The seed was planted..... and it grew!!!

Hey guys!

So this week was a little different than the usual, some bad and some good. We ended up doing quite a bit of service again this week and we recently started volunteering at a place called the Teresa house and it's a hospice type house thing. There is only two patients there at a time but we go for a couple hours once a week and just help around. We don't really do anything with the residents except for visiting with them. Usually we will just clean, make food, restock stuff, get stuff for the nurse, etc.. We went to the senior center but not to do service. We have a member who lives there so we went to go visit and we gave her a blessing. As for lessons this week we weren't able to meet with Trisha and Malissa because they were busy or out of town. Then we tried Brian but we knocked on his door and his wife came to the door and said he broke his femur bone when he slipped on the ice and he was still in the hospital and he can't walk around at all for a month. Randy was super busy. Rick was super busy. We had a lesson with Marissa and Steve and they are slowly but surely progressing so that's great! We also had the usual couple less actives that we see each week and trying to help them. We've been watching past conference talks with them in preparation for this next conference coming up.

On Thursday, we had zone conference for most of the day, which was really good. It's always great to go and see the other missionaries, president, and to learn. President is really trying to end his mission on a sprint because he finishes like two weeks before me so he's almost done with his 3 years. Then that night we went to the Pfaff’s for dinner, which was great!

Saturday, we had an Elders quorum bowling activity in mount Morris and that was a lot of fun! Somehow I won by total luck! Because I suck at bowling! But it was good to get together with them and we had some less actives come too! Then on I got to play the piano for primary and that was a lot of fun! Some of those kids are pretty crazy but they're awesome! And that was my week! Have a good week!

Love you!

P.S. -  Do you remember that Ukrainian guy Elder Gubler and I found in Brockport and taught? He got baptized! So, I know I didn't baptize, him but I'm countin' it ;)

FHE at the Pfaff's

February 21, 2016

Hey guys!

So this week we finally got some snow and that means we were doing lots of shoveling. It happened all of the sudden so we got 18 inches over night and nobody could go out. There was even a travel ban but we still went out because we have a truck and we were helping people shovel. We just went street to street for a couple days shoveling people out.  We were able to find a couple of people to teach that way so it was good. I'm a little sore but oh well. So, it was a pretty exciting week!

We had a lesson with Marissa and her family, a couple less actives, Malissa and Trisha, and we had a family home evening with investigators at the Pfaffs on Thursday.

Cool story about Livonia (where brother Pfaff lives).  It is where the first mission of the church went (Samuel Smith, Joseph's brother) and he handed out one Book of Mormon to the young family and it was the book that Brigham ended up reading from and being converted in Mendon a couple miles north.

We also had a normal family home evening on Monday with out investigators. We moved a couple of people, and found some new places to volunteer. So, one is a hospice house where we just clean the house, restock supplies, etc... And then I felt like we should go up to the senior center in Geneseo and see if we could volunteer and they said they had an orientation the next day so we showed up and there was three sororities from the college volunteering. So, now it is four missionaries and 60 college girls who volunteer there and they said it was really good because all of the guys living there don't have anything to do because the sororities plan dances, fingernail painting, etc.. and they can't participate. So the senior center should be fun! ;) Haha!!

Anyways, most of this week was service. I hope all of you had a good week!

Love you!

 Look what I found at the food pantry!  GOSSNER'S MILK!

February 15th, 2016

I don't really feel like writing this week so it will be a short one.

We got a new missionary in our apartment named Elder Fiesler and I really like him. We get along really well! So, this next transfer should be fun! We did a bunch of service in Perry again helping hand out food to the community and it was super cold. It has been really cold the past few days, so cold that on Saturday we weren't allowed to go out side because it was below -20. We had a good lesson with Malissa and Trisha on the word of wisdom and they are willing to work on that. We also had a good lesson with Marissa and Steve and Layla. Layla has a children's Book of Mormon and she has been taking it to school to read (a Christian school) and she's already 20 chapters in! It's her favorite book now and she's 9! We had dinner with the Pfaffs and we are going over tonight for FHE. Other than that nothing too out of the ordinary.

Have a good week!

Love Elder Daugs

Picked up a guitar at the Good Will

 Cannon similar to one we took a picture with in Barbados

Playing on Frozen Conesus Lake

Trip to Palmyra

Sister Pfaff

February 8th, 2016~ Elder Holmberg Transfered

 This 5'9" boy can jump!

Hey guys!

So last p-day we had a zone p-day up in Brockport, which was fun as usual! Then on Tuesday we went to the temple because a recent convert her who is about 21 is getting married and she went to get her endowments out. It was a really great experience to go to the temple. Especially since we don't get to go that often.

Wednesday, we had district meeting and then we went to Caledonia and some of the other area up there and we had a good lesson with Randy. He's getting more and more busy though because he is in charge of the advertising for the Rochester Redwings baseball team and they are starting up soon.

We had a good lesson with some new people we are teaching named Malissa and Trisha. They are doing pretty good and want to join the church but we have a couple big obstacles first. So we will see how it goes. We are also are staring to teach a guy in Avon named Michael. I went on exchanges with Elder Pedersen down to Nunda and we did a lot of service at the Baldwin’s stacking wood. Then we had dinner with the

Baldwin’s that night and had a lesson with a less active family.

We had dinner with the Larson’s and that was fun as usual! I really like going to the Larson’s! We also went to the Pfaff’s for dinner on Sunday as we made the connection that when she lived in Logan she lived in our ward boundaries and she was really good friends with Tene Olsen and Clark was her home teacher so you should ask them if they remember her.

Other than that it was a good week! Oh yeah and I'm staying another transfer and Elder Holmberg is going to Cheektowaga. Have a good week!

Love you!

February 1st, 2016

Hey guys!

So this past week was pretty good. We did a lot of service again so that was how a lot of the week was spent. So our apartment manager had surgery on his shoulder so he can't do much and he needed a kitchen and carpet torn out of one apartment so we didn't that for him. Then we went down to Tucarora to help some members and their daughter in law who is a non-member. One cool thing is, they live in a yurt so it's just like a giant tent but it looks like a house on the inside. They have to use wood to heat it. They don't have running water, so they get water from the river and put it in bins and it’s gravity fed. And they have a little farm. So we went and spent a couple hours taking water from the river to the storage in the yurt and stacking a lot of wood.

Wednesday, we had district meeting in Warsaw and a lot of the usual stuff. Thursday we had a really cool opportunity. We just recently got a new stake presidency and they have a vision of how they want the missionary work and home teaching to work in the next several years while they are called. So we had a meeting with all of the missionaries from the Rochester stake and all of the priesthood leadership from all of the wards and branches; so the bishoprics, high priest group leader, elder’s quorum president, and a couple others. It was really cool to see how they want to change things. This area is really struggling the past 15 years. The number of members has gone up by about 1400 but the number of active people in the stake has gone down, so that's not good.

Also home teaching and visiting teaching is really low, so they set a goal to get that up to 75 percent and it’s at less than 20 now. And over the course of the next 10 years he wants to have a new stake in the area. And with missionary work, he wants to make it so the missionaries don't have to do any finding and the members do it all and the missionaries just do the teaching. So he's got a lot of good plans going on. It helps that he is the smartest man in the mission boundaries member or nonmember, and he's only about 45! He was also talking about how he realized that now that he is stake president he has to watch over and take care of a lot of people and he realized that that goes for non-members too! As a stake president he takes care of the members of course but he is in charge of the missionaries and they work they do too and all of the non-members in the stake. He is in charge of getting the gospel to them and making sure they are getting prepared for when Christ comes again. So, its a pretty daunting task a but he has a good plan for it which is awesome!

It's a lot different than a Utah stake where you have 4000 member and 5000 people living in your stake boundaries. He has 4000 members and nearly 2 million people in his stake boundaries that he is given stewardship over. Anyways it was a really good meeting! As for lessons this week we had a couple with Marissa and Steve, and we went to the family history center in Rochester with them, and also a couple of less actives.

I wish we had some more snow around here. Its just kinda brown here. 

That's awesome that you got to go to the temple. I'm going tomorrow because a girl in the ward is getting her endowments out. 

I helped teach young woman's with the first councilor in the bishopric and boy was that interesting! ;) haha

Anyways have a great week!

Love you!


P.S. I've been reading this book and there's some pretty good stuff on these pages take a look!