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.

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.

A Rough Week

Well this week has definitely been some experiences that I won't ever forget. Last week we started off with a zone study. It went pretty well. We taught the zone about some things that President brought to the zone leaders in the mission. It is mainly about how enduring to the end needs to be the goal of all of our lessons and teaching. It also had a lot to do about what he called "not one or the other." People in the mission always are asking are we supposed to have lots of baptisms or really good quality ones, or are we supposed to work with less actives or nonmembers? Elder Plowman and I came up with some other similar questions to illustrate president's point like: is Superman fast or strong? In football, should you have a good offense or a good defense?...things like that that just prove that you can't have one without the other. Our job is to do both, and both less active work and baptisms fulfill our purpose especially in Utah. We also presented the standards of excellence to the mission which everyone responded well to. A couple of people said that they are happy "we are finally a real mission!"

So other than that, I can't remember much about the week except our two investigators, Ana and Angel. Well, there is no happy ending with them. Last week on Friday, we had a lesson with them. They were interviewed for baptism and both very easily passed-no problems. Ana still wasn't sure about it, but Angel was, so we had him kneel down right there and pray for the Lord to touch her heart, and he did. She felt the Spirit and said she knew it was from God. She still was being stubborn and wouldn't give us a straight yes, even after saying yes in the interview, but she said if it's God's will, she would get baptized.

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.