February 26, 2018 - South SLC

Dear Madre,

Yes, Elder Jolly opened up Park City for Elders. It has only been sisters there until now. He is awesome! 

So I looked up Alice's address, she is a 5 min walk from where I am emailing right now (her home). I drive by it almost every day. Crazy. Not sure on the rules and regulations, but I am going to check into that. That would be really good to see her.

Holli's email was so awesome! It is so good to hear she is doing well! I am so grateful we can share this mission experience together! I love you so much Mom, grateful for your heart full of love! 

Love, Elder Adams

Great to hear from you Dad! 

The branch is strong, about 175 attend, maybe more! My goal is to make it a ward before I leave, we just don't have a high priest group yet. We are teaching a lot, and it is awesome! Transfers are next week. We find out Saturday who stays and who leaves. We travel all over the valley, we have more and more in Magna, so we went there 2 nights in a row.

Craziest experience from the last week was when we went out to Magna one night. We were contacting a referral. He wasn't home, but the people there invited us in to eat. Eventually they showed up, and we had this awesome conversation about eating camel, and also going to church. Some good potential there. 

I haven't gotten my Burmese tags yet. I will be sure to send a picture when I get them! I love you Dad, have a great week!

Dear friends,

This week has been awesome. I am out of time, so this is really short. Boo got baptized this week. That was incredible. She has changed so much! My language is improving so much, and I love the people. We are working with so many wonderful people, it has been awesome. 

Love you all, have a great week!

P.s. We also went to the temple, it was incredible!

February 20, 2018 - South SLC, UT

This week has been great, but absolutely crazy. It started off last Monday with a trip to the Museum of Natural History. It was closed for a while and fire trucks had to check something, so we went for a hike up the mountain. It started to snow, and was beautiful. That was awesome. Then the museum was sweet, lots of fun stuff. Then back to work. Tuesday we found out that Elder Bowman had a meeting 2 minutes before it started. So we quickly dumped me with 2 elders in the zone, I drove them around all day until 4, they were extremely thankful to have a car for a little bit to help speed up their work. Then we picked up Elder Bowman, and started an exchange (switching companions for a day) with the Elders in our district. I stayed in Karenni with Elder Matheson, and we got to work. It was fun to work super hard with him. Then we finished up Wednesday night, had weekly planning on Thursday, and right after that started an exchange with the zone leaders. It was unbelievably fun to work in a small area with English speaking people again. Elder Nadal and I got along great and had some awesome lessons. Then, we switched back Friday and had district meetings, and then had Boe's baptism on Saturday!  She has changed so much over the last 4 weeks, it was awesome to see her make this important step in following our Savior Jesus Christ. What a blessing it is for us missionaries to help people progress! I love it a lot. It snowed yesterday, that made travel fun. At one point only 2 of the 5 lanes on the road were being used because everywhere else was too snowy. We were going like 25mph in an 80mph area. We are going to the temple this afternoon at 2pm! I can't wait! So that's been the week in a nutshell, lots of hard work, my language is improving, and I can't wait to see what comes next!

I love you all!

Elder Adams 

February 12, 2018 - South SLC, UT

What a fun week. We had some good activities this week.

We are looking for more people to teach, so we started looking everywhere. We found a lot, and it has been super cool to teach more about our Savior, Jesus Christ. We also had some fun events happen. First, we had some delicious dinners. Karenni food is super delicious! Then we had an investigator get married! She is getting baptized next week! When the branch president said they could kiss, she hit him in the face with the flowers. In their culture they don't show affection in public, so it was really funny! They have done a ton of weddings, but no one has ever kissed. Then we celebrated like 3 birthdays this week. Two were Karen, and they are the most interesting things ever, especially since I have no idea what is being said! For my birthday some members in the apartment complex made a cake and it was great fun! Lots of hard work this week, we went on exchanges, and I went with Elder Wagley in my area, and we had a great time, found a lot of new investigators. It has been a really great week. We were with some youth, and they had me dunk so that was really fun too.

We are working super hard, it is great. Lots of improvement being made! And in July the mission will become the Salt Lake City Mission. I love serving the Lord so much! I pray that all is well with you! 

Elder Adams 

Ps: I am waiting for my Burmese name tag to come in, and I speak enough Karenni and Burmese to get in the door, and leave, and also almost pray in Karenni. Soon hopefully I can bear testimony and teach simply in Karenni, which will be awesome! 

 

February 5, 2018 - South SLC, UT

Am I starting to like noodles...? So we eat a lot of noodles. Like 2 times a day. I usually have no lunch, because we have dinner, and then someone else will feed us too. It's part of their culture. And the main food the Karenni people eat is rice and noodles. The rice is great, and sometimes I like the noodles, which is pretty cool since most American pastas are still on the dislike list. Maybe my taste buds are changing.

This week has been amazing. Truly this is the Lord's work, and He guides us to be the best missionaries we can be. This week we saw a lot of ups and downs. We met a family the week before, and the mother and daughters were taking to the gospel so well. The daughters even came to church and loved it so much. We went over for another lesson, and the dad was unhappy. Eventually, we were able to discuss with him the importance of following Jesus Christ and being baptized. He has a strong religious background, so we discussed the priesthood. He said that he is never getting baptized again, but that his wife and daughters can choose, they just have to wait till they are a specific age, which is 7 years away. So that was one of those upsetting moments. The Karenni ward member we brought to translate has a wife who has those same concerns, so we went to a lesson with her, and brought another member who overcame those concerns. This lesson was extremely powerful, and the mother/wife accepted to be baptized. It was incredible. Missions are such up and down roller coasters, but it is really nice to have that change, the work is never monotonous!

A fun activity happened Saturday. There are 8 ethnic groups in Myanmar (Burma) that were run out by the Burmese, and fled to Thailand. One group which has also settled in the Salt Lake Valley is the Mon group. There are only 90 of them in the valley total, but they celebrated a national day, invited us, and held it at our church building, and it was really fun. They had some speakers, one of which was our branch President, President Peterson, and lots of dances. And delicious food! Some of the dances were very different. I have included some pictures and a video. The video is of the Karenni, which is who I am privileged to work with. They were asked to participate, and share some of their culture. That was a neat experience, especially because a lot of the Karenni youth that came are still unbaptized, so we are working on changing that. 

I absolutely love this opportunity I have to serve the Lord. I wish I could spend the rest of my life doing this, but sadly I only have 2 years to give all I have like this. I know that without a doubt I will continue to serve the Lord for the rest of my life; that is one thing I have learned from my mission. I know that the restored gospel of Jesus Christ is here on the earth today. I know that President Russell M. Nelson is the prophet called of God to lead us today, at this time in the world. I know that the Book of Mormon is the most correct book on the earth, and with the prophet Joseph Smith I too can testify that a man can get closer to God by reading this book. I pray that we may all seek to follow the Lord's guidance for us in life. I love you all so much, and I am grateful for the love and support as I try to always remember Our Savior, and give Him all I have. 

Love,

Elder Adams