This week has been amazing!!!!

I love Buena Vista. Where do I even start... OK, so I got started on the bus, and we arrived and went straight to work visiting potentials from the area book. I don’t even think we unpacked until the third day in the morning, we were so excited. So, we immediately got in touch with our wml, Brother Morales. He is the best wml I have ever met in my LIFE. He has spent, I would guess, 15 hours with us in the past week. He works full time and has a family; I don't know how he does it. Right off the bat he drove us around to show us where our top five potentials and baptismal dates were (there were three when we came in the area; they will get baptized this weekend). He also spends almost as much time helping the sisters out in the north half of the ward. AND he even helps fellowship a couple investigator friends in another neighboring Spanish ward. We were talking to the sisters on Sunday about how we were living off of tortillas and peanut butter since we left all our food in our last house and just had a enough to get a couple things. He overheard and brought us like six grocery bags of food the next day; he is the best…very, very dedicated and excited about missionary work. We report back to him every night about what we have done, so he knows who not to visit, because we already have and what to report in meetings on Sundays. I'll admit, he does take over lessons, but that's fine with me if he helps us out that much.

que mas.... 

The members are planting seeds...

This is Jarron...he is 8; we taught his family, and he got baptized last week with the other 8 year old stake baptisms. His family will be on the road to the temple!

Yesterday we had MLC (a new version of zlc with the sisters involved). We had a round robin with three different trainings from some zone leaders. We were trained on retaining converts, using the scriptures, and planning. The idea is we receive those and then bring them back to our zones in a zone study this week. So that's what we will do along with Sister Noel (our STL in our zone). We also had our accounting on our zones goals and goals for next month. Our zone set a goal of 10 and had 8 baptisms, so we set another goal of ten for next month. Things are accelerating, and missionaries are picking it up, so I really think it'll happen this month. Lots of good things are happening in the zone.

And of course there are good things happening in West Point as well. We haven't picked up anyone new to teach; still just trying to get people to squeeze us into their schedule. I think I have finally narrowed down what I have been talking about the past few weeks. I think I just want to be more diligent, because we don't really know what to do during the day. So I want to feel overwhelmed, but right now we feel kind of stuck in nightly planning about what to do the next day. It is a good thing, because it gives me a chance to be a better planner which I will need once I get home and have nothing to do to feel productive and will have to do the best with what I have.

I am really working on love. I need to have more love for the people I teach. I mean, of course I do love them, but I just have room to grow. I hope to end my mission more lost in the work than I ever have been rather than slowing down to the finish line. I think the key to doing that is love, and that's what I am pushing for.

No pictures, but still a faithful letter writer!

I feel obligated to start my email off apologizing for not sending pictures. I keep saying I will do better, and I don't do it! I just don't think about it during the week honestly. I even started carrying my camera around with me, and I still would forget that I had it.

So this past week has been good. They seem to keep flying on by. Sister Erikson called me this week to ask me some info. to verify about going home, so that didn't make me happy. It's sad how fast it's coming to an end.

No new people were found this week, but we did hear about a couple new names of people we hadn't heard of before which doesn’t happen often, so that was good. Maybe we will be able to find some members to help us work with them soon.

Cecilia has been doing better. She gets closer to her answer every day. Taegan still wants to get baptized, and he will be with his mom this weekend, so he can go to church this Sunday. His mom, Kellen, has still not talked to Taegan's dad to see if he is ok with him getting baptized, so we are praying he says yes.

Another week has flown by

Another week has flown by. I lose track of time so easily as a missionary. I still love West Point.

We had zone conference last week, and it went well. It was from 8-4 so it was a very long one. The assistants trained on contacting, which a lot of missionaries needed, so that was great. It made me miss being in Ogden. We hardly ever get TTI's in West Point, and when I say hardly ever, I mean hardly ever. Since it's all neighborhoods, and it's winter, no one is ever outside. It's not like we can go to the convenience store since we don't have one in our area. So I want to apply that training more than I am.

President and Sister Hiers trained on faith and the atonement. It was fantastic. President Hiers is a powerful speaker as is his wife. I love them both; they are definitely a huge, if not majority of the reason I was called to this mission.

Another great week in my favorite city in Utah. It has still been a struggle with New Years and everything to find people, especially, or set up lessons, but I am getting a better idea of how to work effectively. I am getting really good at evaluating daily on what is working; the problem is deciding how to actually change what isn't working. I have said it before; I think the most valuable skill I have learned on my mission is how to grow. Speaking of that, since we have an older zone, we recognized a lot of what we needed to do was help our missionaries grow and that in turn will positively influence their investigators. We asked the assistants to come give a training in our zone on Christlike attributes, and it went very well; they loved it. They had us all pick one and set specific, daily actions we would do to better ourselves with the attribute we had chosen for the rest of the transfer. I picked two things, gratitude and virtue. I am not trunky, but nearing the finish line is pushing me really hard to want to do everything I possibly can to grow out here. I am trying to focus more on our investigators, but it is very difficult. We really struggle with daily contact with people being so busy especially with precedents set in the past by us and past missionaries of once a week contact, which does not cut it.

Yesterday, we had a zone study to set baptismal goals for the month of January. Our companionship set a goal of three baptisms this month. It is pretty high with what we have right now, but we will do everything we can to get it. The zone baptized 14 last month, they set a goal of 17. That means we need to pick things up and get out of this rut we are in from Christmas since numbers really dropped around the holidays. We had our missionaries commit to changing and being better for their investigators, so we can hit our goal. I feel good about it; we just cannot lose the excitement that we had yesterday.

They got baptized!

So Elder harper will be leaving me. We got leadership calls on saturday telling us what leadership positions we would have but not where or who with. So on saturday elder harper was called to be told he was going to be a district leader. Elder Coronado got called to be a zone leader so I was really really hoping it was with me. I had talked to the assistants earlier in the week they called to ask me for some feedback for transfers and I had suggested he go with me and was really hoping it would happen and I guess they prayed about it and it did happen! We found out monday (yesterday) at the lealdership training we always have right before a transfer. SO yesterday's training went well. We just kind of had a discussion for most of the time about some new standards of excellence. THe standards of excellence were changed for the mission and they are much much lower. This is so that everyone feels like it's doable and once people hit it we will re evaluate and adjust it to make it higher. Then the zone leaders went to the chapel and we got envelopes passed out with the tranfer news for our zones. So our zone is getting two other areas and losing sisters (so no more sisters in our zone..only zone in the mission like that). We will have one english district and one all spanish district! That'll be awesome since elder coronado and I are both spanish missionaries so we can help them out a lot too. I am pretty excited about our zone this coming transfer. Today we had tranfser breakfast and announced everything and there were a lot of unexpected changes so people were pretty surprised. THe kristiansen family got baptized this weekend! Early in the week we brought niklas to see the font so he could decide and a couple days later, thursday, they called and said he wanted to get baptized with his family so we got him interviewed and the four of them were baptized saturday and confirmed sunday! I confirmed the two boys and elder harper confirmed finn and kristina. THe service was good, we were very packed in the font room and a lot of people were supporting them it was exctiing. After the baptism finn just couldn't stop crying because of the good feeling he felt. It was a happy time. We had asked them if they wanted to get up at theend to share their feelings a couple days ahead of time and they said no way but we asked them to come up anyway and put them on the spot and they did great. They told everyone how grateful they were for their support and how good they felt. THey had been fasting as a family that day so when we asked anders how he felt he said hungry. Other than that things have been pretty normal. We taught gavin a couple times and he has been struggling to get his reading done so we are going to start texting him to remind him because he says he just forgets about it so I can definitely understand that especially as a kid. Well there is not much to report on this week..merry early christmas!

Elder bassett

Elder Dylan Kipp and I at General Conference

 SO the first week as traveling trainer has been pretty good. I started off the week on Wednesday going with my son to get my grandson. His name is Elder Garcia, and he seems like a really good guy. I hope they do well together; everybody pray really hard for them. The rest of that day was unproductive, just unpacking and moving stuff around. While we aren’t travelling, we leave our extra stuff at the AP's apartment. They didn't have any phones for us, because they accidentally gave them away. They ordered them, and they still haven't come in. It has been pretty awful without phones especially driving to places that we don't know where they are.

The first real day was Thursday. We had our regular study schedule. Then we had kind of a Spanish council meeting. I went with Elder Plowman and his companion and part of the mission presidency. We talked about some of the issues with Spanish people that want to go to English wards and who should teach them. It took like two hours to discuss all the issues and the conclusion was the AP's and I will make a Spanish training for the mission. I think I will just bring in Elder Plowman in to help me do it.

The biggest issue that I want to address is language study. The Spanish of the missionaries in our mission overall is pretty bad. I am convinced it is because people don't know how to be effective with language study. I am sick of hearing missionaries just watch The Testaments in Spanish and expect to become fluent. I will talk a lot about that and maybe have them all make a plan and then train on how to find, because most Spanish missionaries in the mission aren't working effectively with members right now which is a big part of what we talked about.

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.

DL, white-wash, training, Montevista!

DL, white-wash, training, Montevista. It's in the middle of Logan and known as the best area of the mission. I get my son and head out tomorrow. I have mixed feelings. I will miss being a zone leader because of the great companions and all that other stuff. I am nervous about training.  I'm sure it will all work out. I will do my best! I'm sure it will all turn out great. Please pray hard for me...I need it this transfer.

Back row..red shirt is elder barnes..then elder torres..elder gray is next to him then the insanity picture is elder gancho..the blue shirt brown guy is visa waiter elder ruiz..elder plowman is right in front of them..

front row is elder harper..he is awesome..he will be going zone leader in clinton north.then elder macpherson...he will be one of the the ap buddies..(one of the guys that is just serving with the ap's but isn't an ap)...then elder jorgensen who will be going dl..then elder young who is going to huntsville, then me, the elder kelley..then sister lolofie and sister tsifnay

So it is finally time for me to train again.  I am pretty excited. Montevista will be a good area. I am splitting it with another missionary named Elder Coronado and the visa waiter that he will get. It is a two English stake area and is supposed to be really good, but I don't know much about it. It covers a lot of area, and the car just got taken out to be given to another missionary that accidentally stabbed himself in the leg with a ninja sword. So we will be walking/riding bikes/taking the bus. I am praying hard for my son that he is ready to work hard and things go differently than last time. I will be a district leader, too, over the other ones in my ward and two other sets of missionaries. One of the sets is Elder Sutherland who is going home next transfer. He will be with a visa waiter and Elder Ward's son, Elder Larsen. Then there are also a set of English sisters in my district which is too bad, because now I can't do district meetings in Spanish. I have some really good zone leaders. Elder Ward got switched to the English program to be the Idaho zone leader. (At the last minute, they decided to keep just the Preston area...everything north of Utah went to another mission.) Elder Plowman got a Hispanic companion that has been English his whole mission. His name is Elder Escobar, and he is one of the highest baptizing missionaries in the mission. So the assistants told us that they are sending him to Spanish to show us how to baptize since Spanish numbers are so low compared to English. I don't if they realized how disrespectful that was, but we are kind of used to those comments. There are a lot of good changes happening in the mission including two new zones. They still haven't switched any Spanish people to English which is too bad. Elder Senn was just called to be a district leader in Alpha. They finally split Omega into thirds which is really good; that has needed to happen for a while.

Vanessa was baptized

So this week has been a really good. I will start it off just on the full report/story of Vanessa. So she was all set to get baptized all week. We had Liz talk to her boss and make sure that she could go to the baptism on Saturday at three. We set everything up and showed up two hours early on Saturday to make sure everything is good. It turns out Liz never talked to her boss, and she had to work at three. So I guess her boss just assigns them hours the day before, and Liz is too scared to ask for another shift, and she wouldn't let us try to talk to him either. The toughest thing is that she didn't really care too much that she would be missing her daughter’s baptism. So we decided to meet them at their house at two, have them follow us to the church, get Vanessa changed, take some pictures, then take the little kids to the babysitter. That was the plan. So we show up at two at their house, and the van is gone, and no one is home. So of course this couldn’t' happen without maximum stress levels. So I was the one driving at this point, and we start calling Liz and driving around hoping to see her car. She doesn't know where the church is, so she couldn't have gone there. Finally, after a couple minutes, she calls us back, "I'm at 30th and Patterson." So we drive as fast as we can over there and can't find her. We call her, and she says, “Now I am at 33rd and Washington.” So we go there, and she isn't there. So at this point she is driving around trying to tell us to come find her but refuses to park and wait for some reason. So for ten minutes we drive around a four by three block area searching for her and finally find her pulling out. We pulled up next to her and had her pull over. Then she followed us to the church building. I guess that at the last minute she decided to go shopping for some new shoes right before the baptism…of course. We took the pictures, then Vanessa stayed, and everyone else left. Unfortunately, Vanessa couldn't get her older brother who was sleeping at home or her cousins to come, so it was just her and a few ward members. But we did get the laurel president to speak; she is cool. We got a couple people there after inviting most of the ward over the phone. So we got all that done, and Vanessa was happy even if she was nervous before. The next day is when she would be getting confirmed.

Liz is the one on the left. Vanessa is in white. The little kids from left to right are Chuckie, Gorda, and Dickies...at least that's what everyone calls them. Their real names are Yareli, Jalene, and Yandel (not sure on the spellings of those names). Keep praying for Liz. She needs a lot of help. Vanessa is doing well, though. I think she will keep herself going.

I'm sick but thats ok

So this week has been pretty good. I have been pretty sick the last few days but that's ok; it is passing slowly.

At the beginning of the week, I went on exchanges in the J1 with Elder Crook. At night, I was talking to a guy that plays the saxophone on the corner of 25th street. I started to talking to him, and he was in the used car business and knows Jay Brasher and Jeff Brasher for years...his name is Dane...he has really long hair and plays the saxophone a lot.

So after that later on in the week, I went on some other exchanges with Elder Kelley in Weber Heights. Normally we just go on exchanges with district leaders, but they requested to go with us so that was ok, and it was good for them, too. We taught one lesson that night to a lady that wanted to postpone her baptism, and we couldn’t really figure out why. After a little bit, we figured out it’s because she wants to buy this white dress, and she can't afford it for a few more months. So we talked to her about what baptism is and what's important and a bunch of other stuff, and so now she is getting baptized on July 6. They didn't tell her this, but she lives in a wealthy ward, and they are going to try to get them to donate her the dress as a surprise for her baptism. The next morning Elder Kelley and I went running. I had woken up that morning with a sore throat; so that was a horrible idea. It ended up making me sick for the last three or four days with a fever/other flu symptoms so I guess it's my own fault.

I have always heard part of being sick is mental and if you can just tell yourself you're not sick than you won't be...yeah, it turns out that is FALSE. I tried to smile a little more and walk a little faster when I was sick, and I think I just made it worse for myself. Sunday I was pretty much out of commission all day. We went to our early morning meeting, and I was about ready to pass out so I went home and stayed with Elder Torres who was also sick. We slept until our meeting at four o’clock. Even though I was sick, that meeting was awesome. Those videos always make me feel like I need to repent for not having been a good enough missionary before the mission. It always makes us happy to see though. It'll be cool to have all the iPads in use by next year.

They should get baptized in a couple of weeks...

District leader training....they aren't capable of taking a normal picture so I figured why not?

The waterfall hike this morning..about an hour to get up then we went up the side and hiked up on top which will be the next picture I will send.

Ok, first before I forget...Mom, most of the time I send pictures home. Other missionaries send them to me, and I send them to you. Can you make sure to save them all in a file on your computer or something since I don't have a copy of all of them except on my email? I'm sure you are already but just checking.

So, my first question: is correlation even a real thing? or is it supposed to be coordination and everyone mispronounces it? That is a big concern of mine. Do we get together to correlate? Because that's what everyone says, but it always says the word coordinate in preach my gospel. I figured that would be something Dad would know the answer to.

So this week has been better than last week; that's the good news. We went to Goodwood BBQ one night. I haven't had food like that in a while; that was awesome. We went for Elder Plowman and I's hump day mark, a little late, but we needed an excuse. Last week, somebody bought us four short sleeve white shirts which I had wanted some more of, so that's pretty cool.

Happy father's day to all of you fathers I didn't get a letter out to. There are a lot of good fathers that have influenced my life, and I appreciate all your hard work to be better fathers. I even got a father's day shout out from my son, Elder Senn. Last week, he called me one day to see how I was doing, and if I was being sad. What a great missionary! He is always worried about me even if he has the hardest life in the world. I don't know if I have mentioned this, but Elder Senn's mom and like six siblings got baptized last month, and his dad has a date for this coming month. He is beyond excited and tells everyone who will listen.

Rollercoasters

So this week has been up and down, all over the place with our four solid investigators. Ok, so first with Liz and Vanessa: Liz and Vanessa did come to church this Sunday; that is the good news. They showed up 30 minutes late, but whatever, they got there. Last week, we had sat them both down and talked to them about no more cussing, fighting, watching bad tv shows, and just some other basic stuff they need to do to keep the spirit in their home. We taught them both the law of chastity. Vanessa didn't like talking about that in front of her mom, but we did it. Liz also has a boyfriend that she needs to get rid of. He is mean to her kids, doesn't like God, and breaks the commandments with her, so for Liz it was a pretty easy decision to say that she needed to break up with him, but I kind of doubt that she did. Whenever we talk about her sinning, she starts to smile and kind of laugh to kind of soften or start to justify it, but we just keep a straight face and don't laugh about it, but she still doesn’t quite seem to take things seriously especially when she is admitting to us that she broke some commitment. So they also have committed to stop drinking coffee, alcohol, and tea. So they were on track to get baptized this coming Sunday. Then, we went by yesterday, and the day before Liz had gone out dancing and had coffee that morning. She just kind of laughed and said sorry, so she clearly felt it was an obligation to us and not to God. So we had a long talk with her about why she keeps commandments. Then she decided to drop the other bomb and say she is being blessed and got a job! And that they want her to work everyday from 11 to 2 (church is from 11 to 2). So we went into keeping the Sabbath Day holy and told her yesterday to pray about talking to her brand new boss which would probably mean she wouldn't get the job that she is trialing for. She has bills she needs to pay right now, so we just told her Jesus Christ knows about her bills, and he will take care of things if she can just get to church on Sunday and keep the Sabbath Day holy and not work at all. She is thinking about it, but it isn't looking good. Now that she is happier with her son out of jail, she is starting to seem to care less and have less real intent which is pretty frustrating. This is what she has done with this missionaries for years except she has never gotten to church before so she is improving.

Vanessa is awesome. She tried to get her cousins to come to church with her. She doesn't want to give up coffee, but she agreed to try it. She was scared we would get mad at her when she told us she had a boyfriend. We found out her depression is a lot worse than we thought, so we need to get her happier. She is still cool, but she is just 13 so of course she flakes out on lessons to hang out with her friends. We always get frustrated, but then we go to talk to her, and you just can't get mad at vanessa.

What a beginning to the week!

Last week pday was a great start to the week. We went on another two-week shopping trip, so we don't have to get more rides, and someone paid for entire cart!. Then on the way out, someone gave us two trays of raspberries. So it was a good Costco trip.

So first thing off is Frank. He is ok. He found a house and has started two solid jobs. He still isn't smoking or doing anything wrong, but his new house is half a block outside our area. So we called Elder Senn and sent him a baptism! They were pretty happy when we passed off that referral. We talked to Frank a couple times and will still go to his baptism and everything.

Last Saturday, we went with the youth and helped them clean the whole chapel. It's tough to motivate youth to come clean the chapel, so we told them they couldn't play soccer after unless they helped. We got a good turn out and got it done in thirty minutes. It had been raining all that day which made soccer even more fun but a LOT more humid.

We would appreciate the extra prayers for....

Ward Service Project

So I got to talk to my family on Sunday! I pretty much told them all the interesting details from the week so this may end up being a shorter email today.

This morning has been a very adventurous one. We had been ready to go help some missionaries move since last week. We helped our housing coordinator get the trailer all ready for about an hour this morning and went to go help the elder move. He texted us and decided he didn't want to waste his time moving and said, “Don't touch my stuff; I'm not moving.” So after talking to President, he got his way, and we had to push it off to another week when someone can convince him. SO, that was frustrating…learning patience one day at a time! Ha-ha

So this week we went to do service on Saturday. We got to this big park and were spreading these huge piles of bark across a dog park. (And there was a tractor right there across the street! I wanted to tell someone to go get the keys.) We were there for a couple hours before leaving. Then right after that, we had a soccer activity in 90 degree whether. We were very sunburned and very exhausted. That morning we had played ultimate Frisbee with the zone for exercise on top of that. We all have some very lovely farmers tans now.

We love Ana and Angel!

Well, this is really the only picture this week. For companionship inventory, I have always just set goals for each other about how we think our companion can do better, but Elder Plowman, being more positive than me, made us list all our strengths. I thought you could see some of my Bassett genes in there. I didn't have a girlfriend to put as my strength, so they just went with mom instead which makes sense to me. I discovered one "talent" that I have was turning every strength they said into a weakness...they decided I need to be better about accepting good things about people/mainly myself. Anyway, it was just fun to do and look at.

We started off this week with zone conference. It was a replica of what we learned in mission leadership training so we just got to practice and hear everything twice. Elder Ward did a great job training on how to begin teaching. The best part was that they revealed two new key indicators that the missionary department wants us to pilot for Utah missions. Salt lake is already using them; it’s just new to us. They got rid of ‘larcs’ altogether (less active recent converts) and added the key indicator of ‘less actives in sacrament meeting’ and also ‘referrals from recent converts/less actives’. I am very happy with it. It will change the way larc’s are used. Actually, getting them to church is more of a measure of the ordinance and will force more productive less-active lessons, and recording referrals from them will encourage what we should already be doing but aren’t doing. They asked for a vote and two people in our zone opposed (oh boy...love those 20-month Spanish missionaries!), but they went through with it anyways. We went by to visit those two missionaries and discouraged rejecting the brethren's ideas/counsel in the future.

"Best ward mission leader ever, from Buchanan, GA"

Elder Pyne, Elder Plowman, Elder Bassett

So, it has been a great week. Elder Plowman is awesome; we already knew that, but just to reconfirm. We are having a ton of fun-the three of us together. Elder Ward is also doing well travelling the northern area of the mission. We are kind of disappointed the travelling trainers are going to every zone except ours, so he won't come to us, but I guess that's good that they thought they needed to solve problems elsewhere. We are pretty lucky to have such a great zone. It feels like we have been in the house until dinner everyday. Between 12 week, language study, trainings, planning trainings, personal/companionship studies, we are in the apartment a huge chunk of the time. But we are pretty good about not getting distracted and have a good time together. It looks like our visa waiter friend, elder Pyne is suffering from beginning of the mission blues, as Uncle David calls it, so we are trying to help him stay happy and positive. Elder Plowman is a lot better at that stuff, so it's good he is here. My remedy for everything is just to go knock some doors, because that’s what I like to do…probably not very helpful, ha-ha.

Ana and Angel are awesome. They are such blessings! They didn't make it to church this Sunday, but that is our fault, because we didn't tell them enough about it so it was still unfamiliar. While I was on splits teaching a less-active, my companions told them about church and all the classes and what to expect. Then the member, Brother Camacho (like 65 years old) and I showed up, and he talked for a long time to them about how forty years earlier he had been sitting on the couch with his little kids listening to the missionaries and now all his kids were returned missionaries and had families of their own, and how he looked back and was so happy he met the missionaries. It was definitely a perspective they needed to hear. It made them realize how much we loved them and what a blessing this would be for their three little kids. They ask the best questions and have been reading The Book of Mormon. I really hope all goes well with them.

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.

We love Elder Pyne

So this week was great. We started off with a good district meeting last week. Then we went to costco for lunch. While we stood there, three different people walked up to the five of us standing there and gave us 50 dollars total. Life is good. So I got a package from Amy this week. It was awesome. She sent me a weighted jump-rope to do between sets so no more Mexican ladies will be calling me fat, ha-ha. A Men's Warehouse opened up next to Olive Garden, my two favorite places. I went to get my suits pressed last week, and I decided that’s where I want to work when I am going through college: men’s warehouse.

So, there are dust devils in Utah, as well! We were making a u-turn with all the windows down and one of them attacked us and covered us in dust. We just laughed for like five minutes; it was the weirdest thing. We spend a lot of time laughing. Elder Pyne is the best visa waiter ever! We get along with him really, really well. He isn't timid at all about contacting and understands almost all Spanish. People love him and he makes everyone laugh. He is really short and has a permanent smile on and always has squinted eyes. He was a diver/swimmer/wrestler in high school, so we have wrestled a couple times just for fun without making the people that live underneath us too mad, hopefully. Send us a few of your favorite jokes, because we tell each other jokes when we are going to bed at night, ha-ha. Elder Pyne is awesome. They gave us the best of the group. We are pretty lucky.

Throwing down your weapons of war

So Elder Ward and I learned an important lesson this week that we would like to share with all of you. If you use dish soap instead of dish detergent in the dishwasher, it will NOT work, and it makes lots of unwanted bubbles on your floor. Just some advice we wanted to throw out there.

So we got a new investigator a lady named Maria. She has a husband and a son and daughter and her grandkids all living with her, but the first lesson was just with her. We just did a quick how to begin teaching type lesson planning to do the restoration with the rest of her family, which unfortunately still hasn’t happened yet. But she loves us probably more than anybody I have met in the mission. She is probably like 60, and before we left, she talked for like ten minutes about how much she loved the spirit we brought and our charisma, and good looks, and the way we dressed, and were educated, and professional. So we have this lady in love with us. She really wants us to come back for one reason or another; hopefully, we can get the rest of her family all together so they can get baptized together.

So, R- has been good. He came to church with us again on Sunday with his crazy son. We have taught him the plan of salvation and the word of wisdom this week. He has problems with everything in the word of wisdom except tea, so I guess you could call this a worst-case scenario. He was pretty surprised to find out we wanted him to quit smoking completely and not just slow down a little bit. He has already replaced coffee with soda, and honestly, I'll take it if that’s the best he can do, and he is down to a "little more" than five a day smoking so we need lots of prayers for him. Teaching him is the funniest thing. He prays in Spanish, but we talk in English. He invents his own adverbs and puts them at the beginning of every sentence. He has perfect English; so it’s not like he has an accent. He just uses his own, invented word choice. The only way to understand his English is just to listen to every other word and figure out what he’s saying. We are pretty happy to be teaching our first Ogdenite. Especially since our area borders J1:the Ogdenite capital. It is the only place in the mission where the English missionaries cover only one ward, and it’s the highest baptizing area in all of Utah. Ogdenites EVERYWHERE.