January 23rd, 2012

Hi y’all,

Ha ha ha ha I love the picture. I was going to say this last week but forgot. I have decided that I really like the name Nathan and decided I will go by that when I get home.  I like it because it is not too long or too short. You can still call me Nate though. Anyways I am going to answer questions and then work on pictures. So the ward members are awesome.  There is a family that we eat dinner with every Sunday night that are so awesome. We do eat not in members houses every night because there are sister missionaries and they are way more important and get the dinners first. We still go to dinner in member’s homes during the week maybe 4 times a week so I will make dinner and lunches throughout the week. My scripture this week is in 3rd Nephi 23:1.  It is a great scripture to use to help people understand that we use the bible too and it is actually a commandment to study the bible. We have had many great spiritual experiences of knowing needs for the investigators in Stephenville this week. One day this past week we prayed to know what we should read to help one of our investigators and before we knew it we had the perfect scripture. We then said a prayer of thanks and recognized our blessings and knew we have inspiration over our area.  It is so amazing to see that. Anyways I am going to attach some pictures. I love you all so much.  I am excited to hear about the things going on there and hear about snow.  It is approaching 80 here ha ha.

Picture 1 Statue upon arrival

Picture 2 Elder Jackson my right and Elder Brimmitt on my left

Picture 3 Jedi Night Haha

Picture 4 District Picture

Picture 5 Elder Shoemaker and Elder Ericson (being funny)

Picture 6 My Bed
Picture 7 Scripture study/Eating area
Picture 8 Our Ward boundary
Picture 9 Our area
Picture 10 Our fancy kitchen
Picture 11 Looking into Kitchen

Love y’all,

Elder Shoemaker

First Letter From Texas

Howdy y'all,

I will just start off answering questions.

The trip to Texas was awesome it was soo cool flying out of Utah i saw Bingham copper mine on the way out and was like whoa - I have been there. I sat next to two other missionaries and some ward members from Texas and the plane was full of disappointed skiers because there is not very much snow in Utah yet. I got to the mission home and had amazing Texan food we went to the church and i stayed the night at the assistants apartment along with most of the elders. the next day we just did some orientation and then figured out I was going to Stephenville, Texas the farthest west area in my mission. It is all flat with no mountains I like it though amazing sunsets and the stars are so bright because it is basically country. Stephenville is actually the cowboy capital of the world. My bike is here with me we are in a car mission but i am putting the bike together today actually. It is awesome here last night the first Texas storm hit with loud thunder lightning and plenty of rain. My companion is elder Ericson he is awesome. He is from Denver, Colorado. we are working on exact obedience and we can already see the benefits from it. 6 new baptisms scheduled and 3 just yesterday it is so awesome we are doing a lot of teaching it i amazing.

I will share two experiences. There is Mary and Matt they are engaged. the elders contacted her before I got here. So we went to the address she gave them the first day and Matts dad Morris said to go away and he did not want us there. Later that night we saw her walking with Matt scheduled a return appointment the next day and found out Morris was a member along with a friend that lives with them and Morris and Bri were both testifying of what we were saying by the end of the lesson. They committed to baptism on the 28th and we have gone back to teach them and they came to church and loved it.

The other is hector again a contact we went to teach him and had tony along another Hispanic who is getting baptized on the 21 we taught the lesson and he loved it tony bore his testimony in Spanish and we all felt the spirit. Hector is also being baptized on the 28th along with Matt, Mary, Gordon, Damon.

                  (His second email...a few minutes later)

Oh my goodness i forgot to share my scripture for this week and say i love you all.

Anyways I just wanted to talk about Moroni's promise at the end of the Book of Mormon the reference is Moroni 10: 4-5.  It talks about if you want to know if these thing are true to pray with intent and a sincere heart. As i a found out through teaching this it can be applied to anything. We ask investigators to apply this promise to not only the Book of Mormon but to what we teach. We want investigators to know for themselves and not take our word. It is so effective in teaching. Anyways I encourage all yalls (oh my goodness I totally just accidentally said "all yalls" by habit haha yay!) to use this promise to gain answers to anything you want to know is truth...like asking if the bible is true. You don't really think of it because you pray about the Book of Mormon to know its truths but the bible is also the word of God as far as it is translated correctly so we can pray about it too. 

I love y'all,

Elder Shoemaker

P.S. study Preach My Gospel it will really help to prepare for a mission and also make it easier to share the gospel with friends and people you meet. We can all be missionaries!

I'm in Texas! Yeee Haaaw

Dear Family,

Sister Sagers and I want you to know that your missionary has arrived safely here in Texas. We look forward to serving together in accomplishing the Lord's work. We hope you enjoy the attached picture of your missionary, as well as knowing that the missionaries are in good hands here as they are in the Lord's service.

 

Sincerely,

 President and Sister Sagers

Elder Shoemaker Meets the Brown's

A couple from our ward is serving a mission and they entered the MTC on Monday.  We asked them to try to find Nate before he left today the 3rd, and they DID!  Here is a letter from them and some pictures they took together.  Thank you Brown's.

Denise,

We weren't going to start our blog until we got to Montenegro, but I couldn't resist sending a picture of  Elder Shoemaker to you (Click on the blogspot below.)

 

He looks great and is ready to go to Texas.  We ate lunch with him.  He was telling Craig about Preach My Gospel. . .kind of giving us sense of what we would be learning.  We met his two companions that will travel with him tomorrow. . .a nice group.

 

I sat in the cafeteria looking at all of the missionaries young and old.  I wanted to see if they looked stressed (from all of the learning) or if they looked like they were in prison or what.  Actually, they are a relaxed, happy group.  The cafeteria is amazing.  The food is good, but the real impressive thing was how fast they get their food.  There are different stations that they can go to, so there are never long lines or slow lines.

 

They are busy in a pleasant way.  I can tell that Nate feels good about his progress.

 

They are comfortable in their suits.  In the cafeteria many take off their jackets and put them on the back of their chairs.  They comment on each other's ties.

 

Now why would I make the prison comment.  The security is tight here.  You have to have a card to slide in a slot everytime you enter a building (like a hotel).  That way only missionaries  can get in.  They walk around sliding their cards like it is no big deal.  They change classes often and move around to different buildings, so things don't get stagnant.

 

Aren't the Christmas lights beautiful?  They are on the inside patios.  On the outside it looks like a boring mission training center.  Then you get inside and see all of this.

 

I wish I could have seen this when my kids were going on missions. 

 

There are about 98 senior missionaries in our group.  Eight are single sisters, so that makes 45 couples.  They told us to work at a pace that our health permits.  This a marathon, not a sprint.  They stressed sharing our experiences with our families.

 

Take care.

Love,

Nancy

Elder letter December 27th

Dear Familia,

 

The mtc is going great again the keyboard is worn off so i may have a few mistakes.

 

These past few days we have had a missionary rooming with us that is going to the phillipines so it is really cool hearing him tal in his language. i hace no idea what he is saying but it is good for him to practice as lomng as he understands himself. He was supposed to leave a couple days ago but he had broken his finger and had to wait till it was healed because that do not have verty good doctors where he is going. I will be able to call from the airport i am not sure which one but i leave from SLX arounf 8 in the morning so i may call then or when we get to texas. I am not sure if i have told you already but there are about 18 missionaries going to texas that day we may have a new ward by the end of our flight hahaha. i gotta go i love you all and i will call you in about a week. I am glad to hear christmas wwas great mine was amazing too.

 

Love yall ;-)

Elder shoemaker.

Week Two MTC

Hi yall,

Just checking to see if you got my email on tuesday i will see if i can send it again just in case you did not get it they are letting us send emails today because of Christmas i am taking plenty of pictures and i will definently send some as soon as possible.

Thank you so much for the presents and packages the chex mix was amazing again dad and the ear muffs were much needed i had forgot i was going to get them so thank you and the bike pump will be very usefull. this week has gone by so so fast it is crazy it feels like we were just having the first sacrament two days ago. the computer i am using is being really slow and not catching my typing so again i will not be able to write as muvh and no i am not trying to avoid emails there is just alot of elders sending letters right now.

This week has been pretty hard  with alot of elders feeling homesick and making some things depressing but that is okay i just want to be able to help tham out i have not really gotten homesick and i am doing great i just want to help the elders realize that they should be here at this time and that a honorable mission will really strengthen their lives. Also i got the mtc mini flu but it should go away soon. we have been busy all week going to classes and studying, lots of role playing, and working with volunteer investigators. christmas has been awsome so far we got to listen to David A Bednar and have a great Christmas lunch. Elder bednars talk was amazing i was so excited to find out he was speeking he is my favorite. oh my goodness yesterday of the day before i really do not remember which day it was but i saw brother peck (THIS IS NATE'S OLD SEMINARY TEACHER WHO IS NOW TEACHING AT BYI IDAHO)he was here to do some missionary training stuff so he could us it at byu idaho. I was so excited to see him mainly because i did not expect to i just herd my name and turned around i just freaked out and got really excited. I am sorry i have not been able to write much. I miss you all and love you even more. Merry Christmas.

Elder Shoemaker

Elder Shoemaker's First Letter

(Okay at first, I was going to fix this letter, then decided it is way too funny this way.  The first sentence will tell you why.  Should have payed more attention to Computer Apps. class Nate - tsk! tsk! :) 

 

Dear Family,

I only have 25 minutes to talk and the letterson the keyboard areworn off so i may mess up and not be able to write verry much i guess i will learn to type better.

 

The mtc has been amazing i will leave the mtc on the third of january for texas, the food here is great i have learned to control myself so i do not eat too much i eat all of my veggies and am learning to just eat whatevver i get including tomatoes on my salads. there is kind of a subway counter and they make custom wraps they are amazing and i usually get those. i have two companions elder Brummitt and elder Jackson we get along great and are learning to love eachother and love the people we teach. i would send you pictures but there is no sd card slot. so really the only thang that i need would be a sd card converter for a usb port dad will know what that is.

 

The mtc has been hard because we are on such a tight schedule and it does not feel like i have time for anything isent a quick letter a few days ago to let you know i got here. The teaches that we have for our class are awsome there is brother snyder he has been off his mission for two years now. the other teacher is brother Lemperle (limp early) as he says it. It is really cool because he served in the washinton kennewick mission so i could really relate to him he never came to tricities on his mission but he trained elder collier.

 

I have not really gotten homesick compared to other missionaries but i miss all yalls but i know this is where i am supposed to at this time in my life. i have alrady had allot of spiritual expieriences. I have really learned to love hymns we were in a building before a fireside and sang three opening song the first two some elders were goofing off and made in hard to enjoy the song. The third song however the hymn was announced and the whole crowd was in awe of the sonng we would sing we started to sing and it just started i was freezing from shivvering so much during the song and easily more than half of the elders were crying. Also yesterday we got to teach our first investigator George Cepull he is a volunteer investigator for the mtc so it was real. He told use his amazing story of how loosing his right leg above his knee brought him closer to God. We were only supposed to teach him for 15 minutes but we were thaer for 40 and he did not want us to leave and we as alders did not want to leave. He said when he was in the hospital a family came and sang to him every day and throughout the lesson i felt like we should sing i am a child of god i kept battling it but i felt so strong that we sould i brought it up at the end and all of us did not want to sing but the spirit prompted us to. we butched the song were off key the whole time and were crying the whole time along with george at the end he us that was the song that the familly sang to him.He told us on his way home he was going to stop by there house on his way home and share the expirience. I officially love utah and the mtc i cannot wait to see george again.

 

I love yall i have to go,

 

Love elder shoemaker