A Baptism!

Matching ties for conference

Well, Sister Maria Guadalupe Ramirez got baptized on Friday. Livin the dream baptizing a lady named Maria Guadalupe. It went well. There were more people there than there are at Mt. Lewis baptisms but still not a ton.They couldn't do it on the weekend, because her kids work weekends so we had to do Friday. The three of us sang a musical number, ‘Mas Cerca Dios de Ti,’ (Nearer My God to Thee). We did it without piano: first verse in unison, second verse me bass and them melody, and third verse I sang bass, Elder Ward tenor and Elder Pyne melody. And then we spoke after the baptism and told everyone to go do more missionary work since it was all members. Then the bishop said in two weeks we would sing in sacrament meeting…too bad Elder Ward is leaving!

So she was NOT happy about these pictures...she refused to take pictures with us then we went and sat down and pretended to talk to her then elder pyne said go and we looked over and smile.d..then once we got that one over with we just took one from in front..I think you can tell how excited about that she was, ha-ha.

Elder Plowman is coming with Elder Pyne and I tomorrow for this transfer. I am very excited; he, Elder Ward, and Elder Wright are the three missionaries I have always really wanted to serve with.  (Elder Plowman is Madison's boyfriend (Brighton's best friend)… and he is also Tanner's best friend.) Poor Elder Pyne, ha-ha. They told the Argentinian missionaries that they should expect a visa in 2 to sixteen weeks...so president is running with that. Elder Pyne will be with us for a while it looks like. There are now two sets of all visa waiter companionships without regular missionaries which has never happened, but their greeny fire will help them to do great things.

YES...! We had a zone study last week to give the zone what we learned about in leadership conference. It was a train wreck to say the least. President Hiers is bringing back qgc's redefined. Now they are only counted with nonmembers and if all the steps (relating the gospel and the invitation) are included to clear up some previous problems. (There were some missionaries that would report like 1000, because they spoke in stake conference  and counted that as talking to all those people.) So anyways, he brought that back. We also did some reevaluation on the goal and why we didn't meet it. Anyways, there are two particular Spanish missionaries (one of them went home yesterday) that just kept making comments the whole time to get Elder Ward and I mad. For example, about how the problem with the mission is the young zone leaders (us) and how qgc's are dumb and so is president....and they refused to start counting them and if I hadn't addressed it then I think Elder Sillito and Elder Harper would have killed them both. But we talked to them afterward, at least the one that is staying, and he still is refusing to change so we are just going to ignore it. It was pretty aggravating, but they were just trying to make us mad so we will try to just not think about it. Elder Norton is coming to DL white wash train in the j2 area I was born in, and he is being sent here (he is my old zone leader) to clean up some of the mess with the members that were left. He will do a good job with that district and dealing with those problems. It is hard for me to see missionaries act like that without getting frustrated, but one went home and the other is going home soon and that will help the mission culture especially in the Spanish program.

Elder Ardaya came on splits with us (assistant) this last week, and he is an awesome teacher. We managed to find Karina and taught her about recognizing her answer. The way he uses questions worked well. He thinks the problem is that the first missionaries that taught her were flirting with her so now she doesn't really take it seriously which I can definitely see. She cancelled the next lesson with us to play soccer. Elder Ardaya pretty much told us everything that was happening with transfers so that was cool to know early especially about Elder Plowman.

Elder Plowman is going to be awesome companion. I have told president since the beginning that I wanted to serve with Elder Plowman and Elder Ward at some point. It will be fun. We are already texting trying to figure out what we are going to cook for lunch, ha-ha. I am pretty sold on my yogurt/milk/toast diet I started with Elder Ward, but he tells me he learned how to cook from his Hispanic companions so we will see what happens. We taught primary on Sunday for the kids ages 8-10. It was so much fun! The best part was not having to go to Sunday school. We started by asking them their favorite movies and out of the ten kids, four of them said rated R movies, so that is too bad. Then we played charades with them, and they loved that, then taught the lesson which was the story of Limhi and his people and also Alma and his people in bondage. Basically we had them split up into two groups and have a war together where the Lamanites put the Nephites in bondage then the Lamanites went to sleep while the Nephites snuck away, because they prayed and were patient. So the moral of the story was go home and tell your parents you want to pray more. Then we played hangman, because that is just a classic. The words we did were pray, orar, oracion… Then on the way out they had to say three times they were going to pray when they got home with their family.

So at one in the morning last week, our entire building evacuated because of the loudest fire alarm in the history of mankind. We live next door to the fire department and it took 30 minutes to get someone to walk over. Probably someone just smoking set it off: people smoke a lot in our building even though that's not allowed. We were mad about losing sleep, but I guess that's just life.

We started teaching a family named the Rodriguez family this week. It was just Elder Ward and I teaching them that day, and we started by singing to them. Then we gave them a resto/spirit sandwich, and the wife loved it. The husband was definitely more hesitant but not aggressive at all. The wife immediately accepted the soft commitment. They want their kids to learn more about God. The husband will be tough, but they seem like good people and since Elder Plowman is a family baptizing machine, he will be good working with them.

SO Elder Ward ate an egg sandwich the other day, and I told him that it smelled funny, but he didn't listen. So an hour later he was laying in bed for like three hours, and we checked the date on the eggs; they had expired a month before...so that explains that. So the weird thing was that, we had all been eating those eggs for a couple weeks, ha-ha. We went through and checked the date on everything in the apartment.

So it's getting warmer which means you can find Hispanic kids playing sports outside. So we broke in the warm weather playing soccer with some Hispanic kids (Luis’s relatives) for a little. It makes the parents happy when you play with the kids and makes them even more happy if white people are playing soccer. We played zone volleyball on Saturday morning for exercise. It was pretty fun for everyone except for one Spanish missionary who played in high school then gets mad when everyone else isn't as good as he is, but like I said everyone else liked it. We will probably keep doing that Saturday mornings from six to seven.

We dropped Robin and Andres both yesterday. Robin stopped progressing and started working on Sundays. He wasn’t too happy when we were dropping him and kind of tried to talk us out of it, but he can't get work off to go to church and hasn't at all been reading. Hopefully that will give him drive to figure something out. We showed up at Andres's house to figure out why he came to church, and he started to drop us, but for some reason when I can tell someone is about to drop us I end up just dropping them, because it's clear they don't have interest. He made it pretty clear at his door that he doesn't want to listen anymore. Then he lied to us and that drives me crazy when people lie, but anyways we won't go back to him.

Elder Banchon is one missionary that isn't in that zone picture I sent. (The picture is at the end of the email with names of misisionaries in the zone.) He is a good guy; he was elder ward's greeny buster. He wasn't very obedient at that time but has since changed and has a good relationship with Elder Ward now. He is switching to the English program this transfer. He kind of went missing in action this week just staying with other missionaries and when we tried to ask the other three Spanish where he was they lied to our face (Maybe I inherited this from Dad, but there are few things that make me more angry than being lied to), but luckily he has a better companion now and will be able to stay with his companion all the time rather than getting dropped off places. It is good each week to notice people like him that have decided to change their mission and start being obedient. Even some missionaries I knew from Hyrum I heard about last week got caught doing things they shouldn't and after some thinking decided to become obedient missionaries with the help of their zone leaders. So the mission is still changing little by little.

I am about halfway through Jesus the Christ and it’s great and everything, but I can't help feeling like I am reading a textbook. But I feel like I have to have read it through at least once in my mission.

I feel permanently tired. I have decided that's how I will feel for the rest of my life...although the nice thing about being a zone leader is I am so much more frustrated with missionaries in comparison with my investigators so I am always happy with investigators even if they aren’t progressing a ton! (Is that the right attitude? ...probably not) Well things are great...looking forward to another awesome transfer!

Love you all, and you are in my prayers, 

Elder Bassett

No matching ties?

So Elder Pyne and Elder Ward are next to me. Elder Sillito is next after Elder Ward. He is one quarter Samoan and will be transferred to be a dl in Hooper where he has already spent six months before. He is excited; they are sending him back to fix things up. Elder Vance is next to the right of him. He is Elder Orr's son. Elder Orr went home yesterday; he was awesome, one of the best missionaries I have ever met, great with people. Elder Vance is staying with Elder Kelly who will come tomorrow. Then we have Elder Burke who is Elder Sillito's son. He will be staying with Elder Torres who I know from Idaho. Elder Torres is ready to step it up and work Ogden east (English version of our area). The last two on the right are Elder Coronado and Elder Ganschow. Elder Coronado is from Mexico/Texas. He has been out three weeks, great guy. Elder Ganshow is the white guy from San Fran and has been out 22 months and has had a hard transfer...his big smile pretty much sums it up. The two down low are Elder Young on the left and Elder Harper on the right. Elder Young is leaving to go to Rockcliff. He is fairly new but a hard worker and has spent all his time in the j1 area. Elder Harper will be staying. He is a stud, really turned around on his mission. The sisters are Sister Lolofie and Sister MacMallin. They are staying and are amazing at singing with the ukulele.