Email Jan 30 2012

Well everything is going really well here. We had a really good last week. We actually had quite a few good lessons and we planted a garden for a member in the ward! We only taught 2 of our 5 investigators this week because the others fell through but they went very well.

Tuesday was a stupid day. We left at 1:30 to go down to Victorville to a Pep Boys because our tire had a hole in it. So get this... we were there until about 6:10. It wasn’t even that busy!! All they had to do was change the tire! I was really mad and I thought that we were going to lose our appointment with our investigator James that night. Luckily he said it would be okay if we came by later around 7. So we did just that. We went and taught him the second half of the plan of salvation and he had a lot of questions about sealings that I couldn’t answer. I can now because I talked to our ward mission leader about it and he found the answers for me. He is progressing really well and I think he will be getting baptized pretty soon.

Wednesday we planted the garden that morning and the rest of the day was kind of a not great day.

Thursday most of our appointments fell through but we did get to see a less active and find out she is possibly moving and might be getting a divorce.

Friday we visited a few less actives one of which is just going through a hard time and her father in law isn’t in good shape but she thinks he would listen to our message and told us to come back sometime to try and teach him. We also saw a less active for a few minutes and they were super nice and said that before the lady was baptized she didn’t get all the lessons and every time missionaries try to do the lessons with her they always get transferred within a month. We are going to try to teach them to her anyways and hopefully we both stay!

Saturday we went and visited our other investigator who has a lot of faith and loves to talk to us. He had a full knee replacement and it got infected so he isn’t doing too well but this time we went he actually let us in and sit down. We had a pretty good lesson with him and found out he already reads the Book of Mormon. So next time we are going to talk about how the Book of Mormon came about and all that good stuff.

Sunday we visited some more less actives and one of them said that there are 2 people she is going to talk to about having the missionaries come over and teach and if they say yes she wants to go with us which is pretty cool. They were a really nice family but only 3 of them were members. Also Sunday night I called Elder H to see if that baptism was going to go through. He said that there was going to be a baptism but it wasn’t for T and J... it was going to be for T!! The guy who wasn’t doing too well! He has finally set a date and committed to being baptized!! I was so excited to find out! So we are going down on Saturday for that!

It was overall a pretty good week. This next week we are planning to have somewhere around 15 lessons. This week we had 8 and before that we were getting hardly any so we are definitely doing better!! I love you all and miss you like crazy!

To Jeff:  sounds like a fun time at snow canyon! About the ward. We are in the Barstow Ward and there are 4 missionaries in the ward. Me and my companion cover the bigger half that goes out to Hinkley about 20ish miles away and have a car. The other Elders are on bike and have a much smaller area. Yes we are meeting more members and we have some appointments with some more this week. Things are really progressing here and going really well! I actually read that story in the Ensign this week too! I thought it was really good and inspiring! Well I hope you have a great week and are all safe and having fun! Love you lots!

Email Jan 23 2012

That sounds like a really good talk and I’ll have to read it when we get our Ensign! I’m jealous about the storms. It rained here today off and on but that’s all the rain there has been in the last like 4 weeks. Apparently it’s been a really dry year here in California and Utah too I hear. That’s great to hear about Lyndsi's basketball team! We play basketball every Thursday night with the Polys (correct my spelling if I’m wrong) that live around here and there are about 15-20 people that come and all but like 3 are non members so it’s good to get to interact with them! Tuesday nights we play Volleyball which is pretty fun too! Last week after I emailed not a whole lot happened. We did a lot of Tracting and contacting but didn’t get many contacts. The houses here are really spread apart so like to tract a street it takes like 45 minutes to do half of a big street here and you get maybe 8 doors to knock on... not too good but it’s alright. Sometimes we get lucky and meet some good people. We had a zone challenge this week to see who could hand out the most Book of Mormons. We came in second with 15. That was the weekly challenge. One of the daily challenges was to give out a pass along card at a cross walk. 5 points for someone walking and double if they are in a car. Well we were at Burger King and so we went out to the cross walk. Waited for a car and I walked out holding up a card of the temple and they rolled the window down. I told them it was for the LDS church and it was a website and then the car behind them honked so we quickly went back to the sidewalk. hahaha it was pretty sweet! But oh yes! We did meet a Less Active family/Part member family! The mom is a member but her husband and daughter are not. We had met their son once who apparently doesn’t live there anymore he was just on break. And so he told us to come back in a couple days so we did and the dad answered and let us in and we sat down and talked with them for about an hour and a half and they gave us water and doughnuts! It was pretty awesome and they are a way cool family. They don’t seem all that interested but they definitely weren’t pushing us away which was good. On Friday we had a zone conference that went longer than planned. It went from 8 in the morning to 2. Then we had a like 30-40 minute drive back to Barstow. yayy.. But it was really good and I got to see the AP's! One is from St George and is a funny kid and the other was one of my zone leaders in Rancho and he is recently the new AP and is probably one of my favorite people out here. But yeah it was good!! So I’ve decided that we are going to start visiting lots of members because one of our roommates said something that really bugged me. When I asked about an active family he said he didn’t know them because "they haven’t fed us dinner" I wanted to slap him. He doesn’t know half the families in the ward and he has been here for almost 6 months! I knew EVERYBODY that was active in my first ward and I was there for 3 months. I knew MOST people in Chaffey and I was there for 6 weeks. So I decided I want these members to know who I am so I’m going to go meet them all. Even if they don’t feed us dinner! So this next week should go pretty well. We have a lesson with an investigator tonight, one tomorrow night, we are helping a guy with his house on Wednesday, we have a possible new investigator on Thursday, and yeah other stuff too but it should be a great week! Oh we also did some service on Saturday morning for a member out in Newberry. I now know how to put up drywall. haha it was a pretty fun service day! But yeah that’s it for this last week! Wish us luck for this week because we are hoping to set possibly 4 baptismal dates! Love you lots!!

Email Jan 18 2012

Well I’m a little late emailing again. The library was closed on Monday and so we were going to come Tuesday to email but I woke up really early Tuesday morning around 1 and was extremely sick. I was up all night and spent all the next day feeling awful. I couldn’t keep anything down. Anything at all. And it was awful. Luckily I slept through the night last night and am feeling great today! Just hungry and weak. My companion was a little sick yesterday too but we think it was just from hearing me be sick all night. But on the good news I lost a bit of weight! haha I’m sure I’ll get it back soon though! Well this last week hasn’t been too bad! We passed out a couple of Book of Mormons and found a guy who is going to be spending a lot of time trying to repair a house he had bought and he was frustrated because in Barstow it is really hard to find help. So we offered our help and told him we would do it for free. He was very grateful and we are going to call him as soon as we are feeling up to going to help. We also handed out a Book of Mormon to a kid we tracted into that is in College and he said it would be alright if we went back this next week to see what he thought of the book. We also got a new investigator. Her name is T and she is a freshman in high school. Her mom is alright with us teaching her and just wants her daughter to find a religion that is best for her. It was a hectic lesson because there was a lot going on in the house but we taught most of the first lesson minus Joseph Smith because we wanted it to be a better time for that. We will be teaching her again tonight and watching the restoration video with her. We have also begun working with some less actives. I’m not sure if I told you in my last letter but there are somewhere around 600 Less Active members here in Barstow. It is pretty crazy. So we are going to start finding some we can work with. We had a pretty cool lesson last week with a less active member that Elder H and his last comp were working with. He drove us out a little ways into the hills and we had a lesson in the bed of his truck about the Book of Mormon because he isn’t too sure what it’s all about so we read the intro and some of our favorite scriptures with him. He said he wants to come back to church he just wants to quit smoking. He also said he wants to go to the temple and he wants us to help him know the sacrament prayer so that when he comes back he can bless the sacrament. It’s pretty cool! His house is also a pretty big mess and he asked if we would come help him clean sometime and just move some heavier stuff around. He really wants to change his life around and he realizes that the church is the way to do it. Other than that there hasn’t been a whole lot going on this last week. I’m really hoping that we can pick it up the next couple weeks before the end of the transfer. I keep feeling like we aren’t doing anything but at the same time I feel like we are working hard. It’s really weird and the only thing I can think is that just this area is one that is a harder one to work in and I’m just trying to get it started and am not quite sure how to do it. But I’m figuring it out and we will make this area explode. I feel like I might be here for a little while which doesn’t bother me too much. I just need to always remember to work my best!

Email Jan 11 2012

So first of all what’s been going on is that Monday after New Year’s everything was closed then the next day I got transferred and then my new area was supposed to have a temple trip this week so our p day isn’t till today (Wednesday). Well our temple trip got canceled for some reason.

Anyways like I said I got transferred again! After only 6 weeks... I’m now almost as close to home as I can get in BARSTOW! Crazy huh? Yep well the area is actually really pretty good. My companion is good. And I don’t even know where to start... baptisms from my last area... they got moved back a week but they are still going to get baptized. My new comp is from up by Sandy Utah and has been out only 6 weeks longer than I have. I’m extremely overwhelmed at the moment also which is probably why you were getting that feeling mom. When I got here there were 3 investigators and pretty much nothing else going on. Since I have been here for the last week I have already invited all 3 of them to get baptized and almost got a couple new investigators. Anyways I don’t have much to tell about my new area yet but I do have a pretty crazy story…

       Two Elders in my district were in a car accident last Friday. The driver got spooked by headlights and tried to turn to sharp while going 70 and rolled the car 3 or 4 times and completely totaled the car. They are both ok though. The driver (who wasn’t wearing his seatbelt) got stitches on his ear, and his back is sore and he has some scratches on his face and neck. The passenger has a broken rib and a few scrapes. They are super lucky! The crazy thing is that when they took off their garments when they got back the cuts went to the garment line and they were unscratched under them. It was really crazy to see.

            But yeah other than that we have been trying to see less-actives, and tracting a lot and meeting members but I just don’t know what to do and neither does my companion so it’s just stressful. Hopefully we are getting a new investigator tonight. If she is there. Lots of people in Barstow are always gone, or busy, or just flake on us. It’s definitely going to be one of my hardest areas. It makes me miss Rancho, my last comp, my last roommates, my ward... Everything! I do like being in Barstow but I’m just stressed. Well that’s pretty much all I have for this week. Hopefully next email will be better and we will have more stuff to talk about. Love you all tons and miss you!!