Elder Cameron Bolinder's Excellent Adventures: Minnesota Minneapolis Mission: August 2018

Thursday, August 23, 2018

Week 98

Jordan, Elder Harris, Elder Bolinder

Locked Out!

Another week in the books.

Today has been interesting to say the least. Started out prime when I found a deal on a new suit worth $600 for just $90. Score. Then things took a turn when we accidentally locked our keys and tablets in the family history center😂 hahaha. Needless to say, we were stranded at the church for quite a while, but all is well. So, I have less time to write but I’ll try to type the most I can.

We’ve been keeping busy here in Alex. Still meeting tons of new people and finding new blessings in store for us every day!

Some quick highlights from the week:

Remember that inactive member from Lakeville that just so happened to be our next-door neighbor? Well we had dinner with him this week. He’s awesome! And guess what, he surprised us and came to church on Sunday! First time in over a year. Super glad we were able to make a connection with him.

We taught Milo, the Spanish recent convert in our area, and his two boys again. They are doing great and we are preparing for their baptism next week!

We felt prompted to call this media referral from Texas who was never contacted. She picked up and wanted to meet with us the next day! It was sweet, her name is Jane and she brought her boyfriend to the church and we gave them a free tour! They have both gone through so much. Her former husband committed suicide, and he got in a car accident and broke his neck. They both are pretty depressed and just looking for peace. It was amazing to be able to testify of the peace that comes from having faith in Jesus Christ. It was a really cool moment when we explained the purpose of our life, it just clicked with her, she said "wow I've never heard it like that before. That makes so much sense!" And afterwards she leaned over and started to explain it again to her boyfriend and was like, "See! If Adam and Eve didn’t sin, we wouldn’t be here to be able to grow!” It will be hard to meet with her regularly because she works 2 jobs, but hopefully we can see them progress in the gospel.

We also had zone conference this week. It’s a little different when you’re a 3-hour drive away from it, haha! But it was still good, we spent the night at the zone leaders’ apartment the night before. We had a really powerful training on how we can improve our personal prayers! President Barney showed us some clips from Russell M. Nelson and I just love this quote: “Nothing opens the heavens quite like the combination of increased purity, exact obedience, earnest seeking, daily feasting on the words of Christ, and regular time committed to temple and family history work.” So true!

We’ve still been trying to find more Spanish peeps to teach. We saw la familia Maldonado again! Sadly, something happened and they didn’t make it to church. But we contacted a guy who ordered a copy of the Book of Mormon online and happened to be from El Salvador!! I’m surprised at how much Spanish I still use in this area, talking to people, translating at church, so that’s been a great blessing to keep practicing my Español!

Last but not least, our buddy Jordan from China! We had a lesson with him, and honestly it was pretty difficult haha. It's a little weird transitioning from teaching Hispanic people where knowledge of God and faith in Christ just come naturally in their culture. Jordan's only exposure to religion has apparently been from watching American Horror Story😂. So, instead of trying to answer all of his questions we only focused on prayer. The spirit was a lot stronger, and he was able to say his first prayer! He’s progressing well, we just need to take it line upon line.

Elder Harris and I are having a ball out here! I've enjoyed meeting so many of God's children in the area already and I'm so grateful for this chance I have to serve them and serve my Savior. I know He lives!

Love you all! Hasta la proxima

-Elder Bolinder

Elder Harris and Elder Bolinder

Wednesday, August 15, 2018

Week 97

Final Area - Alexandria, MN

A Warm Welcome to 'Alec'

Welcome back amigos!

Coming at you live from central Minnesota. Alexandria - population of a whopping 13,000! All the locals call it Alec. It’s been an interesting week for sure, but so many good things are happening. We’re just absolutely thrilled!

Let me give you some more details of the area. From one end of our area to the other it is a 2-hour drive, and Alexandria is the biggest town. So, there are a lot of cornfields in between! The area has been closed and reopened to missionaries countless times, and there hasn’t been a baptism there for 6 years! But, as of about a month ago, a Colombian family came to visit for the summer and hired an interpreter from Mexico so they could go to church. The interpreter wasn’t a member, but loved the church and felt the spirit so he was taught by the members and he decided to be baptized! So, we are reopening the area, and on top of that, President thought he would jump on the opportunity with the Spanish-speaking recent convert so they tossed me in here sort of as a guinea pig to try to spark something with the untouched Spanish work in the area! It is super exciting but also pretty daunting!! There is a branch of about 40 people, and the members area suuuper great. They were beyond excited to have missionaries again!!

Okay now let’s get into how weird the week was. On Tuesday, I spent the entire day in Bloomington and stayed the night at the APs because they combined our groups for departing missionary training. They had us go a transfer early since the temple was going to be closed in September. It was weird to have to do that 6 weeks early, but it was a good experience nonetheless. Got to go to the temple again! And the spirit was incredibly strong as all the “dying” missionaries gave powerful testimonies of Christ. On Wednesday I packed, we had a few lessons and I said goodbye to all the amazing members of St. Paul! Then Thursday was transfer day. However, since our housing coordinator was out of town until the next day, my new companion Elder Harris (from Pocatello!) and I didn’t get transferred until Friday because we had no apartment yet. So, yet another day in Bloomington spending the night at the assistants’ place. Haha! On Friday we drove 3 hours out to our area and spent most of the day moving into our new apartment. We’ve basically only had two and a half days in the area so far!

We’ve experienced some pretty cool miracles so far! First off, when we were moving all our furniture into our new apartment this guy next door walked out of his door. We said hi and started to chat and turns out he is a less active member from Lakeville! He’s here for college. And the Elders just happened to move in right next door, what are the odds!!?

Second off, we happened to receive a referral for this guy named Jordan. We called him and he said he was available to meet that night! It was an adventure trying to find him way out in the middle of nowhere without an address.. that’s a story in it of itself! Lol. But it turns out he’s from mainland China here for a summer work program. Staying with them were 6 people from China, 3 people from Jamaica, and 2 people from Thailand! (The diversity continues! Lol) Jordan has essentially no religious background whatsoever, but was just so intrigued by Americans’ religious beliefs and asked us, “why do so many of you guys believe in God?” We talked for 45 minutes straight that God is our Heavenly Father and how we can seek to know Him. In the middle of the lesson, all of a sudden their roommates throw out a plate of chicken feet in front of us!! Haha. That definitely took us off guard! I guess you’re not exempt from exotic foods no matter where you are😂. The coolest part of that night was when we said the closing prayer. Elder Harris said a short simple prayer, and when we looked up afterwards, Jordan was literally on the edge of his seat. His eyes were just fixed on us during the entire prayer! He was just blown away and said to us, “that was the first prayer I’ve ever heard in real life, not in the movies!” It was so cool to see how amazed he was at a simple prayer, and in my nightly prayer I thanked my Heavenly Father so much for the connection we have with Him through prayer. I don’t think any prayer will be the same again after that experience! And we also got Jordan to come to church!! He’s just so open and willing to learn, and we’re hoping he can progress well before he moves back in a couple months!

Our third experience was when a member drove us to a tiny town on the edge of our area where there’s a pretty decent Hispanic population. We went to see this member, and she let us right in. Their whole family is from the Dominican Republic, they lived in Alaska and met with the missionaries there, and now moved to Minnesota. She was just so grateful to have us come over again and she said she hasn’t been to church in 3 months and really wanted to go but didn’t know where the church was and so she was super excited to hear we are trying to start a Spanish group in Alexandria! We also met a few of her kids, one of them is named Raul and isn’t baptized but was excited to start reading the Book of Mormon again. So, we are going to start teaching them and get them to church!! 😁

The cherry on top of the ice cream has to be the Spanish convert Milo and his familia. He’s super awesome and he is already a member missionary! We had a lesson with them and set baptismal dates two weeks out for his two sons who are 9 and 10, wahooo!! So, with Esperanza and her family whom we invited to church, our Spanish group has already grown to 3 families in just one week, with two baptisms on the way. What an awesome way to start the transfer! I’m grateful for the Lord’s hand in this work, and for everything I continue to learn out here in the mish.

To end, some funny finding stories from this week:

We were knocking doors in this apartment complex, when a little girl answered. We asked if her mom was home, and she ran outside the complex to get her. As she’s running, we hear her say, “Mom!! The two mailmen are at the door!” 😂. A couple doors down, we knocked and the door swings open only for us to see this 4 year old boy completely naked! Before we could say anything, he says “come in!” And about 3 seconds later he realized he didn’t have any clothes on and shut the door and ran off. Hahaha we were laughing so hard, we just thought, what just happened? Sadly, the parents didn’t come to the door, but we definitely got a laugh out of it😂.

Well, I just want to let all of you know how much I love each one of you!

Que tengan una buena semana,

-Elder Bolinder

Elder Bolinder and Elder Harris

The Famous Alexandria Viking

Sweet Mission Car!

Impromtu Picnic

Alec Scenery

A Warm Ward Welcome

Ha!!

Week 96

"I'll miss these kids!"

Booted...

Hola!!

Well, the day has come. Dreaded transfer week...

Had interviews on Friday so President Barney basically gave us a sneak peek.

Here’s the curveball.......

I’m heading out to the sticks for my last 6 weeks!! It’s a tiny city of 11,000 called Alexandria. So, another English ward! I guess the elders there say there’s been a couple Spanish contacts there recently. So, definitely a surprise but I’m excited to see what we can do!!

It’s been hard to leave this area. I’ve met so many awesome families and we’ve had many amazing experiences. St. Paul definitely has a special place in my heart!

Sorry for the short update this week, but I have a bunch of pics for you all. So enjoy! Haha. I love you all!!

Dios te bendiga,

-Elder Bolinder