April 22, 2013

Hello Family and Friends!   We've had a great, wonderful week in Madison Alabama!   I'm really enjoying our new tripanionship! Adding a third person definitely changes the dynamics (especially with teaching) but things have been going great, and we get along really well.   Our weekly exchanges took me to Decatur, where I worked with Elder Swan (one of our district leaders) while Elder Oslapas and Elder Cowan were in Athens. Not a lot of appointments set beforehand but we found them quite a few new investigators. I probably mention this every letter, but I really enjoy going on exchanges. If you go into the exchange with the right mindset and are focused you can get so much out of it. After the exchange Elder Oslapas and I trained at the Decatur District Meeting.   Awesome Missionary Experience: We had a teaching appointment with M------ on Saturday, and when we got there D------- (M's girlfriend) was there as well, and we ended up teaching her a first lesson. She had been coming to church with him the last few weeks, and we had been trying to arrange for her to meet with the sisters, but she was always busy and it didn't work out. Last weekend, however, she was in Boston running the marathon when all that drama with the bombs happened. She had finished the race about 30 minutes before the bombs went off [so she was fine] but she definitely was still shaken by the experience. Anyways, the lesson went really well. We answered a lot of questions she had about the church and gave her a Book of Mormon. The relief society has given her a lot of fellowship, and she and M------ both have been involved with YSA activities.   E---- has been doing well since his baptism last weekend. We've had a few teaching visits with him, and have introduced him to more members of the ward. There are a few members living in the same apartment complex, so that should really help him with the adjusting to "mormon life".   We have another mid-transfer in our zone today. President Holzapfel has assigned our new sister training leaders, and Sister Murray (serving with us in Madison and previously served in Montgomery when I was down there) is leaving today to serve as a STL in the Tupelo Zone with Sister Leifson from Eagle! (Sister Training Leaders serve with other STLs just like zone leaders). We'll be getting a new sister to take her place. We won't have STLs in the Madison zone yet but the ones in Huntsville are also assigned to work with our sisters. This whole Sister leaders thing is new and different but we are really excited for it! [almost as excited as the sisters :)    President and Sister Holzapfel will be coming and teaching with us and the sisters tonight!   I can't believe that this first transfer in Madison is almost over! It has flown by so fast! I wanted to (belatedly) thank you for the wonderful packages and things you have sent me! I loved the bag that the easter eggs were in! The Raspberry Chipotle sauce that yall sent me while I was in Highland Home I saved and opened just a couple weeks ago. It's a big hit, both Elder Oslapas and Elder Cowan really like it.   Mom and Dad, I loved your photos of your trip. I'm honestly jealous!   Rachel, I'm excited for your choir tryouts. Are the callbacks just for PB or for Sonous as well?  Elder Oslapas is a pianist, and we've definitly been taking advantage of that. We performed at E's baptism, and Bishop B (3rd) and Bro C (1st) liked it so much that we played yesterday in both of their wards as special musical numbers. Love yall!   Elder Madsen --  Elder Coleman Madsen Alabama Birmingham Mission 194 Shelton Rd #116 Madison AL 35758 colemansmissionblog.blogspot.com

April 15, 2013

Hello Family and Friends!

 

We experienced a baptism this last weekend in Madison Alabama! E---- was so excited, and the ward has been so helpful in providing friendship. He had been taught by Elder Andoh-Kesson and Elder Oslapas before, but he didn't come to church so baptism wasn't really an option. We re-committed him to baptism three weeks ago when I got here and really started to keep his commitments. He completed every BOM reading assignment we gave him! It was a really good weekend.

 

Today's been kind of crazy! I'm actually emailing from Cullman right now, which is about an hour south of Madison. We had our zone activity this morning in Decatur from 9-11. Sister K--- got injured so we had to cut it short. She and a few of the other sisters are at the Decatur Hospital right now. We're not exactly sure what is up (doctors have to do x-rays), but please keep her in your prayers! After we got her to the hospital we drove down here to Cullman to exchange for our mid-transfer. Elder Cowan is with Elder Oslapas and me now. After we do e-mails we'll head back up to Madison.

 

I've been able to see more areas in our zone this week. We've been to Decatur a couple of times. The Tennessee River is SO BEAUTIFUL!! It's almost a mile wide at Decatur. We plan on coming back to Decatur for a full-length exchange later this week. The weather has been so nice lately. April is the best month (weather-wise) in Alabama (besides tornadoes). Mostly 65-75 degree days. Speaking of tornadoes, the storm last Thursday was kind of crazy. We're so lucky that we have weather radios and text alerts. Missionaries 50 years ago had no idea when the weather was getting bad. No tornadoes touched down near us though. The Lord will provide!

 

I've only briefly mentioned the large concentration of engineers and US DOD contractors in Madison in past letters. This last week, Elder Oslapas and I had an amazing opportunity to go on the Redstone Arsenal. A member here is the commander of the Flight Test Directorate of the US Army, which is headquartered on the arsenal. I have some pretty cool pictures that I'll send from that. We were able to tour some of the hangars and see some really neat aircraft.

 

I don't think I've said much about Elder Oslapas yet. He is 21 from Bellingham Washington. Loves airplanes! (He did two years of flight school before he came out). He is an amazing missionary. Don't know very much about Elder Cowan yet (since we've only been with him for a couple of hours) but I'm sure I will get to know more. He is from Colorado Springs.

 

 We had quarterly interviews with President Holzapfel this last Saturday. I enjoy every opportunity I get to learn more from that man. I will miss Sister Holzapfel and him so much when they go. They are planning on coming back in a week or so and teaching with us!

 

While President was here, he gave Elder Oslapas and me special permission to attend the stake music training workshop that was going on. We attended an advanced organ class, which was really informative. I learned a lot, especially about setting different registrations (different combinations of stops for different voices). I'm a much better pianist now than I was a year ago, and this training helped me apply a lot of that to the organ.

 

So much to talk about, and as usual, not enough time. Sorry I didn't focus so much on missionary stuff this time, but there was a lot of non-missionary experiences this last week that I wanted to share. The work is going so well here! We've set a few baptism dates this last week and have gotten over 10 member referrals! A lot of good stuff is coming!

 

Love,

 

Elder Coleman Madsen

April 8, 2013

Hello Family and Friends!

 

Hope you are having a great week this week! Conference, as always, was amazing. All of our investigators were able to watch at least some of conference at home, and Edwin actually came to church and watched the Saturday Afternoon and Sunday Morning Sessions with us. It was a very missionary-themed conference.

 

Our exchanges this last week took us to Guntersville AL, about an hour south of Madison. I worked with Elder Campbell, one of our district leaders (knows McKenzie J). It's a very beautiful area. The city itself is on a small peninsula extending onto Lake Guntersville. I really enjoy exchanges. They give you an opportunity to see someone else's teaching style, and you just learn a lot of things.

 

Friday night President announced that Salt Lake has instructed the mission to assign "sister training leaders", a new leadership position for sisters. We don't really know the specifics or how many there will be, but they will attend our monthly leadership council with the assistants and zone leaders.

Our zone training meeting that Elder Oslapas and I conducted went well on Tuesday. I was so stressed out about it, but the spirit really kicked in and helped. It ended up being almost 3 1/2 hours.

 

Our zone has 16 elders and sisters (a relatively small zone) with 2 districts of 8 people.

 

One of our missionaries in Cullman is a visa missionary for Brazil, and this morning received his visa. There's going to be some switching up in the next week. When I email next Monday, Elder Oslapas and I will be in a tripanionship with Elder Cowan (from Athens). His companion (Elder Cowan) will go to Cullman to replace Elder Measles (the visa missionary) and serve with Elder Van Wagenen. This Elder Van Wagenen just so happens to be Craig and Tyler's cousin! Diana had mentioned that he was serving here before I left, but since I've been in the south of the mission until now I forgot about it. Elder Oslapas and I will remain the zone leaders.

 

E is really progressing to baptism. He was able to meet some more members of the ward Saturday and Sunday and is super excited about the whole thing. He's been taught everything. If all goes well it will happen on Friday.

Zone leaders pretty much have unlimited miles. We're trying not to abuse it, but both of our bikes are in need of repair right now, so we've actually not done any bike riding yet.  With what I said about the miles don't interpret that as I'm being lazy. We're still working real hard. It's just that with at least one exchange a week we don't have time to bike.

The mission is really helping me learn to handle stress. I'm really grateful that I'm in a small zone in this leadership transition. If I had been in my former Montgomery zone (with almost 40 missionaries) that would have killed me!:)

As I said, conference was wonderful! I loved seeing the BYU choir perform Saturday Afternoon (I recognized a lot of people, including Allie S--- from Eagle)! I was actually kind of sad for me that I wasn't there with them. But what I'm doing is more important. I really enjoyed both of President Monson's addresses. I always enjoy them, but this conference I think they may have been my favorite talks. Elder Perry also did an inspiring job.

 

I really liked the 4 steps President Monson gave in Priesthood:

1. Search the Scriptures Diligently

2. Plan with a purpose

3. Teach the truth with testimony and

4. Serve the Lord with love.

I'm really going to try and apply those thoughts to my mission. His talk gave me a lot of insight and answers to missionary questions I had been looking for.

 

We've been teaching E and M (&others) as well. We taught E again on Thursday and basically went over the baptismal interview questions with him. He's progressing, but his baptism honestly probably won't be for a few more weeks. M is just really struggling receiving an answer right now. He has a great desire to make the right decision.

 Well, I think that's everything. Hope you all have a great week. Im glad that I was able to transfer the pics. Now I can focus on actually taking pictures in my new area!

 

I love you all!

 

Elder Coleman Madsen

April 1, 2013

Hello Family and Friends!
 
Things have been going well in Madison! We were able to go to the temple on Tuesday. 
After the temple trip, we went on an exchange in Athens, which is about 25 minutes west 
of Madison. We spent the night there and came back to Madison Wednesday morning.
 
We committed Ed--- to baptism on Friday (April 12th). He's been to church twice now - 
sadly he wasn't able to come yesterday. He had to take some pretty severe medicine (for 
his MS) the day before and he just wasn't able to come. He's still really excited about 
everything though. He's been to church twice.
 
Er-- is another investigator we have. He's dating a member of the church and has been 
having the discussions for a few months. He just really wants to make sure that he is 
making the right decision, and that he doesn't join the church for the wrong reasons. 
He's come to church both Sundays, but between the two he got pretty sick so we weren't 
able to teach him this last week. We have an appt scheduled in a couple of days.
 
M--- is another investigator we have. He's also been investigating for a while, and 
really enjoys church. He is just having difficulty recognizing the spirit, and in turn, 
an answer of whether it's all true. He has been coming to church really regular, and for 
the last 3 sundays has brought his girlfriend with him. She's really felt at home in

relief society and we're trying to arrange for the sisters to go over there and teach her.

Mom to answer your question - Missionaries are organized into "districts" with 
a district leader, and districts are organized into "zones" with two zone 
leaders. Up until this transfer we had 6 zones in the mission and 12 zone leaders, but 
because of the rapidly growing numbers they created 3 new zones, so now we have 9 zones 
(18 zone leaders). The zone leader position is unique because our proselyting area is 
techniquely the whole zone (which is all of the missionaries in the Madison Alabama 
Stake). We go on exchanges a lot (at least once a week), and conduct training. Elder 
Oslapas ("oh-sh-la-paz") and I will be conducting a 3-hour long zone training 
meeting tomorrow.
 
We had zone leader council in Birmingham on Friday (probably on the blog) with all the 
zone leaders, the assistants, and a couple sister companionships that President specially 
invited. (Since a lot of the decisions we make are about sisters, President wants to make 
sure their voice is heard). By the way, you probably saw this but Elder Kaupert(Coleman's 
first companion) is the new assistant. It was over 5 hours long and it was a new 
experience to be trained by President in that kind of a setting (it was kind of intense). 
I enjoyed it though.

((from Susan - A good friend of mine growing up, Janet, lives in Decatur AL with hubby 

Jim and their kids--Colemans zone!!))   

Both the Decatur Elders and Sisters have mentioned in calls we've had that they've met 
Sister B-- and that she's asked about me. The Decatur Sisters asked for my address 
because evidently she wants to send me a package. We'll probably be headed to Decatur on 
exchange some time next week.

Well, I'm about to be booted off the computer. Hope y'all have a great week!
 
Love
 
Elder Coleman Madsen

March 25, 2013

Coleman was transferred last Wednesday.  He is serving as a zone leader and is in a 
new area in the north of the mission. Coleman's new address is:

194 Shelton Road #116
Madison, AL 35758


Hello Family and Friends!
 
Hello from Madison, Alabama! Wow, this is a really big change! So much to talk about this 
time.
 
I am serving with Elder Oslapas in the Madison 1st, 2nd and 3rd Wards. The 
Huntsville/Madison area is big on engineering. NASA and the DoD have operations here. The area has the 2nd most number of government contractors in the nation - 2nd only to the 
Washington DC/Arlington area. This attracts a lot of people from Utah and Idaho (Mormons) so there are a lot of mormons here (it's nicknamed "the mormon bubble"). It 
feels like I'm serving in Utah (no joke!).
 
Our zone covers the entire Madison Stake, which includes the Madison wards, the Decatur 
ward, the Athens ward, the Cullman ward and the Guntersville Ward. If you know anyone in 
those areas let me know - I'll probably end up going on exchanges in all of them.
 
We had an amazing music missionary opportunity this last weekend. The Huntsville and 
Madison stakes put on an "Easter Cantata" with a 90-voice choir and actors. It was a

community event and there were a lot of non-members there (we had 3 investigators). 
I was blown away-it was amazing. They had amazing sound - almost MOTAB quality, and 
that's coming from one of the harshest music critics you'll ever meet :) . They performed 
Saturday and Sunday Nights.

It was a little overwhelming being assigned to a completely new part of the mission as a 
zone leader. The first couple of days I thought I was going to die. But I'm a lot better 
now. God really is always there to support us when we need him. I feel like I'll grow a 
lot this next transfer, which is good. This area is about as opposite of Highland Home/

Greenville/Montgomery area as you can get, but there is a lot of work to be done here.
 
I forgot to mention this earlier in my letter, but since we are assigned to all 3 wards we 

attend them all, so we are in church from 8:30 to 4:30. I probably met close to 600 people 

yesterday between all 3.
 
As you know, sister missionaries continue to come and bless our mission. In Madison we 
also have a set of sisters (Decatur and Athens have sisters as well). I've only been here 
for a few days, but I've been able to see the amazing ways that only sisters can bless 
the lives of people they interact with.
 
Gosh, too many investigators to mention right now. One we've worked a lot these last few 
days with is E---. He is Puerto Rican and grew up in spanish Harlem.  We went over to his 

house and taught him Thursday and Friday, and he came with us to the cantata Saturday 

and to church Sunday. 

Bad news - the Madison library has really old computers that don't have SD card slots, so 
it will probably take a while for me to get my pictures to you - I've taken a lot in the 
last week.
 
Don't have a lot of time now --Love you!
 
Elder Coleman Madsen


Totally forgot to mention this - we will be going to the temple tomorrow! We are really 
excited for that. I don't think I'll see anyone from my old stomping grounds though, I 
think that Montgomery is coming another day.
 
You probably saw on the blog how historic this transfer was in the mission. So many sisters! 3 of our zones split as well  so now we have 9 zones.

March 18, 2013

Hello Family and Friends,

(this is in response to a question Susan had about the email policy--someone told me that it has changed and anyone can email missionaries, not just immediate family).  I only email y'all and the mission president. That's my preference. I think she may be right though that the rule has been changed, because pretty much every other missionary I know also emails other people.  It is MUCH more convenient for me to receive letters in the mail than via email. I only have 1 hour to do my weekly letter to y'all and my weekly report to the mission president. When people (including y'all) send me e-mails instead of letters, it is much less likely that I will respond, because it's not usually convenient to print.

Hope everything is going well. The weather has been beautiful here in Alabama. It has been a busy but good last couple of weeks.

 

Well, I'm leaving Highland Home. It doesn't really suprise me. I have now spent almost 9 months in my first area (Highland Home & Greenville) and, though I'll miss a lot of people, I'm ready for change. Elder Cusick will be staying on.

 

We've been working pretty hard this last week here. We've taught E-- two really good lessons, and she's been progressing really well. She has really become a part of the branch here the last couple of months. We've been continuing to work with V-- and her family. So far as we know she hasn't been back to the hospital. She came to the Relief Society activity, and she and S-- were at the branch Easter Egg Hunt on Saturday.

 

I'll find out where my new assignment is at transfer meeting on Wednesday.  I'll let you know where I end up, and will send you some final Highland Home pictures.  Missionaries tell me that the more north you go (in the mission) it is much more like out west. A lot of people from Utah live out there. We'll see!

 

Love you!

 

Elder Madsen

March 11, 2013

Dear Family,

Hope everything is well!  Thanks for your letters.  I enjoy hearing from you.

We've had a good week in Highland Home.  Because of spread out appointments, we spent every day in the Highland home/Sardis area.  We've really been trying to focus on contacting less-active families.

We've had some interesting experiences eating at people's houses.  I don't know if I have ever mentioned this, but southerners LOVE mayo.  They put it on everything.  The official worst thing I have had to eat so far on my mission is pears with dollops of mayo on them, sprinkled with shredded cheddar cheese.  They call it "pear salad". (Could be much worse!!)

While in Highland Home this second time, I  have been serving as the branch pianist.  It's been a good learning experience and I've been able to expand my hymn repertoire:)

I've also had the mission violin for about 7 weeks now.  This last Sunday I did a 2nd musical number with our investigator E--- in Sacrament Meeting.  This has been a great way to help her feel like she's part of the branch.  She was kind of pushed by other missionaries into baptism.  She still has some unresolved concerns but they are being resolved, I think.  It may take her time but I'm pretty sure she'll be baptized in the next year or so.  For some people it just takes time.

B---'s (an investigator) brother has had surgery this last week, and it has kind of limited our opportunities to teach them.  Setting a baptism date with her is just going to take sitting down and asking her.  She already believes in the church and as been reading "Our Heritage" and the Book of Mormon.  Our toughest thing teaching them will be finding time that works--they are very involved people.

Next time you hear from me will probably be after our transfer instruction calls!  We get a whole ton of new sisters this transfer so there will be a lot of changes.  Both Elder Cusick and I have been here in the area 4 transfers now, so really anything could happen.

Well, sorry this is short!  I want to get  this out in the Tuesday mail so you can get it on Friday.  How are y'all doing in your Book of Mormon Reading?  Still alive?  (mission is reading the entire book of mormon by the 6 of April. They started in Jan and every family was invited to participate with their missionary).

Love you!

Elder Coleman Madsen