Family game time

Family!!

   Wow, that was too fun getting to see you all. I can't wait to see and BE with you!  I am happy to hear that Mammoth was so much fun, judging by the pictures it looks like you all enjoyed yourselves. I'm over flowed with joy when I see my family working hard to better one another and spending precious time with each other that will benefit you for the rest of your lives. It was so fun to see my 2 new brothers hanging out and fitting perfectly into  our crazy family. All my companions always comment on how awesome you all are.  I just wanted to express my gratitude to all of you for being such fun loving, light hearted, and hard working examples of how we need to support the other members of our family.  As a part of this wonderful family, we all hold a sacred calling to lift and support one another and I have been so blessed to see that calling fulfilled in my own family.  This week was crazy, we has so much happen.  But I wanted to tell you about a way fun experience we had just last night.  We were invited to go to our investigators house and eat dinner with them. His name is Ruslan. He just turned 30 and had wonderful 5 year old daughter and a super awesome wife. he has been meeting with us off and on but only at the church b/c his wife (Yulia) is not religious at all. last week we went over to his place and had tea and small little munchies with them and gave them a spiritual thought.  Well, they invited us over again and fed us a wonderful meal this time and we played way fun games with them.  It was SO MUCH FUN!  They are such good people and I hope things start to progress with them.  His wife is just like aunt Joni...she ALWAYS win every game!!  It was so much fun and so great to see this family apply Gospel principles with out them even knowing it!  I hope that things start to roll with this family b/c that is exactly what this church needs.  Yesterday I was privileged to confirm another brotha from Cameroon a member of the church, it is always such a special experience for me and always so great to see how the Gift of the Holy Ghost truly does have an impact on peoples' lives.  Anyway, I have to BOUNCE b/c Time is up and I was writing other siblings today :)

I love you all! have a great week!

- Старейшина Руни

ps thanks for the package!!! that popcorn was SOOO good. And I gave all my candy canes away to people at our Christmas party along with the majority of the Andes mints, b/c they have never tried that before. 

pss nothing urgent but if you have time, peanut butter and taco seasoning would be awesome!   I've made tacos for members and investigators and I would like to do that again.   thanks!!

Baptism week

What the heck! Not one letter from any of you!?....I forgive you. hopefully everything will work out, I plan on calling home at 7:30 am wed morning for me, so hopefully that will be Tuesday night for you!

 This week was crazy...we had such an awesome week. The weather is getting so cold again!!!! We haven't had electricity  for 2 days now so we opened up our wanna be balcony thing and opened to windows....so we just froze everything haha.  The guy came to day to fix FINALLY and said that the problem was a super easy fix...of course it was.  We lived to days by flashlight....it was terrible, but an adventure. I'll keep this one short b/c i'll "see" you all soon. But I had such an awesome week.  I was privileged to have the opportunity to baptize a brother from Cameroon.  I didn't teach him the lessons but he always came to our branch b/c we translated for all of the brothas. I did the baptismal interview with him and we got pretty close. there were 2 baptisms at the same time and I knew both of the guys getting baptized really well, so i was really fun to watch them go through the process of faith unto repentance and baptism, and to watch their lives turn around. Then the next day at church, I was pulled into a room by the other brotha  who was baptized on Saturday  and he just spilled out all of his fears and nerves and it was a huge privilege to be able to use the scriptures to comfort him...them only minutes later, I confirmed him a member of the church being that our branch president doesn't speak any English. I was so blessed to be worthy to give counsel when needed  and to be able to perform the ordinances.  honestly, it was one of the happiest days on my mission.   Ok cool, so I'll see you soon and we'll all catch up a bit ok :)?    Love you guys!

Merry Christmas

- Старейшина Руни

Tireless Sunday!

FAMILY!!!!

  Sounds like a super fun week at home. Diana wrote me a letter and told me all about Yolanda and her family. That's so cool to be able to see that after 31 years (you guys are old ;) the person you both helped bring to the truth is just thriving and now her own family is. What a blessing to be able to see the fruit of your labors. OK. so update on our area, I came in into this area with 3 investigators (one of them eternal), and a not so obedient comp....now after these few weeks we have been blessed with 22 new investigators and 6 of them were at church on Sunday.  This is NOT usual by the way. This is HUGE.  Its been so much fun to see that obedience and hard work brings forth such wonderful blessings.  However it takes a companion to make is work. I've learned so much about how unity with your companion makes all the difference. Its been so nice to FINALLY have a comp that wants to work and now that we are unified, I can see a difference in our work here. Our district had 10 investigators at church with 2 other investigators from different missionaries. That makes 12...such a blessing. I will say that I have never been more stressed at church in my life!! Let me tell you why...so I am the translator b/c we have a ton of Brothas from Africa that all come to our branch. So, when ever anyone has an investigator that is English only...they come to us.  So it starts of with no investigators showing up at the beginning of the meeting (b/c all of the brothas work in "African Time" as they call it, which means that you come at least 30 minutes late).  It was Branch conference so there were already a lot of people.  Then Sacrament mtg starts and I get a phone call from one who is trying to make his way over to the church, so I stepped out side to take the call and as I do, I see 5 brothas walk in to the hall, 3 of them being our investigators. So I took the call and Ruslan said that he'll be 20 min late but he's coming.  Then sacrament ends and I go back in to see that there are no more headphones ( I use a micro phone that is connected to a transmitter that sends my voice to a ton of headphones) for every one b/c they are all being used...so Our friend had to translate for some and I translated for the rest.  Then, as I'm translating, the phone goes off again and another investigator is trying to find his way to church, but forgot how so as I'm trying to do my best translating (which is SOOOOOO hard by the way) I'm also texting an investigator the address of our church (which is actually an institute and a lot of people get confused when we tell them that our church is at an institute....) and I'm worrying that the words I'm trying text aren't come out of my mouth....and that words I'm supposed to be saying  are making sense to all the people listening to me ...5 of them investigators and out of those 5, 3 of them were first timers, so of course you don't want them to get a bad 1st impression.  I don't think my brain has ever been that used before.  THEN, the missionaries performed a musical number. I wrote an arrangement to "Oh, come all ye faithful" and our district sang it. The performance went well but then I had to go back to translating and there weren't enough headphones for everyone so those with out head phones had to sit around me to hear my voice while the others were in the congregation somewhere.  So at the end I had an investigator (not English speaking) sitting next to me on a ledge of the wall b/c we ran out of seats, and I was trying to speak loud enough for the English speakers that weren't with headphones but not loud enough that everyone else would get annoyed with me making too much noise and trying to just understand what was being said by the speakers. IT WAS CRAZY!!!  I think the problem was that I had the phone on me and not my comp and he was sitting with other investigators in the front and I was in the back translating.  He DEFINITELY gets the phone next time haha.  So that was one crazy first hour and I'm just so excited that I was worthy for the spirit b/c with the spirit...I wouldn't have been able to do anything.  I love this gospel and I love being so stacked with things to do that I feel like there is not enough time in the day to get it all done. I know that God is the perfect "planner" b/c His house is one of order and with out order there is chaos.  I'm grateful some much to do b/c it is teaching me how to manage my time well and how to become more like my Savior. I will say that the a big motivating factor when dealing with all of the things of missionary work is that Jesus Christ worked "tirelessly" and that is something that I'm trying to apply in my life; to always have energy to keep a smile on my face.   I'm not sure if anything in my letter made any sense but, I'll just say that I'm having a blast and love being here. Definitely the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, but now I have more of a capacity to handle it all, and I know that source of my success is b/c of the Savior and the enabling power of the His atonement.

I love you!!  I'll let you know next week what times I'll be able to Skype....wait actually, you guys need to tell me and I'll make it happen :)

have a great week!

- Sean

Great week

So, I could write to much today but I'm so great! I love my life. I have no more time to type unfortunately but I just wanted to say that i love you and mom so much! Mom's letter was BOSS and super profound.  Ok, I have to go.  I love you!  thanks for being the best parents ever!!

--
- Старейшина Руни

ps MOM!!!!  Happy BIRTHDAYYYYYYYY!!!! soooooooon :)

"Eating Monday"

Hey Fam,

Sounds like you had a party all week, that's so awesome to hear. Of course while being on my mission I have realized more and more how great you all are. I'm so blessed to have you all as shinning examples of how to love others and serve. Elder Southam told me he wrote you, go ahead an write him back when you get the chance, he has change my life and I am forever grateful for the love he has given me. Let him know how wonderful I think he is, truly he is a great friend of mine. The pictures you sent from the wedding are beautiful and the pictures of the after events were awesome. I appreciated the picture of my beautiful mom and my gangster dad wearing his hood haha, I thought that was way funny. I don't know the words that can describe how I feel about my family. Thank you for you wonderful smiles and strong testimonies. I have had a few comps that have not been raised in a similar situation as me, in the sense that their families were as solid in the gospel, and I have seen the blessings that come from having temple worthy parents and siblings, it makes such a big difference. This week was my first week with my new companion and He has been an amazing blessing to me. He works...that's all I could have asked for. We have seen such amazing miracles while serving together and there will be a lot more to come. I'm stoked that I have a young companion that still has the fire b/c he just wants to go go go go....and I love it. We are working so hard and seeing miracles. We are working with a young man named Sasha and he speaks great English. We found him on the streets during Morning Contacting and he has become such a great investigator and friend. Its been so fun to look back on my mission and see the friends that I have made that are not even members but they are still such great people. Today we will have a couple young investigators come with us to FHE at a senior couples' place to eat food and play games and introduce our investigators to members of the church. There are a lot of Brothas that come and they actually changed the name of FHE to "Eating Monday" haha, apparently there is always a ton of food and that is a major selling point to get people to go...and if you have ever worked with poor college students, you know first hand that if the word "food" is mentioned, then your pretty well guaranteed double the attendance haha. So I'm excited for that. Anyway, I hope you all have a great. Thanks for everything! I love you all

-Sean

New Companion in front of a Statue of Stallin

 

New Companion, YEAH!!

HI family!!

Wow...those pictures of the wedding were so RAD!! Cami of course looked beautiful. Dad has lost some weight it looks like...I'm impressed :) You all looked amazing and I'm sure that everything worked out great. Its great to hear that with 10 hours and counting the church was transformed and everything turned out. I don't have too much time to write today unfortunately, I was writing other family member...but I will update you on how I'm doing. I got a new companion! He is really young on his mission, he is in his 3rd transfer and had been such a huge blessing. He actually wants to work!! we have been working so dang much! We will see some great miracles by the end of this transfer. On Sunday, I translated for all the Brothers at church and m brain wanted to explode...its so hard! but I will have to get used to it being that we have a very young district...minus me haha so I'm the designated translator. our district is a "dating" district, which means we have 2 sisters and 2 elders. This was the same as last transfer, I appreciate sisters SOOOO MUCH!! they bring a special spirit with them. They bring with them Virtue and It is always a blessing to have them with us. Thanks so much for being such a great family. I can't wait to talk to you in a little over a month. Its starting to get cold again which is so weird to see again for the 2nd. We haven't experienced negative temperatures yet but that will be here come January...anyways, Thanks for all that you do! I love you all!!!

Have a great week! :)

- Sean

Learning about Truth

Hi family!!

 Its so great to hear about everything that is happening with the wedding. Its kinda weird to know that I will come home to a different family but change is good and necessary. I'm so happy for Cami that she has been able to endure through so much and now is seeing the fruit of her labor.  I'm proud of her. I hope as is well in the Rooney household as the wedding draws nearer. I look forward to Mondays when I can read uplifting words from a loving family, I appreciate you guys more than you can imagine.  Thanks for always being there for me, especially when I was struggling the most. My companions all know a ton about my family...for good reason too. Well, this transfer will end for me on Thursday and I'm excited.  My comp just now was great but I'm down for a change haha.  It was great b/c in the beginning of my transfer, my comp would get mad at me b/c I made him do comp inventory and other things that missionaries like to skip out on ( he didn't like to do a lot of things haha), but its ok.  B/c now he is actually a missionary, and not just someone on vacation in Ukraine.  It was nice to review out transfer together and watch the transformation that has taken place in his life. He is super obedient and can attest for the wondrous success that we have seen lately. We have been getting investigators everywhere and he was finally able to see some fruit of his labor.  This transfer I have learned a lot about truth. And about how when we are honest with ourselves, God will show us the truth, which a lot of the time are our weaknesses. And when we come to God with humility and pray for a changed heart that we will willingly change and adapt that which is of truth, we will see our lives transform as comp has seen his life change.  I know that we make some of the most ridiculous excuses sometimes in our lives, but when we face up to the truth and act accordingly, that is when we become men and women of God.  I know that God shows us the truth to help us become better. I love slash absolutely hate when I hear something that makes my insides turn upside down b/c I know that I have to change b/c of something I'm not doing (if that makes sense....its makes sense to me haha) and it gives me the opportunity to use the gift of repentance and align my will with God's.   Anyways, I love being here and being a missionary, I thank God everyday for the time He has given me to be here.  I love you all!!  have a great week

- Старейшина Руни