June 24, 2013

I'm glad everyone is making it through the storms ok. It's "stormed" couple times here but nothing like it does back home. Mostly it's just dry and hot all day but this last week has been pretty nice but it's supposed to go back up to the 90's and 100's again this week.

 

This week has been super slow. Since we no longer have a car, we have two of the priests from our ward driving us around today. We have also been doing a lot of biking and walking because almost all of our appointments fell through and a lot of the people we normally visit have not been home. My companion and I will start to implement a plan we came up last week of setting up lessons with members and encouraging them to invite non-member friends then teaching about the restoration and then asking for referrals It's interesting that we came up with this because last night there was a broadcast from Salt Lake to the whole world that changed a lot about how missionary work should be done. Basically, they are putting a lot more on to the bishop and members to move the work forward and one of the things was that members should do most all the finding of investigators for the missionaries. We hope that because of this, we will be able to have a lot more people we can help bring in to the gospel.

 

I would also encourage you to invite non-member friends for dinner with the missionaries or to lessons with them. The missionaries would love you forever, I promise. I think I understand more about why the missionaries said they were not getting support from the branch, it was because there was not a whole lot of member involvement or referring others to the missionaries. It is so ineffective to tract door to door, we have found only one person to teach that way. Member involvement and referrals are absolutely necessary for our success, most all the people we teach are member referrals.

 

I love you and miss you too.

June 17, 2013

Dear folks,

We did get to go to a members house for dinner on Father's Day, we had roast, potatoes, and ice cream, it was pretty good.  Hope it works out for you guys, labs are super high strung. I also hope you have a good anniversary. That's a nice shiner Joy, and Josh is a dork, hahaha. Yeah, hopefully they can get out of the house soon. One good thing about out here is that I haven't encountered a tick or mosquito yet, it's awesome.

This week has been a pretty good one but it has been emotionally tough. There were a couple things that happened with families we are dealing with that are just nuts. We have also head the life stories of a few people that are just heartbreaking, it's hard to believe that things like it happen.

Our investigators are still coming along well. We have spent a lot of time walking so that we can street contact and it has been going well for us. We did lose a couple people, though. B and P moved and E has disappeared. We got a hold of one of her friends and she said that she hasn't heard from E in a while so we don't know where she went. All in all though, things are going well. If things continue as they are, we should have at least 2 and maybe as much as 4 baptism in July, we are very excited for our investigators.

I love you all and hope your week will be a good one.

 

Elder J

Dear Joyanna,

I doing well. It's ok, my companion and I only really got to use the car to go to church and shopping on P-day. That sounds like fun. I hope the cheesecake was good.

I love you and hope you have a good week.

Dear Jaeden,

I think the puppy will be more hyper than you guys, even though you're all crazy goofs. Nobody that I know of has had any problems with the heat yet. I hope your next camping adventure goes better.

Love you and have a good week!

June 10, 2013

This week has been a pretty interesting one. As it turns out, Salt Lake has been an end to the rescue missionary work, so now our ward will have to proselyting sets of missionaries. They called us on Tuesday and said that we had to split our area into two separate proselyting areas for the upcoming transfer. Well, we split it based on the fact that one set of missionaries using a car and the other not. We called them on Wednesday to tell them our plan, and they said, "Oh, by the way, your area will now be a bike mission and we are taking away the car." We were shocked considering our area extends to the Oregon border with at least 12 square miles of area that we frequently go to to cover, plus we have two sets of missionaries in our apartment that now have no way to get to the stores or to the library for emails without someone else to give us a ride. We spent all of Wednesday trying to figure out how we were going to split the area and how we were going to get to church on Sundays and shopping and emails on Mondays. We think we have everything figured out pretty well, but this will be an interesting transfer.

Even though this week was pretty slow, we still had a pretty good week. We finally got a hold of a referral that we've been trying to track down for the last 4 weeks. Her name is D and was referred to us by another set of missionaries that met her at her work. She was very interested and we set up a return appointment so we will see how that goes.

O decided to go on vacation to LA for two weeks so we haven't been able to see him for awhile.

We finally set up C's baptism and got everything set up for it so we are pretty excited for him. He is a super cool guy and has a very strong testimony but we are still trying to warm his family up to the idea.

S's folks are having two more kids move in with them, who, I believe, are her full siblings. According to S's step mom, at least one of them, her sister B, is interested in coming to church and taking lessons from us. S is still coming along well. She been reading the Gospel Principles book in her spare time, which is awesome, because she pretty much has a basic understanding of everything we teach and asks a lot of great questions. We hope to have her set with a baptismal date by the end of the week.

We have also have started to work with E's ex-boyfriend P. We don't know where he will go, but he is interested in hearing more about our message so we will see.

I love and miss you guys and look forawrd to hearing from you again next week.

June 3, 2013

This week has been going pretty well. There isn't too much to talk about this week, but there has been a lot of sadness that we have had to work with. My companion and I are working with several families that have had just some of the worst things going on. Sometimes, it's hard to deal with but I know Heavenly Father is in control. In case I've never said it, I just want you to know how much I love you and dad and how much I appreciate all the things you guys did for me growing up. I never realized until now that how you raised me made so much of a difference in my life. Thank you for being there for me and being my parents.