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!!