Friday, April 22, 2011
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Nearing the End
Our Mission in Brief
Elder and Sister Burkhart
Working with less-active families and individuals means a slow work. It takes time to build a relationship with people who often are leery of church people who just want them to go to church but don't really care. Until they know you really care, it doesn't matter what you try to teach. Some families have taken a year before that kind of trust exists. Transferring senior couples puts a difficult strain on the work.
Some of the people we've worked with and the results:
Bennion East Stake (We are lucky to have been left here the entire time.)
Since we have several apartment complexes in the stake, we have had many, many people move away. Some we have heard from even then. We had one man, Mike, who we had taught from the start. We had been trying to get him ready to baptize his son when he turned eight. His wife also wanted the family sealed in the temple. She had been to the temple herself. After months of progress Mike decided that he just couldn't take the stress of church and the stress of his work. He told us he liked us coming but he wasn't going to give up smoking and gambling on his golf games. Two months later he died of a heart attack on the golf course. That was a very hard funeral but we are planning on going to the temple with Marianne next spring.
We had a young couple we were getting ready to go to the temple when they moved to Texas. We heard from a relative here that they went to the Dallas temple shortly after. Then we heard just recently that they were divorcing. Sad. Her family lives there. His family is here. I'm afraid the influence of her family was too much.
Bob – a retired widower with poor health. He is very unresponsive to ward leaders because he feels they don't really care. He loves for us to come visit. The last time we went, even though he already had a visitor, he insisted we come in and talk awhile. We have no trouble leaving him a message and he has become a good friend. He is unable to go to church without help and since he doesn't get along with the ward leadership, there is not one willing to help.
Rick A. is one of our excommunicated brothers. He joined the church when he was 35 but fell into problems years later that destroyed his marriage. He now is highly motivated to return and we have wonderful discussions with him. I wish we had met him earlier. We've only know him about a month.
Another excommunicated brother is Dustin. We are also teaching his brother Kyle, different ward, same stake. Dustin is trying to put his life back together. He went on a mission but got lost much later on.
Erin was baptized by the elders and then they asked us to take care of her. Her husband, Art is a returned missionary who completely left the church. He became an alcoholic but is now in AA. We wish we could get him the churches' program but he likes AA. They are an interesting couple who are having a hard time making changes. They were having a somewhat bad effect on the young elders such as having them watch the Super Bowl with them.
Dustin R. is another returned missionary who let life get in the way. He hasn't really lost his testimony and hasn't picked up bad habits but he has brain cancer in remission and has a fatalistic attitude. He lets job and health overrule what he says he should be doing. He's only in his mid 30s but isn't progressing as he should.
We have a family we teach that is also making good progress. The dad had a serious drinking problem and the mother is handicapped and in a wheel chair. There are two small kids. They live in a strange tumble-down house that needs demolition. However, they have begun attending church regularly.
We had a woman we taught, along with the sisters. She got to where she was attending regularly and loving church but her lease ran out and she had to move. She now lives in another zone altogether. We helped her move and hope she is getting settled in the new neighborhood. She still goes to the old ward and we need to get hold of the new bishop.
Another sister we are visiting is Valerie X. She was excommunicated and is working with her bishop. He has asked us to also teach her. I worry that when we leave there will only be elders there and she is a young, single mom.
We have another family that the ward needs to do more with. He is legally blind and she is unable to walk very far because of health problems. They don't have any transportation to get to church and so the ward thinks of them as inactive. We can't get the ward to send home teachers or visiting teachers who will stay with the job.
We are teaching a mother and daughter Family Home Evening lessons. They are both members but the mother smokes and they don't attend.
We have a family that we could probably claim as reactivated. They began attending because they needed church aid. The father was hurt at work and is now disabled. The mother has been unable to find a job. They have a problem with smoking. There are two young children. Now they attend regularly and really like attending.
In the same apartment complex is a single mom with a very wild 4 year old son and a 21 year old son. She works every chance she can which means every Sunday. However, she does have wonderful visiting teachers.
We had Erin join the church after hearing the lessons we taught her grandfather. I'm sorry to say there was a sad ending to that story. She is 25 years old but has a history of mental problems brought on by early drug abuse. She had had an abortion before we met her and had to have special permission from the mission to be baptized. She was so intent and seemed to have a very strong testimony but mental instability took over and after a few months she fell into old ways, including inactivity, and is now pregnant but unmarried.
Lorrie lives across the street from her parents and claims to be inactive because of health problems. She does have serious health problems but also has five children who need the church. For a long time we were conducting Family Home Evening with them. The children often go to Primary with the grandparents.
We have taught Lisa for quite awhile. Her son Cody was baptized recently and attends faithfully. Lisa seemed to always have a strong testimony and love the church but yet never attended. The last couple of lessons her husband has sat in on and make interesting comments. The ward mission leader didn't even know his name because he has never attended. We can see from his comments he obviously was raised in the church. The last time we were there a couple of days ago, Lisa told us why she doesn't go to church. I wish we had known that months earlier. We want to make the bishop aware and hopefully someone will follow up to help this sister. She is a wonderful person who shouldn't be lost.
We have Valerie who lives in a very small, horrible apartment. At one time things seemed to be better and she moved away for awhile only to return to the same complex. She also has a history of drug abuse and although she maintains she will never return to that, she has a problem with smoking. However, she goes to church whenever she doesn't have to work.
We have several people who have been excommunicated that bishops have specifically asked us to work with. We understand that we should give those to the younger missionaries as soon as possible but in some cases we can't give single men to sisters nor can we give single sisters to elders. It's also hard to argue with bishops who insist that we be the ones to see them. Then there is the young woman, Gabriela, who is pregnant. The bishop thinks she is taking lessons just to get church aid and wants us to teach her. She claims to have a husband in Afghanistan but has absolutely no details about him. We have an older sister, Helen, we see informally. She had her name taken off the records years ago. We got her son, Barry, ready to go back to the temple and he now goes regularly. We still go back to see her because we feel the contact with the church is good even though we can't get her to attend.
Our biggest success in the Bennion East Stake is Rick Wells. He was struggling when we met him. He was an alcoholic. He had broken his back and was in a brace. His general health was terrible with many medical problems. His wife had suddenly died three years before and he tried to drink himself to death. After teaching him most of our mission he attended the church's 12 step program, cleaned himself up, attended church regularly, and received his endowments and was sealed to his wife and daughter. We are now part of the family and are working on the remaining two daughters.
In the Taylorsville Central Stake we were doing quite well until we were transferred. One really wonderful experience was at the Golden Living Center where we began teaching three men and one woman. We began with teaching separate lessons one after another but since they kept getting times mixed up and wandering in on each others lessons, we began to have group discussions. That grew and grew until we had about 10 less-actives and non-members attending each week. We became very attached to them all. Some of those people include:
Sue had a doctorate in chemistry and was extremely intelligent. It was wonderful the discussions we would have with her. She suffered greatly with a disease that destroyed all connective tissue in her body and finally killed her. She wanted to be baptized but was worried about turning her back on her catholic heritage and she worried about her health making it hard. We had her very close when she died. Elder Burkhart and I sang at her funeral in the Catholic church.
Myron grew up alone without family. His mother was unwed and gave him up at birth. He was tossed from one foster home to another. Somewhere along the way he was baptized but knew nothing about the church. One foster family took him to Alaska and at age 9, he was abandoned and left in Alaska. At that time Alaska had no child protection so he was homeless until he made his way to Los Angeles. There he grew up and loved the movie aura. He knew little of the church or his own life but he knew all the old time stars of when he was growing up. I believe he was 84 when he died.
Felix was a career soldier who, I believe, was exposed to poisons in Viet Nam. He was unable to live alone and take care of himself but had a very good income from the army. When his mind was clear he was very sharp and fun to be around.
George had been a musician and probably into drugs in his youth. His mind was quite foggy but he came up with comments at times that showed that he was raised in the church.
We have also taught an older non-member sister, Virginia, who has had the elders several times and doesn't want them again. She attends church fairly often with a neighbor. Also in that stake were people like Joyce, who had slipped away from the church and lost her way, Joey, who sings in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and her inactive husband Kerry, who refuses to listen but will visit about anything but the church, and brothers Ben and Daniel and their wives. They grew up in upstate Missouri and are complete “red necks”. The one wife is from Poland and both families are wonderful. We wish we could have worked with them longer. They were making progress.
Kathy is still doing well we hear from the Richardsons. She is still continuing to attend church and has even given up smoking. Hopefully, John is also progressing. They are a neat couple who have been through a lot. They have legal custody of two grandchildren one of which is severally autistic.
Then there are the Mortensens. They lost a son, 2 ½ years old, about a year before we met them. They also had two daughters. We were teaching the family and doing quite well with them. The Hanberg family was also progressing. The mother was semi-active when we started and the father was changing from antagonistic to being more supporting. The young son was beginning cubs and very excited. The older son wanted to be baptized but the father had been refusing. I hope things progressed from there.
We were in the Murray Parkway Stake such a short time we feel we didn't accomplish much there. We did go to the temple with one couple but we worry about another couple we were teaching. They are a young couple living with her inactive parents. She insisted that he join the church before they were married yet she won't go to church herself. He goes faithfully and is making great progress. I worry that her inactivity will become a wedge.
West Jordan River Stake. We've only been there a short time but have tried to work very hard to make some difference. There is an apartment complex where we have been teaching several families. It is very low income with a number of families where there is no marriage. One couple who are both returned missionaries have been living there and have continued their missions by working with their neighbors. They have given us the names we are working with. However, the husband is graduating and they will be moving to Idaho. I'm afraid that some of their and our hard work will fall apart. When we go to that ward it is interesting to see a couple of rows in the middle of the chapel with mothers and lots of children but no men. The men don't attend.
We have a wonderful sister in that stake that we look forward to taking to the temple. Even though we will be released, she will call us with the details this coming autumn.
We have finally gotten into a family that has been avoiding us since we started in this stake. They seemed quite receptive when we finally got them to talk to us. However, this last week they canceled the appointment.
We also have a part member family we have just started with. We are giving the first lesson today. We will be involving the sisters just as soon as we know more about the family. Most of the time the wards do not give us very much information and rather than interrogate new people, we take a little while to get to know them.
One thing we have learned in all the stakes; people are blessed when they stay faithful and there are countless problems of every type that come to inflict people who wander away. Sometimes you want to shake them and say, “Look, see what you are doing to yourself! Let God help you and rescue you!”
Elder and Sister Burkhart
Working with less-active families and individuals means a slow work. It takes time to build a relationship with people who often are leery of church people who just want them to go to church but don't really care. Until they know you really care, it doesn't matter what you try to teach. Some families have taken a year before that kind of trust exists. Transferring senior couples puts a difficult strain on the work.
Some of the people we've worked with and the results:
Bennion East Stake (We are lucky to have been left here the entire time.)
Since we have several apartment complexes in the stake, we have had many, many people move away. Some we have heard from even then. We had one man, Mike, who we had taught from the start. We had been trying to get him ready to baptize his son when he turned eight. His wife also wanted the family sealed in the temple. She had been to the temple herself. After months of progress Mike decided that he just couldn't take the stress of church and the stress of his work. He told us he liked us coming but he wasn't going to give up smoking and gambling on his golf games. Two months later he died of a heart attack on the golf course. That was a very hard funeral but we are planning on going to the temple with Marianne next spring.
We had a young couple we were getting ready to go to the temple when they moved to Texas. We heard from a relative here that they went to the Dallas temple shortly after. Then we heard just recently that they were divorcing. Sad. Her family lives there. His family is here. I'm afraid the influence of her family was too much.
Bob – a retired widower with poor health. He is very unresponsive to ward leaders because he feels they don't really care. He loves for us to come visit. The last time we went, even though he already had a visitor, he insisted we come in and talk awhile. We have no trouble leaving him a message and he has become a good friend. He is unable to go to church without help and since he doesn't get along with the ward leadership, there is not one willing to help.
Rick A. is one of our excommunicated brothers. He joined the church when he was 35 but fell into problems years later that destroyed his marriage. He now is highly motivated to return and we have wonderful discussions with him. I wish we had met him earlier. We've only know him about a month.
Another excommunicated brother is Dustin. We are also teaching his brother Kyle, different ward, same stake. Dustin is trying to put his life back together. He went on a mission but got lost much later on.
Erin was baptized by the elders and then they asked us to take care of her. Her husband, Art is a returned missionary who completely left the church. He became an alcoholic but is now in AA. We wish we could get him the churches' program but he likes AA. They are an interesting couple who are having a hard time making changes. They were having a somewhat bad effect on the young elders such as having them watch the Super Bowl with them.
Dustin R. is another returned missionary who let life get in the way. He hasn't really lost his testimony and hasn't picked up bad habits but he has brain cancer in remission and has a fatalistic attitude. He lets job and health overrule what he says he should be doing. He's only in his mid 30s but isn't progressing as he should.
We have a family we teach that is also making good progress. The dad had a serious drinking problem and the mother is handicapped and in a wheel chair. There are two small kids. They live in a strange tumble-down house that needs demolition. However, they have begun attending church regularly.
We had a woman we taught, along with the sisters. She got to where she was attending regularly and loving church but her lease ran out and she had to move. She now lives in another zone altogether. We helped her move and hope she is getting settled in the new neighborhood. She still goes to the old ward and we need to get hold of the new bishop.
Another sister we are visiting is Valerie X. She was excommunicated and is working with her bishop. He has asked us to also teach her. I worry that when we leave there will only be elders there and she is a young, single mom.
We have another family that the ward needs to do more with. He is legally blind and she is unable to walk very far because of health problems. They don't have any transportation to get to church and so the ward thinks of them as inactive. We can't get the ward to send home teachers or visiting teachers who will stay with the job.
We are teaching a mother and daughter Family Home Evening lessons. They are both members but the mother smokes and they don't attend.
We have a family that we could probably claim as reactivated. They began attending because they needed church aid. The father was hurt at work and is now disabled. The mother has been unable to find a job. They have a problem with smoking. There are two young children. Now they attend regularly and really like attending.
In the same apartment complex is a single mom with a very wild 4 year old son and a 21 year old son. She works every chance she can which means every Sunday. However, she does have wonderful visiting teachers.
We had Erin join the church after hearing the lessons we taught her grandfather. I'm sorry to say there was a sad ending to that story. She is 25 years old but has a history of mental problems brought on by early drug abuse. She had had an abortion before we met her and had to have special permission from the mission to be baptized. She was so intent and seemed to have a very strong testimony but mental instability took over and after a few months she fell into old ways, including inactivity, and is now pregnant but unmarried.
Lorrie lives across the street from her parents and claims to be inactive because of health problems. She does have serious health problems but also has five children who need the church. For a long time we were conducting Family Home Evening with them. The children often go to Primary with the grandparents.
We have taught Lisa for quite awhile. Her son Cody was baptized recently and attends faithfully. Lisa seemed to always have a strong testimony and love the church but yet never attended. The last couple of lessons her husband has sat in on and make interesting comments. The ward mission leader didn't even know his name because he has never attended. We can see from his comments he obviously was raised in the church. The last time we were there a couple of days ago, Lisa told us why she doesn't go to church. I wish we had known that months earlier. We want to make the bishop aware and hopefully someone will follow up to help this sister. She is a wonderful person who shouldn't be lost.
We have Valerie who lives in a very small, horrible apartment. At one time things seemed to be better and she moved away for awhile only to return to the same complex. She also has a history of drug abuse and although she maintains she will never return to that, she has a problem with smoking. However, she goes to church whenever she doesn't have to work.
We have several people who have been excommunicated that bishops have specifically asked us to work with. We understand that we should give those to the younger missionaries as soon as possible but in some cases we can't give single men to sisters nor can we give single sisters to elders. It's also hard to argue with bishops who insist that we be the ones to see them. Then there is the young woman, Gabriela, who is pregnant. The bishop thinks she is taking lessons just to get church aid and wants us to teach her. She claims to have a husband in Afghanistan but has absolutely no details about him. We have an older sister, Helen, we see informally. She had her name taken off the records years ago. We got her son, Barry, ready to go back to the temple and he now goes regularly. We still go back to see her because we feel the contact with the church is good even though we can't get her to attend.
Our biggest success in the Bennion East Stake is Rick Wells. He was struggling when we met him. He was an alcoholic. He had broken his back and was in a brace. His general health was terrible with many medical problems. His wife had suddenly died three years before and he tried to drink himself to death. After teaching him most of our mission he attended the church's 12 step program, cleaned himself up, attended church regularly, and received his endowments and was sealed to his wife and daughter. We are now part of the family and are working on the remaining two daughters.
In the Taylorsville Central Stake we were doing quite well until we were transferred. One really wonderful experience was at the Golden Living Center where we began teaching three men and one woman. We began with teaching separate lessons one after another but since they kept getting times mixed up and wandering in on each others lessons, we began to have group discussions. That grew and grew until we had about 10 less-actives and non-members attending each week. We became very attached to them all. Some of those people include:
Sue had a doctorate in chemistry and was extremely intelligent. It was wonderful the discussions we would have with her. She suffered greatly with a disease that destroyed all connective tissue in her body and finally killed her. She wanted to be baptized but was worried about turning her back on her catholic heritage and she worried about her health making it hard. We had her very close when she died. Elder Burkhart and I sang at her funeral in the Catholic church.
Myron grew up alone without family. His mother was unwed and gave him up at birth. He was tossed from one foster home to another. Somewhere along the way he was baptized but knew nothing about the church. One foster family took him to Alaska and at age 9, he was abandoned and left in Alaska. At that time Alaska had no child protection so he was homeless until he made his way to Los Angeles. There he grew up and loved the movie aura. He knew little of the church or his own life but he knew all the old time stars of when he was growing up. I believe he was 84 when he died.
Felix was a career soldier who, I believe, was exposed to poisons in Viet Nam. He was unable to live alone and take care of himself but had a very good income from the army. When his mind was clear he was very sharp and fun to be around.
George had been a musician and probably into drugs in his youth. His mind was quite foggy but he came up with comments at times that showed that he was raised in the church.
We have also taught an older non-member sister, Virginia, who has had the elders several times and doesn't want them again. She attends church fairly often with a neighbor. Also in that stake were people like Joyce, who had slipped away from the church and lost her way, Joey, who sings in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and her inactive husband Kerry, who refuses to listen but will visit about anything but the church, and brothers Ben and Daniel and their wives. They grew up in upstate Missouri and are complete “red necks”. The one wife is from Poland and both families are wonderful. We wish we could have worked with them longer. They were making progress.
Kathy is still doing well we hear from the Richardsons. She is still continuing to attend church and has even given up smoking. Hopefully, John is also progressing. They are a neat couple who have been through a lot. They have legal custody of two grandchildren one of which is severally autistic.
Then there are the Mortensens. They lost a son, 2 ½ years old, about a year before we met them. They also had two daughters. We were teaching the family and doing quite well with them. The Hanberg family was also progressing. The mother was semi-active when we started and the father was changing from antagonistic to being more supporting. The young son was beginning cubs and very excited. The older son wanted to be baptized but the father had been refusing. I hope things progressed from there.
We were in the Murray Parkway Stake such a short time we feel we didn't accomplish much there. We did go to the temple with one couple but we worry about another couple we were teaching. They are a young couple living with her inactive parents. She insisted that he join the church before they were married yet she won't go to church herself. He goes faithfully and is making great progress. I worry that her inactivity will become a wedge.
West Jordan River Stake. We've only been there a short time but have tried to work very hard to make some difference. There is an apartment complex where we have been teaching several families. It is very low income with a number of families where there is no marriage. One couple who are both returned missionaries have been living there and have continued their missions by working with their neighbors. They have given us the names we are working with. However, the husband is graduating and they will be moving to Idaho. I'm afraid that some of their and our hard work will fall apart. When we go to that ward it is interesting to see a couple of rows in the middle of the chapel with mothers and lots of children but no men. The men don't attend.
We have a wonderful sister in that stake that we look forward to taking to the temple. Even though we will be released, she will call us with the details this coming autumn.
We have finally gotten into a family that has been avoiding us since we started in this stake. They seemed quite receptive when we finally got them to talk to us. However, this last week they canceled the appointment.
We also have a part member family we have just started with. We are giving the first lesson today. We will be involving the sisters just as soon as we know more about the family. Most of the time the wards do not give us very much information and rather than interrogate new people, we take a little while to get to know them.
One thing we have learned in all the stakes; people are blessed when they stay faithful and there are countless problems of every type that come to inflict people who wander away. Sometimes you want to shake them and say, “Look, see what you are doing to yourself! Let God help you and rescue you!”
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