AUGUST 1, 2011 - EMAIL
(I had already found out where he was staying from the mission President's wife so that is why he starts out his letter the way he does)
Hey there! I should have known that you'd already know more about my mission than I do. haha It has been great! The Renfroes do in fact have a sweet pad. They even let us swim in their swimming pool and play video games in their game room! Not. You are right about the mission being very focused on obedience, which is totally not a bad thing. That is why we are the Only True Mission after
all! I had to start parting my hair because that is also something we do in this mission. I'm now literally set a"part" as a missionary! haha The Merkley's are about the most awesome couple ever and definitely the best President and President's Wife ever.
My first companion in the field, and my trainer as well, is Elder Jared Gordon. He is also from Utah (as many missionaries are) around the Provo area. He and I get along very well and he is an excellent missionary. He's been out about a year and a half. He has a family with siblings and he is the oldest but we haven't really talked about our families too much. My first night in the field (not counting the night I spent in the mission home) we had a teaching appointment with a guy named Wei. He is working at the
University of Arkansas here but he is originally from China. His daughter is with him but his wife stayed behind in China. Previous to me arriving here they had taught him about The Restoration and so when I went that night we watched the Restoration video and then we taught him about prayer. He has very little christian background so prayer was a good place to start. He actually had
thought that, in order to pray, you had to be a member of the church and he was very happy and excited to find out that he could pray. Unfortunately, he leaves for China again on the 11th so we are basically trying to pump him full of as much gospel as we can before he leaves.
Someone else we have taught is a man who is attending the University and is originally from Nigeria. He is very serious and is extremely knowledgeable about the Bible. I think once he successfully finds that our teachings do match up with the Bible that he'll want to join the church. Who wouldn't? This is the happiest gospel ever!
We also have taught a middle aged couple who are about the nicest people ever. He is completely blind and so they're always very close and it's great to see how much they love each other. We taught them about church last time and they seemed really excited to go but for some reason they didn't show up on Sunday. I hope everything is okay but we haven't been able to talk to them yet.
Another cool story is when we were teaching a 17 year old boy, Nathan. He is friends with a member named John who invited him to go to efy earlier in the summer. He went and when he came back he has basically said that he knows he wants to be baptized and he even wants to serve a mission! Basically our lessons consist of us teaching him each of the lessons and just preparing him for his
baptismal interview. So at church on Sunday I think I did meet the sister you are talking about unless there's more than one missionary mom in the area who you are emailing. (to be honest that wouldn't surprise me. haha) It was kinda crazy on Sunday because I actually ended up going to all three sacrament meetings! The first ward is the ward I'm over, the second ward is the single's/university ward and we were visiting their Elder's Quorum to get some referrals so we skipped the combined priesthood/relief society lesson of our home ward to go to their sacrament, and then we went to the 1 o'clock ward because it was the only one Wei could make it to. Another thing, the members here are great! We pretty much have dinner lined up every single day and every one of the families has been super nice. I love how you can feel right at home no matter where you are in the church. Well that's about it! I love you all very much and I'm very appreciative of your love and support! The Church is true! Love, Elder Cody Holmes
Hey there! I should have known that you'd already know more about my mission than I do. haha It has been great! The Renfroes do in fact have a sweet pad. They even let us swim in their swimming pool and play video games in their game room! Not. You are right about the mission being very focused on obedience, which is totally not a bad thing. That is why we are the Only True Mission after
all! I had to start parting my hair because that is also something we do in this mission. I'm now literally set a"part" as a missionary! haha The Merkley's are about the most awesome couple ever and definitely the best President and President's Wife ever.
My first companion in the field, and my trainer as well, is Elder Jared Gordon. He is also from Utah (as many missionaries are) around the Provo area. He and I get along very well and he is an excellent missionary. He's been out about a year and a half. He has a family with siblings and he is the oldest but we haven't really talked about our families too much. My first night in the field (not counting the night I spent in the mission home) we had a teaching appointment with a guy named Wei. He is working at the
University of Arkansas here but he is originally from China. His daughter is with him but his wife stayed behind in China. Previous to me arriving here they had taught him about The Restoration and so when I went that night we watched the Restoration video and then we taught him about prayer. He has very little christian background so prayer was a good place to start. He actually had
thought that, in order to pray, you had to be a member of the church and he was very happy and excited to find out that he could pray. Unfortunately, he leaves for China again on the 11th so we are basically trying to pump him full of as much gospel as we can before he leaves.
Someone else we have taught is a man who is attending the University and is originally from Nigeria. He is very serious and is extremely knowledgeable about the Bible. I think once he successfully finds that our teachings do match up with the Bible that he'll want to join the church. Who wouldn't? This is the happiest gospel ever!
We also have taught a middle aged couple who are about the nicest people ever. He is completely blind and so they're always very close and it's great to see how much they love each other. We taught them about church last time and they seemed really excited to go but for some reason they didn't show up on Sunday. I hope everything is okay but we haven't been able to talk to them yet.
Another cool story is when we were teaching a 17 year old boy, Nathan. He is friends with a member named John who invited him to go to efy earlier in the summer. He went and when he came back he has basically said that he knows he wants to be baptized and he even wants to serve a mission! Basically our lessons consist of us teaching him each of the lessons and just preparing him for his
baptismal interview. So at church on Sunday I think I did meet the sister you are talking about unless there's more than one missionary mom in the area who you are emailing. (to be honest that wouldn't surprise me. haha) It was kinda crazy on Sunday because I actually ended up going to all three sacrament meetings! The first ward is the ward I'm over, the second ward is the single's/university ward and we were visiting their Elder's Quorum to get some referrals so we skipped the combined priesthood/relief society lesson of our home ward to go to their sacrament, and then we went to the 1 o'clock ward because it was the only one Wei could make it to. Another thing, the members here are great! We pretty much have dinner lined up every single day and every one of the families has been super nice. I love how you can feel right at home no matter where you are in the church. Well that's about it! I love you all very much and I'm very appreciative of your love and support! The Church is true! Love, Elder Cody Holmes
HE MAKES IT TO OKLAHOMA! Letter from the Pres.
Dear Brother and Sister Holmes,
We wanted to take a minute and let you know that your son Elder Cody John Holmes, arrived in Tulsa in good shape and in excellent spirits. What a thrill it is to get acquainted with him and to welcome him into the Oklahoma Tulsa Mission. We would like to tell you what an honor it is to care for your son, and pray that our Father in Heaven will help us be worthy of the "sacred trust" given us. It is a wonderful experience to be associated with these fine young missionaries and we find ourselves loving them more and more each day. If there is anything we can do to be of greater assistance to him, please feel free to write or call. We want your son to have the finest experience possible. A happy missionary is a good missionary. We find theyt are most happy when all is well at home, when they feel your love and support, and when they receive a letter from family each week. May the choicest blessings of the Lord always abide with you. Sincerely, President Richard E. and Sister Betty Lu Merkley
We wanted to take a minute and let you know that your son Elder Cody John Holmes, arrived in Tulsa in good shape and in excellent spirits. What a thrill it is to get acquainted with him and to welcome him into the Oklahoma Tulsa Mission. We would like to tell you what an honor it is to care for your son, and pray that our Father in Heaven will help us be worthy of the "sacred trust" given us. It is a wonderful experience to be associated with these fine young missionaries and we find ourselves loving them more and more each day. If there is anything we can do to be of greater assistance to him, please feel free to write or call. We want your son to have the finest experience possible. A happy missionary is a good missionary. We find theyt are most happy when all is well at home, when they feel your love and support, and when they receive a letter from family each week. May the choicest blessings of the Lord always abide with you. Sincerely, President Richard E. and Sister Betty Lu Merkley
August 8, 2011 - Email
Hey! It's been a pretty good week. That greenie package was awesome, thoughtful and hilarious! I don't know where you found all of those ridiculous things but they made me laugh. Especially the rock, paper, scissors things, which Elder Gordon and I have played with. I'm making my way through the sunflower seeds. I know you wish you could have sent me an actual pickle! ha ha We are in a car area so I haven't had to ride my bike yet. Which is good, because I don't even have a bike yet., ha ha The Elder in charge of bikes did call me and say it was on it's way, but I have not yet received it. Our car is a blue toyota corolla. I will put the pictures in the mail today. The items I would like you to send me most are: more preparation day clothes (more shirts and basketball shorts) and music. The rule in the mission is uplifting music. So, if you could find some cool instrumental hymn cd's that'd be sweet. I'm pretty sure there are albums of hymns arranged for guitar and that would be awesome. I can't think of anything else right now but I will let you know if I do. The house: Before I send off the memory card, I will take some pictures of it but it is dang sweet. I don't remember what I have already told you, but it has a swimming pool, tennis court, observatory (with a telescope and everything), a library/study, and a game room with a projector for videogames, a ping-pong table, a pool table, and an air hockey table. We live in a room upstairs that used to be their youngest son's bedroom. The game room also has a mini kitchen that we use as our own. The Renfroes are also super nice. Their son just got back from a mission in Japan and he is really awesome and hangs with us sometimes. President and Sister Renfroe are also awesome, they are really nice. The other night President Renfroe took Elder Gordon and I up to his obervatory to look at Saturn through his telescope and we got into this really deep gospel discussion and stuff. My companion is from Springville, Utah and he is the oldest of five sons. He likes basketball and he played in high school. He didn't do any college before he left and he has been out for about a year and a half. He and I get along really well and I really enjoy teaching with him. Investigators: I love our investigators! There are only a couple who seem to be having problems with progressing. We have four investigators with a baptismal date! I acrually think that is the highest in the zone right now. Last time I believe I mentioned the blind man and his wife and how nice they were. They are just so accepting of the gospel and last night we went and taught them and they agreed to be baptized on September 10th without any hesitation! We also have a woman in her 20's who has been going to church with her boyfriend for like two years but had just never met with the missionaries before. The first time I taught her was when we set a baptismal date for her and she was just way ready for it. The fourth is someone who has been meeting with the missionaries for quite a long time, at least since some time in 2010. He has had a date before and backed out but I really believe he'll go through with it this time. I really think that he gets it. The members are all sweet! Only a couple days have gone by so far without a dinner appointment and everyone is very supportive. It's so much easier when you have the whole ward behind you. I am quite healthy. Although, some time back Elder Gordon got a bit of a cold from which he has since recovered. I am super glad I have a car because the heat here has literally been record breaking. Temperatures of around 110 F. have been definitely not uncommon and that is before the heat index factoring in the humidity. However, it is a good ice breaker when talking to people. The work is awesome and I love being a missionary. I also love you all and your support from home. I know you pray for me and it does help!
August 15, 2011 - Email
Hey! I've had some good and some lame this week. Lessons with investigators have been going pretty well. We had all six of our investigators at church yesterday! However, we need to find more investigators because four of the ones we have now are getting baptized by the beginning of next month. Also, we went from being a full-time car area to being a car-share area. That means that we share with another area so we only have the car every other week. I'm looking forward to the extra exercise, but it just kinda sucks because we live about 7 or 8 miles outside of town. I love you all! Ask dad if his motion sickness patches worked. p.s. Elder Carbon...er, I mean Elder Gordon does forgive you. We thought it was pretty hilarious and he was just happy to get something in the mail. ha ha
August 21, 2011 - Email
Tuesday was pretty exciting. Last time I told you that I will now be on a bike every other week which really is no fun because we live about six or seven miles outside of town and Fayetteville is very hilly. So, Elder Gordon and I were on our way to do some service at a place called Lifesource and we were on our bikes. The ride took about an hour and a half and in the middle of it, my chain decided that it wanted to come off and get stuck. Elder Gordon was trying to pull out the chain and it would not budge, when the thought came into his mind to say a prayer. He said that he kind of shrugged it off thinking, "this is dumb, I don't need to pray about this." After some more struggling, he gave in and said a quick prayer. After he said amen, the chain came right out. It was a pretty cool story! Then later, on the way home from the service place, my right pedal came off my bike! The arm that the pedal screws into basically got stripped out and so now I'm working with them to get it fixed asap. Could you send me the info and terms for my warranty through CTRBikes please? The day actually turned out to be not that bad though. We found a few potential investigators that evening and we made contact with a couple of less active members that was really cool. One of them was an older couple who say that they retired from everything including the church. Wednesday morning at district meeting we got the car back! (Yay!) So we drove around and visited more less active familites, with little success. We had dinner with the Valentin family, they took us to a place called Cici's Pizza. It was pretty dang good and it is all you can eat pizza. Later that night we had a meeting with a man named Dominic. He is going to school here and is from Nigeria. We found out that he is talking to like seven ministers and reverends from his country about what we teach him and so they send him arguments back to present to us. If two young men are able to address concerns presented by seven Nigerian ministers, that should be a testament in and of itself that we are the true church! Thursday we do weekly planning and that goes for a few hours. Then we went and saw a man who goes by the name Cello. He is getting baptised this coming Saturday so we were making sure that he was ready and everything. For dinner, we ate home made pizza with a family in the ward who also invited their neighbor over, not to be taught but just to meet us so they can "ease" her into meeting with us. After dinner we taught Mary, which was way sweet. She is super spiritual and she is finally working toward a baptism date. Friday we saw a less active lady who seems interested in coming back. She recognizes that she has some changes to make but she likes the church and is willing to change. We taught Rus and Becky also. They are always super accepting and really nice. We went out to Cici's with the Smith's (that's right. pizza three days in a row.) We invited them to come to church but they won't come for some reason. Then we taught Jeanie about tithing and fast offerings. She basically knows all about the Church so we just make sure she understands everything in preparation for her baptism. Odd as it may sound, Saturday was the first day that I went tracting for reals. It wasn't very effective haha we only actually spoke to one person, but it was work so I know I'll be blessed for it. Sunday we went to church and saw some people. Nothing much else exciting happened. The memberd are great and I love the ward. We have only ever had one day where we didn't have a dinner appointment set up and even that day a member ended up feeding us. I think that my weight is staying the same but with how much I'll be biking, I'm sure I'm going to start to trim down. I don't know if I necessarily miss the mountains per se, but I do definitely notice their absence. Of coure my testimony has grown immensely. I know that my Savior loves me and I love sharing that message with other people and seeing how it blesses their lives. We have five investigators with baptismal dates! Starting this Saturday we have one the 27th, 3rd, 10th, and 24th!
August 31, 2011 - Email
(Elder Holmes normally emails on Monday during his P-Day. This week we didn't hear from him until Wednesday. Mom struggled. LOL)
Hey! So since we were on the bikes on Monday we didn't get to the library to email. I hope you didn't worry too much. Just know that it may happen again but I'll at least always make time to write you a letter. It isn't that y'all aren't worthy of one (that's right. I said y'all.) We were on our way to the library when we realized that we didn't have the key to Elder Gordon's bike lock which I was sharing. So, we had to turn back and by the time we got back we decided that our legs weren't going to make it all the way there again. I did end up getting the silly putty from Brandon which was sweet! Have you seen much of Brandon since he got the new xbox? Sorry in advance for this email probably not being as detailed as you'd like but we won't have as much time today so I'll just hit the highlights. We've been on bikes everyday this week and it's been kind of lame but kind of good because I know it's giving me some solid exercise. On Friday, Elder Gordon and I went on exchanges with the Zone Leaders, Elders Thomas and Taylor. I was in my area with Elder Thomas and we switched at their apartment. Since my area is on bikes this week, we had to bike from their area to our appointment that day in our area and we had to go up a mammoth of a hill. They may not have any mountains but it sure is hilly here. Anyway, Elder Thomas was having a tough time and wasn't feeling very well so we stopped and said a prayer. About half a minute later we stopped again. He puked and then he said he felt fine and we continued our ride. ha ha The Lord made him barf!!! Another funny story from my exchange, a member took us out to eat. He is an older gentleman and when the waitress came up to introduce herself he introduced us and said, "we're Mormon. What are you?" and proceeded to invite her to church on Sunday. It was sweet! ha ha We left her with a pass along card before we left the restaurant. On Saturday was my first convert baptism! He goes by Cello (no , he doesn't play) and the missionaries had been meeting with him for almost two years. I told you before that I was giving the talk on the Holy Ghost and that went pretty well. I love seeing people's lives change because of things that we teach them about our Savior. Today has been great. We had a meeting with our Zone where we had some instruction for a few hours. Then some members took Elder Gordon and I to a Mongolian BBQ place and it was dang good. Oh, and to top it all off, we have the car now. :) This Saturday is transfer calls, so it is when I'll find out if I'm going to another area or staying here for another transfer. I can't believe how long I've been out already! I am loving this area and I love to teach the gospel of Christ. The mission has really made me appreciate more the fact that I was able to grow up in the church. If there is anything I left out that you want to know, please ask me and I'll answer you. How is my blog looking? Figure out any more cool bells and whistles? I love you all!!! Oh, and I do wish I could have some home grown tomatoes in a bacon sandwich. That would be amazing. Also amazing sounding are those cake bites you've been making. I went to a family's house to eat on Sunday and the guy is a great cook. He made some home made cheesecake with oreo crust. It was the best cheesecake I've ever had. If my stomach had a face, it would be smiling.
Hey! So since we were on the bikes on Monday we didn't get to the library to email. I hope you didn't worry too much. Just know that it may happen again but I'll at least always make time to write you a letter. It isn't that y'all aren't worthy of one (that's right. I said y'all.) We were on our way to the library when we realized that we didn't have the key to Elder Gordon's bike lock which I was sharing. So, we had to turn back and by the time we got back we decided that our legs weren't going to make it all the way there again. I did end up getting the silly putty from Brandon which was sweet! Have you seen much of Brandon since he got the new xbox? Sorry in advance for this email probably not being as detailed as you'd like but we won't have as much time today so I'll just hit the highlights. We've been on bikes everyday this week and it's been kind of lame but kind of good because I know it's giving me some solid exercise. On Friday, Elder Gordon and I went on exchanges with the Zone Leaders, Elders Thomas and Taylor. I was in my area with Elder Thomas and we switched at their apartment. Since my area is on bikes this week, we had to bike from their area to our appointment that day in our area and we had to go up a mammoth of a hill. They may not have any mountains but it sure is hilly here. Anyway, Elder Thomas was having a tough time and wasn't feeling very well so we stopped and said a prayer. About half a minute later we stopped again. He puked and then he said he felt fine and we continued our ride. ha ha The Lord made him barf!!! Another funny story from my exchange, a member took us out to eat. He is an older gentleman and when the waitress came up to introduce herself he introduced us and said, "we're Mormon. What are you?" and proceeded to invite her to church on Sunday. It was sweet! ha ha We left her with a pass along card before we left the restaurant. On Saturday was my first convert baptism! He goes by Cello (no , he doesn't play) and the missionaries had been meeting with him for almost two years. I told you before that I was giving the talk on the Holy Ghost and that went pretty well. I love seeing people's lives change because of things that we teach them about our Savior. Today has been great. We had a meeting with our Zone where we had some instruction for a few hours. Then some members took Elder Gordon and I to a Mongolian BBQ place and it was dang good. Oh, and to top it all off, we have the car now. :) This Saturday is transfer calls, so it is when I'll find out if I'm going to another area or staying here for another transfer. I can't believe how long I've been out already! I am loving this area and I love to teach the gospel of Christ. The mission has really made me appreciate more the fact that I was able to grow up in the church. If there is anything I left out that you want to know, please ask me and I'll answer you. How is my blog looking? Figure out any more cool bells and whistles? I love you all!!! Oh, and I do wish I could have some home grown tomatoes in a bacon sandwich. That would be amazing. Also amazing sounding are those cake bites you've been making. I went to a family's house to eat on Sunday and the guy is a great cook. He made some home made cheesecake with oreo crust. It was the best cheesecake I've ever had. If my stomach had a face, it would be smiling.