June 30, 2009

Hey family,
**** Note about his response about the news about his Tae Kwon Do students last belt test...
First of all: YAY FOR OLIVER, SABRINA, AND RICK!!! (I asume it's the brown belt Rick, as that's the only one I know who's not a black belt ;] ). Tell them a I said they're way awesome and congrats. :-) Our little Tae Kwon Do students are getting all growed up. :-) (Well, that sounds funny if you include Rick in that statement. . . lol) Bro. Saley is a 5th degree black belt?! No way! WOW! TELL HIM CONGRATS!!!

Now on to the weekly letter...

Anyway, my week was. . . . interesting. I'll start with the good stuff.
On Sunday I got to do the confirmation for Milton, as well as the Priesthood ordination for him. That was really neat. I was pretty well prepared for the confirmation-- I reviewed the prayer all week and what-not-- but then they asked Milton in Elders Quorum who he wanted to ordain him as a priest, and he pointed to me. So I had like 60 seconds to figure out how to do that! Thank you so much for giving me that card with all the different blessings on it, because it saved my life! lol. Brother Thompson came up to me after church, and it was funny. He said "That was a great blessing. Some people get carried away with stuff like 'we're so proud of you' and all that in the blessing; but not you! You were like we bless you with this, this, this, and this." lol. Anyway, Milton is really excited and he's doing great.
We've also been getting a less active to church. Missionaries have been working on getting this guy to church for years, but never with any luck. He kept telling us he was thinking about leaving the church. But we decided he justed needed a friend to talk to (he's in his 70's) so we go over a few times a week to just talk to him. And this past Sunday, and the Sunday before he came to church! And he really likes it a lot. He's totally changing. I don't want to sound like I'm bragging, 'cause truth be told I don't think he really likes me all that much (he likes Elder Turner better) but WOW! It's really neat.
Another guy came to church, which is really great. He's struggling to quit smoking, though. He's down to 7 cigerettes, but can't seem to go any lower. We talked to him for a while on Sunday and just brainstormed some ideas on how he can keep dropping down. We'll see how it goes. He's still one of the greatest guys I've ever taught, and he's doing great.
So, these other 2 girls, I think I told you about them last time. One is 14 and the other is 18 and they both have a baby under 6 months old. We fasted and prayed all week that all of them would come to church. We taught the girls about church, prayed they would come, talked to them more about church, prayed more, invited them to tour the church building, prayed some more. And they sent us a text Saturday morning: "We won't be able to make it today. Also, we don't want to see you again. So sorry." We were so confuised. We gave them a call and talked to them. They said she talked to her pastor and she told them to stop meeting with us. So they dropped us. I'm not sure you can really imagine the heart break. :-(
That same morning another investigater dropped us due to work conflicts. So, that was a real bummer. One of the worst things that's happened on my mission so far since Rick, if you can remember that far back.
But we found another great investigater who really wants to get baptized and we got several referrals for really solid people as well. I think Heavenly Father knows when you need a pick-me-up. :-) He seems pretty good at that.
Yesterday we also got into a horrible bash with someone. It was going okay until Elder Turner got frustrated. They the investigater got frustrated and wouldn't let us talk. Then I got frustrated that he wouldn't let us talk. So we walked out. Good times. . . .
Anyway, we had a great lesson with another investigater right after that, so our day ended on a really good note.
Again, the rule seems to be after every bad thing that happens, something good will happen. :-)
Oh, and the temp here has been a great +/- 111 degrees. And we get to walk around in it. I hope I get tranferred north!!! lol. We drink tons of water and take breaks as needed, so don't worry. :-)
We've discovered here that all of us Elders like to play the Magic: the Gathering. You probably don't remember what that is, but it's that trading card game that Nathan got me into many moons ago. Everyone bought a deck and we've been playing on P-Days.
Love you and hope your week is going good,
--Jason

June 23. 2009

Hello family,
I'll start out with some breaking news. This is huge! Are you sitting down (just in case)?
President Bassett. . . . he . . . CHANGED OUR P-DAY!!! Woah! Yeah, I know what your thinking, "that's the craziest thing I've heard of sinced sliced bread." But yes, P-day will no longer be on Mondays in the AZ Mesa Mission. Now it's on (drum roll) . . . Tuesdays. :-) So yeah, crazy stuff. Really, it's not that big of a deal, but I thought I'd blow it way out of proportion for you. ;-)
President Bassett mentioned that in Zone conference like "Oh yeah, and by the way, effective this week, P-Days are on Tuesdays." It shocked us a lot, but it makes more sense to have our P-Day on Tuesday rather than on Monday.
Oh, and I'm glad to hear that Pres. Bassett called for Father's day! He's the greatest mission president ever, I'm pretty sure.

Some good stuff happened this week. :-)
So, we had another baptism this week! Milten was baptized this past Sunday, which was great. Our ward mission leader, did the baptism, and next Sunday I'll be doing the confirmation. So, obviously I'm excited about that. He's doing really good and seems to like church a lot.
James is doing good. We have a baptismal date set roughly for the 12th of July for him. It's going to be tough for him to get there-- he is struggling to quit smoking and to learn the doctrine-- but he's doing really good. Again, he's a super nice guy and really wants to learn about his Heavenly Father. We taught him how to pray a while back, and now he prays better than we do. He's just great, that's all I can say.
We found two new investigaters this week, as well. One is 14 and the other is 18, and they both have a baby. They were surprisingly tough to teach. You wouldn't think teenagers would have that many questions, but they did. It was really interesting. They didn't really seem to agree with what we were talking about, and they refused our invitation to pray about the Book of Mormon. But we talked a bit more, bore our testimonies (our Ward Mission Leader was with us, and he did a really great job) and they accepted and told us to come back two days later. We did, and they were a lot more open. They read what we assigned them and had prayed about it and seem to like it. It's still a long road (they really don't seem to like the idea of baptism) but they're great. Probably amoung our better investigaters, actually.
So the work is still moving foreward. Our ward mission leader is always smiling ear to ear. He thinks this is THE greatest thing on earth. We report our numbers to him on Sunday nights and he gets even more excited.
The work is really picking up in the central ward. :-) I'm just glad that I can help it a long a little bit.
We dropped a guy that just wanted to bash with us. That's always rough. But we're continuing to find the good investigaters who want to "come unto Christ, and be prefected in Him" (See Matthew 5:48 and Moroni 10:32-33 in your spare time.) Hopefully that will get you kind of caught up for the week.
Ha ha ha. You should find a hobby Kaydee. Like giving away copies of the Book of Mormon. :-) That keeps me busy.

Love you all,
Jason



Note to Watts family: WOW! Nathan's a ZL already, huh? That's great! Tell his parents to tell him congrat's for me. That's pretty awesome. He must be working hard. :-) Nathan's a year out... He's going down hill now!

June 15, 2009

Once again a short letter this week as time was spent chatting with his dad getting caught up on the health issues. Infact Jason was the first one to hear about the
CT reports as no one was around when the doctor came in to talk to Rick. To start with.... Jason's response to the girls of why he got the news first..

lol. It's cause I'm dad's favorite missionary. :-)

Now on to his letter.....
1st he answers my questions....


First, about the whole MTC thing. . . .Actually, it's kind of a funny thing. The MTC was in "lockdown" for a while, I guess. The new greenies that should have come into the mission two weeks ago didn't come in because they are worried about the swine flue, I guess. So, the missionaries here that president Bassett assigned to train the new missionaries coming in are currently companion-less. Some have been put in trios, others are companions with members, etc. The new missionaries should be here tomorrow, I think, so that will put things back to normal. Like you said, they still are letting people INTO the MTC, but they have to get dropped off at the door.

Are there 4 of you in the apartment now or who had to move out? Elder Rutledge and Voigtlaender moved into another (better!) appartment. President Bassett doesn't like putting missionaries together. They don't work as hard. :-)

Who got the car, or did they bring in another? We both have cars. Oh, and we name our cars. My car in Scottsdale I named Faith, my first car in Phoenix I name Hope, and then they replaced it with another that I've named Charity. lol. But I don't know what to name the next one, 'cause "love" is a dumb name, lol.

How is the ward liking the split? I don't know about the bishop, but our ward mission leader loves it! lol. He's super excited about the work that's going on here.

Is your Ward mission leader going crazy yet? See above, lol.

Did you get my package from Mexico (or KD's package actually, she's the one who picked the stuff out)? Yes, as a matter of fact my wonderful family sent me another really awesome package! It's pretty amazing! Thank you so much! I keep telling everyone about how much my family loves me. Don't know if it's on purpose or not, but I've gotten at least one package a month since I left. Yeah, my family is definately the best. Ever. Period. :-D

Did you just love the MC Donalds Ketchup... Was any of it any good? It tastes okay. I put it on a burrito. :-) Not quite the same as on fries, I'm sure, but it's good. :-)

Are you dying of heat exhuast yet? Nope. It got up to 111 degress (no, not a type, lol.) but then it cooled off. It's been in the upper 90's for almost two weeks.

How are the investagators? Great! I'll tell you about one later!!!

So dad's still in there, huh? Glad things are still going well, though. It's pretty awesome how that stuff works out when God's involved. :-D And, yeah, Tell Kellie to wait her turn! Good gravy!

So we got a referral for a guy this past week. We stopped by, knocked on his door, and were very confuised when we saw who it was. We had seen him in church several times before, and we just assumed that he was a member. He always would come and sit in the front row all by himself. Turns out, he's not a member but wants to join the church. To say that he is a nice guy would be an understatement. Elder Cole, our District Leader, came with me on exchanges and we went by and talked to him for a while, and he opened up and told us his story. It turns out that he was shot in the face years ago and it caused him to go almost completely blind. It also affected him mentally and psycologically. He doesn't really like to be around people because he gets scared, but he really loves coming to church. Long story short, as we were leaving, Elder Cole turned to me and said "Wow. I feel like giving him a hug." lol. He is awesome. I haven't gotten attached to an investigater in a while, but he just might do it. :-) Teaching him has gone kind of slow. He has a lot of questions and struggles to understand everything, so we teach him one principle at a time, rather than lesson by lesson. We go by every day, and so far he's catching on well, and is doing great.

The area is still moving along, and we had another great week as far as lessons go. Still trying to get people to church, though. That's the struggle. :-( But we'll get it figured out. For now I can't complain, we're finding a lot of work to do, so that's great.
So that's my quick summary of the week.
Love you all,
Jason

June 8, 2009

Most of Elder Mace's letter this week was about his dad, but here are other parts for us to share...

The dog now? Hmmm. Most families just have one at a time, you know. lol. Tell Keesha to wait until it's her turn. :-P Anyway, the mission president called me to give me an update, I assume right after you called him. Thank you by the way for keeping me in the loop. :-)

So, our area got split in half, right? We counted up the investigaters and got our records split up and what-not. Well, it turned out that Elder Turner and I had six investigaters, and Elder Rutledge and Voigtlaender (I spelled it wrong last week) had at least twice as many. So we've been doing a lot of finding this week. But I think the Lord knows when we don't have enough to do, because the Spanish elders called us and said they haven't been giving us enough referrals lately, so they're going to get us some more. And they have been! We've been getting an average of three a day from them, in addition to the text-messaged referrals that we get from the referrals center at the MTC in Provo, Utah. Plus we've been tracting and finding some people on our own. It's been pretty neat. Despite out lack of investigaters, we taught almost the same number of lessons this week as we did all of last transfer. Wow!
Given the progress, our new goal is to get a North, South, East and West area out of the Central Ward, lol. So yeah, it's been a great week. Elder Turner and I are getting along really well and working hard, and so far everything's been going really good. No complaints here.... But it's been great. Go figure. :-)
This week I started going through what I am calling a mid-mission-life crisis. I'm going through computer and Tae Kwon Do withdraws all over again! lol. Elder Turners been making fun of me. :-P
We've been teaching Milten for a while, and he should be getting baptized on the 21 of June. We showed him the family history websites the church has, and he thought it was the greatest thing ever. We finally told him we had to leave after a while. He practically forgot we were there, he was just going to town with it. :-D
Anyway, that's about it for this week. Mostly just finding new people to teach.
Love Y'all,
Jason

June 1, 2009

(In response to hearing about Dad being in the hospital)

Mom,
So, now it's dad's turn, huh? For a few minutes I thought it would be the swine flue from going to Cancun-- Which would have given you another free trip if I remember your last email right. :-) Tell dad he got the wrong thing. Just kidding. Really, though, glad to hear he's doing a bit better. And thanks for keeping me posted. Hopefully they can take care of it soon. I asume he's had a blessing and all of that good stuff. I'll keep him in my prayers as well.

This is big. This is very big. Not really, but yeah. I know you all keep losing sleep over this, so I'll get right to it. OUR AREA IS BEING SPLIT. YAY! In light of our three baptisms, many investigaters, use of a bizillion miles on our car (yes, it's a number), and the fact that we can't really seem to do it all, our area has been cut in half. The Assistants to the President called us Friday afternoon and told us that the president wanted to split the area, and asked how we thought it could be best done. So we talked for a while, gave our input, and they talked with President Bassett more about it. Oddly enough, we don't know the boundry yet. What we do know is that Elder Turner and I are going to be covering the West Side (which has the richest and poorest parts of the area) and Elder Rutledge will be with Elder Voightlander on the east side (V-oy-t--Lander. Good luck saying it.). Currently, the East side is where more of the work is, but the West side is where all our investigaters with a baptismal date are. (We have three with a date right now.)

Jorge and the Tenuda's are also on the East side, so we have to say our good-bye's to them.
It's funny, because the mission president told us he was not going to split the area, even though he knew there was a lot of work going on. He didn't want to overwhelm the ward-- which consists of mostly less-active members. And then he split it. lol. So that's pretty exciting. We split an area! YAY! (It's always been Elder Rutledge's dream to split an area.) So once again, YAY! If you can't tell, I'm excited. It will be nice to focus on our investigaters more. But scarry that we will have less work to do. That means we'll have to actually FIND people again. Wooh! :-) I've been really spoiled this last transfer. Our street contacts were like "Hey, can we come by to teach you if we have time?" lol. Now we can actually LOOK for people. The Tenuda's were confirmed yesterday, which was great.
Theophile wants to go out and teach with us all day everyday. lol. He really wants to be a Sr. missionary later on in life. We told him his wife had to go with him, and he said that would be okay. :-)
Oh, and we're going to Jorge's house for dinner tonight. He's doing great as well. I would send you pictures of them all, but these computers won't let me do anything with pictures. . . Maybe later on. . . .
So anyway, all is going well.
I've gotta go to.
Talk to you all next week.
Love,
Jason