July 2010 Letters

July 6, 2010

Dear family,

My holidays were ok. I think most holidays are pretty lame in the
mission. Not many people want to talk to us or set up lessons on those days.

We ran into a girl that got baptized in cali a few years back. We tracted into her and I was surprised how easily we were able to get her back to church. She said she got baptized because her husband was LDS and then they got divorced. She moved up to Utah and when everything was going on she just stopped going to church. We asked her and she said the reason why she doesn't go to church is she doesn't have a ride. So we talked to the Relief Society president and she took her to church. The Lord really is doing all the legwork for us up here.

It was nice spending last Friday with Grandma and Grandpa. We went up to Logan to see a family I taught get sealed. It was way spiritual especially when they had their 7 week old baby sealed to them. I think that moment was one of the real paydays for missionary work.

Love, E[...] M[...]

P.S. I guess you can look into Pima for me. I think I'll hang out in
Tucson for at least a little bit.

July 13, 2010

To answer your questions. I like my new area. We've got it pretty much
figured out. There are 14 total elders and sisters in the South Ogden zone,
and I've been a zone leader for 5 months.

This week we found out we are going to be in this thing called the youth
spectacular. It is going to have 3000 youth from 30 stakes in it and it is
supposively going to be like what the Chinese did at the beginning of the
Summer Olympics. We are going to come out in the finale and sing Called To
Serve. Rumor has it that the prophet and some apostles are going to show
up. We are excited about that and we have 3 investigators that are coming
to it.

We baptized two guys last Saturday. K[...] B[...] is a black guy who plays
football for Weber State [University] and and 13 year old named B[...].
Their baptisms went really well. I played the piano for them.

Good luck on battling cybersitter.

Love, E[...] M[...]

July 20, 2010

Dear family,

Well, the youth spectacular is over. It went pretty good. We had 3 investigators go to it and it turned out really good. [...], but it still turned out to be nice.

This weekend we are having a baptism for 2 of our investigators. their names are T[...] and V[...]. T[...] is Navajo and only speaks English and V[...] is Mexican and only speaks Spanish. I'm not sure how their marriage really works out because Victor can only do the superficial conversations like Hi and How are you and that sort of thing. They're making it work though. We taught them for a while and they just weren't progressing so we got the Spanish elders to start team teaching with us and its been working out better for that. We could never get them to go to church and so we decided to give them a church tour. It went really well and they started going to church. I think it made them a whole lot more comfortable with it because they are shy. They are getting baptized into the Spanish branch. This is because T[...] told us she is uncomfortable around white people so even though she doesn't understand it, she likes it better. I think she also likes the fact that nobody can come up and talk to her. Some of the members of the branch have been translating for her.

Congratulations on the baptisms in the ward. That's great the parts that the family were able to take in the program. I'm always doing something, whether its playing the piano, bearing my testimony, giving a talk, or giving a message while the person baptized is changing. It's the best.

Love, E[...] M[...]

July 27, 2010

Dear family,

This week was a pretty good one. Three people we were teaching got baptized. The baptisms were a little stressful though. How it worked out is the only times they could do them was 4:30 and 5. so we planned on going to T[...] and V[...] baptism at 4:30 and leaving right after they got baptized to go to D[...]'s baptism. We got to the 4:30 baptism and the [...] were supposed to get clothes, but got ones that were too small. We ran around everywhere trying to find clothes, but ended up just leaving and going to D[...]'s baptism. Everything eventuallly worked out and everyone got baptized. I like doing things myself and not relying on others. That way I never get disappointed because we weren't able to be there to see T[...] and V[...] get baptized. All of the confirmations went really good. All three of them cried, even D[...] who's a fitness trainer in the Air Force teared up.

We won some points with the sister missionaries on Saturday. The 4 sisters in the zone for some reason decided they didn't like us us they would criticize everything we did and not pay attention. So we set up a time to just talk it over with them. I was wary going into it because: 1) I didn't want to come down really hard on them and make them feel worthless; and 2) I didn't want to in any way grovel for their support. So we had to go somewhere in the middle of all of that. We told them the things we were doing in the zone and got them to agree that what we are doing will help, then we got them to tell us they support us. It went a whole lot better than expected. I hope this is the last of our sister problems.

Love, E[...] M[...]