Elder Fitt's Forum

May 23, 2010

2010-05-24T13:43:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone,
We had a good week. Nothing too amazing or exciting happened out of the ordinary but it was a good solid week of work. We were able to get into a lot of people's home which is nice...and somehow (I think the Lord had some pity on us) we had a meal at a member's home every day this week but saturday! And usually its only twice a week. So that was amazing.
We got out and about in the country visiting some of the smaller towns in our branch to do some tracting, since we hadn't been getting any success in Watertown proper. We didn't find any new people to teach but we found a less-active man whose records aren't on our rolls so hopefully we can start working with him. He was really friendly and said he'd like to talk with us but he was just walking out the door for work, dang, but at least we found him!
Other than that we got to do a lot of service this week which was a lot of fun. We helped a member couple plant some 250 flowers along their driveway and also help them plant some onions, tomatoes, carrots and beans in their garden, which was good. We also got a nice meal out of it. But it was nice doing some physical labor, it makes want to have a garden when I get back!
But we're still searching searching searching for those who the Lord is preparing. We'll find them, or him, or her, eventually, but its on the Lord's time. But the Lord is directing this work, I know that to be true. It is such a blessing to be a part of it and to have wonderful experiences every day to reconfirm my faith and strengthen my testimony. I know this church is true, and so do you, so go out and share it!
Love,
Elder Fitt

May 17, 2010

2010-05-23T19:20:00.001-07:00

Hello Everyone,
I hope you had a pleasant week. Mine was interesting. On thursday as I was getting ready to take a shower in the morning I bent over real quick and...my back went out! It dropped me to the ground and I could barely get up or move around. It took a couple minutes to finally get back on my feet and I hobbled out of the bathroom to better assess the situation. I was in pretty bad shape and could barely support myself. Soon after I talked with the mission presiden't wife and the church doctor over the area and I probably only tweaked my back, which learning about some of the alternative explanations which gladly I didn't show symptoms for. So for that whole day I stayed mainly in bed barely being able to move, but since it has gotten better quite fast and I'm getting around pretty well now. I still is difficult to bend over and actions that take a lot of lower back strength still trouble me, but I'm recovering and am able to get back to work.
So that was a fun experience for the week! The day after I threw it out my district leader and his companion came to Watertown to help us work the area. His companion, Elder Lindstrom has a foot problem that he's being sent home for tomorrow that is really debillitating. So him and I rested in the apartment while Elder Johnson and Macneille worked the area, it worked out kind of nice.
We also got to go visit some members down in Brandt and Astoria, SD a good 40 miles away and that was nice. We talked with our branch president out there about how we can get the work rolling and we have some ideas we're going to work with. So we're optimistic about this coming week and see some good things in the future. We're praying and hoping to find someone to baptize this week.
Well I hope all is well with you and that the Lord is blessing you with missionary experiences and you are taking advantage of those experiences and helping bring those the Lord has prepared to the waters of baptism and to the doors of His temple. Have a great week!
Love,
Elder Fitt

May 10, 2010

2010-05-23T19:15:00.001-07:00

Hello Everyone,
I hope all is well and that everyone had a great Mother's Day! I know I did being able to talk with my family. But unfortunately I don't have too much to report this week. Things are going well. We had a great bi-zone conference up in Fargo, ND. But other than that things are going a little slow. We haven't had any luck this week with finding new investigators, every door has been a no or an emphatic NO! Haha, its fun. We're going to be visiting several families down in Brandt, SD this weekend and hopefully we can get somethings going down there with them and their friends.
We did get to start our volunteer work at the Jenkins Living Center and help out in the Alzheimer's/Dimensia ward playing bingo with the people there. It was pretty fun. This sunday we will also help wheel them to their mini-church service held in the building. Other than that James is still reading, but not getting an answer or coming to church again. But we're working on him. The older gentleman we started teaching a little while ago has seemed to disappear which is unfortunate, but we're still trying to get a hold of him.
But I am grateful for this opportunity to serve. I am learning a lot and enjoying the work. It is difficult sometimes but the Lord has a plan for us and it is wonderful to be an instrument in his hands. I hope you all are active in fellowshipping your friends and family to help them find the happiness that the gospel brings. Have a great week!
Love,
Elder Fitt

May 3, 2010

2010-05-23T19:12:00.001-07:00

Hi Mom!
Thanks for the email, it was great to hear from you. My week went pretty well. My new companion and I get along really well. His name is Elder Johnson, he's from Fresno, CA. So we've been able to talk a lot about Cali which has been nice. We are having some good experiences and he wants to work so I'm grateful for what a great blessing that is.
It sounds like everything is going well with you, it was good to hear that you had a good trip. Hopefully Dude does well in OK and make a ton of dough. So you got some snow huh? We've been having a ton of rain these past few days which has been really nice, I've enjoyed it alot. But it hasn't been cold enough for snow, thankfully. But I've been enjoying the overcast weather.
That IMAX movie sounds pretty cool. G-bob's observation was pretty smart for a boy his age, man. In the new gospel art book the first picture his of outer space and it always boggles my mind when I look at it. Especially since every swirling looking system is a galaxy of stars and when you count over 30 of those just in that one pictures along with everything else its mind blowing. I always get lost in that picture. There definitely is order to all of this creation!
We had a pretty good week. Elder Johnson and I are getting along really well and have been working hard to get this area going. Unfortunately not much has changed...but we're working at it! Though we have been blessed with some new opportunities. We volunteered at a rest home called Jenkins Living Center and will be going there 1-3 times away. Twice to help the people play bingo, or we'll read to them or write letters for them. Then on sundays after church we'll go over there and help wheel them to the church services that are held in the living center. We hope it will be beneficial to the area. The people will see we want to serve and at the very least we'll be able to brighten up the days of people who probably seldom get visitors (and maybe that will lead to the missionaries in the spirit world being able to teach them easier once they pass on!)

Well thanks for all that you do! I'm looking forward to talking to you and being able to wish you a happy mother's day, because you are the best mother there is! Have a great day!
Love,
Elder Fitt

April 26, 2010

2010-05-23T19:11:00.001-07:00

Hello Everyone,
Thanks so much for the birthday wishes all you that sent them! I wish I could email all you back, but alas...there are rules. But it was so wonderful to hear from you, it really made my day!
So we had transfer calls on Saturday and the area is staying open, Elder Jones is getting shipped out to Sheridan, WY -- cowpoke country, and I'm getting an Elder Johnson, from Fresno, CA. He's only been out for 3 months and he's still got that greenie fire a burnin' so I'm way excited to start working with him. His trainer is also one of the hardest working missionaries in the mission so he's been taught well. I'm really optimistic for this transfer and so is President Layton.
Yesterday as well as earlier last week we met some more with James and he's coming around a little again. He seemed to have some barries put up, possibly from things his church told them, but we successfully knocked them down and built him up in correct doctrines. And he actually read from the Book of Mormon, which was awesome. We assigned him to read Moroni 10 but instead he read all of Moroni, haha. But we had a great lesson with him on the last 3 verses of Moroni 10 (read them if you aren't familiar with them, they're some of the most powerful verses in scripture, in my opinion) and he's still praying and waiting for answer. So things are looking up for him.
We had stake conference yesteday and that was good stuff. The focus was on the family and how to guard it against the troubles of the day. The Dakotas are really beautiful right now with all the moisture from the melted snow and some rain we had this weekend, so everything is nice and green green green! Its great. So I'm doing well out here and am enjoying the blessings of the Lord.
I am so grateful for this opportunity to serve the Lord and what a powerful impact it has had in my life. I have a testimony of the truthfulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is His work and He is directing it. What a blessing it is to serve the people out here and find those who are lost. I love this opportunity the Lord has given me and cherish it with my whole soul.
I hope this email finds you all well! Share the gospel with your friends and family -- they need it! We are selfish when we don't share. Sometimes its tough, sometimes its scary, but like my last mission president always said, "There's no growth in the comfort zone and no comfort in the growth zone." It takes effort...but the joy and blessings that come far outweigh the possible discomfort of the moment. I love you all, have a great week!
Love,
Elder Fitt

April 19, 2010

2010-05-23T19:09:00.000-07:00

Hi Mom,
It was good to hear from you...you're the only one who emailed me this week (so far at least)! Haha, but thats alright. Its good to hear things worked out with the van. So is it being repaired or are you gonna try something different? Man I bet you're having a blast with the kiddos, and I'm sure Cam and Julie are relieved to have some help. Their rat babies sound pretty dang cute. I bet Virginia is really pretty this time of the year too!
So is Grandma Louise still planning on moving into the basement? Or is that what she just did when she arrived with Kenny? Is the basement all finished up?
Man I bet that was a really neat stake conference, too bad you didn't get to see all of it. It would be neat to hear from some of those speakers. Elder Ballard seems to have a lot of speaking assignments. About 2 months ago I got a missionary newsletter from President Bangerter and it had an extra sheet that told about 2 missionaries who died (from asphyxiation by a carbon monoxide leak in their apartment, while they were asleep) while serving in Romania I believe (one of which left from our old stake). It was way sad to see because the Elder who died was one of the first kids who befriended me when I just got to Lone Peak. He was awesome. But Elder Ballard talked at their funeral and made a lot of really good remarks. It seems like he does a lot of speaking around the Utah Valley Area.
But the talk who quote reminded me of that a little, thanks for the insight and spiritual boost! Its tough for missionaries to really live the law of sacrifice while we're out here, because there isn't much to sacrifice. We're here and everything is our duty and calling, so it isn't a sacrifice to get up on time or follow all the rules, that's what we're expected (and covenanted) to do. The sacrifice was already when we came out. But we were told the way we can live the law of sacrifice is through a broken heart and contrite spirit continually. But like always, that can be tough and is a life long process of being able to be continually humble and teachable.
In Sacrament meeting our high councilor related a story of a missionary who had the assignment in a central american mission to drive his mission president and wife as well as Elder Spencer W. Kimball (when he was still in the Q of 12) around the mission for a mission tour. Well they were driving on a narrow mountain pass and Elder Kimball tapped the elder on the shoulder and told him to stop the car. The elder looked for a place to pull over but couldn't find one. Elder Kimball a little louder told him to stop the car. The elder looked a little hard and tried to figure out how to do that but still drove on because he couldn't find a logical place to stop. Finally Elder Kimball told him to stop the car right now! The elder slammed on the brakes and a few seconds later a semi came driving down the other side of the road and over turned and tipped, following all over the other lane. Had they kept driving they would've been involved in a very bad wreck.
Well afterwards conversation picked up on why Elder Kimball had the inspiration and the rest didn't. The missionary was living a clean, worthy life and the mission president and his wife were as well, and seemed to be entitled to guidance of that sort. Elder Kimball told them they all received the prompting, but he was the only one who heard it. Making the point that we need to get in the habit of actually trying listen for the Spirit at all times. He's constantly speaking to us but most of the time we have our ears closed unfortunately, at least a lot of us do.
Anyway, I'm just kind of rambling now, but thanks for all that you do mom! I'm excited for the package. I'll see if I have a good birthday...it might be kind of lame because theres a possibility of President Layton closing down Watertown for missionary service so we'd be doing a lot of packing and cleaning and moving stuff out of the apartment next monday. Haha, we'll see.
Anyway, I hope you have a good time in Virginny! Tell Cam and Julie and the babies I say hi and I love them!
Love,
Elder Fitt

April 13, 2010

2010-05-23T19:06:00.001-07:00

Hi Ashby,
I love you too sweetie. It sounds like you had a fun trip eating cookies, making peacock's, playing playing playing, having club and tea parties and getting all wet in the ocean! I hope you gave mommy and daddy a big love and told them thank you for bringing you on such a fun trip! I love you and miss you Ashby, be good for the parents!
Love,
Elder Fitt

Dear Gentry,
Elder Fitt Speaking. How are you doing? I'm doing good on my mission. We're working with a nice guy right now who is excited to learn about our church, pretty cool huh? He might get baptized within the next month, we'll see! Ya the Jelly Belly factory is pretty need huh? I remember going there when I was around your age.
So it sounded like you had a fun time hunting with Dad. You're a dang good shot too it sounds like. The squirrel didn't even know he had it coming. That must've been a big lizard to get at 30 yards, or you have really good eyes. Cool beans, I wish I could've gone hunting with you guys too! But I'm out fishing for people out here...so similar...but really different.
Well I'm glad you had a good spring break. Now its time to buckle down and work hard at school so you'll make mom happy (and yourself happy) and you can enjoy your summer to the fullest! I love you bro!
Love,
Elder Fitt

Hi Mom!
It sounds like you all had a pretty eventful trip to California! You should've taken some pictures of the scenery...though that might've made me trunky looking at them, haha. It was too bad to hear about the van, hopefully thing's will work out.
Man I didn't know Julie hurt her shoulder a while back, hopefully the surgery goes went well! Anything else exciting happening?
I'm doing pretty good. I'm healthy and happy and striving to do a little better every day. You might like to hear this: I was on exchange this weekend and at the other Elder's apartment I was looking for something to eat and I was horrified at what I saw. Basically the only food one of the Elders had was comprized of potatoe chips, pop tarts, candy, Lucky Charms, Little Debby treats and whole milk......scary! Luckily I found some carrots and an orange that had been neglected in the fridge and made a good meal of that and a loaf of bread I bought. But geez...I'm glad you taught me to eat healthy, I've really tried to do that out here. The biggest problem is its more expensive...oh well, my health is worth it.
Anyway, thanks for the advice and stories, they help! Some things are looking up in the area and hopefully we'll be able to do some good. Thanks for sending the package...I'm looking forward to it. I've got a lot of lasts coming up, and/or recently just had: last General Conference, last B-day, and last phone call home! Its crazy, but exciting and I hope I can make the most of it. Thanks for all that you do mom! The church is true!
Love,
Elder Fitt

Hello Everyone,
I hope you all had a good week. I'm emailing a day late because we weren't able to email yesterday. I had been in Huron, SD on exchange for the weekend, and we had a district P-day in Brookings, SD for most of the day so we by the time we did that and exchanged back and got home to Watertown there wasn't much time to do all the emails. Anyway, things are going good!
We had zone conference on Friday and it was awesome, as always. The focus was on the Atonement and that is always worth learning more about. It was good to be able to learn more and feel of the strong spirit the Layton's bring with them. After that I went with the district leader back to his area in Huron and worked with him for the weekend. It was a lot of fun. He's a spanish speaking elder so we visited some spanish speaking people. I mainly played with the kids but I got to help out one to learn english a bit. I'm suprised that I still remember as much spanish I do from taking it in high school, but it certainly helped out this weekend.
We also had an amazing lesson with one of their investigators. After teaching about the gospel we taught about the priesthood and its removal and restoration and she said we hit her with a ton of bricks. She was the first person I've ever taught that has so fully grasped the concept we were teaching. It took her aback and remarked how she never thought that that was even a possibility. For the next 30 minutes of talking and asking questions she was still shocked at the doctrine and thought it very interesting. Almost as we were about to leave she made the observation that now that we had gave her this knowledge she "only had 2 choices left." She didn't say what they were but we believed her to mean to accept the fulness of Christ's gospel or reject it. So hopefully she'll choose the former and get baptized soon!
Anyway, the work is going slow still here in Watertown but that isn't a problem...it just means we have a lot of time to find more people to teach! James isn't progressing the best but is still interested in learning. We think he might have gotten some negative vibes from people at home or at his church. He just needs to read and pray, its so simple...yet remarkably hard for a lot of people.
Anyway, thats about it for now. Today is dang hot and we've been sweating a lot. I can't wait for it too cool off again. Its 80 degrees! Man...hopefully I can acclamte quickly..not fun. But ya, the church is true! Thanks everyone for your support, have a great week!
Love,
Elder Fitt

April 5, 2010

2010-04-11T23:12:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone,
I hope you all had a wonderful Easter sunday! And I hope you had the opportunity to watch all the sessions of conference. They were great! It was a very spirtually innervating conference. Its neat how there is always a theme in the conferences, this one seem to focus a lot on each aspect of the family especially in strengthening it spiritually. There was a lot of warning in this conference whether they said it out front or eluded to it in the talks, but they seemed to have a sense of urgency about them. This life is the time for us to prepare to meet God, and if we don't prepare swiftly we may loose our ability to prepare.
We had a decent week though. It was a little slow but we did get to have some good appointments with people. We're still struggling to find new people to teach and are about to get into our plan to visit all the members in the branch. We did have a great lesson with James last week and we committed him for baptism on the 24th of April! We may have to move it back because that weekend is Stake Conference. The biggest problem was he didn't make it to conference, so hopefully when he had attended his church that morning for their meetings he didn't get any negative messages about our church, and hopefully he just got caught up in the Easter festivities.
Other than that we're doing good. I'm really enjoying the spring weather, its been beautiful here. In the 60's mainly with a nice breeze and almost all the snow is gone. Except for 2 big piles in town. On is probably about 30 feet high and 150 feet in circumference. Its a ton of snow mixed with dirt that they've piled from the course of the winter, and it will probably take another few months to melt.
Other than that things are going good. Not too much to report this week besides being harassed by a drunk. We were teaching a lesson to one of our investigators on his door step and the drunk guy comes up and apparently our investigator knew him and backed up and went inside after a few seconds. They guy tried to talk with us for about Jesus while dropping the F bomb right and left. I tried to leave as quick as possible because I've dealt with enough of these guys before but my companion talked to him a bit, trying to be courteous. I know we're supposed to love one another...but in situations like that you don't care about common courtesy, you tell the guy you have to go and you get the heck out of Dodge, because you have no idea what he is trying to do or wants to do with you. Luckily, our investigator had called the cops so in a few minutes a trooper pulled up and got the guy in his car. He knew the drunk by name...so I'm guessing he has a long history in the area. But that isn't too exciting news because it happened a lot in Rapid...OBEY the word of wisdom! Thats all I have to say, alcohol, drugs, tobacky, baddd stuff.
Anyway, I think I'll end on that beautiful note. The church is true! I testify we are being led by a prophet of God and that as we follow the counsel we have been so richly blessed with this week we will find pure joy and peace in our lives.
Love,
Elder Fitt

Hello from Sunny South Dakota!

2010-03-25T10:47:00.002-07:00

Hello Everyone,

We had a pretty good week this week! Transfers were pretty crazy though. The vehicle that was transporting my new companion ran quite a bit late, so I got a fun opportunity to spend some time working in the zone leaders area of Brookings, SD with them. My companion didn't get to Brookings until about 10 pm and they were supposed to be there about 6 hours earlier, but it was good spending time with a bunch of Elders and not feel so isolated.

Well Elder Jones and I have been working to find some new investigators, and we actually were able to get one this past week. His name is James and seems like he could be pretty promising providing his minister doesn't find out that we're visiting with him and feed him some anti material. Hopefully that won't happen. But other than that tracting hasn't been too effective, so we're working with our Branch mission leader to get into every member's home in the branch to share a missionary lesson with them. Hopefully we can get that accomplished but it will be a difficult feat because the branch boundaries spread about 60 miles each direction from Watertown. So it'll be a lot of driving.

We also were able to go home teaching with a member and got to see a lot of the outlying towns in the area. This faithful member's route takes about 5 hours for him to drive to all his appointments... and thats without even visiting the families. Luckily we only did half of it, but man, no one is allowed to complain about their hometeaching route after hearing that! And, almost all of the families are less-active too. But he gets it done every month- what a stud!

Other than that we're enjoying the wonderful spring weather with the sun shining and the temperature which has been in the 50's. Hopefully it'll stay around for a while.

I'm so grateful for this opportunity to serve and the challenges that come with it. What a blessing it is to have trials and to learn from them and overcome them with the help of the Savior. I am grateful for the gospel in my life and know it to be true!

Have a great week!
Love,
Elder Fitt

Hello from Watertown

2010-03-15T18:52:00.001-07:00

Hello Everyone,
So we had transfer calls this weekend and my companion, Elder Wilson, is going to be leaving me. He's headed off to Dickinson, ND and I'll be getting Elder Jones. Elder Jones was in my district in the MTC so it'll be neat getting to serve with him. We actually had the same room in the residence halls at the MTC, we should get along well.
The work here is going well, though this week was kind of slow like we predicted. Most all of our callbacks from tracting were on spring break last week so it was hard to contact anyone, but hopefully this week will be better. We have been getting some new people to visit and are starting to work with some part member and less active families which is a lot of fun, they're awesome. Its just hard to get them to come to church!
Other than that I don't have too much to report on this week. We're buzzing around today for Elder Wilson so he can say his goodbyes so I'll try to write more next week and share some stories of what is happening. The church is true!
Love,
Elder Fitt

Hello From Rainy! South Dakota

2010-03-10T20:14:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone,

Its been raining here, YA! I'm way stoked about that, its washing away all the dirt and snow from the winter and cleaning up the place...though I bet we'll get more snow...it is the Dakotas. But I'm doing good. I'm emailing today because we had our P-day moved this week to tuesday from monday because of the district meeting we had today in Brookings, SD, which is 45 miles away.

So I wish I had more time to email now but we got to get heading soon. The work here is progressing and we're starting to get some investigators in our teaching pool which is way exciting.

It was great to hear about Cam & Julie's new baby!! Third grandbaby- way cool, I bet you're excited to go visit them.

I'm really grateful for the wonderful emails you write me. They really give me a boost each week. I love hearing about the family too, they're growing up too fast those fetchers. Oh well. I wish I had more time to write tonight. We had our p-day moved from yesterday to today for just this week because we were having a district meeting in Brookings, SD and it worked better for everyone to work yesterday and have P-day today. But we don't have much time left in the library tonight.

But I just want to tell you how much I love you and appreciate you all. Thinking about it, I'd say one of the most important attributes parents should have is that they help you to feel the love that your Heavenly Parents have for you. You always do that for me. I have always know that you love me and I think I took that for granted for a long time. Being out here has really shown me how incredibly blessed I am to have the family that I have, who cares about each other and isn't always arguing and fighting and backstabbing each other. Thank you so much, you're the best!

I want to testify that this Church is true. At District Meeting today I gave a training on how we can continually improve as missionaries (and it applies for non-missionaries) as well. I got a lot of my ideas from a talk called "The Fourth Missionary" by Elder Corbridge of the 70 when he was a mission president. Its way awesome. But one of the principles that is so crucial to our growth in the gospel is that we follow the common saying "What would Jesus do?" But really thinking about that and applying it in our lives will bring tremendous blessings. At every choice of right or wrong...just think that in your head and I bet 9 times out of 10 you'll pick the right choice. I'd like to write more but we need to head.

I hope you all have a good week!

Love,
Elder Fitt

It's March in South Dakota (and everywhere else too!)

2010-03-01T13:06:00.001-07:00

Hello Everyone,
We had a pretty awesome week in Watertown, I hope you all had good weeks. First off we're healthy so we've been able to work, what a blessing that is! We've been able to work a lot with less-actives and members and have been having a lot of success. Its exciting to meet with these people and try to get them back and active in the church. Its a blessing to be a missionary because the less-active members seem to allow missionaries into their homes a lot more than members of their branch because we don't know them and don't have and prior opinions of them. So it allows us to get into places where the members can't.
Next we were able to do a lot of finding this week and we got a lot of people who said we can come back and have a lesson with them so we're way excited about that. I've been praying hard that they their hearts will be open to the promptings of the Spirit and actually let us inside their homes when we visit them again.
Also, its been warming up here!!! Its been 30+ degrees for the past few days and boy has it been nice. Some of the snow is melting and the sun is warm, boy am I ready for spring. Though I am grateful for the cold...because generally it means the summers are as dang hot. You can always put on more layers...but can't keep taking them off, especially as a missionary. Those missionaries in Mexico and South America and such are studs dealing with that heat.
Yesterday we had stake general priesthood meeting and the stake president shared a neat story about his brother and his brother's wife. They were in a laundromat, around 11pm, washing their clothing and all of the sudden two men ran in with guns pointed at them. They ordered the couple to get on the floor and put their hands behind their back. There had been reports of two men doing armed robberies followed by other atrocious and despicable acts. Well one of the men very briefly put his gun on the floor to check the wife's purse and the brother felt the Spirit whisper to him "you need to act now or else you will soon lose the ability to act." So he grabbed the gun that the man set down and had a gun battle with the other man, killing him, while the unarmed one ran out the door. The stake president told us this story to illustrate the point that the Priesthood is the power and authority to act and that as members and missionaries we have that ability. We are not in a position where we are unable to act. What a blessing it is to be able to help those around us and bring them closer to the Savior. I'm grateful for the opportunity that I have to act out here in the name of the Savior to help bring souls to safety. I testify that this work is true! Hopefully I'll be able to get as worn out as my shoes are at the moment...the tread has been gone for the past several months!
Well I don't have any crazy personal stories that has happened this week, but just the continuing conviction that Christ is leading this work and the Spirit is constantly directing us and whispering what we should do. It is such a blessing to have that guidance, because I know I couldn't do any of this without it. I am also grateful for a companion who listens to the Spirit and takes over when it stops whispering to me and starts whispering to him. It is so important to be worthy of that Spirit and I try harder every day to qualify for it more and more.
I hope you all are doing well and are reading and praying and asking Heavenly Father for opportunies to share the gospel. This church is true and it brings such joy to my soul.

Love,
Elder Fitt

Happy Valentine's Day From Watertown SD!

2010-02-16T15:24:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone,

I hope you all are well. We've gotten a good amount of snow here in South Dakota this week, enough to cancel church on Sunday. That was too bad, but most of the branch lives out of town so there was no way for them to make it.

Elder Wilson and I were sick for most of last week but we're both on the mend. So last week was a little slow not being able to work as much, but I'm excited for this week, especially since we have zone conference on Thursday! I'm way excited. Except for the fact that 12 missionaries will be staying the night in our apartment, say goodbye to all our food! It'll be fun though...because I'll have my own bed, haha.

I wish I had more to report on this week but not too much happened. We did some good ol' deep cleaning in our apartment, and a member that is realy close with the missionaries came over and helped a little so we offered to help him clean his apartment. Lets just say that hes a 39 year old bachelor living in an old, apartment. Ya it was crazy. We filled up our vacuum in about a 10 square foot area. It was nuts, luckily its the kind that doesn't use a bag and you just empty the container. We still aren't done at his place but we're going to keep helping him and help him be more clean. The place reminds me somewhat of Aunt Toda's...though most you won't know what that means.

Anyway, I am so grateful to be able to serve. The Lord has so many blessings in store for us but we have to want them, and we have to strive for them. Action! Action! Action! The gospel is all about action and the Lord helps those who help themselves. Some people out there aren't able to help themselves, either they're too tired, or lost, or whatever, so we must help them as well. We're all in this together. Now let us go out and be the answer to someone's prayers!

Love,
Elder Fitt

Hello From Watertown South Dakota!

2010-02-09T10:40:00.002-07:00

Hello Everyone,

I hope all is going well. SO we had a pretty good week here in Watertown. It was fun meeting a ton of new people and terrible having to start driving in a grid based town, I hate grids! Anyway, I got to Watertown late Tuesday night because the transfer train was about 3 hours late. Actually I had to drive the truck that was following the transfer train, which turned out to be at least another hour late. So then I had to drive from Fargo to Sisseton, SD and drop off a greenie and pick up the guy he was replacing. Then we drove down to Watertown and got there about 10pm. It was a long day.

The apartment here is nice. Its good sized, but its always hot and we're in the basement! But its good. The weather is a bit warmer here than MN, but still cold. Its 0 degrees today but it has been in the 30's. My companion is a lot of fun. We get along well. His name is Elder Wilson and he's a convert of a few years, pretty awesome. I am missing people from Detroit Lakes but I have their information and will keep in touch with them.

I'm glad everyone liked the pictures...probably because they never see any so when the finally get some its awesome! Haha. Hopefully sharing the photobucket account will be helpful for others.

Man its hard to start talking about what happened because so much did! Hmm well we helped a part member, less active family get their house in order because of some stuff that is going on with them. It was pretty interesting, I cleaned so many dishes! It was nuts. They have a totally ghetto fireplace...it's just two 57 gallon drums that are attached together with a 1 foot tube. It's sitting right in the middle of their kitchen...ya totally not safe. But it puts out ridiculous amounts of heat.

We also went out teaching with a member named Walter, he was pretty cool. We found some new investigators in the process which could turn out to be pretty good. Their names are Rod and Theresa.

What else happened...we both got sick! Elder Wilson, my new companion, has been coughing and hacking for the past 4 days or so and I recently have had a really bad sore throat and things don't seem to be getting much better. We'll see what happens, I hope it goes away soon. And if not I guess I'll have to take advantage of that new-fangled stuff called medicine... psh who uses that anyway? Oh wait I do... since I've been getting massive headaches all week. Ibuprofen is amazing. But I'm not complaining, headaches are the norm.

Back to missionary work, church on Sunday was awesome! The members here are really cool. I'm excited to start working with them. The area is really neat. Watertown is the 4th largest city in South Dakota with a whopping 21,000 or so population! Thats smaller than EDH.

Anyway, I hope all is well and that you all got to see those pictures I sent out. The church is true!

Love,
Elder Fitt

A Short Hello From Minnesota!

2010-01-28T11:40:00.001-07:00

Hi Everyone!

So the library was closed again on our P-day so I don't have much time to email today unfortunately. A storm hit us on Friday and lasted until yesterday, it seems to be cleared up now. We got a good amount of snow and it blew around a lot so travel wasn't advised...but that didn't stop us! However, it did slow the work down a lot, and church was even cancelled, which was lame. The biggest problem was most of the side roads weren't plowed, but we could get around town just fine. Since the library was closed yesterday and the town was shut down, we went to the Valdez's and played with the kids in the snow. They were working on an igloo and it was a lot of fun. I got some good pictures.

We did have a pretty good week, well interesting would be a better word. Lots of good things happened. And yes, I'm staying warm. Luckily when I got to DL some missionaries had left a nice pair of warm boots and some good gloves, so I've been blessed. I'd like to tell more about the family with 4 kids but we weren't able to get in with them last week unfortunately. Hopefully we can this week. The Perez's are doing well but Sister Perez got bronchitis...I think, so we haven't seen them for a few weeks. Keith kind of same story, haven't got to get in with him because of weather and work. But we're trying! We did get to meet with some less-actives though and a couple that I have been working with since I got here finally committed to come to church at least twice a month. So hopefully they'll be able to follow through.

We had zone conference this week and it was awesome. We had a lot of good trainings, rebukings and lovings, so it was great. President Layton gave a really awesome training on the importance of the phrase "will you" and how to use it effectively. Basically...thats all you do, haha. President Layton showed us a video of a talk that was given by V. Dallas Merrell (I think his name was) about "will you" and it was really powerful. He told about experiences where he used that phrase with people he didn't know and many baptisms, reactivations, priesthood ordinations and temple recommends resulted. It was awesome. We were also challenged by our zone leaders to commit everyone we teach for baptism, at the first lesson.

Mom, I liked the story about the baby horse you related from your Stake RS Enrichment meeting. Our Father in Heaven truly looks out for us. I heard a similar story on the Joseph Smith lectures CD by Truman Madsen. He's telling a story about when the Prophet and others were meeting in the 'School of the Prophets." Well they were all going around and giving their dissertations and knowledge on faith. The last person to get up and speak his mind was Heber C. Kimball. He said how he couldn't add anymore scriptures or insight to what had already been said, so instead he told a story. It was about his little daughter who was told by her mother to not touch the china plates on the table. Her mother told her if she broke the plates she'd whip her. Her mother left for a little while and the little girl didn't obey her mother. She played with the plates and broke them. She was scared and sad and ran outside and prayed to Heavenly Father. When her mom got back, she was furious. She grabbed the girl and got her into position to give her a whipping and then she broke down and started crying. The daughter took her mother by the face and looked into her eyes and said, "Oh, Mommy, I prayed to the Lord that you wouldn't whip me, I'm sorry, I'm sorry I broke the dishes!" My typing doesn't do the story justice, but after Heber C. Kimball told that story he sat down and Joseph Smith stood up and told the brethren that was the kind of faith THEY needed to have. It was a powerful story.

BTW, President told me in our interview that I'm most likely leaving next transfer- a week from today, unless the Lord says otherwise. So all you that are planning on sending me packages or letters this week (haha) do so through the mission office address:

2525 W Main #311
Rapid City, SD 57702

Well, thats about all I have time for today, I hope you all are well! The Church is true!
Love,
Elder Fitt
--------------------------------------
(From Gina's letter to Elder Fitt) The highlight of my week was Saturday. There was a Stake RS Enrichment meeting for all the women with keynote speakers and breakout sessions followed by lunch. It was awesome! There were a couple of things that really touched me. One old gal spoke. She's single and has never been married. She was a professor at BYU and executive assistant to the president for over 25 years and she is quite the scriptorian- well she got paid by BYU to be one for 25 years! Anyway, she talked about when she was 9 years old growing up on a horse ranch in AZ. One of the mares was pregnant. The foal was going to be her very own horse. A month before the foal's birth the mare was struck in the eye by a rope on a gate and blinded. The day the foal was born, the girl's father called her home from school to be present at the birth. After the foal was born, the father left the barn to get some hot water leaving the girl alone with the mare and foal. The mare rolled over to try to stand up, but because she couldn't see, she rolled on top of the baby horse and crushed it. When the father came back, he helped the mare off the baby. But it was dead. Father left the little girl alone with the foal's body to mourn. The gal said "I picked up that little warm wet body in my arms and cried my eyes out. I prayed with ALL my heart that Heavenly Father would bless that little foal to return to life. In a few minutes it started moving in my arms. The foal lived. My father said there is nothing as powerful as the prayers of the faithful." That experience really touched my heart because it helped me to realize that Heavenly Father really does know each one of us and He does love us and longs to bless us. It helped me to understand the importance of caring deeply enough to pray with complete earnestness and sincerety. The deepest heartfelt longings of our souls are the prayers which reach the highest towards Heaven. God truly blesses us as we diligently seek Him.

January 11, 2010

2010-01-11T13:55:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone,

How's it going? Things here are pretty good. The weather was pretty dang chilly last week but its supposed to get warmer this week for a January Thaw. Too bad it won't last though, it'll all just refreeze shortly after, but the warmth of possible above freezing (32 degrees) weather will be nice. Thats short sleeve weather (provided theres no wind)!

Lets see, not too much happened this week out of the ordinary. It was slow like usual, which is unfortunate. A lot of people that we work with are having their schedules changed around because of people quitting and other reasons so it has been tough to meet with them. But we're gonna keep trying, obviously. We were able to make some more progress with Keith, and he's been reading from the Book of Mormon! Way awesome, not many investigators actually crack it open, at least in my experience (maybe thats my fault?). But he's been taking it to work becasue his supervisor told him to stop bringing his bible because it influences other people to be Christian (he works at a group home) SOO he's been taking the Book of Mormon to read during breaks because it ISN'T the bible so they can't tell him to stop, haha ya pretty cool. He's doing well though.

We were also able to meet with the Perez's a bit and they said they still want to hold off on baptism, which is fine because they still are considering it but are waiting for a solid spiritual confirmation. But they really want to learn and we finally have some spanish speaking support which helps lot. So thats good and we're gonna keep working with them, thats all you can do.

So crazy story this week. The garages for our apartment building caught on fire this week! Some dodo was trying to heat his engine up by putting a propane heater underneath it and he left it unattended. Something caught on fire which ended up torching 3-4 of the garages and not only destoying his car but badly damaging 2 others. Luckily there was fireproof sheetrock installed which stopped the fire spreading further down the row. Our garage is at the very end so we still had 5-6 garages inbetween ours and the fire, which is nice, though most of the stuff in our garage got badly smokedamage so we'll have to trash them. But luckily it was mostly just papers and pamphlets. My bike got a nice new black finish to it though!

So thats the exciting news for the week. But I did have a really neat experience at church. I won't go too much into detail but I had an overwhelming feeling of God's love for all of us and that came through observing and interacting with some sweet little children. I couldn't stop smiling all through Sacrament meeting because of all the little children, especially a little or 3 year old girl that was playing peek-a-boo with me. It made me think about the Savior and his love for little children. Then it made me think about the Prophet Joseph Smith and his love for little children. They are embodiments of purity, innocence and love. No wonder we are told to become childlike. And that also made me remember a talk I was listening too. The speaker remarked on how little children completely trust their parents. I think that's something we lose as we grow older, and one of the most important things we should to strive to develope, complete trust in our Father in Heaven. There is much to be learned from little children that we sadly unlearn as we grow up. But thats why we have this time to learn and grow our testimonies and help others do so as well.

Well I'll get off my soapbox and hope you all have a great week!

Love,
Elder Fitt

January 4, 2010

2010-01-11T13:54:00.001-07:00

Hello Everyone,

I hope you're all excited for this new year as I am. Its a time to start changing for the better. This year is going to be great! We had a slow week last week but the holidays are over with and the people here have no more excuses to dodge our appointments...unless we're snowed in or something. But we're looking forward to a new slate.

We were blessed to able to to soft commit the Perez family for baptism on sunday. That means that they are going to pray about it and we'll see how that goes when we visit them next. They seemed excited to do so and began asking questions and what they have to do to be baptized and what is required of them. The only problem might be coffee for the husband, Alvaro, but we're praying that they'll be sensitive to the promptings of the Spirit and that they'll accept the Lord's will for them.
We found out that Stephanie's mom kinda intimidating her out of asking for permission for baptism. She still wants to be is scared to ask. So we told her to keep praying about it to see if the Lord wants her to ask now or wait until she's 18. But she still loves coming to church and has been really consistent.
Other than that we're trying to contact and work with the callbacks that we've gotten recently. Its been tough with the holidays but hopefully we'll be able to find them home now.

I hope everyone is working hard to have missionary experiences to help move this work along. Some of the members were thinking about ways to help us do our job better and some were saying that they should make a goal to go teaching with us more. Though that is good, we already have a good support with that. What the full-time missionaries want, and what we told them, was that rather we'd have them make a goal to have a family or friend taught in their home by the missionaries. So I'm going to challenge each of you to pray and ask the Lord for guidance to find an individual or family to be taught in your home by the missionaries by the end of March. That gives plenty of time to figure it out, fellowship them and break the ice to invite them to listen to the missionaries. I can promise you that the Lord will pour out his blessings upon you and that you will feel a greater love in your homes, families, and individual lives as you help another child of God along the path that leads to eternal life. So I'm challenging you all do that and would love to hear of any experiences you have regarding that in the future. I know this work is true and the Lord is guiding it. All we have to do is follow the Spirit and have the courage to open our mouths.

Love,
Elder Fitt

December 28, 2009 Happy New Year!

2009-12-29T09:31:00.001-07:00

Hello Everyone,

I hope you all had a Merry Christmas! Ours was really good here. I don't have much time to write today but we were blessed with safety during the stormy week we had. We narrowly dodged a bad blizzard it seems, which is a good thing.

During the week the Zone Leaders and our District leader suprised us by coming down and visiting. We talked for a while about mssionry work and then we went tracting (we split up of course...it'd be a little intimidating for 5 missionaries to walk up to you door don't you think?). And guess what? People actually opened their doors to us and we got some good callbacks! That rarely happens this time of year! The other group even got to go into someone's trailer and teach them the first lesson! So that is way exciting and I hope we can help them continue to progress and learn more.

Thanks so much to everyone who sent me letters and gifts, I appreciate it very much. We're now swamped with goodies that will probably last until March! But we are very, very grateful to all of you for your great love and support. I'll try to write you separately, but it may take some time.

Anyway, I hope all is well and that you don't lose the spirit of the season now that Christmas is over. Keep it all year round- the spirit of service and Christlike love for everyone.

Have a good day!
Love,
Elder Fitt

December 21, 2009 Merry Christmas from Minnesota!

2009-12-28T00:28:00.001-07:00

Hello Everyone,
I hope all is going well! Things are going good here and we had an enjoyable week. I don't have much time to email today, its been a busy day. But things are progressing well and we got to see the Perez's at church again and we had a lesson at their home as well. There's finally someone in the branch who can speak spanish! But there's always a catch right? He and his wife are only here for 3 months, he's doing an internship, so he'll be gone in March. We're gonna have to use him a lot before then. But things are going well for now.
We got a neat opportunity to go caroling with the youth this week at an old folks' nursing home and that was a very sweet experience. It was so nice seeing their smiles and kind faces as we walked by and sang songs about the cheer of Christmas and of the Savior.
This time of year is so special being able to have our focus on the birth of the Savior. He is the cornerstone of our faith and what a blessing it is to share that with others.
I hope that we all will have the Christmas spirit this season and spread Christlike love to all of our brothers and sisters in the world, old and young, rich and poor, humble and proud. For we all need the love of the Savior in our lives and we're all the children of a kind and wise Father in Heaven.
I hope you all have a very merry Christmas!
Love,
Elder Fitt

December 14, 2009 Hello From Minnesoooocold!

2009-12-28T00:25:00.002-07:00

Hello Everyone,
I hope you all had a great week! Mine was pretty good, besides the constant -5 to -15 degree weather. First off, we had suprise transfer calls this week, and it was big suprise, they're moving me to a new mission! Ya just not really, I'm staying for another 7 weeks in Detroit Lakes, which is awesome because I didn't want to leave. My companion is staying too, so maybe we'll get white washed (both taken out and two new missionaries bought in) out next transfer, who knows. But I'm excited to stay. So feel free to write letters and send packages and stuff, I'll be here to open them and write back! Haha.
So we got to help Bob, a member's neighbor, string up a deer he shot for them. It was close to his yard where he got it(he lives out of town) so we didn't have to drag it far to hang it in tree near his home. We gutted it there then got had some hot chocolate to warm up! Ya I think I'll stick to pig hunting, its a lot less work for clean up.
We were able to make some good progress with our investigator Keith who seems to be really clicking with the idea of a prophet. Hopefully he is able to read the Book of Mormon in faith and pray sincerely and with real intent so the Spirit can witness to him that its true!
Well we had tri-zone conference this week in Bismarck and that was awesome. Its always nice seeing my missionary buddies. We were blessed to attend the temple in Bismarck again, and that was a wonderful experience. It was a two-day zone conference, so after the temple my zone stayed the night at a member's house in Bismarck. The next day we had our meetings and did a white elephant exchange. That was pretty funny, since there was at least 60 people in attendance, so there were some pretty funny gifts. We also had a nice Christmas program at the end of the conference. When we got back on Friday we had our branch Christmas party which was a lot of fun. Good food and a great turn out, which makes things even better.
One of the best things that happened this week was during church. The Perez family showed up! We were shocked. Because just a week ago we got a call from them saying they just got back from Mexico but are going back down to help their sick mother get better. They didn't know when they'd be back. But apparently they got home on Saturday and felt like they needed to come to church. It was awesome. And what made it even better was a certain member felt prompted to attend the gospel principles class we had with them and from that came a very choice experience.
It is such a blessing to be apart of this work. And though it has some tremendous difficulties and hardships, the Lord always lifts and blesses us with blessings that dwarf the negative experiences. He is there for us and his arms of mercy are always extended. It is just up to us to run to him.
I hope you all have a great week and are having luck in sharing the gospel with others!
Love,
Elder Fitt

December 7, 2009 Its Cold Out Here!

2009-12-28T00:24:00.001-07:00

Hello Everyone,
I hope you all had a great week. Ours was alright. It was pretty slow in a lot of aspects. With the weather beginning to get cold a lot of people seem to be getting sick again. Its been in the teens and and sometimes in the single digits, whereas a few weeks ago it was 40 degrees.
So unfortunately we didn't get to see as many people as we would have liked. We also were informed that the Perez family will be gone for another 3 weeks, which could be good if they're attending church in Mexico, hopefully they are. Well we have zone conference this week which I'm really looking forward too. Its another tri-zone so theres going to be a lot of missionaries, which makes it a lot of fun.
But other than that I don't have much to report this week. Nothing too eventful happened, people are progressing though, which is good.
Well sorry for this being short but I hope you all have a good week and are being the answer to someone's prayer!
Love,
Elder Fitt

November 30, 2009

2009-12-28T00:22:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone,
I hope you all had a great week and a happy Thanksgiving. I know I did. We had a pretty good week out here, we got to see a lot of people in the branch, active and less-active.
First off we had Xander's baptism yesterday and that went really well. We had it after church so just about everyone from the branch stayed for it which was great. It was funny though, he's a pretty small kid and his uncle who was baptizing him is a pretty big guy, so when he brought him down to immerse him it was basically a body slam. Xander's foot shot up, probably from the shock of the slam, so they had to do it once more but the second time it went well. It was pretty funny though. But it was great and I could feel the Spirit strong there.
We also got to teach Stephanie a lot at church committed her for baptism! But, she's 17 and has to ask her mom first, who is a staunch Catholic, so she might have to wait until October of 2010 when she turns 18, we'll see. But its exciting to see her progress.
Man lots of good things happened this week and theres too much to talk about, but after soaking it all it truly makes me grateful to be a missionary. You often here about how missions have the highest of highs and lowest of lows, and often people equate the lows with times that the work is struggling or whatever, but for me some of the lowest times were when we'd visit with people who are struggling so hard. We had an experience like that this week with a brother in the Branch who is lonely beyond lonely, and is so tired and sad, and it was heartbreaking to talk with him. Though he isn't giving up, it was a sobering. It is IMPERATIVE that we help those who are struggling. Whatever little things are bothering us in our life, there are others in a worse situation. If you still have the capacity to reach out to others you should and must, for there are many, like this good brother who are too tired to reach out anymore, and they need someone to lift the hands that hang out.
We're all in this work together. Returning to life with our Father in Heaven is not a solo task, it is a group task and we must all help each other, or else none of us will make it.
I am so grateful to be a missionary, to have these wonderful experiences that strengthen my testimony and desire to serve the Lord. I only hope that I can be of some service for someone who is in need and help them feel of the Savior's love. Yesterday there was a dear sister who is just returning to activity from years of inactivity. She couldn't stop crying all throughout church. She told us it was because she finally was able to feel the Savior's love again in her heart, she finally knew that He was real and this His Father is real. What joy that brought to her heart.
Let us all during this Christmas season reach out to those in need and help them hear the call of the Master, feel of his love and partake of the healing that he offers.
Love,
Elder Fitt

November 23, 2009 Happy Thanksgiving!

2009-12-28T00:20:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone,
I hope you all are doing well and have exciting plans for Thanksgiving. I think for once the distance we have in this area has worked to my advantage. Since all the members last Thanksgiving lived pretty close to each other they all wanted us to stop in for Thanksgiving, so we were in pain by the day ended after eating about 3 and a half Thanksgiving dinners! But since everyone is far from each other and it would be a large inconvenience to find rides, we will only be able to eat at one persons home. Alright, my stomach won't explode this year!
But other than that we had a pretty good week. Again we got to do a lot of service. We helped a member move to a new house which is a lot closer to the church, which is awesome. We helped an investigator build out a window well for the basement, which was fun.
A few weeks ago we fixed a Sister's computer and this week she gave us our reward. It was a homemade 5 pound pizza, the thing was ridiculous. Huge ol pizza and boy was it good, needless to say it didn't survive very long.
Also, the baptism for our 9 year old is still set in stone for the Sunday after Thanksgiving, which is awesome and we're looking forward to that. Things are looking good hear and we have some members working with their friends who sound pretty interested in learning about the gospel. So we're excited about that and are hoping for the best.
Other than that things are going a little slow since we aren't having much luck finding people on our own efforts. But the Lord is blessing us in other ways for which we are grateful. We had a really nice week this week weather wise and we've been able to ride bikes some more which was really nice. Cold weather is approaching and I'm not looking forward to it.
Well I better get running but I hope all is well and that you are sharing the gospel with your friends are living in thanksgiving to the Lord; 'tis the season!
Love,
Elder Fitt

November 16, 2009

2009-12-28T00:19:00.001-07:00

Hello Everyone,
How are you all doing? I'm doing pretty good here. Our week was pretty good here. Again we got to do a lot of service for people around the community which was good. Lots of leaves need a rakin' so we're usually there to help. We also go to help a friend of a member's move his tree stand for deer hunting to a new tree, which at some parts was kinda wild, but it was fun.
Unfortunately there isn't too much to report this week out of the ordinary. We're still pushing along trying to find new people to teach and gratefully we were able to get 2 new investigators this week, a couple with 2 children. The lesson seemed to go pretty well and they committed to read from the Book of Mormon. There could be some good potential and I'm excited to see what happens.
And again the baptism for our 9-year old got pushed back until the weekend after Thanksgiving. But its because his mom works weekends and thats the only weekend she was able to get off this month. But its set for that and its going to be awesome. I'm pretty excited and so is he.
Hopefully soon after that we'll have someone else on date, but December is a scary month for missionary work because it seems like either no one wants to talk to you because they're so busy getting ready for the holidays, they're already out of town, or they're overlyfriendly. Haha. But I'm looking forward to it because its also a great month because they church seems to really advertise well the Joy to the World DVD they have and we get a lot of referrals from people wanting one.
Well this is going to be a short one but I hope all is well and that everyone is staying healthy, physically and spiritually!
Love,
Elder Fitt

November 9, 2009 Come on in the Weather is Fine!

2009-12-28T00:15:00.002-07:00

Hello Everyone,
I hope you all are doing well. We had a good week and got to finally enjoy some warm weather! I got to be in the 50's for a few days and I was about to wear a short sleeve shirt, but since the weather here is so deceptive I thought better. But it still was great to enjoy the sun a bit before the cold of winter sets in soon.
The weather was also nice for all the service we got to do this week. A friend of the Valdez family (members of the branch) that we had helped out previous gave us a call seeing if we'd like to help rake the yards of some widows of the church that he attends. So we got to do that it was a lot of fun. Man theres a lot of leaves out now, but it was good to be of service to these sweet ladies.
So transfer calls came and went and I'll be staying in the area for at least another 6 weeks, so I'm really excited. I didn't want to leave at all so I'm glad I got to stay.
Not too much else happened out of the ordinary but we did have stake conference this weekend which was really good. Got to listen to President Layton and his wife as well as the Stake presidency and President Rees and his wife, who are over the Bismarck temple. He has an interesting story of service in this area because he served in Fargo as a missionary and at that time it was a branch. Now its a stake. But also he was the mission president of this mission about 9 years back. And now hes the temple president for the mission's temple. So it was neat to hear stories from him as well.
But things are going well and I'm enjoying the work. Hopefully we should the baptism for Xander this coming Saturday. We didn't have it last weekend because of stake conference. But he's still on track and is doing awesome. We got to see the Perez's some more and had a good meeting with them. Unfortunately for us they're going to be in Mexico for the next month visiting their son. They'll be in the state of Guanajuarto in a town called Uriangato...so hopefully they get to meet up with some missionaries there and learn more. We gave them an address to the closest churchhouse in that area and they plan on attending.
And now another story from tri-zone that Elder Zwick had related to us, its pretty crazy. He told us a story about how he was called to be the mission president in Chile, or at least for one of its missions, I don't know how many it has. Anyway, told us how the first day he got to Chile, the first telephone call they get from anyone is from one of their missionaries in the southern end of Chile who was calling from a phone booth and the only thing he was wearing was his companion's overcoat.
Apparently they were prep'ing for a baptismal interview at the church and a group of terrorists came in, held them all up at gun point and made this missionary take off all his clothes in front of the seminary class that was going on. Then they doused the clothes in gasoline and lit them on fire.
The missionary was calling to see what they should do, since the building was burning to the ground while they spoke. Then President Zwick commented on the shock of the situation and how they felt completely lost and incapable of performing the calling. But they followed the Spirit and things turned out ok.
Well a while later Elder Richard G. Scott of the 12 came to the mission to tour it, and wanted to visit the town where that happened. We he came he promised them that if they were diligent and obedient that the Lord would repay and multiply. At the time it was only one small branch of I think 40 people. By the end of Elder Zwick's mission, it was its own stake! The Lord truly does love us and has amazing blessing in store for us as we endure(not just make through, but make it a positive experience and grow therein) our trials.
Well I hope you all have a great week and give the missionaries in your area tons of referralls!
Love,
Elder Fitt

November 2, 2009 Happy Post-Halloween!

2009-12-28T00:12:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone,
I hope you all had a good weekend, I know I did. I may have mentioned this before, but since it was Halloween and we can't really do much effective proselyting with all that goes on President Layton cleared the missionaries in the Fargo zone to attend the temple in Bismarck(provided we found a ride). So we got a ride with a member and were able to attend the temple. It had been too long since I got to go last. The last time was in the MTC, so about 13 months ago, which is nuts(dang, time flies). But it was a great experience and I am grateful that we were allowed to go. There is always such an amazing spirit at the temple, on the grounds and especially inside.
We had a pretty good week though. We were able to continue to make progress with a lot of our invesigators, 3 of which are progressing nicely towards baptism. They are doing great, namely, Stephanie and the Perez family. And we should have a baptism this weekend or next, depending on how stake conference this weekend works.
But transfer calls are coming this saturday and I really don't want to leave the area. Things are just starting to really pick up and it would be sad to leave. But the Lord knows whats best so we'll see what happens.
I know this was a pretty short email, but I'm running out of time. I hope you all are doing great. The church is true!
Love,
Elder Fitt

October 26, 2009 Tri Zone Conference

2009-12-28T00:04:00.002-07:00

Hello Everyone,
We had a pretty god week this week. Again we got to do a lot of service but we were also able to see some of our top investigators, which is awesome.
We were able to start teaching Stephanie, who is friends with one of the youth in our ward. She seems really interested I can see her getting baptized within this next month(if her parents allow it). We also were able to see the Perez family and continue teaching them. We had a neat experience with them and Sister Perez really opened up to us. I think it'll be a turning point for them and learning about the church. So they're looking pretty good too! It'll still take a while with the language barrier.
A highlight of the week was we had our tri-zone conference for the east side of the mission on thursday. So that included the 3 "east side" zones which are Fargo, Bismarck and Sioux Falls. So a lot of missionaries where there and it was really neat. Elder Zwick of the 70 was there and gave most of the training that received. It was a very powerful conference and I really appreciated the theme of it. The theme was change. Change is a very powerful and necessary part of the gospel if we ever plan on growing spiritually. He also told a lot of really neat stories that I wish I had time to share but I don't. Needless to say it was a great blessing to be able to taught from a 70. Something that was really neat about Elder Zwick was that Elder Richard G. Scott of the 12 was his mission president! So he had some really neat stories about Elder Scott since he is really close to him.
I actually have time to share one story. He mentioned how in this last conference Elder L. Tom Perry(I believe) talked about the Manti temple and its roof. Then he said he's going to tell the rest of the story that Elder Perry didn't know about(but not he does). Elder Zwick's company was contracted to double the size of the Manti temple. So that involved expanding it downwards. Anyway, he talked about in the process of that it led them to the roof and to reinforcing the supports(for lack of a better word) while they were in construction so the roof wouldn't collapse. But as they were doing so they found that about 90% supports were dryrotted and structrally unsound. So first off it was a great discovery because not even the structural engineers of the temple had found this and if they didn't pretty soon the roof would collapse and destroy much of the temple. He talked about how they were faced with a dilemma and that they had to remove the whole roof on the 5th floor that was over the Priesthood room. It was a tragedy for them to do that because of the beautiful pioneer artwork. But he said you can still go there today and see it how it was because they took many many pictures so it could be recreated. Anyway, to the point of the story. He talked about how we all in our lives have spiritual dryrot, and if we never get rid of it and cleanse the inner vessel soon our spiritual roofs will collapse. Sometimes its difficult to remove that dryrot and replace it with good solid wood, and sometimes it will take sacrifices and removing things that are precious to us. But as we take those steps to remove that spiritual dryrot the Lord will bless us and grant us the gift of His Spirit!
Anyway other than that we finally have some on date for baptism! Its exciting. He's our 9 year old, Xander, and he's excited to baptized 2 weeks from now, the first weekend in November. So we're getting pretty excited about that. The work seems to be picking up and I only hope that I can be ready and worthy to be filled with the Spirit so I can help the Lord accomplish miracles in this area of His vineyard. And do you know what the most important thing to do is to be ready and worthy of the Spirit? I'm sure you do...its EXACT obedience. As we strive in our lives to be 100% obedient, not 99%, not 99.9% got will endow us with great power.
I am grateful to be a missionary and to be learning and growing and helping others to do so as well. Have a great week!
Love,
Elder Fitt

October 19, 2009

2009-12-28T00:03:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone,
We had a pretty awesome week this week. Which is always good. I don't have too much time to write, but I'll let you know about the highlights.
We were able to visit one of our investigators, Eunice, along with her recent convert daughter, and reteach them the Restoration. It went really well. Eunice has been taught for about 8 months now and I don't she's been able to come to church once. At least she hasn't since I've been here. But they said they'd try to make it this week.
We also got to see the Perez family and that was great. Taught them the Restoration again and watched the Restoration DVD. It really helped them out. Their daughter was also there and was interested too! Unfortunately they worked this week. Oh well.
But Sunday was the highlight of our day. Miraculously we had 5 investigators at church(Now all you missionaries in South America...don't laugh)! It was so good. Two of which were new and two members brought their friends who we are teaching now! It was really exciting. The Lord is really blessing this area. Now hopefully they're genuinely interested and will progress! But that was the highlight of the week.
I hope you all are doing well and that you will feel the joy of sharing the gospel as you do so with your friends.
Love,
Elder Fitt

October 13, 2009 Rain

2009-12-28T00:01:00.000-07:00

Hello!
We had a pretty good week this week. We finally had another positive experience tracting...something we haven't had since August! Ya we were knocking doors out in the rain, light rain, and a guy answered and was really nice. He didn't like us standing out in the rain so he invited us in for a bit. We talked for a while and got to share a little bit about families and and the Book of Mormon. He said that he'd read it as well as a Plan of Salvation pamphlet we left with him(I forgot to restock on Restoration pamphlets). But he was really sincere and a good guy. Hopefully he's there next time we go back, apparently he's a smoke jumper(I think thats the name for it), and is on call 24/7 for the government to go fight forest fires. So he could be in town until April, or gone tomorrow. Ya, good guy though.
We also got a media referral which seems pretty promising. He took of tour of temple square while he was in Salt Lake City and really loved it. He requested a Together Forever DVD and a missionary visit. The only problem is when we contacted him it turns out he runs a resort on a lake in the area and won't be back at his house until after Thanksgiving, so we can't see him until then, but it seemed like he really wanted to visit with us, hopefully he still is that way a month and a half from now.
We got to do a lot of service this week, like usual. Helped out at the Boys and Girls club moving stuff into storage for them. Man they get a lot of donations, but so much of it is junk. Being on the receiving end I'd just like to say...if you donate things to places like this, make sure its good quality, and not just random junk. Its frustrating to deal with. Anyways, sorry for the rant.
We also got to help the Valdez family out with their yard and getting ready for winter, which was fun. One of their friend's furnaces broke so they said he could chop up some fallen wood on their property. So we helped him split it and load it in the trailer. It was fun, especially with the snow everywhere. Nothing like hauling wood.
Oh ya, we also got to see Marcus and make some progress with him. We read 2 Nephi 31 with him(a really powerful chapter about faith, repentance, baptism, receiving the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end. I suggest you read it if you haven't recently) and afterwards committed him for baptism! He agreed, but was hesitant because of some of the struggles he still has, but we told him it will be a goal to work towards and that we'll set a date next time we see him. He's got a lot on his plate and was pretty sick, didn't feel like we should overwhelm him on that day. So that's pretty exciting...most importantly we got to get him to church. Hopefully he can get time off from work to do so.
So that was our week in nutshell. This week is looking pretty promising and I am excited to see what happens. Recently, President Layton shared a powerful quote from Ezra Taft Benson and I'll try to share it as accurately as possible. He said, "When obedience ceases to be an irritant and instead becomes our quest, then God will endow us with great power." What truth! I am learning that more and more on my mission. As we truly give our will to the Father and our only goal is to do what he'd have us do, we will be much more able to cope with the trials that come before us, and not only deal with them but have joy as we do so. I love this gospel and all the truths that are available to us as we faithfully seek them. Have a great week!
Love,
Elder Fitt

October 5, 2009

2009-12-27T23:59:00.001-07:00

Hello Everyone,
This week was slowwww, but at least we had General Conference to make up for it. It was so good, like always, and I think it gets better every year. All the talks were great, and I especially enjoyed President Monson's address in the Sunday morning session. What a blessing it is to be able to listen to the prophet of God and to hear his counsel. I hope we all take the messages we heard to heart and apply them in our lives.
So I got my new companion this week, Elder Kurzhals (its German) from Arizona. He's an interesting guy with a really genuine demeanor. We're getting along well. We got a lot of promises this week from people to attend General Conference...but guess what? None seemed to show up. Ya it was a little discouraging but, thats what happens in missionary work.
Anyway, we're still pressing on with the work here. The flu has been going around and basically all of our investigators have been sick, cool right? Not really, it was a slow week since we didn't get to see many people but we're going to be focused on finding this week and hopefully we can get some new investigators to help fill our teaching pool. The weather has been interesting here. Since Tuesday last week we haven't seen the sun. Its been cloudy and rainy and in the 40's, which I'm not complaining about but its pretty wild since 2 weeks ago it was in the 80's. Apparently there was a snowstorm in Casper, Wyoming last week so we might get that soon or we're just getting part of the cold front that is moving through this part of the states.
Well that's about it for this week. I am so grateful to be a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. It is a huge blessing in my life to be a missionary serving my God and fellow man. I pray that each one of us can and will be blessed with missionary opportunities where we can help others feel that tremendous, perfect love our Father in Heaven and his Son Jesus Christ has for us. Have a great week!
Love,
Elder Fitt

September 28, 2009

2009-12-27T23:58:00.001-07:00

Hello Everyone,
We had a pretty good week this week. Unfortunately, I forgot my planner at the apartment...so I'll do my best to remember the good stuff that happened. We got to see a lot of people which was good. We were blessed to be able to go out with members a lot this week which was awesome.
A neat story. We have an investigator whose member daughter was moving from Bemidji to Detroit Lakes and she asked us to help unload the trailer when it go to their town, Perham, which is about 20 miles east of DL). Since its a good distance we needed a ride to take us. But it was in the afternoon and most people were working. So we got an idea to ask a certain member to come with us. He agreed and we went. Well when we got there we where going to follow them to the storage shed but the trailer had got a flat tire. The neat part was the member that we brought was the only person around who was able to fix the flat tire. If we didn't bring him it would've either taken a whole lot longer or we would not have been able to help them unload. So that was a big blessing. The Lord watches out for his children, thats for sure!
Oh ya, on Fridays we do service for the museum in town, and 2 Fridays ago the manager invited us to an event they were putting on. So that was cool. It was a catered dinner with a silent auction(ya we didn't bid on anything), then they showed a movie made about the logging history in the surrounding areas. Ya we aren't supposed to watch movies...but since missionaries never get to go to things like this and since the museum has been really kind to us we thought it would be alright to watch the film. It was only an hour and it was actually really interesting.
But ya, back to missionary work. Transfer calls came this saturday, I'm staying and my companion is getting transferred. I'm getting a new comp who I don't know so we'll see what he's like tomorrow. It'll be neat taking over the area, but nothing new.
We're looking forward to general conference coming up. Its always a great opportunity to invite investigators and less-active members to. We try our hardest to get everyone out. Its extra nice in branches because they gather together on sunday and have a potluck inbetween sessions, which makes for good fellowship for investigators.
But ya, we're still working hard to teach those we have. Hopefully the Perez family will get home this week so they can attend GC, that would be awesome.
But that's the report for now, I hope you all are doing great. The church is true!
Love,
Elder Fitt

September 21, 2009 Service and More Service

2009-12-27T23:55:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone,
I hope you all are doing well. This week was a kinda slow one for us unfortunately. Not a lot of people were home. But it was a nice week weather wise, so a lot of people were probably out and about doing stuff.
Monday night we drove to Bemidji, MN for the district meeting we were having there on tuesday. It was fun meeting with the other elders(2 other sets). Tuesday morning apparently a professor at a local Christian college invited us to participate in his class called "Modern Religious Movements." His point of discussion that day was on a talk given by Bruce R. McConkie called the "7 Deadly Heresies." Ya, bad choice mister. Good talk, but it focuses a lot on heresies in the mormon church that need to be corrected...but they mostly deal with deep, deep doctrine stuff. The kind of doctrine that shouldn't be so lightly discusses by people not of our faith. Needless to say it was an interesting class, lots of tangents and some of the missionaries got the teacher a little mad when we explained our point of view and discovered we don't believe he has the priesthood nor had a valid baptism. Ya, he was perturbed by the end of the class. But we just about doubled the class size with us 6 missionaries, so it was interesting.
Anyway, we helped some members can some food this week, that was fun. Some jelly and salsa. Got to continue teaching the 9 year old boy, he's doing great. turns out one of our investigator's is testing today, I think, to see if he is eligible to join the Marine Corps. Which is pretty awesome...but if he passes he'll get shipped out on wednesday, which is too bad. We'll see what happens.
We got to do a lot of service, ranging from mowing lawns, to moving furniture, to helping habitat for humanity build a home. It was a branch project and we helped to install the insulation. Ya, fun stuff. But it was good.
Other than that we're still trying to find new people to teach and continue to work with those we have. The hispanic couple won't be home for another week or two due to illness, which is sad. We did get a hold of the Taiwanese boy attending the Christian school in Fergus Falls, MN and we'll be meeting with him on saturday hopefully. So we're exciting about this upcoming week. Also because we have a dinner appointment every night except saturday, which is pretty awesome.
Well I hope you all are doing well and are studying your scriptures daily! It is a great strength to us in our lives and a tremendous blessing from the Lord to have all the scripture that we do. The church is true!
Love,
Elder Fitt

September 14, 2009

2009-12-27T23:52:00.002-07:00

Hello Everyone,
I hope you all are doing well. We had a pretty good week this week. Lets see, some highlights:
We visited a member this week who said they think there is a spirit in their house. Not necessarily evil, but unwanted so they had us bless the house and hopes of getting rid of it. It was neat because she's native and her mother is too. Her mother was there and isn't a member but seemed to be grateful that we did it. She has her own ways of casting out spirits she said and told us if ours didn't work she'd try hers. But at least she's giving it a try.
Recently we got a referral from the Taiwai, Taipei Mission(oh ya Cameron) for a Taiwanese guy who was being taught there but is apparently attending a christian school in the area. He lives in Fergus Falls, about an hour drive so we had a member take us there last week. We were unable to contact him but found out he goes to a Lutheran academy. So it will be interesting but apparently he really liked our church. So hopefully we'll be able to contact him and get him baptized like the referral requested, haha.
But we were able to see most all of our investigators this week. And they're all doing well and seem to be doing a little better in their efforts. Unfortunately we didn't get to see Marcus, but he almost showed up to church on sunday, we'll have to ask him why he didn't make it.
Oh ya, on Saturday we were able to help out with a half marathon run that was taking place in the town. The Valdez family, members, were in charge of the water stations along the route. So we helped them bring additional water jugs to the tables and fill up cups and pass them out to the runners, as well as clean it all up afterwards. It was a lot of fun though. There were about 2,000 runners, so a decent size race for the population of the area. We also got a free t-shirt!
But other than that things are going as normal. The Perez family gets home this week so hopefully we'll be able to get back in contact with them and get the ball rolling. Its exciting being a missionary and I'm loving every second. I feel humble being allowed to be out here and performing the same task that the ancient apostles were charged with. It truly is an amazing and inspired work. Let us all strive to participate in it however we can in our lives, to help further the Lord's work and help our fellow brothers and sisters feel the love that comes with partaking of the gospel!
Love,
Elder Fitt

September 8, 2009 Labor Day

2009-12-27T23:50:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone,
Sorry for being late this week. Since yesterday was Labor Day the library was closed and we couldn't do emails. But we had a pretty good week last week. I don't have much time to write but again we were able to do a lot of service. Unfortunately we didn't get to make too much progress with our investigators since the Perez family is out of town visiting family for 2 weeks. Though we did get to talk with Marcus about faith and watch the DVD "Finding Faith in Christ" which is a powerful movie. He has a pretty limited gospel knowledge so it'll make the teaching process a little slower, mainly since he doesn't comprehend much of what he reads. But he wants to learn so that helps.
Sorry for the short email, but I'll try to write more next week since it will be P-day instead of tuesday and I'll have more time.
I hope all is going well and that you're being blessed with missionary opportunities of your own!
Love,
Elder Fitt

August 31, 2009 One Year Out!!

2009-12-27T23:46:00.001-07:00

Hello Everyone,
I hope you all had a good week! Man time sure does fly, its crazy. This time last year I was just barely in the first week of my MTC experience. Its been a good year though and hopefully the next one will be even better.
We had a pretty good week this week. We had zone conference earlier in the week and it was amazing like always. We had some great trainings about building our faith, which is always important to keep working on. Right after zone conference we did exchanges and I went to serve with an Elder Erickson(he's from Orem, UT) in a city called Bemidji, the place where I was originally called to serve a transfer ago before they changed it to Detroit Lakes. Anyway, it was a lot of fun and we got a lot done up there.
Its always amazing to see where ever you go the members are always awesome and want to help out in whatever way they can.
Neat experience we had there. We were teaching one of their investigator's,
Todd, whose a pretty spiritually sensitive guy. He's working towards baptism but had a pretty rough life so he's working on overcoming some bad habits. We offered to give him a blessing to help him in that effort and he said he'd like that. After the blessing he commented on how he felt different and that he felt that he had known us for a really long time. It was pretty neat.
When I got back to Detroit Lakes we were blessed to see the Perez family again, Maria and Alvarro. They're doing awesome. We taught them about the Plan of Salvation and they really liked it and kept talking about how they want to make it to the top circle and not the other two. We tried to commit them to baptism. They said they wanted to be baptized but didn't want to set a date yet because they want to learn more. But its pretty exciting. They also fed us some traditional Mexican food, highlight being a mole sauce. They were able to make it to church too, which they enjoyed. Its too bad that Maria can't understand English too well. But the Lord will
provide.
Well I better get going. I hope the Lord is providing you all with missionary experiences and that you're seeking them yourselves! The Church is true!
Love,
Elder Fitt

August 24, 2009

2009-12-27T23:45:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone,
We had a pretty good week this week. Again we were able to do a bit of service for people around the area. One of the biggest projects was we helped a member who is the resident manager of an apartment complex clean one of the apartments that got totally trashed. It was like his 7th to clean in the last month and he had people moving in that day so we told him we'd help him catch up. It was nasty! Man, some people just don't know how to clean. But it was good to be able to help him out so that apartment wasn't trashed for the people moving in.
We got to attend one of our investigator's 'testing' nights for Tae Kwon Do. He was testing to go from I guess purple trim to brown belt? I think. Anyways, it was pretty fun to watch and see what they do. Unfortunately he didn't pass, but he gets to retry this week. Also watched some of the other members train before the test which was pretty cool.
We were able to make some more progress with the Perez family, Alvaro and Maria. They're awesome. They had read all that we assigned and loved it. So we jumped in the Gospel of Jesus Christ lesson and they really enjoyed it, especially the verses we used from the Book of Mormon. They're really excited to come to church and should be there this coming sunday, which is awesome. They really want to learn which is great. They're also helping me remember some of my spanish, which is fun too. So we're both learning!
Other than that we've been trying to find new people to teach. Zone conference is this week which is exciting. We attended stake general priesthood meeting yesterday and something that has been said before but is always good to hear was spoken. They mentioned that missionaries are called to be full-time teachers...and that members are the full-time finders. This is true. Though a lot of times missionaries have to do finding themselves. But, they were emphasizing the importance of members finding people for the missionaries to teach. I know that as you ask the Lord for assistance in finding someone for the missionaries to teach He will help you. You will find greater joy and happiness as you share the gospel with others, I can promise you that.
I hope you all have a great week!
Love,
Elder Fitt

August 17, 2009 Hello From Minnesota!

2009-12-27T23:43:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone,
We had a pretty good week this week, I hope you did too. We were able to start meeting with a guy we tracted into a little bit ago, his name is Marcus. We taught him the Restoration earlier this week and he participated a lot and had good questions. Best yet, when we asked when we could come back he said the next day. Then, it gets even better, when we came back the next day he had actually read some of the assignment we left! Wow...no one has read anything we have left for such a long time, it was crazy. So then we talked about that and taught him about the plan of salvation. So things are looking pretty good for him, hopefully he'll keep reading and praying and good things will happen.
Also, another cool story. We got a referral in the mail the other day for a person down in a town called Pelican Rapids. Its about 30 miles out of town so we had a member take us down there. Before we left Elder Badten remembered we had another referral for down there that they had got like 3 months ago and hadn't been able to contact. So we took that too. The one we recently got wasn't there but we tried the old one. They answered and we were able to drop off the Lamb of God DVD for them. They are a nice Mexican couple, the husband speaks pretty good English the wife doesn't...wish I knew my Spanish as well as I used to(which still wasn't the greatest). But we set up a time to come back to meet with them later in the week. So we were able to do so and we had an restoration lesson with them. The wife was full of questions, and though it took a little longer with the husband acting as interpreter, it still was great. They're searching for the truth and they realize it isn't in a lot of other churches. A great part was that they were upset with all the idol worship that happens in Mexico and we were able to talk about that and other things. But they look really promising. The only problem will be getting them to church since they live a decent ways from the building and might work during it...and the wife wouldn't be able to understand most of what they say. But the Lord will provide.
The rest of the week was good too. But those were the top stories. We were able to help a member's neighbor move some wood. A tree had fallen on his property, a good mile or so from the house in a pretty thick forest and he had quartered it. So we piled into a 4-wheeler pick-up thing and picked up the wood and brought it back so he could split it for firewood. It was pretty fun. Neat old guy.
I'd say those are the highlights of the week. Oh ya, transfer calls came, we're both staying. So I'll be here for at least another 6 weeks. But a lot of missionaries are going home in the next few months. We got 9 new missionaries this transfer and are getting 11 new ones next one...so maybe I'll be training, we'll see.
Anyway, I hope all is going well and that you are getting blessed with missionary opportunities!
Love,
Elder Fitt

August 10, 2009 Minnesota Summer

2009-12-27T23:42:00.002-07:00

Everything is going pretty well here. We had a pretty slow week though unfortunately. There was a big country music concert/festival in town from Wednesday to Saturday called "We Fest" so most of the people who live in town bailed for the weekend and we were flooded with tourists...so we didn't get to see a lot of people.
Fortunately we were able to pick up 3 new investigators this week, which is awesome. They're looking pretty good...hopefuly, like all the rest, they have a desire to read and pray, and hopefully we can help strengthen that desire.
Other than that, the weather has been nice here. Nice and cool, but not too cold. Though this week is supposed to be really hot...90's or so and humid. Seeing how its been in the 70's, its a pretty big jump.
We did a lot of service, which is good. We're really trying to focus on working with the members at the moment and get them excited to be missionaries to their friends and be active in reactivation in the ward and help with missionary work in part-member families. Its looking pretty good so far so we're excited about that.
Well I hope you all have a great week and sorry this was a short letter. Not much happened out of the ordinary. The church is true!
Love,
Elder Fitt

August 3, 2009 Minnesota Missionary- that's me!

2009-12-22T11:32:00.002-07:00

Hello Everyone,
Things are going pretty well here. This last week was pretty good, though it had its ups and downs. We were able to get a new investigator, her name is Sharon, an old lady. She is real nice and we had a good lesson about the Restoration with her. It was interesting how we found her. We were tracting an apartment building, knocked on her door and she didn't answer. So we continued on that floor knocking doors then she opens her door and hollers to us if we were knocking on her door. We said yes and that we're missionaries and she told us to come back in few days. That isn't something that happens too often..especially here in Detroit Lakes. But it was good and we hopefully will see her again this week.
Besides that nothing too eventful or crazy happened. We just did a lot of tracting and finding this week. Lots of which didn't turn out so well. But we're really focusing on working with the members. There's a family, the Valdez's, who are really friendly with the missionaries. We eat at their house every Sunday, and we were talking with them the other day about how the branch struggles with member referrals and actively pursuing their own missionary efforts. So yesterday when we saw them they told us they invited a part-member family over for dinner next Sunday! Its awesome, so we'll be able to share a lesson with them and hopefully get the ball rolling again on the husband. I think he's been taught before, but hopefully he's open this time.
That's about it for this week. This is the Lord's work and he will bless you for your efforts in it!
Love,
Elder Fitt

July 27, 2009

2009-12-22T11:31:00.001-07:00

Hello Everyone,
I hope all is going well with all of you. Things are going pretty good here. It was another slow week but we were able to make some good progress with investigators who we hadn't been able to get in contact with for a while.
On Tuesday we had Zone Conference in Fargo and that was a great experience. It was neat to have our first Zone Conference with President and Sister Layton. They're great, and gave really good trainings and helped us become better missionaries. Its amazing to see the mantle shift so perfectly. It really is a testimony to me of the divinity of this work and the truthfulness of the gospel. Not to get into politics, but whenever a new president takes office you see all these changes, insertions and deletions, whereas in the church when a new leader takes over its seamless. And thats because the Lord is in charge of the work and he's directing it.
We were able to attend the Branch Pioneer day picnic this week which was a lot of fun. Played some 'ladder golf' and some badminton(sp?) which was a lot of fun. We also got to mingle a lot with the youth, and there are a few mission-age priests, so hopefully we can help get them fired up to go.
Other than that we were able to do a lot of service this week around the community and the branch, which is always good. I am so grateful for the opportunity to be a missionary and serve the Lord in this capacity. I was able to give a talk yesterday in Sacrament meeting about Proclaiming the Gospel. It was a good experience, but isn't just the missionaries job, its everyones! But you all know that, so just keep praying for missionary experiences and the Lord will help you become a instrument in His hands.
Love,
Elder Fitt

July 20, 2009

2009-12-22T11:28:00.001-07:00

Hello everyone,
I hope all is going well with you! The work here is kinda slow as usual, but good. We had an interesting week this week. Some of the "promising" investigators we had dropped us this week unfortunately. We got to see some others and the work went on just as usual. But one thing here that is always hard is finding people. Tracting here is really difficult, people are pretty set in their ways so tracting isn't too fruitful. But the other day we were trying to find a place to tract. So we drove down a road and both of us had a weird feeling...for some reason the street just didn't feel right. So I turned around and went to another little community and we just drove and decided to tract at the end of a couldesac(sp?). Anyway, a few doors down we were able to talk with a lady named Angela and give talk to her about the Restoration. She really seemed to enjoy it and was excited to read the Book of Mormon. We're going to be seeing her tomorrow...so hopefully
she's had a positive experience reading and praying! Either way it was exciting to actually have some success tracting.
We were also blessed to get in and visit with an investigator that has lost contact with us for a while. Her name is Alysha and she's searching pretty hard for the truth right now. She is looking at the Seventh Day Adventist church but hasn't said she has decided either way. She just wants to find truth. So hopefully she'll take the initiative to read what we left her so she can find out for herself.
Other than that we're just trying to find ways to fill the time in the day. There isn't much going on here. The members are great but don't do much in the ways of referrals...and since many of them live 20+ miles out of town its a little hard too. We do a lot of service, which is good. We were able to spread about 10 yards(cubic) of bark chips around the Chamber of Commerce here in town, which was fun. Reminded me of the days when I used to do that in High School with some friends. It was fun, took a little while with only two of us and one wheel barrow, but it looks good now.
Late last night we got a call from the Branch President asking us to meet him at the hospital. A member's daughter(about 7 years old) apparently had appendicitis and was in the emergency room and had requested a blessing. So we hurried over and we were able to administer a blessing before she went in for surgery. It was a neat experience. I think her father isn't a member, but he was really grateful we came and did it. So maybe a seed was planted there and some fruit may come of it in the future.
Anyway, that was our week in a nutshell. The church is true and I'm loving the work. Keep praying for missionary experiences and the Lord will bless you with them!
Love,
Elder Fitt

July 13, 2009 Hello From MN

2009-12-22T11:17:00.002-07:00

Hello everyone!
We had a pretty good week this week. I'm starting to learn the area pretty well and meet most of the people that we associate with. We have a pretty small teaching pool here, but we're trying to build it up. But the only way we can really do that is from tracting...and tracting is pretty unproductive in a town that is mostly old people, most of which are staunch lutherans or catholics. But we still try nonetheless. Something President Cannon told us is that "tracting is a sign of obedience, its there to call down the blessings of heaven." So as we tract and show the Lord we're willing to work and find people on our own, he'll bless us either in our tracting efforts or in other areas of the work.
We have a pretty neat investigator here, her name is Bonita and she's an older native lady. She has been taught for quite a while now, off and on, by the elders. She has a testimony of the church and really wants to get baptized...but its difficult for her to make it to church because of work. She has 2-3 jobs and is really busy, so its even hard for us to get in to visit with her. But all she needs to do is come to church and she can get baptized. She's determined to make it this sunday though and said she won't let anything get in her way. So that's pretty exciting...and hoepfully nothing does.
The other people we're working with aren't really progressing too much at the moment, but we're trying to help them keep commitments and gain a testimony for themselves. Its amazing how flaky people are sometimes, but its not in our control so it really shouldn't make us mad since it isn't our fault. So lesson to be learned...don't be a flake, haha.
Yesterday was quite an amazing day though. It had been a pretty spiritually draining week this past week and I was getting pretty low. So I decided to read my patriarchal blessing for personal study. I am so grateful for the power and strength it brings to me through the Spirit. I hope all of you regularly read your patriarchal blessing(which I'm sure you do), it is a tremendous sign of our Father in Heaven's love for us.
Church was amazing too. In Sacrament meeting we had some of the best talks I have ever heard. One was on the importance of the temples and how they are a light to our lives. The second was about how we all need to treat each other better. The overarching theme I found in the talk is that we need to truly learn how when we run into someone...that we treat them exactly the way the Savior would. It is a hard task, but as we are able to develope that kind of charity in our lives, we will find an immense increase of joy in our lives.
I am so grateful for the opportunity to serve a mission for the Lord. I know he leads and guides this work and that as we follow the promptings of the Spirit we can help bring others to the knowledge of the truth!
Love,
Elder Fitt

July 6, 2009 Hello From Minnesota (That's weird to say!)

2009-12-22T11:16:00.001-07:00

Hello Everyone,
I hope all is going well with you. Minnesota is treating me great! After about a 12 hour trip across the mission, I finally made it to Detroit Lakes. Its really pretty here and full of lakes! Lots of green stuff...everywhere. And lakes and green stuff also mean lots of mosquitos, dang, but it's alright.
I had a fun week. Got to meet a lot of our investigators...which is about 3 or 4, haha. The work is pretty slow here, but we do have a lady on date for baptism, our only struggle will be getting her to church since she works 3 jobs and is really busy. My companions name is Elder Badten and he's from New Hampshire. He's a good guy and we're getting along really well.
The branch out here is pretty tiny, about 20-30 active members, but I'm excited to be in a branch again, they're a lot of fun. The members are great and seem to have a special spirit about them, which is exciting.
I'm a little short on stories this week since my brain doesn't seem to want to work right now. But I'm loving it.
The work is going well and we're trying to find new people to teach and get this place built up. One of the biggest problems is the closest members to us are about 20 minutes away. None of the members actually live in Detroit Lakes itself, which is kind of nuts. But we have a few people who are willing to go out, but since they live pretty far out of town(a lot of them) they aren't able to make it as much. But we're working with what we have and making the most of it.
Well, if anyone has any questions, feel free to email them to me and I can reply in this email I send out every week.
I have a great love for this work and the blessing it brings to my life. I know that the Lord is amongst us preparing people within our circle of influence to come unto Him. But it is up to us to find those people. Many people are looking for the truth but "don't know where to find it." So in the words of Sister Cannon..."Go out and be the answer to someone's prayer!"
Love,
Elder Fitt

June 29, 2009 Hello From South Dakota- Almost Minnesota!

2009-12-14T09:21:00.001-07:00

Hello Everyone,
Transfer calls came this week and I'm getting shipped out of Rapid City! I'm going all they way across the state and a few state borders to Detroit Lakes, Minnesota! Pretty nuts. I don't know too much about it, but it will be hot and humid for sure. It is somewhat close to Fargo, to give you a point of reference. I'm going to be serving with Elder Badten, who has been out for one transfer less than me, so another young companionship. It'll be good though, I'm excited.
Also, President Cannon is going home today, and President Layton will be coming in. So hopefully I'll get to see him before I leave for Minnesota tomorrow. Once I get my new address I'll email, but you can always send letters to my current address regardless where I'm at, because its the office's address and they'll forward it.
But other than that things are going well. Our baptisms got moved to July, they weren't quite ready, but it'll be good. This week I got to go on some exchanges with some of the elders in my district, so that was a lot of fun. I got to spend some time in Sturgis, South Dakota, where they have the bike rallies each year. The missionaries who serve in Spearfish cover Sturgis and they aren't allowed to leave their apartment to proselyte for the whole week that the bike rally is going on, pretty nuts.
But it was neat being up there, really beautiful. There is a member up there that owns an animal sanctuary. He takes most animals that have been abused, mistreated, or that are unwanted. Also he takes animals from zoo's that are mistreating them or doing illegal activities. We helped him do a tour because he had a big crowd coming through and needed help making sure people didn't wander off or little kids get their hands bitten. It was awesome. Got to see all sorts of animals, a lot of which you see in zoo's, but a lot closer. We go to watch them feed these two twin baby brown bears, it was really neat. Also, they have a section which is all big cats, so it had bengal tigers, siberian tigers, a huge barberry lion(they're the ones whose mane extends down their torso) named Hercules, leopards, jaguars, panthers, mountain lions, and some smaller cats too. It was awesome! Coolest though was a white siberian tiger they had, beautiful cat. Neat thing...I learned that the white coloring is a genetic thing and not a species thing. So a bengal tiger is usually orange, but can be white, and same with a siberian. The reason there are less white ones is because their coloring doesn't help much in the ways of disguise in the jungles...anyways, back to missionary work.
Things are going great and I'm excited for my new area. Thanks for the emails from those who sent them this week, they were much appreciated and enjoyed. I'm loving my time out here and all the experiences and growth I'm seeing. I'm grateful to be a member of Christ's church and to help others partake of the fruit of the tree of life and feel of that overwhelming joy(Lehi's dream is an amazing story!).
I hope you all have a great week!
Love,
Elder Fitt

June 22, 2009 Crazy Thunderstorms!

2009-12-14T09:19:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone,
I hope all is well. Its been pretty good out here. Most all of last week we were have some crazy thunderstorms which made things really interesting. We got caught in it a few times, once when we were tracting...we got soaked, nothing was dry when we made it to the car. It was fun though, and a good experience. The suns starting to come out a lot more and its staying in the 80's, so I'm starting to get some color back to my skin. Its been cloudy for quite some time now.
Things are going alright. Still have problems getting in with people. We might still have 2 baptisms this weekend though, which should be good. Hopefully they're ready, we'll see on tuesday.
I don't remember if I talked about Eric at all last week, but he was a callback a while ago. Well last week we got to teach him about 3 times. He loves talking with us and really seems to enjoy the Book of Mormon. He really knows his stuff and is Catholic, so I'm just hoping the Spirit touches him and helps him realize the importance of the church. But he's doing really good and is trying hard to apply what he's learning.
Other than that things are going slow though. The transfer is coming to an end this week and so is President and Sister Cannon's missions! Its nuts, the new mission president gets in a week from today. I'm really going to miss the Cannon's, they're amazing people. But I guess I'm one of the lucky few who gets to know 2 mission presidents for about the same time. So I get to know 4 really neat people instead of just 2! But I'm excited to see what happens and if any changes take place in ways of policy.
Everything is going well though. I'd like to hear from all of you if you ever have time. Though I can't respond to your emails, I'd enjoy reading them!
Well, I hope you all have a great week!
Love,
Elder Fitt

June 15, 2009 Hello from . . . you know where!

2009-12-14T09:18:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone,
I hope you all had a good week, because it was kind of a downer for us. Had some good things happen, but generally, everything fell through. It was pretty disappointing. But we still have 2 people who are on date for baptism on the 27th of June, which is really exciting, Stacy and Kate. They're doing well and working their best to prepare themselves. Its great to see.
It rained for the most of the week, which was pretty nice. It would be nice and sunny for a little bit then the rain would start tearing through, then stop, then rain again, then stop and get sunny, then rain again. It was fun stuff.
Alright, the one really neat thing that happened this week happened while we were tracting. We were waiting to do some service, so we decided to tract until it was time. The first door we knock on the lady peeks through her blinds and motions us to leave. Then as we are walking she opens the door and asks us to come in. She explained that she is suffering from depressions, loneliness, and these 2 rare, painful diseases that I hadn't heard of but are pretty nasty. She also told us she was contemplating suicide minutes before we opened the door. At first she was too afraid to let us in, but then thought to herself, "God must have sent this 2 young men to my house to help me turn my life around." It was really neat.
We talked and she mentioned how shes been in a real slump and we talked about her faith and church. She mentioned how she misses church a lot and wants to get back into it. Her past denominations she attended didn't treat her too well, so she got disaffected and stopped going. But as we explained how our church works she got really excited and wanted to come. She said she wanted to sing in the choir and work in the nursery! It was cute. She said she couldn't come this week because of previous engagements, but wants to come this upcoming Sunday, so that will be great. We're going to see her on Wednesday and teach her more about our Father in Heaven's love for us.
Funny sidenote...the other elders in our apartment caught a spider 2 weeks or so ago and have been catching bugs to feed it. Well the other day we were doing service dumping a truck-full of branches for a lady and found a pretty nasty looking spider. So we caught him and tonight we're gonna have the spiders duke it out. Hopefully they'll do something...hey, missionaries need to have fun too somehow.
But other than that things are going kinda slow. All of our appointments are falling through and people are disappearing. But we're still working and trying to find more people to teach.
On Sunday, Elder Hansen, an area authority 70, was in town visiting President Cannon, so the missionaries got invited to the mission home to chat with him in the evening. He talked and taught us a lot of things. But one thing he stressed that is key to missionary work that Elder Perry stressed to and all the apostles and prophets teach...is that full-time missionaries aren't very effective without member support. Its important to realize that the missionaries are working in your wards. They're there to teach your friends, relatives and coworkers. Sure missionaries can tract...but often times that yields little or no results. True, solid, converts come from members referring people they know to the missionaries and being involved themselves in the teaching process.
So, stepping off my soapbox, I'd like to commit you all to sincerely pray this week and next, however long it takes, until the Lord reveals to you a person or family he has prepared within your circle of influence for baptism...then act on it! What would be amazing if each one of you could have at least one family/person taught in your home by the end of the year by the full-time missionaries. It will be a tremendous blessing in your life as you do so. I know that this is the Lord's work and he will aid us in our righteous efforts!
I love you all and hope you have a great week!
Love,
Elder Fitt

June 8, 2009 Frustrations and Forging Ahead

2009-12-14T09:17:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone,
This week blew by! Its been good though. One of our baptisms, Ronald, fell off date and isn't getting baptized anymore. His mom said she doesn't want him to be, which is really annoying. She's a member too! She doesn't think he'd be able to keep his baptismal covenants...load of crock, but he'll get baptized when he's older and moves out. Kinda frustrating, especially since the real reason she doesn't want him to be baptized is because she got offended by the bishop! Argh, anyway, back to good news.
Yesterday at church we were able to commit two more people for baptism! Their names are Kate and Clayton. They're going to have the bishop marry them real soon. Their date is for the 27th of June, along with their friends, Stacy and Jolyn. They're all middle-aged and Native American, so its pretty exciting. They're doing really well!
So that's the big news for the week. Not too much else happened. Some investigator's that weren't progressing are starting to do better, and some that were doing good, like JD and Donny, we haven't been able to get a hold of for about 2 weeks! So that's really frustrating, but the work goes on.
Well, spiritual thought for the day. I was reading in the Doctrine and Covenants today during personal study and was reading in and around section 60-70 and came across a verse I really liked. I believe Jesus is speaking in the revelation to Joseph Smith and he is talking about his Father and describes Him as "the Father of lights." I thought that was a really interesting title. The footnotes cross-referenced it to another verse in the Doctrine and Covenants talking about how whatever is good is light and whatever is light comes from the Father. I just made me think more that whatever is good in this life comes from our Father in Heaven. If it promotes us to live happy, fulfilling, righteous lives, it have been provided for us by our Father. On the contrary, the father of darkness only provides things that allow for instant gratification which generally lead to lasting sorrow and guilt. I loved the description though, "Father of lights." Let us all seek for things that bring light in our lives. And what is the thing that can bring us the most light? Our Savior Jesus Christ, who is the light of the world. I hope we all look to Him as we go thoughout our days for comfort and support, so He can help us find true, lasting happiness(I hope that all made sense).
Well I'll get off my soap box, I love you all, have a great week!
Love,
Elder Fitt

June 1, 2009 Its raining, it pouring . . .

2009-12-14T09:16:00.001-07:00

Hello everyone,
Things are going great here! Its raining at the moment, which is a nice change from the blazing hot 85 degree weather we've been having! Haha, man I'm glad I'm not serving in Mexico or Hawaii or Brazil or something...too hot for me! Anyways, the Lord is continuing to bless our area a lot!
This week we were blessed to commit two more people with a baptismal date! Two native women who are excited for their baptism and love church! Its great. Two of their friends are getting close too, which is great. We were able to get 7 investigators at church this week, it was ridiculous, record for me so far. Though it wasn't at all of my own doing.
This month is looking really promising and its exciting to be a part of. Oh ya, I called to be the district leader here in Rapid City again. So that will be fun stuff...its a huge district, 13 elders, 2 sisters, 2 senior couples, the mission president and his wife and the assistants to the president! So district meetings are usualyl pretty big, but its great.
Interesting story...last week we ran into a guy who had probably one of the most intense and crazy religious beliefs I've ever heard. He isn't part of any denomination, just has his own ideas that he says God told him about. Anyways, he prefaced his beliefs by an experience that started it all when he was 12(I almost laughed when he told us). He said he found an old ship off the coast of Southern California that had on board thousands of these perfect pearls, the Holy Bible, The Book of Life, The Book of Death, The Ark of the Covenant, The Holy Grail, Excalibur, and Then Necronomicon! Pretty crazy huh...but he doesn't have any of it because he didn't want to take any with him. And his brother who was with him(so he says) doesn't remember anything...so all the validity of his statement went right down the drain. But needless to say, he had some crazy beliefs, a lot of which had some profound elements of truth and deep doctrine twisted into it, but there was so much extra stuff that the truths were hard to discern. It was a neat experience...learned that Noah didn't really build an ark, he was just a rich man who lived on a plantation and knew how to teleport...so he teleported himself and all the animals to avoid the flood. Yup..thats how it happened!
Anyway, I'm loving it out here and am really enjoying the work. Lots of great experiences and hard times but its all worth it and I wouldn't give it up for anything! The Church is true!
Love,
Elder Fitt

May 26, 2009 Happy Memorial Day!

2009-12-14T09:15:00.001-07:00

Hello Everyone!
I hope you all had a great memorial day and that everyone is doing good. Ours was pretty good except the fact that we couldn't email because everything was closed! But it was fun. Its transfers week so we're getting all sorts of missionaries coming through town, which is always neat. I'm staying another transfer(at least) in Rapid City and I'll still be with Elder Davis. It's going to be a shorter transfer though, because President Cannon is gonna do one more transfer right before he goes home so the new mission president isn't overwhelmed the first day he gets here. So this transfer ends at the end of June, pretty crazy. But it'll be good.
The works been going well and we have another baptism coming up on Saturday for a boy named Ronald, I think I've talked about him before. Anyway, he's 14 or so and is excited to be baptized. His mom is a member but never had him baptized, though he's came to church for the past few years. So we're pretty excited about that.
Crazy story. The other night Elder Clark(a missionary in our apartment) was coming back inside the apartment complex when a guy who was obviously a little 'high' approached him. He had a ferret in his hands and said he had just found it in the parking lot, and he gave it to Elder Clark because he didn't know what to do with it. So he let it loose in the apartment and we had some fun. It was pretty funny too because we didn't know what to do with it at first, so we kept it in the bathroom, then the neighborhood stray cat stopped at our apartment(we named it Princess, haha, she stops by every week or so) and browsed around. She started smelling the ferret and camped outside the bathroom door for about 30 minutes. But eventually we kicked her out and put the ferret in a box for the night. The next day we gave it to a member who has 5 other ferrets. Well that was probably a boring story but it was pretty exciting for a missionary.
But ya, we're getting 2 new missionaries in our apartment, so it'll be an interesting transfer, hopefully we all get along well, probably will. The weather here has been really nice. Had a massive thunderstorm 2 nights ago and parts of the town got flooded, it was awesome. Elder Davis and I got some nice photos of the lightning. Its neat seeing actual lightning bolts, because back in California you rarely see them, they usually just light up the sky.
Another neat story. So Elder Davis and I were running really low on funds this money(I miscalculated the next time we received money for groceries) so yesterday I only had 10 dollars and I was low on everything so it wouldn't have been enough to live on for the next week, especially since we have only 2 dinners lined up. But we were in a store and there happened to be a member of the church there just passing through. He pulled us aside and introduced himself. Told us he has a son on a mission in South Africa and that since he wants his son to be fed out there, he has to do his part here. So he gave us 20 dollars for lunch! It was a great blessing, we were able to get all our groceries we needed and lunch with it too! So there's a testimony that going out on a mission will bless people's lives that you aren't even serving, even another missionary's live in a different mission. So that was really neat.
Well I love you all and hope everything is going well!
Love,
Elder Fitt

May 18, 2009 baby its warm outside!

2009-12-14T09:14:00.001-07:00

Hello Everyone,
I hope all is going well. Man its hot here today, a whopping 85 degrees. But I'll survive! We went mini golfing today, that was a lot of fun, haven't been for a long time.
Anyway, exciting news! Cody, and investigator of ours we've been teaching for a while was praying for a baptismal date last week. So at our appointment on Wednesday we asked him what date he received as an answer. He said, "This weekend." Man it took me by suprise, in a good way. So we set it all up, it was pretty crazy, but everything went well and we were able to have the baptismal service on Sunday after church. The Spirit was so strong there and he was really excited to be baptized. He was also able to be confirmed right after the baptism because he attended the Single's Branch with his member girlfriend when he came to church, and since they all showed up the branch president gave it the OK. So, all in all, I feel really blessed to have been able to participate in his baptism, oh ya, and he asked me to baptize him! So that was really neat too.
But other than that most of the week we were doing service. Helped do service at the mission home. They're remodeling it for the new mission president so we helped with the downstairs, taking apart bunk beds and ripping off vinyl siding so they could put on new baseboards and clean the carpet. Then the next day we came back and move all the bunk beds back, about 10 of them, which all had to be disassembled and reassembled in both days. It was a lot of fun though. We also helped a member move, which took the better part of the day, but he need the help.
The work here is going great, but transfer calls are this weekend, so I might be moving in the next week, we'll have to wait and see. I hope everyone is doing well!
Love,
Elder Fitt

May 11, 2009 Hello From SD!

2009-12-14T09:12:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone,
This past week was pretty good.

We were blessed to get a new investigator. His name is Donnie and he has been extremely humbled in the past few years by a lot of deaths in his family. So we were able to teach him at his friend's home about the Plan of Salvation and he really enjoyed it. This week we will get to teach the Restoration, hopefully it will go well. He wants to be baptized, so it is pretty exciting.

We have one young man still on date for baptism and 2 others who are praying for a date right now, so things are doing great.

Oh ya, Happy Mother's Day to all the mother's out there!

The weather is getting pretty nice here. But a little too hot...the other day it was 70 degrees and I could barely stand it! Its gonna be brutal once it gets into the 80's and 90's. Its crazy how that works.

Earlier today we got to help out at the mission home. The FM (facilities management) group of the church is totally remodeling it and we got to help a little bit. It was pretty fun, besides the part where we had to tear vinyl baseboard type things off the wall. That was pretty ridiculous. Our hands got pretty torn up because the adhesive was really strong. Then finally when we get to the last few feet of it, one of the workers comes down and says "do you guys want some scrapers for that" ...man they would've been nice to have earlier! But it was fun though. Afterwards the Cannon's (mission pres) brought some pizza and stuff, so it was good.

Besides that everything is going well. Not too much to report, its been a pretty normal week otherwise. Transfers are coming up in 2 weeks, which is scary because I might be transferred this time and not get to see some of the people that might have baptism dates after that. So hopefully I'll be blessed to stay another 6 weeks, Rapid is a really nice city.

Well I hope everyone is doing well and staying on top of their scripture study and member missionary work!

Love,
Elder Fitt

April 8, 2009 A Letter About Elder Fitt

2009-12-14T09:11:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone!
I hope all is well. Things have been great out here. We had a baptism on saturday for an eight year old girl named Sayna. Her parents aren't members so we had the privilege of teaching her. It was a great day and a member, Brother Kingi, got to baptize her. It was special because 40 or so years ago he served in this mission and baptized Sayna's great-grandmother so it was a really neat experience for him and the family. He's originally from New Zealand and probably one of the best members I have ever met. At the baptism and on sunday after he conferred upon her the gift of the Holy Ghost, he got to bear his testimony, which was so powerful. Since he's from the Pacific Islands he has common ancestry with the Native Americans from the Nephites(read about Hagoth in the book of Helaman) and Lamanites and talked about how our church is the church of their ancestors. The church that their people belonged to ages past. It was a really special experience.
Also, on sunday there was a musical fireside the missionaries in Rapid put together. The Zone Leaders here headed up the project but we all had a part. The members here have some amazing talents in music and it went really well. Also, we(the Elders in Rapid) got to have a piece in the program. We sang "Nearer My God to Thee" and I think God was watching out for us because everyone said we sounded good...though I beg to differ, haha. It was a neat experience though, I've never sang in front of people before...though it was with 10 other missionaries.
The work has been progressing really well. We have between 4-7 people who are looking pretty close to baptism. Two of which we're going to commit with a date this week, hopefully they accept. I'm really excited. The Lord is blessing this area tremendously and we're working hard to keep up with all the work he is providing for us. May is looking to be a great month. And we do have another person committed at the moment too. A 14 year old boy, who is going to be baptized on the 16th of May. So, ya, things are going well.
I hope everything is going well back in the real world and that everyone is studying their scriptures daily!! It is so important. Sometimes it may be tough, put you just have to plant that seed that Alma talks about in Chapter 32 of the book of Alma, and as you do scripture study will not only become rewarding, but also fun and entertaining. In the mornings I now get lost in the stories of the scriptures. The Book of Mormon was definitely written for our time. I have a testimony that it is sacred scripture that was translated by the power of God through Joseph Smith. It is a powerful witness of the divinity of our Savior Jesus Christ and the great love he has for us. It also provides understanding of the great importance of the Atonement and the power it has to heal us: our hurts, our sorrows, our sins, our afflictions. I know that as we rely on the Savior and prayerfully and faithfully do our part, weak things will be made strong, and peace and comfort will be provided in times of hardship that are bound to come.
I love you all and hope you have a great week and are blessed with missionary experiences!
Love,
Elder Fitt

May 4, 2009 Hellow from South Dakota!

2009-12-14T09:06:00.001-07:00

Hello Everyone!
I hope all is well. Things have been great out here. We had a baptism on Saturday for an eight year old girl named Sayna. Her parents aren't members so we had the privilege of teaching her. It was a great day and a member, Brother Kingi, got to baptize her. It was special because 40 or so years ago he served in this mission and baptized Sayna's great-grandmother so it was a really neat experience for him and the family. He's originally from New Zealand and probably one of the best members I have ever met. At the baptism and on Sunday after he confered upon her the gift of the Holy Ghost, he got to bear his testimony, which was so powerful. Since he's from the Pacific Islands he has common ancestry with the Native Americans from the Nephites(read about Hagoth in the book of Helaman) and Lamanites, he talked about how our church is the church of their ancestors. The church that their people belonged to ages past. It was a really special experience.
Also, on Sunday there was a musical fireside the missionaries in Rapid put together. The Zone Leaders headed up the project but we all had a part. The members here have some amazing talents in music and it went really well. Also, we(the Elders in Rapid) got to have a piece in the program. We sang "Nearer My God to Thee" and I think God was watching out for us because everyone said we sounded good...though I beg to differ, haha. It was a neat experience though, I've never sung in front of people before...though it was with 10 other missionaries.
The work has been progressing really well. We have between 4-7 people who are looking pretty close to baptism. Two of which we're going to commit with a date this week, hopefully they accept. I'm really excited. The Lord is blessing this area tremendously and we're working hard to keep up with all the work he is providing for us. May is looking to be a great month. And we do have another person committed at the moment too. A 14 year old boy, who is going to be baptized on the 16th of May. So, ya, things are going well.
I hope everything is going well back in the real world and that everyone is studying their scriptures daily!! It is so important. Sometimes it may be tough, put you just have to plant that seed that Alma talks about in Chapter 32 of the book of Alma, and as you do scripture study will not only become rewarding, but also fun and entertaining. In the mornings I now get lost in the stories of the scriptures. The Book of Mormon was definitely written for our time. I have a testimony that it is sacred scripture that was translated by the power of God through Joseph Smith. It is a powerful witness of the divinity of our Savior Jesus Christ and the great love he has for us. It also provides understanding of the great importance of the Atonement and the power it has to heal us: our hurts, our sorrows, our sins, our afflictions. I know that as we rely on the Savior and prayerfully and faithfully do our part, weak things will be made strong, and peace and comfort will be provided in times of hardship that are bound to come.
I love you all and hope you have a great week and are blessed with missionary experiences!
Love,
Elder Fitt

April 27 2009 Eight Months Have Flown By!

2009-11-24T10:53:00.001-07:00

Hello hello,
Its crazy how fast time flies. I've already been out 8 months, 1/3 of the mission, and it feels like yesterday I was heading for the MTC and it feels like 2 days ago I was reading my call letter. Weird. But things are going well here. I don't know where spring went. Thursday it was 85 degrees, then friday it was 35 and raining, then saturday it was snowing and we got about 2-4 inches in town. And all of sunday it continued to snow! The weather sure is crazy here. But fun, it always keeps you on your toes.
Thanks everyone for all the birthday emails and such, they were very much appreciated and unexpected, it really made my day. I wish I could email you all back, but I'm not supposed to...only immediate family members. I can write letters if I get addresses some how.
Anyway, the work is going great. We've been blessed with a large teaching pool recently. And out 8 year old investigator, Sayna, is getting baptized this saturday. I don't remember if I have told you already, but for a while we thought she would be a child of record baptism, but it turns out her parents aren't members, thus making it a convert baptism! Lucky us, so we're excited about that and she is really excited to get baptized.
We were blessed yesterday to get a call from an investigator who we haven't seen for 3 months. She had a baptism date then, but just disappeared. She said she wanted us to come back and that she still wants to be baptized, she was just having a hard time and had to fix some stuff. So we're really excited to start teaching her again and help her come unto her Savior.
Other than that, most everyone else is progressing well, we should have a few more baptisms lined up in the coming weeks, hopefully. So all is well. We've been playing tennis in the mornings. I had never really played it before my mission...sadly, it is way fun! But I'm not really good, so Elder Davis is learning me. This morning I got to kill off(send home) my daddy(my trainer) Elder Daly. It was kinda sad, I'll miss him, he's a great missionary.
Spiritual thought for the week. This past week, Elder Davis, Daly and I had a humbling experience. Earlier we had a tracted into a lady named Candy who had recently been fired from her job and was feeling pretty bitter and had negative feelings towards God. We were able to talk to her a while and calm her down and get her somewhat happy by the time we left. Well she said we could come back. So a few days later we did so. We were having a pretty good meeting with her and her friends, but her friends were kinda mocking her in the fact that she was even meeting with us. Eventually they left and she just started to cry. She felt dumb that her friends were making fun of her. She asked us to leave, but right before she did we heard her say quietly, "I hurt inside" and "I just want to feel peace." Earlier she had talked about how she had searched and never could find answers. On those notes we had to leave. We were heartbroken. We could see how much she needed the Atonement in her life. It can cure all pains, it can heal all sufferings. Though we weren't able to bring it to her, hopefully she reads the Book of Mormon and invites us back. But I can testify that the power of the Atonement is real. That as we come unto the Savior and ask for his help humbly, he will carry our cross for us. It doesn't mean that life will no longer be hard, quite the contrary, it means that no matter what happens, we will have peace, we will have joy.
I love you all and hope you have great week!
Love,
Elder Fitt

April 20, 2009 Hello From SD!

2009-11-24T10:52:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone,
This week was pretty interesting. It was transfers so a lot of missionaries came and went throughout the first part of the week, which made things pretty crazy, but fun. I got to visit with an Elder from my MTC district for a while, which was good, Elder Gregerson. He's from Orem, UT. But ya, it was good. 3 new missionaries came in, and we had one of them with us for 2 days while he waited for the transfer train to come back around to take him to Casper, WY.
His name is Elder Maurer, from Pleasant Grove, UT. He is a way awesome guy and an amazing missionary. We took him out for his first time tracting and he did great. Last door we knocked we got to teach a lesson and he got to place his first Book of Mormon, so he was pretty excited.
We were able to make some good progress with just about all our investigator's this week. We're gonna have a baptism in a week or 2, for an 8 year old investigator. She would've been a child of record baptism, but since her parents are both not members, it becomes a convert baptism. Her grandma takes her to church with her, so it'll be good. Then we got 2 new investigator's this week. Kinda interesting, we're teaching 4 late-teen native girls who all are ridicousl'y shy and quiet. They all want to be baptized though, which is pretty neat. Its just gonna be hard to make sure they have a testimony when they are so quiet. But the Lord is really blessing the work and I think we'll be blessed to help bring many into the waters of baptism this transfer(the next 6 weeks).
Also, my trainer, Elder Daly, goes home in a few days so he's been in Rapid with us while he waits. Its been a good experience being able to serve with him again. Its funny, when you're being trainer, many missionaries don't really like their trainer, but after they meet other missionaries, they love their trainer. That's how it was for me. He is such a great missionary and has an incredible testimony, its been a blessing to be able to serve with him again.
Well I gotta get running, I hope everyone is doing well, having their FHE's each week, having family and/or personal scripture study each day, doing their home/visiting teaching and are praying daily! Big list huh, but all these things will help strengthen your testimony and unity in the gospel, which is vital! Have a great week.
Love,
Elder Fitt

April 13, 2009 I Think Spring Might Almost Be Here!

2009-11-24T10:51:00.000-07:00

Hello!
Well I don't have much time this week to email. Some highlights from the week. Lately we have been working with a less-active family in reactivating them and teaching the eight year old granddaughter so she can get baptized. It turns out the 20 yr old or so son's girlfriend asked him if she could learn too and come to church. So after a week or two of trying to get in with her, we got to this week. Turns out her friend also wanted to learn and come to church as well! So we got to teach Josie and Tanie about the Restoration and they came to stake conference on sunday. So needless to say, we're pretty excited about them.
Umm, we got to participate in a Easter Program the young single adults were putting on at the School of Mines(a college in Rapid City). THat was pretty neat. An atheist attended and we got to talk with him and answer some of his questions and such. He took a Book of Mormon with him so hopefully he'll read it.
Last one, we showed up to stake conference on sunday and 1 of our investigators was there with her daughter, much to our suprise because we hadn't invited them to it. Apparently they came to the church earlier in the week to talk with the bishop, but he wasn't there, but a lady was, and told them to come back on sunday morning and catch him them. So they did just that. Her name is Cindy, and she said she really enjoyed conference. After it she got to talk with the bishop and was able to help her out with some financial aid in exchange for her helping clean the church once a week. She was really grateful. But the best part was she told us how since we've been coming over her husband, Augy(Augustine) has really been changing for the good. He's being a lot more open, happy, spiritual etc. and she was really grateful that we've been coming over and teaching them. It was a heart-warming experience.
Well that's all for this week, gotta run. I hope you all have a good week and share the gospel with your friends!
Love,
Elder Fitt

April 6, 2009 its April and There's Four Feet of Snow in My Backyard!

2009-11-24T10:49:00.001-07:00

Hello Everyone,
I hope you all had a great conference weekend! I know I did. I don't know if its just that I'm on my mission and listening more intently, but this was my favorite conference I've listened to. The talks were all inspiring, uplifting and seemed to have a sense of urgency I haven't quite picked up in the past. I hope we all apply their words in our lives and take the counsel of President Monson and study and restudy the talks when they are released in next month's Ensign. Its hard to pick a favorite talk, but one of the most stirring(like usual) was Elder Holland's talk on the Atonement. It seems like its always him who talks on the subject, and I wouldn't have it any other way because he is so passionate when he speaks. His love for the Savior is incredible and I loved feeling the Spirit so strongly as he spoke about what he loves most.
As for progress in the work, I think soon one of our investigator's, JD Martin, will have a baptismal date soon! This last week we invited him to be baptized and he said he felt like he needs to, but wants us to teach him more first. He was able to attend both Saturday sessions of conference and loved it; he took 2.5 pages of notes, he boasted to us. So I'm really excited about that, especially since we've been teaching him for 3 months now. Hopefully we can help him into the waters of baptism as he comes unto Christ and his Father in Heaven.
Other than that, I'm glad it chose to blizzard on Saturday instead of today, or else it would have been our 3rd P-day in a row stuck inside. Saturday's blizzard was pretty crazy, just about as bad as last weeks. But it was a blessing because we were inside most of the day anyway for General Conference, so it didn't interfere much with the work.
In closing, I hope you all heard Elder Perry's talk on member missionary work. His analogy was so true and accurate, on how members are the shepards and full-time missionaries are the search and rescue team. We usually only find those who are on the brink, or want to be found. But there are many others who will reject us, but not you, their friends. I know that the best way to find people to teach and baptize is through the members of the church. So please, pray for missionary experiences every day. Pray for the strength and courage to ask a friend, co-worker, or neighbor to hear the glad message of the gospel. As we have recently been instructed, one of the reasons we are here in this life is to build eternal friendships. I know, that as you make a constant effort to help those you know and come in contact with to find the truth of the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ, your Father in Heaven will bless you immensely and you will feel the joy of helping a child of God enjoy the blessings of baptism and the temple.
I hope you all have a great week!
Love,
Elder Fitt

March 30, 2009 Hello From Elder Fitt!

2009-11-24T10:42:00.000-07:00

Oh ya, has this week been nice. It started warming up early last week and its went to the 40's to 50's and has been in the 60's for 3 or so days now. Its nice to have some warm weather for a change, but 60 is a little too hot, maybe 55 or 50 would be good.
The other benefit of warm weather is we can tract houses without freezing our faces off! Apartments are alright and everything, but it gets depressing being stuck in a building which usually smells like alcohol and throw up, yuk. So it has been really fun being able to get outside and tract some houses again. We've been blessed with a lot of callbacks and potential investigator's this week. So hopefully has be check back on them this week we'll be able to make some progress.
As of now though the work is going a little slow. A lot of our investigator's aren't progressing too well, which could be out fault, or not letting us in. But we're trying. We were able to do some good service this week for people and just get out in the neighborhood and brighten people's days, which is good. Sometimes we harvest and sometimes we seed the ground...or in some cases break up the ground and remove the rocks, which gratefully isn't our task here like it was in Pierre.
I'm blessed with a good District though and another set of good Elders in our apartment which help make the work fun and interesting. Oh ya, thanks for all the letters from everyone this week, they were great...I'll have to try to find some time to write back...I'm bad at that. I don't know if my mom has been able to upload some of the pictures I sent her, hopefully though...I can tell I'm getting a little chubbier out here, not much though. So we've been trying to eat a lot healthier...which includes lots of fruit smoothies and just other healthy stuff. Its good though and I don't know why I'm writing all this, just kind of rambling on. Soo I hope everyone had a great week. The Church is true! Oh ya real quick. Yesterday in Priesthood I learned how on the west side of the Salt Lake Temple, the big dipper is carved into the face of the middle tower. And if you don't know, the big dipper points to the North Star, which is the star that would lead mariners as well as other people back home. It is a guiding star and helps you get your bearings to know where you're at as well. The symbolism is that the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ and the temple act in the same function, they help point others back home, back to safety and refuge, back to their Father in Heaven. And just like how there is only ONE North Star, there is only one Church that can bring us joyfully back home, and that is Christ's church.
Well, have a great week!
Love,
Elder Fitt

March 16, 2009 Its Been Warm in South Dakota!

2009-11-24T10:37:00.001-07:00

Hello From Elder Fitt

2009-03-10T20:50:00.001-07:00

Hi hi hi,
This week has been alright, I hope everyone else's was better. It was transfers week so it was really hectic, especially in Rapid City, since its one of the main hubs for transfers. But finally on tuesday evening I got my new companion, Elder Davis. He's from Oregon, and a pretty cool guy, just needs to speak up a little bit. Its been interesting since I'm pretty quiet to take the lead role a lot, but its helping me grow, which is great.
But ya, the week has been really slow. We did a lot of tracting and were able to get one new investigator named Alex, a 20 yr old or so native man who is kinda floating through life but wants religion in it. So we were able to deliver a pretty good lesson, he could have some prospects.
This is probably gonna be a pretty short email. We did get to attend a baptism for Chance Martin, an investigator of our Zone Leaders. It was a really good event, but kinda sad a little bit because the man baptizing him took about 7 tries to do it right...I was so glad I was able to do it right the first time, I was blessed. But either way, it was still good, and it has to be done right, since the Lord's house is a house of order.
Other than that we've been working hard, but not many people have been home. I sent a ton of pictures home so hopefully they will be posted somewhere soon.
Other than that things are going well, a storm hit us last night and is gonna be around for a while, yay more snow! But its good I guess, I'll probably miss the cold once summer hits.
Well I hope you all are doing well. Remember, when the going gets tough, don't forget to turn to the Lord. Without Him we are nothing. The other day we had an interesting discussion about obedience and how it is the governing principle of the universe basically. Probably got a little too deep for our own good, but it helped really put into perspective the idea that man is less than the dust of the earth because the dust obeys its creator. It has perfect faith that God will never change and thus it does exactly what it is supposed to. As we draw closer to the Savior and begin to align our will with His, we will see the blessings that obedience grants us in our lives and will be able to put all our trust in the Lord and not fear.
Well, have a great week everyone, and be an "example of the believers" everywhere you go!
Love,
Elder Fitt

6 Months!!!

2009-03-03T10:35:00.001-07:00

Hi Everyone!
GOSH, I hate these terrible library computers. I was almost done writing this letter than I get a '10 minutes left' warning pop-up and I close it and it closed my email with it...sooo lame.
Anyway, I'm just gonna have to make everything a lot shorter, I'm sorry.
The baptism was amazing. James is a great guy and had a lot of family and members there which made the event really spiritual. I was so blessed to be apart of this baptism. With our current teaching pool and the 4 new investigator's we got last week, I hope we can get at least 2 more baptismal commitments this week if not next.
The work is going great though. I was able to go up and serve in Spearfish again for 2 days. A storm blew in and covered the area in 4-8 inches of snow. We went to Deadwood and a member we visited there lives in the tops of the mountains there, so I got some amazing pictures of the area.
I know everyone wants to see some pictures, I would've sent some these past 6 weeks but the computers we use don't let us, so I'm sending them home to my family this week and hopefully they can upload some to somewhere...
Anyway, I'm grateful to be a missionary and be serving the Lord. Sorry to cut this short, but I love you all and hope everyone's week goes well!
Love,
Elder Fitt

Weekly Update from Elder Fitt

2009-03-03T10:34:00.001-07:00

Hi Everyone,
I had a pretty good week here. We worked a lot of finalizing things for our booth in the mall, which went pretty well. I'll try to send some pictures out next week of it(because they're on another Elder's camera). It was good for the church though; the mall was packed and a lot of people saw the booth. On one side we have the dvd Special Witnesses of Christ which is an hour long presentation of the testimonies of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve of various subjects regarding our faith(if you haven't seen it I'd recommend watching it for FHE). Lots of handouts, Book of Mormons, flyers, banners, slideshow of families in the Stake, the works, it was pretty awesome.
James Tracke, is getting baptized this coming Sunday, and he asked me to perform the baptism! I'm way excited. Though I wasn't here for his whole learning experience, its still awesome. I'll finally get to break in my baptismal clothes that have been collecting dust on my shelf for the past 6 months. Other than that we've been trying to contact less-actives, and find new investigator's, both of which are slow, but we have some promising contacts and current investigator's we're working with.
I'm not sure what else to report this week, I left my journal at home because I thought we'd be coming to the library later, so I don't remember all the cool things that happened this week. But its been good for the most part.
Spiritual thought for the week. I've been reading in Jesus the Christ lately, in the later chapters around the last week of Christ. Talmage discusses the parable of the 10 virgins, as well as the talents. Both of which touch on preparation as well as using the talents the Lord gives you and the magnification thereof. As I've been out here, in myself and others, I've seen talents that have been used and others that have been buried and have begun to grasp the reality of it. If we aren't grateful for what we have and use it to the best of our ability, the Lord will take it away from us, not because he's mean, but because He wants to humble us. As we submit to the will of the Lord and do all we can with all that we have, He will do the rest. Trust in the Lord.
I hope you all have a great week. The Church is true!
Love,
Elder Fitt

Hello from South Dakota!

2009-03-03T10:27:00.001-07:00

Hello Everyone,
I hope you all had a great week. Mine was pretty good. This week we had Zone Conference, its was way awesome. It was a 2-day thing, so the last half of tuesday and the morning of Wednesday we had it. I always love Zone Conference, we got taught a lot of great things and it helps boost the morale of the mission. Neat story, beforehand, the District got together for lunch at a place called Buffalo Wings and Rings. There was about 11 of us there, we all order a good amount of wings and such, and right after we finish ordering the waitress comes back and lets us know the man in the booth "over there" and is picking up our bill. Turns out is was a member in the 1st ward here in Rapid. Pretty crazy seeing how the bill was easily over $100. It was a great blessing and we were thankful for his kindness.
After Zone Conference I went on an exchange with Elder Potter, whose actually from Highland, UT. But I didn't know him. He's serving in Spearfish, SD which also covers Sturgis(where the annual biker road rallys are), Deadwood(a pretty sweet old western town) and Belle Fourche. He's an interesting guy. But the best part of the exchange, and Andrew is gonna love this, was we visited 3 Paraguayans! They're here in the States on a program from their University to work and learn and stuff. One of them is a member of the church, her name is Biera, and the other two, Jorge and Maria, aren't, but they're being taught. They had to have been the nicest people I have ever met, it was so much fun talking with them and at the end of the meeting we were able to go around and share our favorite scriptures from the Book of Mormon. They all have their own Spanish Copy of it. Anyway, they were way cool and will most likely be baptized once they get home to Paraguay in a
few months. Jorge wanted me to ask if you had been to the Avenue(but in Spanish) de Sacrmiento in Asuncion Andrew, I guess that's where he lives maybe? Anyway, it was great.
We exchanged back the next day. We were able to find some new investigator's this week, which is really awesome, and they all seem pretty promising which is exciting. James Tracke is still on date for baptism on the 28th which is really exciting and we have a few others who got pushed back until March. The work out here is great, hard at times but as long as we rely on the Savior he will make our burdens light and help us along the way. I've truly learned that as we humble ourselves and accept the Lord's will in ourlives we will find more joy and happiness. He will help us lose our selfish desires and have more love in helping our brothers and sisters.
I learned a powerful concept in Zone Conference, that I have probably heard in the past but haven't internalized. It is that if we pray and ask for things to benefit ourselves, the Lord often times will grant us our desires, but when we ask for things to bless us with so that we may help and serves others, the blessings come more numerously and abundantly. For example: In the mission we do a lot of studying of the sciptures in the morning. I have experienced for myself that when I begin my study and ask for knowledge and understanding of the scriptures so that through that knowledge I can bless the lives of my investigator's, the Lord as much more fully opened my mind to what I am studying as opposed to when I just ask for knowledge. I can be applied to all aspects of life and I know that as we apply this principle in our own lives that we will be blessed more fully and will be able to bless the lives of those around us.
I love you all and hope you have a great week!
Love,
Elder Fitt

Its Raining in Rapid City!

2009-03-03T10:25:00.000-07:00

Oh ya, raining not snowing!! I'm so excited, I'm tired of the snow. But it was neat 2 weeks ago or so, I saw a 'movie snowflake' that was perfectly shaped. From what I hear, that happens only when its really cold, which is probably why I didn't see any in Utah. Maybe, I don't know, but it was cool nonetheless.

Anyway, its been a good week. The rodeo has been in town and some of the Elders rode the mechanical bull, it was pretty funny. I didn't ride, since it isn't exactly allowed...but I didn't mind them doing it since the man running the bull was LDS and he was talking about the church and the importance of missionaries when an Elder would be on the bull, so it gave some good publicity for us.

It was a kinda slow week for lessons, but we did get to see some people we haven't seen for a while which is always good. We got a new investigator named Ken Brown, an African American guy, who was a media referral for a free bible. We delivered it to him and had a really fun discussion with him on scriptures in the Bible. We didn't bash which was good, He has a pretty open mind, but wants to make sure he doesn't get led astray. He'll probably be at church next week with his son, which is exciting. He's a really good guy and loves his family, which is always a plus.

The missionaries in Rapid City got together on Saturday and we "blitz'd" the sister missionaries area to help them get investigators. It was fun tracting with a different Elder and we had a lot of success, which is really exciting. We tracted into an Atheist woman, who was kinda bipolar in her religious beliefs. It was sad, she kep saying how one part of her wishes she could see her husband and kids and pets after she dies, but the other half says theres no God...and she wouldn't let us teach her otherwise. Just kinda sad.

Anyway, other than that things have been good. One of the AP's (assistant to the president) is staying in our apartment for the week. He goes home on Friday, Its really fun being around him because he's an amazing missionary and disciple of Christ. His name is Elder Johanssen and he's from Florida. What a good guy.

Well other than that, thanks everyone for the letters, and I hope I can get a mail key soon so I can get the letters that people sent to the sheridan lake address. I hope everyone is still reading the Book of Mormon, it is an amazing book and I grow to love it more every day. I know this Church is true. Yesterday at church we talked about apostasy/apostates and the importance of following the current leadership of the church today. I know President Monson is a prophet of God and that the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles are inspired men and as we listen to their council we will be able to succeed through the trials of life. I love you all and hope you have a great week!
Love,
Elder Fitt

Hello From South Dakoter

2009-02-02T16:44:00.002-07:00

Hi Everyone,
I hope everyone's week has been a great one. Mine has been pretty interesting for sure. The work is going pretty well, we have 5 people committed for baptism, which is pretty awesome. One fellow we just committed this week is a 20 yr. old native man who is really excited about the gospel. So we're excited for him. Another two are a great couple who plan to get baptized as soon as the woman gets divorced from her previous husband who ran away from her about 20 years ago (so she's having problems locating him), so they can get married. Another two are a mom and her daughter, who will probably get baptized this weekend or next, depending on how they are feeling.
Also, our district is setting up a booth in the mall here for a Saturday, which will 'advertise' the church. We aren't allowed to approach people, but if people come to the booth and ask us questions, we can say anything. So hopefully it draws a lot of attention and positive publicity for the church. The missionaries here are going to do it in shifts, having 1-2 companionships present for the duration of the day. It'll be good stuff.
Oh ya, we helped a less-active guy skin some deer, the meat of which he is giving to a needy family. It was pretty fun, but it made me want to go pig hunting so bad! Ah man.
Also, the Lord blessed us with quite a few new investigators this week. One of whom is golden! She is a 30 year old patrolling cop. We tracted in to her and after a couple of attempts to contact her she finally visited with us. Anyway, we taught her a lesson on the Restoration and it went really well. What makes her so golden is what she wants from a church. She said stuff like, "I want a church that helps me be a better person every day of my life." And, "All the churches I have been to have always left me feeling empty." (Void of the Spirit, bing bing bing). And many other things along those lines. She's a non-practicing Catholic who believes the Catholic church has a lot of problems, mainly focusing on the hypocritical nature of confessions and such. She is the first investigator I've had in whom I have really seen a sincere desire to change and become a better person, and its awesome (which may mean I haven't been doing my job too well in the past...) But I'm excited for whatever the Lord has in store for me.
As long as we humble ourselves and acknowledge his hand in ourlives and sincerely try to be better each and every day, the Lord will bless us tremendously and will carry our burdens. I know this to be true. I love you all and hope you have a great week!
Love,
Elder Fitt

First Week in Rapid City!

2009-01-26T14:33:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone!
I hope everyone's week has been good. Mine has been pretty crazy. First off, I got called to be District Leader for Rapid City and surrounding areas...pretty crazy. I'm over 4 sets of elders and a pair of sister missionaries, Pres. Cannon is also in my district. Its pretty humbling, I'm the 3rd youngest missionary in the district out of like 10 missionaries or somethin, so I feel pretty inadequate, but I know that who the Lord calls, he qualifies. So hopefully I will be able to humble myself so I can be strengthened by the Lord.
Well I didn't get into Rapid until Thursday evening. The whole next day we went to whats called Zone leader/District Leader Council. It was comprised of Pres. and Sis. Cannon, one of the AP's, and the ZL's and DL's from 3 of the zones. So about about 16 of us, basically all the leadership on the west half of the mission. It was an awesome meeting and really helped me out with what I can and will be doing as District Leader.
I'm loving Rapid though, and my new companion is pretty cool. His name is Elder Rigg and he's from Las Vegas. Dunno if I said this last time but he's only been out for 3 months now, so 1 transfer less than me...so we're a pretty young companionship.
We got to visit some pretty cool people so far, some recent converts who are way awesome and really excited about the gospel. We have like 4 baptisms lined up for the month of February, which is crazy, seeing how I haven't had a baptism yet. And its pretty crazy being in a ward again...so many people its ridiculous, just as I was getting used to being in a branch now I have to adjus to a ward again. Biggest difference is wards are a lot more independant, and branches tend to rely a lot more on missionary support.
But the work is great, its been snowing here like crazy, weird because last week it was 60 degrees in Rapid and now its about 8.Well that its for now, I'll have more to talk about next week after I've been in the area for a little longer.
Oh ya, last email I said you could use two different addresses for me. I was told wrong. Only the mission office one works(apparently we don't have the key for the mailbox at our apartments and the landlord won't give us one). So if you want to send me a letter only use:

2525 W Main St. Suite #311
Rapid City, SD 57702

Well, I hope everyone is doing well and is keeping up on their Book of Mormon reading! I love you all!
Love,Elder Fitt

Subject: I'm getting transferred!

2009-01-21T15:25:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone,
Yup, transfer calls came this Saturday and I'm getting transferred to serve in Rapid City! Pretty exciting. I'll be serving with Elder Rigg, who has only been out for 3 months, so it'll be pretty interesting. My new mailing address will be:
Elder William Fitt(duh)
614 Sheridan Lake Dr. #102
Rapid City, SD 57702
or
the mission office's address
2525 West Main Suite #311
Rapid City, SD 57702
Both work. Anyway, its been a good week. We got to visit our regular less-actives and read with them, which is always good. One, Rachel, who I've talked about before...answered the door without any pants on, it was kind of awkward...luckily her shirt was long, but it still was pretty weird, she covered up of course once we got in to teach, but still...
We got to teach Lynn Rouillard(a referral we've been trying to get to church and visit for a while) and her husband Bill finally. It was an awesome lesson and before we even asked them to read the Book of Mormon they were like, man I wanna read this, or something like that...pretty exciting. She wasn't at church because of the flu, sadly, and he works on the weekends, but they should be good for Elder Nelson and his new companion.
Got to do some service this week, helped a less-active guy with his house that he's remodeling. We helped him lay laminate wood flooring, which was pretty fun. We also helped him later on sand baseboards...not so much fun, but its always nice to do service! We also helped a member lady put together a crib, baby changing table and dresser that she bought...she fed us afterwards but dang, those things are confusing, especially when you're crammed in a little apartment, thankfully we brought Elder Moulton along, a senior missionary in the area, and he helped a lot. Directions just don't always cut it...
Other than that the week was kind of slow, Elder Nelson got sick one day so we stayed in so he could rest. But all in all it was a good week. And I'll be in Rapid on thursday, so if you were planning on sending a letter to me, send it to the new address, thanks! I hope everyone is keeping up on their Book of Mormon reading, and their reading from Preach My Gospel! I know that it will bless your lives and as missionary opportunities cross your path you will be more able to accept them and have the Spirit be your guide. Have a great week everyone!
Love,
Elder Fitt

Hello from SD!

2009-01-14T21:35:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,
If I learned anything out here so far on my mission...its that I will not live in the Dakota's once I get home! They're nice and all...but the wind is killer. Anyway, this week was pretty sweet.
First part of the week was pretty slow, up until Wednesday. Then we drove up to Eagle Butte(town on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation) and had a district meeting there. It was good stuff and we started an exchange. Elder Schoppmann came down to Pierre with me. He's an awesome Elder, really humble and hardworking, it was a privilege to serve with him. He's actually from a Navajo Reservation in Arizona, from a town called Page. He isn't Navajo, but his family has a ranch on the land.
Anyway, we had a lot of success together. We were able to visit a part-member less-active family who we never had contact with and scheduled a return appointment with them to teach their family. The husband is Catholic but didn't mind us coming back to talk about the gospel. So I'm excited about that.
Then we spent most of Thursday tracting because a lot of our regulars weren't home. First half of the day was fruitless, but the second half was awesome. We tracted into a former investigator, and she wanted us to start coming back and teaching her. She came to church this week, her name is Pat Hill. So that was way good.
Then we also tracted into a lady named Rachel who said she "wanted to talk to us" but had to clean up her house real fast. So we stood outside her door while she tidied up and were kinda scared...no one wants to talk to us. Turns out she was really genuine. She has been studying religion for a while, she's a non-denominational Christian looking for truth. We taught her the Restoration lesson(if you don't know what that all entails, read Preach My Gospel Chapter 3, lesson 1. Actually, I'm challenging you to read it, every family should have a copy in their home, its an inspired book and will really strengthen your testimony!) Back to my story, so we taught her the lesson and she asked a ton of really great questions, and when we asked her to read the Book of Mormon she told us how she always wanted to read it but never had a copy!! She told us she would study it out before we come back again and we asked her to pray about what she studies. She could be
really golden as long as she doesn't have any too farfetched ideas that turn her off of the truth.
Other awesome stuff happened in the week, Brother Gravatt told us some more sweet stories and 4 ways on how to torture and kill a man slowly that the Natives implemented on their criminals...kinda interesting.
Sunday was awesome. It was Branch Conference and President and Sister Cannon came. All the meetings were great and afterward we had potluck, yum. After all that President Cannon help a big meeting with all the leadership of the Branch, and us missionaries, and basically told us what he thinks the branch needs and how to fix it. He also really pushed the point that the branch needs to make use of their full-time missionaries, so hopefully the branch will want to become more involved in missionary work and reactivation work and so on. Things are really looking up, and from what I've been told, Pierre is one of the hardest areas in the mission, so its nice to come here first so I know how to deal with it!
Oh ya, Elder Nelson and Schoppmann swapped back on Friday, so I'm back with Elder Nelson, which is good too. Anyway, I hope everyone is doing well, is reading their Book of Mormon and will also take my challenge to read PMG Ch.3 Ls.1 "The Restoration." I know that if you do the Lord will bless you and your testimony will increase in the knowledge that the gospel is true!

Love,
Elder Fittpotluck, yum

What Happened to 2008?

2009-01-05T17:34:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone,
Man, this year flew by, especially the last 4 months. I hope everyone had a Happy New Years and stuff...we kinda did. Played some games and read a lot, because we had to come in at 5pm.
Anyway, the work is still pretty slow. It seems as though everyone is still in the vacation mode, hopefully that will change this week with school starting up again and such. The week went decently though, it had its upsides and downsides of course. We'll start with the downsides, heh. We were supposed to have 5, yes 5 investigator's at church on Sunday, pretty ridiculous number for Pierre. But, all 5 dogged us. Oh well. It was going to by Lynn, her daughter as well as Austin, Jace and Jace's cousin Clayton(who has sat in on 2 lessons now). But it seems some way or another they found an excuse to not make it, oh well, there's always next Sunday!
Well let's see, have some crazy stories from this week. First off, we got to meet with The Gravatt's again, the less-active family who always tells crazy stories. Turns out, Ivan, when he was in high school, was an Olympic level runner, I guess he said he ran a 1:47 half mile and a 4:48 mile, now I don't know what Olympic times are like...but I cannot picture this guy being able to book it that fast. But he didn't want to go to the Olympics because he wanted to be a cook instead. Also, he told us Mexico is floating on the ocean. Its like a woven basket and just floats on the Pacific and that Mexican's were brought over from Spain by the conquistador's to be their slaves. Haha, pretty crazy.
We also got cast out by some crazy guy when we were tracting. He opened his door and proceeded to tell us we were false teachers and the Gold Plates were a scam, because he had "researched" it on the internet. Then he pointed at his little Christian Jesus fish on his door and said "Jesus Christ, Be Gone!" And slammed the door, it was pretty awesome, but hard to not rebuke him for being so...so...unsmart? I dunno, it was funny.
I guess I did say I we had some good news too. That would have to be the fact that the holidays are over, we've been getting quite a bit of media referrals from the HQ in Salt Lake. The only problem is they're 160 miles, round trip, which really hurts the mileage budget. Oh well.
The work is still exciting and I love being a missionary. I've recently been reading from Jesus the Christ, and like Elder Ricks said in one of the letters that I got sent a while ago...once you pick it up you can't put it down. I've been reading it like crazy and loving every bit that I can understand (...man Talmage uses some big words that the little dictionary in our apartment hasn't even heard of).
Anyway, I hope you all have a great week, and I hope you all accepted my challenge to read the Book of Mormon. And if I didn't say every day, I'm saying it now, read it every day and the Lord will bless you for it and your testimony will grow. The church is true!
Love,
Elder Fitt

Pictures!

2009-01-05T17:33:00.003-07:00

Chrismas Email Update

2009-01-05T17:30:00.001-07:00

Hello Everyone,
I hope you Christmas' went well. Mine was, of course, a little different than usual, but still good. We have soooo much junk food now, its crazy. From packages and members and investigator's...its sickening just thinking about how much sugar is in the apartment. I'm thinking about giving it to some of our other investigator's...haha.

Anyway, it was a slow week. We only got to teach one lesson, and that was to Angelo. We did help Markata box some stuff up, she's moving on Tuesday across town, and we're gonna help her with that as well. But no one was home or was busy all week long with family, so it went by pretty slow.

I went to an opthamologist last week because Sister Cannon (mission presiden'ts wife) said I had to. Turns out I have a common problem I guess with my eyes where the oil glands in them produce a little too much oil, so when they mix with my tears to create the solution with coats they eyes, sometimes it is too thick. That coupled with the collection of dust and stuff in the air makes it easier for my eyes to get infected and is what caused my eyes to burn and hurt so bad. Anywho, fixing it is really easy and its just a matter of using really hot water when I clean my eyes every night to help loosen the oil and dust that gets in my eyes during the day. So problem solved(I hope)!

Highlight of the week was probably branch volleyball...haha, sad to say. It was a lot of fun and we had a good turnout. It got pretty competitive near the end of it and during one of the volleys I dove to get the ball and got a massive rug burn on my palm(the church gym's floor is carpet not hardwood). So that was fun, but I'm happy to say we won that match!

Oh ya, we did get a new investigator this week, which is exciting. Her name is Cora and has had some relations with Mormons in the past when she was raising her children. We're gonna visit her again this week and hopefully things progress well.

Also, our referral turned investigator Lynn, is really trying to make it out to church with her family but her husband has a big drinking problem, not to mention other things. But I'd like to ask you to keep her and her family in your prayers, she has a really sincere desire to come closer to her Savior and its really sad to see her husband stand in the way of it.

As the new year approaches I would hope that everyone would recommit themselves to come closer to the Savior. I know I will and I know that is what He wants. As we shape our thoughts and desires to things that He would have us do, our lives will be happier, we will be able to endure trials with more patience and fortitude and I know that the Savior will bless you for it. Also, I would like to commit you all to start reading the Book of Mormon all the way through again, or pick up where you left off. You can never read it enough, there is always something new you can learn from it and it will bless your life!

Anyway, enough of my challengings, I hope everyone has a wonderful week and stays safe in the weather and worries that surround this coming holiday!

Love,
Elder Fitt

A Very Merry Christmas from Elder Fitt

2008-12-22T19:35:00.001-07:00

Merry Christmas!
I hope everyone is doing well and that you all have fun plans for Christmas. We are spending the afternoon with the Branch President's family here, it'll be pretty fun. Other than that though, Christmas is pretty slow for a missionary since no one will let you in(or so I've heard).
Anyway, this week was pretty good. We got to teach Debby Trap again, this time about the Plan of Salvation. It was a good lesson and we enjoy visiting with her and her family. Now only if we could get her to church...(she lives out of town on the weekends on her ranch). Oh well.
On Tuesday we had Zone Conference. It was way good like always. At the end of it each companionship was assigned to give a short training on one person or aspect of the Nativity and how we can apply it to missionary work. It was awesome. We got to train on the innkeeper. And though he isn't directly mentioned in the Bible, we did our best. We touched on President Monson's address from the Christmas Devotional about how we need to make room for Christ in our lives.
We got to teach Cal some more, and Angelo as well. We read with both of them from the Book of Mormon. Hopefully it will strengthen their desire to read and pray about its truthfulness.
One of the zone leader's, Elder Wallace, came to Pierre for an exchange for a few days. It was a lot of fun and I learned a lot from him. He's from Boise, Idaho and is a hard worker.
We got to visit Rachel, our less-active lady, this week and read with her some more out of the Book of Mormon. But what was awesome is we got her to pray at the end of our visit!! I was so excited, when we first met her she told us flat out she wouldn't pray with us, and now she is, its great! The Lord sure does know what he's doing.
So we finally got in contact with Markata again, turns out she was in jail for 11 days this time...that would explain a lot. Anyway, we're helping her move this coming week, but she's staying in town so we'll still be able to visit her. Hopefully we can get her back on track!
Well this is kind of a shorter letter, but its time to get going. I want to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and hope that you will remember Christ in this season of giving. I heard a powerful talk yesterday at church talking about the greatest gift ever given, our Savior Jesus Christ, who gave his Father everything He has, his will. So I'd like to remind everyone that the only gift we can give to our Father in heaven is our will, everything else he already has and owns, but our will is our own and cannot be taken away. So as we submit our will to Him, I know he will bless us and lead us down the path to supreme happiness and joy. I love you all and hope you have a great week!
Love,
Elder Fitt

Prep Day Email 12/5/08

2008-12-16T14:55:00.002-07:00

Hello Everyone!
Dang its cold. Saturday night a big storm chased us from the west as we drove home to Pierre from Rapid City, and hit all day Sunday. Raw temperature was around -14 degrees with 30-50 mph winds...we didn't leave the apartment, and church was cancelled. It was pretty cold.
But the week was alright though. We got to visit some people, but not as much as we would have liked...lots of appointments fell through and Markata is still missing. We did get to visit some less-active members and help them out, which is really exciting. Its great seeing them progress back towards the gospel when they're so far off the straight and narrow.
We had our Branch Christmas party this week and we were able to get some non-members that attend our Branch volleyball nights to come, as well as some less-actives, it was good.
We did a lot of traveling this week. We received a referral to deliver and visit with a lady in St. Francis, a small town on the Rosebud Indian Reservation near the border of Nebraska, about 140 miles away from PIerre. So we traveled down there, and guess what...she dogged us, but we still dropped the video off. Elder Nelson had a leadership meeting to attend because he's district leader, so we traveled to Rapid City after going to St. Francis, another 150+ miles. On the way as we drove through Kadoka(you may recognize that name...that was where we got stuck in the hotel for three days because of a storm last month) the weather got really bad, almost to the point where I felt like I should turn off. But thankfully I was able to follow a train of cars out of the storm and then it cleared up. I did not want to be snowed in again in a hotel!!! Anyway, spent the next day in Rapid while Elder Nelson was in Gilette, WY for his meeting. I got to serve with
Elder Callor and Elder Moss. It was a good experience because they're both really good at tracting and I learned a lot from them. The next day we drove home because my eyes were acting up again and I had to go to the doctor to get some medication for them which I don't even think helped at all, but oh well.
And now its Monday and we're out of miles. Yeah, each set of missionaries gets a certain amount of miles alotted to them each month, and we have already used 1000 of our 1100, for the month because of all the traveling. So, we are going to have to walk everywhere we go now in the cold, its going to be fun...kinda, but its alright, the Lord will provide!
One of the great blessings of missionary work that I have noticed really strongly this week is that the Lord is always there to help you. As long as you're willing and are trying to do His will, He will help you accomplish your goal. I know this is true and am so thankful for it. And I know that as we put our faith in Christ, that we will be able to work miracles in the lives of those around us. Never doubt that! This gospel is true! I love you all and hope you have a great week!
Love,
Elder Fitt

Elder Fitt's Response

2008-12-16T07:07:00.000-07:00

Hi Mom,
Man, my heart sunk when I read your email. But then was lifted back up again when you told me of the spiritual strength the family had. The Lord works in mysterious ways, and I'm sure he needed Jen and that she was ready to go. I was glad to hear that Troy is dealing with it really well, I hope it pushes him into the church, I'm sure Jen would really love that.
We are so blessed with this fullness of the Gospel that we know what is waiting for us in the next life and that we can look forward to it with joy instead of fear. I think that's one of the amazing things about the church, that it is one of peace and joy, fear doesn't(or shouldn't) exist. And it is because of our Heavenly Father's love for us that we can trust in Him and acknowledge his hand in all things.
Well I love you mom so much, I hope you made it safely back to Utah, tell the family I love them!

Love,
Elder Fitt

Letter to Elder Fitt

2008-12-16T07:06:00.000-07:00

Hi There Elder Fitt,

I'm writing this at Grandma Ann's table in EDH on Sunday morning. Its been a very different week and I've been thinking for several days how to write this letter to you.

I guess I'll just tell you from the top. Last Monday Bradd and Ann were supposed to drive out to UT for Thanksgiving. I got a call from Julia in the middle of the day telling me that they weren't coming. Jen Gilbert had called Troy at work that morning complaining of chest pains and shortness of breath. He told her to hang up and call the paramedics and that he would be right home. When he got there, the paramedics were loading her into the back of the ambulance. They told Troy she'd had a seizure. One of the paramedics stayed at Jen's house with their week old baby, Jake Taylor, while everyone else went to the hospital. Grandma Ann went down to Jen's house to watch the baby while Bradd went to the hospital to be with Troy. A short while after arriving at the hospital Jen was pronounced dead. It was certainly a shock to everyone and it has been a difficult week for all. The autopsy showed that Jen died of a very rare condition called SCAD- Sudden
Coronary Artieral Dissection. Basically what happens is a small tear develops in the lining of the coronary artery. Blood leaks into the lining and creates a blockage that prevents proper blood flow, so although the method is different, the result is the same as a heart attack. This is a very rare condition and happens mostly to women between the ages of 35-40 who are pregnant or post partum. It is rarely diagnosed before death and there is not much that can be done about it. We all feel that Jen was prepared and ready to go and that it was God's will for her. The funeral was on Saturday.

Although it has been a very sad week, it has been filled with spiritual experiences. The outpouring of love and support from ward members both in EDH and in Jen's ward has been amazing. Troy has been literally overwhelmed by the the goodness of church members. He even wanted a blessing when Bradd and Kurt received them and it has been a great source of strength and peace for him. He is really stepping up to the plate and thinking about what is necessary to take care of the girls and the baby. The funeral was a beautiful, moving, spiritual experience. Many thoughts of Jen, of love, of family were shared. I had the honor of helping to dress Jennifer's body at the mortuary. There were about 6 of us there to assist. Before we began, we gathered in a circle and offered a prayer. Will, the spirit was so strong in the room I thought I wouldn't be able to breathe. It was a powerful physical force and it was amazing to experience. I know that Heavenly Father is
aware of Jen and her children and of our family and that He is watching over all of us and that no matter how difficult our challenges may seem, it will all work together for our good.

We all love Jen and we will miss her bright presence in our lives very much. But we are confident that she is still aware of Troy and their children and that she is watching them. Inspite of this tragedy we are sure their lives will be blessed. We are so grateful for the comfort of the gospel which teaches us that God watches over all of His children and loves each one. We trust in His wisdom and look forward in faith towards that perfect day.

Love
Mom

FYI

2008-12-14T19:17:00.001-07:00

Hi All,

If you could please keep Elder Fitt in your prayers this week, he has been having a lot of trouble with his eyes. We think alllergies might be leading to infections. He was at the doctor again on Saturday and must go back on Monday. He has been in a lot of pain and can't wear his contacts, or see to drive or do his other duties very well.

Love to all,

Gina

December 8, 2008

2008-12-14T19:14:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone!
Man time is flying by. I hope everyone is doing well and that you all were able to attend the Christmas Devotional with your non-member friends! It was awesome, none of our investigators showed up(darn it!) but a less-active came, Ivan Gravatt, the guy with crazy sweet stories. So that was good.
So we got a new investigator this week. Her name is Deby Trap, middle-aged women with a few children. Her husband lives and works on their Ranch in Midland, a ways out of town, so her and the kids live in Pierre during the week for school then go to the ranch on the weekends. We taught her about the Restoration and we brought up how there is prophets today on the earth and she was all jokingly "well the better getter to work then" ...ya, I think they're getting to work lady, haha. But she is really nice and hopefully we when we teacher her next the Spirit will really touch her heart.
We went up to the rez this week, Eagle Butte(In the Cheyenne River Reservation if anyone wants to look it up) because Elder Daly had to do the baptismal interviews for the Waters' family who is getting baptized on Saturday. It was a good trip, but the weather got pretty bad so we had to stay up there for the night, sleeping in the church. Man those floors are uncomfortable! It was good though.
We got to visit a less-active lady, Rachel, for a while. I think I have talked a little about her before, how she is living a lifestyle contrary to church standards and doesn't want to stop because its too much fun. Anywho, we got to read with her from the Book of Mormon...last time we visited she refused to read from it. It was great. When we left we assigned her to read some chapters and she said she would! She's changing and not even realizing it. She really is a nice girl, but I don't think she knows it. Its awesome seeing the Lord work in others lives.
Saw Markata this week too and taught her about prayer...then our next appointment she was missing again, and wasn't home all week. Might be in jail again, oh boy. Crazy people out here, that's for sure, but I hope she's alright, I can tell she really wants to change.
So ya, transfer calls were this week. Elder Daly is being shipped off to Rapid City to be a zone leader, and Elder Nelson will be my new companion, the Elder Nelson from Eagle Butte, who I have served with on exchanges a couple times...kinda crazy. What's crazier is his companion, Elder Schoppmann, has served his whole mission so far in Eagle Butte, for 9 months, and now he'll be training a new missionary there, which usually lasts for 2 transfers or 3 months...so he will have served in one area for a whole year, pretty crazy...but he loves it.
Anyway, I hope everyone is doing great. Sorry for not writing back to everyone who has written me letters, I'll get better at that. And since I'm not leaving Pierre my address will be the same:
Elder William Fitt
819 E. Broadway Ave. #B2
Pierre, SD 57501
Alrighty then, have a great week everyone, I love you all!
Love,
Elder Fitt

A PICTURE!!!

2008-12-13T14:10:00.001-07:00

No time to write, i'llwrite a letter to everyone this week. I'll upload a picture of my district though.

shown from left to right are : Elder Nelson and Elder Schoppman(missionaries from the rez) Elder Gillette and Sister Gillette(rez senior missionaries) Sister and Elder Moulton then Elder Daly and Elder Fitt.

love ya bye

12/1/08 update

2008-12-02T21:11:00.004-07:00

Hello Everyone!

Well its been a different week, that's for sure. We did a whole bunch of service. Helped a less-active member with some work who is renovating his home. We cleaned out old insulation in the walls, pretty nasty stuff. Then later in the week we helped Pauletta Carpenter, a member's non-member mom, paint her living room. Kinda nasty since it was a messy room where junk had piled up over the years and we had to clean it all out to get to the walls. But her friend, Rex, said he would pay us 20 dollars each if we helped her...which we said we didn't want so they instead took us out to a steakhouse and made us order the biggest prime rib they had there...oh dang. Man it was good!

We also helped out president Olson a lot this week. Helped him shingle the roof of his shed, frame the front part and sheet it. I'll attach some pictures of that so you can see. It was fun stuff and we got a few dinners/lunches out of it.

One cool thing this week. We were looking through some old investigator's who had dropped the missionaries 3-4 years ago. So we tried to visit some, and the last one, lived in an apartment that is always locked, so we just called her instead. And guess what...she answered, and not only did she answer, but she was excited to hear from us! I was shocked, and kinda didn't know what to say at first, I half-expected her to not even live at the place anymore. Anyway, we're going to see her this week and hopefully it would be good. She was a very far progressed investigator who had read the whole Book of Mormon and knew the church was true, but was having some difficulties with her marriage and kinda stopped investigating.

We saw Markata again and read 1 Nephi 2 with her, we're trying to get her into reading the Book of Mormon, it'll be a strength to her as she tries to stop drinking. We also saw Angelo this week and read with him in 3 Nephi 16. He loved it and commented on how he thought he could literally feel Jesus in the room, telling us what was written in the scriptures. He is way awesome, and we invited him and his family out to the First Presidency Christmas Devotional, which he said he'll come to. Ok, everyone, invite your friends, non-members and less-actives around you to it! It is probably one of the most non-threatening things you could bring them to, in my opinion. The Christmas story with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing...what would be better to help get someone interested in our church. So I would challenge each and everyone one of you to bring at least one non-member friend to the Christmas Devotional. Its on Sunday the 7th. Times vary according to
time zone...

Thanksgiving was crazy! We had 3 people invite us over to eat with them...man I was stuffed. I thought I was gonna die if I ate one more bite. But we got a ton of leftovers, so I'm happy. We went to a part-member's home for one of the appointments, and his wife's father was there(an old native gentleman) and he proceeded to talk our ears off for a while. It was interesting. He talked about how the white man stole the country and that its our fault that the natives are so lazy now and how he's going to go visit Obama personally once he gets into office to have him fix the reservations. Ya, crazy guy. But he was nice to us to its all good.

Oh ya, yesterday at church, it was awkward. Kinda glad our investigator didn't show, even though they would've not thought anything about it. But one of the speakers blasted a country song from the Pulpit, the "I'm proud to be an American" song, then proceeded to give a talk on every major war in American history. I know she tried her best to give a good talk, but being in the missionary mindset...none of it seemed quite appropriate for Sacrament meeting, I was squirming in my seat. Oh well, the Church is still True and we need to love and appreciate people where they're at. I know we're all growing and learning together!

Well I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving! Have a great week!

Love,
Elder Fitt

3 Months out! (minus 3 days)

2008-11-25T15:17:00.002-07:00

Hello Everyone!
Its already been 3 months, well in 3 days it will be. Pretty crazy how fast time flies. I can't believe Thanksgiving is this week! Its going to hurt though..we have 4 families that want us over for dinner, my stomach is going to explode.
So this week was good. We got to help out Scott Olson a little more on his shed. Since we finished the truss's last weekend, we got to put them up on Monday, so we built the basic skeleton of the roof, it was pretty crazy. And it was getting dark when we were finishing, we're just lucky it stayed up!
Funny story, we tracted into a lady who had Alzheimer's...needless to say she had about 3 different conversations programmed into her mind that all led into each other so it was pretty funny. She was a sweet old lady though, and it we left after being there a while and hearing about 10 times how she could "never steer a vehicle, I wonder why that is?"
We got to teach Angelo twice this week, on faith and Alma 32, which was really good. He enjoyed it a lot...now we just gotta get him to church and stuff. But he's really busy at work and takes as many shifts as we can, so he's seldom free on sundays : /
We taught Cal some more. We read with him in 3 Nephi 11 and explained a lot of about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and answered a lot of his questions. But he doesn't want to leave the Methodist church. And he told us he was going to ask his preacher if Jesus really did come to the Americas...oh boy. But we're going to invite him out to the First Presidency Christmas Devotional, hopefully he'll be able to feel the Spirit strongly there.
On Tuesday we had district meeting, which was great. And afterward Elder Nelson who is serving in Eagle Butte, stayed down here on exchange. We had a good end of the week together and its always fun having a new companion for a while.
Ya so we visited the Gravatz again, the guy with the crazy stories. Apparently he used to be a Catholic Monk when he was younger...a Catholic monk who lived in an episcopal church(church of england i believe) that has been around since before Christ and has a crown in the backroom with golden snakes adorning it in the shape of 666. Heh. Hes a cool guy.
We also got a new investigator, his name is Austin and I guess he's been taught before by other missionaries but just moved to Pierre recently. So we started out with the Restoration to review. He's awesome and knows the importance of prayer and committed to reading from the Book of Mormon more, hes in Enos at the moment!
On Saturday we exchanged back in Eagle Butte, 2 hour drive away from Pierre, and attended a baptism there of a mother and daughter Elder Nelson and Schoppmann had been teaching. It was a nice service.
I don't remember if I told you all last week, but the family that I helped teach when I was up on the rez in Eagle Butte, the family of 6, they committed to baptism on December 6th! And the oldest son, Wyman, wants to go to the temple as soon as possible. Its so cool, they're an awesome family and I'm really excited.
So we hadn't been able to find Markata for a while, but apparently she was in jail for a while for some reason...we were worried about her. But she's fine, which is good. We talked to her and found out she isn't smoking any more! Which is awesome, and she's trying to stop drinking, which is way good.
We're trying to find new people to teach but everyone out here is still pretty comfortable with where they're at. Its hard trying to show people being complacent is not a good thing! The Gospel often times requires you to be uncomfortable to you can grow from the experience, and progress and have a better understanding of your Heavenly Father's love for you! I have really gained a testimony of this on my mission so far. It constantly requires you to go out of your comfort zone and though it is hard sometimes, the Lord blesses you for doing so and you are able to make a difference in someone's life.
Well I hope everyone is doing great and that you all have a happy Thanksgiving!

Love,
Elder Fitt

Elder Fitt's News 11/17/08

2008-11-17T18:34:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone!
Sorry for the sloppy email last week, I didn't have much time to write it. The library at Rapid City where we were at had a 30 minute time limit on the computers and other people were waiting in line, oh well.
But we made it back to Pierre safe and sound, which is good. We almost hit a deer though. It was about a foot from the wheel well on my side when we swerved away, it was pretty scary seeings how we were going about 75 and the deer was running full speed. It just sprinted right out in front of us, gutsy beast.
We saw Markata that evening. And it was sad because I guess she had a bad day and spent most of it drinking. But she told us that she had only had 1 cigarette in the past 6 days, so she's improving on that part of the W. of W., just not the alcohol part. But we weren't able to see her at the rest of the week and her apartment lights are always off...so we think she might be in jail or something, which isn't good.
We saw Cal Nelson later in the week, the older Methodist gentleman, and taught him about the Plan of Salvation. He thought it was pretty neat and was intrigued about the 3 kingdoms of glory concept of our church. We recommitted him to reading parts of the Book of Mormon and he said he'd really try this time, which is awesome.
But most of our appointments fell through this week which is really discouraging. We never go to teach Buckley, and the other investigators we planned to see where never home. We did get to see some less-active members..which is always fun.
One family, the Gravatz, is always interesting. He's a native(though he looks white) and was raised on a reservation. He always tells us crazy stories of his life, and this week we got to hear how on a trip to Paulsen Montana he went hunting in a forest with 3,000 foot tall trees and shot an elk that had 8,000, yes, 8,000 pounds of meat on it. I wish I could have seen that elk! Freakin huge!
He also talked about his run in with an archangel that had 11 foot tall wings and it would wrap its wings around people and turn them into a pillar of salt. So ya, interesting stuff.
We got to help out Scott Olson some more on his shed. We helped him build trusses for the roof, and that was really fun. I always end of learning a lot working on his projects, and its fun doing some good ol' manual labor; he feeds us too!
But the week in a whole was kinda depressing as of missionary work. Its hard to stay positive when people don't keep commitments and flake on us, everyone flakes on us out here! But I'm trying to stay positive. I know that the Lord can help us through our trials and if just exercise our faith, we can make it through any challenge, any pain, any heartache that befalls us. I know Jesus Christ is my Savior, and that our Father in Heaven loves us so much that he provided a way for us to return to live with him.
I hope you all have a great week. I'd encourage you all to seek for missionary opportunities in your lives. Ask your Father in Heaven to help you in this endeavor. Support your local missionaries, I know they're trying to do their best, but a lot of times they can feel forsaken by the members, and that should never be the case. MEMBERS ARE KEY TO MISSIONARY WORK. So please, help bring others unto Christ, it is the most important work we can do on this work, according to the Prophet Joseph Smith, and I know the Lord will help you if you try.
I love you all and hope you have a great week!
Love,
Elder Fitt

Elder Fitts cRaZY week...

2008-11-12T19:24:00.001-07:00

Hello Everyone!
Well I've had a quite interesting week. And I don't have my journal with me so I know I'll leave some stuff out. The week started out good. We finally were able to get a hold of Angelo again and we got to teach him. We decided to just review the Plan of Salvation, but it was awesome because he remembered most of it (we had him put all the pieces to the puzzle together which outline the plan). He's a great guy and loves having us over, but is just really busy with work. Hopefully we'll be able to see him more often.
I don't remember if I told everyone last week, but Ramone dropped us, which was lame. We did get a new investigator though. His name is Jace, a native in his 20's. We taught him the restoration and it was good stuff. I'm rushed on time today so I bet I'm leaving stuff out.
We also saw Markata and committed her to follow the Word of Wisdom, which was awesome! She has problems with smoking, drinking and coffee, but she said she is willing to stop all of them, and we'll help her along the way, so its good stuff.
Well like I said last week, Elder Daly and I were going to go to Rapid for a day and a night so he could go to some District/Zone leader council meeting or something. And we left Wednesday night for it. Well...a big storm was rolling in that night and we were told to just try to beat it. Ya, that didn't happen. About halfway to Rapid the road conditions were too poor. Winds around 50 mph blowing snow like crazy, maybe 30 feet of visibility. So we had to stop off in the a little town called Kadoka. ANd I only have 2 mins left. Sooo, to make a long story short. We were stuck in Kadoka for THREE DAYS, IT was terrible. The interstate didn't open for that long. So we finally drove to Rapid on saturday. And have since been hanging out with the Zone Leaders and going on exchanges with them. Its been awesome and I got to watch my first baptism out on the mission.
I haven't been home for like 5 days though so I haven't been able to write to anyone. Sorry! Well I gotta go, I'll write more next week. These Rapid City computers have a 30 min time limit. Have a great week everyone!
Love,
Elder Fitt

Nov 3 2008 Email

2008-11-03T10:17:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!
How was your Halloween? Mine was pretty dull...missionaries have to go back to their apartments once it starts getting dark, unless they have an appointment, which we didn't. So it was a boring night, and no little kids trick or treated us! Of course...I don't remember having the nerve when I was 8 to trick or treat an apartment building.
Daylight savings time ended...that extra hour of sleep sure felt good, especially since I haven't been doing too well recently...well ever since I got out here I guess. I haven't told you all because I didn't want my mom to freak out, heh. We were told in the MTC to not report any illness until it was under control.
Anyway, ever since I got out here, about twice a week my eyes would get really red and veiny, and burn like the dickens. At first I just thought it was my contacts irritating them, or something else. And it always went away the following day. But this week it got really bad. For three days my eyes were totally bloodshot, burned like crazy, and felt like I had a handful of sand in my eyes day and night...and let me tell you, it did not feel very pleasant at all, not at all.
I tell you all this because I learned something from the illness. Before this week, I relied on myself to get better. And that seemed to work alright...but it kept coming back. Well this week I just couldn't handle it, and I asked the Lord to help me. And no, he didn't immediately heal my eyes and I was cured, instead he kinda said to me, "You dummy, you have a companion who is here to support you, you have your mission president and his wife. Have them help you, that's their job." So, I did that, and after trying a few medications that didn't work, Sister Cannon told me I needed to go to a doctor, which I did. The doctor was great and prescribed me a heavy duty zirtec like drug called xyzol, as well as some antibiotic eyedrops to muscle out the infection.
Well it worked and my eyes are back to normal, to which I am very grateful. I tell you all this because it was a humbling experience for me and a learning experience. We aren't here in life to make it through by ourselves, we are here to help others and in turn get help from them. Man is not a solitary creature and though I sometimes try to be...my Father in Heaven reminds me that I need to rely on others sometimes. Also, it gave me a lot of gratitude for the the rapid advances in science and medicine that have occurred since the coming forth of the gospel. The Lord will provide for us, but we must first put forth an effort ourselves before he'll act. He could just as easily told the infection to go away and I would have been fine, but he wanted me to learn and grow, I needed that trial of my faith, to stretch and humble me, to allow my testimony to grow.
Anyway, as to what happened this week. Well we taught Markata some more and soft-committed her to baptism, which means we asked her that once she finds the things we teach her to be true, will she be baptized, and she said yes. Which is great, she is progressing well but she needs to come to church again, she wasn't able to this week..and also read the Book of Mormon.
We haven't been able to get a hold of Judd at all, which is a bummer, or Christina for that matter. Grr...sometime soon.
Buckley contacted us which was really good, we had no idea what happened to him. Apparently he moved out of his mom's house and got his own place in Pierre so we can teach him more often now. We taught him about the restoration and he said he would read the Book of Mormon, and he committed to baptism! So next time we'll see him we'll bring a baptismal calender and plot out the steps necessary to get him ready for baptism, which is really exciting.
Not much else happened besides that teaching wise. A lot of our appointments fell through this week and we didn't get any callbacks from our tracting efforts. We did get to help out Scott Olson again in his yard. We worked more on his shed. We put supports and flooring for the second story, it was fun and another good learning experience. Its fun working there because he knows a lot and kind of teaches us a little bit as we go along, which is neat. This week he's putting up trusses(sp?) and we'll be helping out with that.
Elder Daly is leaving for Rapid City on wednesday for a district/zone leader conference, and Elder Maynes, a zone leader, will be coming out the next day to stay with me for a few days. I'll be in charge I'm told..which is going to be a new thing for me, so hopefully I'll do alright. Then Elder Maynes will go up to Eagle Butte, the indian reservation I served on for an exchange, and Elder Schoppman will come to Pierre for a few days and we'll be together until zone conference on the 11th. So its going to be an interesting week coming up.
Well I wish all the best for you. I know that the Lord will provide for us as long as we are doing our part, and by doing the small and simple things he asks of us, great things will come to pass!

Love,
Elder Fitt

Letter from Elder Fitt !!!

2008-10-31T18:06:00.002-07:00

10.10.08

Family!

I thought you might like getting a letter, even though my handwriting is atrocious! So ya, Pierre is pronounced pier, which took a little getting used to. My area is rather large and it goes into so of Nebraska, but there are only 4 sets of missionaries in it. Two sets of elders and two sets of senior missionaries. The other elders in the district are serving on the indian reservation. The members rarely feed us. We do have a family which feeds us every Tuesday. Then we average one more meal a week every other week so the pickins are slim.
Well Mom had a lot of questions so I'll try to answer them all. So in a normal day we get up at 6:30 (hopefully) do a little bit of exerciseing (sit ups, push ups, jump rope, stretches). Then we eat breakfast, have personal study for an hour, then companion study for an hour. So we're finished with all that by 10am. For the rest of the day we either tract, work on re-activation, or teach investigators. We do a lot of service because tracting isn't too efficient here. Most of the day people are either gone at work or can't get together. I'm eating decently and taking my multivitamins every day! (Ithink I've only missed one day so far) Most of the members out here are strong, but don't help too much with missionary work. They're great people though!
One person I really enjoy is an ol' codger named Stan Olson. His family and his deceased brother's family make up like a third of the branch. Crazy huh? Well he's retired and he basiclly just puts around all day doing service for everyone in the community. He's way cool and I've learned a lot from him. I have helped him with various service projects.
More about my companion . . . well, he's jolly. We get along pretty well, but there are those annoyances that exist, like he sings ALL the time in the car and it drives me crazy, but I need to learn not to get bugged by it. He is cool though.
The weather is starting to drop in temperature, usually getting into the 30s at night and capping around 60 in the day. My coat seems pleanty warm. Good choice Mom! I do have access to other cold weather accessories.
It was great to hear about Gentry and AShby's antics. I miss them so much. I loved Gbob's pictures. I laughed for a good minute or two at the one of why we shouldn't do drugs. It was awesome.
I'm sending a picture of my MTC group in the letter. Maybe you can scan it and put it on the blog. I'll try to email a few pictures on Monday as well. Its sure to be better than nothing.
Well, I better close this up. I love you guys so much. I'm grateful for this opportunity to serve, learn and grow. I've already learned so much its almost been overwhelming. I have gone through some of the highs and lows of a mission already. I have learned how to pray earnestly and have grown so much closer to my Father in Heaven and His son Jesus Christ. I love this work and though it is hard and is really trying at times, I know the Lord will provide. Well, keep safe, don't move out of the new house before I get back!

Have a great week!
Love
Elder Fitt

2 Month Mark!

2008-10-27T23:05:00.001-07:00

Hello Everyone!

How's it going? Ya so as of today I've been in the mission field for 2 months, crazy huh!? I think so! The time has flown by. The saying out here goes "the days go by slow(sometimes) but the weeks go by fast, and months fly by." And its too true.
Anyway, we had an alright week. We got to do a lot of service helping out Scott Olson and other relatives in the Olson family. We helped pour and shape a driveway, which was a new experience for me and was pretty fun. Did a lot of landscaping and backfilling behind a shed that President Olson built, so we moved a lot of dirt. We also helped him build a retaining wall, which is always fun...lugging 80 lbs cement blocks around again always leave you sore, but satisfied. And it is getting a lot colder here. This morning it was 20 degrees or so, but we've had some nasty winds for the past week which chill to the bone, and it isn't even very cold out yet. But I haven't started wearing my jacket yet...that could be my problem.
A lot of this week was spent trying to find people to teach because many of our appointments fell through again. We got a new investigator this week, Christina. She was sorta skeptical about our message, but warmed up to it and when we gave her a Book of Mormon she said, "Oh I always wanted one of those, I wanted to see what is in it." So that's was exciting, hopefully she'll have a desire to learn more at our next appointment.
We ran into some stoners when we were looking for previous investigators...it was pretty funny, but I don't think we'll go back anytime soon.
Another funny story, we were tracting and a guy started talking to us for a while. He said he had talked to missionaries before, and didn't want to hear our message, but wanted to chat for a while. And about halfway through talking to us he stops and says to me, "You know what? You look like Donny Osmond..a young Donny Osmond." Now I don't think so..but he couldn't get it out of his mind and found it very amusing, he even made his wife come look at me to show her. It was funny, but a little awkward at the same time.
We also got to visit a less-active member in the hospital. She's about 2 months along in a pregnancy but was having trouble with it and we comforted her a bit and gave her a priesthood blessing, which is was a neat experience. The next day, however, we visited her and it turns out the doctors had to remove the baby. They said it had no chance of living and if it stayed, she probably wouldn't be able to recover, and could die from some internal bleeding she was having. Needless to say, it was heartbreaking talking to her the next day, and seeing her in such despair about losing her child, but she already has two little kids and it seemed to strengthen her love for them and increase her desire to be a better mom, which is good.
We taught Gloria some more, but she doesn't seem too interested in baptism. Ramon blew us off again, doh! We got to run into Buckley this week, and comfort him through a tough time he is having in the home. His mother is kicking him out of the house and he has no where to go. So we showed him the dvd "Finding Faith in Christ." And he said that helped a bit. I hope he's alright, he hasn't contacted us since he got kicked out.
Another interesting tracting experience. We knocked on this old fella's door, who said he was really busy but WANTED to talk to us, so invited us to come back at 7pm. Now, that is a very unusual occurrence in the mission field, and usually when it happens, the person is a minister of some sort for his religion and wants to mess with you. But, it turns out he was just a nice old guy who said he wanted to talk to us because he felt he should, and everyone should at least give us a chance. He let us teach him about the Restoration, and he didn't disagree with anything, and we committed him to read some in the Book of Mormon, and he said he would like that. But then he told us we wouldn't convert him because he's been a Methodist for 72 years, but we told him we weren't here for that...we just wanted him to pray. So he said he would, it was a great experience, he is a great guy. BTW, we did teach Markata this week and she soft-committed to baptism, meaning she said she'll be baptized when she finds what we teach to be true. Also, we didn't run into Judd at all, which was a bummer!
Then on Sunday, we had the primary program, which is always fun. None of our investigator's showed up but President and Sister Cannon came to teach in a combined Relief Society and Priesthood meeting, which was awesome. They are such great people and feel like a pair of grandparents to me. I have a great love for them and it is always a great experience being with them.
Well, it was a good week. Spiritual thought...hmmm, Have faith! We were listening to "Lectures on Faith" and like we've been taught all our lives, faith is foremost. But listening to the lectures is wonderful, they expound on the necessity of faith, and remind us that it is by faith that everything in the universe is made possible. Man I wanna keep writing about some of the stuff I've learned out here..but I can't explain what the people said...so just go listen to lecture series by Truman G. Madsen about the Prophet Joseph...and you won't be disappointed. Or read the talk about the Atonement by Cleon Skousen. Phew...its all good stuff and I'm learning a lot. Here's another point, learn learn learn!!! You're never to old to learn, and as we teach in the discussions...the reason we came to earth in the first place was to obtain the things that God had that we didn't have in the preexistence, namely a body and knowledge (experience). We have a body, so now we need to get as much knowledge as possible. Anyway, I've talked long enough. I love you all and I hope you have a great week. The church is true!

Love,
Elder Fitt

Week Five/area ONE

2008-10-20T09:28:00.000-07:00

Well, its been an interesting week. First off, anyone who had written me in the past week or before that...you've all been written, so expect letters some time soon, they got sent out today.
Alrighty, well last time I wrote I told you all I was serving on an Indian Reservation temporarily. Well, I went back home to Pierre last Wednesday, after we had a district meeting, which is where all the missionaries in our district get together and teach each other (we're supposed to do them every week, but since the 2 places where missionaries are in the district are 2.5 hours apart, we only do them once a month). It was good stuff.
When we got back to Pierre Elder Daly and I visited Markata, a callback (someone they met tracting earlier that week), and she was home..remarkably, and let us in. We taught her about the restoration and she was extremely focused on every word, and she would stare whoever was speaking straight in the eye, it was intense. After the lesson we asked her if she would offer the prayer. She did, and she just broke down, and expressed how she had been having a hard time, and praying earlier for some help. And how she had forgotten that we were coming over and how greatful she was that we came and helped her learn more, and that she wanted to learn whatever he (the Lord) wanted her to learn from us. It was awesome. We gpt to visit her later in the week and show her the video on the Restoration and she said it was really helpful in explaining more what we had taught, so she is excited to learn more.
We got to do some service for a member in the branch, Scott Olson again. He is making a shed, I don't remember if I have talked about this already, and we helped him build the retaining wall around it, which took a while and was pretty tiring..toting around 80 lbs cement blocks is quite a work out, but it was good stuff. Service is always awesome.
So this week had some disappointment as a lot of our investigator's didn't show for their appointments, like Ramone. And the lady named Kara is no longer an investigator, her father said he wouldn't allow her to be taught anymore, so that's lame.
But we did get a new investigator, Buckley. He's a native who has led a pretty sad life. Him and his sisters were forced to be adopted, because their mother was too drunk all the time to take care of them. So they got placed with a family who abused them physically on a weekly basis. I won't go into detail on what he talked about but all I can say is that it broke my heart. And because of it he has become a very timid person, and he says that he is afraid of people. But he is way nice and what's awesome is that he trusts us implicitly. He wants to learn and grow, and wants some friends, he's a pretty lonely guy. We got to teach him about the Plan of Salvation and he thought it was good stuff and we invited him to church but he wasn't able to make it for some reason we haven't found out yet.
We got to help a memeber in the ward move as well, which is always good, service is good stuff. The highlight of the week was definitely Sunday. We had two investigator's show up, Markata, with her 2 five-year-old children, and Judd, a tracting contact.
Markata enjoyed it, but her kids were giving her trouble so she had to leave during Sunday school, but she said she wants to come back next week and she'll find a babysitter.
Judd is interesting. We actually tracted into his fiancee(I can't put accents in) earlier and were trying to contact her one day and instead he answered the door and wanted to hear what we were about. He told us how him and his fiancee(Rian) had sobered up recently, gotten off of drugs, got their own apartment and two jobs and how they're getting married soon and how greatful he was for all of it. He said he hadn't really ever been to church but now he feels like he needs to go. So we got him and I sat with him during Sacrament meeting, he had a ton of questions, but did his best, even sang during the hymns and everything. It was good stuff. He attended sunday school too, and I kinda smacked my head when the teacher said, "Today we're learning aboutn the 10 lost tribes of Israel." DOH! But he still enjoyed it and even answered some questions, correctly!, even though he has never really been to church before . He was like..."its all common sense, we just read about it.." he was a neat guy. Just a sidenote...on the mission, bringing investigator's to church is way stressful...you're praying and hoping that nothing too extreme will be taught and NO FALSE DOCTRINE will be taught...its scary some things members say and you got to hurry and try to correct it to the class, or to the investigator personally so he doesn't get a wrong impression. Needless to say, a little false doctrine was preached..but no damage was done.
Next week he said he was going to bring his fiancee to church with him and stay for all 3 hours instead of just the first 2, which is awesome.

Well that's about it for now, keep sending letters and emails, they're always welcome. I love you all and thank you for your support. One thing I've learned out here is to be grateful for what you have...there are people out here who have had some crazy lives and live in such disarray it is crazy to even think about...so be thankful for what you have and tell your Heavenly Father. We have been told one of the biggest sins of this generation is that of ingratitude...I know I am guilty of it at times, but thats why we have the atonement and repentance. I love this gospel and this opportunity I have to serve, it is way awesome. Soo...get out and serve!(And feed the missionaries in your area, they appreciate soo much...I know I do, now if only the members here will feed us more than once a week....)

Love,
Elder Fitt

Week Four/area One

2008-10-20T09:23:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone!
Phew, its been a long week. Sorry I didn't email yesterday, but it was Colombus day(and Native American Day) s othe libraries were closed and we couldn't email.
So where to start, its been a crazy week.
The first half of the week went by fast. We did a lot of tracting and ran into some interesting characters, like a 100 year old woman who "likes to sleep." She was pretty funny. Then we ran into a old methodist man who's best friend is mormon, so we talked to him for a while and he asked us questions. He was really nice and I enjoyed talking with him a lot.
We taught a lady named Kara that we tracted into a week or 2 ago. She's a little cooky, and probably in her late 20's. Seems like she's had a traumatic life. But it was great teaching her about the Restoration and when we told her about the Book of Mormon and how Christ visited the Nephites she was all "I didn't know that happened...well that makes sense." So she was really receptive to what we taught her and she said to come back next week and teach her more.
We got to do some service for a member of the ward, Scott Olson, who is the 2nd counselor in the Branch Presidency. He is a great guy. He's building a shed in his back yard as well as a 20-step set of stairs to his front door. So we helped him set up the framework for the stairs so he could pour cement into on Thursday(we helped him on Wednesday). I think he said he needed about 17 yards of cement for the shed and the stairs.
But on thursday we had tri-zone zone conference! It was awesome. We drove to Rapid City for it with Elder and Sister Moulton, a senior couple from Provo, Utah, who are really funny. They took us to Wall Drug, in Wall, SD which is "world famous" for its free ice water. It was funny.
Well at the tri-zone we got to hear from Elder Jones from the 2nd Quorum of the Seventy, and he was awesome. He was way enthusiastic and taught us so much about teaching with the Spirit. It was way good. I also ran into an Elder Scott Henry, who is from Cameron Park, CA. I knew him a little from stake activities back in the day so we chatted for a while and it was neat talking with him. He goes home in few months I believe.
After zone conference, I got sent on an exchange with Elder Nelson from Layton, UT, up to Eagle Butte, and Indian reservation for 6 days. Its a long exchange and I go back to Pierre tomorrow, but its been awesome. For those of you who haven't been on a reservation, just imagine a small town of a couple thousand, full of drunks, trailers, and small houses. Its a pretty little town but its out in the boondocks. Oh also, a lot of rules don't apply on the rez(reservation). Like you don't need a driver's license or insurance on your car, etc. It's crazy.
Every morning on the rez we do service for 2 hours picking up trash because all of the natives are either asleep, wasted or at work. So you can really visit anyone, except for the few white people here in the mornings. Its been pretty bitter cold up here because its been kinda stormy, so picking up trash in 30 degree weather w/out a coat(Because I forgot it in Pierre) wasn't too fun, but it was good being able to serve.

Geez, there's too much to talk about and this letter is getting longer and longer by the minute.
Next...we've been teaching a recently reactivated family's children, 2 of which have been baptized and one that we're working on now, Xania, who is almost 8 years old. The family is the Norris's and they're a funny family. They have a little 3 or 4 year old girl named Isis, but everyone calls her Grandma. She is probably the cutest little girl(excluding Ashby) that I have ever seen in my life. I wish I had a picture. She's adorable, and calls everyone mom except for here dad, who she calls gog. She'll go around and pull on your shirt saying, " Mom mom mom mom" and then point to something, its so funny. So I'm officially a mom now, haha.
Well we've been fed a lot on the rez which has been really nice and the members out here are really nice. Its a small branch.
Well we've been able to teach alot of people out here and there's 2-3 baptisms scheduled soonish, which is great.
Now to the climax of the week. A family(The Waters) of 6, a mom, and 5 kids, ages ranging between 13 and 23, moved up to Eagle Butte in may, from Modesto. They're natives and are an extremely close family. Well one of the sons plays football and it just so happens that the Branch President out here is the coach of the team. So he was able to get the family to come to General Conference, well the mom said she'd go. And that morning she told he kids, "I'm going to church, and you guys can come if you want." And they all came! And then this week they all came again! They have a great love for each other and for Heavenly Father.
Well anyway, President Inu(a polynesian guy with a native wife) invited us over, as well as the Waters family to have lunch after church. He made the best seafood I have ever had. There was pounds upon pounds of shrimp there, fish, crab, lobster, squid, octopus, mussels, you name it he had it. Oh it was delicious and I'm still craving it. But after lunch we got to teach the family the restoration. They all listened really well and participated a lot, sharing experiences where God has blessed them in their lives and how they have grown closer to him as a family.
I could write 2 more pages of our lesson, but I don't have time. Anyway, we committed them to reading the Book of Mormon and all of them said they would, pretty enthusiastically as well. They're so awesome and I'm said that I have to go back to Pierre because I can see them being baptized really soon, that'd be 6 baptisms! Anyway, it was an amazing experience teaching them and feeling the Spirit.
I've made this long enough, but I'd like to thank my Heavenly Father for this opportunity I have to serve His children. I have learned and grown so much and this work is great. We listened to a talk, called the Mortal Christ, by Jack R. Christensen(or something like that). The talk was amazing and I'd recommend listening to it, but one thing that he emphasized that really hit me hard was he said, most sincerely, something in the effect of this. "I came to the realization that I don't want to be the causine of Christ's suffering in Gethsemane." Meaning, his relationship with Christ had become so personal, so full of love and trust, that he himself couldn't bear the thought of causing the Savior pain and sorrow as he atoned for us. So with that he said he determined to no longer add to the drops of blood for the Savior to suffer for us. He had a change of heart and did not want to sin anymore.
I thought it was so powerful and it really made me think about my relationship with Christ, how I do love him so much and am thankful for his Atonement, how he suffered for me personally, as well as everyone else. How he knows me and can help me in my struggles as well as you. He his my Savior and I love him, and am so greatful for my Father in Heaven for allowing his son to be the Redeemer of mankind.
Again, I love this work and my call to serve. I hope all you are helping the missionaries where you live further the work of the Lord.
I love you all hope you have a great week!

Love,
Elder Fitt

P.S. Because of the exchange, I haven't been able to get to people's letters that have been sent within the last week or so, but once I get back to Pierre I'll get right on it!

Week Three/Area One

2008-10-06T09:27:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone!
This week has been great! First off, General Conference was amazing to say the least. There were so many good talks, and though it is hard to pick a favorite, one would have to be President Uchdorf's talk on hope. It was so powerful and had so much stuff in it. President Uchdorf is such a stud, heh, he has some really great talks. But you were all there(I hope) so I won't talk anymore about it.
This week went pretty fast, probably because we kept ourselves busy. But, basically all of our lessons fell through this week, which was disappointing. Either the people weren't there, or they found something else to keep them busy, or they had to go to work 'unexpectedly. Oh well. All of our callbacks fell through as well, which you get from tracting, except one!!! It was our first callback since I've been here that hasn't fallen through, and we've had at least 15. The guy's name is Ramon(accent above the 'o'). He grew up on the Indian reservation, or the 'rez'. He's a nice guy, and not a native, or doesn't look native. We taught him the first half of the Restoration and then he had to go. But as he was walking us out he told us he felt the love we brought, and just felt good about what we were teaching. So he seems pretty golden to me. He's had a hard life and I think we're teaching him exactly what he needs to hear.
The rest of the week was full of tracting, and visiting less-active members of the church, in efforts to get them to come to General Conference. We invited probably about the six or so that were home or let us in, but none of them showed to any session of Conference.
We had the opportunity to visit with a less-active family, the Freestone's. They're a couple probably in their 30's with 2 little girls. Brother Freestone has been a member all his life, but I'm not sure if his wife is. Anyway, they were really great people, extremely nice and hospitable. They said they believed the church and call but the wife said, "I'm not a church going person." So they just don't go to church. Hopefully somewhere down the line we can instill in them a desire to go to church. Their little girls go sometimes because they like going, maybe that will help spark a desire in their soul to attend as well.
We taught Angelo the Plan of Salvation this week, and he loved it. He believes everything we teach him which is awesome, and said it was great actually knowing about the Plan and how much our Father in Heaven loves us. We didn't talk about baptism this week, it didn't feel right. Hopefully this coming week he'll be ready to accept a baptismal committment.
Well not much else has happened this weel. We've basically had to start from scratch since I got here, in a difficult area, because most everybody is already content with their own religion and aren't willing to learn more about our church. But we're working hard and trying our best to get inside people's house and spread the good word of the Lord!
I love you all and am grateful for your support. Have a great week everyone!

Love,
Elder Fitt

P.S.
I'm not sure if the correct address was given out to everyone to mail letters to. So I'll relist it:

Elder William Fitt
819 E. Broadway Avenue #B2
Pierre, SD 57501

Sorry for the trouble...the mission president gave out an incorrect address the first time around...silly mission president.

Week 2 in the mission field (9/29/08)

2008-09-29T22:57:00.001-07:00

Hello Everyone,
First off, thanks for the emails and support, its great! Well this week went pretty well. We ran into an interesting character earlier this week. His name is Joe and he called us up and asked us for "just one interview." So we met him at Burger King, because he was out roaming the streets. He seemed not all there, and Elder Daly wasn't so sure if Joe is accountable. Anyway, we answered all his questions and bore our testimony of the truthfulness of the gospel and why we go to church. It was a good experience, I hope we see him more often because he said he was just really lonely and wanted someone to talk to.
We haven't gotten any member referrals yet since I've been here, and when I arrived in the mission field there was only 1 progressing investigator...so we've been out finding people as much as we can. We've been tracting, trying to reactivate less-active members, contacting previous investigator's etc. And have had about 10 callback appointments fall through. So it has been a frustrating week in finding new people to teach. We did get the opportunity to teach some less active members some lessons and invite them out to church, but nobody made it.
The only lessons we taught to a investigator was to a lady named Gloria. She's probably in her 60's and seems to be getting a little senile. She has been receiving the lessons from the missionaries for several months now I believe. But she asked a question that led us straight into lesson 3, or the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It was a good lesson and we focused on the importance of priesthood authority and the necessity of being baptized by it, because that is one of her main struggles. We tried to commit her to baptism afterward but she said she didn't want to rush anything and that she'll think about it. Oh well.
Our other investigator, Angelo, missed his appointments this week because of work but hopefully we can talk with him today. He seems close to baptism, so hopefully we'll be able to teach with the Spirit today and help his testimony grow.
Sunday was nice. It had been 2 weeks since I had partaken of the Sacrament, since last week was District Conference. And when you're on your mission, at least for me, the Sacrament is a pick-me-up even more so than off the mission. It was a good meeting and afterward I had the opportunity to participate in a blessing of the sick for an elderly lady. Her and her husband are a senior missionary couple from Ohio who were on their way to Salt Lake City for a family history mission. The day they left the Sister broke her arm, and then on Sunday she was feeling sick as well so I had to the opportunity to take part in that and it was pretty neat. It so great to help others and serve, its definitely one of the best parts of the mission.
Well this is a shorter email because nothing too exciting happened. Ooh except last Monday there was a CRAZY lightning storm. It was awesome, lightning was striking about every 6 seconds on average, it was intense, and lasted for about 45 minutes. It was pretty sweet.
So on that note, I'll close with my testimony of service. I know that as we try our hardest to look for others in need, the Lord will bless us, and as we help them through their struggles our capacity to love will increase and provoke in us a desire to serve everyone! Our church is a church of action, so we need to get out there and serve, serve, serve. I know the Lord will bless our lives and those who we help. In Preach My Gospel it gives a list of Christlike Attributes that everyone needs to develop. I'd urge you all to work on the attribute of Charity, which is the pure love of Christ. Serving others is a great way to do so and I know that as we try to increase our Charity we will draw closer to Christ and He will help us and strengthen us in our lives. I love you all and hope you have a great week!

Love,
Elder Fitt

P.S.
I'm not sure who knows, but I'm only allowed to email back my immediate family. So anyone who emails me who doesn't fall into that category and would like me to write back, give me your mailing address, I'd be more than happy to write : )

Week One/Area One

2008-09-22T12:05:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!
Its been a crazy week. Last Wednesday we took a plane to Rapid City, South Dakota. The flight was only an hour and 15 minutes long, and somehow I managed to get a seat next to a member of the church, it was cool. As we flew to SD, he pointed out a bunch of the trails and landmarks that some of the handcart companies took. They sure trekked through some pretty desolate areas.
Well when we arrived the mission president, President Cannon, picked us up with one of his AP's, and 2 of the office elders. So we went to the mission home, and had a really good lunch and spent the rest of the day learning about the mission rules, bearing our testimonies, getting interviews and napping. That evening we were assigned our areas after we had a little spiritual pow-wow. As you know, I was assigned to the Pierre District. Pierre is the capitol of South Dakota, only because it is in the middle of the state. It is definitely not a large city at all. Its population is 15,000...so its smaller that good ol' EDH. The Missouri River, I believe, runs through the middle of it, its a cool river.
Anyway, on Thursday we jumped in the transfer train (a big ol' van with a trailer) and started our journey to our respective cities. Pierre is only 2 hours away from Rapid City so I had the quickest drive of the lot. Some of the elders had 14 hour+ drives, and the elder's who were driving the transfer train were going to be driving around for 3 days! The mission is huge. Well I arrived in Pierre and met my trainer, Elder Daly. He's from Mesa, Arizona and is a cool guy. He's been teaching me well. We visited some people that day and did a little bit of tracting. The people here are very nice for the most part, and are willing to talk for a bit even if they don't let you in. We visited a Native American guy named Angelo Horse, and after answering some of his questions from a previous lesson, Elder Daly committed him to baptism...but Angelo was unsure of some things so we committed him to setting a date for baptism next time we came, and he agreed to that. So that's pretty exciting.
The rest of the week we tracted and visited the less active members, or part member families in the area. There are a ton of them. One family that stands out is a member, named Candy, and her non-member mother, Pauletta. Apparently the missionaries have been visiting Pauletta for several months now, but its hard to get lessons in because she doesn't like formal lessons, so you gotta squeeze them in when you can. But she feeds us a lot and well, so we're willing to visit whenever we can. They are a crazy family though, they live in a trailer. Like half the town lives in trailers it seems, it was a pretty big culture shock to me, and I'm still getting used to it.
But the people are friendly, though most of them are really kooky. Oh, apparently Big Mike Andrus served here and he was the AP. He was a trainer for Elder Johanssen, who picked me up (is that worded weird?)! So it was cool talking about that for a while. And Evan Fox, who lived in the Cameron Park area in California served in this mission as well. He just went home though about a week before I got here. Pretty crazy.
Well this letter is already too long...but I'm gonna write more...so if you're getting bored feel free to stop reading, it won't hurt my feelings.
The rest of the week we tracted and visited LA's (less actives) but didn't get much teaching in, we were unlucky. Saturday however, was District Conference. All the branches in the Pierre District (we're in the Pierre Branch) come to Pierre for a 2 day meeting, like Stake Conference. But its a little more important in a way, because the person who you get your temple recommend interview from is the Mission President, President Cannon. And District Conference only happens every 6 months.
So there was dinner that night then an adult session. We got to help out with the preparation and had a chance to visit with the members. The members out here are awesome, they're so strong in their faith. Some of them had to drive over 3 hours to get here. Pretty committed! I had the opportunity of bearing my testimony at the start of the meeting, which was good stuff. Two elders who are serving in the Eagle Butte Indian Reservation, which is up north, came down for the conference and stayed with us at the apartment. They're cool fellas: Elder Schoppman, a hick from Arizona, and Elder Nelson, a pretty cool guy from Utah (Provo area somewhere). They got assigned to be traveling Elders, and we're their back up. That means if anyone anywhere in the district has someone for them to teach, they'll come...which means they could end up driving 7 hours for one teaching appointment! Its pretty crazy.
On Sunday we had the last bit of district conference, with the general session. Afterwards there was a potluck, which was really tasty, and we got to take home the leftovers...about 20 pounds of food, it was awesome. Later that night we went to Candy's place again and had dinner there and tried to sneak in a lesson, but Pauletta wasn't in the mood and hadn't read what we asked her to.
Well that takes me to Monday, today. I think I wrote too much and the only person who read this far was my mom...haha.
I'd just like to close the letter with my testimony that I know that this gospel is true. I know our Heavenly Father loves us and cares for us and through our families we are greatly blessed. Jesus Christ is our Savior and by our faith in Him we can be cleansed from our sins and have the opportunity to live with our families forever in God's presence. I know the Book of Mormon is the word of God, I've grown so close to it since I've been out here. I challenge all of you who are reading this to start reading the Book of Mormon again if you aren't already, to pray about it, and to finish it by the end of the year. I know that if you do our Father in Heaven will bless you with a knowledge of its truthfulness through the Holy Ghost and you will have a greater love for it. I read the whole book while I was in the MTC and had an amazing experience and I want all of you to have that experience as well. I know we have a living prophet on the earth today, who leads and guides us. I don't remember where...it may have been a talk a by a general authority, but it said that the words of the prophet are more important than the scriptures. FOLLOW the prophet, please, and I know that if you do he'll help you have a happier, more successful life. I love this church, I love the people out here in South Dakota and I am so grateful to be out here on this mission, serving the Lord and His children.

Love,
Elder Fitt

P.S.
The other day I was reading in Alma during the war chapters that involved Captain Moroni. If you get a chance, read his epistle to Pahoran, and then Pahoran's response back and the actions that follow. The faith and love these two brethren have are amazing and they are wonderful examples of dedication, long-suffering, kindness and faithfulness that we all can learn from.

P.P.S.
Dang...I wrote a lot. By the way, I have an hour for writing and reading emails, so if it is easier for some of you to write emails, then go for it, but I won't respond as quickly to them. But letters are still preferred since they are more exciting and more fun to read, given that they come in intervals and not just on preparation day.

P.P.P.S. My mom says if you want to send her your email letters, she'll print and mail them to me.

An email from the Mission Presidents Wife:

2008-09-18T09:43:00.001-07:00

Elder Fitt will be serving in Pierre South Dakota His companion is Kevin Daly. Pierre is the capital of South Dakota. He will receive good training in Pierre.

721 East Wells Apt B2
Pierre South Dakota 57501

Love,
Sister Cannon

Week Three/MTC

2008-09-16T15:30:00.005-07:00

Here's Elder Fitt's final email/letter from the MTC... now the real work begins! YAY for William! Let's all be a BIG, loving family of support and WRITE him lots and lots of letters that are uplifting and geared towards working hard and being an obedient missionary!!! He'll appreciate it more than we know.... or at least I know some of you know how it is to get mail on the mission. It makes the hard times not so hard when one knows that there's so many people out there praying for you and those that you're looking to share the Gospel with.

Hi all!
This email is going to be really short.

We didn't get a p-day this week since we leave tomorrow so I'm squeezing this in during my laundry time. Anyway, this last week has been great, been learning a lot and I'm feeling pretty comfortable in teaching the first few lessons.

We leave tomorrow morning at about 6 am for the Salt Lake airport to be shipped off to our various locations. We spend all the rest of Wednesday at the mission home with the mission president I believe, or his wife and they prep us for the next 2 years. Thursday we'll be shipped out to our area. So that's it for now, I'll be sure to write more in my next email and tell more about what has happened.

Reminder, if you missed it...I'm leaving the MTC, so if you've been writing me letters, my address will be changing soon, and you can use the mission home address I gave some of you a while back.

I'd like to ask everyone to please send me written letters, not emails. I only have 1/2 hour on the computer on my day. If I spend all my time reading letters, I won't have any time left to write to you all. Beside which, I really appreciate receiving the mail. I can re-read the written letters during my spare time and they really help to boost morale.

Anyway, thanks for all the support and all the packages and goodies, have a great week everyone!

Love,
Elder Fitt

Week Two/MTC

2008-09-11T01:56:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone!,
Thanks for all your letters and packages and what not, they've been awesome.

Well to get into everything, this week has had its ups and downs. It started off pretty lame because I got this nasty virus that was going around the MTC and have had a really bad cold/chills/aches and occasional fevers for about 4 days. But I got some medication a few days ago and I'm feeling a lot better, thankfully. It is difficult to concentrate when you're sick.

Well lets see, lots has been happening, between studying, teaching, learning and loving- its been a rush. I've had a lot of awesome experiences though. One was with a man who I telephone from the referral center. I was doing confirmation calls (making sure they received what they ordered from the church). He had asked for a bible and when I talked to him he said he did and that he loved it and was reading it every day and night. He was so excited to read about the gospel and he wanted to know more, so I gave him the necessary info and got to bear my testimony to him, it was a neat experience.

What else...we had a elder from our district go home because of some issues before the mission, it was sad but necessary. So every, keep yourself worthy all the time!

We had a fireside on Sunday and had some random district president in the MTC talk to us, it was good, but the best part of that evening was probably the hymns. We get to sing hymns about 30 minutes before firesides and devotionals to get the spirit flowing, heh. We got to sing "Bring the World His Truth"(Army of Helaman), it was awesome. Then that followed with "How Firm a Foundation", all verses. What a powerful hymn, especially the last verse. Then afterwards we got to watch the church movie "Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration." Its one of the movies they show at the Joseph Smith Memorial building. It is such a powerful movie and testimony of this man and I am so grateful for him, his example and his dedication to the Lord.

Well we're studying Lesson 2 at the moment, or the Plan of Salvation, and it is really fun to teach and study. Its a real privilege to do so. And yesterday we had the opporunity to practice teaching it to a member who volunteered at the TRC. She was awesome and really did a good job playing the investigator's part. I felt the spirit so strong as we got to center our lesson around the Savior and His atonement. It is such a powerful message of comfort and joy and it was awesome being help to help this lady with her needs even though we were teaching to a character she was playing. I love missionary work.

I know this has been a long letter, but I have one last experience to share that is really dear to my heart. Last night we had the great opportunity to hear from President Uchdorf and his sweet wife. At first I was excited but not ecstatic, because I don't know him all that well yet. But Sister Uchdorf was really funny and cute and has a pretty thick accent. She told us to have courage and "not be spiritual weaklings!" But President Uchdorf's talk was the single most powerful talk I have ever listened to in my life. I wish I had a video of it so you could all watch it. Look for it if you can, maybe the MTC posts videos of the devotionals.

Anyway, he talked about a whole range of topics ranging from humility, to diligence, to managing our time, to our purpose and everything. There was so much in it I only was able to take notes on about half of what he saying, it was all so good. Anyway, some of the gems he said was "don't speak with eloquence of the mouth, speak with eloquence of the heart" and "knowing something by heart is not the same as knowing something with your heart." He focused a lot on teaching by the Spirit and teaching to people's needs, because that is the mission of Preach My Gospel. Theres a lot more really good quotes and I have them all in my journal so you can read it later, but I want to end with my favorite quote. I want to preface this by saying, I know we're told not to tell cast our pearls before swine...(not saying any of you are swine), but this moment is one of the most special moments of my life, and I wouldn't trade it for anything. Well anyway, he was talking about the power of our calling and the authority of it. Then he talked about how this same power that we have Jesus himself gave to His twelve apostles when he was on the earth. The President Uchdorf made a most powerful connection and told us that we are literally "the extended arm of the quorum of the twelve." Right at the moment I felt like I was lifted up in the air by the Spirit, I felt like I was floating above my seat. It brought tears to my eyes and I knew that what he was telling me was true.
I have a new found love for this great man and I know that he is a prophet of the Lord. I know the Brethren and President Monson are all prophets and they do have a very special witness of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Treasure their words and their counsel. It comes straight from God. I love this work. I love being a missionary. I am so grateful for this calling.

Anyway, I have 30 seconds until I get kicked off.

HAVE A GREAT WEEK!

Love,
Elder Fitt

Week One/MTC

2008-09-11T01:54:00.000-07:00

Hello All!

I don't know whose email addresses were correct when I sent this so email me back the family's correct email addresses.
Anyways, how is every one? I sent you a letter today so it looks like you'll be getting this first. So, my first week of the MTC was great, I went over some general stuff in the letter so I'll go into more details right now.
Awesome experiences...well there were a lot. My district is really cool and we had a chance to do a District Fast for a sister in our district who was wanting to go home. We sang a lot of hymns together then all got a turn to tell the sister why we loved her and why we needed to stay (there are 12 of us in the district). I felt the Spirit really stong. It was awesome. It was also cool because I didn't feel hungry at all. And later that day we had some gym time and I probably ran about 2 miles, and I wasn't even thirsty after it. It's amazing how the Lord will bless you when you are doing the right thing.
We had a great speaker at Sunday's fireside who is the missionary services director, Robert Swenson I think, or something like that. He spoke with a lot of power and conviction and got me excited for the work.
Probably one of the coolest experiences was the day we were fasting, we had an opportunity to team teach our teacher, Bro. Vallett, the first discussion, with 6 of us elders. Our goal was to find his needs and help him with them. And by the end of the lesson, he was blown away and laughed as he told us we helped him with a need he didn't even realize he had. Then right afterwards he told us to go outside and bear our testimonies to someone outside.
Elder Whisler and I found this solo elder and went to bear our testimony to him. He was an Elder who was called to serve at the MTC and I guess had special needs. Anyway, after we bore our testimonies, and were walking away, he called to us in his really soft voice and asked if he could bear his testimony as well. And he bore the sweetest, most simple testimony I have ever heard, and he shed a few tears too. But I felt the spirit so strong and was so grateful for the experience, because I knew that we brightened his day and he brightened ours, it was awesome.
A lot more cool stuff happened but there's so much that I can't remember it all. We listened to a really cool talk Elder Holland gave at the MTC in 2000, were he basically pored out his heart to the missionaries and got the most riled up I've ever seen him, he was shaking the podium and hitting it, he was yelling and he was crying, and it was because he kept saying, "My mission meant EVERYTHING to me." It was an awesome talk, and was really inspiring.
Anyway, its about time for me to go, I just wanted to tell you all I love you and hope you are reading your scriptures and are praying everyday! Keep it up!

Love,
Elder Fitt

P.S.
Feel free to starting forwarding these emails to everyone else, and feel free to write me as well!

PPS My mailing address is:
Elder William Fitt
MTC Mailbox #120
SD-RAPI 0917
2005 N 900 E
Provo, UT 84604-1793

I can receive mail at this address until I leave for SD on the 17th of September.

...Farewell Elder Fitt...

2008-09-11T01:32:00.000-07:00

...adios...ciao....au revoir... tschüs...пока....tot ziens...Family & Friends at Elder Fitt's missionary farewell!!!

The beginning of a new adventure!

2008-09-11T01:00:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Elder William Fitt's Forum!!! YAY! This blog is going to be a posting of his weekly letters and random pictures... so we can come look, read, and enjoy the work and spirit of an amazing missionary!

Elder Fitts mailing address for the time being, this can change with transfers, as some of his areas could be up to 17 hours away by car from the Mission home...

So let's give will LOTS of support when he gets out to the field and send him some letters!

Elder William Fitt
C/O the South Dakota Rapid City Mission
2525 West Main Street, Suite 311
Rapid City, SD 57702-2443