November 14, 2011

Hi Mom and Dad,
I have been doing great out here in warren. It has been a little cold here and we got to see some snow a few days ago but not to exciting other then that. We have been very busy and very happy as well its pretty weird how fast time flys out here. We are already half way through the transfer its crazy but I love it, I am not to worried about two years haha. Oh and mom there is a member that lives here that served in the riverside mission, he served around wildomar and a bunch of other places its pretty cool his name is Brother Furness, he is in the elders quorum presidency. Oh so last Monday Elder Trammell told me that he got an email from one of his good friends back in pocatello and he told us that they were related to our family. Their names are Paul and Colette Ottis, I personally don't know them but I bet dad would so i thought that was pretty cool. Well since it has been getting cold our bike riding has slowed down a lot. Its not fun riding when there is snow and you cant feel your hands or feet. But we did ride our bikes a few times this week but it stopped after the snow fell. Oh and it gets so dark here at like 6:00 so tracting at night is not very fun at all. But sadly no mom we don't get anymore miles they expect us to suffer through it. Which I guess I can do it I just don't really want to do it. That's great that you are having the family over for a early thanksgiving, it sounds like it will be fun. That is great that you enjoyed stake conference this week sounds like it was a good one. Well me and elder stone learn a lot from each other and from those we teach. It is a great learning experience to be out here and I love it so far. There are so many people in this area that are really suffering from the economy and its great to talk to them about Christ and how our message can help them through this time. It is great to watch someone change their entire life a come unto Christ. Well its a sad day that i couldn't hear the great and inspiring words of dad but i think i can make it a week without them haha. I love you all and hope you have a great week.
Love,
Elder Ryan Furtney

Hi Mom and "The Dad",

 Its great to hear from both of you and I have been doing great this past week. We are seeing a lot of success from our diligence and our bishop is becoming more missionary minded which helps us out a lot. I am enjoying having Elder Stone as my companion and I am learning a lot from him. It was too bad taking over an area and it was a growing experience. We still have not had any snow here, actually the past few days have been surprisingly warm but its going to be gone soon. We have been biking a lot to try to save miles and enjoy the weather. I got the thermals you sent me and I'll look for the next box as well. Oh and I am sorry i am bad at writing back ill try to be better it just takes so long haha. But i will write as well so you can hear from me more then once a week, Because i know that you all love hearing about wonderful Warren haha. That's great you had a good Halloween. Ours was just boring missionary meetings which i could barely stay awake in. But I do want to see these pictures they sound pretty funny. Thanksgiving sounds kind of boring but at least you don't need to worry about the cooking and everything. We will probably just be at members houses all day we cant go out and teach on thanksgiving. But it should be a good day I am excited for it. Yes we have been tracting so much these past few weeks but we have one of our most solid investigators that came from tracting and she would have gone to church but she was very sick. The family that we have been teaching has been kind of hard because they don't have a lot of desire to keep learning, but we are trying to work with them and trying to get them to church. We are also teaching a guy that has had three strokes and he is so humble it is amazing. He was able to come to church and we hope that he can be baptized by the end of this month or by the first of December. The work is going great here there has been tons of success from working with our less active members and we will have a baptism this transfer. Well that has been our week and Its been so great for me, I have learned so much. Well I love all of you and thank you for all the support you give me.

Love your son,

Elder Ryan Furtney

October 31st

Hey Mom and Dad,

I am doing so great here in cold Ohio haha. The temperatures have dropped a lot but no snow just a lot of frost which is not fun when you tract. Yep so Elder Trammell got transferred but he is still really close to where I am.  He is in Tallmage, Ohio. He is a zone leader. I will probably see him a lot more before he leaves so it's all good haha. So my new companion's name is Elder Stone, he is from Spanish Fork, Utah and has been on his mission for about 16 months. He was serving in Perryburg, Ohio which is by Toledo its just right outside of that city. He is a great missionary and he knows what he is doing so I have been learning a lot still. So I will look for the thermals.  I hope they work because it is getting cold here. I heard about some storm over in the far eastern states but all we got was a little bit of freezing cold rain nothing to exciting but it kills my knuckles when I knock on a door - it's so cold. That's so cool to hear that Sheen is about to leave. He is going to love it on his mission, it's so amazing. That's cool that you are getting everybody indexing out there. All we focus on around here is missionary work and bringing back less active members... Which is not bad at all.  I cannot complain because it helps us out a lot. So this week Elder Stone and I talked in sacrament meeting and I am just going to say it's hard to prepare a talk without using the internet.. but of course i didn't even follow my notes and just let the spirit talk for me. It worked pretty well, but I was a little nervous. Actually I am not the senior companion because Elder Stone is the district leader so he is senior but that is okay with me haha. Maybe some other time I will get there but for now junior is just fine haha. Well it was a great week.  We had tons of stuff to do and we have even more for next week so I'll be very tired which is good because I love a great nights rest haha. Well is there anything new going on with the family? Anything happening over there in that distant land of what we call Utah? Well I love you all and I will talk to you in a week.

Love your Son!!

Elder Ryan Furtney

October 25

Hi Mom and Dad,

Its great to hear from you and that is so cool you were down in California with grandma, i bet she enjoyed it a lot. Its good to hear that she is doing so well and and i hope that she knows that i am doing great out here. Also its good to hear about Gordon, Kathy, Julie and Scott,  I hope they are doing good. I bet you enjoyed the trip.  How long were you down there for? Oh and one of the members told me about the troops leaving.  I was wondering if Eric was going to be home or not. Hopefully he is.  I bet mom would love to have one her sons back with her haha especially for the holidays. Well i hope he is able to come back.  That would be great and a lot less worrying about him. I am glad you like the pictures, there will be more coming soon.  We will be taking a lot today because it's Elder Trammell's last day in Warren and then he will be gone and i will have a new companion. This was a great week so far we were able to have some pretty great lessons with our investigators that we want to set baptismal dates with and we were able to find their concerns about what we were teaching. The only bad part about the week is we can't get Skylar and Tyler to get to church and so we are thinking about taking a break with them.  We will find out this up coming week. Actually this week i was able to learn a lot about asking questions and listening to find concerns as i already explained but i learned so much from elder trammell and it's sad to see him leave.   I am excited for my new companion. I hope he is able to teach me a lot as well. I will let you know what happens next week and who my companion is.

Dad,

I am glad you are getting the elders over to your good tan friend and trying to teach him. i hope all goes well. I hope you enjoyed your trip down to California before the winter comes haha. Its going to be interesting over here its starting to cool down a lot but the trees over here are way cool during the fall. But the snow will probably be here anytime soon I guess i will see. I have enjoyed my mission so far and I want to keep it that way, nothing from back home is going to distract me I promise. Well I hope you have a wonderful week and i love you all.

Love,

Elder Ryan Furtney

October 17

Hey Mom and Dad,

I am doing so good out here. We had a disappointing week because Skylar and Tyler didn't make it to church again but we have been teaching another family and they seem to finally want to except a baptismal date. Hopefully I will still be here if they accept it.  We have transfers coming up next week and mine and elder Trammell's chances of staying together are slim to none. Our week was pretty productive it was a week of a lot of service but we do have some new investigators that we are teaching. We don't know tons about them. We have just stopped by and said hi to them and set up some return appointments. Well that's pretty funny about your class, we see it a lot out here in Ohio how the world is more important than church and other things. I heard that Amy came over I got a few emails from Carmen and Lexi haha. They make me laugh.  They are so funny. Oh so i just put some pictures onto Facebook for people to see but I will send the rest back over there soon. Oh and don't worry I didn't have to sign on to Facebook so i didn't break any rules. haha. That's good your heard from Eric I am glad to hear that he is doing fin.  I hope his new mission won't be too bad but I will keep praying for him. That's so cool about Wesytn and Sheen.  I am glad to hear that they got their calls. I didn't know Sheen was planning on going.  That is so cool that he is.  I hope he is safe in Columbia. Oh and dad I have no idea what you were saying but thanks i guess. And I hope you know that when someone gives me a referral I am so excited. It's the best thing in the world when we get referrals because they will listen to us haha. I have loved my service so far and I love my family even more since I got out here. You are all great examples to me and I love you all.
Love,

Elder Ryan Furtney

October 10

Hi Mom and Dad,

This week is going good I pulled my hamstring playing football with some elders but other then that i have had a great week. Its not cold yet but it is suppossed to cool down at the end of the week and its possible that it will be snowing at the end of the month. I will go and check out dick sporting goods and see if they have any and then if not the UPS guy is pretty smart about keeping the boxes and not leaveing out in the open for people to steal. Well the halloween decorations are starting to show up around here and i think that its pretty funny. I guess on halloween we can only work during the day then at night we just have to stay at a members house tell we go back home to sleep. They must be scared that we will get jumped or something that night haha. I have been able to email carmen and i loved hearing from her she sounds like she is growing up more each day and I love the letter you sent me too thank you so much. I am glad that you and dad are still thinking about a serving a mission. The senior missionaires are great around here they help us so much and they are all so kind. Like elder holland said they bring a maturity to the mission that is so true. We actually have a senior couple in our district and we have been helping them move in and helping them learn how to teach because they only have a week at the MTC. But they are great people and i am so glad that you are still thinking about it. Well skylar and Tyler were not able to make it to church today tyler was pretty sick and didnt feel like going. So we pushed the date back to the 23rd but now their gradma is able to come to church more because she changed her work hours so she will start taking them now. I have been learning a lot from once i started to now and it is amazing. Love all of you and thank you for being great example to me i love both of you so much.

Dad,

Its great to here your humor over here in ohio. Long underwear looks good on me didn't you know haha. I would rather have a nice new pair then one from the DI just saying dad that pretty gross haha. I am glad you are still doing missionary work dad i really wish that we had member here that would do the same because that is where we get the baptisms its not from tracting even though that is good. I hope you keep handing out Books of Mormon to those you feel impressed to give them to. Member missionary work is amazing and like President hinkley said "There is no point to missionary work without the members" If the member dont help missionaries then those we do baptize will just fall away we need strong members to keep them active. I am sorry to say but we do not have to many lamanite brothers here it would be nice but i have not seen one yet I dont think they like the cold. Well thank you dad for all the good news and humor. I hope you know that my testimony is growing and I feel like i am learning so much everyday that i am out here.

Love,

Elder Ryan Furtney

October 3, 2011

Hi Mom and Dad,
This weekend was amazing, elder Trammell and I were able to watch all of the sessions and it was so amazing. Watching Elder Holland's talk was amazing it was another testimony to me that this is where I need to be and it gives me a greater desire to go out and work. It was great to hear from the Prophet and it is always nice to be able to have a good laugh from him and be taught so much at the same time. There were so many talks that I loved and I don't think I have ever been so into a conference before in my life. I took a lot of notes so that is probably why haha. We were not able to have the baptism yesterday Skylar and Tyler need to make it to church more often but we were able to talk more to their mom and we gave her a Book of Mormon to start reading for herself. We hope that she will have a greater desire to listen to the lessons and want to be baptized. That's so great that you were able to see Eric on Skype, I have been thinking a lot about him and I miss him a lot. Hopefully i will be able to skype on Christmas i don't really know yet but it is very possible. I wish that we had warm weather here the past two days we have had coats on and it seems to be getting colder but i think it should warm up again by the end of the week. Yesterday i was surprised it didn't snow though it was very cold but it was raining all day too. I got the boots and thank you so much for them. I haven't tried them on yet but i will tonight and I hope they fit. Oh so i guess my coat i have probably wont be thick enough for the winter but i will wait and see i will just buy one here so you don't have to worry about that but I will probably need money in my account so i can buy it. We have dinner most of the time with members but really only three families feed us at least once a week and they are amazing. The members here are way funny, we have been working with one of the 17 year olds in the ward and we have had a lot of fun with him he would be a great missionary he just has a lot of doubts and doesn't feel like he needs to go. We are hoping he decides to go, but it is his choice. Well the flu shots just came out and actually like more then half of our mission has had the flu, The last two weeks like every missionary was sick but it didn't hit us so its great here. President Sorensen actually just sent us an email recommending us to go get a flu shot but it has to be paid with our own money. Well i have heard from Brock and Matt but not Dillon yet, i sent him an email but nothing yet. It was great to hear from Matt I guess he is doing really well in Brazil so that is good. Well I am expecting another great week and it should be very good and productive week this week as well. I love you all and pray for everyone all the time.
Love,
Elder Ryan Furtney