Email Oct 29 2012

Well basically in a singles ward that is DEAD work wise and being a zone leader we don’t get very much new stuff going on so our week was pretty much average... We did get to teach 3 people unexpectedly which was awesome! We just went to a member’s house to share a message and whoa... They had a friend their so we shared lessons with them! They were all hesitant to learn more but we at least taught them! Also our investigator W came to church yesterday with her boyfriend who I found out is a returned missionary! Sweet! So she will hopefully get baptized in a couple weeks! We also had a pretty cool thing at church! so we had been trying to get this member to help his friend want to take the lessons and his friend kept saying no so we were pretty much just giving up on him... well yesterday the member came up to us and said he asked his friend again and he finally agreed!! The thing is that his friend has only missed church 1 time since I’ve been here and goes to FHE and Institute he is sooo just ready to get baptized! So wish us luck with him and pray for us!

Also some cool news! Elder N my favorite comp is now training... and he is in our zone!! He lives right across the street from us so I get to see him all the time! It’s super awesome! A couple more just really cool/funny experiences.

1. I went tracting with Elder N and we had TONS of weird things happen. We got a LEGIT door slammed on us and afterwards the old lady yelled swear words at us out the window and complained about how she had to get up when she didn’t want to and how we were bugging people. We just laughed and it made her more mad. Oh well. We got offered some beer. That’s always funny. Some guy said he had one question for us so we said go ahead and he asked "Do you really believe that you will become Gods of your own world based on how you lived here and how many children you have?" We said, "Well that’s some deep doctrine and we don’t believe it matters how many children we have." So he said "Just answer the question.. do you really believe you will be gods of your own world?" and Elder N just was like "yep!" and we tried to tell him where it says it in the Bible such as Psalms 82:6 and Romans 8: 16-17 but he just waved us off and told us if we told people that we might offend them. It was weird. So also Elder N got scared by some dogs and then we saw a chicken just wandering around someone’s front yard! haha It was soooo weird! All this happened in about an hour haha pretty awesome.

2. I went tracting with Elder M and we go to knock on the first door and this kid comes out before we even get to the door and we do our little summary of what we are there for and asked if we could take 15-20 minutes to share a message and he said sure! So we sat down right there and taught an amazing restoration lesson which was cool because we have never really taught before but it flowed way well and hopefully Elder M and A will be able to teach the whole family. But it was just cool because it was the FIRST door we went to. Usually it’s the last but we had a good time and the kid was kind of younger and really relaxed and had a lot of really good input. So there is a chance there!

Well that’s really about all! Things are going really well! Hopefully the work picks up more and more! I love you tons and miss you lots!

Email Oct 22 2012

I did get your package the other day and it made my day!! Mail has been a rarity for me lately so it was nice to see my name on something in the mailbox (:

Well as for this week we really didn’t do much but run things around for people and had some assignments from President that we had to do but it was pretty good. We got transfer calls and Elder H and I are staying together again!! I’m super excited! I was worried he was going to be taken away! I’m thinking that this will possibly be his last transfer here because at the end of this one he will have been in the ward for 9 months. Well my good buddy Elder C has been in his ward for a very long time also. So it is likely he will get transferred and he is already a zone leader so it’s possible I could have him as a next companion and most likely would be with him for 2 transfers by then I will be down to my final 4. It would be fantastic if that happened. Our zone actually didn’t have much change. Of the 11 companionships we only had 3 people get transferred. One Elder had been here is whole mission (9 months) and the other 2 were both companions and we know why one got transferred but we didn’t think they were going to take both. One of them is one of our super awesome greenies so we are bummed but we will probably get a new greenie there with a trainer.

Something really awesome happened this week! We met with a referral we got named W. We met at the church and brought a girl from our ward and taught her the restoration and she said that she liked it and we invited her to be baptized on Nov 10.... She said yes!! I’m really excited! There hasn’t been a baptism here for over a year! Hopefully this will get people started in missionary work. Plus there was a missionary who just got home from Orlando and he is SUPER AWESOME! We talked to the bishop about maybe having him as ward mission leader since we don’t have one and he would just do really great! You can tell by the way that he is that he was an excellent missionary and did lots of really good work. He is also like a superstar at sports and has tons of friends so this could be the thing to get it started!

Another really awesome thing happened this week. Elder V and Elder M our APs came and talked to us after our zone leader meeting and asked if we could do a favor for them. We said sure and they asked us if we could pick up a missionary from their place that was flying in early before transfers and keep him with us until transfers. Wellllll that missionary just happened to be Elder U!!! He is back out here!! It’s been awesome to be with him the last few days and it’s possible that he could actually be the one in our zone. Maybe. We find out tomorrow! So yeah not a whole lot of new things going on but it’s been a good week. I really hope things pick up soon because I’m starting to get frustrated. Multiple different reasons but I’m doing alright and as soon as the work starts up everything will be better because I’ve found the more work I do the happier I am. I love you tons and hope you have an awesome week!!

To Jeff:

I sure miss Zion’s! It’s funny to still see lizards everywhere up here and I’ve caught a couple of them. One time I put it on my tie while we were tracting and it was pretty funny but nobody was answering their doors so that was a little disappointing. I don’t remember putting lizards on you though. It’s been a fun week with the zone and the last couple days we did some tie trades with the missionary that is leaving because he has some super awesome ties! I love getting new ties and got 2 REALLY awesome ties. And the best part was that one of the ties I traded was one that I was just "eh" about that another missionary gave me before he went home. The other was one that was a little harder to give away but I got a good deal for it and it was just one I got at Ross. It’s always fun to try to see how nice of ties you can get. I think I’m up to about 40 ties now and just can’t get enough. I’m always on the lookout for new awesome ties haha I’m sure you remember from being on your mission. 

Email Oct 15 2012

Well this week really wasn’t all that interesting besides our meetings with Elder Grow. All the Zone Leaders had a meeting with him on Wednesday night and it went pretty good. He is a pretty interactive guy and had some pretty good topics to train us on. They were good for us but not too interesting for other people haha. The first was about us setting our goals for baptisms. Usually when you plan for the next week if you don’t already have a baptism planned your goal for baptisms that week is 0. Well he taught us a "duh" principle. You need to plan about 4 weeks ahead for the baptisms. Why we hadn’t done that. I have no idea. haha but nobody ever has done that here. So then once you set a goal of baptisms you can figure out what you need to do in the 3 weeks prior to reach that goal. Then with this there should never be a goal for zero baptisms again. It’s pretty awesome but kind of confusing when you get into the other numbers and I’m not even going to try to explain it over email. Anyways the other thing he trained on was about President Monson’s book "to the Rescue." and about how we need to work with Less Actives more because through them we will find most of our success because they usually have a lot of non member friends. Nothing new to me but I’m glad he talked about it. So they were really pretty good trainings and I enjoyed it a lot.

Friday when we had all of the Valley Missionaries meet with him from 8-2 he just went over the same things so it was nothing really new. They just figured we needed to hear it more as the zone leaders because now tomorrow Elder H and I get to train our zone on it just to make sure they really understand it. Hopefully it goes well. After that we all got to get our flu shots.... yay.... haha it wasn’t too great.

Other than that not really anything happened. We got a referral and called her and she texted us back and we are supposed to set up an appointment with her this week to start teaching her. Also J our investigator had to cancel on us this last week but he texted us later in the week to set up an appointment with us! So he is pretty solid! We are meeting with him tonight right after FHE.  Well that’s really all... love you tons and hope you have an awesome week!!

Email Oct 8 2012

Conference was really great! We missed most of the first session on Saturday morning due to some upset stomachs but made it in time for President Uchtdorfs which I thought was fantastic! We just watched it at the church building. About the age change... hmm I’m not really too sure how I feel about it. 18 seems young and with the immaturity of some of the 19 and 20 year olds it worries me a little that they will be worse. the problem with 19 year old sister missionaries is that lots more will go which means when we get home there may be a lot of girls on missions. It narrows our pool of potential wives hahaha The Saturday afternoon session we watched over at a family’s house. We actually had dinner over at their house last Thursday and they were a super awesome family and we asked if we could possibly watch a session of conference at their house. They said yes and even fed us lunch and afterward sent us home with a TON of food. They are feeding us again on Thursday. I think they like us more than the sister missionaries in their ward. hahaha Priesthood session we watched at the church building of course and we sat with the Spanish missionaries in our zone. Sunday we ended up watching both sessions at the H’s apartment. They are a senior missionary couple and are super fun to be around. It was really fun being able to watch it with them and they made us breakfast and lunch! People are too good to us sometimes haha.

Most of our week this last week was spent going and teaching members. We were really working on finding a way to help members do missionary work so we were trying to figure out what the first step would be and we concluded that the first step in missionary work is being able to recognize the Holy Ghost. So we came up with a lesson to teach people starting with reading out of PMG. (They recently came out with mini PMG's so we are able to take them around with us more easily) PG 96 and read about how the Holy Ghost gives small promptings and how we really need to pay attention to them. Then we read some scriptures the first from Gal. 5:22-23, then 2 Nephi 32:5, and last Moroni 7:13, 16-17. Then read PMG PG 97 to finish off. Afterwards we left them with some papers we made that had some scriptures about the Holy Ghost and a blank spot next to them and asked them to read the scriptures then write what they learned and we set up appointments to go back and follow up this week. We had 2 very common responses which helped us really see how inspired it was that we started with this. Every young adult we taught this too said the same thing "Yes, I have trouble recognizing the Holy Ghost." a couple even asked us "How did you guys know that I’ve been struggling with this? This is exactly what I needed." There was a family we taught it too because their daughter is in our ward but still lives at home so we ate and then taught this and the dad said "I think the Lord knew what he was doing when he put you two back together because you teach together how missionaries should." It was nice to hear that. That was most of our week though not a ton happened but at least it wasn’t a bad week. This next week Elder C. Scott Grow is coming to the mission. The Zone Leaders have a meeting with him tomorrow night and then he speaks to the entire mission on Friday so I’m really excited for both of those. Also between conferences we ended up cleaning up our apartment and de-junking it and I’m pretty sure it’s the cleanest missionary apartment in the mission by far. haha and most of the time I was thinking "well I’m glad that mom taught me how to clean well." haha It was a pretty good week... except on Friday which was the day we went up to see D B get baptized. We were almost up there and we got a text that it was cancelled. Now they are on their way to Ohio to live. We went up anyways and got to see Elder N which was super nice. He was an awesome comp. then we went and stopped by the B’s because I never told them goodbye and I heard they were upset that I left. So we decided to surprise them and boy we did. N B did like a double take and was like "Your back? For how long?" haha It was good to see them though and actually get to say goodbye and I promised to keep in better contact with them. But yeah bummer about the baptism but it was made up for. Also we stopped by the DI after an appointment in C and we found some AWESOME ties. That rarely happens at this DI but they had just restocked and they had some real quality ties there. Well that’s about all. Love you tons and hope you have a great week!

.

Email Oct 1 2012

Well you are going to be the only one to get an email this week because ALOT has happened and we are running late and have dinner in like 45 min and it’s about a 20 min drive plus we have to drop off some other missionaries at their apartment so I don’t have much time.

Well this week was kind of really crazy. We had exchanges with the AP's Tuesday and Elder M (my zone leader from V, now the AP) came to our ward with me. We worked really hard to find people to teach but didn’t have a ton of success. We were looking through some former investigators though and saw 2 people who had been being taught who had NO reason for being dropped and the last things they said were that they were loving the lessons so I looked at the fellowshipper they had and it was a girl in our ward on both of them so I called her. I asked about them and she said "yeah after this other missionary left the next missionaries never really kept teaching them... do you have an record of these other 3 of my friends?" well we didn’t so we set up a time that we could go over and talk to her. Turns out she has 5 friends that are still hopefully interested that she is inviting to either institute this week or to sacrament next week. Hopefully we see some pretty cool things from that. Other than that we contacted a little bit and talked to a couple people who seem a little interested. The best part of our day had to do with the return appointment we had with R. The first guy that let Elder H and I in last week. I took Elder M one of the missionaries that we are handing him over to and Elder M and M’s comp Elder A went tracting. Elder M and I had a REALLY great lesson. We read from 3 Nephi 11 about the Savior coming. Then we asked if he had prayed about the Book of Mormon after he read it and he said that he hadn’t so we went to the intro of the Book of Mormon and talked about how to know if it’s true we need to pray. Then we asked him to right this minute pray to know if the Book of Mormon was true and after we would sit for a few seconds so we would make sure not to miss it. After he prayed we sat and the Spirit was really strong. I asked him how he felt and he said... "I feel okay" so I told him how I felt about how I felt peaceful and happy and he told us "Yeah I feel the same... I felt this way last time you guys came too.... I have a confession to make. 99.9% of the people who knock on my door I will send them away. But there was something about you guys... I knew you were here for a reason." After he said that I just bore my testimony and said "R we are here for a reason. We cover all of S and R. We could have gone to ANY street in the city and we came here because our Savior led us here because he loves you so much that he wants you to know about the restored Gospel and how it can bless your life. You let us in because you felt the Holy Ghost and those same feelings are telling you right now that the Book of Mormon is true and that what we have taught is true." I said more things but I don’t really remember what they were. It was very powerful though. After when we were about to go I told him that this would be the last time I would be there but that Elder M would be the one teaching him. After I told him that he got up from his seat and came over and I got up to shake his hand but he gave me a big hug. It was really neat and I hope so much that he can keep progressing because he is sooo ready for the Gospel. It was a really neat lesson.

Wednesday we had exchanges with one of the district leaders and I went to their area with the district leader’s greenie. We ended up tracting almost all day and we got 22 contacts and had pretty much no success. Finally it was time for an appointment they got while tracting the other day and it was 2 teenage girls and their little brother. (Their mom wasn’t interested) but we taught them about the Book of Mormon and how it can help them. Not as powerful a lesson as R’s but they still seem really interested and wanted Elder T and Elder M to keep coming every Wednesday. I also invited them to be baptized and they said YES!! There are a couple things they will need to overcome but they will work out. before we left they even asked if they could invited a friend for next week and the mom said she liked what we were doing and next week she would make sure her other 2 sons would be there to listen too. It was pretty awesome.

Thursday we had exchanges with the Spanish elders! I stayed in our ward and had Elder M come to our area. He has been out about 22 months. We had an AWEFUL day. At the end of our day Elder M even said that it was one of the hardest days he has had on his mission. All our appointments fell through and when we went tracting people not only just said no but were flat out jerks to us. Elder M asked one old lady how she was doing and she said "none of your business" and shut the door. The guy at the next house came out and pointed at his gate and said "never come through that gate again" people were just frustrating me really bad. It was just a super bad day.

Friday not much happened but I was back with Elder H again.

Saturday we had exchanges AGAIN. This time I was in Elder M’s area on bike and we went and shared an MRR lesson with a past bishop that went really well and Elder M is going to start using it with more members to get them to do missionary work. Then we went tracting for 2 hours and talked to some really awesome people 3 of which said if we were in the area we could come by and share our message.

Sunday was Fast Sunday and was a pretty good time at church the best part of our day was from teaching a new investigator we got last Monday. We taught him at his brother’s house who is a member and taught the intro to the Book of Mormon and asked if he found out it was true if he would be baptized and he said yes! That will be the first baptism in this ward in nearly a year. Pretty crazy but hopefully it will get the work going quicker.

Today the reason we are behind is because we went on a hike up in Lake Arrowhead. We got lots of sweet pictures that I’ll get to you guys soon. Well we gotta go! I love you all tons!! Have a great week!!

Email Sept 24 2012

So yes and no about my first area. It is not in our zone but it’s in our area. Elder H and I cover all of S B zone and R zone for the YSA and it’s in the R zone. But yeah we just met with Bishop S from C on Thursday and it was cool to see him again. He remembered me which was cool. And it’s neat because all the youth that I got pretty close with there are all now in the singles ward. They aren’t going but we are working on that. Yep we still have a truck so that we can move missionaries around, move their bikes and take random things to their apartments that the office wants us to.  So we live in the Northern part of S B.

E’s baptism went really well. It started around 6 because we were a half hour late but it was alright. E was just really happy to be there. He was just kind of "eh.." about the baptism part because he’s been baptized a few other times but her was REALLY excited about the confirmation. It was neat to be able to do that. He had a really good turn out too which was awesome. Afterwards he gave Elder D and me each one of his ties. I got a pretty awesome new clip on tie haha. We do actually have Spanish missionaries in our zone but that’s all. I think my favorite part about being a missionary is seeing the miracles that happen all the time. We have seen our zone have SO much success this last week it’s crazy. When the APs called this morning to talk about numbers they said our zone had the most new investigators than any other zone. We had 31 this last week. We also as a zone this week had about 337 contacts which almost tripled what they have been getting in the past. The coolest thing is that almost all of those new investigators came from contacting which means that people were being let in when they were knocking on doors. Some missionaries still don’t get it though they just expect that investigators will fall in their laps without them doing anything. It was great when we would get calls from our missionaries and they would say. Guys guess what!  And they would be sooo excited that they found people and I loved that they would call and share it with us. But yeah. Most of our week was spent tracting but like I said last week we were working with going with everyone in our zone to try to get them out contacting and to be able to just talk with our zone members. It was really fun and we are going to keep doing that. Not AS much but with a few companionships a week. This week we are going to focus on visiting ysa's that are still going to their home wards and try to get them to come out to our ward. So yeah we had a pretty good week. Not a ton happened to us but our zone is doing great and that is what we really want. I love you and hope you have an awesome week!

Email Sept 19 2012

Welllll...... I’m emailing on Wednesday because our first Pday of the transfer was our temple trip!! So we just went to the temple with our zone this morning and now we are emailing and then we are driving up to BB for E’s baptism!! I’m pretty excited for him. Elder D is baptizing him and I’m confirming him. Anyways I guess you want to hear about where I am and who I’m with! I am in the NP YSA ward that covers the SB stake and the R stake so we have a pretty big area. And my companion is.... Elder H again!!! I was super happy when they read off our names together! It’s been fun being with him and we have taught a few lessons and it just seems like we were never not companions. It’s nice because we didn’t have to waste time trying to get a feel for how each other teaches.

The work in the YSA ward is really pretty hard and I’m still not sure exactly how to do it. We don’t really have any investigators right now but what we have been doing as Zone Leaders is this week we scheduled each companionship 2 times in the week that we were going to go tracting with them so 1. We could help them get contacts and 2. Get to know each member of our zone a little better. So far it’s been really good and we have been spending a lot of our day tracting. We are getting pretty good at it haha. Our first week together consisted of doing ALOT of just driving around and helping missionaries with their bikes, or helping them figure out their areas, and just a lot of running errands. Friday was zone leader council where the APs do training and president does training and then we take notes and in our zone meeting the next week we teach our zone. So that took up a lot of our Friday but it was good. I never realized how much a zone leader’s phone goes off during the day! It seems like I’m on the phone more than I’m off it haha. We have to charge it every night.

Well anyways we don’t have tons of time but I wanted to share an AMAZING miracle that happened. So the APs trained on having faith to find people to teach and how really faith is the key to becoming a better missionary than anyone has ever seen even Ammon and Aaron and Alma and Amulek. So after our meeting we were pretty pumped up and that’s when we started to schedule our tracting times with missionaries. Well on Monday we had 3 companionships scheduled and we went with the first 2 and got a few contacts and a couple potentials for those missionaries but nothing special. Then our last companionship cancelled on us and we were 1 contact away from reaching our daily goal of 10 so we asked them where in their area they would like us to tract and they gave us the name of a street. Well we went and parked and started knocking on doors. We had 2 pretty good contacts that seem like they may be pretty solid but they were busy at the time so we told them some other missionaries would be coming back in about a week and they agreed to listen to them. So we kept going and got up to the next street corner and we had 13 contacts so we thought "eh we could just go back to the truck and get going... well we might as well just knock the doors across the street on the way down." Well we got to the last 3 houses and we were talking to a guy on his door step and it was my turn for the door approach and I talked about a lot of stuff and it just seemed like he was just not that interested and said no to a copy of the Book of Mormon so I just said "well would it be okay if we came by another time?" and he said "yeah that’s fine." and I just had the thought. Teach him now. So I asked "hey well do you have a few minutes and we could share part of our message with you?" and he let us in and we sat and taught a VERY powerful restoration and he kept telling us "I know you guys are here for a reason. I know you are." So we gave him a Book of Mormon and he said he would read from it and we set up a time to go back. So we leave the house and we are just stoked! I mean how often does THAT happen?? So we only have 2 houses left and we are like let’s just do these 2 and go. Well the next house was Elder H’s turn and it was a young man in his 20s and his girlfriend and they let us in too!! We taught ANOTHER lesson that went really well. Not AS well as the first but it went very well. It was such an amazing miracle. 2 houses in a row!! It was also a blessing because the next day we were doing our training on the faith to find and we were able to share our experience and tell our zone that hey this really does work. We did it and it worked!

So one last cool story. Elder D, one of the missionaries training in our zone (probably one of the best companionships in our zone. I love them to death.) called and said "hey I have something to tell you! After your training we were all pumped up about finding so we went tracting and it just seemed like EVERYONE was listening to us we even taught an entire family and they said that they would come to church on Sunday!" It’s so great to see the way the Lord works and I’m so glad that some of the missionaries in our zone have been able to see the things that we trained on work personally for them. Anyways it was a great week! I’m loving the new area and being with Elder H again! I love you all tons! I will email again on Monday!