Email June 11 2012

You should have just sent some of that rain off this way! We need it here in B! Sounds like you all had a great trip though. That’s too bad Michelle wouldn’t go on Tower of Terror! When I went to Disneyland last year we went on that around 17 times I think. It was super fun! I know I didn’t used to like it but when you get older it’s not so bad. I’m sorry to hear that dad is sick... get the home teachers over to give him a blessing! Tell him I hope he gets better soon and that I love him! And just to clarify. It’s mormon.org not lds.org. mormon.org is focused on nonmembers and lds.org is for members. My profile isn’t up yet because it wouldn’t let me use my picture that I wanted to so I’m going in to fix it right after I’m done emailing you.

So this week’s email is going to be kind of short because this week was pretty much shot. Tuesday I took Elder U down to V to get an MRI for his knee and by the time we got back the day was pretty much over. Wednesday I had exchanges with Elder B my zone leader and it was pretty good. We didn’t have any scheduled appointments but we just went and tried to visit less actives and just meet with people. Thursday Elder U, his companion, and I all went down to Ro for a training meeting. It was a really really great meeting! There are about 18 missionaries going home this transfer and the group that is going home has been a major leadership group. 5 of them are currently zone leaders, a couple of them were past zone leaders, and one is an AP. so they had each of the missionaries that has spent a lot of time in leadership give 30 minutes trainings on different topics and give advice on how to best fulfill your mission. It was really sad though because a lot of the missionaries going home are the ones that I’ve looked to a lot and been friends with and now they aren’t going to be here! But it really was an amazing meeting. They mostly covered being obedient, working hard, and about making your studies effective.

Friday-Sunday was also pretty slow. It was just a dead week. We did meet with the L family the one with the 4 kids we are teaching and it was a little crazy. The 14 year old son wasn’t paying much attention and distracting the 2 younger girls. We found out he has ADHD so that explained it. But the mom was a really big help in helping us teach them and the 16 year old daughter was really paying attention pretty well. Sadly they didn’t make it to church again. I’m not sure what happened but it was definitely a bummer. We didn’t get a chance to see J because he was out at Yosemite for the weekend so that was a bummer and we haven’t met with S and A at all this transfer. They were at church though this week so I at least got to see them!

We did have a really neat experience on Saturday. The other 2 elders had a baptism of a 13 year old boy and a 12 year old girl and they had a ton of non members there so after they got baptized and we were waiting for them to get dried off and dressed we turned on a video about Joseph Smiths first vision. After it finished I got up and talked about it and I wish I could tell you more of what I talked about but as soon as I sat down I had no idea what I had said at all. I know it wasn’t even me talking. I know I did say a little bit and then I bore my testimony of the church and Elder N bore his testimony also. Afterwards we had a few of the non members thank us for our testimonies and we went to a lunch at the family’s house where most people went and Elder N started talking to a family there from South Africa who moved up here and found out that they are on our side and that they are interested in hearing our message! We are going to go try and see them this week! I sat down and got to talk with them a little bit and they were really friendly and were asking a lot of questions about missions and we just had a really good talk. This next week is looking to be a better one. Hopefully not so empty so we can get our numbers back up to where they were the week before.

 I hope everything goes great for you all and that you continue to have a great summer! I miss you all like crazy! It’s insane that it’s coming up to a year in just a couple months! It doesn’t seem like it’s been that long at all. I love you all!

Email June 4 2012

I wish I could go with you guys! We are going to have to see if we can find something to look at Venus with.

This week was quite the amazing week!! Tuesday went by pretty slow not too much happened at all. We went out to an older couples house and gave them blessings because they were going to be going on a long trip so that was good.

Wednesday we went down to R for a greenie meeting. I was in a tri-panionship with Elder C and Elder R again. We went to Ensign Book and I bought 2 journals; one for just my daily writing. The other is one that I’m going to have other missionaries sign throughout my mission. And we went out to lunch then did some studies because we didn’t have too much time to go to any of our areas. It was a pretty fun day and I was happy to be with some of the friends I have out here.

Thursday was definitely the best day of the week and most miraculous. We had an appointment with our investigator who we set the date with for October 13 and he says he knows the Book of Mormon is true and we just had a great talk about the Book of Mormon. After that we had an appointment with the lady that came to church with her 2 daughters last week. We found out she actually has 5 kids living at home from the ages of 11 - 18. We sat down and taught all of them except the 18 year old because he was having a bad day because he found out he wouldn’t be able to graduate. But we had a really powerful lesson with the other 4 and set baptismal dates for July 14! The mom was such an amazing help in that one. She brought the spirit really well. After that we went out to the V’s who are a part member family that we did a family home evening lesson with last week and this time we officially started teaching 2 of their kids and also the dad said he would listen and take the lessons which is a great improvement over last week! We set a date with both of the kids for July 28. It was just such a great day! We got 7 new investigators and 6 more baptismal dates! That’s more than I’ve had in a week my entire mission.

Friday-Saturday not a ton happened. It was soo soo hot here. We tried tracting and had absolutely no success. Knocking on doors in 100 degree weather is just sooo much fun.

Sunday evening we had an appointment with a family that is friends with a family in the ward. When we went they just had the attitude of just share your message but we aren’t really interested. By the end of us talking about the restoration and the Book of Mormon they were so much different. The mom said she really wanted to know if this was true and she would read and she really wants to come to church. It was so fantastic and the Spirit was sooooo strong! We got another 5 investigators with that making 12 in the entire week! That is going to be a hard one to beat in a week. I’ve only got a year to beat it haha. It was just soo amazing. Sadly we only had D B at church... we don’t know where everyone else was so we will need to stress the importance of church.

So one last thing. the mission has now started a thing where we are to get on Mormon.org 2 times a week for an hour each and just start using that in our finding and in our teaching and we are encouraged to have people make accounts on mormon.org so I’m going to ask ALLL of you minus Lyndsi because she is a little young but.. Michelle, Mom, Dad, Brian, Ellen, Becky, Joey, Grandma, and Grandpa and anyone else. Make profiles and tell EVERYONE about it. Any nonmember you run into tell them to check out your profile and others it is such a great source. I’m already on there so you can look mine up and see it! I love you all tons and miss you like crazy! Hope you have a great time at Disney World!

To Mom:  It really amazes me how tuned to the Spirit you are. I wish I was that tuned into the spirit and I’m working on it. our lesson in Gospel Principles yesterday was about the Holy Ghost and I shared about how you always seem to know when I’m having a hard time or am sick or something and how great you are at listening to the Holy Ghost. I’m glad everything worked out so great for the baptisms! I have a feeling that I will only be in B for another 2 weeks and that my training will be interrupted again... I’m not sure though and I honestly wouldn’t mind leaving B... it’s getting hot and I feel like I’ve met EVERYBODY here and know who is interested and who isn’t but I’ll definitely be here until I’m supposed to leave. The only thing that would upset me is just that me and my companion get along so well and just have a good time and are getting a lot of work done. But yeah its good!

Email May 28 2012

My nephew is sooooo cute!! I’m so excited! It seems like all my emails were filled with crazy things going on! Some good, some bad! I’m so full of mixed emotions right now I might explode! The kid who got baptized was a Jamaican kid named D! His sisters were all baptized almost a year ago and he finally got there after a lot of work on his part. I’m glad you liked the text! C thinks you’re such an awesome mom haha. She is one of the youth in the ward. Her brother is on a mission in Boston area so her and her family looovee the missionaries. Oh funny story! It kind of made me mad. So bishop asked to talk to me so I went and talked to him. Apparently a young women’s leader complained to bishop and said that "the missionaries need to stop bothering the young women during mutual on Wednesdays and distracting them" and that she thinks we are getting "too comfortable with the young women." umm okay. Yes we go to mutual but we stay with the young men usually playing basketball in the gym. We go because we have a kid there that we are going to be teaching soon. The young women sometimes come in the gym and talk to us and apparently according to Sister H the young women talk about me and Elder U a bit but we don’t even bother the young women. We are friendly with the young women. We are friendly with everyone! We are supposed to get comfortable with the ward it’s the sign of a good missionary when the members actually know the missionaries and see them bring people to church and all. Bishop says that he doesn’t think anything is wrong but just letting us know. It was really dumb. Honestly there aren’t even any young women I would date in this ward :P haha but yeah some people just grind my gears. Everything else is going really well though! Just crazy that everyone is graduating. I keep getting graduation announcements. Cortney emailed me hers! That made my day! It was awesome! Well I love you tons and hope you have an awesome awesome week! I love you soooo much!

Yeah meeting that lady was really funny! She came inside the gas station when we were getting icees and said "hi elders!" so we figured she was a member and when we were putting air in our tire I saw a truck with a Utah license plate so I went and asked where they were from and they said St George and I told them I was from there too and then she said she knew you guys! It was way crazy! The baptism we had was for a kid in C who we had been working with and he FINALLY did! It was a good baptism and long overdue. So that was really fun to go to!

This last week was really great! We set another baptismal date with a less actives husband for October 13 because he is on probation or something like that. But it’s still a start! We met with quite a few less actives and had a couple really good lessons! We had one day though that we went tracting for an hour and only 1 person answered their door! We could hear people in other houses but they just didn’t answer. It was kind of a bummer but it’s alright! We didn’t find any new people this week but we should get about 7 new investigators this week if everything goes the way we are hoping! There was another family that just showed up to church! I talked with them and the mom said she has lived in Bfor 8 years and was baptized a long time ago but fell away. Then she started to tear up and said she wants to come back and be here every week! It was super awesome! She has 2 daughters one is 11 and the other is a little older than that I think and we are probably going to be teaching them! We have an appointment with them on Thursday! We are also going to start teaching a lady who is semi active's 3 children and then a kid in our ward has a friend who he and his mom want to learn! So we are going to see if we can meet with them! Things are going really well right now and it is just awesome!! Honestly though I miss being down in the valley in like Rancho areas down there. I’m getting tired of being up here in the middle of nowhere... it was also soo good to see Elder H at the baptism!

I can’t believe everything that is going on back home! It’s just insane! I wonder what’s going to be happening in the next year that I’m gone! Oh by the way happy Memorial Day! Oh we had a really really great lesson with a less active family that is trying to come back. It was the E’s and they are an older couple and have been going through a tough time and she has medical problems and it’s just no good. But we went and had a really awesome lesson on the atonement and on praying for strength. The Spirit was super super strong and she started crying and told us how much we were a blessing to her and her husband and how much she enjoyed us coming over and really helping her. They have now been at church for 2 weeks in a row and you can really tell the difference in how happy she is.

Our Elder Quorum lesson this week was on Elder Eyring’s talk "Mountains to Climb" I loved that lesson a lot especially being on a mission because it’s like I’m constantly climbing this mountain. It’s impossible for everything to just be going good. There is always some challenge to overcome. Being on a mission is definitely the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. It really just drains you. I’ve never been as tired as I am on my mission ever in my life. But it helps me to look forward to getting lots of sleep when I get home! hahaha its just crazy how everything is changing back home! I have a nephew, Michelle is a senior, Lyndsi is in 6th grade, Maxx Pope is engaged! It’s just crazy! But it is nice to know that almost all my friends are on missions too so it’s not like I’m the only one out here and everyone is getting married and all that great stuff. I can’t believe I’m coming up on a year out here! I don’t feel like I’ve been out that long. I figured when I got this far I’d know everything and just be so old. haha wrong! I don’t feel too different. I definitely have learned more than when I first got out here but I still feel new. Well that’s about all! I love you tons! I miss you and I’m glad that lady was able to get a hold of you!!

Email May 21 2012

Mom! I’m glad you liked my card! I found it and thought it just said it perfectly :) thank you for the advice on how to be more motivated. I think a lot of it is just that sometimes it feels like I’m still going to be out here forever longer and its frustrating especially when you get in a rut. But we had an extremely good week this week! The beginning of the week was just pretty average. We worked a lot on making sure we go tracting every day for at least an hour. Because for the past few transfers we just haven’t knocked on a whole lot of doors. I really don’t mind tracting all that much especially with a companion that I actually enjoy being with. We get along really well and have pretty similar personalities. He is by far my favorite companion. I don’t know how he feels about me but I like being with him haha. He is an extremely good missionary too. He doesn’t seem like a greenie one bit and I can rely on him to help me teach just like I should have been able to do with a lot of my past companions. So anyways things are going really good. Wednesday we had exchanges and I was in my area with Elder R (Elder U’s companion) and we went out to a less active family we usually visit and we officially started teaching the husband the lessons. It went pretty well and we now have him as a new investigator. The rest of the week we spent trying to catch people home and visit less actives and find new people to teach. We had a few people that seemed pretty promising but turned out not to be. We handed out I think 5 Book of Mormons and had 40 contacts this week. That is more than I’ve had my entire time in B! On Saturday we were having kind of a slow day where everything was just falling through. Finally we went and stopped by a less active I had never met and we had a really good visit with her. Her husband is not a member or any of her little kids. But she told us that she wants to start doing family home evening so we offered to come over and help her get it started. We are going over Tuesday night and her husband is going to be there and all her kids! It was pretty awesome. Sunday was an awesome awesome day and we got extremely blessed! We had a random guy come to church! He said he hadn’t been here for just over 2 years because he got sick but that he wanted to start learning again. We sat with I’m through all of church and then had a meeting with him after church. He opened up to us a ton and told us the things he is looking for such as fellowshippers who won’t do him wrong and something to "fill his emptiness" and help him to be more happy. We (Elder N, Sister E, and I) all bore our testimonies that this church is what will help him to do all that. We are now going to start teaching him! After church we went out to a member I told you about how we were going to start teaching their daughter. Well we started and it went pretty well and we set a baptism date for June 23! We also had a less active family back at church that we have been working with and they just seemed so happy to be there! It was really really great! It was an awesome week and our district did super good with the work! It was the highest I’ve seen our numbers in a long time! I think a lot of it is that we go out and tract and try our best to find people so we are being blessed! Sister J from back in C told me one time when I was complaining about tracting she said "my mission president told me that if we were to tract an hour a day the Lord would bless us." I think that it really is true. But I still want to have our members more involved and we are definitely working on that still. Well that was pretty much all for our week! It was a really good one! I love you tons and hope you have an awesome week!

To Brian:  so at first I was going to say that because you’re in the Elders Quorum you’re going to be involved with the missionaries a bunch but then I remembered that you are in Utah and you probably hardly ever see missionaries unlike here in B where there are 4 missionaries in one ward hahaha I’m excited for my nephew! He better be born by next Monday! So I totally missed the eclipse! I was pretty bummed. Last night we had our upstairs neighbors (these black people who we are pretty sure are drug dealers) having a party. They were being way annoyingly loud. They were drunk by the time we got home at 8. So that was definitely just soooo great. The lady that manages our apartments lives next door and this morning she was going off about how she is fed up with them sooooo they might be getting kicked out soon and we could get new neighbors who don’t party all night and sell drugs! hahaha Missions are definitely interesting. Always gotta love the houses you walk up to and can smell the weed just rolling out their door. Oh! We had such a funny door contact! We knock on this door and a girl answers and I immediately realized she was blazed. So we do our message anyways and she says no. And then this way tall big guy comes up behind her and says. "Would you like to discuss this over a bunt of marijuana?" I just started busting up laughing and said "no that’s okay but thanks for asking!" haha it was so random and unexpected! Anyways hope you have a splendid week! I love you tons! Hope the baby comes soon!

Email May 14 2012

So since I’ve been a slacker at writing you and keeping you informed I’m going to send the big email to you today and you can forward it to mom or what not. They already heard everything I’ll put in here anyways. The call home was awesome yesterday but I was a little disappointed I didn’t get to see you or Becky. Christmas is only 7 months away! haha My new greenie is really awesome! His name is Elder N and he is from West Jordan. He is a big time snowboarder and skater; he is athletic and pretty tall. We get along really well! Better than I think I have with my other companions and we are going to have a good couple transfers. I had him take lead of one of the first lessons we taught after he got here and he did an awesome job considering he is a greenie! He has a very solid testimony and its going to help him a lot out here. We are still in the process of looking for people to teach and not having the best success but for how successful my mission has been until now. I can’t complain. I just want it to be a good successful time for Elder N. It’s getting super hot here. Like 100 for the last couple days and is supposed to stay like that for another couple days. It’s miserable but we get over it.

So after I talked with the family we went to dinner and oh. my. gosh. It was the best/biggest dinner I have EVER eaten in my life. It was so awesome I took pictures of the meal before we dug in. It was ribs that were drenched in this guys secret sauce that was amazing. The ribs had sooo much meat on them too which is perfect! Also there was hot links, and bbq chicken. I have never ever eaten like that before. It was like a feast of kings! It really was the very best ribs I have eaten in my life. By far. The guy who made it is a black guy who grew up down south and knows all the awesome southern cooking. Next time we go over he is making fried okra and homemade corn bread for me! haha I’m super excited! It made the day that much more awesome! Also had a cool small world experience at church. Met some guys about my age that were with these girls just traveling back up to BYU and I was talking to the guys and said something about being from St. George and one guy was like "my mission president was from St. George!" so I asked where he went and he said Paraguay and so I asked if his mission president was President Wade and it was! haha I told him I used to be pretty good friends with his sons Ryan and Jace. It was such a small world experience! I find that it happens pretty often out here. Well that is pretty much all for this week. Not really much else happened. Love you tons! Hope you’re doing awesome! I’m excited for you and Ellen and the baby!

Email May 7 2012

To Mom:  Well I haven’t got an email from Michelle so I guess I’ll find out how she did on Mother’s Day when I call. We are trying to get it worked out to where we can skype at the H’s and you will be able to meet the family that I love so much! I’m sure if we skype there I will have at least one of the kids with me throughout the skype haha they are super cute!

I see now why you loved being in primary. We (Elder U and I) taught primary again this week. This time the CTR 6. There were 3 kids and one of them was the H girl named R and we had a good time talking about priesthood blessings and healing the sick. The best was when this super quiet girl told us a story about when she was sick she said "one time. I woke up and I puked all over my bed and I went back to sleep....... in my puke." hahahaha Elder U and I started busting up laughing. I love the things that kids say! Well I’m going to send the big email to bug this week! I love you tons!!

To Family: well bug I’m going to send you the big email this week!! First off, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MICHELLE!! She didn’t email me so I’m sending it in the family email. Well I’m going to start out with the unexpected news we got Saturday night. Well as you may know it was transfer calls so I was waiting for the zone leaders to call to tell me who out of my district was leaving. Not thinking much about it because I still have one more transfer to train. Weeeelll I got a call from AP Elder M and he asked me if I would train again. As soon as we hung up the zone leaders called and said the only person leaving from my district is Elder F. So our training was interrupted and I’m getting a new greenie tomorrow! Crazy! That was definitely not expected. Pretty much the rest of our week was a bummer except a less active we taught. Bro S. He calls himself a Jack Mormon. But he really wants to start going to church and stop smoking and everything. I know I’ve talked about him before but anyways we finally met with him after a really long time and we had a really good visit and I’ve been working on being more bold and I just told him part way through our lesson that he really needs to come to church and that if he does he will find that quitting smoking will be easier and his life will improve. He was out of town this week at his mom’s so we told him to go to church there because it would be easier because nobody there knows him. He said he would and we are going to meet with him this week and get him a white shirt and get him to church. He even said that sometime he wants to suit up and go around with us for a day! He is 45 years old and is one of the most genuine nice people I have ever ever met. He has all the right desires now we just have to help him reach them. Awesome story number 2. Our investigator S FINALLY came to church!! Now we just need to see what she thought about it. But church attendance was awesome we had at least 14 less actives from our side, 4 recent converts, 1 investigator, and 2 non members! We were fasting to find people to teach and after sacrament the mother of the nonmember kids said we need to start coming over to teach her daughter M who is 9 so she can get baptized!! So me and my new companion will start teaching her! I’m really excited. I can’t believe that another transfer is over. I’m on number 7 of 17! I’ll now possibly be in B until July 31!  Making it 3 days away from spending 7 months in B! Oh my goodness! I almost forgot! On Saturday Elder F and I got a ride with the zone leaders out to El Mirage. It’s a dry lake bed that is a reserve for OHV's like dirt bikes and all. We had a big service project out there that they asked for help with. They do this service every year where they just go around and maintain the place. There were 11 missionaries there and we got put in the group of going around and cleaning up around certain Joshua trees that were the biggest and oldest ones there. The only problem was our transportation was a 3-seater jeep for 11 missionaries. Well the guy started out by taking groups around and he would just move from group to group and take them around and it was taking awhile. So in my group it was Elder C, Elder K and me and these two are a couple of my best friends in the zone. Well we were cleaning up a Joshua tree when we saw a sand rail flying down the road and we were all just staring being jealous of the people having fun. Well the sand rail pulled up to where we were and the guy got out and said "I hear they need help with transportation so I’m with you guys!" oh. My. Gosh. It was sooo awesome! I got a couple of pictures on the phone but didn’t have my camera so I’ve got to get them from Elder K but it was super super cool! I also got a little burnt but it’s gone now. And I got stabbed in the top of the head by a Joshua tree and it hurt super bad. Not 2 minutes after I did Elder K did the same thing though haha. It was great! Anyways I love you tons and have an awesome week!!

Email April 30 2012

Well this week has been a pretty busy one! Like I said last week we had a lot of scheduled appointments. Sadly most of them fell through... not all of them though! We visited a few less active families. One was a less active family that I was visiting back when Elder H was here but they had been busy and we haven’t seen them for awhile. While we were there I found out their 8 year old daughter has a guitar but didn’t know how to play anything and none of the family knows how either so I had her bring it out and I taught her and her brother who is like 10 just a couple chords and told them to practice them and next time I would teach them a couple more. I’m super grateful for my talent of playing the guitar because this isn’t the first time I used it to talk with people. After I taught them that, their 13 year old son who is probably one of my favorite kids in the ward showed me his drum set and we just played around on that for a bit. We had a really good time and we are going back possibly this upcoming week. Another cool story about guitar. We have a couple people we visit in a rest home every couple weeks and when we were leaving there was an older guy there who had been performing for the old folks and he was leaving with his stuff and I asked him what kind of guitar he had and he set it down and pulled it out of the case and handed it to me to play so I just played around on it for a minute and told him it was a wonderful guitar and he took it back and started playing a song and singing a song that he wrote! It was super cool. After he finished we helped him carry his stuff to his van and load it up. They weren’t interested in our message at all but a couple of the people (him and one of his friends) live up at the veterans home and they know one of our members there and we told him we would be up there Monday night for dinner with them and they said they would sit with us! It was super cool so hopefully we will see them tonight and possibly invite them to the lesson afterward! Other than that we stopped by and visited some other less actives a few of them are actually starting to be at church pretty regularly! I think we haven’t had much success with investigators because it has helped us focus on less actives and we are seeing some progress there.

So crazy story! The AP's called last Monday night and told me they would be at my district meeting the next day. Oh boy! So as they said they did show up and we had a really good district meeting! Afterward I talked with Elder M and he told me it was one of the best district meetings he had been to so I was happy about that and then we just talked about my district and how they were doing. After district meeting I had talked to Elder J about going tracting with me so I can see how he does it so we went out to a neighborhood and started knocking on doors. We knocked on this one door and this is what happened. So the screen door was closed but his main door was open so we could see into his house. We knock and he shows up down the hall and just says "hello?"

Elder J, "Hello sir how are you doing?"

"I’m busy!"

"Sir do you know who we are?"

"I don’t care who you are!"

"Sir do you need help with anything?"

-Asian man literally runs forward, throws the door open so it slams against the wall, and gets right up in Elder J’s face and yells "I TOLD YOU I’M BUSY!"

-Jordan just stands his ground and says "Sir. We just want to help you."

"I DONT NEED ANY HELP! GET AWAY FROM MY HOUSE!"

Turns around and slams the door behind him.

Whoa. Yeah that guy was a jerk. It was crazy! Of the 4 people we talked to that day 3 of them were flat out jerks to us... so it didn’t work out to well but it made for some good stories. We still haven’t found any new investigators but this week our goal is to see at LEAST one member a day and try to get people active in missionary work. Hopefully it will work better than tracting has. Oh also on Saturday morning we had the big helping hands service day for California and we just helped clean windows up at the veterans home! It was pretty fun!

Well that’s pretty much all for this email. I love you tons and miss you!!