Teresa was baptized!

Elder Coronado, Teresa, Bishop Colohan is baptizing her, and the ward mission leader there, Brother Crockett, confirmed her. He is the one that served in Mesa.

Teresa got baptized this week. It was great to have so much help from a great ward. They set most everything up, and we just filled the font and showed up. She is already halfway through the recent convert lessons, because we had started doing them even before she was baptized, because she wanted to learn more so quickly. Things will go well for her. She stood up to share her thoughts at the end of the baptism and told everyone she had waited a long time and wasn't sorry that she did it. Her next day was the confirmation, and she was very happy, as was Garland. They had to leave right after sacrament, because Garland can't last through all of church, but she will usually stay and maybe they will bring the sacrament to him; I am not sure.

SO now we are just looking for other non-members to teach! Keep praying for us finding new people. Yesterday, we had a lesson with Gavin...he hadn’t come to church the day before, because his aunt took him to a hockey game. We talked about who he wanted to be as far as values and asked his mom what kind of person he wanted to be. He told us, and we talked about how baptism will bring that. Then as we were wrapping up, his Mom kind of nudged him to tell us something. Then he said thank you for teaching me, but "I won’t be needing your assistance anymore." He felt like he had learned enough ways to feel the Spirit and didn't think he needed anymore than that. He can read the Book of Mormon if he gets time, or go to church, but doesn't need the lessons. I guess he really just didn't get how much we were stressing the necessity of baptism. So then the ward mission leader took over and talks for 10 minutes about I don't know what, and we shared our testimonies and left. So that was too bad, never thought I would get dropped by a 12 year old, but it happened.

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.

Time moves swiftly

Another p-day! This week has been great as always. Elder Coronado and I love serving together and are working hard in West Point. Today we got our suits dry cleaned, and it was definitely time.

So, recently I have been dragging out planning to be way long, so I wanted to get it done more quickly, in 30 minutes. So we started to do abs every night to motivate us to finish planning, so we can get to abs. It's funny how often it actually happens, and how often we get caught up calling missionaries in the zone, or fall asleep planning on the couch. I think it has only actually happened once in the past week. I guess that means we are working hard enough to be exhausted at the end of the day, or we are just very out of shape, because we ride in a car all day.

The no sugar thing has been good, we get offered dessert 1-3 times everyday and most people are ok with it, but they always need an explanation of why we are saying no. Some say good for you and others just seem unhappy that we said no to their dessert/candy. We ate with the Facers twice this week, and she hid all sweets in her house for us; she is the Kristiansen fellowshipper (one of them) and the ones we killed the turkey with at thanksgiving.

Our overabundance of vegetables with our chicken. Sorry, this is about the only picture I have on my iPad. 

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.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Well, last week I got to Skype my family! It was a great day. So, it started out with a night on Christmas Eve. We went to the Larsen’s house with Elder Harper and the assistants and ate a TON of snow crab legs...thanks Larsen family! Then we played a couple games and went home. In the morning, we did studies like normal. For companionship study, I think we ended up making Christmas cards for bishops. We went to the Larsen’s for breakfast, and I couldn't eat! I wasn't sure why; I don’t think I was nervous. I just couldn't sit still. I was so excited to see my family! Then we talked for a while with a few technical difficulties, but it was great. I got to see Emma laugh a few times, and my mom smiling so much, so it made me happy. We talked a lot about things that needed to be talked about like signing up for school, summer plans and things like that, but as soon as I hung up and realized that was my last call. I was so so trunky. I have never really felt that way, but for some reason I just had no desire to really do anything. Realizing that the next time I would see them was at the airport made me sick to my stomach.

We then went to an assisted living place to sing to some of the people that stay there. I was not in the mood at all. But I learned, once again, the importance of service. Only about half of our zone showed up (the Hispanic ones showed up, the white ones didn’t. Just increases my love for Hispanic people). We started to sing and visit with the people there, and after about 20 minutes, I had a big smile, and I didn't feel trunky or unmotivated at all. One woman told us that we made her whole day, and she started to cry she was so happy to see us. Me and one other elder stayed behind and talked to her about life for a while, and everyone else moved on to keep singing. SOoo, just like that, the trunkiness was gone! I was back to normal and forgot about going home and have been loving missionary work more than before ever since.

Christmas Eve!

Well this will probably be a short letter just to make sure we have stuff to talk about tomorrow. I’m not too exciting so I won't have much to say more than things about my area. We have been doing lots and lots of finding this week. And we just need your prayers and miracles to happen. WE are working hard and being as effective as we can. This area is all about relying on members and having them invite their friends so if they don't invite we don't have much to do since nothing usually happens when we just show up at doors, that's just the way it works in this type of area. We have been having fun together though...more about elder Coronado. He was born in Mexico, in Reynosa Tamaulipas. When he was nine he moved to McAllen (spa), TX and when he was 13 his siblings and mom and him were baptized. His dad hasn't yet so pray hard for him! He likes to make people laugh and his family is the main reason he came on his mission so they would be blessed. He is a great missionary; he really loves people and wants to just serve wherever he possibly can. I was his zone leader a long time ago in Ogden and then we lived together in Monte vista and now serving together, it's been fun. Our stake president is still awesome. Whenever we have a meeting with him we leave just feeling great and happy. He is very motivated and wants to double baptisms in the stake this next year so we need to go to work! WE are hoping the New Year will bring lots of excited members to do missionary work because right now they are all busy with the business that Christmas tends to bring. We are going to eat crab tonight so we are very happy. WE spent comp study tomorrow writing cards for bishops and wml's which is hard because then we feel like we need to do that for the relief society presidents, and then you can't leave out the counselors. But then the elder quorum will feel left out. It goes on and on but we settled with just those two groups and hoped it will suffice (also we didn’t have enough cards or time for that many people). We will try to be as effective as possible tomorrow but I have no idea what to do all day. At one point we are taking our zone to an assisted living place to sing to the people leaving there. I have to go pick up my watch today and I am scared of how much it will have cost to get it fixed. The knob had come off getting caught on a door handle I was walking by. So I took it in and the guy told me it would take ten days to fix it and I said ok call me and left my number. After a month I called to ask and he didn't know the progress so had to call me back and let me know later that it would still be another week. I can finally pick it up. People can sometimes take advantage because we were missionaries but I was still unhappy with the service so on the last phone call I asked him "Can I give you some feedback, sir?" I suggested more communication with customers especially after making a promise of ten days. He wasn't happy with the feedback I could tell but I did it in the nicest way possible in case he is a non-member or offended member but I don't even know how to handle that as a missionary. We have to drive through Riverdale today. It will be AWFUL. Everyone is talking about how bad the traffic has been. What used to be a ten-minute drive will be 40 minutes.ughhhh I wish we could wait but pday is pday. Ok well talk to you tomorrow family! Love you

Elder Bassett

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