"I mean... It's Dayton..."

Hello everyone!!! 

I hope that everyone is doing well and has a safe Halloween. We are going to be staying inside tonight so there isn't anything weird that could happen with missionaries and Halloween. Don't worry, we have received some assignments from President Welch to keep us occupied. 

Dayton is a very interesting place. There are things that you just wouldn't really see anywhere else other than Dayton, Ohio. People are interesting, they drive interesting, they talk about weird stuff. It is fun though. On Friday, we met the most racist woman I have ever met in my life... That was an experience. When ever we see something that is out of the ordinary, but it normal for Dayton, we say, "I mean... It's Dayton..." 

We do a lot of service here for members. It is pretty fun. We have been helping with a roof of a barn. One day, we were demolishing this shed that was attached to it and the next we were putting on shingles. The roof was really steep though and I really didn't like being on it so I wasn't much help. They were some fun projects. 

The work here is a little slow, but we are working to find some new investigators to teach and help them progress. Elder Grass and I need to involve Heavenly Father in this work more. If we don't, we are going to keep running into a wall, and headaches aren't fun. 

Thank you for everything! I love you!

Elder Hayden Cannon

Hello from the mishmarries in Dayton!!!

Hello everyone!!!

I am really excited to be in Dayton! it is very interesting to be in a city again, but this time I have a full time car! That is really nice to have. I am really enjoying it though. 

Elder Grass is my companion. He is from Sandy Utah. He is pretty cool. A big thing that I have learned on my mission is that the world doesn't have to be nor should it be organized into cliques. To be perfectly honest, Elder Grass and I probably wouldn't have spoken to each other before we were missionaries. We are excited to work together though. We have only been together a week and we are already able to teach people in unity. That was a really cool realization.

Being a zone leader hasn't seemed all that different so far. All we really do is help everyone in the zone continue to effectively work. It really has only been a week, though. I don't think I can give it a fair evaluation. I am really excited for Mission Leadership Council where all of the zone leaders and sister training leaders meet at the mission home with President Welch and have a meeting with him. Once I go to that, I think I will start to feel like a zone leader. 

This week we found some really cool new investigators. We got these two referrals from teenage girls and we were a little worried about them. Teenage girls have a reputation of being hard to teach for elders. These girls though are awesome!!! They are taking this college religion class and they had some sister missionaries from another mission (we think) come to their class and talk about Mormonism. They were really interested and are writing a paper about it. Their looking into the church at first does seem like an academic search, but we see some great potential in both of these girls. One of them had read all the way into the Book of Jacob in 2 days! We couldn't believe it! It was great to talk with them!

Thank you for everything! I love you!

Elder Hayden Cannon   

P.S.

I said "mishmarries" because there is a family in the ward here with a 4 year old daughter who says "missionaries" like "mishmarries." I thought I should include that. I thought it was cute. 

Elder Cannon and Elder Grass

My crusade on New Castle is done...

Hello Everyone!!!

Things have been going well here in New Castle. Elder Davis and I have been able to find a good amount of potential investigators which is really setting up the area for some great success. We had 3 people who were planning on coming to church but by Sunday morning, all of them were unable to come. That was a bummer. 

I had a very interesting experience giving a blessing this week. Our branch president took us to give a sister a blessing because she is having some trouble with her kidneys. I did the anointing and the branch president gave the blessing. He tends to give rather long blessings and this was no exception. I got up to the circle and made sure that my legs were a good distance apart and that I was bending my knees so that I wouldn't pass out. Even with all of that precaution, I still began to feel woozy. Even my tongue began to tingle, that was weird! I tried my best to push through and stay in the circle, praying to myself that the blessing would end. Finally, when it did end, I just about fell on the couch that was right behind me and was super pale. I asked Elder Davis how pale I was compared to the guy who died at the library and he said that I was about half as pale. That was a weird experience. I have since found out that I can leave the blessing if I need to, but at the time, I didn't know that I could. 

I found out this morning that I am leaving New Castle. I am going to miss this branch. We have done some good work here. Elder Davis is going to continue to do really miraculous things here. I have a lot of faith in him. I found out this morning that I am going to be a zone leader in Dayton, Ohio! I am really excited! That is the same zone as Greenville is in. Hopefully I will get to go on exchanges there some time!   

I love this work and I am excited to see what it has in store for me! I love you all! Thank you for everything that you do!
Elder Hayden Cannon

The spirit of Joseph of Arimathæa

Hello!

Sorry I didn't write last week. I ran out of time emailing. But now I am here to tell you what happened. 

We had an experience with this guy who wasn't very interested in learning about our church, he just wanted to argue with us. He said that he had some questions and the first thing that he said was the difference between his beliefs and ours was that Mormons don't give any divinity to Jesus Christ. Right off the bat, I wanted to smack him and I knew that this wasn't going to go over well. We spent the whole time talking about the trinity vs the godhead. It really didn't get anyone anywhere. It was pretty much bible bashing. We tried our best to defend our faith and to tell him what we believe, but he was very much set in his ways. We tried to say that we go off of what the spirit has testified to us is true, but he then said that the spirit isn't a credible source because it could be a whole number of things that make us "feel" that way. I couldn't believe that he was discounting the spirit! He just denounced a third part of what he was defending by saying it isn't credible. He was also denouncing another third part, Jesus Christ, by saying that because Jesus Christ is the one who tells us that we should go by the spirit (John 14:27)! What was so funny to me was that at the very end he said to us, "I tell you this because I love you, but I believe that you need to accept Jesus Christ and repent of your sins." I was very confused by this and told him that I had done so, but he said because I haven't accepted who Jesus Christ is because I don't understand who he truly is. I just told him that we are going to agree to disagree and we left. I am very lucky that the spirit is able to sit with me in situations like that and be able to tell me, "you know the truth!" 

We had a really good zone meeting this week. We talked about the spirit of Joseph of Arimathæa. Joseph of Arimathæa took the body of Christ and put him in a tomb. It says in Mark 15:43 that he "craved the body of Jesus." I love how that is says that he craved Jesus. It got me thinking, do we crave Jesus Christ? Do we crave the atonement and its healing abilities? Do we then want that for others? I really enjoyed that zone meeting and the discussion from that came for the talk about the spirit of Joseph of Arimathæa. I really want to have that in my life and in this work. 

Thank you, I love you!

Elder Hayden Cannon