Transferred from Anacostia

Farley and Rushton

Hey Mom and Dad!

I am glad to hear you all got home safely from the Spring Break
trip!  A little hectic, but it sounded like it went well and everyone
had fun!
This week is transfer week and I will be leaving to be Zone Leader
in another area.  But like I told Brian, it will be a area I know a
little bit... but a lot of new ground to cover.  Next week I will be
able to tell you who it will be with and what area :) since I don't
want any Elder's to see my blog and find out before tomorrow night
when everyone finds out where they are going and with what companion.
I can just say that my companion is LEGIT and I already know him
pretty well.
This past week has FLOWN by.  We got to go visit the J. family
this week and share the Restoration again with them.  It was more of a
review for BJ (Will) but it was very helpful and answered a lot of
their questions.  We watched the full length movie "Joseph Smith:
Prophet of the Restoration" with them but only to watch the first 20
minutes after the Priesthood is restored and the Book of Mormon is
published.  We had a big Q&A session afterward and BJ had a lot of
concerns with the Priesthood but his wife Kim was very helpful and
answered a lot of them.  She really focuses in the lessons and likes
to learn and find out the truth for herself.  The main thing she
wanted to do before getting baptized was to come to church.  So thanks
to the new Senior Couple who arrived two days ago in the ward, we were
able to get them a ride and they stayed for all of church! :) It was
great!  They still have a lot of concerns with Joseph Smith, but I am
VERY glad they ask us more questions instead of just getting antied
without getting the full story.
That is one thing that I LOVE to see on my mission: when people are
searching for truth and even when Satan throws false ideas and
concerns in their paths, they keep seeking to find out if it is true.
They all have opportunities to feel the Spirit, so they just have to
decide whether they will act on that impression from the Holy Ghost,
or if they will deny it.  That is why we are all down here! Good ol'
agency! haha it is frustrating as missionaries sometimes, but then I
remember how dumb I am sometimes and how frustrated God must be with
me.
I am very thankful to The Lord for allowing me to be a part of the
people's lives here in the Anacostia ward/Capitol heights area for
these short 3 months.  I will miss it a lot and miss the people I have
made friendships with.  But I know that my next area will be full of
future opportunities and experiences that will help me become more
like the man God wants me to be.  Thank goodness for this Gospel!  It
allows all of us to find peace through the Atonement, even when we are
constantly messing up each day.  I am grateful for the opportunity The
Lord gives us to get better and to try again.  This church is truly
the Church of Christ.  I KNOW that.  And I will never deny that, no
matter what. I hope to ever be a witness of The Lord and his Gospel
until I leave this mortal life. It is the most important thing we can
do.  We have the truth... now all we have to do is SHARE IT!
I love you so much and am very happy that our family is blessed to
be so engaged in missionary work at this time.  Keep working hard, and
ENJOY it! :)

Love,
Elder Sean B. Farley

Farley, Humphrey, Chapman, Rushton

14 Months!

Birthday gift from the Lacey's

Hey Momma!

  Sorry for getting back to you so late, things have been crazy today
with our zone activity!  We had probably one of the best I have ever
had.  We had everyone pitch in 5 dollars in the zone and we had a
member, Brother Tyner, go to Costco and pick up rib-eye steaks for
everyone.  Each person had their own 12-14 ounce steak, baked potato,
serving of corn and green beans.  It was amazing! Brother Tyner
seriously makes the best steaks ever and he went WAY out of his way to
make this such a great zone activity... could never thank him enough.
Everyone loved it and had a great time, there were not any injuries
and most importantly-Not one person lost any of their teeth! haha
  This past week has gone pretty well!  Elder Rushton and I were able
to see a lot of our investigators and help them prepare for Church and
General Conference.  Unfortunately, none of our investigators were
able to make it to church this week. :/  They committed to coming this
week though so we are excited to meet with them, along with a few
other people who we finally have come back in contact with and who are
interested again :D
  Our investigators Will and Kim  have seen a LOT of miracles
lately.  Will was having a really tough time getting a job.  He sent us a text today
and said he finally got a job!!! So sweet!  And he also said he and his wife
have been growing a lot closer from reading the Book of Mormon and they
are doing really well right now.  So that was really great to hear and it made me
really happy!
   This is the last full week of this transfer so it is pretty weird.
I feel like these last two transfers with Elder Rushton have FLOWN by.
I have had such a blast here in Anacostia.  I love the zone and the
area.  Most likely Elder Rushton and I will no longer be companions
for the next one though.
   Besides all that I don't have too much else to say.  I am really
excited for General Conference though!  There is going to be a lot on
Hastening the Work and on how we as members can be united with the
missionaries.  I also know that the messages that will be shared will
help us for the following 6 months until Conference in the fall, so we
need to be ready to listen, learn and apply what we are taught.  I
recommend Elder Hales talk from last Conference called "General
Conference: Strengthening Faith and Testimony."  It speaks about what
we can get out of Conference and how is can bless us in our lives if
we prepare for it correctly!  Everyone should read it-it is super
good!
Anyway, I love you and hope the family is doing great :)  Keep
working hard sharing the Gospel and remember that when we open our
mouths to share it with others, the Holy Ghost will help us know what
to say.  So all we need is the courage to open our mouths!

Much Love
Your son,

Elder Sean B. Farley

P.S. I got Summer and Jonnys package for my birthday! I love the Duck
Copmmander Shirt :'D haha it is awesome.  Tell them thank you!  Also,
I got Rachel's too with the SUPER cool Underarmour shorts in them!
They are from the NFL Combine!  And thank the Lacey family too! They
sent me out a missionary pillow cover and a "Mormon Dude" shirt that
looks like the "Mountain Dew" logo! Haha Thank you everyone!  You made
my 20th birthday awesome! Love you! :) I will have to send some
pictures of the gifts!

Elder Farley's 20th Birthday!

Sean's 20th Birthday -TODAY!!

Hi Momma!

Wow! What a great day! today is our P-day... even though it is Tuesday, because we had a snow day yesterday and were not able to go shop or do anything else really.  Luckily in the evening we were notified that we were able to go out and to see people if we had appointments set up with them. 
I woke up and I feel a year older already! But not really... haha I was telling Dad in my email that I feel like I just had my 18th Birthday.  That might only be since I spent these last two in the field.  This year has been an awesome birthday though, so far. Brother Weitzner made us Beef Stroganoff, Corn Beef and Cabbage, and he gave me some awesome presents! He also took Elder Rushton and I out to Red Lobster last Friday! He is the best! 
Two nights ago, on Sunday, we went to the "Why I Believe" at the WDC Temple's Visitor Center.  There we got to hear from a couple who had recently returned from their Mission in South Africa.  They were the mission President(and wife) there for 4 1/2 years! Usually it is just 3 years, so that was really interesting.  I guess he must have been pretty good! haha We brought our investigator Melody with us and a member of the ward, Brother Harrison, took us there.  It was starting to snow a little bit on the way up, but really didn't start coming down until later that night!  I was also able to see the King family, as you saw on FB!  They gave me a cake, a present, and we got to take a few pictures! They are awesome :) I was very glad to be able to see them and catch up with them! 

ZL's - Elder Rushton & Elder Farley

As for the work: we have been able to see some pretty sweet miracles with the people we have been working with.  The Ned family, was able to meet with us and her oldest just got out of the hospital!  He was in there for a while and we are really happy to see him out again.  She read the Plan of Salvation pamphlet with her kids so that when we stop by she will be ready with questions and also to hear the lesson and we review with her.  Another awesome miracle was that we got to meet with William again and this time his wife sat in on the lesson!  She was not very excited about last time we came and didn't really believe in the whole story with Joseph Smith and the First Vision.  This time she explained she had read the Book of Mormon one day when her Husband left it by her bedside.  She had a lot of awesome questions for us and we were able to answer all of Kim's and William's that day (Saturday).  They are great because when they hear something about the church or when they see something online they research it, ask us later, and then pray about it.  She talked about how she can just feel/sense when things are right or wrong.  So overall it was a GREAT lesson and we are really excited for the whole family!
It is crazy to me how fast these last two transfers with Elder Rushton have gone.  We are having a great time together and have been able to work very well together as we go out and preach the gospel.  
Good job on sharing the gospel mom!  Just keep looking for opportunities and I know Heavenly Father will lead you to the people you and help.  I love how engaged our family is now in missionary work!  It is so great!  I hope everyone and their families can start getting more and more excited about spreading the good news of the great gospel! Keep up the creative thinking on ward activities and getting people out to meet more members.  That is truly how people are affected the most I believe –– by meeting the members of the ward and interacting with them.
I am happy to hear everything is going well back at home.  I am especially excited to see Brian's papers going in so soon!  I hope all that gets worked out and can get in so we can know where he will be serving the Lord!  
Love you and miss you!

Love your boy, 

Elder Sean B. Farley

P.S. Thank you Mom, Dad, Brian for your gifts and also Grandma and Grandpa for your gifts as well!  Love you all so much! It is an awesome birthday! That's for sure :D 

P.S.S. Do you talk to McKala still now and then? Tell her I say thank you too for her gift! It was very sweet :)

Elder Rushton, Elder Farley and Bro. Weitzner

Dear Mom,

This week went great, besides the snow days we had back-to-back.  That was a bummer since we had a few lessons planned that had to be canceled.  Hopefully we can still get a chance to meet with the people we had originally planned to see.  Unfortunately we were not able to meet with a ton of our investigators this week, but we were able to meet with Melody and with Cathey (who we haven't seen in a while).  So that was good!  We have been really frustrated/sad since Melody cannot get Sundays off to come to church.  We are going through the main lessons in Preach My Gospel again with her.  She wants to get baptized but we were not sure how much she was willing to sacrifice for Baptism.  So we had a lesson on church attendance and sort of "dropped cain" as we told her that she needed to get Sundays off or she should quit her job.  She said she would try harder to talk to her boss and pray and think about quitting her job.  She is very shy so we hope she can find some courage to ask her boss boldly for at LEAST every other Sunday off work to come to church.  I will keep you updated on her.
As for Cathey, she seems to be lacking motivation to come to church and she really isn't a big reader at all.  Thank goodness for the audio feature on the Gospel Library's app for the scriptures.  She is going to listen to the scriptures and pray about the Book of Mormon.  She also is going to try to come to church this week, although she did not seem too firm in her commitment.  
We also had Zone Training this week, where the whole Zone gets together and President, Sister Cooke and the AP's come to do interviews.  It all went well and Elder Rushton and I were able to give a training on Attitude.  We had a fun time doing it, and we really feel like the zone listened well and are excited to be cheerful and ecstatic about the work.  So we are really stoked for the rest of the transfer and the ones to follow!  Brother Weitzner even stopped by afterward to bring us Costco pizza!  What a great guy!! 
Today, for preparation day, we went into the city to meet Brother Weitzner and the Lexington Park Elders to go to the Spy Museum.  Brother Weitzner paid for all of us and also treated us to an amazing lunch at this really good Italian restaurant!  It was an AWESOME day!  And the Spy Museum had such a cool exhibit which included a whole section that was dedicated to the James Bond films.  Seriously one of the coolest museums here for sure!  So a big thanks goes out to Bro. Weitzner!! 
I am very happy to hear all is well back at home. I am really so stoked that the ward is picking up on the Hastening the Work of Salvation!  It is also so great to know of all the missionaries that are out or that are coming out into the field so soon.  I CANNOT wait to hear where Brian goes! 
As always, I miss you and love you!  Keep working hard to share the "good news" of Christ and the Restored Gospel.  You are the best!

Much Love,
Elder Sean B. Farley

St. Patty's Day? Anyone?

Snowed In, Again!

Hey Mom!

This week has been really great!!  We have a mission-wide goal to get 3 new investigators each week to accomplish our standard of excellence.  This week we came close but no cigar.  However, we did have a pretty awesome miracle or two. 

For the last two weeks we have been trying to contact one of our Mormon.org referrals, William.  He is a father of two girls(6 years and 1 year) who is looking for the truth.  When we first knocked on his door he was wondering if we had brought the study bible we had requested online.  We asked if he requested a Book of Mormon and he said he did not.  So we talked for a little while and set up an appointment, but that appointment got dogged.  So we were skeptical on how much he really was interested and that he might have just wanted a free bible.  Later we stopped by, which was this past week, and we saw him outside his home cleaning his car.  We approached him and started asking if he would like to hear the rest of our message that we had summarized with him on our first visit.  He agreed and stopped cleaning his car and brought us inside.  He is a really awesome guy!  He had a rough past and did some things that put him in bad situations but now he has realized he needs to change and do what God wants him to do.  We were able to share about the differences between other Christian religions and our church.  We also taught him the Restoration of the Gospel of Christ and about the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith.  It was a great lesson and the Spirit really guided Elder Rushton and I to say the right things as we taught.  At the end we invited him to read and pray about the Book of Mormon and our message to find out for himself to know it what we shared was true.  He also accepted to be baptized on the 13th of April when he comes to know that it is true.  At the end of our lesson we ended with a prayer and he was willing to offer it.  He prayed REALLY sincerely and asked God if Joseph Smith really was a prophet... Elder Rushton and I afterward both agreed that the Spirit was very strong in the lesson and especially as he closed with that remarkable prayer.  So we are hoping and praying that he will continue to seek out the truth and that we can teach his wife too!  They are both baptists and she is pretty strong/set in her ways.

We currently have 6 people who are on date for baptism including William.  We have Sister Ned and her two sons and also Crystal and Christian who is a mother and her son.  It is really awesome to be able to find so many people recently who are looking for the truth and have kept their hearts and minds open to the Holy Ghost. 

I love preaching the gospel to others.  Sometimes I feel tired or nervous, but I always remember that I have a calling from the Lord to go and share HIS gospel with my brothers and sisters.  As I pray for courage and strength He has always helped me continue onward and forward to those who are searching for the truth, but don't know where to find it.  Sharing the gospel is such a wonderful blessing!  We get to present the happiest news on the earth to others and allow them to either accept or deny it.  We hope for them to partake in the wonderful blessings that are found in Christ's church, but we cannot force them and neither will God.  It is our duty to present the message in a way that they understand what is being shared.  In the Preface of the book, "A Marvelous Work and A Wonder" we are encouraged to ask ourselves, "In how many homes have I explained our message in detail and completeness so it could stand as a witness against those who heard it?" Now as Full Time Missionaries, this is our calling and duty.  But as members we can be good examples for those around us, invite others to participate in church activities, do service to others, and be prepared for when a missionary opportunity arrises. I think we as members of the church make things too complicated sometimes when all we are really asked to do is be cheerful and friendly and share our happiness with our friends and families. 

I love this Gospel so much.  I am so grateful for my Savior who has helped me through all the hard times in my life so far and for helping me overcome my weaknesses and struggles.  I love the Atonement of Christ and I am so thankful that it is accessible to everyone!  Even a dumb kid like me who messes up again and again.  Because I have felt such love from The Lord I know that He truly loves us all.  I am so glad that we have a Father in Heaven who created a plan for us to be able to come down to earth and receive bodies so that we could learn and grow even more.  And even more so, I am SO HAPPY to know that if we do all we can we can live as a family forever with God. What a blessing! 

I love you mom, and I am happy that everyone is doing well back at home.  Keep up the great work in Farmington and give everyone a hug for me! Happy March! 

Love your boy,

Elder Sean B. Farley

P.S. Hope that everyone is getting excited for St. Patty's day!! wohoo!