Molis Family Website

Yesterday Adam Gregory Carbine was born.  He is 7 lbs. 19inches and has a bunch of blond hair.  The census is that he is a “little Steve”.  He looks a lot like Camille and Tyson…Amy too…but he is definitely Carbine. They also say that he has a cute dimple in his chin.

I’m in Costa Rica and have only seen pictures.  So if you’ve seen little Adam and want to add how cute he is you can leave a comment.  If you want to add pictures you can write that in the comment and I’ll send you my email address.

Doesn’t she look awesome for just having a baby?!?!

Thanks for sending me these pictures Mom!

Kristi

Hello from Vidalia, GA! Well this week has been yet another amazing week! This past Tuesday we taught a family that we had tracted into about a week before. There were six in the family. They have definitely been prepared for us. They were really receptive and the spirit was really strong when we taught them the first lesson. They had come from some church that was very, very restrictive and had a lot of gossip. For example, the women had to always wear dresses, and if you didn’t you were kicked out. There were multiple things, but when we told them different things about our church, they sounded happy.

The wife especially liked it. It was her birthday and when the lesson was over, she said that this was the best birthday present she has ever had. It was awesome! I was filled with exquisite joy! That’s the best part about being a missionary! We’ve talked to them about twice since and asked them how they’ve been doing and they’ve been reading, unlike the majority of our investigators. The wife, Debbie, said that she had been lying in bed and she heard, Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and she thought some one was saying it, but no one was around, she heard it three times. That made me
think of the voice that came from heaven three times after Jesus Christ had been crucified, in 3 Nephi 11, and I gave her that to read.

Tonight we are going to commit them to be baptized on the 27 of October, Me and Elder Crane had both prayed for a date and came up with that day. There was a total of six in that family and they’ve all been prepared.

We also had zone conference this week as well. It was really good, there was a lot of information given and I hope I can remember it all. We talked a lot about finding new people. I am so very close to being done with my training, all I have to do is finish my reading in the B.O.M. and I’ll be done. We had Bro. Josh Fulmer interviewed that day and it went well.

This General Conference was awesome! I especially liked the last two talks on the Saturday afternoon session when Elder Jeffrey R. Holland gave a great talk on the Godhead and disproving the trinity. And Russell M. Nelson’s talk on the Book of Mormon with the bible. I wish we could’ve had one of our investigators there that believes in the trinity. We tried getting all the investigators we could but only Hattie came to all of them.

Hattie is the other one with a baptismal date; she smoked again, so her baptismal date has been pushed back to Oct. 21. I also really liked the priesthood session, lots of amazing talks.

And this last Sunday morning at 10:00 we had Josh Fulmer’s Baptism! All went well and he only had to go under once. He had his step father-in-law baptize him and the second councilor confirmed. It went really well and the spirit was especially strong during the confirmation. That was both mine and Elder Crane’s first baptism, and we’ll have many more to come.

I hope all goes well with y’all. Love y’all! Until next week!

-Elder Molis

Here in Georgia, we’re starting to see the fruits of our labors. Josh Fulmer is going to be baptized on the 7th of Oct. He drank a glass of tea so we had to push it back. It’s going to be at 10:00 in between the sessions of General Conference.

We have been talking to a lady that’s about 51 years old, she’s in the ghetto and she is one of those too good to be true investigators. She accepts almost everything and loves it when we come by. We just need to make sure that she knows and understands what we’re teaching her. She has a baptismal date of Oct. 20th. She is going to be a good member to have because she talks to a lot of people.  She got Betty to come back to church and one other.  She keeps inviting people out to church.

We had five investigators at church yesterday. Things are really starting to progress. This last Thursday we went tracting and the very first house we got to we knocked and she just invited us in without us even saying anything. I asked if there was a man in the house, so she called in her husband. He has the deepest voice I’ve heard in GA. We taught them the first lesson and it was amazing! They took in everything we gave him and he was knowledgeable in the bible and accepted the Book of Mormon and didn’t have any problems with that. They said that they’d definitely come to General Conference. Calvin and Joyce. Joyce actually might be a member but we’ve got to make sure. It was awesome.

Just down the street from them was a media referral and we were going to give a Book Of Mormon to the lady there. But a guy answered the door and said that she was busy but that he had time.  We taught him and he pretty much invited himself to church. So we’re praying for a baptismal date for him.

On Tuesday we had exchanges with the Hazlehurst elders and one of them was being trained. It was pretty fun. One of the times it was me a trainee with a younger trainee. It went well though. We also tracted out a trailer park.  Almost everyone that answered the door said we could come back and we set appointments. Two of those really want to see us again.  When we tracted there, we saw a snake.  I looked at it and saw it’s eyes. I could tell if it’s poisonous or not and it wasn’t so I was going to try and catch it but it tried striking, so I put my shoe by him and he struck at it about five times, it was cool. He was out of energy and curled up so I couldn’t do much. It’s pretty fruitless to catch it because I’d have just had to let it go, but it was cool.

We had a picnic this last Saturday and got about ten investigators there.  Most of them were people from the ghetto that Hattie invited. When we were there, two of them had separated from the group so we went and talked to them and got them back.  But on our way back, a couple called us over and we talked to them for about half an hour, almost all of the picnic. We got one of their addresses and will probably go by there sometime. All in all it was a successful picnic, they also had really good burgers.

Yesterday we were able to teach Lenorris and his mom Lisa, they were both pretty interested, but I think it really hit his mom more.  Lenorris has been visiting with the Jehovah’s Witnesses every week and said that he’d been leaning towards them. We just told him to read and pray, we didn’t bash out the J.W.’s at all.  We just built up this church. I think we’re the only ones that tell others to ask God, not to just take our word for it. We’ll continue to teach them and hopefully they’ll read and pray, that’s the converting power.

I am almost done with my training, I will probably have it done by this week. I’ve been waking up early so I can get it done. My companion will most likely get transferred in a few weeks. We got along so well, we teach great.  We get a lot of work done together. I will most likely stay in Vidalia for another while. Well that’s about it. Until next week!

Love y’all

-Elder Molis

This last week has been quite the week. We talked to this lady that ordered a bible and we taught her the first discussion and gave her a book of Mormon as well. Later this week we talked to her and she said that she didn’t want to learn more because it wasn’t for her. We asked why. At her church they purge out the sin. But they literally purge. She said they say, Jesus Jesus Jesus until they “get the Holy Ghost” and white stuff comes out of their mouth. That was a weird case for us. So we’re going to get the Book of Mormon back and give it to someone who’ll read it.

This past Tuesday we had District meeting, and I gave a short talk on prayer. My companion did a great job of teaching and leading the rest of the district meeting. We had the zone leaders come with us to Vidalia and we had exchanges with them. It was a great day. Almost all our plans went through and we were able to teach a lot of people. Me and Elder Mortensen went to the same place where E.Crane got punched in the balls. I was teaching and Elder Mortensen got punched as well! It was funny. We also learned a lot more about extending commitments and stuff. We were able to teach ten lessons in one day when on the average we usually teach three at the most. We got six new investigators in one day. The Lord was really blessing us.

That night we were getting ready for bed and someone farted and said,”service” like volley ball and then someone else has to fart within three minutes or he scores. So Elder Crane said for me to blow him out of the water and so I did. No one was able to score on me! It was hilarious. There were so many farts in one night.

We have an investigator, her name is Hattie and it’s almost too good to be true, everything we teach her she accepts, and she understands as well. She can’t read because she broke her reading glasses. She needs to quit smoking, but besides that she accepts everything. She even wants to come to church, she came yesterday and really liked it. We committed her to be baptized on Oct. 20th. That’s about two days after transfers and I think Elder Crane will be transfered most likely and I’ll stay here.

We have an investigator that died this past week, Tommy. He was as old as could be and smoked, but he really enjoyed us coming by and he was a fun guy, He’d always talk about faith, hope, and charity and planting seeds. But I’m sure that he’ll accept the gospel up there in the spirit world.

The ward had scheduled a picnic for this last Saturday and so we went around and invited all our investigators out and we had about nine ready to go and then it started to rain and they canceled it. We thought they’d at least have something inside the church, but they didn’t. So we had to go and tell all those people that it had been canceled. But we’ll have it next week.

We have Josh Fulmer getting ready for baptism. We’re seeing him everyday and reminding him to keep his commitments and so far he’s doing well. He might be baptized on the 6th of Oct. but since it’s general conference weekend, they might push it to the week after that.

The weather is still pretty nice now, it has the occasional hot and humid day, but it’s usually nice. I’m starting to understand some of the accents down here a little better. We went to a spanish guys house that had been one of the spanish elders investigators, he spoke english pretty well. He has received answers to his prayers but he keeps talking doubts into his answers. He wants to know everything before he joins. He wanted to know where the cities in the Book of Mormon were. We of course don’t know exactly except that they were in America and around there. He has either a roommate or his brother in law or someone that was there and I think he owns the house, but he started giving us anti stuff.

I would continue, but the librarian told me I had to wrap it up. long line. I’ll write more next week.

Love y’all
Blake

Well this week has had some learning experiences.   On Tuesday we talked to this guy that was a pastor at a Trinity Baptist church, but we didn’t know that until the end.

We came in his house and we were talking to him about the Holy Ghost and he didn’t even let us get past that before he started contradicting us.

We were going to give the lesson, but he started asking questions about our religion.  We answered them.  His main thing was that he believed that we were already saved and that we do good things out of gratitude for already being saved.  When he said that, I said, “Then what’s the purpose for living?”   I think it caught him off guard because he didn’t have a straight answer right away he had to think about it and then said pretty much the same thing.

We shared most of the first lesson.  Once my companion recited the first vision, he said that he couldn’t believe that he’d know that by memory and not know more about the scriptures.  He said he didn’t really listen to what was said, but that it was memorized.

He was closed off and didn’t want to know at all what we had to say, he just tried to prove us wrong.  I wanted to take him to Phillipians 2:12 which says something like you need to work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, but I couldn’t find it during the lesson.

It was a waste of time.  He had asked for our first names and we were hesitant to give them to him, and he just used that to talk down to us.  Looking back on it, it was pretty funny.

We’ve taught a lot of people, some more relative to listen than others.  When we were tracting one of the houses, I knocked then there was some noise inside.  A few minutes after I knocked, a car flew out of the drive way and onto the road.  It was hilarious.

We had zone conference in Douglas and learned a lot about finding people to teach and doing that better.  Our area is one of the lowest baptizing areas in the mission, but it’s one of the hardest areas to work in.  It’s just a little frustrating to know that, but we’ll persevere.

We also stayed with the elders in Douglas and went on exchanges with them.  It was a little different.  The night we stayed there, we had a rubber band war, it was fun, we had it in the dark too.  So it was a little more challenging.

The next day when we had Bro. Witt take us back to our apartment.  We were on the last turn and we stopped to wait for the traffic to open to turn left. We got hit from behind, it wasn’t too bad at all, we got a little whiplash, but nothing too serious.

The other day we had an inactive call in the morning and I didn’t know and so I talked to him a little bit and then ended the call.  Elder Crane wanted to call him back because he had been trying to get a hold of him for a long time.  But we couldn’t.

Later that day we were talking to a guy in the parking lot and he didn’t really believe what we were saying, but he was nice and stuff.  He said that he had an LDS friend, by the name of Billy Walker.  That was the same inactive that called that morning, so we went there and it was him!  He is as excited as can be to get back into church, it was awesome.

This Sunday we had a few investigators say that they’d come to church.  One said she’d be waiting for us to pick her up.  But none of them came.  It’s hard to get them out because almost no one we talk to really wants to commit to do anything, they’re pretty lazy.

Today we’re going to go to Josh Fulmers house and recommit him to be baptized on the 29th, so cross your fingers.

For lunch after church, we went to Bro. Mixon’s house and he is the one that says, “And what not” a lot. He must have thought the other elders were making fun of him because once they were gone, he went hyperactive on his, “and what not’s” It was hilarious.  I was trying not to laugh the whole time I was talking to him.

I’m getting even closer to having my training done, I can’t wait.   Well I hope all goes well with all ya’ll.  Have a great week!  Love ya’ll!

Well transfers are now over and the other elders are gone!  They were fun to be around but they were lazy and were in almost everytime we came in and we’d always leave before them.

We get to have the full time car!  It’s nice.  I think we have the full time car because my companion got called to be the district leader.  It was funny because when you’re called to be a district leader they usually call you the night before or the morning of, but he didn’t get one that morning and so he didn’t even think he’d get called.  The assistant to the President called later that night and said that he needed to repent because he didn’t tell him on time.  It was funny.  But I think he likes it so far, I like it, that way I can learn about being a DL without a lot of responsibility.  He he.

We went to a Jehovah’s Witness church the other day.  It was a little different, because they’d say Jehovah God, a lot and they think that Jehovah is Heavenly Father.  I think one of the main reasons why they’re so strong is because the people are so nice.  We got welcomed by probably twenty people within minutes.  We were able to get a new world translation of the bible.  It’s full of blashpemy.  There’s a scripture in Job 6:6 that says a slimy juice of marshmallow in it.  It’s funny.

We were at Daniel Williams house the other day and we knocked and the only thing that was closed was the screen so we could see in a little bit, and could hear.  The lady that was on the couch yelled for Daniel to get the door.  But she got it and said, “He isn’t going”.  And we weren’t there to pick him up or anything so when she said that I was like, coming to what, church?  She kind of nodded her head. I asked if we could talk to Daniel.  She called his name and then asked someone on the couch if he was asleep, then another woman called out that he wasn’t there.  I couldn’t believe they’d lie right out to us, when we knew he was there, his bike was even there.  I just said, alright tell him we came by.  I don’t like it very much when they lie right out to you.  We’ve had a lot of people lie to us.

Oh it was funny we had stopped at this place and two little kids opened the door and we’d talked to them before and asked if Kendra was there.  They said for us to go away and they didn’t want to see us anymore.  We asked why and the little kids just said “because” and then the little kid tried to guide us back to our car, we just wanted to talk to Kendra.  But she didn’t come.  So the little kid just hauled back and punched Elder Crane right in the balls!  I almost laughed right out loud!  Then he came after me, but I was able to block.  We left soon after that.  It was hilarious.  Well I don’t have much time left.  Love you all!

Hello from Georgia!

Well this week went by really quickly and luckily neither me nor my companion got transfered this week. But the spanish elders we were sharing the apartment with are being transfered and we’ll have the apartment all to ourselves. I hope we’ll have a full time car, we might have to switch off every week with someone in another area like Hazelhurst or something. But who knows?

Yesterday I wasn’t able to write e-mail because the library was closed for Labor Day. So I’m writing today.

The kid we’re trying to find, Daniel Williams, we can never catch. We ran into him once this week and he said to come by tomorrow and he said that he was still committed and wanted to know more.  But he sure doesn’t show it because he wasn’t there when he said he would be.

We taught this old guy that’s kind of “special” and he said he agreed with everything we taught him. We’ve taught him lesson one and two. He’s a good guy, Roy Hayne is his name.

We went to a members house last night, the Witt’s, and we had spaghetti dinner with them, it was really good. They have a brand new Jack Russell terrier puppy.  That is the coolest dog. He’s really cute.

Nothing really special happened this past week. Just about the same old same old.

Does anyone know good ways to relieve stress? My companion is getting pretty stressed out and is looking for good ways to relieve them.

I bet a lot has happened over there, especially with mom getting married and all. Well hope to hear from you all soon.

-Love Elder Molis

Well this week has been a little different. I had my first exchange with the other elders. It actually went quite well, we taught four lessons in one day and talked to lots of people. I also had my first zone conference this past week. It lasted a long time. It was awesome though, food for lunch was great! Cream corn is a lot better than I thought it would be.

My mission president rocks! He taught about perfect faith and the spirit was really strong. I’m praying for perfect faith. He said in order to gain perfect faith we must go through trials, keep the commandments, gain a greater knowledge of the things of God, and have virtuous thoughts and words. So I’ll be going through a few more trials.

Speaking of trials, a few days after zone conference, me and Elder Crane were biking down the side walk and a lady we’d talked to before was parked on the side of the sidewalk. Elder Crane was in front of me and he said hi to her. As we were going by the guy in the front seat said, “hey” and so I stopped and backed up to the window. I thought Elder Crane had heard it as well, but he had kept going. When I looked at the guy I noticed that he was an older man and didn’t have very many teeth. Right when I came to the window he said, ” You bible pushing mother F***er! I’m pentecostal” he said a few other swear words. Then he stopped and it kind of caught me off guard. But I said,”well you just said all those words to Jesus Christ himself, I represent Jesus Christ.” He said,”you don’t represent anyone but the devil!” I think I said something like have a good day or something, but I ended the conversation. It was funny. We also got flipped off by a guy in a passing truck.

Yesterday we were able to teach this couple the first lesson and they were really receptive and the spirit was very strong. The lady got teary eyed and almost cried. We gave them a Book of Mormon and they said they’d read it. It was awesome. Well that’s about it for this week. I hope all is well with Ya’ll.

Love ya!
Elder Molis

How ya’ll doin’?

Well here there’s been yet another baptismal invite! One of the investigators that has been working with the missionaries for quite awhile, Josh Fulmer, was invited to be baptized on the 1st as well. But he said later on that he had to work that night, so he’s thinking the 8th of Sept. So it’s not really from what I’ve done, it’s just me seeing the fruit of other missionaries. I helped a little. But sadly, the investigator I committed to be baptized will have to be baptized a little later because he wasn’t able to make it to church yesterday. He’ll be baptized, but it might be longer. He’s just so darn hard to catch. He’s in the ghetto and they don’t have any sense of time. But we’ll do our best and ask for the Lord’s help.

This last week we were able to get all our contacts each day, we might have been the only one’s in our district. It was hard, half the week we had less time to go out and find people because of district meetings and service and dinners at members homes. But we’re trying to do our best.

Me and my companion get along great and we’re really good friends. Transfers are coming up on the 9th of September and I sure hope that neither me nor my companion gets transfered. I’m not done with my training yet and I’d hate to get a different trainer half way through. I also want to get Daniel Williams in the waters of baptism before I go.

This last Saturday we did service for a couple that recently moved into the ward and we started at 7:00 am and went until about 6:00 pm. We didn’t intend on staying that long, we just lost track of time and what not. It’s funny, there’s a member in our ward that says, “and what not” a lot. We always say that back at the apartment because it’s so funny to hear him say it so many times. So if I start incorporating that into my e-mails, you’ll know why.

We’ve had a little rejection this past week, we tracted at a trailor park and one guy opened the door, said, “go away!” and closed the door. Another we knocked and a lady said that she can’t open the door and we asked if we could come back at another time and she said, “never” and we told her we knew the message we shared was true and she said, “I know that you need to get off my porch.” It was funny.

Well I hope things are going good. I love you all very much and pray for you daily.

Until next week!
Elder Molis

I have to tell you about Camille.  Yesterday at Dad’s I was pushing her in the swing and I accidentally pushed the swing too hard and she fell out.

She didn’t get hurt but I could tell by the look on her face that it scared her.  So I picked her up and and hugged her and said that I was so sorry.

When I put her down she told me “um, I learned about forgiveness today”.  So I asked her “do you forgive me?”  And very sweetly she said, “yah, I forgive you.”  It was so cute.

-Kristi