Well another week in the greatest mission in the world has flown by!

This week Eustolia and her two kids, Luis and Nayeli, got baptized. Abel is her youngest, but he isn't old enough yet. They are pretty solid. The other family we have the picture, the husband isn't there. The sisters were teaching them, and when we got in, we gave them a baptismal date then found out they live on the border of our area, and it might be in another ward. But the two stake presidents don't agree on whose area it is, so the sisters that border us have been going by to take over. We just talked to President Reyna, and he will talk to the area seventy to figure out whose stake/ward it is in. It doesn't really matter to me as long as they don't have to get switched back and forth; they are already pretty bugged that they will have to start going to a different ward now possibly.

Never been more tired...

Sooo tired! Today for p-day we went to Antelope Island with four other zone leaders. It wasn't planned, but we slept at their house and then ended up just going, because they kept asking us to come. Then we spent two hours cooking lunch for all of us. Then we went back to Ogden, moved apartments, and there goes p-day! It flew by pretty fast. Antelope Island was kind of desolate. We saw a few buffalo and lots of dirt and dried out plants and that was that. So we just had to do it to say we did it once.

We had some amazing chicken. Elder Graham is from Hawaii, and he made us sushi, but instead of meat he used spam. It was actually pretty good: spam, mayonnaise, rice and seaweed. So I got a taste of Hawaii.

This week has been pretty interesting. I had some stressful days and some not so stressful days, too. I will work backwards. Yesterday, I went out with Elder Saldaña and his companion. He still loves me so much, ha-ha. He was kind of mad that I am going out with him again tonight and wanted me to go somewhere else, but I will be with him again tonight. During the day, we had normal morning schedule, then had some stuff at the office to do, and then did several companionship studies with groups of sisters. We do that instead of exchanges. Elder Kipp and I will just get together with four sisters at a church building to train on stuff. One group of sisters was Spanish, and they are all pretty young in the mission so it was good to just talk about the Spanish program. I miss it.

Personal goal, zone goal, ipads, traveling trainer

The teaser paragraph he sent while he typed his letter. (He knows Mark, Jessica and I are all waiting to read his email each Tuesday.):

Goodbye Mont Vista...I will be travelling the mission with Elder Kipp all next transfer. The assistants told me to get ready for the hardest transfer of my mission! Who's excited?! It will be very tough, but I am excited...I will learn a ton, I know that, and be able to work closely with President Hiers…I am excited. They got rid of traveling trainers temporarily, but President thinks it is needed again with the new "five essentials" and how young our mission is. A lot of what we will be doing is going around training everyone on how to use it.

Elder Kipp was my zone leader my first transfer with Elder Salazar; he is awesome. I really, really like him. He is from Canada and went to ASU before the mission. We hit our goal of four baptisms this transfer, first time hitting my goal. Our zone also hit our goal of 15 by getting 16 baptisms...first time I have ever hit a zone goal!

Oh, and did I mention we got ipads? They’re awesome, aren't they Dad? They are really well made...still lots of glitches, but that is to be expected. We are only the third mission in the world to get them...it's a big change.

WELL, there is a lot of change happening this week in the Utah Ogden Mission and for me generally. The first big change is that we got ipads this week! Monday they were given to the zone leaders, but it was kept a secret. Then on Friday we had a zone meeting with president and a few other zones. They started the meeting off like normal, out of the scriptures, and then one of the senior couples walked in with a big brown box and said he had a delivery. President pulled something out of the box, and it was an ipad. Then we all immediately walked out to the hall, and they handed us all ipads, and we had a three hour meeting learning how to install everything and use our area book app.

Great weekend!

Paola and her Dad

So this was a good weekend! We had three baptisms that all went well for the most part. The Morales family was on Saturday. Paola is a nine-year-old, and her dad was able to get back going to church and baptize her which has been a process over the past couple weeks. They are a great family. They did a good job of setting up their program so Elder Salazar and I didn't participate except for the missionary presentation while they are changing (we just teach the restoration). Brother Morales went to baptize her, and I think it took him almost a minute, because he was crying so hard… and he really isn't an emotional guy. 

Setting up for all of this was kind of a nightmare without a ward mission leader. We had someone in our bishopric do it, but then the day before he called and still hadn't done anything, so we did it all: programs, building, font… That's ok; that's always what I have done. It worries me too much to let other people do it in case something is done wrong, or they forget towels or something. Finding baptismal clothes was the biggest nightmare. Our bishopric was going to get some, then the morning of the baptism they said they had nothing and to send the Morales family to DI to get their own. Ugh...so we went to another stake and made like 1,000 calls to different people (it seemed like) and found some clothes.

 

Things just keeping better!

Happy Birthday Elder Salazar!

 This has been a good week! They just keep getting better; even more lessons than the week before. We had Elder Salazar’s birthday this week. So there is a lady that lives here that tailors our clothes for free, and it was her birthday, too. SO we went over in the morning to sing her happy birthday and give her a cake as a zone. Then I drove straight to the other elders’ apartment, and they had a sign for Elder Salazar’s birthday and a cake, and they shoved his face in. Then we went to Olive Garden for lunch for his birthday. He had a great day and got a few packages from some friends (thank you!). Then that night we went for a lesson at the Salazar’s house, and they somehow knew it was his birthday and had bought him a cake and a new tie, so that was cool.

SO the Salazar’s: they didn't come to church this Sunday. We went over to their house last night for dinner since they have been dying to feed us. They made a huge meal and invited some member families over. It was getting late, so we had to leave before a spiritual thought. I don't know if we could have gotten them all to quiet down. But we taught them another lesson. They hadn't read in The Book of Mormon, so we read with them. They seem kind of interested. I mean, they say they are, but I'm not feeling a lot of real intent. I think they do it just to be classy, so they can tell their friends they are religious and study with the missionaries or something. We will see what happens.

...the happiest I have ever been.

So before I get started on my area, I can update everyone on Ana and Angel. Ana won't get baptized, and Angel had a baptism set up for this Sunday. Then on Sunday morning, his boss sent him to Arizona for four weeks, too bad. So much stress with that family. I found out Vanessa is moving to Vegas. I think it's probably so Liz can make more money working in clubs, so I think that means she isn't getting baptized anytime soon.

So missionaries do dumb things sometimes. We cleaned “The Sink” again this week. We went for lunch, because Elder Ward said he and his companion had cleaned it in 12 minutes. (It's like a gallon of ice cream, two bananas and a lot of toppings..maybe a little more but around there.) So I texted a few members our zone (building zone unity), and we cleaned it in 10 minutes. Elder Salazar is still new, so he can't eat very much, so I ate about 75% of the ice cream; you can all be proud of me that I learned how to be a gluttonous pig in the mission field. I don't think we ate sugar for two days afterwards. I just couldn't make myself do it.

We went to an 8-year-old baptism on Saturday. She turns nine years old in a month, so it was almost a convert baptism, ha-ha. Oh well; it was still good to go. She had asked me to confirm her, so I did that. Utah baptisms for kids are funny. They do it the first Sunday of every month. There were like 12 kids that had to get baptized. All the people filled the whole chapel, and they send us into the font room by ward. (They send the Spanish ward in first, because we are incapable of waiting reverently.) I realized more this week that I was sent to the Spanish program, so I can learn to chill out and not get so stressed and ocd about what others are doing. I kind of thought about it and was surprised when my heart rate wasn't even raised when we didn't have one single investigator show up until ten minutes after the meeting started.

Life is Great

Last week was great, it's not all about numbers but last week we had a ton of appointments, more than ever in a my mission and it just felt great. Things are moving well, and we are loving it. I guess this week I can just move on down the list of the people we are working with.

 

The temple this morning

The first would be Hernan Zavala. He got back, and the worst of all his work is over with so no more big trips that he knows of. If all goes well, he will get baptized this Sunday. He is kind of iffy about the time, but knows it's something that he needs to do. He went to church on Sunday, and in elders quorum, he was introducing himself again and someone called out asking when he was getting baptized. He laughed and said, “Probably next week if I can't convince these elders otherwise.” They all laughed, because that was them in his shoes within the last five years or so. He is great; he has read all of the Nephi books and is in Mosiah I think now.

I remember how much I wanted to be a missionary, and it's finally happening....

So we had two new missionaries living with us for about five days, and they are already moved out. They are Elder Franco and Elder Olsen; they cover English for the Logan stake (our more southern stake) even though they are both Spanish missionaries. Elder Olsen is waiting for his visa to go to Argentina. They just moved out last night to a nicer apartment across the street. We kept the not so nice one, because I didn't want to pack, and we get free milk sent to our apartment from the dairy in Logan. AANND Elder Coronado moved out so I promoted myself to the queen size bed...living like kings in Logan in Utah.

 

These are those three kids I told you about that I talked to for a long time about disneyland..they have these birds, chinchillas, a shitzu...also I met a lady this week with a malti-poo named Lucky. 

So this week has been awesome. Things are just changing for me generally. It's kind of hard to explain, but mainly it’s my perspective and confidence in the Lord being able to just guide me and tell me how to be a missionary. I'll come back to that, but this week we had kind of a funny dinner appointment.

We called the night before like always and then showed up the next day, and the mom was asleep; she had forgotten. Her kids said sorry, and we said no worries we would eat at home. She called thirty minutes after that when we were eating at home bawling her eyes out asking us to come back and eat with her. We said it was fine, and we didn't have time, but she really wanted to give us money to go out. We said seriously it's fine. She just cried harder and said, "Please come back! I have rejected the servants of God! I’m so sorry!" It was really hard not to laugh; we couldn't figure out why she was being so hard on herself, but we promised to go back for dinner another day, poor lady. I wish our investigators felt that bad about missing appointments.

Well I made it through another transfer!

The Zone

My zone leaders

Elder Salazar and I will both be staying in Montevista and absorbing the other half of the area that was previously covered by another companionship. In the past, for English missionaries there was only one companionship for every two stakes. Through the past couple transfers, our mission has been trying to work towards having one set of missionaries for each stake. So on Sunday, the transfer board was all done then President Hiers went to lunch with Elder Perry who told him that they wanted it done now. President Hiers went straight to the transfer room and changed everything up moving about 80% of missionaries to different areas and white washing a TON. It is a big and exciting change; a lot of stakes will be happy. It will also be more tough for those English missionaries to focus only on baptisms which is good; it will force a lot more less active work.

This transfer I plan on getting our ward council more involved by inviting them to set us up less-active lessons and hopefully that will be a good start to where we can eventually transition to having them set us up lessons with potential investigators. We will see how it goes; it'll take some time.

There go Mom & Dad's dreams of having Taylor become a doctor

At the Martin Harris Pageant with Elder Coronado!

I can't believe that next week I will be emailing you with transfer news. Time is flying by so quickly. Especially this past transfer; it has been the fastest one of my mission. This week there have been a couple tough changes in our area that made things kind of discouraging. First thing was we went by to see Lenny and Neri, and they said they were moving the next day to North Logan. So they moved, and we sent the referral up and haven't heard from them since then. Then we talked to Hernan, and he said he won't be coming back from Wyoming for at least another month. Then last night Ana called and said she doesn't want to meet with us anymore. So that kind of happened all at once, ha-ha, but we are still working. I must be calloused or something, because it wasn't nearly as devastating as Ana and Angel. By the way, an update on them. It turns out that Ana had been lying to us, and she was the one convincing Angel not to get baptized. In fact, Elder Plowman has one of Ana's friends getting baptized this weekend. When Ana found out, she called her and said she wouldn't be her friend anymore. So I guess Ana had been lying that whole time and been the one trying to stop the whole thing, but Angel just didn't want to blame it on her. That was pretty disappointing, but Elder Plowman is more patient than me, so it's probably better that he handles it rather than me.

We did start talking to one new guy named Ceasar. He is 18 and is dating one of the seventeen year olds. He got here from Mexico recently and doesn't speak any English. So a couple weeks ago, he had come to church with his girlfriend, and we went to talk to him in English. He just laughed at us and walked away. So we thought he was just a punk, BUT it turns out he doesn't speak English so he just kind of laughed and walked away, because he didn't know what we were saying. So that was kind of funny to realize, but we talked to him, and he said he works and plays soccer all the time but would be interested. He actually came with his girlfriend to a family night on this past Sunday. It was mostly adults so I think they were kind of uncomfortable, but I am still glad that they went. Every Sunday night there are about three families that do a family night for us to invite people to and whoever teaches the lesson chooses the next person to teach the lesson the following week.  I was chosen so any cool object lesson ideas that can entertain 20 people and a few little kids is what I am looking for.

Here we go again!

So there is an elder with a whip and he let me try...like the indiana jones kind..so I whipped myself in the face by accident and everyone for the next three days that I saw asked what happened to my face..it looked worse in person.

This one is right before we ate some habaneros filled with cream cheese..a member nearby made them for us..very hot! 

SO this week we had a pretty good district meeting. It was all about working with members and building trust so Elder Coronado and I gave an example of how not to act in a ward council that was pretty fun. It was similar to the way that Elder Endemano and Marquardt did it a few years back. Before hand, the four Spanish missionaries made lunch for our district. A couple weeks ago, the sisters had bought us pizza, and they told us we needed to do it the next week. SO we made enough for all our district, but when we went out to eat it, several members of another district came out and started eating! NO one invited them, and they didn't ask so it looks like no more district lunches now. It was too bad; nobody really got enough so we went home and ate something really quickly. Then we had a zone blitz of the sisters’ area covering the singles ward.

Luckily, that also happens to be our area so we went out tracting, and I found a woman named Angelica. She is awesome! She started crying when I was testifying to her that God had sent us. Since then, we have had two lessons with her. She is very interested and has known members of the church in the past and trusts and loves them. She is having a lot of family problems right now which makes us meeting with her kind of weird, because her husband checks her phone and computer everyday to see if she has talked to any boys. So she asked us to come and teach her during the day as long as we bring a woman with us (and a man so we can go in the house). We aren't really sure what to do, because she really wants us to come by and has felt the Spirit, but her husband wouldn't be ok with it. It's really sad; she talked about how when he gets home she just tells the kids to not make any noise and stay in their room the whole night so he doesn't get mad at them. Not really sure what the solution here is, but for now, we will just get her some friends from the relief society to come visit her and read the scriptures with her. SO the zone blitz didn't help the sisters a lot we were blitzing for, but it helped us out!

The next day I went on an exchange with a visa waiter named Elder Wyckoff in my area. We had planned on doing splits with the bishopric, so I wouldn't actually be with him at night. So the few days before, I set up Wednesday with double appointments and was going to send him off to teach with a member. He wasn't very excited when I told him that since he doesn’t speak Spanish at all yet. He has been out two months and was trained by Elder Saldaña, and so he doesn't feel like he has learned anything and didn't know how to do any of the lessons. I told him he would be fine and that's the best way to learn. He went with a member and for the first lesson he just sat there while the member bashed for an hour. Then the other two appointments fell through. Some how he got through the night, but I don't know if it was the best night of his mission, ha-ha. Either way I have done that with everyone I have trained; I think it's a good way to learn. When Elder Ward and I did it with Elder Pyne, he came back with a baptismal date!

So jumping to Saturday night, we went to help with the Martin Harris pageant. The Martin Harris pageant is something that happens every year in Clarkston (near the Idaho border) and it is a lot like the Easter pageant in Mesa just not as many seats. They have been doing it for like twenty years, and they said last night they had their millionth viewer. I will have to take the family back to see it one day; it was pretty cool to see the whole story from Martin Harris' perspective, and how he (mainly his wife’s fault from what the pageant made it seem) lost the pages but then was still a witness. We couldn’t figure out why everyone brought blankets. We had our short sleeve shirts on, but we quickly figured out why. We will go back again to help this week. It runs everyday for a couple weeks and different missionaries go everyday. We leave at like four and then spend the night at a member’s house up there (so we don't have to drive back late) and come back the next morning. It takes a whole night away form proselyting which is too bad. We mainly just passed out programs and shook members hands and told them where we were from and how long we had been out (the question every member asks as soon as they see us, ha-ha!). So the best part of that was we stayed at a guy's guest house, and he had swiss rolls, nutty bars, chips and salsa, and pancakes left out for us. It was like staying in a hotel. We are staying in his house again when we go this Thursday.

We had a service project last week that made me feel like I was on extreme makeover home edition. We went to go fix up a family's house to sell. The thing that made me feel like we were on that show is because the mom kept crying that so many of us had come out. I filled in lots and lots of holes in the wall, and it reminded me of me ‘practicing my hammering’ in the Antelope house, and Dad teaching me how to fill them in and paint over them. I also realized I don't have enough skills; Tyson needs to teach me. They asked me if I knew how to do dry wall. I didn't and felt ashamed like I wasn't manly enough or something, ha-ha.

Ana is doing ok. She bailed out and didn't come to church because, she had to do laundry. She obviously just got nervous and decided not to come. We have tried to ask her if we can get someone to pick her up, but she always says no, but we probably will do it anyways next week. Lenny and Neri showed up 30 minutes late and then they left right after the first meeting to take their sick son to the hospital. At least they came at all though! Neri didn't like it, because she doesn't like to  leave the house or look at anyone. We are trying to get them set up with a therapist since Lenny has a lot of mental problems and Neri has the worst depression in the world. Every lesson is the same with them; she comes out depressed then we talk to her for 30 minutes, and she is fine and willing to keep commitments to get better. Then we go back the next time and start all over.

Hernan randomly decided to go to Wyoming for a week and half, so he didn't come to church. That was so disappointing, because he is the best investigator we have, but he works so, so much, and they don't warn him they just pick him and drive him away for a while to work in another state. Miguel didn't feel like coming to church this week, just an 8 year old kid I guess, just all the more reason we need to get his very uninterested mom involved. Hopefully we can build enough trust to let her teach us a lesson by still stopping by to teach Miguel in the mornings. There is still no progress with the Salazars. They won't come to our ward still, and someone told them not to talk to us so we can't set up a lesson with them.

Big news! This Friday I will be getting on facebook and keep getting on everyday to proselyte with friends/family from home. There’s a lot of grey area…basically anyone that's less active or not a member I can talk to. I will update my status and you can see it. You can even write on my wall if you want; I just can't reply to it. We aren't clear on everything yet. I will find out on Friday. Dad probably knows more than me. I hope it will be a successful tool. It is a little weird. I kind of wonder what I will do since I really don't know a lot of nonmembers.  I am so mad I missed the mission leadership conference where they talked about and introduced it. The first mlc that I miss after released had to be this one!  

Love you all, take care!

Elder Bassett

This week has flown by, and so has the p-day

A little taste of Hawaii? We went all out today...20 dollars for unlimited sushi and two appetizers. I ate a lot more than just what's in the pictures. Only three of us did it. I have never eaten that much of anything at once in my entire life. This is us eating the last bite. If you don't finish everything you order, you have to pay extra for it.
 ...best part is we went to the jump park right after. 

(I think he took this picture and sent it just to make his mom feel queasy.)

Today was a pretty good p-day. I am writing at the end of the day which is unusual. So this morning, we hiked a mile and half up to some wind caves. It was just going to be our zone then someone invited an entire other zone, so it was a big group of people. We ran on the way down. It was fun; it reminded me of Camelback. Then we went home and did studies. After that, we went grocery shopping, then ate Japanese food...unlimited sushi. Then straight from there, we went to the jump park (not a good idea to go right after eating unlimited sushi). Now we are here doing emails.... 

So we had one cool experience this week. We were at the end of the night, and I looked at my planner and there was an address scheduled into our night, and I didn't know where it came from. I looked around in our phone and planner and everything and had no idea where it came from, but Elder Salazar had it down too so we went to see who it was, and it was a member. She had been feeling a lot of pain and needed a blessing to be able to go to the temple the next day. So that was cool seeing how the Lord put us there, and we still don't know how it got in our planners. But the best part was her daughter was there, and she said she works at paradise bakery in Logan! She said if we ever come when she is working she will give us a 70 percent discount. Ok well that's not the best part,; but that was pretty awesome I had no idea they had those here.

The work is progressing; there's so much to do here.

So last p-day was pretty good. The three Cache Valley zones all ended up going to one park, and we played volleyball, football and ultimate Frisbee. Elder Ward was there, and he is doing very well in Idaho. They had four baptisms last week and have three this weekend and a lot more coming. He has so much work he doesn’t even have time to cover his zebra Spanish work which I would guess the Preston Branch is pretty unhappy about.

The next day we had our first district meeting, and it went fine. There are some young missionaries in my district, so it will be a lot of practicing and role-playing. I went on exchanges for the next two days. The first day, I went with Elder Coronado, and it went ok. We didn't teach at all, but we worked the whole time. The next day I went to Elder Mark in his area. We went to go tracting in the trailers. They have been telling me how their area isn't good enough since we started to find people in ours, and they want to trade and all this stuff. So I was determined to find some work for them in that 24 hours. The first door we knocked was an old man named Ramon. We taught him a lesson, and he accepted a baptismal date and volunteered to come to church. It was the most fun lesson of my whole mission except maybe Robin's law of chastity lesson. So Ramon is deaf; the only way he can hear is if you yell as loud as you can. So we taught him in the front yard the whole first lesson in ten minutes yelling at the top of our lungs. As we approached the first vision, I wondered if he would feel the Spirit since we were yelling and half laughing because he kept saying "what?!, what?! what?!". But we screamed the first vision too and he kind of jolted and said it gives him the chills. We connected it, invited him, and he will get baptized in three weeks. I had so much fun with him; I made sure to schedule their next appointment for the next morning so I could teach him again before we ended exchanges. We found him a fellowshipper and brought him to the lesson, so hopefully that should get them started on some work to do. I hope everything works out with Ramon.

Great Area! Great Companion!

My new son! Elder Salazar originally form Honduras.

Well I am in Logan, Utah...west of Main Street and right in the center of everything. Our branch is called Monte Vista and is very small...not quite as small as Idaho but close. The ward in the past (a year ago) was really good with missionaries. The past year the missionaries haven't worked with the members which made a lot of members really mad at the missionaries. So mainly people have told us to start working with them again which is awesome. There is moderately low trust, but it should shoot up really quick.

OK, I am jumping ahead. I can start with the beginning of the week. So last week about 32 new missionaries came into the mission. We were all (trainers) waiting in the office and as soon as the Spanish ones showed up we said hi, and I was surprised to see Elder Sewell. I had no idea he was coming as a visa waiter in our mission. (He went to Buena Ventura with Elder Banchon.  Elder Banchon was Elder Ward's second companion. That’s in central Ogden between Mt. Lewis and Jefferson 2^nd.) So eventually, after some very anxious waiting (I think I was the most excited person there), we all went into the gym and got ready for the meet your trainer meeting. I guess it's just the culture of our mission, but the way we do it is really loud with lots of clapping and cheering. Elder Pali and Elder Graham both used to work at the Polynesian Cultural Center; they get the metal chairs and do the Samoan drum thing that they do as the drumroll. It was a big group, so everyone had lost their voice by the end of it. At the beginning, one of the assistants, Elder Key, came up and said he was excited for me. The night before they had had a testimony meeting with all the greenies, and Elder Key said as soon as Elder Salazar stood up he, president, and the other assistant all wrote my name down. That was the only one they all three agreed on as far as whose companion they should be. So it was definitely what the Lord wanted. Elder Salazar was about the fourth one called up. They did the drumroll and yelled out my name, and I ran up and got him and carried him away, the usual stuff. I guess we are pretty weird. Elder Sewell mentioned, "This is a weird little ritual you have going here." That pretty much sums it up. So after that, we waited for several hours for the shuttle up to Logan.