Trainer Calls (Week 91)

Saturday night we got in a little late, we were about to start planning when the other elders knocked on the door which reminded me of what was happening that night. I had totally forgotten that it was the night that the assistants made trainer calls. The other elders were pretty set that I was going to be training so they came over to wait for the call from the APs. The phone some how got put on silent, we had a missed call from the APs and 1 new voice mail. I anxiously put the phone on speaker and we listened to the voice mail. AP Nibley was simply relaying information about Elder Mierau's departing temple trip and asked us to call him back. My heart sank a little but I know it was probably Elder Nibley giving me a hard time. I patiently waited while AP Nibley and Elder Meirau talked about the trip and then about our area, then as soon as I thought the conversation was over I hear: "Oh and is Elder Watkins still there?" Everyone fell silent. "...yes" the next response: "President has asked that you would train this next transfer." We all went crazy! Haha so much fun. I'm so excited to train! I've been wanting to train my whole mission! I am excited for the new experiences that lay ahead. I will be training for last 2 transfers of my mission.

All of the missionaries in our district are getting ready to go home. All of us leave one transfer after the other. We have all decided to hide how long we have been out from the new missionary so we don't make him homesick. That way none of us will get "trunky". It should be a fun challenge.

We have good/bad news about C~. He got a job, but it's clear up in Tulsa so we are unable to teach him for the time being. We have been helping him find a closer job by asking around. Keep them in your prayers. It was cool though because yesterday we heard from the Relief Society president in ward council that when B~ and her husband C~ both came to church the previous week B~ stood up and bore her testimony in Relief Society. She shared in her testimony that while C~ and her were in gospel principles class, he leaned over and whispered in her ear, "this is home". It's such a joy to see investigators feel God's love as they come to church and feel the spirit.

Yesterday we got permission with Cr's mom to set a baptism date with him. We are excited that we are able to help him progress now!

This week we are going to be giving Br~ a church tour. It's going to be great. It seems that every time we teach him, his heart grows more as well as his interest to learn more.

Our finding has been going really well as of late. We are finding a lot of new investigators. We have also been running into a lot of former investigators who want to start investigating again.

Well I'm running out of time! I'll be sure to send you the audio files of last p-day. Lots of fun.

I love you all, I hope you have a good week!

Sincerely, Elder Watkins

Bluegrass venue. The back part of the Cowboy Music Store in Comanche

The flood gates of Lake Waurika (after all the rain we got this spring)

19th Street (Week 90)

Summer is here, and the temperature is rising.

We have been doing more work in Marlow with our car which has been a blessing. Last week we found a less active family who have a 12 and a 13 year old who haven't been baptized. The parents have really strong testimonies but struggle with coming to church. The father served 6 years in Iraq and suffers with really bad PTSD so he struggles with crowds. During our visit they explained to us that they want their children to make the decision on their own to be baptized. The mother told us that lately her daughter (12) has been asking about baptism and wants to be baptized. By the end of the conversation the Dad confessed there were Sundays that they could make it to church. We didn't say to much during the visit but whatever was said the spirit spoke and was present to touch their hearts. We are teaching their family this week. We are excited to start working with them!

We set a baptism date with C~ this week! It's the wonderful date of July 4th. We are excited. A bitter sweet thing happened in their family. C~ lost his job but the cool thing about it was that now he is able to come to church and came yesterday! He was talking about it with us and he started pointing out all of the positive things about losing his job. He gets to catch up with his family, he can come to church, and he can be here to help his sister after she has her baby
(any day now). He knows that God has a plan for everything.

We have been doing quite a bit of finding this week. For the first half of the week it seemed as though no one in Duncan was receptive, but on Friday everyone and their cat wanted to listen to us. We knocked almost all of 19th street and everyone at least listened to us and accepted our offer to say a prayer with them. With 10 minutes before 9:00 pm we had to head back home on our bikes before we could finish the street. As we were biking away the spirit told me that tomorrow was when we should to knock the rest of the doors on the street. Huh strange prompting. Well the next day around 7:00 pm we came back and knocked on the rest of the houses, and the one house that appeared to be vacant was the one that opened. When the homeowner answered the door she had this big grin on her face. We introduced ourselves, afterwards I felt to ask if she had met with missionaries before. She said yes! In fact, she had studied with them for along time and had read a lot of the Book of Mormon. She has African-American children and told us she stopped when she found information on blacks and the priesthood and it gave her doubts. We had a HUGE conversation with her on the porch and helped answer her questions about it. We explained the purpose for the priesthood and explained to her that God gives all of his children callings. We  pointed out how in the old testament only the Levites held the priesthood. We quickly resolved her concern on the that topic and she began to ask us questions pertaining to the plan of salvation. We basically covered every part of the plan of salvation lesson from our conversation and her questions. She explained to us the trials that she was going through and that our visit was an answer to her questions. One of the huge questions she had been struggling with was why does God allow his innocent children to suffer here on earth. The spirit prompted me to share the story of my brother Tyler who has cerebral palsy. Turns our her youngest son has a lighter form of cerebral palsy. The connection we made with her was really cool. We gave her a plan of salvation pamphlet with our number on it. Right after she pointed to the Book of Mormon in my hand and asked if she could have a copy because she couldn't find hers. I gave her a copy and asked if we could come back for a visit. she told us that she would call us when her life settled down a little. We are still going to swing by next week. :)

Today for p-day we are going with a member from Waurika to Comanche's Music (instrument store). Brother Chesley plays a lot of blue grass instruments and is going to teach us a few tricks. He's really really good on the Dobro which is an instrument I've been waiting and dying to learn. Next week I'll send a recording of our music. Come Come ye Saints.

I love you all! Have a wonderful week.

Sincerely, Elder Watkins

Out of Stock (Week 89)

Elder Mierau and I have had a really good week! We were able to meet with a lot of our investigators and we are starting seeing a lot of growth and progression. We also had a former investigator (Has to wait until he is off parole) come to stake conference.

We Got to teach Bd~ and C~ this week. They are on fire! Bd~ has been working on getting C~'s sister-in-law interested in taking the discussions and coming to church. Until this last week she hasn't been really interested. She is in a very difficult situation right now. She is pregnant and is living with Bd~ and C~ because her boyfriend is abusive and she is trying to break up the relationship. She has a lot of questions and is beginning to search for answers. She is really receptive and wanting to find the truth. Before we could get to the end of the lesson she asked us if she could have a Book of Mormon. We had run completely out of Book of Mormons that day and we were running late for stake conference in Lawton so we were unable to give her one (the most frustrating thing ever). We told her we would come by and give her one the next day. Well later that night we got home earlier then expected and I had this prompting that we should give it to her tonight. We pulled up to the house and she was sitting on the front porch sulking. It was perfect timing, she seemed so sad and lost when we pulled up. We gave her the Book of Mormon and had a really spiritual conversation with her that lifted her spirits. We testified of the Book of Mormons power to heal and direct our lives and left her with inspired promises if she would read and pray. We could feel the spirit so strong, it just goes to show that God sends us to the right place at the right time.

We had a good discussion with Brother B~ (investigator who has met with missionaries for over a year). We had a discussion about sacrifice and its blessings. It was amazing because the spirit resolved his struggles and motivated him to do better. He is more committed now to reading the Book of Mormon. Hopefully life will slow down a little bit for their family so they can make it to church on Sunday. Keep them in your prayers.

Stake conference was great! We were honored to hear Elder Frost from the Quorum of the Seventy speak. A lot of the talks were focused on keeping the Sabbath Day holy and making sacrament meeting more spiritual. President Walkenhorst gave an excellent talk on hastening the work of salvation in Oklahoma and how we can become better member missionaries. At the conference I saw a couple of people that looked really familiar, they were some of my classmates from Lone Peak HS. It was super weird. They are part of a sales group down in Wichita Falls, Texas. Small world.

Well the sun is suppose to be shining all week long. It's time to melt haha. It shouldn't be to bad.

Thank you for the emails I love you all have a wonderful week!

Sincerely, Elder Watkins

New downtown mural for Rhythm and Routes

Newspaper on the flood

A member taught us how to play a few hymns on our harmonicas

Taking shelter from a hail storm

More crazy newspapers

Cloudburst

Elder Mierau wanted me to make him a funky planner cover. So I did.

Flood the Earth (Week 88)

The weather this week has been crazy. Its rained almost everyday and we have received four severe alerts and two extreme alerts for flash flooding and tornado's. Craziness! We only needed to get in the shelter once and the tornado rotation dissipated just south of Duncan so we were safe. Duncan is no longer in a drought so that's good. We have seen a couple of signs saying please stop praying for rain.

They almost had to reschedule zone p-day because highway 7 was covered in a foot of water from Beaver Creek overflowing. We took a picture of it from off of the front page of Lawton's newspaper. I'll send it to you.

Our whole mission is focusing on using the Book of Mormon to its fullest. The Lord is flooding the earth more than one way. It was funny that our elders quorum lesson this week was reading Ezra Taft Bensen's talk entitled: Flood the Earth with the Book of Mormon. A very good talk BTW.

We taught C~ and Bd~ (Recent Convert) twice last week. The first visit we went over the plan of salvation and answered a lot of their questions about the spirit world. At our second visit they still had more questions so we read Alma chapter 40. They loved the chapter, it was cool how they would ask a question and the the next few verses would answer their question. It's amazing the answers that Book of Mormon contains. We are blessed with so much knowledge. That was a cool visit because Bd~'s friend K~ was over who was also sitting in on the lessons when Bd~ was first investigating. She also had a ton of questions that were similar to Bd~'s about the plan of salvation. That's one of the most important things preach my gospel talks about is teaching people not lessons. We have to adjust the messages we share to what the person or family needs. Listening to the spirit is key for teaching effectively.

We went over the 17 points of the true church with B~. It was a good discussion, we went through the scriptures and talked about the organization of Jesus Christ's church and taught him the restoration. He is awesome. He is so honest and sincere about finding the truth. He loves the messages we leave with him. His desire to read and study grows every time. Keep his family in your prayers.

Oh after we had our specialized training meeting in Lawton with the zone leaders. They informed us that we were getting a car. So our area has a car now, which means we can work with the members in Marlow, Empire City, and Central more. We were excited to get that news. :)

Sorry I have to wrap up. I love you all. Have a wonderful week!

Sincerely, Elder Watkins

Storm Chasers (Week 87)

This week has been great! Me and Elder Mierau are basically brothers, both of us are very similar. He is from California, orange county. I can tell this is going to be a great transfer full of spiritual experiences and fun times.

We had a very spiritual weekend. First, we went to the Stake President's future daughter in law's baptism in the afternoon and then afterwards we were very privileged and blessed to attend the Stephen's baptism in Ponca City. It was a long drive (3 hours) but me and Elder Mierau were able to talk and get to know each other. The baptism went great. There were four kids and three missionaries dressed in white. Haha the kids all picked different missionaries to baptized them, they are so funny. After I brought Xander (The youngest) out from under the water he jumped in the air with his hands held high splashing water all over the font! He was so happy to be baptized. It was amazing to see their whole family together at the service. You could see a difference in their eyes. The first step to an eternal family.

No we didn't chase a storm, but it chased us! After the Stephen's baptism we decided that we would drive home so we could make it to church in the morning. President called us and advised us to be safe and keep in contact with our weather contacts because there were some big storms moving NE across Oklahoma. We decided to drive south through Stillwater to avoid the city and the major roads because that is where the storm was hitting and we would have to drive through Moore (Which is famous for getting hit with big storms and tornadoes). As we drove south towards Stillwater the weather began to get worse. With our wipers on full and our brights on it was really hard to see the road. We drove slow and offered a silent prayer to know which direction to take. We both had a feeling to get on the 35 and go through the city. We were both a little hesitant to the prompting. Then 5 minutes later we got a text from our Stake President to take the 35 and that the storm was beginning to pass the city. We got on the 64 and hopped onto the 35. We didn't get hit with a drop of rain the whole way into the city and we got to watch a sweet electric storm over Stillwater to the east. We learned two things follow the promptings of the spirit and follow the guidance of your priesthood leaders. Your faith will increase, you will be protected, and you might get to watch a beautiful light show.

We taught B~ again! He is awesome! We went over some of the 17 points of the true church with him and we taught him about the sacrament. He is planning on coming to church this week! Keep him in your prayers.

Thank you for all of your letters and emails! I'm glad things are going well for "yall"! You are in my prayers!

Sincerely, Elder Watkins

Xander, Josiah, Isaiah, Adreanna

The first time on my mission that I've seen a bike lane

The Seal of Melchizedek

Tracting Adventures

Tornadoes and Floods (Week 86)

This week we have had some pretty crazy weather. We heard from several people that just within the past few days Oklahoma and Kansas had over 58 tornadoes touch down. CRAZINESS! No worries Duncan wasn't hit with any of them, but one of them got really close to us. It actually went through the south elders area in Waurika but only destroyed a few trees and an old barn. I guess the tornadoes weren't really the intense part. The big problem for our area was flooding. We were in a flash flood warning for three days in a row (good thing our apartment is on the second floor). My weather radio was going off every five minutes. We were driving during one of the really big storms and the water in the street was 6-12 inches high (I have some videos I'll try to send). The storms were a huge answer to prayers because of the drought Duncan is in.

Last Tuesday we had Mission conference where we got to hear training from Elder and Sister Corbrige. He gave the missionary talk "The 4th Missionary". All of you who are preparing to serve a mission or are on a mission it's a must read. His training was called "The Most Important Thing" (The Atonement). He really focused on teaching to the understanding of those we teach: the What, Why, and How of the gospel. It was a very inspired training.

This week we had a really good lesson with B~ (recent convert) and her non-member husband C~. We taught them the restoration with the Jenga blocks, it was a lot of fun because their toddlers wanted to help, haha you can imagine how that went. Thankfully we were able to distract them until the great apostasy haha. C~ really enjoyed the message and is really receptive, we are hoping to see him at church in a couple of weeks when his work schedule lines up. He enjoys church he has been two times already. It was really cool to watch B~ teach a lot of the lesson from her observations. It's amazing how strong of a testimony she has developed.

Mother's day was great! I love you Mom! It's a blessing that we get to skype, I enjoyed seeing "yall". I just realized earlier that was the last call I will make to you guys before I come home... that's weird.

My new companion is Elder Mierau who was just serving with the other Elder Watkins (not related) in our mission. I will be serving with him for one transfer and then he will be finished with his mission. Then I will only have two transfers left which leaves me with a chance to train a new missionary! :D Who knows it might happen!

Duncan is doing well! Please keep our stake presidents wife in your prayers she was recently diagnosed with stage 4 cancer :(. As with all things faith brings miracles, everything will work out!

I love you all! Have a wonderful week!

Sincerely, Elder Watkins

YEEHAA (Week 85)

This past week has been good. Elder Hoopes goes home next week so we are getting things ready but working hard. Ain't no one getting trunky serving with me. :) All joking aside he is doing really well!

This past week we have been doing service for Mrs. B~'s Brother T~ on a house that he is painting/remodeling. Our first impressions of T~ was that he was a pretty rough guy always in a
hurry. Mr. B~ was telling us about the project and we asked if we could help. He asked T~ and he said sure. We went with Mr. B~ the first time out into the far country in Velma. The next time we went to help, T~ picked us up. While we were in the car he started to ask us questions about what we did as missionaries and what we believed. His interest grew and we had a really good conversation. About the time we were pulling in he asked if he could study with us sometime. Why of course! On the third day we helped him he picked us up and took us to Taco Bell for breakfast (good stuff), and offered to buy us something that would help us with our missionary work... he offered to buy us new bikes. He's a very nice guy, we politely told him that we weren't serving him for any reward. He was persistent, we told him the gift we would enjoy most is if we could share the message that we love with him. He said: "okay, but also I'd like to take you guys to the rodeo with my family this weekend if that's okay." We asked president for permission and got to go to the rodeo with him! I'll send pictures! We are hoping to teach him sometime this week.

We had another great lesson with Br~ this week, he has already read to 2 Nephi! We taught him the plan of salvation and he really enjoyed it. It made complete sense to him. He is still on his spiritual search for the unity of faith. He says some of the most profound prayers I've heard on my mission. We are just helping to ask those specific questions so he can get those specific answers the Lord has prepared for him. He is going out of town next week for a political meeting so we won't see him for a while, but it will give him more time to study and pray. We are hoping he can come to church soon.

We are finding new investigators and things are starting to pick up here in Duncan. Keep us in your prayers. Love you all!

Sincerely, Elder Watkins

The rodeo with T~

Getting the horses ready

Sunsets. They never get old.

Axis and Allies for a rainy p-day. Lol

Service before...

... and after