July 27, 2009

Hey family!
--==Question & Answers:==--
Do you need 2 cent stamps and if so how many? Or do you need new .44 cent stamps?I meant to buy some 2 cent stamps (Why did the post office have to change the price!!!) but I haven't had time. So, yes, if you can get me some that would be great.
So, how is the area? Did your baptism go through or was that this next week? The area is doing well. And the baptism went well. I tried to send some pics, but it didn't work on this computer. I'll try again another time. I still have to show you pics of Jorge's baptism, Theophile and Suzanne, and Milton as well. One of these days, lol.
Are you drinking tons of water? I'm sure you are! Yup. You can never drink enough 'cause the heat just sucks it all right out of you.
What do you want or need for your birthday? The girls already have something ready to go. I'm slow, but have things started. Anything you are needing me to send? Not really, no. Just stamps, I guess. Oh, and some more lables, if you can. :-)

--==Now on with the letter:==--
Our zone's doing great in the baptism area. In just two weeks we've already had 5 baptisms in our Zone, and we still have 20 more baptismal dates set. Needless to say, we're all really excited about that. Previously this Zone has been getting an average of 6 baptisms per transfer (6 weeks). It looks like we'll finally smash that pattern. :-) The down side is that finding efforts our low. So we're trying to figure out how to help our zone, or else next transfer will be a bad one. We'll end up baptizing everyone and then we'll have no one to teach! But we'll get that going.

We're going to be doing exchanges soon, so we can work with everyone on that. :-D Hopefully the numbers will go up after that, so we can set ourselves up for another great transfer.
This week I interviewed someone else for baptism. :-) It was for a 10 year old girl named Brylee. That was another great experience, and she was baptized the same day as our investigater, a nine year old girl named Roxanne. Roxanne's mom is a member, her dad is not. We're still working on getting her dad baptized. They're a really great family.
Tomorrow is Zone Conference, which is why I am on today. I will also probably be on next monday, because Tuesday is Zone Developement Meeting and interviews with President Bassett. After that it will probably go back to "normal".
So how's everyone doing? Congrats on graduating, Kellie! YAY! Now you can go for your Ph.D. :-)
I see you're all on, so I'll wrap up this email.
Love you all,
Jason

July 21, 2009

Sorry, with everything going on last week, I forgot to post the letter from July 21st, so here it is...

Dear Family,
....No one let me know Kellie was speaking at graduation-- until yesterday when I got Kellie's letter and today when I read mom's email! Congrats!
Mom sent me a list of questions, so here's the answers: (BTW, I do like q's. If you have any, send 'em to me)
How big of a zone do you cover? That depends on what you mean by big. It's the 4th largest Zone as far as the amount of ground we cover, so it's pretty big in that regard. As far as missionaries, though, we only have 16 in the Zone (8 companionships).
What areas do you cover? Our Zone covers part of East Mesa and I think all of Apache Junction. Elder Gomez and I cover one ward in Mesa and two in Apache Junction.
We live right on the boarder of Mesa and Apache Junction on a street called Meridian (Meridian and University are the major cross roads, if you want to look it up on a map).
Any indian reservations in your zone? Nope.
How's your comp? He's a great missionary. It's so nice to not be with a greenie! lol. I've spent my whole mission thus far with greenies (except my trainer), until now! lol. He works really hard, is really obedient to the rules, and is a great example. He's great.
Where is he from? South Jordan, Utah. The same place as my trainer Elder Williamson.
What's the area like? Desert. lol. It's the first area I've been in that really shows what Arizona is-- a desert. lol. It's actually a lot nicer than I thought it would be-- probably a good size step up from my area in Phoenix. The people aren't as humble, though. But they also don't have as many problems.
Is it a downtown area again? No. It's again more like Seabrook than Houston.
Is it getting really hot yet? YES. I told you in my last few emails it's hot! lol. It got to somewhere around 115-117 this past week. But it rained this morning, so it's a freezing cold 106 today. *shiver*
How do you like being a ZL? It's interesting. lol. It's good so far. Interesting, but good. I realized that I definately don't want to be an AP. lol. Elder Diaz, one of the AP's, was with us yesterday and his phone rang all day yesterday with missionaries calling him for this or that. It was crazy. At least we are never THAT busy. lol.
Any news from those in your last area? No.
Isn't Apache Junc. next to your Mesa area? Close, but not quite. Mesa is actually bigger than I thought. It goes WAY out to the east.
Is it in the same zone? No, my old area was in the Pueblo Zone, which is right next to this one, I think.
Hopefully that answers all of those.

So I did my first baptismal interview the second day of being a Zone Leader. It was for a 13 year old girl named LeAnn. I was more nervous doing the interview than she was, no doubt. It turned out alright, but it was hard just because I had no idea what I was doing. Elder Gomez practiced with me that morning, so that was good, but still. :-P Anyway, it all went well.
Our Zone has some struggles-- our numbers are below the mission average, so we're trying to figure out how we can help our zone do better. One of the assistants came with us on Exchanges yesterday to see how we're doing and give us some feed back. Elder Diaz-- the assistant that came with us for the day-- was in my district in Mesa. He's a great guy, and REALLY good at street contacts. It made me realize how much I need to work on that.
We have a bunch of baptismal dates set, including a baptism for this Saturday, so that's really exciting. It's for a 9 year old girl named Roxanne. We're trying to convince her non-member father to get baptized on the same day. Her mom is a member. They're a great family, so I'm looking forward to the baptism.

Well, I've got to go. Catch you again next week. Hopefully dad will be at home. :-) I'm still praying for you. Tell everyone hi for me.

Love you,
Jason

July 14, 2009

Hey family,
Yes, president Bassett called me with the update. I'm glad to hear that dad is doing well. Hopefully he'll be home soon. :-)
[drum roll]
Yes, it's time for more exciting transfer news!
I know what you're thinking, the Central Ward area must have been split again! That would have been amazing, but no, it wasn't. Actually, transfer news is even crazier than that.
Elder Turner and I were sure that he was leaving-- he's been in the area for a long time. But we were wrong. In fact, I'm not emailing you from the Phoenix library today. I'm actually emailing you from a library in Apache Junction right now. Yes, I got transfered to AJ! Crazy, huh?
I told Elder Christensen when I went to Phoenix that I would go to AJ next-- it's the next logical place in the valley after Scottsdale, Mesa, Phoenix. Yup, I called it.
Oh, and I am once again Junior companion, which is nice. I've been hoping to go Jr. again since I went Sr. in Mesa, lol. The problem is that I am Jr. companion to a Zone Leader. Thus, I am now a Zone Leader! :-) I turned a bit pale when President Bassett called me to tell me. But I'm happy to give it a try. Hopefully I don't let him down. So I am a Zone Leader in the Superstition Zone (spelling?).
My new companion is Elder Gomez. He's a pretty awesome guy, and I'm excited to work with him. Elder Coffman was here before me, BTW. Just thought you'd like to know that side note.
Oh, and my first born in the wilderness, my greenie Elder Christensen is also now a Zone Leader up in Pasen (spelling?). That was really great to hear. Both of us becoming ZL's at the same time. He's only been out six months and he's a Zone Leader already! He's such a good missionary. I'm glad I didn't ruin him, lol. :-D
Last week Elder Turner and I found a new investigater. She was really great-- she reminded me a lot of Ceanna, my first baptism. We taught her the first lesson, and she was really excited, so we set a a church tour to show her around the church. Then we taught lesson two, then three and set a date for August 2nd. All in one week! It was really amazing. She was yet another GREAT referral from the spanish speaking missionaries. They give us some really great people to teach.
James is doing well. He's down to five cigerettes. So far, so good. He's still slowly working his way towards getting baptized.
Hopefull I'll be able to make it to all the baptisms that will be coming up this next month in my old area, but it's a pretty far drive, so I may not get to. Either way, I'm glad I could help get the area moving.
While I was there, more people were baptized into the ward than the entire previous year. Not because of me, of course, but because the members were helping out a lot, and Heavenly Father was helping us find some really amazing people. I'm so glad I could help. I know the ward will keep moving forward, and work will increase even more. Everything was going great, so I'm sad that I had to leave the area, but I am excited to be in this area. I hear that there is a lot of work going on here, so I can't wait to get started!
hope all goes well this next week.
Love you, and hope to catch you next week. :-)
Tell everyone hi for me.
Jason

July 7, 2009

Once again, this week was alot of talk about the concerns he has for Rick. We can tell from his letters that this is really starting to bother him. We've encouraged him to get in contact with his mission president. But, here is news from the mission field...

Hey family,
I had yeat another interesting week. . .
First of all, you will be getting a surprise in the mail this week. A victims rights packet. Yeah, don't worry, we're fine. Our car got broken into this week. Some one jimmied the door and stole elder Turner's camera and my MP3 FM adapter. Not a big deal for me, but elder Turner lost his camera, so that stinks. I don't leave my camera in the car-- in fact it's always in my pocket. But that was a hard lesson for him to learn. So we filed a police report, called the mission office, talked to the appartment office (it happened at our appartment at night while we were sleeping) and got all that taken care of. Legally they have to send the packet to our home, so you'll be getting it soon. Again, nothing to worry about.
We set a baptismal date with a guy named Brian. He's really great. He doesn't have a car, so he asked if we could get him a ride to church. We called and called and called and everyone was out of town. We finally had to call him back and say we couldn't get him a ride. He told us he'd be there anyway. And sure enough, when we came to church he was already sitting there, ready to go. He's really awesome. When we told him about baptism, getting ready to set a date, he cut us off saying "I want to get baptized!" So we were like, "great!"
James is having some trouble with church, though. He has a REALLY severe fear of people. He tried to come to gospel principles, but only made it through about half the class before his fear finally got to him. Poor guy. He's really awesome, but he has some hard challanges in his life-- most of them aren't his fault. Like his fear of people is caused from the fact that he was shot in the face a few years back. It also caused him to go almost completely blind. And so he's on medication for anxiety, and that makes it really hard for him to quit smoking cause he can't sleep, etc. Luckily, the atonement can cover such problems. We just have to keep building his faith, and we know we'll see miracles happen.
We also found some great new people to teach, but not much is going on there, yet. I'll have to update you on them later. We're short on time today. Kind of a long story, but a new guy in the office is making life . . . interesting for us.
My 4th was just a normal day. I saw no fireworks. Nothing special :-)
We set a baptismal date, though. So that was good. :-)
But anywho.
Love you all, and I hope everything goes good for you all this next week.
Dad, get better!
Keep me posted.

I don't say it enough, so:
Love you Dad.
Love you Mom.
Love you Kassie.
Love you Kellie.
Love you Kaydee.

--Jason
Oh, and Alex. . . . You're a good guy. . . . ;-)