Elder Bloxham - 11.25.2014

I am so happy and Thankful for everything I have! I truly am blessed! There has been no better time than this, that I have felt so close to my Savior, and i'm deeply thankful for his Atonement. It's interesting because when I think about Thanksgiving, the thing that tags right along with it is Christmas because we are thankful for the same thing. First of all I am sooo ready for Christmas, it's going to be an amazing time! Especially because people then realize they aren't living right, and they are like crap i really need to be closer to Christ, and their hearts get softened and their necks a little looser! It's awesome because we get to be in the cold, and the Lord feels sorry for us, so he blesses us more because of it! ;) But i really am thankful for my life, and more my Lord and my Savior. His Atonement means so much to me, and allows my same selfish, lazy, and imperfect self, become patient, active, and perfect. Through the tools that he gives us, we can be made whole, and i'm so thankful for that!

We have some amazing plans for Thanksgiving!! We have a Turkey Bowl in the morning, then we have dinner with our favorite family, the Bensons, and then later in the evening we get to go to a Blackgiving with Andre and Patrice!! We are going with them so eat soooo much food! Andre says, "this food will be so good, it'll make you mad at your mama!" hahaha i guess we'll find out! Mom, i'm sure your food is wayyyyyy better!!! No doubt! :) This family really is the coolest!! They are so amazing and i love to be able to see them as often as we do! Gosh, they are the funnest! They're always trying to hook us up with their sisters and friends because they love us so much! hahah :) But things are  going great here in the Geezy, and I love my Savior!!

Love Y'all, Elder Bloxham

P.S. y'all can send me letters, i don't mind :)

Elder Bloxham - 11.17.2014 Forgiveness

A quick update with what is going on in Mongeezy!!! Andre and Patrice are doing amazing! They came to church this last Sunday, and they absolutely loved it! They now want to get married, so Elder Seegmiller and I might get to marry them! That would be so awesome!!!! haha!! But they are progressing really well!! I love working with them! They will be baptized at the beginning of December!

This last Saturday we played basketball with our investigators, and it was so so so awesome! Big Andre is like this 6'5 390 lbs. guy, and he brought Patrice's brother and he was the leading scorer of Cincinnati when he was in High School (So they say, although, he really is an amazing athlete) and it was so much fun!!! And I had the chance to play basketball, that was great :)

With an experience this week, I feel like I should share this! :) 

I think one of the hardest things to do is to forgive. Forgiveness is hard... When somebody has done something against you in the past, several times, you have the hardest time trusting them, as well as forgiving them. I say this because we had an experience when we saw people we love fight, and i realized why Heavenly Father let us see it. When we were listening to the war of words, what kept coming to mind was the parable of the Adulterous woman. When she was taken and thrown down at the feet of Jesus, he knew all that she had done. He knew what she did the day before, the week before, and 10 years before that. He could have went off and said, well.... you really have kept going against my commandments, you don't listen, you this, you that. But he didn't do that. He looked at her and said, "Go, and sin no more." We need to forgive and forget the things that have happened in the past. We need to see the change within the person now. If we kept our mind in the past, then we would have no need of the Atonement, because the Lord sees us progressing, not digressing. So, I invite all to open your eyes, look at the world around you and if you have not forgiven somebody, please pray to the Lord for help to forgive them. As we see in the eyes of the Lord, we will grow ourselves, as well as allow others to grow! :)

 1 Nephi 7:21 And it came to pass that I did frankly forgive them all that they had done, and I did exhort them that they would pray unto the Lord their God for forgiveness. And it came to pass that they did so. And after they had done praying unto the Lord we did again travel on our journey towards the tent of our father.

I hope this is able to help someone, because for some reason i felt as though I should share it.

I love Y'all!!! Stay tuned for next week!!

-Elder Bloxham

Elder Bloxham - 11.10.2014

I just have an amazing miracle i'd like to share :) Stay tuned!!

There is this family that we are working with, and they are so amazing! It's a family of 5 and they live in a place called Lockland, Ohio. Now everybody in our area does not know how to keep commitments, and they have never had to in their whole life, but we expect them to keep them every single time we invite them. It kinda reminds me of Coach Carter, the basketball movie. All of those kids have no idea how to stay at class, get good grades, or even be committed to something. But the coach set a high expectation and didn't settle for anything less, because he knew that they all needed to get a college education. See we have the same thing in mind! We know that baptism can change their life, and we have such a high expectation set with them, that we do not want them to settle for anything less. 

If you can remember when i shared the story of the "Win The Dad" Situation when we pulled weeds for Andre, that was the beginning of the heart softening. A couple days ago on Saturday, we brought this family into a members home and had dinner with them! They had the time of their life, and the kids kept saying, "wow, this house is so big! it's so big!" They have never been in a decent home before, so it was a pretty cool experience for them to see a normal sized house, and also to feel the spirit that was there! But they committed to come to church the following day, and they were set on it! We stopped by in the morning and the mom, Petrice, said "Yes, all the kids took their baths and are getting their stuff ready." They were on their way!!! So we head to church and we were saving seats, all ready for them, then we get a text saying they weren't coming because she had gotten sick.... She had "worried herself sick"!!! Then we left after we took the Sacrament and drove over to get them going. Elder Seegmiller and I go in and just start getting all the kids clothes on! haha, ironing shirts, pulling the pants onto to 2 year old, and getting the dad ready! It was funny because when we got there, they all were like alright lets get ready! haha so it was a scramble!! But lo and behold, we got them all ready and downstairs and 'bout to go. But before we left we gave Petrice a blessing, and it really calmed her down, so that was amazing!

They came to church, absolutely loved it, and to put the cherry on top, we had an awesome Linger Longer after church with some dang good food! :)

When Nephi says, " 23 For we labor diligently to write, to persuade our children, and also our brethren, to believe in Christ, and to be reconciled to God; for we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do."     He really means it! haha!! We did all that we could do, and then Grace was poured out upon that family! Truly a miracle!!

"Miracles are everywhere to be found, when Priesthood duties are magnified! When faith replaces doubt, when selfless service eliminates selfish striving" - President Thomas S. Monson

Love y'all!! -Elder Bloxham

A couple more pictures from Kentucky

The second night i was in Montgomery, we had to retrieve our love sac back from missionaries that stole it from our apartment! haha so we fit that bugger in the back of G storms car and the only spot for Seegmiller was to smush up in the back and i had to shove him in with the door! it was supppper funny! 

We saw a pretty sweet castle when i was on exchanges! And then of course i want to fish this river! i've heard they've got some alligator gar in it! That'd be pretty awesome!

Elder Bloxham - 11.3.14

It's November!!!! I can't even believe it, but now i have embarked on a new journey in Montgomery, Ohio! I'm back to the second best state (behind Kentucky) and I'm super pumped because this was Elder Hanks' last area he served in before Kentucky! I'm in a huge ward now! there is like 260 people there, it was massive! But we get fed every night, and the ward is pretty awesome so i'm excited! I'm companions with Elder Seegmiller, and he is from Kaysville, UT. He's awesome, this transfer is going to be awesome!

We are going to be doing some rebuilding here for sure though! The zone needs some shaping up, as well as our own area! We don't really have anybody solid yet, but we are finding like crazy! I definitely know that the Lord is preparing people for us to meet. :)

That is pretty much all that is going on right now, next week's email will be much better so stay tuned! :)

Love Y'all!!

Elder Bloxham

The address to my new apartment is 9213 Deercross Pkwy, Apt 1A, Blue Ash, Ohio 45236 Send me Letters, i love  them :)

Elder Seegmiller and Elder Bloxham at a members house in Montgomery

Elder Bloxham - 10.27.14

Today is the day in which we received our transfer Doctrine!!! Elder Hanks will be staying, and after 7 1/2 months, I will be departing the Promised Land.... This is terrible!! I love it here, it has been the best time of my life!! I love the Northern Kentucky Ward, and I love the missionaries in the zone! But I guess it is what it is!!! Now I will embark on my journey somewhere else!

We had amazing things happen this whole month!! As a mission, we have a goal of getting 6 baptisms each month for each zone, and this month we had 10!!! It was so amazing! Every single one was such an amazing experience! Yesterday there were 4 people baptized! A family from Dayton Kentucky, and then an amazing young lady named Angelina! It was such an amazing baptismal service!

We had an awesome Halloween Party as well! Our Ward Mission Leader, Ryan Smith and his wife, dressed up as the Mad Hatter and the Queen of Hearts! Their costumes were so amazing!!! But it was a sweet party!

Not much else is going on, but I love this mission! This really is the Best Two Years!

Love,

      Elder Bloxham

The Buck family has taken such good care of the missionaries!

Elder Lemmon, Bloxham, and Hanks with the Buck family

The ward Halloween party

Elder Bloxham - 10.20.14

Isn't this crazy!! We are reaching the end of October already! I hope everyone has their Halloween Costume picked out!! :)

Things are going great in the Promised Land! But I do want to ask everyone who is married, Why is marriage so important to you and how it has helped you in your life. We have a couple that doesn't want to get married, I think experiences and events from your life will really help them, so please send me an email letting me know how it has blessed your life! :)

We have been going on a finding spree these past couple of weeks! I mean we are always on the grind, I mean find, but we really have been diggin these past couple weeks! We don't have a lot progressing, so we keep on lookin!! :) How we find most of the time is when we have our plans, we see the person who we wanted to see, but then we stay in the area and walk around talking to everyone we see, that has been helping us find a lot of new people. I love it, Elder Hanks and I have the funnest time! We're always cracking jokes, and we go to the investigators level. That is the funnest part!! Sometimes they are crazy, so we get crazy and do funny handshakes with them, or talk the way they do! haha it's the greatest!

The best thing that happened this week was we went to a Ghanaian's house, Brother Abuagye, and he fed us Fufu! If you don't know what that is, go look it up on google, and read about how they eat it! For those missionaries in Ghana, they probably love it now, but must have stomachs of steal!! That Fufu sits heavy on your stomach, and is so hard to eat!!! They say not to chew it, but to just cut a little piece off of it, and just swallow it straight down! It was hard, but definitely and experience to never forget! We also got Ghanaian ties, which are awesome!!! :)

Things are great here, I love y'all at home! Take care and Godspeed!!

Elder Bloxham  

Elder Hanks, Julie, and Elder Bloxham Driving to Rabbit Hash

Found these beanies! this is inside rabbit hash general store!

My homie Roddy G, or Elder Rodriguez, and his comp Elder Marchello! (roddy is in the middle)

The Northern Kentucky district at the Temple!!!!!

Olive Garden, Elder Rodriguez and our Awesome Waiter!!

Elder Bloxham - Hey Y'all!!

I want to say at the beginning that the hardest thing for me is to see the negatives, and when I think of the negatives it doesn't feel good! But I wanted to tell you about this week and the crazy turns it took!

To start it off, as a mission, we have a goal of 720 Convert Baptisms, and because of the prior months, all of the zones in the mission need to get 6 baptisms per month, and we've been doing great thus far, last month we had 4, and this month we were super excited with what was panning out, we were going to have 12 as a zone. Because that is so awesome, Satan likes to take action! There has been craziness in the zone! Missionaries being persecuted, our friends falling off date, rides to church being mixed up! I mean it's been utter Chaos! With Elder Hanks and I, we got rocked in one day! If you remember of my past letters, I talked about Elder Billy and Rick, the Native American guy that knows that the Book of Mormon is true. A few days ago, he texts us and says that he and his recent convert brother John, don't want us to come back anymore. They said it was nothing that we did wrong, they just want to be left alone... That was a wrencher! We love them so much, and for them to tell us that, it broke my heart! They will be found in the future, I know it! They are too amazing to be dusted under the rug.

Now, despite the craziness, it is all made okay by the Grace and miracles of the Lord! When Elder Hanks and I were going to our appointments on Saturday, everybody kept calling us and canceling! It was like 4 straight! haha we were like holy, this is typical! Lets keep these kind of things coming! hahah, but low and behold, the righteous and faithful Elder Hanks, being the inspired man he is, invokes the powers of Heaven by saying a prayer! As we looked at the Less Actives list, we chose the closest one to us, and went for it! This was at about 7:30, dark and chilly, we knock on this unknown less active. Answering the door was a High School girl, and we ask if this was the Sheilds home. They said no they moved a year and a half ago! Now conversation moves to sports, to school, to the gospel, funny how that always happens...... :) Also, her mom came talking to us at this point as well. But they were both very open! We are seeing them tomorrow and it's going to be a progression of conversion, blessed be the name of the miraculous Lord! Sometimes I hate that because I'm like okay, lets have all these bad things happen, just so you can build our faith! I see what you did there Heavenly Father, I see... :)

Heavenly Father answers prayers, Jesus is the Christ, and together, they are hastening their work!!

Love,

        Elder Bloxham

this is a picture of the Elders in the district! haha, but the kid on the other end is Elder Hanks! You can tell we're companions because we're the best looking ones ;) hah jokes!