dinner with the familes breaking their fast. Family it was a great week. Thankyou for your prayers. That was cool about Elder Phelps and Grandma. We have a member in our ward going to the MTC next week. Brant might see him. His name is Jeff Stien. Could you tell Brant congrats for me? Thanks.
Elder Durfee
PS no we don't grow winter gardens :)