Tuesday, April 24, 2012

April 23


Here’s the Kansas City Temple.  Don’t miss the public open house ... this is the last week!  Don’t worry about a reservation; just go.  More information is here.

Here in Las Vegas, we are feeling the heat:  It was 99 a couple days last week according to the thermometer. Pretty hot.  Better this week.

The week had its ups and its downs, though quite a few downs unfortunately. We taught the fewest lessons we’ve taught here this week and had some frustrations.  But there was a real highlight:  F. set a date to be baptized!  We have been really staying on top of him to make sure he has the experiences he needs and understands how those experiences are helping him receive an answer to his prayers. He is getting there. 

Today we are having a bi-zone activity with Lone Mountain zone. Should be pretty fun. They challenged us in basketball, so we have to beat them. 

Mom asked about what I eat.  Let’s see, these days I mostly eat granola with yogurt for breakfast and for lunch I usually make myself some type of pasta. I make a big batch of pasta at the beginning of the week and then through some of it plus different sauces etc in a skillet each day. Works great and is super cheap. Definitely going to be on that in college, too. Dinners, let’s see. We eat in members’ homes every night.  This week I had chile relleno, a whole plate full of traditional Dominican food yesterday...really good, carne asada again, and some other stuff I don’t remember. Tonight J. and D. are coming up here to take us out to eat! We're excited. 

We study scriptures every day.  I’m in Acts at the moment. Crazy how much doctrine is in there!

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

April 16

We had a pretty solid week. We got a new investigator this week named P. who will be baptized very soon. He is the one that showed up to church last Sunday and was there again yesterday. We taught him this week and he loved it. He is struggling looking for work, but I think this is really giving him some comfort. He even came to church on Saturday to help clean it. When we taught P. he really felt the spirit and was really touched by the message of the restoration. He is excited to be learning about the gospel and understands everything very well. We will be setting him with a date for baptism this week. His prayer (watch this video -- Spanish with subtitles) at the end of our lesson was fantastic and heartfelt. It was a great experience.

We also had a great lesson with F.and he came to church yesterday for the first time in 2 months. We are excited for him, and we really hope we can set him with a baptism date this week.

FYI: In our zone there are 3 stakes and 3 districts. The districts are not quite organized by stakes, so we have to get district and stake stats differently every week. For example we have to send our stats to another set of zone leaders for stake statistics in the Las Vegas Stake but our stats go to our district leader in our zone. There are a couple things like that inside our zone too. The English companionships each cover at least 2 wards and many of them cover 3. Each week we split and go to a district meeting in one of the districts. We rotate which one that were in that week.

I was glad to hear some of my friends were among the 40,000 people who visited the Kansas City Temple during the open house last week. It continues to the 28th. If you don't get a reservation, go anyway. They will work you in.

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

April 9

Here I am standing by the Las Vegas temple. For my friends back in Missouri, your chance to visit the inside of a temple is NOW, in Kansas City. Look on line or call or email my parents for more info.

Gl. got baptized and it went great! She was super happy and her whole family showed up (most are members, a couple not). Everything went really smoothly and the highlight was that there was water in the font, hahaha. The talks were great and she was fellowshipped pretty solidly. There wasn’t a huge crowd from the ward because the week before was conference and so there wasn’t a ward meeting where we could announce her baptism and encourage people to come. But her family made up for it. I was able to confirm her yesterday at church

This week was transfers. We lost two of our missionaries in the ward and got 3. We are the same and our roommates are the same. Elder Kakau is in the ward now, which is fun, but we were sad to see the other two go. Both to probably be in the new mission in Reno. Outside of our ward, we got some new people in the zone to meet and stuff, but I already know most of them and honestly the zone really just got better, so things should be going really well this month. The zone had 8 baptisms this weekend!

After our baptisms the last few weeks, we are at 4-5 investigator households (though we'll be getting another on Wednesday) and around 7 less active and recent convert households we’re teaching. Pretty decent, but working on getting that number up.

On Sunday, a guy just showed up to church who I guess had been going to another ward for a couple weeks and found out he corresponded to ours. Our bishopric grabbed him and introduced us to him and now we will be teaching him this week! That was pretty fun! Turns out he barely falls into our area, so it worked out great!

For Easter dinner we had some really solid carne asada. It was super good, been a while since somebody has made me good carne asada. For P-day today, we are having a bi-zone activity with Red Rock zone to play basketball and volleyball and stuff. Should be pretty fun.

Saturday, April 7, 2012

April 2, 2012

Here's a pic to go with last week's baptism story.

General conference was great. We watched at the stake center. I really enjoyed Elder Christofferson’s talk on the keys and how revelation has always worked, but the best might have been President Uchtdorf's talk on judging and gossip and stuff. That one was great.

This week is transfers. So Saturday, as zone leaders, we gave people calls who are staying in our zone and then let everyone know the times and places they need to be. Tonight we will be
hosting one of the new missionaries from the MTC in our apartment.

G., who was baptized last week, had his interview with bishop this week for the priesthood and for a temple recommend. They are doing fantastic!

This week we’ll be teaching and prepping for Gl's baptism this Saturday. So for the weekend we will be having a baptism and confirmation! Pretty solid Easter things, I’d say. Gl is super excited and we will try to get several other people to go to, but we will see. All of our best investigators are getting baptized, so we are trying to find some new good ones, hahaha. We will see how things go this week!

Click here for Easter. What a great day to remember our Savior!

And here for the KC temple -- where the open house has been extended. You better go!