Green Light on Facebook! (Elder Travis Herdt)

Well to start off our recent convert Jen is just awesome!!! We brought another recent convert(like 4 years ago) to a lesson with us and Jen ended up teaching and really helping the other recent convert. She just got called to be the ward Librarian and is loving it. So I'm finally feeling like we're making a presence on the NIU campus. We're starting to get noticed by a lot more people and more and more people are starting to talk to us.  Its really hard because we cant stop students. We finally got our first lesson though on campus, she requested us from Mormon.org and wanted a Book of Mormon and to know more about us. We thought it was golden until she told us why she want to read. hahaha she said she is an atheist and wanted to read the bible and the book of Mormon and so on and so forth to make sure she knows why she is an atheist. It was very weird but we taught her about the restoration and the Book of Mormon and she really liked it. After the lesson she gave us some referrals of friend who would be interested and we really hope this maybe our way into the campus. Or, maybe something else will help.... because as of October 26, Dekalb is now a Facebook proselyting area!!! but more on that later!;)

        Well we had a pretty cool experience with an old PNI (potential new investigator) we hadn't seen here in months. We walked up and started talking to her and she wanted us to come by the next day and have dinner! We were surprised and Elder Black didn't like it because it sounded to good to be true! We went by the next day and had an awesome lesson, we were invited back and we saw here the fallowing week and taught the plan of salvation.  It went really good because she is a nurse and she has experienced a lot of death and she knew that there was life after death but didn't know where we went or what happens. We plan on seeing her this week and can't wait to teach her again! So our teaching pool got a little low and we had to tract, I don't mind it, but it normally isn't the best way to find people now  days. But we happened to get some success. We found this man, he told us to come back in a week. It was so easy we almost wrote it off as not legit but we went back anyways. We got there a little late and he was already reading the bible when we got there. We got scared because we thought he just wanted to bash. He ended up being really nice and loved the lesson. He understood everything and said that he wanted to read the book of Mormon to make sure this was all legit because he was a recent convert of the Catholics and he just doesn't want to hop around church to church and what not. He gave us a return appointment and now were going to see him in a week or two, so I hope he reads and prays to know.

        So this last week was a Crazy one we had Clayton Christensen the one who wrote the book the power of the everyday missionary! He was just a superstar of a teacher!  It really helped us out as missionaries and as wards in the greater Chicago land area! Then on Monday we had a Zone activity at the Black Hawk statue in Oregon. It was awesome! we played capture the flag, went on a hike and had a testimony meeting and I met this old barbershop guy and he sang for us hahaha:) On Wednesday we got to do some service at Feed'em Soup. Just the coolest soup kitchen ever, so you should look it up to know why it's so cool! But, Friday was the really cool day.  We got invited to an emergency leadership meeting. Only  us, zone leaders, assistants and the sister training leaders were there. We were very privileged! The meeting was on missionaries getting Facebook in the Chicago West mission. So as of Friday Elder Black and I have been approved to use facebook! some cool things I learned from that meeting was that only 30 missions can have facebook and we were the 9th to get it phased in! The reason why was the bretheren said we were among the top ten most obedient missions out of the 450 missions. So moral of the story is you get blessed for being obedient!

       Well on the lines of obedience I want to share with you some things Ive been learning in my personal studies. So the last week I read all of Helaman and some of 3 Nephi and I notice how much it talked about repentance and how God wants to give us so many blessings when we repent and when we don't God warns us of trails to come. I notice that God sometimes lets bad things happen, for us to remember him and to repent and change and grow closer to him. I have really noticed that in my life that as I repent God truly blesses me. I also know that as you do in your life he will bless you. I am so thankful for my Savior Jesus Christ and atoning for my sins that I can repent of them and be blessed and return to my father in heaven.

 God wants to bless us, so what are you willing to do to get those blessings?

-Elder Herdt

Let Us All Press On!

Well hola my readers,
       I have had a wonderfully hard week but It was great! Elder Black is a great missionary and I'm learning lots from him! He is one smart cookie! He has helped me a lot with my studies and we have been having wonderful companionship study. Something that I have been studying lately is God's, standard of righteousness. I learned a lot from it and I just want to know what your thoughts are on it? Shoot me and email with your thoughts:)
      Work In Dekalb is going great, we're kinda on the front of building back up our teaching pool and we were kinda forced into tracking, but we have seen some great things from it; including some new investigators. I have a couple of tracting stories!:P 

       First, we were walking along the street and this crazy old guy pulled up and looked at us all bug-eyed and said "What are you selling".....(before we could answer) he said, "your selling something...... I know your sell something..... you just look like it..." then drove away. Weird huh? Next I finally tracked in to a JW He was a nice guy who knew a lot of scriptures but knew very little about them. He was funny and did a reverse door approach on us but it was just even more funny because Elder Black is a boss about the Bible and knew just the right thing to say. He had us held up at his door for a while and because we are on the Lord's errand we just bore our testimonies and asked if he wanted a card "he didn't even want that" and we left. It was hard to leave because we could have taught him so much, but for him all the bible is, is a fighting ground...... NEXT STORY!....While tracking by NIU we ran into a girl from Taiwan, who was very interested in us and we just got her a Chinese book of Mormon and she's loving it! Speaking of NIU were doing a lot of work on Campus and finding out what we can and cannot do. What we found out was that we can do about anything as long as were representing The LDS SA. My Goal while at Dekalb is to really make NIU a investigator Gold mine.       

          We Have one Person on date for October right now. We lost contact with a few of our investigators and we're sad but trying to find them. The person getting baptized is as solid as solid gets. She has been truly converted to the gospel and funny thing is, it really has been from her own. All we really did was line her up in the right direction. She's wonderful and is always texting us saying that she knows how the Church of Jesus Christ is the true church today and she can't wait to be baptized. She is just amazing and I can't wait so see her enter the waters of baptism.
        Another crazy thing happened this week. A less active member got dropped in on by some of his friends who were traveling the country and both of them are investigators to the church and near members. One is 3 days away from his baptism and relapsed and drank some beer with his father and that's why we help, and his other friend's dad just got baptized.  Dropped drinking and smoking got married and was baptized in 3 weeks and is now about to go through the temple. It was amazing to see these wanderers and how much they were a blessing to this less active. They all went to church together and the one who was almost baptized bore his testimony. It was soo good, I even took notes. He talked about worship and how we worship what ever we hold the highest and if that isn't God we need to rethink our lives.
        I know we all have our our battles, our own trials, and things he have but with Hope, which is the anchor to the soul - Ether 12:4, we can stay fast in this constant whirl wind of life. So let us all press on step by step and become better people. Working at one weakness at a time until we reach the light of the perfect day.

The Old "Herdt" Suit of Armor

Well This has been a Crazy week so Elder Engler went zone leader on me and went to Joliet. 

His Replacement Is..... Wait for It...... Elder Black from Mesa Arizona! He is an amazing missionary, He has been a zone leader twice and has been sent to Dekalb on the special assignment to help progress the work here in Dekalb. I'm really happy because I have been itching to do work on Campus. I had a really cool experience on campus this week we got a call from the stake president to go to the campus and be in a Religious Q and A on campus and be the LDS representatives on the religious board. It was going great and right as I was about to bear testimony about the book of Mormon, A fire alarm went off!! oh my goodness I was so mad at the devil, I knew he was behind it. Afterwards though, we continued and it was a really amazing experience and I felt like it was a small but BIG step toward getting in the campus.

         2013- 2015                                               1979 - 1981  

     Elder Travis Herdt                           Elder Matthew Herdt 

 I would also like to mention my great appreciation to My father for sending His mission suit to me. The Old Herdt Suit of Armor "commissioned 1979-81"  and now to 2013-15. (He wore his 2 suits his whole mission and they look brand new! The pin stripe, big lapels and bell bottoms may help to be a good contacting strategy! haha)  I plan on making good use of it and will love to see how many more lives this suit will be able to bless, not many suits get a second chance at missionary work. I loved my First mission General conference. Its like any missionary will tell you; it is the best conference they ever watched. I love my mission so much because it is setting a frame work for the rest of my life. I love the things that I have been taught, learning spiritual self Independence, no one is forcing me to be spiritually independent, I'm just learning from the spirit and as Matthew 11:28-30 says it's either the Lords way or the highway and the Lords way is the easy way. Lately I have really been trying to consecrate my mind to have a laser like focus on the Glory of God and I have found some cool quotes I want to share with you. They have really helped me and I really have enjoyed them, because it's easy to control our actions but it's harder to control our thoughts, and only when we learn how to fully control our thoughts can we learn how to be exalted.

"Prayer is the laboratory where we can facilitate and learn how to be masters of our own minds"- Presidant Fenn   

"The mind is the agent of the almighty, clothed in the mortal tabernacle. If we can learn to control our mind, we can control our families, our lives & the kingdom of God"-Orson Pratt

"How can a person possibly become what he is NOT THINKING? Nor is any thought when persistently entertained to small to have its effects..."-Spencer W. Kimball

I know its so.... so... so... very difficult to control our minds but just imagine what we can do when we learn how? I've struggled with it my whole life and I finally learned, I can control my mind. Its weird before I felt like I didn't even know I could do that! hahaha. I love my mission so much, It has taught me more than I can even write.

When we can master both our mind and bodies we will soon find our selves close to the Glory of God.

-Elder Herdt

PS: After that dog bite I think it may be affecting me a little.