Mount Camelback March 30, 2009

Mission Zone P-day activity, March 30, 2009

It was a lot of fun going up. Not quite as fun coming down.

Some steep slopes, lol.

All of the cuts and bruises I got we're from the descent. :- P

(PS.... Elder Mace is on the Left front row)

March 30, 2009

Hello!
I'm not having much fun using this MyLDSMail thing. I can really see why Pres. Bassett doesn't use it anymore-- it's not reliable at all. Oh well.
We had a great Zone Conferrence this last week. The best part was the Assistants to the President talked about TTI-ing. (or street contacting). They pretty much helped us shoot down every excuse for not talking to everyone. It was really great, and really motivational. Elder Christensen and I TTI-ed 75 people the next day. :-)
And the easter pageant is coming up-- it's a big play about Christ and his life-- so I'll get to help out with that later this week. It's pretty much the same as the Christmas lights-- I'll be going there to walk around and talk to people. :-)
Oh, we hiked Camelback Mountain this morning with the zone-- I'll try to send pics.
Emad is moving soon. He may have moved already. But we will probably teach him at least one more time. He should be down to five or six cigeretts a day, now. He hasn't been reading the BofM, though, so in our last lesson we talked a lot about that. And he missed church yesterday, even though he wasn't working or anything. . . .
Sorry, but I don't really feel like typing much more when I don't know if it will go through or not. I might write a hand-written letter later and mail it to you (yeah, I actually know how to do that).
Love ya,
--Jason

March 23, 2009

Ok, his Network did not work, but I broke into it so I could get his emails. Now he'll probably get in trouble for logging in to many times or something... but here is one letter from this week.

Hello Family,Good news, everyone. This will blow your minds, really. Are you ready for this? MyLDSMail has finally decided to work again! YAY!!!How's life been? Sounds like it's been kind of busy.Sweet story for you. We were going down Southern on our bikes (it's a busy street in our area) at night last week when the greastest thing ever happened. I was biking in front and Elder Christensen was behind me, when all of a sudden I heard a sound like quarters falling on the pavement. I looked back and saw my companion hit the road and roll a little bit. I jumped off my bike as fast as I could, put the kick stand down, and ran over to him to see if he was okay. He said he was, and I couldn't help it-- I started laughing. It was a really funny fall, and he just kinda sat there stunned. I asked him what happened and he wasn't quite sure. We looked at his bike, and it turns out that the bolt that holds his seat onto the frame just snapped in half, which caused him to fly off his bike. We had to spend the next hour and a half or so hunting down a new bolt to fix his seat. And we had to walk everywhere.
:-PAnyway, other news. We set a baptismal date with Emad for April 18th. He's super excited about it. He's dropped down to 16 or so cigerettes, and we asked his to drop down to 10. He said no, he's going down to 7 instead. We didn't complain, obviously. :-D The problem is, as it always is, he told us he's moving soon-- to the the TEMPE MISSION!!! COME ONE! One of our ward mission leaders decided that the missionaries there do nothing but fast that our best investigaters get transferred to them. Grrrr. Well, it doesn't matter. As long as he gets baptised.
And we're teaching Mike again. I don't know if you remember him-- probably not, it was like 2 1/2 months ago. But anyway, basically he dropped us and now he wants us to teach him again. :-)That's pretty much it.
Love ya,
--Jason

March 9, 2009

TRANSFER NEWS...
Hey family, Yes, yes, I know that you have all been losing sleep over transfer news-- you've been up late at night thinking "where is Elder Mace going to be spending the next 6 weeks of his life? Is he a new AP?" (yeah right, lol. Can you say no to pres. Bassett? j/k) "Is he a Jr. comp. again? Is he in a threesome? On the indian res.?" Have you had enough of this yet? IS THE SUSPENSE JUST ABSOLUTELY KILLING YOU?! . . . What? Why not. . . ? So guess what? I'm staying in the same area, as is my greenie Elder Christensen. Nope, no changes here. I actually broke the Two Transfer Curse in this area: no missionary in the past year or so has stayed in this area longer than two transfers. This will be my third. Curse broken. :-) I think they figure the area is already ruined, why send me somewhere where I can do more damage. lol. No, the area is actually just starting to take off, which is really great!
We're still trying to get Angie transferred over to the new elders-- turns out she's actually in the Tempe Mission now. Argh! But that means we get to teach her for a little longer until we get things set up. :-) We're teaching her tonight, and then next time we'll probably be meeting her and the other elders at the Visitors Center (I almost wrote VC, but I realized you probably wouldn't have understood that) to swap her over.
Not much excitement happened this week. Taught more lessons than previous weeks, which is good. Works finally starting to pick up a bit. Let's hope it continues.
--Elder Mace

March 2, 2009 6 months out

Hello Family!
How's it going? This week's been alright. We got some really horrible news though. Elder Christensen and I almost cried. Angie is moving suddenly. Tonight is probably our last lesson with her. :'-
Elder Christensen and I have been TTI-ing (teach, testify, invite. In other words, a street contact) all of Mesa. We TTI-d 170 people last week, which is a personal best for me. We've been talking to everyone we see and then some. That number doesn't include people we tract into, etc. Only people we see on our way to appointments/potentials/members/etc. One day elder Christensen and I were out TTI-ing the world, and despite the many people we talked to that day, no one was interested. In fact, most seemed angry with us, and a few people even used some interesting words I won't repeat. :-p We had an appointment that night, which was in an appartment complex, and as we made our way there a guy shouted "Are you mormons?" I couldn't tell where it came from because it was dark, so I kept walking. Then he shouted again, "Are you mormons?" Elder Christensen spotted him and walked over to him. He said we were, and the other man said "I love mormons! Can you share a message with me?" We told him we were on our way to an appointment, and he disappointedly told us to come back another time then. So we walked the rest of the way to our appointment, found no one was home, and ran back to the other guy and taught him instead... He's from Egypt. His family took lessons from missionaries back in the day, and his whole family was baptised except for him, because he couldn't quit smoking. He's currently seperated from his family. He came to church on Sunday and afterwards asked how we felt. We said we felt good, and he smiled and said he did as well. But then we taught him that night and we had a bit of a debate about the nature of the God-head. (We were watching the Restoration video, and he made us stop it when it got to the first vision.) I committed him to study it again and pray about it, and I promised I would do the same. Anyway, he's a good guy. Last night he had us try some Arabic food. :-) .... But what it all comes down to is this: Tony the tiger rules!
We should have a really busy week next week :-) Lots of appointments set up. We usually don't have appointments set up more than a few days in advance, but we already have 18+ appointments this week, most in the next 3 days.
And no, I haven't been out six months yet. Not until tomorrow. YAY!!!! TOMORROW MARKS 6 MONTHS OF MY MISSION!!! WOOT!!! YEAH!!! Time flies, especially when you have a good companion.
Obama was here a few weeks ago-- he spoke in a High School not far from me-- and I didn't even know it until the day before he came when someone asked us if we were going to listen to him. lol.
Anyway, I just wanted to repeat my advice: Move to Dallas. Not Utah, apparently. Dallas. Send pics of the new house so I can see it. :-D
Love ya,
--Jason

February 24, 2009

So, no one thinks I know Michael McLain huh? Doesn't everyone?
Let me start by saying: I'm so proud that Kaydee's following in her AMAZING brother's footsteps by scoring above a 100% on her history test. And that she's doing poorly on her math test! (Which doesn't effect her GPA, so who cares, right?) YAY! Keep it up! One day you might be as smart as me, lol. (And as humble.) Sounds like some fun stuff is going on at home. At least everyone is okay. And yeah, you should move. To Dallas. :-) Really, send pictures of the new house. A pool would be nice. And a game room. Hopefully the See's will be okay. Sounds rough-- obviously it would be. Keep me posted.
My weeks been kinda lame. We keep trying to set a date with Angie, but it still hasn't worked out. Yesterday we taught her with full intentions of setting a date. . . And we ended up teaching her about the word of wisdom. How does that happen? Anyway, we'll get there. We've been looking for new investagaters, 'cause the ones we have are flaking out of their appointments consistantly... (I think we had between 20 and 30 appointments last week, and only like 4 or 5 went through. This is the 3rd week in a row that's happened.) :-p Some, like Angie, obviously won't be dropped, but some others are getting close.
We went to the temple this morning, hence why we took P-day today.
Thanks for all the emails.
I got Grandma Mace's package. It had some papers with some evidences of the book of Mormon. I read through them, and some were pretty neat....
Oh, and Bro. Watts in the bishopric, huh? Wow! Did not see that coming, but it makes sense. :-)
and tell Rhett good luck!
Oh, and I need more pics of 'Lisha and Alexandra. It's been a while, their probably huge now. :-) (height wise, not in chubby-ness, lol)
I gotta go now,
Love ya,
--Jason

February 17, 2009

My weeks been pretty lame. ..
All of our appointments except maybe four cancelled on us, so we taught almost no one all week. Twas one of the slowest weeks of my mission. But good news! Remember Angie? If you don't, you should really start memorizing my letters. lol....... Well, she started going to another church with her brother and stopped coming to the YSA ward, so we met with her and taught her a bit. We found out she's been busy with work/school and hasn't been reading or praying much. So we talked to her and testified that she needed to do those things, and if she did she would come to know they're true. She was saying that she felt confused-- she didn't know if she should stick with her church or change to ours. We told her she needed to ask God through prayer and scripture study. The spirit was pretty strong there. That was all Sunday night. Monday afternoon (yesterday) she called us up and said "Hey! I was just reading in second Nephi and I was looking at the foot notes, and I saw here where is says. . .and she read the foot note to me to . . . in the new testament. And there's a foot note there that took me to Isaiah. That is soo neat! It even says the same things!" So she's really excited again about studying the gospel. She called us, even! No ones done that except on those rare occasions when they decide to tell us they won't be home for their appointment (usually they just aren't there when we show up-- or their hiding. j/k). So that was good. Hopefully we'll have a date set with her next week. Stay tuned for that story. :-)
I gotta go soon.
Love ya.--Jason

February 9, 2009

How's it going, Family?
This weeks been interesting. Lots of good things have happened, and a few other interesting things have happened. ? Elder Rowe and I (right before he left) street-contacted a lady named April in one of the apartment complexes we cover. She was in a hurry, but gave us her apartment number and said we could come by. So Elder Christensen and I did, and her husband (or boyfriend) answered the door. We told him April said we could come by and we wanted to set up a time. He agreed to let us come by a few nights later, but no one was there when we actually came. So we went by the next day and he answered the door. He appoligized for not being there, but told us he wasn't interested and that we shouldn't bother coming back. I didn't know what else to do, so I handed him a Finding Faith in Christ pass along card, told him to call the number to get it, and started to walk away. And then I had the strong impression that I shouldn't give up yet-- he was interested and I needed to talk about families and the temple. (I guess I use that one a lot, huh? lol). So I told him about how Temples make it possible for families to be together forever, because of the seeling authority that Christ gave to Peter (Matthew 16). When I finished, I told him we would love to come by and share that message, but I understood he wasn't interested. I was going to leave again when he suddenly said, "actually, I am interested. Come back Tuesday at six o' clock." . . . Wow!
Angie, our most promising investigater didn't come to church on yesterday despite a really amazing lesson we had just the night before. We were wondering what was going on-- where was she? We left church after sacrement and I felt really strongly like we needed to go see Ramone, an investigater we've only taught once. That confused Elder Christensen because we had planned to see a less active family in one of our ward, to re-schedule a time with them. But we biked to Ramone's. It turns out that Ramone wasn't even home. But as we came into the appartment complex, Angie was on her way out and we talked to her for a bit. Then right after she left the Ward Mission Leader called and asked if we knew why Angie didn't make it to church-- which we did know because we had just talked to her.
Then we went to another familly. She had just gotten home before we got there and found that her husband had packed up and left while she was gone. We told her we were there to help her and her kids with whatever they needed. Our timing's been crazy this week. Crazy, huh? That just a couple of stories. The Holy Ghost is amazing. --Jason