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

May 26, 2009

Yay! You're back in the states! Congratulations! You probably wouldn't have been able to do that had you gone into Canada. :-P
Nope, my P-Day was yesterday, but I had to Email today, 'cause the libraries were all closed yesterday.

I bet the ruins were awesome. I can't get the pics to open-- they're blocked on these computers. I'll have to wait to open them. But it does sound like a fun trip. Like Disney Land during the school year ;-)
Tell Kaydee she'll never pass up my amazing tan, no matter how hard she tries. lol.
But the "mexican minute" is classic.

So, Theophile and Suzanne were baptized on Sunday, and Jorge was confirmed and given the Aaronic Priesthood. Theophile is from Togo, Africa, and Suzanne is from the neighboring country of Ghana (spelling?). Theophile was looking for a church, and he went to a few different churches and read things on different religeons, but couldn't find a the right one. Then one day he showed up to the Gateway Ward during their sacrement meeting. The missionaries (Elder Ahern and Elder Edmonds) talked to them and started teaching them. After a while, they found out that they actually lived outside of their area, so they referred them to us. Theophile's wife, Suzanne, only speaks French, so that was a tough challange. Theophile had to translate for her, and we had to find a missionary who speaks French to help with the baptismal interview. (We had to coordinate a date/time with our District leader, the interpreter, a ride for the Tenuda's, and reserve a room at the Visiters Center where we could all meet for the interview.) But we got through it all and they got baptized! We took Theophile with us to teach and investigater last night-- he's really excited to get out and teach people. We made the mistake of showing him "Preach My Gospel" and now he REALLY wants one. lol. So we've got to find him one, now. He's really awesome.
Really, all converts are amazing and want to help out like crazy. :-) (See Mosiah 28:3-4) As of now there are no baptisms coming up, but we're working on it. There is still tons of work going on here, so we're doing our best to keep up with it.
President Bassett said he could split the area to get the work moving faster, but the ward wouldn't be able to handle it, so he's not going to. The reason he gave us three, he said, was because that was the next best thing. We could get more done without overwhelming the Bishop and the ward.
A few people you might be hearing more about in the future: William, we've been teaching for a while. He loves the church, but doesn't want to get baptized until he knows for sure that it's true. So we're trying to help him get an answer to his prayers.
Milten, who finally came out to church not this past Sunday but the Sunday before. He said he hadn't ever come to church before because he didn't think he'd like it. But, as it turns out, he loved it. He called this past Sunday to say sorry that he didn't come--his back was hurting. He also seems to really like the church.
And there are a few brand new investigaters that are really great, as well. I'm sure you'll be hearing more on them soon. :-)
Anyway, this is week six of the transefer, which means transefer news come in on Saturday. . . . Dun dun dun! I don't expect to be going anywhere, but the whole trio thing makes it hard to guess what will happen.
Anyway, that's about all from Pheonix.
How are all of you recovering from vacation?
love you,
--Jason

May 18, 2009

How goes life?
Everything here has been going great. Two people got baptized this week. The first was Jorge! I've got some pics I'll send another time, if this computer lets me. Jorge is really excited, and will get confirmed next week. What was really neat was that some of our investigaters went to that baptismal service and started asking questions like "how many times do I need to go to church before I get baptized?" etc. The spirit is really strong at baptismal services, and people can't help but feel the need to follow Christ's example.
Okay, so who's the other one, you ask? Well, it was none other than EMAD!!! Yeah, he finally got out of the hospital, finished up lessons with some elders in north Mesa, and got baptized on Saturday. I tried REALLY, REALLY, REALLY hard to get there, but I didn't make it :-( I was really, really, really unhappy about that, but at least he got baptized. He's an awesome guy. :-) Elder Christensen went and is supposed to send me some pictures. I'll foreward them to you as soon as I get them.
And work continues to go foreward. The one family will hopefully be baptized this coming Sunday, the same day that Jorge will be confirmed a member of the church. Needless to say, we're excited about that. It will probably just be the husband and wife getting baptised, as their daughter isn't sure that it's what she wants to do right now. The tough thing is, the wife only speak french, so the interview will be hard. But we should have that worked out-- A sister missionary from Canada speaks French, and a sister in the ward does as well. :-D
I think that's about all that's going on this week. Not too much else worth mentioning. Well, we helped an investigater move on Saturday, and he was getting rid of a couch, so we gave it to another investigater who needed a couch, and they both came to church Sunday, so we were like "hey, here's the guy who gave you his couch." That was fun :-) lol. The guy we helped move-- he actually moved right next door to us in the appartment complex. :-) He's a really neat guy, too.
Ah, well, I guess there all great! I say that about everyone. :-)
Yeah, it's getting pretty hot. "But at least it's a dry heat." I hate when people say that, lol.
I got Kassie's package, BTW, and Elders Turner and Rutledge were jealous. :-p It was great. Thank you!!!
Bye everyone!
Have fun on your trip and be safe!
Love you all,
--Jason

May 7, 2009

Jason only had 20 minutes on the computer today, and alot of emails from family to read. So his letter is very short this week. But we get to talk to him on Sunday for Mother's day!!! His letter follows....

Had to take a P-day on a Thursday today, 'cause of "training blitz"'s which the mission does once a year. It's a big mission wide thing where we go on exchanges with people to help each other get better. We'll be doing it again next week, so my P-Day will probably be on a Wed. next week.
So I learned something new this week, much like Kellie and Alex in Cub Scouts (ha ha ha) and that is this: I don't last a week and a half without a P-Day very well. . . Man alive! In missionary time it's like 10 years! Don't get me wrong, I love teaching (especially here where it's busy) but you do get tired after a while.

Anyway, glad Kellie's doing okay. Is the pain going away? Hopefully?
BTW: Kaydee, no Phoenix isn't pretty! It's like downtown Houston, lol.

Anyways, we had training blitz's this week, and another elder came with us on Mon. and Tue. to critic us (yeah, there were FOUR of us going to lessons! I think we scared some people), and President Bassett and the Zone Leaders and the Assistants all taught us how to do better. Next week me and my comp's are going with some other missionaries, so P-Day will likely be on a Wed. One of our investigaters, called us and said he just couldn't wait until the 24th to get baptized, so we moved it to the 17th of may! That's one week from Sunday. If all goes well, we should be having a few baptisms over the next few weeks. Keep your fingers crossed :-)
Phone calls will be in the afternoon, it looks like. I'll probably be calling around 2:00pm AZ time. Other than that, not a whole lot is going on. :-)
Love you all,
And I'll talk to you on Sunday!
Jason

April 27, 2009

Mom's note... Finally a long informative letter. I sent him a list of questions so he would give us some information on his new area. Plus we got a good sized email from him! Computers in Phoenix must be better than Mesa!)

Hey! QUESTIONS:
1) How is your new area??? Interesting. Read on for more. But yeah, interesting.
2) How are your Comps??? Also interesting. Again, read on.
3) Are you in a bike area or car??? It's a big area so we have a car.
4) How long have your comps been out??? Elder Rutledge had been out for a year, and elder Turner's been out for seven weeks now.
5) Where are they from??? Utah and California
6) What is the reason for 3 of you??? Er, honestly I'm not entirely sure. I would guess several reasons. One, there is a LOT of work going on in our area. Everyone we talk to is willing to listen to us, it seems. So having three of us makes it a lot easier (for example, we can go into a single ladies house without having to spend time finding another guy to go with us)
7) Is it a good area or bad??? All a matter of perspective. :-) It's a more run-down area, you could say. Not like a scary run down, but run down.
8) Like a Seabrook or downtown Houston??? Like downtown Houston.
9) How many wards do you have this time??? Just one: Centrol Ward in the Phoenix East stake.
10) Do you live with members??? Nope. We live in an appartment.
11) How is the teaching pool there??? Big. See above q's.
12) Any baptisms scheduled??? Several, but I don't know the people very well yet. The Zone set a goal to baptize 30 people this transfer, so it should be good. :-)
13) Do members feed you there??? yes. Around 4-5 times a week.

How's it going?
You might want to try putting a stop to the flooding-- it doesn't really sound like much fun. Anyway, it sounds like things are going pretty good, though.
So, I'm in central Phoenix! What a crazy change it is, too. Being in a trio is neat, though. It keeps things more fun. When a disagreement comes up, there's always someone to crack a joke and keep things light-hearted. So far I really like it. It may be hard to go back to just one companion, 'cause if the two of you don't get along, your stuck. :-P
The area is interesting. I went from covering a few nice neighborhoods to a huge chunk of downtown phoenix. Talk about culture shock. Wow. The good news is that everyone here seems interested. We went tracting last night and every door said we could come back. What?! In Scottsdale you tract for 2 hours and MAYBE you'll find one or two people. lol. I guess people here are more humble and understand they need Christ more in their lives.
It's a big adjustment for me though. But I just keep doing what I'm suppose to be doing and hope it all works out. The problem is that's probably why I'm still Sr. Companion. . . lol.
I like Elder Rutledge a lot. He's a good guy. (He says "way sweet" a lot, lol.) Elder Turner is also great.
Anyway, things are going good. No really great stories, but we're teaching lots of lessons, so it's great!
Love you all,
Jason
Oh! BTW: Only one person in my MTC district hasn't trained, as of this current transfer! Thus proving my MTC district was amazing!I don't get to see my MTC district very much. They're scattered all over the place. I only see a few of them every once in a while. But they're all doing good as far as I've heard.
Oh, dad, this is SUPER IMPORTANT! Listen closely: I'm making chicken wings tonight for my comps. :-) I'll have to take some pics for you. :-D
I'm about out of time. I'll talk to you all later.
Love you!
--Jason