Mormon Bloggers

Old Apple Tree Park by the Columbia River, Vancouver, Washington This week went great. We got things all lined up for Friday where we have our two baptisms. That is really exciting for us. Elder Hardy gets to baptize Stephanie and Brother Brown is going to baptize Crystal so it an awesome opportunity for everyone. We had three investigators drop us this week. It seemed that each of them had talked to a friend and they told them something. They were all really nice telling us not to come back again. Things like we believe in a different Jesus or we only believe in half of a God and Jesus was their mix up. One the investigators, about two hours after dropping us, gave us a call. She expressed how horrible she felt for rejecting us. She said she saw the love we had for the scriptures and how we were like Christ going to the people and visiting them. She also said that someone at her church had told her not to meet with us. She didn’t agree with that and said as she was reading her... Read the rest of this entry »

Daniel (right) and and Elder Hardy with couple We had yet again another great week. This time its full of exciting things such as baptism! We had one investigator pass an interview and another having her interview this Friday. They should be baptized next weekend. Stephanie is a investigator that looked up the church online and went to the wrong building and at the wrong time. She remembered going there as a small child and said she enjoyed the services. The bishop there got her information and it was passed to us. I remember her saying on the first phone call she wasn’t interested in converting. I mentioned we would stop by to tell her more about the church so she’d feel comfortable coming and could answer her questions. So she has come to church about four times now and we’ve been meeting with her for that month’s time. We asked her to be baptized a while ago, but since she was living with her boyfriend she didn’t know when she could be. So this week, she... Read the rest of this entry »

This week was just as great as last. We were extremely busy and were doing all we could to teach, find, and help people come to church. We were blessed with success and had eight investigators come to church. We are excited for a baptism in about two weeks. It has been quite the effort to find people that are ready, but we should be having more here in the future. The Spirit has helped us so much it is the greatest feeling. We were traveling down the street on our bikes and we weren’t sure what to do with an extra thirty minutes we had before dinner. Then I had the thought to go to Eric’s house, a media referral we received two months ago and hadn’t been able to contact him yet. We went and he was home. He has a testimony of the gospel and has been going to church with the person who referred him. He is about to move, but plans on being baptized. There was a good spirit about him and I could tell he had made big changes in his life. It was great to meet him. Our weeks... Read the rest of this entry »

Esther Short Park, Vancouver, Washington This week was a dream come true and it continues to be that way. We had two days in a row that we were so busy we had just enough time to grab a snack for lunch between appointments. I like to have lunch as a back up plan anyway. We continue to find many prepared people to hear the gospel. Joe is a good example. He is 11 years old and we had talked to him about a month ago and he missed our return appointment and we hadn’t seem him for awhile. As we rode down the street he called out and said, “Hey, can you wait ten minutes I want to do a Bible study with ya!” Of course we waited and we taught half the Plan of Salvation. We had another appointment so we left after a brief lesson, but he followed us and said he wanted to join us in the next lesson. We saw nothing wrong with that so we let him and it happened to be that we taught the Plan of Salvation again. Keelin was another young man referred by his grandma to us. His mom is... Read the rest of this entry »

Harrah!!! I’ve finally got the piano solo arrangement of We’ll Bring the World His Truth available for sheet music purchase. I had to get permissions from Janice Kapp Perry, so it took a little longer than usual. But now it’s here! To see the real store, go to chashathaway.com, but to save you a step, I’ve pasted all the links so you can buy it right from this page if you want: Purchase Sheet music for $3.95 Download Sample Page AKPC_IDS += "243568,";Popularity: unranked [?] Read More →

All the mission leaders met this week for a four day training for missionaries. It has a lot to do with how to follow the Spirit, teaching skills in general, and the importance of certain commitments. It’s hard to summarize four days of excellent training, but we were able to role play each day to practice. I’ve already had the chance to use the things I learned and it has been great. Elder Hardy worked hard with another Elder Draper he was able to be with. We arranged for priests to come out with Elder Hoskin (Elder Draper’s companion) so both areas would have missionaries in them. It was as if I had never left. Both my companion and Elder Hoskin grew a lot from the experience and it was good for them to take the area over for awhile. We had seven investigators at church and they all had a wonderful time. I am so happy that they were able to come. The Lord has been leading us to so many people to teach, our days are full with appointments two to three days in advance.... Read the rest of this entry »

Because of recent mission rule changes they have asked us to knock on every door we see. They have told us to wait for someone to come to the door before we leave. At one door we were there for a while so we took a picture of it. This week was absolutely incredible. Possibly the best week of my mission. We had several situations a day where we followed a thought we had or a feeling and recognized that it was a prompting from the Spirit. We felt like we went where the Lord would have us go and do what He wanted us to. I usually don’t care much at all about numbers, but in this case I’ll talk about them for a bit. This week we were able to teach 19 lessons to investigators. Only a couple were repeat lessons, which 12 of those lessons we had a church member come with us to the lesson. Along with that we were able to teach 9 lessons to less active members and a few of them we hadn’t ever met before. That is a total of 28 lessons which the standard of excellence in the mission... Read the rest of this entry »

Daniel (left) with Elders Hardy, Hodson, and Draper. This week went very well. We had some of the best work I’ve had since coming to this mission. The Lord really blessed us and we were grateful. There are many exciting stories to share, but I’ll just mention one. We have been meeting with an investigator that has been thinking that he doesn’t have nice enough clothes to come to our church. We didn’t really know that was his concern, but we left him with a commitment to read Alma 32. He read the chapter and when we returned he mentioned to us that it talks about people being kicked out of the churches because they were poor. It teaches that it is more important to have faith. He said, “Did you know that was in there? You hit it right on with that chapter you gave me to read.” We were again grateful for the guidance of the Spirit and were able to resolve his concern. It opened up the opportunity to resolve other concerns as well. We are hoping he will... Read the rest of this entry »

So Wednesday we picked up our new companions. My companion is Elder Hardy from Atlanta, Georgia. He lived close to where I served for three weeks, so that was really cool. He plays the guitar and had a job working at a pest control company selling door to door. He has lots of good ideas that work for tracting, but we keep in mind that following the Spirit is most important. We have had many great experiences already, which comes from working with new missionaries. They are fresh from the MTC full of faith, desire, and excitement which does wonders. I was prompted to turn down a street that I’d never really noticed before. As it so happens we talked to a man and he allowed us to teach him about the restoration. We gave him a Book of Mormon and said we could come back. The road also was a shortcut to where we wanted to get to. I was grateful for the guidance of the Spirit and it strengthens my testimony that the Lord uses us as instruments. I think rarely do things happen by coincidence... Read the rest of this entry »

Transfer calls created chaos (kind of). Every companionship in my district is changing. Only three Elders (including me) are staying and the rest are going to be different. It was quite surprising. Elder Draper and I are sticking it out in the apartment with two new missionaries to train. We were both humbled by the call and excited at the same time. We’ll get to meet them tomorrow. The hike last week was really fun and it was nice to be with the whole district. The picture in front of the waterfall is with Elder Draper. My bike had an interesting experience. The back tire’s bearings fell out making it out of commission. That is okay because today is the best day to fix it. It’ll be good to go soon. We decided to ride some scooters around while it wasn’t working (see picture). The person on the training wheels is Nathan in the ward leaving on a mission soon who likes to go around to lessons with us. Church was great. We were able to have five investigators there.... Read the rest of this entry »

President and Sister Greer with missionaries. Daniel is third from left rear. The 4th of July was lots of fun. We got to watch a few fireworks from our apartments backyard. We were completely surrounded on all sides with people launching fireworks into the air. Since they are legal here they are everywhere. We were riding our bikes at the usual quick pace that we do and we were coming up on a driveway that leads down a slight hill. I was just about past it when I glanced over and saw a lady washing her car. I slammed on my brakes causing my companion to almost hit me and went and talked to her. She happened to be a member who’d been less active for 20 years. She was married and sealed in the temple, but now is divorced. We invited her back and we’ll see what comes from it. It was great to have the Spirit direct us like that. We met our new president and his wife. I sent a picture of the zone with them in it (see above). He is really cool and seems like he’ll do great. Elder... Read the rest of this entry »

My first book is finally out!!! It’s taken about five years to write, revise, cleanup, format, edit, and publish, but Giraffe Tracks is available as of today! I’ll have it on its own webpage soon, but the webpage isn’t ready yet, so for now I’m linking to straight the store from my blog. So far, it’s available in: Softbound book Hardbound book PDF download Kindle book or you can Read a Sample I was hoping to release the audio book at the same time as the book release, but couldn’t have it ready in time. If there is a format that you would want to buy it in that is not listed above, let me know. I’d like people to be able to buy it in whatever format they want, even if it’s .doc, .jpg or even .mov (that would be interesting). If you’re willing to buy it in a certain format, I’ll make it in that format and sell it at the same price as any digital text format. I’m publishing it through Willowrise Press, which is my family’s... Read the rest of this entry »