Email July 23 2012

Well this email is going to be pretty short this week. Honestly not a whole lot happened. I don’t know why but it seems that our appointments just aren’t working out. We were really bummed and ended up going to the H’s for about an hour to just sit and talk with them. We went to a baptism on Friday night for the relief society president’s granddaughter. It was really good and I always love feeling the spirit at those baptisms. Saturday was a bad day too. We had a ward party for pioneer day and that was about as good as that got. Really pretty much our week consisted of driving around, getting rejected, and driving some more. It really is crazy how hard Satan works on people. He is just messing everything up. This week really should be a lot better because I’m pretty much going to go around and teach lessons and say goodbye to everyone. We will be getting transfer calls on Saturday. Hopefully people stop canceling on us at least for this week so I can have a good last week.

So it’s funny that your speaking on Sunday because so am I!!! haha they are having 3 of the 4 missionaries talk and the other one is doing a musical number. We get to choose our own topic and I’ve decided to do my talk on having hope. I looked up some things on it earlier and found some really good insights and I hope it turns out good. It’s almost like having a farewell talk haha I feel like this is a home ward to me and now I’ll be leaving.  I’ve been thinking about USU a little bit too. I have a friend out here that has said that if I go there I can live with him and his family because they have a separate area for guests and he said they would be all about having me up there. Free housing would be super nice. I probably won’t get that in Provo, but it’s still looking like I’ll be at UVU for at least my first year. There are just so many different good schools. Also I had it hit me this last week what I REALLY want to do. I originally wanted to be a Pediatrician. But every time I thought about it I felt like that might not be what I should get into. Well I was thinking about a career when I was talking to a member and something that really interests me would be to be like a sports med person/physical therapist. I still have plenty of time to see if it’s really what I want to do and I’m still going to focus on Biology as a major and that will leave lots of doors pretty open.

Ideas for your talk...getting your children to do missionary work. I would have to say just talk about it enough that it will be on their minds. Do lessons about it in FHE and practice how you might talk to people about the church. Talk about bearing your testimony even if it’s small. On page 41 of the November 2011 Ensign there is a talk by L Tom Perry about missionary work and it’s really good. I especially love the quote that is right under the name of the article.

I can’t believe so many crazy killings are happening.. Elder N and I were in complete shock and loss for words when we found out about the killing in Colorado at the movie theater. It made me so sick that anyone would actually do that. Thank goodness for the Gospel and keeping us all on that straight and narrow path so that when bad things happen we know that there is more to life. Well I love you tons and hope you have and excellent week. And yes this was my "big" email today even though it wasn’t very big. haha

To Mom:  I just told dad that I "get" to speak on Sunday too! haha crazzyy! This week our week really wasn’t a good one and it shows in the email haha. Since it is pioneer day tomorrow we went out to the B’s home who is a less active we are working with who has actually been at church pretty regularly for the last month or so. And we watched 17 Miracles. That movie is such a good one! It’s the second time I’ve seen it on my mission. We also had some banana bread that was aweeesomme.

Chris will definitely be a good missionary. Hopefully his companions will get along with him well! Well there really isn’t much to say this week. I love you so much and hope you have an awesome week!

Email July 18 2012

Well its Wednesday and it’s our pday! I forgot to tell you last week that our pday was going to be Wednesday because we went to the temple! We just got back about an hour ago. It was such a great experience and so peaceful. I love being able to go in the in the House of the Lord and it’s such a great blessing we have to have such an out of world place to go when we just need to be away. It’s amazing how everything is just so much better as soon as you step on the grounds. The Spirit is quite an amazing blessing. The only bad part was that I had to drive because we couldn’t get a member ride and it is about an hour and a half drive so that was no fun. It was definitely worth it though and I got lots of good pictures.

This last week was once again somewhat of a not so good one. We had to drive to V 4 times in the week and that took up a lot of our time. The first time was to take our car in to get repaired because we hit a piece of a tire on I 15 and it tore up our bumper so we had to have it repaired which took 5 days. The bad part was that the APs weren’t going to give us a replacement car for those few days so we just wouldn’t have a car and our area is WAY too big to do on bike and with the members schedules there was no way we could depend on them for rides places. Luckily our Zone leaders have a small area so they loaned us their car. The next day we went down for a zone meeting where the zone leaders just talked and taught us a little bit about how we can improve our missionary work and talked about the "little things" we can do to improve our missionary work such as just being obedient and waking up at 6:30 and actually going out and knocking on doors and trying to find people to teach. The other time we went down to drop off our roommates so they could go with somebody else down to R for his greenie meeting. Well we took them down at 8 and were supposed to pick them up at 3. Kind of a waste of gas to go down and back and down and back again. So we went to our zone leaders and did a thing where I went with Elder M and Elder N went with Elder B and we dropped them off to try and see somebody and then they were going to tract and we went to go see somebody else. They ended up not even living there anymore but the guy that answered said we could come in and share a message with him. Turns out he is from Hawaii and is aunt, uncle, and mom are all members of the church! He wants to get baptized but just has some challenges to overcome. Then we wait at the zone leader’s apartment for the others to get back up here but they didn’t get back until almost 5 so by the time it was all done we just were out of time to do anything.

The last time we went was on my birthday and it was for President interviews. We just had a good talk and talked about how we can help others around us and how we can be more effective at finding because I told him that is what we were having a hard time with. Not a whole lot of new information but it was good to sit down with President. In his interview with Elder N he asked him if he felt ready to take over the area which means that I probably will be leaving the 31st which is what I’ve expected and I’m ready for. The rest of my birthday consisted of going out to see our investigator D in H and we played some card games, went out to the B’s, the less active lady we are working with and her daughter we are working on getting baptized, and had dinner and played games, then went to the H’s and had smores and J shot off some fireworks! It was a really good day. I definitely missed the family a lot though. Oh I also used some birthday money and bought a new soccer ball because my old one.... died. hahaha the one I bought wasn’t too expensive but it’s a nice ball. I loveeedd the presents you sent! I really liked the ties a lot! Who picked out the crazy blue, red, and green one? I’m guessing Michelle? It’s also way nicer to wear my shoes now that they have insoles that don’t fold up all weird. I really enjoyed the cards from everyone and the food (:

We had quite the miracle on Thursday. I got a call from Brother S, a less active I have worked with since I was with Elder H, who smokes and doesn’t want to come to church until he quits called and we were just talking and I was seeing how he was doing and he just said "oh yeah.. I’m coming to church on Sunday." I was just shocked. And the best part is... HE REALLY CAME! It was so great! He is a way funny guy and during priesthood they asked him to introduce himself (that’s how long he’s been away from the church) and he did and said "you'll be seeing me lots more often. Thanks for having me. And thanks to you guys (points at us and gives us a big thumbs up) for being diligent in working with me to get to church. It was sooo awesome. It was nice also for the fact that the ward got to see that yes we are out working. We only had 1 investigator at church sadly but we sure had a lot of less actives and that in my eyes is just as good.

Monday since it wasn’t Pday we went out to try to see a referral who was a 14 year old girl who was curious about who we were because her dad works in our apartment complex and she saw us come in and out a lot for a couple days. So we went over and she let us in and it was her, her little sister, her sister’s friend and then her best friend. At first they didn’t seem all that interested except for her but it really broke the ice when we walked in they had a song up on the tv that had been playing off their xbox and it was a rock band I listen to and so without thinking I just said "escape the fate... that’s a pretty good band." and immediately she was like "no way! You guys are cool!" and they realized that "Mormons aren’t weird!" hahahaha oh boy. But we ended up teaching them all and they all were pretty into it by the end and all want to keep learning and the 14 year old wants us to next time teach her brother and her boyfriend because she thinks they will really liked our message! It was way awesome! They wanted us to come back the next day too but we wanted to give them some time to read the Book of Mormon so we are going back tomorrow. We don’t really have anybody to close to baptism but we have a lot of people that are getting there. This week already has started out to be pretty good so we just have to keep it up.

The message we really hit on this week to try and share with members and less actives was repentance and its funny because I used to be kind of nervous to share this message because I didn’t want people to get offended but I’ve realized as I’ve gone on with my mission how great of a blessing repentance is and it’s not something we should be scared to share about because it’s no secret that EVERYBODY makes mistakes. We really do need to apply the atonement more than we do in our lives. I came up with an analogy for applying the atonement and I’m going to share it with you.

Imagine that you work super hard and save up your money to buy a gift for your brother, sister, mom, dad, son, or daughter. You are so excited and happy that you were able to get them this great gift and you had worked so hard and given up so much to give it to them. They open the gift and say "oh that’s great; thank you." they put it off to the side and they don’t use it. How would you feel? They have this gift that you gave them and they just don’t use it... it’s like the atonement. Our Savior paid the price of our sins and gave us the gift of being able to repent. It shows our gratitude as we apply the atonement and use the gift that He so willingly gave us.

It’s hard to type the analogy but I hope you get it and it makes sense. It worked pretty well with a few people and they really seemed to take it to heart. Well I hope you guys all have a great week! I love you a ton and hope everything is going good. Thank you again for all the birthday gifts!

Email July 10 2012

To Dad: Sounds like a great get together. I definitely miss all those. But I’ll be able to enjoy them again in just over a year. I’m really excited for my birthday.  There are a couple of families here that are throwing me a birthday party. I’m going out to the Bs who are the less active family I talked about in my big email. I’m going to the H’s and actually I have an interview with President at 11 on my birthday because our president interviews happen to fall on my birthday. haha and then a family is throwing me a little party on Saturday. I’m pretty excited for my Birthday. I got the package but we weren’t home to get it so it’s at the post office and I’ll be going to pick it up in about an hour. I’m kind of glad I get to spend my Birthday here in B because I’ve been here for so long it’s almost like a second home. haha There is a family that is moving out this week and they have only been here a little less than a year and I was talking to them about it and they were joking with me saying that I had been here almost the entire time they had and to them I was just basically part of the ward haha funny how things like that happen. I’ve actually been here so long that I’ve been in the V zone the longest out of the other missionaries. I’ve seen a complete change in the zone haha its pretty weird but I only have about 2 1/2 more weeks here then I’ll get out before it gets to hot! It’s already getting pretty bad. Anyways I love you tons and miss you so much!

To Mom:  Well this was a good week in some points and not so good in others. I didn’t get an email off yesterday because I ended up being pretty sick with who knows what. I’m not sure if it was a sickness or just a headache or what but about 2 yesterday my head started to hurt so I took some ibuprohpine and that didn’t even help. It was a headache right behind my eyes and it hurt super bad. I couldn’t bend over or anything and it was making me feel like I was going to throw up. It was no fun so I ended up sleeping a lot yesterday and now this morning it is almost gone but still hurts when I bend over to pick things up.

    Well today it is supposed to be 111'. It’s going to be craazzzyyy. Well let’s see for this last week not a whole lot happened Monday or Tuesday. Our car battery died on Tuesday but some very kind guy came and jumped our car and it worked fine after that. Wednesday was the 4th and we organized volleyball at the church from 10-1 with the Samoans. We had a really good turn out and had a ton of fun. Oh we also had a great surprise of waking up to rain outside! That was just awesome! We then went and visited a less active and went out to an appointment that fell through so we went and visited the H’s and had a great lesson there and the spirit was really strong. Then we went to dinner which was a BBQ outside and right as we got there it started to POUR down rain and there was lightning and thunder! It was super awesome. Only lasted about 45 minutes but it was great!

     Now the rest of the week we don’t even know what happened. We had SOOO many appointments set up that are usually good solid appointments but they alllll fell through except a couple! It was really frustrating. Friday was the worst. We had so many appointments that we didn’t even have time for lunch. Well only one of our appointments actually went through and it was with the L family. We only taught Sister L and J the 11 year old again but we got to visit with J and G for a little while. We taught a good lesson about going to church and why it’s so important even if it can sometimes be boring when you’re younger. It was a great lesson and wasn’t even what we planned on teaching. The spirit was really strong and Sister L is always so happy when we come by.

       So something interesting happened on Friday. One of our roommates Elder G got hit by a truck. He is completely fine. Not even a scrape. But his companion who didn’t even hit the truck crashed his bike right after and got all cut up haha. It was a pretty funny story. So Elder R went through an intersection where a truck was stopped and as soon as he went through she started to creep up to see around the corner and Elder G and her met haha its still undecided how it happened because I’ve heard about 9 different stories about either G hit her or she hit G but anyways Elder R had turned around to warn his companion and saw him get hit so he slammed on his brakes and he crashed his bike and his hands, elbow and knee got all cut up. He was pretty mad at his companion because he didn’t even get hit by a car but he was hurt worse. It was a pretty funny thing afterwards when we knew everyone was alright. Saturday went okay and we were able to see a few less actives and work with them. We have one lady who is like a second mom out here who we are working with helping her come back to church full time. Her daughter is 8 and is getting baptized soon and her other daughter got baptized a year ago and her husband is not a member but we have gotten to be pretty close with this family and on Sunday ALL of them came! Even her husband and she told us after that she didn’t even have to ask him he just said he wanted to come! It was really cool. But yea kind of a bummer week. I love you all tons! This is the last time you will hear from your 19 year old son. Next time I write I won’t be a teenager anymore!

Email July 2 2012

To Dad:  I loved your mormon.org profile. It was fantastic! Now we just need the others to make some ;) haha I’ve been hearing a lot about the fires up in Utah. There is one in Heriman and that is where my trainer Elder T is from. He will be going home July 31 to a bunch of burnt land. Sounds like your little vacation up north went pretty well! I definitely miss being with the entire family! I’m looking forward to spending some time with you all when I get home! Yeah those pictures of me with the mustache and beard were pretty funny. It’s actually Nutella hahah We were bored one morning and I agree that I looked like the guy from Italian job! That’s what we said after we took them too.

This week was a pretty great week with a lot of appointments that actually went through! We finally met with the V family. The family with the 9 and 10 year old we are teaching and we are now teaching the dad too. They have been out of town. For the first little bit we just played around with the kids and built legos with them and played catch then we taught a lesson about prophets. At the end the 10 year old said the prayer and he prayed that he could be turned into a dragon for a day. hahahah oh the prayers of the children. We are meeting with them again this upcoming week and are going to set up a day we can come help them with yard work. We found that giving service is a great way to get families to see that we are normal people and DO wear normal clothes sometimes haha. We had one day that we did different services all day so we only wore our pros for studies and then wore it to one teaching appointment then the rest of the day we were in service clothes. We helped a guy who just moved into his moms house start to fix up his house and we were cleaning a ton of branches and just junk from the backyard and we found like 5 black widows. Blah. Oh we also have roaches in our apartment and it is sooo nasty! So our best service so far was on Friday night. But I’m going to go back a couple of days. We met with the L family out in H on Wednesday and it was about to turn into another lesson with just the mom and the 11 year old girl J. Well we told the mom that we were going to be talking about our purpose here on earth and the plan of salvation and she convinced 2 of her other kids to come listen. We had a great little lesson then showed some videos from mormon.org and the spirit was way strong and you could just tell that from the time we were there they were happier. We even had the 14 year old son laughing a bit and loosening up. We then set up a day to come help with the yard. We went back Friday night after it wasn’t hot anymore and mowed their lawn and picked up branches and then just hung out with them. We really had a good time and they saw that we are normal people too and even the 13 year old daughter who had stopped the lessons was out with us and I talked to her a bit and we had her laughing and they really warmed up to us a lot. Now the best part is.... Sister L and her 3 daughters were ALL at church!! From what they said they really liked it! So hopefully we can see how things are going when we see them on Wednesday! They are such a great family it’s crazy! We of course tracted more this week but people just don’t answer their doors!! It’s frustrating. No funny stories with that at all. Our 2 week missionary went home today about an hour ago because he had a flag ceremony to do and it was his last one before he turns 18 and can’t do it anymore. It’s bitter sweet having him gone. This next week we already have a few good appointments set that I’m really excited for. One of them is an appointment with a less active guy and his wife has already said she wants to be baptized! So we are going to see them this next weekend and see how that will go! We are also working with a few members to start teaching members of their family or friends. We have a plan we are going to see how well it works for this next week and one day (probably Saturday) we are going to visit a member for 30-45 min. tract for 30 minutes, visit a member 30-45 min. tract for 30 minutes and make it an entire day of trying to find someone to teach! Hopefully it goes well! Pray for us! I’m getting more and more excited for my birthday! Only 11 more days of being a teenager! I don’t feel old enough to be 20 yet... haha oh well. I hope you guys have a pleasant week! I love you tons and miss you alllll the time!

To Mom:  I can relate to the driving. I have driven somewhere around 6400 miles in the last 5 months. Yeah having the 2 week missionary was pretty fun but I’m glad it’s over haha we were ready for it to be just us two again and being able to focus better on what we are going to do and everything. I miss our home wards testimony meetings.

That’s weird that sometimes you don’t get my emails for awhile... You’re right it’s probably because there are soo many people on. I hope you guys are having a good week and that everything is okay I had a feeling that I needed to pray for you guys either Friday or Saturday night. I don’t remember which but I just hope everything’s good! Love you!!

Email June 25 2012

Yep the mailing adress is the same! Still in the same place! Yeah the family that dropped off the package is a really nice family. Wish you could have met them. Their daughter is the one who I had text you on your birthday. I can’t believe Jordan and Dakotas brother are home already! It’s weird that I’m almost half way. Things are going really well right now. We had some ups and some downs. Some of the downs first were that we met with the L family with the 4 kids we were teaching and I guess they had gone to C and their Catholic aunt had talked to them a bunch and they are rethinking baptism and we weren’t able to meet with the older kids. Good news in that is that the mom still wants to come back to church and her youngest daughter the 11 year old knows it’s true and still wants to get baptized. We only taught them on Wednesday. This week really did just fly by. We visited a lot of less actives and had a few good lessons. We got a call Wednesday evening from AP M and he asked if I would be willing to have a two week missionary. I agreed and we picked him up the next morning. His name is Elder G from F. The youth here have the opportunity in the summer to serve a two week mission and kind of see how things go. It’s been going pretty well so far. We have had a lot of good powerful lessons while he has been here. I’m still getting along really great with Elder N and am really enjoying having a good, fun, hardworking companion. I’m hoping I continue to get companions like him the rest of my mission. Things in B are getting a little crazy. Lots of people are going to be moving in August. Luckily I’ll probably already be gone then because I don’t want to be here without those families in the ward. And just having Elder U gone is weird. He has been here the whole time I was. His companion got a new greenie they are a lot alike and let’s just say that Elder N and I will be mostly keeping to ourselves this transfer. haha We are planning on hopefully getting a couple of new investigators this upcoming week and set baptismal dates with whoever we can. We have been slacking a little on tracting so we are going to make sure we do better at that and I’m sure either we will find someone or like before we will have someone fall into our laps. Not a ton happened the rest of the week... oh on Sunday we had a good lesson with our investigator C and talked about the plan of salvation. He really ate it up and is taking it in really well. We talked about temples and work for the dead and he loved it. We are still trying to set a baptismal date with him but it isn’t working yet but we will get one soon. I hope you all are doing fantastic! I love and miss you all so so so much!

Sounds like a good family reunion! I miss Pine Valley and Zion’s! I have a postcard of Zion’s on my wall that Sister Plumb I think? It was awhile back. Also Taylor Ellsworth sent a postcard too. So if you see them Sunday and remember tell them I appreciate it and look at those postcards every day.

Some of my favorite scriptures? That’s a really hard question because honestly before I left on my mission, I didn’t understand really anything I read. But now I understand it and apply it like I’ve been doing it my whole life. Some of my favorite scriptures though are Alma 37:36-37 about prayer. 2 Nephi 9 talks alot about the plan of salvation. I love the stories of Lamoni’s conversion and his father’s conversion. And Ammon, Aaron, Omner and Himni. Their missions are a lot more relatable being on one and are really inspiring. I really like D&C 121 I think 7-9 if I’m correct that is when Christ comforts Joseph and tells him that our trials are but a moment? Yeah that scripture is definitely one of my favorites. Well I hope you have a great week this week and stay cool I hear that its getting warm up there. Also if you get a chance feed the missionaries there and make them something unique :) haha