Letter to Mission President

 Don't have time for a big letter today   or last week    I'm slackin

so this is my letter to president

It was great to see you yesterday!!

 Love you

President Loveland,
I hope you had a great Christmas, I know I did. We spent a lot of the day doing service and also got to call home and eat dinner with PM and LA families. These past few weeks I have been able to see myself grow a lot. I had been praying to know what the Lord would have me learn and to direct my studies accordingly. It was really neat then when we had zone conference that all of my studies directly applied to what we discussed. 
I have had a lot of great opportunities to sever in the last few weeks as well. We have been over 10 hours of service several times. And now members of the community, especially other churches, love seeing us and know who we are. And are now starting to ask questions. It has also been a great experience training in a trio. I have learned a lot by serving my companions and especially elder Wright. It has been good for me to go back to the basics and study them for myself.  The trio is doing great. We have had the opportunity to split up several times and that has been a good experience.
The District is doing well. I am excited to have district meeting again, it feels like it has been a while. We did have the opportunity to get Christmas presents for Sister Christensen in Nevada, because she didn't get any. So thanks for asking me to do that! 
I really enjoyed your letter because I feel like that has been something I have been working on for a while. Having at least a degree of the Character of Christ feels amazing. I am totally exhausted physically, mentally and socially but my joy is full. I love being able to serve others and not focus on myself. I am continually trying to be more consecrated as I release those things that the natural man wants to hold on to. A thought that came to me this week when thinking about humility, but can apply to any principle " I will never Be humble, but I can become More humble" 
Wow this was a long letter. haha I guess I'm learning a lot!

Baptism Week

Hey everybody, 

Weve got a lot of stuff going on here so i will try to have it make some sense:

We found out that our mission boundaries are changing. Three Stakes in the Tulsa area will be going to the OKC mission, including Brookhollow my first area. Kind of sad. But we will keep all of our missionaries so we will not be spread so thin throughout the mission. That will be happening at the beginning of the year.

We also got our transfer calls last night. Elder Greenwood and I will both be staying in Pittsburg(till at least the beginning of the year)  and we will also be training a new missionary named Elder Wright!  We are both pretty excited.

Monday we were visited by a general authority named Elder Gay. I learned a ton and it was a pretty great cconference. I was supposed to play a song on French Horn but I wasnt able to:( Maybe next time. We are having our Christmas zone conferences next week so I am excited for that.

We also had a mission deep cleaning day, We spent 6-8 hours cleaning our apartment. We got rid of 3 garbage bags of stuff and it looks so much better now. We also decided to fix our heater, Which had not been working for a few weeks. Our appartment was always in the 50s and that was getting really cold.  So we were heating our room with candles and a blow dryer. But now we have heat so we are good!!

Well besides all of that good stuff we have been doing to usual stuff as well. We have had a lot of good lessons and progress from those we are seeing.  

Love you all and hope you all stay warm

It's December!

I dont know what to write this week.  Emailing is hard sometimes. We had a really good week. We did a lot of teaching and had a few Christmas partys to go to already. We also had a district service project where we helped decorate a historic hotel for Christmas. It was a lot of fun. I got to stand where President Rosevelt gave a speech

We also went and saw a huge tractor -  like real big

So a lot of fun things mixed in with missionary work.  We have been teaching Wyatt quite a bit and have also been working with Jurnie, who will most likely be baptized in the next week or so, Paschal Htue and some of his siblings have been coming to activities and coming along well and then a few other families and such     

So we are staying busy.

This next week is the last week of the transfer already. Next monday we have a conference with Elder Gay of the 70 and then we will have transfers that Thursday.

Excited to work hard this last week and we get deeper into the Christmas season.

We just have a lot of good things happening and it is so fun to be a part of it all.

Love you all and hope you have a great week.

#LIGHTtheWORLD

"Why Dogs Can't Do Dishes"

Hi  I've had a good week

We had a good Thanksgiving, we served pie to about 1000 people at a big church community dinner. It was a ton of fun.  Then on Saturday we got to go to the temple with a recent convert family to do baptisms for the first time. It was a great experience. Well those are the highlights for this week. 

For those that want more detail: 

Monday night we had dinner and then went to FHE. Had a lesson on Luke 1-2(That I had to teach on the spot) and then we had a bonfire and roasted marshmallows

Tuesday we had lessons with Aaron and Jerica, and Wyatt  and then had basketball with the YSA's 

Wednesday we had district meeting and that went really well and then we learned how to do family history so that was cool.

Thursday we did our service thingy for about 6 hours and then drove to dinner and then came back and played cards with the YSAs (Peanuts)

Friday we saw Ismael and then had a lesson with Wyatt and Quincy, not much else

Saturday was the temple trip,  We left at about 7 and then got back at 7. On the way up it was way foggy and we almost hit a ton of deer.  We also got to go to the Liberty Jail site. On the way back we were running on empty for about 20 miles(praying real hard for some angels to be pushing)

Sunday we had church and then a lesson afterward with Paschal and Wyatt. Then went and saw Aaron and Jerica again.  That evening Elder Greenwood had a migraine so I got about 6 hours of study time. I memorized a bunch of scriptures, including almost the entire chapter of 2 Nephi 31  and then watch the Testaments in English and German, and then watched some cheesy church documentaries for the rest of the night. 

Today we went to a really old hotel and decorated for Christmas, then went shopping, made christmas cards, did laundry and am now emailing.  So yeah

Its been a good week

Hope the same for you all as well

#Light the World

i dont know

Hello   hope you all are doing well

Its cold in Pittsburg 

We workout in the mornings  - it's even colder then!

We are teaching a few people that want to get baptized

Thats about life - haha

But we had a pretty good week here. we ended up doing a bunch of service so we didn't have a lot of teaching but still did pretty well.  We also had interviews and exchanges this week.

I always love being able to spend time around President and Sister Loveland. I always feel like I learn so much. We also had exchanges with the zone leaders after interviews. We had a lot of fun serving in Joplin, MO.  

I have now officially served in 4 states!   That's pretty cool

Also on exchanges we visited with an elderly couple that asked for a blessing. When I got out my oil she told me she wanted us to use hers that her son got from the garden of Gethsemane!  So we gave that blessing and then she filled up my vial with it too.Pretty neat experience. 

We are teaching Wyatt and Jurnie right now and they are both awesome. They come to all the activities and church and are ready to be baptized right now   we just need to finish teaching them. So excited for them.

Also yesterday we went out with a few of the YSA members and delivered cookies and notes to some less actives and nonmember friends.  And we got to take the Party Bus​

 IMG_2528.JPG

​Any way, I'm loving it here and am excited for the Holiday season

#Light the world 

Pittsburg, KS

Hello everyone, Don't have a lot of time today, but I am in Pittsburg Kansas. It is a small college town. I am really enjoying it so far. There is a small family ward with a lot of older members and then a small YSA group as well.

 We work out in the mornings at the stadium with a few members. Have a lot of fun there and are going to start going to workouts with the ROTC group.  We ran 2 miles of 400s today and then we did a 100 push ups after  I'm gonna be really in shape when I leave this area.

We set a baptismal date on Sunday so we are excited for that.
We have a lot of good things about to happen here!

Love you all and hope you have a great week!

The IDK

Hey Everyone! Exciting news! Trump is president and i am leaving Fayetteville :(

Kind of sad but i know that i have done what i needed to do here and learned what i came to learn.

Im getting real lazy so I'm gonna attach my letter to president again   i really liked that haha

Im excited to be moving to Kansas this transfer. t should be a good change. I am sad to leave Fayetteville though. Especial because we had tickets to the Razorbacks game this coming Saturday haha. Oh well. This week was way good though. 

Last Wednesday i went on an exchange with Elder Nau. I learned a lot from him and i think he really took something away as well.  I asked Elder Nau a lot about how to be bold and teach with the spirit. That was the strongest i have felt the spirit in a lesson and the first time i fell like i had power behind my words. It was a great learning experience. We had a lot of other great things happen but those were the highlights i suppose.

We also had a really good DM on monday. There were a lot of good role plays and good application. Afterwards we tried bringing a lunch to eat after. It went very well. Normally when we go out to eat we get chatty about random stuff, but since we were still in the church we ended up sharing a lot of spiritual experiences with each other and i felt like the District came together better than we had after any activity or outing.

We had some pretty neat experiences with Lauren this week. We had both fasted that Lauren would receive an answer. She came to church with questions about Joseph Smith and the BoM. Testimony meeting was a lot about how revelation comes in patterns or repetition and then a lot about prophets and conference. In Sunday School we felt prompted to teach about prophets. Then apparently in Relief Society the talked about prophets and the BoM as well. After church she excitedly came up to us and said "its not a coincidence" it was way cool. She has made a lot of great friends in the ward and she is now ready for the next step :) So awesome to see.

Some other highlights for the week were hiking a "mountain" with Tim, Seeing Scott again, and yesterday we had a bomb dinner with a bunch of members at the institute with some investigators as well.  

It is cool to see how this area has changed from the members not wanting much do do with us to now, bringing friends to church, asking for BoMs, becoming great friends with Gators and just having a great missionary mindset.  I love it

Looking forward to letting you know more about my new area on Monday!

With Love

Temple Week

We have had a week full of blessings

We had the opportunity to go to the Kansas City, Missouri Temple on Wednesday with a bunch of missionaries and it was a pretty great experience. I got to see a lot of people that I hadn't seen in a long time.  I Learned a lot while at the temple. Also this week we had a ton of unplanned success teaching. we had several investigators out of town and we just had more people show up that we haven't met before.   It was pretty amazing to see how the Lord rewards effort.

I thought I would include a few thoughts from my letter to President Loveland that I had while at the Temple

I have had a pretty amazing week and i learned a lot.
 During interviews Sister Loveland mentioned light and it is also something that my Patriarchal blessing talks about, so i spent a few days studying that. What is light? Where does it come from? What does it do? I gained a lot of insights and had some cool experiences. And the question that i took to the temple was How can i gain more/increase my light? What i learned from the temple, several talks that i read on the bus ride and talking with some other missionaries was this. I need to be a more Consecrated missionary, and let go of things that tie me down.
1 Be more exact in my language. Speak simply and powerfully as i testify of truth
2 Obey willingly all commandments and standards in the Missionary handbook
3 Give up my Fears. Quite often i will avoid speaking to people out of fear that i will mess up or won't know what to say. Also fears of not being adequate or not living up to expectations of a missionary.
4 Knowing "Which way do I face" Elder Robbins spoke about not mixing up the first 2 commandments, and making sure that the Lord is our first priority and not those around us. Too often i see myself going with the status quo in an attempt to avoid contention or make sure people like me. When i should instead set an example, which is where we feel the Loneliness of Leadership.
Throughout my mission i have felt the spirit many times, but always in short spurts. After i left the temple that feeling didn't leave me for 3 days. Until after a baptism several missionaries went to get ice cream(nothing wrong with that) But our focus was more that of a social club than that of full time missionaries. That was a witness to me that that was something i needed to work on and help others with as well. Along with that i had the thought to use all "social" times as a time to minister to the specific needs of those around me. I have felt a difference with this change as it is much more fulfilling. 

Rugby Day

Hello Everyone,

today we are going to play Rugby with our mission President. Looking forward to that.

This week has been pretty solid though. We had a lot of good appointments and are starting to meet with some new people. We also got to meet with President and Sister Loveland for interviews this week. They bring such an abundance of the spirit wherever they go. 

We had another booth set up on campus this week and had most of the zone come out to help us with that. We talked to a lot of people and have had a lot of great teaching opportunities come from that exposure on campus. We hand out a lot of materials every week which is pretty awesome. We had pizza after and played ping pong and pool during our lunch hour. It was a lot of fun.

We are doing well with all of our investigators. 

 Tim has been struggling lately but he came to church this week and is doing a lot better and is looking forward to getting baptized.

 Brianne decided to talk to her parents about getting baptized and has been coming to church on her own for a while. She knows what she needs to do but is just waiting for the right time.

 Gabriela has been meeting with us for a few weeks and has been reading the Book of Mormon. She came to church and is starting to come to activities with one of her good friends. Her main hangup is that her dad doesn't like the church for some reason.

 Brock has been fun to meet with. Our first meeting with him was when he came to an institute class and started bashing with the teacher so we pulled him out. Since then we have met a few times and answered his questions and bore testimony. He his training to be an apologist, and there have been several times when he is at a loss for words.

 Lauren has been meeting with Sister Loveland and another set of missionaries. During interviews i spoke to sister loveland about her for quite a while and how  she has been struggling. Then she came to church and had a great time and got to know a lot of the members Really excited for her as well.

This week is pretty exciting also because we get to go to the temple on Wednesday.  I love being in the temple and am looking forward to that time.

Thats all for me now

Love you all 

WPS

Instagram Famous

This week was pretty solid.  The weather has cooled down quite a bit now that it is suit coat season and the leaves are all turning colors. Really is a great time to be here in Fayetteville. Elder Doman and I have been doing a lot of good work and finding success. This week we did a lot of finding. We met so many people that have really just been waiting for an opportunity to hear the gospel. It is really cool to see how the lord will bless you when you work hard. 

We had the booth on campus again(we've started doing that every week) and we had an awesome time.  We handed out about 50 BoM's this week and taught a lot of lessons with the help of the rest of the zone.  On Thursday a member from Grove OK came to Fayetteville and took me and another Elder,who had served in Grove, out to lunch. It was really nice of them and they ended up spending over 100$ because they got a parking ticket. Really put a damper on the experience :/  but it was still good to see them.

Saturdays are still probably the hardest day here.  Nothing happens except the Razorback game, especially for home games. People start heading to the game and tailgating at least 6 hours before the game starts.   Just need to get someone to take us to a game ;)

I think that will do it for me.

Hope you all have a great day.

With love

Elder Shepherd

Fayetteville

Hello Everybody, It has been a wild week here in Fayetteville.

This week was pretty solid. We met with quite a few people and had a lot of success. Hopefully coming up on a few baptisms this month.

Friday and Saturday were a little different. All week the entire city has been prepping for the game on Saturday so that is in the background of all of this. Friday was mine and a few other elders year mark so we went out to eat at a really nice Sushi restaurant in Fayetteville. It also happened to be on the street that has all the bars and clubs so late on a Friday night that got pretty hectic. Afterwards we all went to the city park and took turns burning a white shirt. We had a blast and made a lot of good memories.

Saturday was crazy, we helped some members set up for a game party (because no one would meet with us). and then we went to a baptism for some of the other elders. Then the members hosting the party got really sick and our whole evening got thrown up in flames and we were kind of just stranded with nothing to do. And we broke our phone.  And then Arkansas lost to Alabama.

It just wasn't the best of days. Sunday was better though. We had a couple of appointments and then had a good missionary meeting with the family ward and had a lot of good results.  We are gonna start doing some good work on campus and I'm pretty excited for it.

Love you all 

1 Year!

Hey Everyone, 
Hasn't been too long since i last wrote so this will fairly short. 

We had transfers on Thursday. So I said goodbye to Elder Sokol and met Elder Doman. He has been out for 3 months and is from Pleasant Grove UT. We have had a good past couple of days and taught a lot of lessons. Most of our time has been General Conference though, which was great. Hope you all got as much out of it as I did. It is such a blessing to be led by modern prophets and apostles. 

Dinner and watching Conference with members

Love you all and hope you have a good week

Transfers

hey Everybody,

I am emailing today because we have transfers this week.

Found out last night that I am staying and getting a new companion. Elder Doman, don't know much about him but I'm looking forward to meeting him.

Emailing on Wednesday is always odd because this week just barely started and I don't remember anything from last week  haha

The biggest thing that happened last week was a big biker rally in Fayetteville, Bike Blues and BBQ. It is the second biggest in the nation. There were a couple hundred thousand bikers here in town.  Could always hear the rumble of bikes.  It was pretty cool because there were some members there with like fair food booths that gave us free food.  I also got a free shoe shine. 

There has also been a lot of stuff going on on campus this week.  We have gotten free food the last few days,  pizza and corndogs and stuff.  It's the bomb!

Our investigators are all still doing well. Hopefully we can pick up a few more in the coming weeks.

Getting pumped for General Conference this week, heard some other people refer to it as Mormon Super Bowl. Really looking forward to it, and i hope you all are too.

Have a great week and enjoy the weather.

Woo Pig Sooie

Goodbye to Elder Sokol

Why you don't drive without a wallet.

Clarification, I did not get arrested.

We just had a cop pick us up one day because it was about to start raining. We got in the car and it just dumped for about 30 min. So we sat in his SUV for 15 min or so and talked to him about church and missionary work. It was pretty cool. I'm glad I got the chance to sit in a cop car and also for the fact that I didn't get soaked.

That was probably the most exciting part of the week. We are doing well with all of our investigators. Tim is getting baptized next Tuesday which is awesome to see. We also had a new investigator come to church for the first time, she had a good time, name is Gabriella. Brianne still has a Bap date for Jan. 7th but we are planning on changing that this week. We also got a new investigator that is currently meeting with President and Sister Loveland. She moved here for school and is staying in here sorority house ,KKG, she has come to church here twice and we are meeting with her tomorrow. Excited to see how that goes.

I love it down here in Fayetteville. The weather is starting to cool off and fall is coming on. Its' really nice. And everyone is crazy about football, that is really fun as well.

Hope you all are doing well and have a great week

Elder Shepherd

Razorbacks!

Hey all,

So we had a pretty good week here in Fayetteville. The Razorbacks won their game so everyone is happy. This week really flew by, we met with a bunch of the members and talked to them about their missionary work. It was really productive. We also had a cool arcade night, got to go to a retro arcade, but only played air hockey and Foosball.  We have gotten a few new investigators this week which is fun. And we have a baptismal date for Tim, the 27th, really excited for him.

Really love it here in Fayetteville, especially now that its cooling off. Lots of good things happening

Sorry it was short today,

Love you all

Luke 10:4

So this week not much good happened here in Fayetteville so I'm gonna tell a story:

About 3 months ago I was in a district meeting with President Loveland, and I had everyone read Christ's charge to the 12 and 70 when he sends them forth to preach, because there is a lot of stuff there that we can apply to ourselves in missionary work. President Loveland then brought up a story about a mission where the president had a set of missionaries go forth without purse or scrip, and how they at first struggled and could only focus on that but when they turned their focus to the work, they always had what they needed.  So I thought that would be cool to try out, see how I could do.

Now after having gone 3 weeks with no food or money I am starting to not like that idea so much. So the moral of the story is 2 things, one  "beware of pride boy, your eternal soul is at stake"(Restoration DVD for those non-missionary types), and be careful what you ask for because sometimes it doesn't turn out the way you were expecting. 

Also learned this week:

   Don't step on cardboard boxes while walking downhill

   Football games don't go well with missionary work

   Don't leave important things like scriptures at the library

   Don't ride a bike with a flat tire

   Remember where you left your wallet

   Don't drink dirty water

I guess I learned a lot this week.

We did have a Zone conference this week which was amazingly spiritual as usual. And it is always a lot of fun to see other missionaries and meet with President and Sister Loveland.

I hope you all learned a lot this week too!

With Love,

Elder Shepherd

(Mom's note: I have no further details on any of the above mentioned "learning experiernces" but he says he is fine.)

Razorbacks

Hey Everyone, hope you are all doing well.

I am still chilling here in Fayetteville. We have had a very up and down week.

School started on Monday so we spent a lot of time on campus talking to people this week. Tuesday and Wednesday we had a booth set up and the student union building and had a lot of success talking to people. We actually had the whole zone come out on Wednesday and a few companionships on Tuesday. We ended up teaching over 100 lessons which was amazing. 

Then all of the not so good stuff happened. We had a student come to institute just looking to cause trouble. Just bring to prove everything wrong so we ended up taking him into the other room so he didn't ruin the class. We had a member of the Bishopric with us which was really nice, because this kid was really good at what he does. It was really just annoying to have to deal with someone whose only intent is to tear down what you believe. On Friday we had dinner with an investigator, one week before his baptismal date, and found out that he has a major issue that is keeping him from baptism. And he doesn't want to change. So he is pretty much off the radar. Our other investigator started smoking again and got a new job so we haven't seen him much. And everyone else we have met with felt to intimidated and pressured by my companion so they kinda dropped us.

So that's my week. Everyone here is getting ready to go nuts over football, missing out on that.

I did get free tacos today so that is really good :)

With Love,

10

Wow  Hard to believe that it has already been another month. I'm really having a blast here in Fayetteville it's an awesome place. 

This week has been pretty great. I'd have to say that the highlight of the week was Thursday. We had a good exchange set up and a bunch of people we were planning on seeing. But before noon everything had canceled. We were a bit down but we decided that we needed to go out and do something at least. We ended the day with 9 total lessons and got a new investigator named Tim. And last night we set a baptismal date with him for September 3rd. Really excited for him! Our recent convert Alyssa has been awesome with him, helping out at lessons and inviting him to activities. It is great to see ward members involved in the missionary work, and enjoying it.

Food this week was pretty slim, we had 2 dinners set up so we did a lot of unintentional fasting. But we made it work. On Saturday we went to Slim Chickens with a member from Angola. He is pretty cool, but the best part was that I got chicken and waffles. It was way good. On the plus side we have a dinner for every day this coming week.

In President Loveland's email this week he talked about President Uchtdorf's analogy of an eagle learning to fly where he said, " the thrill of soaring begins with the fear of falling." I think that in order to soar and have success we have to be willing to put ourselves in new and uncomfortable situations. When we stretch ourselves we have the opportunity to experience things that we never have before.

Well I hope you all have a great week.

August

Hi everybody  hope you are all doing well

we played Rugby this morning  and its hot out so I'm not really in a typing mood

But Everything is still going well here in Fayetteville.  Making good progress with our investigators.

It's hot so we are doing lots of walking and sweating.

The Church is true 

The Book of Mormon Is awesome, you should read it.

Invite your friends to church or activities it makes missionaries happy

Love you all :)

Hot

Well we have had a pretty great week here, besides the fact that its been the hottest is has been all year... and we have to walk everywhere. Like just 5 minutes outside and I am dripping with sweat. The humidity is just plain nasty. We also don't really eat much anymore. We'll have a meal maybe once every day or two. And surprisingly I'm starting to trim down a bit.

Well, enough complaining because we killed it this week. We hit a total of 57 lessons! We have really just been able to talk to everyone, and we have been using a whiteboard to teach the restoration.

On Saturday Elder Sokol and I went down to U of A campus and sat outside and played some hymns for an hour or so. He had his guitar and I had my trumpet. It was pretty fun, and we had a few people come up and talk to us.

Had a bit of a hard time with Alyssa who is a RC of about 4 months. Her mom committed suicide on Tuesday so we have really been working as emotional counselors all day everyday for her. She is really having a tough time with a lot of things right now.

On Wednesday we met Malachi. We were following up on a less active referral from some other Elders and ended up finding him instead. He was really excited to talk to us and said that he had been looking for a church. The next day he came to institute and yesterday he came to church. Both of which are awesome because he bikes everywhere. That's dedication right there.

Cade, our gay Theology master, made it to church as well this Sunday. He was really surprised at how different it was. Very humble. It was pretty cool because he came to church in his full cassock robes. He is an awesome guy though.

We have also been meeting with Anna. She works at Steak n Shake so we go see her there. Pretty good food and also fairly cheap. She is really fun though. Short Mexican girl.  She calls us her Mormon homies. haha

Well I think that is about it. We are about to go roller skating so that should be fun

love you all

 

19

Hey Everyone,

Just wanna start out by saying thank you to everyone that wished me a happy birthday 

The work here in the Fayetteville YSA is going great. This week we had a total of 8 new investigators and 20+ lessons. 

 I don't have a lot of time today so Ill try to make this quick. 

We had a lot of fun activities with the YSA this week and have met a lot of really cool members. We have a couple of RC's that we are working with right now. Our two main ones are Alyssa, who is a psychologist and super cool, and Shelby, who we are planning on going to the temple with pretty soon. We have a good time seeing them.

A few of the investigators that we are working with right now. 

Anna works at Steak n' Shake, which is really good, and has a few coworker friends that are members. She has been to church a few times and really likes what she sees.

Cade we just met this week. he was a name in the phone that we contacted and met up with. He is currently Eastern Orthodox and is majoring in Theology. We have had some awesome lessons with him and he has pretty much told us that he already knows that the church is true. His main hold up right now is that he is struggling with his sexuality. Not something I thought I would have to work with on my mission but he is a super cool kid.

One day this week I went on exchanges with Elder Nau in the Prairie Grove area. He is an awesome Elder and we had a great day. I gave him a couple of tips and advice and that day we taught 7 lessons, got 3 referrals, Set a baptism date with a PM family that we just met, and almost got plowed by a Semi.  It was a pretty exciting day and he is just an fun kid to be around.

Today we went on a hike to Devils Den with the zone  It was an OK hike but the caves were closed so that was kinda lame. But still fun.

Anyway, hope you all had a great week,

FayetteChill

Whats up Everybody?

I am now in Fayetteville Arkansas in the YSA ward (a congregation of Young Single Adults). We have had a pretty sweet first few days here. There have been a few baptisms in the last couple months so we have a bunch of Recent converts to work with and a few investigators that are doing really well. One thing that is not so great is the fact that the car for this area left when I came in so we have to cover the whole stake on foot. And it is pretty stinkin' hot out here! Just walking for 5 minutes and it feels like I jumped in the pool. But it's fun because we get to be out and see a lot of people. Our Church building is right next to U of A campus so that is also pretty fun. Another different thing is that we live with the Bishop of our ward. Which is kinda tough cuz we have a lot less space for our stuff. But they are super nice and good to be around. Well that's about all. I'm still trying to get my feet under me here but it is going to be a great 6 weeks.

Love you all,

  New address 

4th o' July

Hows it going?
We have had a pretty eventful last couple of days here in Grove.

Don't remember much about the rest of the week but this weekend was a blast. Sunday we got a call from Sister Loveland letting us know that both Elder Thomas and I are headed out for transfers. Giving us a little extra time to wrap everything up. SO we got to say good bye to everyone at church. They were all sad to see us go. The bishop had us stand up during sacrament and thanked us for all of our hard work. Feels good to be appreciated every once and a while :)

Then we went and visited an old couple that we love. Gonna miss them. Then we spent the evening BBQing with the Forsons, a LA family. They live in a super rich neighborhood - just a bunch of little summer lake houses with 3 stories and huge docks and just $$$$  So they had a big fireworks show there. Everyone brings there boats out to the cove (we didnt :( ) to watch the show. You could probably walk across the lake there are so many people. It was nuts. Yesterday we got to go out with the Zone to a BBQ at a members home. Had a lot of fun there and then go to go bowling after. Came back to Grove for a ward party and some fireworks. 

Sad to be leaving Grove but it will be exciting for some change.

"God is not a Long Distance Administrator"

Hey Everybody, We had a pretty full week here in Grove. We spent Monday in Bentonville and then stayed the night for the temple trip early Tuesday morning. It was a long day but we had a ton of fun. Got to go to the Kansas City Temple and then went to the Liberty Jail Visitors Center. Didn't get back to Bentonville until about 11 p.m. so it was a long day. We stayed the night again in Bentonville because we had district meeting Wednesday morning. I had to put it all together last minute but it went really well. President came and participated so it was a bit stressful at first but we had a great meeting. Thursday we were back in Grove. We had planning so that took most of the day. It was way hot all week though High 90s with a lot of humidity. Friday we saw a lot of people and had a really good day. Saturday we went to Thunder on Wolf Creek, they had more boat races and they were really fun to watch. And there was a lot of people there so we got some missionary work done. Last night we had a huge storm blow through. There was a ton of lightning and lots of rain. In about an hour the parking lot had about 5 inches of water. We had a good time running around in the rain and wading through little rivers on the side of the road.  I guess more good news - Padi Yang, an investigator from my first, area got baptized this week. Way excited for her. 

We were so busy this week but writing it all it doest seem that long. Transfers are coming up soon as well as my 9 month mark. Time is flying. And 4th of July is going to be awesome. There are a ton of Firework shows on the lake so I'm excited for that.

Hope you all have a great week.

At the other four corners

Gang signs?

Found mom a new car?

Boat races

It's Hot!

We had a really good week, it has just been super hot.

We open the door in the morning and get hit with the humidity and like 80 degrees at 6:00 am. 

Had a lot of the usual stuff this week but we also had the zone leaders come and blitz the area. We had a lot of fun and I got to go do a bunch of tracting. It was fun to get out and work hard and talk to a bunch of new people. On Wednesday we had a zone training meeting and I was asked to instruct for 15 min. I ended up going for about 35min. Everyone said it was really good though. Hopefully they all learned something. Saturday we had an appointment with a part-member family. we were supposed to do some service and then have a bbq. We ended up just chillin, playing catch and then had some BBQed chicken. Had a good time.  Saturday there were some drag boat races on the lake. Those were crazy to watch. Boats going 250 mph in a quater mile. Like one run cost about $10,000. Had a good time watching. Eh not sure what else to say. Hope everyone had a great week. And Happy Fathers Day.

Love and miss you all,

Zone Conf

Hey everybody, 
Things are going well for me.

This week was pretty full although we had a lot of Goose eggs on our numbers. Tuesday was a no pros. day. We did service all day which is really nice to not have to put on a suit in 90 degree weather. Wednesday we went to Bentonville for Exchanges with the Zone leaders. We had a lot of fun. We split up and then had a competition for how many lessons we could teach and BoM's passed out. My team won so we got free Braums from the other companionship. Had a blast. And that night we played Spikeball which is way fun. Thursday we had Zone Conferences and it was amazing. I love President and Sister Loveland. Their spirit is so strong and we learn so much. Friday we just did planning and had our first dinner of the week. Saturday and Sunday we were able to see a few people but that's about it.

We're getting pretty good at unplanned dinners. We only had 2 dinners this week so we had to be kinda sneaky. Doing service up until dinner time, stopping by for a lesson at dinner time, returning Tupperware at dinner time.  Good ways to get a free meal. 

Also this week I bought some hair clippers. And I have to say that both mine and Elder Thomas' hair cut look pretty sharp. Got a decent amount of compliments at Zone Conf. So I'm gonna add cutting hair to my list of skills that I have learned on my mission.

Well I think that is about it for me. We have a pretty intense game of beach volleyball planned for later today. And the weather here is ridiculous. Its either way hot and humid or is thunder and lightning. But its exciting at least.

Love and miss you all,

8 months!

I thought that today I would start off with a quote from our favorite Liquor store:

"People tell me to drink Less Whisky... I can't find that brand anywhere" (note - they don't go to said store, just pass by)

Well this week went pretty well. Started off slow but finished up very nicely.  Wednesday was the first district meeting of the transfer and it actually went pretty well. We played a little bit of spike ball after DM. It was really fun, but it was hot and I ended up splitting my suit pants pretty bad. Thursday we went on splits for the first time. It was pretty fun and we had a productive evening. Firday we had a few good hours of service and then that night I got a call from President. We talked about our day for a minute and then we talked about the lake and fishing for about 15 min. We had a good little chat. Then Saturday we had a big service project on a members property getting the girls camp ready. Had a lot of fun there. The Traveling assistants came and stayed the night and went to a few appointments with us. They both are really good missionaries so we were able to learn a lot from them. Our dinner Saturday was really late, so he just gave us a $100 bill for dinner and said to bring him back the change if there was any. So we went to Braums and spent 15 because we didn't have much time before we had to be in. Sunday went well and had a lot of good things happen.

That's about it for this week. We have Zone Conferences coming up this week which should be fun. 

Well, Love and miss you all and hope you're doing great,

Memorial Day

Hey Everyone,

Hope your having a great Memorial day. We had a pretty solid week here. The lake is getting pretty full now that it is summer time. This little town is getting pretty busy. We got in a lot of service this week and had a few good morning runs. We also had a few really good visits with a part member family. It just feels good to be out and working hard.  We had a dinner this week with a rich family. They just got back from a 4 month world cruise.  $$$$$$ dang we got a tour of their house/mansion and all of their expensive stuff. They have a bunch of collector edition games, Monopoly, Dominos... and a few others that have solid gold and silver pieces and super fancy wood boards and stands. Tons of expensive paintings and sculptures. Tons of money
 We also had dinner with our Ward Mission leader one day and he showed us how to make a fire with a hand drill and the bow drill. I got both of them to work which was pretty cool. He's quite the mountain man/ survivalist. Really awesome guy to work with.

Well I still love being a missionary and being here on the lake. (even though I can't have any fun with it, it is a great area.)

I think thats all for me

Love ya all,

Another Beautiful Monday

Hey everyone - I'm going to have to apologize for not getting an email out last week. We spent the day doing leather work making scripture cases (pictures soon to come) so I will try to give a brief overview of this week and last week. Last week was a really full week and we got a lot done. We saw a couple of new people and a few less actives that we hadn't been to in a while. On wednesday we had interviews with President and Sister Loveland and that was really good. I always love being around them; they are just awesome people. 

We had a few dinners with part member families and they went really well. One of them we had smoked brisket that was waay good. I also got to shoot a bow (pretty sure that's approved?)  It was a fun week and also one of our best for stats.

This week was probably even better. We had the most lessons since I have been here and just had some really good appointments. We started running with our ward mission leader every morning. We ran along the lake near the church a couple times about 2 miles and then the past couple days we have been running over Sailboat bridge which is almost 2 miles.  It is pretty fun to run across the lake and watch the sunrise. The only problem is the incline of the bridge, gets a good burn going. On Wednesday we had district meeting and then went to Wendy's for lunch. We had to bring the truck in to Firestone for maintenance. Seth was glad to see us again. haha. We were there with a few other missionaries and had a couple people come up and talk to us which was fun. Although it is kind of sad when the Firestone guys "say see you soon" when you leave. Thursday we got to go out with Stake members and we made a lot of good visits. On Sunday we had Ward conference so we got to hear from the Stake president and bishop. It was a good Sunday. In class we got called out to recite "My Mission Commission" and luckily we didn't mess up.

I am really enjoying the work here in this area and I also get to stay for another transfer! I always so happy even when I'm exhausted. I have definitely been able to experience the "living water" and it just fills me up. I love the Lord and the great work I am a part of.

Love and miss you all,