Email Dec 26 2011

(Kevin's "other brother" Brandon's in-laws live in the ward where Kevin is serving.  They were able to get together for dinner!!)

So I’m not going to say much but yes it was great to be able to talk to you all for Christmas! I’ll just put a little about how our Christmas went and what we did for the sake of everyone that might be reading my blog. Well we woke up with a phone call from our zone leaders at 5:45 in the morning and they said they were on their way to our apartment with the AP's so we woke up and waited for them. When our ZL's and AP's got there we opened all our presents and made quite the mess of our apartment. After that we got ready and me and Elder H had church from 9-10 and wished our ward members Merry Christmas after that. Then we headed up to a family’s house in our ward and played games with their two little daughters and then ate a brunch! It was fantastic! After that the mom asked where we were eating dinner and we said that we would be eating at our apartment and she would not allow that so we left for a little bit to another families house to skype home which went really well and I loved it! Everyone is growing up so much! After that we went back to the member’s house and played more games and ate dinner then went back to the apartment and rested. It was really one of my favorite Christmas's I’ve ever had. Thanks to everyone who sent me presents and letters. I really enjoyed everything I got and appreciated it. It’s good to know of the support I have from home.

Cool story from today though. We went to a potential investigators house where we had met a 17 year old girl and she said she and her family would want to hear the message we had so we went back when they told us to but they were gone. (Of course) so we went back today to see if there was a time we could meet with them and she let us in to teach her right then and there! We ended up only teaching her and her friend but we met most of the family including one of her 3 older brothers, her mom and her dad. And they were all super friendly to us and we taught the girl and her friend about the Book of Mormon and they said that they would read and said we could come back Thursday!! It was super awesome!! Except transfers are next week so I could be leaving... we find out Saturday! Love you all!! Have a great New Years and I’ll write again next year!

Dec 19 2011 Email

Thank you for Josh's address and for the package! Yes I did get it and I was really excited! I also got a package from Grandma Kay and from Granddaddy!! Our tree has lots of presents under it so far! All of them are mine and my companions though and I’m hoping that our roommates get some packages this week! But yeah this last week turned out to be really good besides Thursday and Friday!

Tuesday we met with a guy that we have been meeting with who is pretttyy crazy but when we met with him his sister asked if she could sit in on the lesson and she has decided she wants to take the lessons too! We worked out a day separate from her brother to teach her because they don’t get along to well. We also taught to less active members that night and they both went pretty well!

Wednesday morning we set up 6 return appointments. 4 for the next day and a couple later on in the week and we went down to Trader Joes to talk to people around there and as we were walking there we went around the back of the store because its faster and there was a homeless guy there and he turned around and asked if we were Mormons. We said we were and he asked if we could read him a scripture from the Book of Mormon that tells what we believe. So we read the scripture in 2 Nephi 25:26 about we believe in Christ, we talk of Christ... and we just sat down and talked to him about Joseph Smith and a little about our church. He was super funny partly because he was a little drunk but he was telling us about how he used to be so athletic and what not. (By the way he was pretty young. Maybe in his mid-late 20's) but he was saying how he didn’t want to drink anymore, how he wanted a job, and asked how he could be part of our church. We told him he has to be baptized and go to church and he was a little interested. We then left him with a Book of Mormon and told him maybe we would see him again sometime. It’s a little hard to set up return appointments with a homeless man but hopefully he is reading the Book of Mormon. That night we went with the Young men/Young women to a place over in Upland that the whole street is decked out hardcore with lights and tons of people walk the streets to see them. So we went with the youth and organized it so they could hand out pass along cards with candy canes tied to them. We took 80 cards and ended with 3. I only personally handed out 5 and Elder H didn’t hand out too many either.  The youth did a really good job! It was really fun too.

Thursday and Friday, literally EVERY appointment that we had canceled on us. ALL of them. It was the most disappointing days I’ve had and I was super bummed but we made up for it on Saturday and Sunday.  Oh but we did have a good storm on Thursday! Luckily we were in our apartment complex trying to see an investigator in there when it started so we ran back to our apartment and it POURED down rain and there was lightning and thunder and it was super close. So later that night after it had stopped we went to dinner and just a few streets up it had snowed! There was snow in the whole top of our area so we got to throw snowballs in California!! The family we ate with is the C family and they have recently bought a house down kind of by Stahlie farms and are in the Washington fields stake so they are really close to you guys! But they gave us presents and it was really neat! The members up here have been really good to us!

Saturday we taught a lesson to T and J. The lady that walked to our mission office and talked to President. I think I told you about it. But we met with them and taught them about the Book of Mormon and she said since church last week she has been praying every night and has felt the blessings and knows how the Holy Ghost feels and so we asked if her and her friend J would be baptized on January 14th and they said yes!! Later that night we went to a less actives house we have been to a few times just to take our Christmas picture in front of their super pretty tree and after we got them they asked if we had time to sit down so we sat and just talked and I connected with them really well and they talked about how they love desserts so I told them about chocolate waffles and yogurt pie and told them we would come over sometime and we can make a couple yogurt pies and they were really excited. We then just taught a little message to them about service and when we left they said "our house is your house and our kitchen is yours whenever you need anything or a place to be" they are super super nice so I was wondering if I could get a couple simple dessert recipes from you that I could make over there and also the one for yogurt pie. It is a good opportunity to be able to be in their house and I think I might start doing cooking things at people houses more often and so we can just chat and they can get to know us better and then have food and teach a lesson. I at least want to try it out and see how it goes.

Sunday we had 6 investigators at church and 2 people who aren’t quite yet investigators technically but will be soon I hope. T brought her 15 year old son and her 9 year old daughter and they both had a really good time. I guess lots of our youth if not all of them knew her son and were really nice and friendly and he seemed like he enjoyed it but he will definitely take more work than his mom. He has lots of piercings and seems kinda like a punk but we talked to him for a minute and he seemed super nice. After church we met with T, J and T’s daughter!! We taught about the first part of the plan of salvation and J and T were saying how excited they are to be baptized and we asked her daughter if she wanted to be baptized with her mom and she also said yes!! We set 3 baptism dates this week!! Hopefully we will set more next week! We also got to meet with a less active member and he was another super friendly guy. Said he wants to feed us dinner sometime and when we read our message to him he pretty much bore his testimony about it. It was really neat and hopefully we can get to work with him!

This next week me and Elder C my roommate are performing for the stake seminary! I’m playing guitar and we are both singing the little drummer boy! It should be pretty fun but I’m nervous!

Hope you have a great week! Love you!

Dec 12 2011 Email

(Please see prior post for Kevin's new mission address)

About my area. Yes it is suppper pretty! The sunsets from up here are normally amazing and I have a few good pictures of some. We are also going to get a Christmas picture today with the four of us in our apartment and send out some Christmas Cards! It’s going to be an awesome picture and you guys will love it :) I’m only going to send them to family and to a couple friends. It’s currently raining though so our original idea isn’t going to work but we will still get a good one!

I’m SUPER excited for Josh to go to the MTC I know he will have a great experience and he will be blessed as much as I have. I have really started to notice the blessings that I’ve been getting even if I don’t notice them at first I notice them after awhile and I am so grateful!

As for this week we had a pretty tough week because of so many appointments falling through at the beginning of the week but we ended up with 70 contacts which is the standard of excellence for our mission and we were really excited to hit it! We ended up later this week being able to teach a few more lessons and ended up with 12 total lessons for the week which is pretty decent.

We had a cool story about a referral we got from President G.  Apparently the lady that lives across the street from a guy we have been teaching sees us a lot and has wanted to talk to us but hasn’t gotten up the courage so she ended up walking down to our new mission office which isn’t too far but still far enough and walked in and said she wanted to meet with me and Elder H!  We contacted her and played a little phone tag and weren’t able to meet with her before Sunday but she said that she would walk to church Sunday morning. We ended up getting her and her friend a member ride and after church she said that she LOVED it and would be back next week and that we can teach her!

Another really neat story.  We had a Living Nativity program set up for last Thursday night, Friday night, and Saturday night and we stopped by this partly autistic kids (just barely autistic like the only thing that’s wrong is he is a little bit socially awkward but he is a cool kid) house that we have been teaching to invite him and his family but his mom and sister were gone so we invited him and he said if he wasn’t drunk and had nothing better to do then he would go to it. We got to go see the program Saturday night and talk with lots of people and S was there!! He got there at 6:30 when it started and stayed through all 4 of the shows and then helped clean up! We introduced him to lots of ward members and they were all really nice and talked to him a lot it was really good! We also found out he went to church yesterday! He just went to a different building. Attended all 3 hours. Stayed an extra hour and then went to sacrament meeting at the singles ward also! Luckily lots of people there fellowshipped him so we are going to stop by this week and see what he thought!

We have also been making some really good progress with an investigator named D that lives in our complex.  The first couple times I met him he really wasn’t convincing when he said he would read but then last Monday night we took a convert member and had an awesome lesson on faith and he just admitted and said he should have been reading and that he really does want to gain a testimony of the book so he really would read this time. We have another meeting with him tonight so we will see how it goes! Oh and good news about the 70 contacts! We got about 7 or 8 people that said we could come back and share more about the church! I was pretty excited about it! I’m also getting really excited for Christmas! Our apartment is decked out and looks super awesome!! I’m excited to be able to skype with you! Well that’s about it for this last week! It was a good one and hopefully this week is really good too! I love you lots!!

NEW MISSION ADDRESS!!!

Elder Kevin Graf
California San Bernardino Mission
6541 Woodruff Place
Rancho Cucamonga, CA 91701

Dec 5 Email

I’m really excited to see Brandon!!! He is coming the 29th supposedly!!

Well this week has been pretty lame. Our appointment with both people fell through... but crazy story about one of them. her name is T and we went over and I guess her mom had to leave or something so she gave us her dad’s number so we could call and schedule something so we go to call her the next night and the number is already in our phone as a less active/part member guy. So we were confused because it wasn’t his address that she was at. So we went to the address where the ward directory said he was and the lady was really nice and told us it was a bad time but to come back this week. Then we found out that the T's (T's family) moved! So we got a return appointment with some strangers!! yay!! But yeah turns out we found out where the T's moved to and we talked to the dad and he is completely okay with us teaching his daughter and possibly his wife if she is interested and other 2 kids! That would be really awesome! We taught some pretty good lessons and set a baptismal date for the 24th! But it doesn’t look like it’s going to stick.

Some other crazy things from this week. I’ve been sick... bleh. I’ve had a cold since Thursday. I started to get it Tuesday but Wednesday it was gone. Then Thursday it was back and bad. So we didn’t get a whole lot of work done but there is a lady in our ward who has like a van with tons of medicine in it. I’m not sure her exact job but she said if we ever needed anything to call her so we did and she gave us some cold medicine and made me and my companion lots better! I feel pretty good now. Just a little clogged nose and a tiny cough but I’m tons better than before. The other reason we didn’t get much work done is because there was a very large windstorm Tuesday night! Like supposedly 80-100MPH winds. It was the worst there has been in 10 years! How crazy is that!? There were huge trees that were uprooted all over the place! The road outside our apartment was blocked by 2 huge trees! It’s almost been a week and there are still trees all over the place because the city workers have been so busy. So we did lots of service cutting up trees and all that good stuff. I got some pictures so I’ll send those possibly back with Brandon who can give them to Brian who can sometime get them to you! Yeah so lots of crazy stuff this week! Now that I’m feeling better we are going to teach lots of lessons this week and make up for last week! Oh so we have also been decorating our apartment for Christmas! Using stuff we bought at the dollar store such as stockings that we hung over our fireplace that we have been using! It’s been super awesome! And we are all pitching in to get a fake tree! It’s going to be awesome!

Transfers are going to be January 3rd and I could leave then just so you know! Well I love you all so much and hope you have a great week!!