October 19, 2009

Hey family!
I'm on a day early today because tomorrow is Zone Conferrence. I'm pretty excited about it-- they're always really great. I think next week or the week after will also be on a Monday because of Zone Developement meeting and Interviews with President Bassett.
Well, it sounds like it's been a crazy week. The stake is finally going to be splitting, huh? Wow. That's really exciting. You'll have to keep me posted on that one. I heard rumors that was going to happen waaayyy back when they took Clear Lake I & II out of our stake. . . . Well, when does Seabrook get to be it's own ward? :-D
The Apache Junction stake that I am serving in is actually in the same process of splitting right now. They are building the new stake center as we speak (or rather write) and when it's done, the AJ stake will be split into the AJ stake and the Usery Park stake. :-)
Anyway, how's life treating everyone? Sounds like Kellie and Dad are having fun. . . . :-P Hope you both get feeling better, by the way.
Our week has been pretty good. We found five new people to teach this past week, which I don't think I've done since I was in Phoenix. (I think 5 new in Phoenix is considered low now, actually). That is going to help out our area a lot. We are baptizing our investigaters, which is really good, but it drains our teaching pool.
So now we're getting some new people to teach. The miracles keep coming in.
We had a baptism on Saturday for a woman named Lee Ann. I can't remember if I told you about her last week, but I'll tell you again anyway. The bishop of one of our wards got a phone call saying there was a lady that lived in his ward boundries that was being taught in the Tempe Mission and was going to be baptized. They called because they needed his permission to baptize her in the Tempe Mission. He said no, she needs to get baptized in her ward and she needs to meet the people in her ward so she can get fellowshipped in (otherwise she would probably go less active right after the baptism). We found out that the Tempe missionaries were teaching someone in our area and our mission (which is against missionary rules-- they should have turned her over to us). But we got it straightened out and got her baptized this last Saturday, so all is well. She's a super nice lady, and we're excited to have her in the church.
We have two baptisms coming up this Saturday, so we're excited about that as well. I think I told you a little bit about them last week. Elsa is in her 60's, and the missionaries found her after her dog ran away (she was really upset about that). We ended up teaching her, convincing her to give up coffee, and now she's getting baptized. Roy moved into our area from somewhere else in the Zone. He's been taught forever, but health reasons always prevented him from getting baptized. I guess when your in your 70's, your health isn't all that good anymore. Anyway, his health is finally holding up, and he's ready to be baptized.
Other than that, we continue to find and work. And judge Chilli cook off's (chilli here just isn't the same. The winning one was a BBQ flavor chilli. . . what's up with that?) Alex puts ketchup on his burrito's? HOLY CHALUPA! He puts what on what? That just aint right. But I guess he can always move to Arizona. ;-)
Oh, and question for you:My MP3 player is on it's last leg. That is, it's almost dead. The battery doesn't last very long anymore, and it randomly does whatever it wants (restarts songs, changes albums/playlists, skips songs, etc.). So I was wondering what you think I should do. Should I buy one here and try to have a member load music on it, or do you want to pick one up for me and send it to me, or should I buy one and send it home so you can load music on it, or should I just give up and buy one when I get home (or take my Zune back ;-]). . . . ? Let me know what you think.

BTW, I'm practicing sneaking little children candies and goodies-- after their mom says no-- just for my new niece or nephew. :-P

Thanks, and I love you all.
Jason

October 13. 2009

More wonderful pictures!!!

This one is of Emad getting baptized. Christina, Ted, and Franky from the ward are also in the picture.


This is a picture elder Christensen took of me clicking my heels back when I was in Mesa. He just emailed it to me. :-D





Hey family!
How's life going?
This week was great. We had the baptism on Saturday, which was really good. Megan had a lot of her family come to her baptism (none of whom are members), her husbands family was all there, and some members of the ward and stake were also able to attend. The baptismal service itself was also good. Her father in law did the baptism on Saturday and the confirmation on Sunday. I'll send you a picture later on, if I have time. There was a mix up with the time, though. The stake does baptisms on a stake level, rather than a ward level like most do. We called to see what time the stake was going to do the baptism, and they told us 12, so we told Megan and Cameron and the ward 12. But then later the stake president told us it was 3. Oops! We tried to change the time to make everyone happy, but it was kind of a mess. The time ended up staying noon, and I think everyone is still happy, so that's good. :-)
We have two more baptisms set for the 24th of October. Roy, a 71 year old man, and Elsa, who is a sixty something year old woman. (Neither are related in any way, their baptisms just happen to land on the same day.)
Our zone is exploding! It's really neat to see the work spring forward. Last year if our mission got 100 baptisms in 6 weeks that was considered a miracle. This year, 100 is considered a lack of effort. The mission is really on fire, and the Gospel of Jesus Christ is moving forward regardless of world conditions or circumstances. Missionaries are now working harder than ever, and the outcome is truely amazing.
I just got a graph of our zone for week one of the new transfer, and in some areas we are ahead of the mission average. :-) So the zone itself is doing well. Hopefully this continues, because what it considered good today will be only average tomorrow, the way that the work is going. It mean that we missionaries have to work REALLY hard. :-)
We had Zone Leader Counsel with president Bassett yesterday, and we started talking about Christmas lights-- yes, it's coming up again already. It starts the day after thanksgiving, which is the start of next transfer, if I am not mistaken. But ZLC is probably the best meeting ever. :-) It's kind of a shame only ZL's get to go.
Anyway, all is going well.
Love you and hope you have a fantastic week.
Any missionary experiences?
In the Ensign this month they talked about using the internet to share the gospel.
I gotta go. Love you!

Love,
Elder Jason Mace
P.S. Dad, go to a doctor :-P

October 6, 2009

Hi family, I'm online and checking my emails.....

Hello family!
It's time for transfer news. Dun dun dun!
First of all, Elder Stoker (our temporary other companion) flew home this morning and is probably back with his family now. So it went back to two. Now, guess who got moved to Wisconson? No one! And, in fact, neither me nor my companion moved. So nothing really exciting happened.
Elder Page goes home at the end of this transfer, so most likely I'll be here for at least one more transfer (possibly two) after this to get a new Zone Leader companion and teach him the area. So, for the first time ever, I might be in an area for at least 6 months!
Speaking of missionaries, I'm going on exchanges tonight. And Kassie might know him, as a matter of fact. His companion went home with Elder Stoker, so he spent the night with us, and he was talking about how he went to BYU-I studying graphic design. And I said that's what my oldest sister is studying there. He asked what Kassie's name was, and said "I think I know her!" So I showed him a picture, and he does. His name's Tayler Davenport, he was in Kassie's ward at BYU-I. I think he said he's also her friend on Facebook or something-- I can't remember. Anyway, small world.
(******A SIDE NOTE..... AFTER TALKING WITH KASSIE, SHE DOES INDEED KNOW ELDER TAYLOR DAVENPORT AND IS/WAS FRIENDS WITH HIM ON FACEBOOK).

And did I tell you in one of the ward's I cover there is a Brother Mace? Crazy stuff out here in Apache Junction.
And. . . JEFFERY R. HOLLAND IS AMAZING!!! That was pretty much the best talk ever. Everyone I teach from now on is going to hear that talk!!! lol. His talk last conferrence was also amazing. He's become my new favorite apostle (Sorry Elder Bednar! You're awesome too!). I really enjoyed the talks. There was another really good one on Joseph smith-- I can't remember the name of the guy that gave it, but it was really good. The talks were all super awesome.
Megan is getting baptized this Saturday, so I am really excited about that. We started talking about temples and how that needs to be her and her husbands goal, and they expressed a really deep desire to go there. They told us that when we went to the visitors center two weeks ago, they stayed after we left and walked around the temple. Megan said she felt something and knew she needed to go there. It made her cry. Cameron-- her husband-- said the same thing, though he was quick to add that he did not cry, lol. We're really excited for them. They are probably the most on-the-path people I've ever taught. Cameron is now becoming active again after not going to church in a decade and a half or so.
Roy is moving towards his date on the 24th, still, which is really good, too.
It was good to hear about your missionary experiences. Keep up the good work.

Oh, did I ever submit a guess on whether Kellie's baby is a boy or girl? 'Cause it's obviously going to be a girl. No brainer. :-) (If it turns out to be a boy, he can look back at this letter years from now and laugh at how wrong his uncle was. Or I can use it to prove to my neice that I have the spirit of prophecy. :-])

That's about it for this week.
We found a couple of new investigaters that are really good, and you'll probably hear more about later. A few of the "former investigaters" (People missionaries taught, then dropped because they weren't progressing) don't want to get baptized only because of the way that the stake here does baptisms. They only allow baptisms twice a month, and all converts get baptized together.
Well, that's great except our investigaters are shy and don't want the big audience that stake wide baptisms produce. :-o So we have to figure that one out now.
Week was great. Yup, watched all 5 sessions at the church. It was awesome.
Oh well.
Anyway, things are great.
I've gotta go, but I'll catch you all later.
Have a great week.
Love you all,
Jason

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