Monday, June 29, 2015

District Leader....Awesome District!

YAY...he had a good first week as a district leader!)

Mother and Father,

   Yes, this was my first week as a district leader. I think I'm doing well. Last night we did call-ins for our weekly numbers and had a good time. My district consists of the zone leaders and the sisters in Boulder Ward. We have Elder Nielson and I, Elder Moala and Elder Pratt from Arizona, Sister Tanner form Canada, and Sister Benney from Washington. It's hard to be a district leader over such excellent missionaries.
   Elder Nielson is a way cool elder. He was serving in Casper, Wyoming before serving here. He has been on his mission for six months. He is from Taylorsville, Utah. Before his mission, he graduated high school and worked at a bakery. He played as nose guard in football. He tells me he's not sure, but he wants to go to the
University of Utah to study architecture. He's a good elder that wants to work hard. I like it. (I like it too!)
   Oh my goodness, getting those granola bars made me so happy. Thank you Brother Mariana! Your gift has brought me so much joy. (Thank you Victor for being so thoughtful!!!) T was out of contact this week, but we just got back in contact with her, so you may be hearing from her. V just left on a month long vacation and Brother M had a tragedy happen in his family that caused him to cancel his appointments with us. We hope to meet him this week and help him in any way we can. (So goes the life of a missionary.)
   Last transfer we had a man send us a text message out of the blue asking for LDS missionaries. We set up an appointment and finally had it go through yesterday. We were a little afraid we were going to the door of an axe murderer, but we ended up in the home of a wonderful family. They fed us dinner and were very receptive to our message. The wife has been looking for a church modeled after Christ's original church, and I showed her a picture of the twelve apostles, which she loved. The sad part for us is that they are moving to Arvada on Tuesday, so some Denver North missionaries are going to get an excellent referral. (That's a pretty cool story.)
   We did some tracting this week against Elder Nielson's wishes, and met an awesome woman. She is a Bible scholar and Christian apologist studying philosophy at CU. She told us she was saved, but she promised to read the Book of Mormon once she finished her honors thesis.
   Whenever I see Elder Moala, all we do is laugh because we have so many inside jokes together. It makes me so happy to have him as a zone leader. It's been a good week here in Boulder, and I hope that this
one is even better!

Love,

Elder Andrew Campbell

(I am guessing this is his new companion, Elder Nielson.)

Monday, June 22, 2015

Orange Chicken and Family Board Games!

(Since it's transfer week...I might have my weeks numbered wrong. It certainly wouldn't surprise me! Sounds like he's moving right along as a good missionary.  This week our letter was written by everyone since we were in Provo and BJ, Michele and Peter were all there. I didn't think about it making our missionary homesick. Oops! I'm sure he'll be fine!)

 
Mother and Father,

   To be honest, I probably don't have to tell you about transfers, since Sister M probably already told you, but I'll do it anyway. (Sis. M  did NOT spill the beans...so I'm glad he shared, especially since I thought transfers were in another week.) Elder P is leaving to Laramie, and I am staying and serving as a district leader. (Wahoo!) My new companion will be Elder N. No one has heard of him, so we think he came from Casper or Riverton. (It'll be fun to find out more about Elder N!!) What else? My new Zone Leader will be none other than Elder M. I am so excited for my best friend to be my zone leader. (I'm so excited too! We LOVE Elder M.)
   This week has been full of so many completely random things that I don't even know where to begin. We brought the S family to our lesson with V, and it went very well. We're just trying to get her to read more of the Book of Mormon. Brother M is progressing amazingly. He's getting excited to come back to church. (I wonder how you pronounce his last name?)  Last night, the tunnel we take to get back to our house was closed for a 45 minute delay. Elder P said he knew a back road, so we took it! The next hour or so was the most intense driving of my life. We're talking sharp switchbacks, very steep dirt roads and driving on top of the world. We saw a fox and a deer eating a flower and a beautiful view of the Boulder city lights. It took us about the same amount of time to get home as if we stayed in the line, but we can say we had a
lot more fun than anyone who sat there for 45 minutes. (More fun than our 2 hour wait today on I-80 due to a semi truck that burned up!)
   I loved getting a paragraph from everyone. It looks like BJ is really, super happy to be graduated. Now he's becoming a real adult with a real job. I heard that their apartment is jungle themed. That sounds amazing, to say the least. (They live in a Momba unit. There's an elephant at the front entrance.)  It took me a while to get the real meaning of your statement on the 7 billion ways to do missionary work. Very clever. I'm still working on figuring out how to do missionary work in one way though. I guess it comes down to the statement, "teach people, not lessons".

   Reading about orange chicken and board games with the family made me a little homesick, but I'm fine. Even though I'm regularly faced with things I wouldn't normally want to deal with, going through these trials has made me so much stronger. I feel ready to be a district leader, to be honest. Not to blow my own horn, but I feel a lot tougher whereas I used to be quite fragile. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that being with my family is certainly a lot of fun, but my mission is so important to me. I like being a missionary! (That's good to hear!)
   (Looks like he spaced Father's Day!) Oh, my goodness, I didn't even take the time to write Dad a letter this week. I love you Dad, you have done a lot for me. I want to apologize for dragging my feet on so much stuff when I was younger. You were trying to teach me the things that really matter, and I'm finally starting to understand.

   I love you all and now I'm hungry for orange chicken.

Love again,

Elder Andrew Campbell

Monday, June 15, 2015

$5 Papa Murphy Pizza...Life is GOOD!

(We have been vacationing in the Washington DC and now we are in North Carolina...so I've given him our day by day itinerary. Not very spiritual, I realize, but it's what's going on in our lives right now. Here's Elder Campbell's life this past week....)

Good morning Mom and Dad,

   That's a very exciting email you sent me. It sounds like you've had a very full week. I, personally, had quite the stressful week. A lot of crazy stuff that is going to have to remain anonymous. (Why did he even have to say this in his email???? I would rather not know anything!!) I do have some good things to highlight, however!

  A recent convert from the Boulder Ward wanted to go do work with some elders because his ward is served by sisters, so he spent Wednesday with us, and we taught 3 lessons with him. One was a lesson with V, who, after some time spent reading, believes that the Book of Mormon is a true book. The only roadblock to her conversion is that she is an "all roads lead to heaven" kind of person, so she doesn't feel a strong need to adhere to a true book. She does, however, regard our lessons as spiritual experiences, and comments on the spirit that we, the elders, carry. This week we're extending the invitation to sacrament meeting, so here goes nothing.

  This week we had zone conference! The main theme was on the spirit of the Sabbath and church attendance. I slept through the first two hours, but after lunch I learned a lot! (Glad he got his nap in!!) We had a section on progressing investigators and effective ways to use our iPads. We should be getting the new planning app this week! At least I hope so, haha.

  We had a lesson with Brother M on Saturday, which went wonderfully. We challenged him to come to Sacrament meeting, which he refused. I had already read ahead in the scriptures we were reading and knew what he needed to hear, and read to him e section of Alma 32 on faith being an experiment, and like unto planting a seed. It moved him incredibly, and he has made the verbal commitment to be in church by the end of July.

   Our dinner appointment yesterday was a picnic at Purple Park in Superior, which was super fun, we also had stake priesthood meeting, which was a good meeting. We also had a sealing reception yesterday for the Swarr family. They were married several years ago in a New Jersey courthouse, and have now been sealed in the Denver Temple. In other words, too much cake to be had in one day. Luckily I skipped lunch because we were so busy.

  Have a safe trip to Provo, and then Lodi!

Love,

Elder Andrew Campbell

Oh yeah, I was also made aware this week of Papa Murphy's $5 Faves menu. You can get a large pepperoni pizza for $5 dollars. It is a beautiful thing. (Thank you Papa Murphy!!)
Okay, so my iPad has this thing called Photo Booth that takes really silly, warped pictures. I'm going to send you some, and one regular one. (They really are ridiculous...but I will share them.)
 

 

Monday, June 8, 2015

Oh, you guys are LDS? I prefer LSD personally!

Mother and Father,

   I would start this message by saying that I gave Michele's scriptures to my good friend Jeff, and asked him to deliver the scriptures to Michele. He just lived across the street from them. (When Andrew entered the MTC he left his messenger bag at the airport. So, Michele, kindly gave him her scriptures to use until he got his back.Looks like we have a slight problem.) 

My
cabin in the mountains is awesome. I wake up to some beautiful sights, and the drive to town everyday is so gorgeous. (I asked him about wild animals.) The only wild animal I've been told to watch for is mice, though wild bears are known to walk through Boulder City proper. I see families of deer chilling in the middle of the city sometimes. Brother Wolcott actually has wifi,
so I'm writing from our cabin.

I've heard about a crazy Colorado Killer, but President has not talked to us about it. (I was concerned about tornadoes and shooters!)

Okay, that was weird. I accidentally sent the email prematurely. So, the Boulder Creek is running at a very high capacity, and people are worried about another big flood in Boulder. The weather has been quite insane, but I've gotten quite good at driving in a lot of bad weather. We went hiking on Brother Wolcott's property this morning, and sawsome pretty sights. I have some pictures on the way.

I got the packages, and they both made me very happy. Healthy food is the way to
go. When I go grocery shopping today, I plan on getting some healthy food, like oatmeal and almond butter.

   So my favorite thing about Boulder is the tracting. Anything weird is cool in Boulder, and the church is considered weird by many factors. So, we get a lot of lessons in via tracting. We have an investigator named Valerie who just moved here. She came to Boulder so she could be close to a group of people following a man who claims to have restored prophecy to the Earth. We told her that the keys of prophecy were restored 175 years ago, and she is willing to hear us out. At the same time, some people want to bash, like anywhere else. Their presentation is more sophisticated, but the arguments are not.

The Portugese Book of Mormon has not been delivered to us quite yet,but we still have some time. The Brazilian investigators did not come to church because they were sick. However, two men from Brazil who are on a business trip came to church. One came up and bore his testimony directly to the other man, his friend who is not a member of the church, and it was quite powerful. I've heard that Costa Vida is good, but I don't know if it's Cafe Rio good. This week I discovered that there is a Cafe Rio in Westminster, just on the wrong side of the mission boundary...okay, I'm going to work on getting some pictures sent to you.

Love,

Elder Andrew Campbell

PS. My favorite quote in Boulder so far, "Oh, you guys are LDS? I prefer LSD personally."
The pictures are from above the cabin....look down and you can see the cabin. The glasses are called "BYU Sports Nation Blue Goggles" sent to Elder Campbell from his brother, Peter.




Monday, June 1, 2015

Moving into a cabin!!

(After last week's debacle...I am happy I changed to a new gmail account. He got our weekly letter and I'm able to send his out without a hitch. Sounds like he's been busy and he's moving into a cabin. Can't wait to hear about that!)

Mom and Dad,

  It's so good to get an email from you! Last week I was particularly
sad without an email. It is quite revolutionary to see you with a
gmail account Mom. In the same vein, apparently you have an iPad now?
I'm proud of you for making such a leap. What caused you to get it? It
would also make for an excellent college tool. I can type really fast
on the tiny keyboard and It has a lot of music capabilities. Don't
worry, I won't take advantage of them until after my mission. It was
very kind of Tricia to say those things. (I have an iPad because my new school gave me one. I'm going to iPad training on Thursday. I'm becoming such a techie!)
  What happened to our investigator pool this week? It grew! On Monday we had dinner with a new family in the ward, and they invited a neighbor over. We taught a family home evening lesson and he asked us
theological questions. They invited him to come back so we could answer his questions. We have a Portuguese Book of Mormon on the way for us to give to him. This week we also did a fair amount of tracting. We found a guy out washing his car, and talked to him for about twenty minutes. He's a semi-professional soccer player working on making it into the big league. We gave him a Book of Mormon and he agreed to read it. He wants us to come back and talk about it this week. We also have some new-age people that like to talk theology with us. We don't consider them investigators, but they're nice people!

  Okay, so we are moving on Thursday. We are going back to the cabin up in the mountains! Brother W lives there and he is an amazing man. I'm really excited about going up there. The only sad thing is that there is no wifi up there... Oh well! Also, Elder Pope is about 6 foot 4 inches.

   The ward here is really cool, though they're a bit distrustful of missionaries. One of our big jobs is rebuilding ward trust. Luckily everyone loves Elder Pope. Our ward mission leader is Brother R, with whom we've been living. He work at a place where they make really big digital storage centers. He said they have a
really big storage center for Google. (I wonder what happened to cause the distrust.)

Can I comment once again on how beautiful it is here in Boulder? Elder Pope explained to me that the city of Boulder owns a large green belt around the city, and doesn't allow the city to expand. The reason for doing this is so Boulder can stay unique, and not get swallowed up by the Denver Metro area, like Superior. The result? Really expensive housing. People who live in tiny apartments have really lucrative jobs. It's kind of wild to think about. Last night we drove through campus. It's not a place I would ever want to go to school in a million years. The whole place just seems eerie. (Maybe he should go in the daytime!)
   I got my package from the hermanas yesterday and it made me very happy. Those are the best banana chips I've tasted yet. I have not had a hard time grocery shopping. When you took me to BYU, you took me
grocery shopping to have food for my first few weeks. From that point, I went  shopping to replace the things I had used, and soon had a pretty good idea of what I needed. On a mission things are a little different! For example, I have fallen in love with Nature Valley Dark Chocolate Cherry Bars, and they are amazing. I buy about 4 boxes a week. They are a main source of nutrients for me. Anywho, that appears
to have been my week in a nutshell. I will keep praying for you all.

Love,
Elder Andrew Campbell

PS. There is no Cafe Rio in Boulder. I am quite sad about that...  Our
Bishop gave us a bunch of pizza and wrapped it up to look like a duck.
I'll attach a picture.