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.

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.

Surprise!

Fred Kenney was in Logan and ran into Elder Bassett. He was one of Taylor's former YM's Presidents.

...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.