October 27th, 2014

The one in the middle is mine.

there was funny stuff written on this boarded house haha

This is us in the Sidney Montana Ward building

picking up trash!

October 20th, 2014

Dianna got baptized and confirmed on Saturday! SO HAPPY!

Our plumbing is backed up and leaking under our sink! So now we have to wash our dishes in two bowls so the water doesn't go down the drain!
We have just moved from a second world proselyting area to a third world proselyting area!

Monday it was an elder's birthday. We had cake, icecream, brownies, and pizza. such a good day. 

Let's get fat :)

October 13th, 2014

Just some adorable puppies my investigator has. Mom is a German Shepherd, and dad is.... dad is... well.... There were many dads so we aren't sure...

It's the rez!

Made a dang good stir fry with so sauce mmmmm. We were teaching a lesson and this little kitten climbed on Elder Hausia's back and was super surprised to find out that the mountain moves! And we have an entire fridge full of food! Our wonderful branch president went shopping and brought us a ton of food!

Blessings from above!

October 6th, 2014

This week was transfer week, and was super crazy. Elder Hausia and I got stuck in Wolf Point for 3 days. It wasn't too bad there. We got to teach a lot of lessons and we set four new investigators on date for baptism! I'm so happy to have Elder Hausia. He is a worker, and he is a very powerful teacher. He doesn't ever make any excuses, he just works. I am glad to be put with a companion who is so bold in declaring the gospel.

 

Conference was wonderful. I received a lot of good help for my personal growth and how I can better share the gospel with the people. I was very excited to see Elder Carlos A. Godoy speaking because he came to our mission last summer for a mission tour. He is a very amazing man and a great speaker.

 

This week Elder Hausia and I are going to hit the ground running, and hit it hard. I can't wait for the miracles that are going to happen while we are here in Poplar!

 

I am excited to tell you that during my studies I read about the temple in True to the Faith. While I read that I obtained a clear vision of what it means to be a consecrated missionary. I especially received revelation from page 173 where it talks about temple clothing: "When you go to the temple, you should wear your best clothing... As you put your clothing in the locker, you can leave all your worldly distractions behind. Dressed in white, you can feel a oneness and a sense of equality with others in the temple, for everyone around you is similarly dressed."

What made me want to look it up was a phrase I read in a talk called, "spiritual Whirlwinds" by Neil L. Andersen. He said, "The way you feel in the temple is a pattern for how you want to feel in your life." That made me start to think of in what ways a mission can be like going to the temple. I took what I read from true to the faith and applied it to being in the mission. I started to look at everything in my life right now that I wouldn't want if I had to go to the temple for two years. This week I have felt the spirit more in my life and I have felt like I do in the temple. Amazing things happen when we sacrifice our own will to the Lord.
THE WAY THAT I FEEL IN THE TEMPLE IS A PATTERN FOR THE WAY I WANT TO FEEL IN MY MISSION!

 

I hope everything is going well! have a great day!

 

Elder Garceau

(I love you Mom!)

The glendive northern district at transfers, and Elder Hausia and I at the temple

So sad to be seeing Elder Archie leave, and so Jealous that he is going to my first area Dillon Montana! Gonna miss you bud!

September 29th, 2014

Hello again with another week!

Transfer calls came last night and I am staying in Poplar! Elder Archie is getting transfered to my first area, Dillon. 

And I will be companions with Elder Hausia from Tonga. He has also served in Dillon. Elder Hausia is a very good elder and I know that we will do good together.

 

On Saturday we had a baptism for JJ Cantrell who the other elders have been teaching. He has been coming to church for the past month and he is a great guy! He has been in my sunday school class for the time he's been at church. He is very excited about the gospel. 

I was very surprised when he called and asked me to baptize him! This is the first person I have ever baptized in my life and it was very exciting! 

 

I don't have the pictures now, but I will send them later. (I was wearing grandpa's tie when I did the baptism.)

 

It is getting colder right now, but it has been off and on for the past month. It's what they call, "indian summer". Today I broke out the trench coat and gloves. If it rains I've got my new baclava to keep my head dry.

 

Next month we have a baptism scheduled for basically every weekend. We just have to get on top of things and we will have four baptisms next month!

I have been having feelings recently that I don't need to leave Poplar yet, so I knew that I would be staying. There are still things I need to do, and people I need to teach on this reservation. I am super excited to be here with Elder Hausia. I went on an exchange with him a few weeks ago and felt like I should maybe tell the mission president that we should be companions in Poplar, but I didn't want to dictate to him what he should do with us. I was very surprised and very happy when I found out we were going to be companions here! I know for sure that my mission president is inspired!

I hope everything is going well back home, I'm having a blast here!

September 22nd, 2014

Here are just a few pictures of some things that happened this week. The first one is Mikey. He is a super cool blood hound that follows us around and other dogs leave us alone when he's around. He usually has his friend, scared one, who is a retired K9 police dog, following us too. But we haven't seen him this week. Mikey is really nice and likes to rub his face against your leg. We never see them coming either. It's usually when we are knocking on a door and not looking that he will show up and put his face on your hand.

The second picture is me activating the yeast for the dough I made for our bread sticks. I had a lot of fun making these and next time I am going to make them skinnier and longer, but the up side to it is that we have massive bread sticks to munch on! They were super good and reminded me of when I was at my uncle's house in Eagle Mountain Utah and they would make these all the time. Elder Archie even liked them!

Thanks for the recipe uncle Steve! 

September 15th, 2014

Hello all it's been another week in Popping Poplar. No cursed items this week, but it's still been a good one. Once again I was not with my companion the whole week, but we did great. Our numbers are really starting to go somewhere. I'm positive in the next two weeks the work will sky rocket. The other Poplar Elders are swamped in their teaching pool so they help by giving us some of their new contacts to teach if they don't have time. I think we will be able to teach about 30 lessons a week in just a little bit at the rate things are going.

 

We went to district meeting in Wolf Point on Wednesday and I started an exchange with my district leader Elder Brisco. A series of events occurred and we were stuck in Wolf Point by ourselves! We did the only thing we knew how to do, we walked around and found people to talk to. We got the Elders a new investigator to teach while we were at it. We finally got to go back to work in Poplar on Thursday where we continued the work that we started in Wolf Point. In spite of being out of Poplar for a whole day, we were able to teach 18 lessons last week which is just 2 short of our missions standards of excellence! I haven't taught close to that many lessons since I was in Lovell Wyoming so I am excited to be back where I was before. Every week I am seeing little improvements and I am very excited for what will be happening next transfer.

 

At the beginning of the week we met a couple that was at our investigators house who wants us to teach them about the gospel. We were teaching Duston Scott's cousin when he randomly showed up at the house with his girlfriend Tisha.They both said they wanted to be baptized and we are very excited for them. They want to clean themselves up and get closer to God. We only gave Duston a Book of Mormon, and the next meeting we asked his girlfriend, Tisha, if she was reading it to. She said that he wouldn't ever let her touch it because he was reading it, so we gave her one as well. They seem extremely prepared. Duston told us that he feels the spirit every time he reads to Book of Mormon and he believes it's true. Tisha doesn't quite know why she wants to be baptized yet, so we will be working on her to understand what it's all about. We have to make a conscious effort here for people to understand what we are inviting them to do because sometimes people aren't always sober when you teach them the lessons, but most of the people here are very good people.

 

(Just a side note, We met two other guys who are interested in what we teach, and we walked with them for half an hour talking about the gospel. I asked them what "oka-hey" meant, and they said it doesn't mean "it's a good day" like the drunk people told me. It's actually more of a war cry when you're about to fight or go into battle.)

 

We found more people walking around here than we did trying people on our list that we were given when we got here. Sometimes I feel prompted that we should see a certain person, and they weren't home, but we did find someone else who just happened to be where we were at the time walking around. I have found planning to be a very essential element of following the spirit. If you listen to the promptings of the holy ghost in your planning at night, the next day, the Lord can place those in your path to receive the gospel.

 

We were all freezing our tails off because we couldn't figure out why the furnace wasn't working in the basement. We tried resetting it and everything but it just wouldn't work. Finally we called Elder Allsop, one of the senior missionaries who just moved out of Poplar, and he told us that we have to manually light the Pilot. And this whole time we thought it would automatically light! We finally went down and lit the darn thing and we have been nice and toasty ever since :)

 

I hope everyone is having a wonderful day today! Stay warm!

 

sincerely, Elder Garceau

 

(I love you mom!)

 

Oka-hey!