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!

Email Sept 10 2012

To Family:  Oh man! I am extremely jealous that Elder Holland was in St. George and that you got to hear him! I was thinking about it and it would be soooo cool if Elder Holland could be the one to marry me to my wife! That would be something to remember! I got your package the other day! It made my day!

Okay well.... there were some good and bad this week. Lots of our appointments fell through but we did teach E twice. We moved his baptismal date to the 19th because it will be better. He is still doing really well. We are going over to his place after this to play some pool, get the program ready for his baptism, and to say goodbye. Yes... Both of us will be saying goodbye. We got the call that we are getting whitewashed out of here. I was pretty angry at first and was thinking "how could they do this to us with so much work going on! What if the next missionaries mess it up?!" Well I got a call from a missionary who has become a very good friend and I was telling him how upset I was and he just started to laugh and said "Elder Graf. The Lord needs you somewhere else." It was simple and I already knew that concept and I don’t know why I had let it get away from me. But yes it’s true. He has a plan for us and we got the work started here and someone else (Sisters, we found out.) will be continuing it.

So Sunday was ward conference and we skipped out on ward council in the morning to write notes and start packing but we had told our ward mission leader about us being transferred. Apparently there was pretty much the upset of the year in there. EVERYONE got very upset and angry and were all pretty much how I felt the night before. Our ward mission leader called president. The stake president said that he would be calling later in the day just to figure out the why. And all through church people kept coming up and telling us how we were the best missionaries in such a long time. It was honestly insane. I didn’t see this much sadness even when I left B and I had been there for 7 1/2 months. It was nice to have our efforts recognized though and the ward members told us all day how much we meant to them and went through the things in both of us that they just loved. It was a very uplifting experience. I don’t remember what the talks were on or anything at church because my head was spinning allll day. But after sacrament meeting I went and pulled the stake president aside and I told him that I was told he would be calling president but that before he did that I wanted him to know how I felt about what was happening. I told him that obviously president is a VERY inspired man and he has another calling for us both and I told him about how at first I was very upset but through Elder C talking to me and through a big long prayer I felt like this is what’s supposed to happen and that everything would be taken care of. What the ward wasn’t understanding is that this is the LORDS work. And he will have president put missionaries here who will help it. I loved this ward here but I’m needed somewhere else and it made sense later that night.

So the rest of Sunday we went around and got pictures with people and said our goodbyes and packed and wrote notes for the next missionaries. Well we were at the M that night and I got a phone call from President Godwin and he asked me to be a Zone Leader... I’m quite nervous for it. And don’t really feel like I’ll make a good Zone Leader but I promised President I will try my best.

To Dad:  I miss being able to look through the telescope and wish I would have done that more back home. I got to do it in B because J has a decent one and we got to see some stars and planets and all. It was really fun! I’m really excited for this transfer now. I wasn’t at first when they said we were both leaving but then I got over it. Even though I was only in the best area for 6 weeks I’m over it. We found out last night that it is becoming a sister’s area which means the chances of me coming back here anytime in my mission are pretty much gone. But I have been making plans with Kody Andersen and next winter we are going to come up here to go snowboarding together because they have a lot of fun runs here from what I’ve heard. I also worked it out with one of the youth here who is 16 and he said he will take us through the good runs and all that so I’ll be back for sure. And I’ll be coming back on the 19th for E’s baptism

 I love you tons! Can’t wait to get to be with you again!

Email Sept 3 2012

Well I’m in the process of getting another migraine so this email won’t be very long. Not much happened this week anyways. It was a really hard weekend up here with Labor Day. There were people EVERYWHERE! The streets were super packed and everyone was just busy so the work was really slow and we weren’t able to see many people. The rest of the week was just tough too because we got cancelled on a lot. We had a few good moments though such as on Saturday we got a phone call from E and he asked us how he pays tithing. It was pretty cool because usually people struggle with that. Then on Sunday it was a super powerful day at church. Something cool happened in priesthood though! So E had a cutout he had to read that was part of a story that we were going through and his section happened to be on how the Holy Ghost tells us truths and how it can tell us that the church is true. Well right when he was talking about the Holy Ghost he got kind of choked up and I know that he was feeling the Spirit which was what I was fasting for! So it was really neat to see it answered that fast. OH also I forgot this was this last week but on Tuesday E called and left a message and in it he told us that after his long talk with the bishop he decided to stop drinking wine and coffee!!! It was a miracle!! So pretty neat. Not a whole lot else to talk about. Not feeling to hot right now.