September 29, 2009

Hey family!
What's happening?
I guess the top story is Kellie's baby moved, 'cause everyone talked about that. :-) Yay! And. . . . Happy anniversary to Kellie and Alex.

Mom: All of my stuff is holding up just fine, so I think I'm still set for now. My shoes are still awesome (:-D), my shirts are still white (or white enough), and nothing is broken yet. And, I haven't gained a single stinking pound, so everything still fits as well. :-( Everyone else in the mission has been gaining weight-- I'm the only one that doesn't seem to be. Oh well.
Not too much happened this week in the way of exciting news. We managed to street contact an astounding 175 people this week, which is pretty darn good. It's not a crazy number, but it's good. We also went on exchanges with Elder Woolf this week, who is one of the assistants to the president. That was pretty fun as well. We got to get some feed back on what we can be doing better, which is always really nice.
I also went on exchanges with some other Elders in the zone, which went pretty good. Both of them are pretty young in the field, so they have some things to work on as far as teaching and what not (each of their lessons consist of non-stop analogies, lol), but over all they're doing really good. And they took my advice pretty well. :-) That's Always a plus.
Our Zone also had it's highest weekly numbers over all since. . . I don't even know how long. So that was REALLY exciting. We're doing really great as a mission and as a zone. We're moving right along. hopefully this keeps up. I don't see any reason why it shouldn't, either.
Elder Page and I went through our zone's records and found out what the best the zone has ever done on specific things (like street contacts, lessons with a member present, etc.) and we are going to talk to our zone tomorrow about smashing all the records this upcoming transfer. There is no better time than now to work harder and get more done.
Heavenly Father is really blessing us with a lot of people who are open and really willing to listen to what He wants for them. Even in areas where there isn't much work going on, missionaries are still being led to people who need Christ more in their life. We're seeing miracles.
We have two baptisms set for the 10th of October, one of them being super solid, the other so-so. I think I told you about Megan already, right? She's the super solid one. It's been really neat to teach her and see her and Cameron grow in their desire to have the spirit more in their lives. Cameron now even has a calling in the church-- working with the priests as the venture scout leader. :-) He's waaaayyy excited about that, 'cause he loves camping. And Megan is jealous 'cause she does too. lol. Anyway, things are going great.
Oh, and we hiked up the Superstition Mountains this morning. I don't know how I forgot that. It was a lot of fun. It was suppose to be a Zone activity, but only about half the zone was there. :-( But in any case, it was a lot of fun. A few of the missionaries went all the way to the top, but most of us went about half way and just took pictures and hung out. It was fun.
Anyway, keep sharing the gospel. I'm super excited about it.

Rhett: Yeah, that doesn't sound like too much fun. Oh well. Hopefully he gets healed up again soon.
I gotta go, my companions are wanting to leave. I'll catch you all next week though WITH TRANSFER NEWS. :-D Yup, it's already that time again.
Love you all,
Jason

September 22, 2009

Hello family,
Glad to hear everyone is in one piece. :-)
The soccar game sounds like it was a lot of fun.
It's been an interesting week. Elder Page and I went on exchanges with some missionaries. Elder Page went with a district leader and his companion, and I went with some other missionaries who are struggling to find new investigaters. Elder Page's exchange went really well. The missionaries he went with are doing amazing. Mine, not so much. They have a serious lack of faith in finding, and they wouldn't listen to any of my advice. When I tried to give feed back, they got mad. Do you have any suggestions for dealing with that?
We still are going on a few more exchanges before the transfer is up.
In any case, the zone is doing well. We had a Zone Developement Meeting, and we tried our best to inspire the zone to work harder. We have a lot of great missionaries in the zone, so hopefully that will get them to push just a little bit harder. I really think Elder Page and I did a good job with it. :-)
Elder Stoker is now with us in a threesome. He'll be with us for these last two weeks of his mission (not really sure why). He's a good guy, and we got some 39 street contacts in the half day that we worked. Not too bad, since the "Standard of Excellance" is 20 per day. ;-)
So, what missionary work are you doing now-a-days? Might a offer a suggestion? General conferrence is coming up soon. You should invite someone to watch it, preferably with you. :-) No one will get offended or stop being your friend if you do, I promise. ;-) Just invite them-- it doesn't even matter if they say yes. There are a lot of prepared people that just need a simple invitation. Plus, you've got to be doing a lot of missionary work so when I get home you can get me to keep doing missionary work. :-D
I love you all, and hope you have a great week.
Jason

September 15, 2009

Jason sent pictures today from his baptisms in Phoenix and Apache Junction. The one below is of new members Tracy & Lakota, His companion Elder Gomez and Bishop. This was (I believe, Jason's 1st time actually baptizing). Enjoy the other pictures on the side as well....



Hey family!
Let's try this whole emailing thing agian, huh? Hopefully this time it actually works.
Well, first of all, I'm sending some pictures of the baptisms that I've had since I last sent pictures to you. Those were all of our baptisms from Phoenix in the short time that I was there. I'll send the ones from here in Apache Junction soon.

Went to the temple today, and then did some other stuff. . .
Aaron's baptisms went very well this week. It was really great to finally see him get baptized. He's a good guy, and I'm excited that he took this step. His parents were not at the baptism, as far as I know, but he had a lot of friends there to support him. He really has a strong testimony and everyone seems to be impressed by enthusiasm for the gospel. :-)
Megan is doing really well preparing for her upcoming baptism on the 24th of September. We taught her the Word of Wisdom, and she said she drinks ice coffee. (It was funny, when we read through D&C 89, she asked if Iced Coffee is okay, because it's not a hot drink). When we told her that all coffee is against the word of wisdom, and asked her if she would give it up, she agreed without any hesitation. She really has a strong desire to get baptized. I don't know if she understands why, but she can feel that it is right. The week before (when the Email wasn't working) Elder Page told her that Satan would try to stop her from getting baptized, and she and her husband broke down a little bit. They explained that they had been going through a lot-- especially a lot of stress-- with the upcoming baptism, and they didn't know why. But when we explained it to them, they felt releived that it was normal and would get better.
Emad actually lives in our area here in AJ. He always did. When his wife and he seperated, he was living temperarily with a freind in my area in Mesa. I didn't realize that THIS is where he lives, so that was a really neat surprise. Unfortunately he is smoking 3 packs a day again, so we'll need to work on that some more, but he'll get right back on track and everything should go well. He was two teenage kids that we got to meet as well.
Our Zone is also continuing to pick up the pace. The number of street contacts that we are getting is going way up, so we're still pleased with the results. We've selected the things we want to discuss as a zone in Zone Developement Meeting next week, so hopefully the things we talk about and work on will excelerate things even more.
I have no idea what else I am leaving out, but that's pretty much the highlights of what's going on.
Oh, the Police thing with Joe was pretty good. But you gotta keep going. If you let up now, he's going to think he won!
Anyway, all is going well.

Love you all,
Jason

Then the girls started fighting over who was the favorite sister.... so this was kinda funny.....

I don't have a FAVORITE sister. . . .
Unless they send me a lengthy email during the week. ;-)

Here, I have an Idea.
Read only the part that is addressed to you, and we'll all be happy.
Kassie: Your my favorite sister
Kellie: Your my faverite sister
Kaydee: Your my favorite sister
Dora: your my hero :-P

September 8, 2009

I HATE THIS STINKING EMAIL SERVICE!!!! It just erased my weekly email without sending it. And now I don't have time to send another one!!!!!!!! it logged me out and erased it before I could get the darn thing sent. It's no where now. :-(
I hate this stinking email. :-(
The librarians may not be happy if I destroy one of their computers. . . . But I might do it anyway!
DARN IT!!!

Okay, short summary, cause this email stinks really bad: Aaron is getting baptized this week. He found a job and his parents decided to un-ground him. Yay!
We ran into Emad. He lives in our area now. He's gone a bit less active and has started smoking again, so we're helping him get back on track.
Megan was in church sunday, and really liked it.
Zone conferrence was yesterday, and it was good. Elder Page and I gave a training on calandering with baptismal dates.
Happy Birthday Kellie and Kassie. (Sorry mom, I was suppose to send you a card for your birthday, but I wasn't able to).

Love you all,
Jason
P.S. Mom, about College, I was planning on staying out the full time and starting the next semester after that, unless that is a problem.

September 1, 2009

Hey family,
The big news for this upcoming week:Thursday marks ONE YEAR of me being out. Wooh! I feel like I should still be in the MTC. And at the same time I feel like the MTC was forever ago. Crazy how time just flies by, isn't it?
So things are going pretty good here. We had a really neat day yesterday, all kinds of good stuff happened. Or cars' battery hasn't been doing too good lately-- sometimes we had trouble starting the car over the weekend. So, yesterday we had a Zone Leader Council meeting that required us to go to the mission office. We talked to the vehicle coordinater while we were there. He told us to go to Big-O tires to get a new battery, so we did. They looked at the car and told us we had a bad alternater. :-( We called the Vehicle Coordinater again, and he told us to meet him with the car at the dealership. We had to jump start the car to get it there. We got a ride home and had to walk the rest of the night. . . . It was really windy . . . . and it rained. :-( Oh well. Good times.)
We found a LOT of new people to teach last week, and we set a bunch of baptismal dates. I guess Heavenly Father thought he'd bless Elder Page or something, cause we had a crazy good week. :-)
For example, we got a referral for a guy this week (Referrals in Apache Junction are very rare, so that was huge!). We went by and contacted it, and we found out that the guy was a less active member who's friend invited him to come back to church. He went to another ward with his wife, and they both really enjoyed it. He wants to come back, and his wife wants to get baptized. Wow! We taught them twice, and it went extremely well. The spirit was really strong and they were really receptive and open. It was really great.
Another guy we found in a park when one of our appointments fell through. We talked to him, mentioned baptism, and he said he's never been baptized before and he'd like to be. :-)
And we found a few more decent investigaters as well. Right now we have a great teaching pool set up for our area. In fact, it's motivation to drop people who aren't progressing, because we don't really have much time. (On a sad note, I think we're dropping someone tonight. I REALLY hate dropping people. But sometimes you have to. :-[)
Our zone didn't really kick off the transfer well-- numbers were kinda low-- but hopefully things will pick up.
I gotta go. We have to pick up our car, and our Vehicle coordinater just called and is mad that we're not there. Even though we didn't know we were suppose to be there right now. :-P oh well.
Love you all,
Elder Mace

August 25, 2009

TRANSFER NEWS!

Hey Family,
Yes, another six weeks have come to a close, and transfers have come and gone. What happened you ask? Are Elder Gomez and I still companions? Nope. . . :-( Elder Gomez got transferred to be a Zone Leader in Scottsdale, with the rich people. :-D So now I'm Jr. Zone Leader to Elder Page. I've only known him for less than two hours now, but he seems like a really good guy. I'm excited to work with him.
It should be another really good transfer. Our zone did really good as far as baptisms go. The zone has been getting a consistant 6 baptisms per transfer (6 weeks). Last transfer, we got 17! Almost three times that number. And this transfer we're looking good. We still have a lot of dates set up, so that's exciting.
We took Donaldo to the Visitor Center last night to watch the Joseph Smith movie. (It was probably the 20th time I've seen that movie. . . . It's really good though.) If you don't remember who Donaldo is, it's Roxanne's dad. She was baptized a while back, the mom is also a member. We're just trying to get Donaldo baptized. We're not really sure what's going on there. . . Right now we're just trying to help him feel the spirit and gain a stronger testimony.
We found several new investigaters, as well. And all of them seem really solid, so that's exciting.
Sunday we had an appointment fall through, so as we were walking back I saw a guy in the park. I walked over and talked to him, and we ended up teaching him about the restoration right there in the park. His name is Jack.
Then, yesterday we taught a guy named Jesse. His grandma is a less active member, and I don't think his mom is a member. He's a really cool guy, and we had a great conversation with him. He wants us to help him quit smoking-- we happen to be experts at that. Not really, but we try.
And finally, last night a couple had us over for dinner and then a lesson. That went really well, too.
This next transfer should be really good. No baptisms coming up until September 12, because all of the baptisms are done on a stake level. So, the next stake baptism isn't until then, so our investigaters can't get baptized 'till then either. But it makes it a really spiritual experience, 'cause the stake does a really good job. One of our investigaters wouldn't come to church, but we got her to go to the last baptism. She came and liked it so much, she was in church the next morning. :-)
Not too much more happened this week.

How's yours been?
How's the new car? YAY! I have no idea how to drive it, but alright. I'll learn :-)

As for baby names.... I like Jason Jr. for the record. how about Jason XIV (That's roman for 14th, lol). That would be a really cool signiture.
I've got to get going. Love you and catch you next week.

Love,
Jason

August 18, 2009

Hey Family!
First off: YAY! Dad is home. Congratulations dad! How are you feeling? What have you been doing to make up for lost time in the hospital? President Bassett called to give me the update, but I'll tell you about that later, 'cause that's a bit of a story right there, lol.
Secondly, I am impressed with the latest Joe torturing attempts. They sound like their doing alright. Bishop Duke, in one of my wards, turned out to be a black belt of 20 something years and teaches martial arts as his actual income. You can tell Joe he's a ninja who trained Bruce Lee back in the day and that he's helping me develop my technique more, lol. Anyway, keep up the good effort, lol. :-P

Thirdly, Kaydee's taking Guitar! Are you using my guitar, Kassie's, or are you getting a new one? BTW, can you tune my guitar, if you haven't been doing that. The neck is probably way bent a little now if no one's been tuning it. :-(
Anyway, Keifer is awesome. He's the coolest music teacher at COM ever. Period. End of story.

Now onto my week.
Zone developement meeting went well. Everything worked out alright. But a lot of the trainings went over, so I spent more of it worrying about time than learning, it seemed like. But it all worked out and we still managed to end on time without cutting anything out. :-)
And our zone's numbers are continuing to go up, so that's great.
Elder Gomez and I woke up Saturday morning we had two baptismal dates set for this coming Saturday (I think I mentioned that last week), and we had both of the baptismal interviews set up for that day.
An 18 year old, had his in the morning. It all went well. He passed the interview, and was really excited to get baptized, and so were we!
Then, the other interview. He is 50 years old, came to the church and told us he was still smoking. :-O Needless to say, he didn't make it passed the interview. He was doing really well, but some current situations caused him to start smoking again, so the blessings of being baptized by someone who has priesthood authority will have to wait a little bit longer. We reset his date for mid September.
Then, later that night, we got a phone call from the 18 year old's girl friend. . . . He lost his job, and so his parents got mad and grounded him. So now he can't come to church for a while, and he can't get baptized for a while either.
:-( So we had two, now we have none.
But the rest of the zone will be baptizing seven or eight people this coming Saturday. WOW! We're seeing miracles, not just in the zone, but in the mission. The work here is going really strong.

So, Monday (yesterday) I woke up and got ready to go for the day. I had personal study, and then I started to feel funny. I got sick (I won't give you the details). After a while, I finally felt better, so we went out to work-- and came right back 30 minutes later 'cause I was feeling sick again. President Bassett called while I was sleeping, so Elder Gomez told me when I woke up that dad is out of the hospital. :-) Then we went out and worked from about 3 o' clock on. What made me sick you ask? Food poisining, it seems. From what? That is a good question. I don't know. Elder Gomez didn't get sick, and we ate the same things! Anyway, fun times.

This morning we had a Zone activity-- we played soccer. It was a lot of fun. :-) This afternoon one of our ward mission leaders taught us how to speed read. :-) With practice, we're suppose to be able to read way fast. He once read the Book of Mormon in 25 minutes, and the Old Testiment in 55 minutes. WOW!
Anyway, I love you and hope you all have a great week.
Jason

August 10, 2009

We weren't online this week to chat with Jason as we weren't expecting him to get on until tomorrow. So we missed him, but here is his letter and Jason responds to the news that "He's gonna be an Uncle"....


Hello again family! (from Apache Junction)

So, I got your emails, and I opened the first one and thought "I want some of that cake. It looks really good. Why's there a question mark there? Is the cake vanilla or chocolate?"
Then I opened the second one. . . . HOLY SANTA BIBLIA!
Congratulations. But I'm warning you, you better not corrupt the poor child. That's uncle Jason's job. ;-)

So my week was pretty good. We had another baptism, which I'll tell you about a little later on. But first, I have to tell you how awesome our zone is doing.
Our Zone is up to 9 baptisms after just four weeks! There are only 8 companionships in the zone, so you can kind of see how great things are going. As a mission, in four weeks, we've baptized 98 people! And many more are on there way for the last two weeks of the transfer. This is the most baptisms I've seen in the mission since I got to Arizona, I think. Hopefully this keeps up.

Moving on-- I think I told you a little bit about the baptism last week, but it was for Tracy and Lakota. We're teaching a part member family, and the mom and two oldest kids were going to get baptized on this past Saturday, but the mom wasn't ready so we decided it would be best to push the baptism back a few weeks. But the parents wanted us to baptize the kids anyway, so we went ahead and baptized Tracy and Lakota. They're doing really great. They actually started arguing over who gets to say the opening/closing prayer when we come over. :-) When I first started going over there, neither would pray. :-) Bishop Duke baptized Tracy, and guess who baptized Lakota? . . . . I did! That was pretty neat. It's the first time I've ever done a baptism. Hopefully their mom will be baptized on the 22nd of this month, but we'll see.

We do currently have two more solid baptism dates set for the 22nd. One is for an older guy named David (well, he's dad's age, so that to me is "older", lol), and the other is for a 19 year old guy named Aaron. Both are doing good and are on track for that day.

Tomorrow is Zone Development meeting, which is where we, the Zone Leaders, put together a meeting to help our zone improve. So we have assigned some missionaries in our zone to talk about street contacting (TTI's, as we call them), teaching simply, leaving commitments, etc. It should be great. It was a hard thing to plan, lol. All we really had to do was decide what the zone needed to work on and who we would assign to teach us a skill to work on that thing. Turns out that is kinda hard to do. lol.

That's pretty neat that Phillip is a ZL as well. And a lot of ZL's don't train. Elder Christensen was never even Sr. Companion when he became a ZL. He'd only been out 6 months. So you never know when it going to happen, I guess.

Didn't do much for my birthday. We had our entire day full of appiontments, which was really great. Except that all but one fell through. . . . that's probably the worst fall out rate I've seen in a long time. But the day was pretty good anyway. We had a district meeting, and elder Gomez had the zone sing me happy birthday. lol.

Thanks for all of the stuff. I love Eddie, my personal stress relieving from, lol.

Love you all,
Jason