October 18

This week was interesting overall. Tuesday we had our meeting with Elder Pearson (http://new.lds.org/church/leader/kevin-w-pearson?lang=eng). It takes about 1 hour 30 mins to get to Reno. It’s a much nicer drive than most of what we do. Mostly because we actually get to be on a 4-lane highway which is just cool now by itself. Going into a city was actually a little weird, but to be honest felt so good. Reno is a nice city. They have trees and buildings and things that block the desert landscape. I didnt get to see a lot of it though. Plus where we were was actually Sparks, not that there is really a difference.

Elder Pearson was probably the best teacher I have ever seen in my life. He is very, very smart and understands his audience very, very well. He drew us lots of graphs and pictures to illustrate his point and they worked extremely well. He was very charismatic and pretty straightforward with us. He talked to us a lot about who we think we are now and who we really are/can become. He talked about we might think that we are a certain way and because of that we don’t want to lose who we really are and become like everyone else, but what we really need to understand is that we have no idea who we really are if we think in that way. That prevents us from changing and progressing, which is what we are supposed to do. He further told us that we existed before this life and made the decision to come here -- something I’ve heard 1000 times, but this time he added that if we existed before this life and can't remember it, then it is kind of judgmental of us to say we know who we are when we don’t even know many of the things that we have done. He talked about a lot of other things too, but his final point was really the most important. He reminded us that we are all literal spirit sons and daughters of God and that if we really understood that, we would not want to do anything except for His will. That doesn’t mean we all have the same personality or the same way of doing things. But it does mean that if we love our heavenly father anywhere close to the amount that he loves us, we will want to do everything that we can to align our will with His. That was how Jesus Christ lived a perfect life. He aligned His will perfectly with that of the Father.

We did a lot of service. We put in somewhere around 25 hours of straight service. On Wednesday we helped our investigators who have already moved like 5 times pack up their stuff again. We are now very efficient at packing their things. We can take their tables apart super fast and pack their truck perfectly. Then on Thursday we spent 4 hours in court with our 1 member that only speaks Spanish. He had gotten a ticket for letting somebody without a license drive his car, but he didn’t understand that he was supposed to go to court the first time, so he got arrested and spent a few hours in jail and then we had to go to court with him to translate because nobody in this town speaks Spanish. Once it all got straightened out the judge just had him pay his ticket and court fees and that was it, so he still got $300 back from bail he had to have posted. It was pretty ridiculous. Ended well though, so that’s good. Friday we started the longest move of all time. It was just us, their family, and a couple other people helping and it was completely unorganized. Absolutely everything was super heavy. The worst was the hot tub. That thing was huge. Eventually we got it up onto the trailer with 7 guys lifting. When we got to where it was going we had way too far to go, but thankfully we figured out that if we put 2 X 4s under it that it would be really easy just to slide to where it was going. It was. It took us like 30 seconds after that. We continued the same move again on Saturday, and got it all finished. It was really good for them though and helped them a lot.

We didn't make a whole lot of progress with people this week, but we definitely helped a lot of people, so it's ok. We did teach Tom and Gail. Tom believes that anyone can have the priesthood and that anybody who writes a good book is inspired and that the book is true. He believes all good religious books are given by divine revelation. So, he believes the Book of Mormon is true and that Joseph Smith was a prophet, but misses how that means that everything else we are teaching them has to be true. Any advice?

October 11

We have been doing a lot of service, which is always fun. We helped one family split wood and completely tear everything out of their garden which afterwards made me feel pretty accomplished. We also helped one less active who is starting to come back to church clean up his backyard for prepare for his grandmother to return home from long term care at the hospital. She was roommates with a member there.

Last night we had dinner with Congressmen Heller and his family. They are a super nice family and have a sweet place out in Smith Valley. Definitely nice people.

We have been encouraging Church members to go to the new mormon.org and check it out and make a profile for themselves. I will probably finish my profile on there today. It’s really cool and I would definitely recommend checking it out if you haven’t. Watch some of the videos and stuff.

Tomorrow Elder Kevin Pearson of the Seventy (http://beta-newsroom.lds.org/article/seventy) will be having a day long meeting in Reno with all of us, so we are headed up there. Don’t really know what to expect yet, but we did all have to write talks. We'll see what happens. It’s about 1 hour and a half drive up there. We will leave about 6:30 to factor in traffic, which will not be fun, then it will probably end about 4 and after we will have interviews with pres black until 5 or whenever it’s our turn which probably means until 5. Then drive back

October 4

ITS RAINING!!!!!!!!!! Its been raining all day today and a lot of yesterday!!! Even occasional thunder and lightning. Its so awesome. I've broken out my sweaters and the vest. I probably dont need them very much yet, but I love sweaters. Oh, ya and we dont really have to wear our full suits if we wear our sweaters. It just doesnt work, because they cant have us wearing out our suits all of them time when its cold up here, so its all good, which is way awesome. Oh, and its about 60 today with a cooler breeze.

Well, the week started off last Monday with Paintball!!! That was wayyyyy fun. Theres a member of the Church in Fernley who owns a really big tournament paintball course and let all of us missionaries come down and use the course, his equipment, and 500 balls for $15. Super super good deal. Plus he fed us hotdogs and stuff. Hes a super cool guy. We got to play for a couple hours and we could have gone for way longer but we had to get back for an appointment. I got a sweet welt that I think I have a picture of too. It was super fun. Even the sisters came. they were funny. They didn’t care about getting hit at all and just hung with everyone else. I'm definitely going to be a lot better next time if we get permission again this transfer. Its also way sweet just to be able to hang out with other elders a little bit since we never get to.

After paintball we went to an appointment with a recent convert named Nabor. He’s super cool and we hadn’t been able to meet with him in forever because he works the harvest schedule right now so he can't even go to church. He took his one day off of the month and called us and asked us to meet with him, which was super cool of him. We then had a family home evening and another visit, both of which went very well. Really the only other highlight of the week was our lesson with the Sotos. We showed the Elder Holland's talk Safety for the Soul which Brother Hansen got on a DVD in Spanish for us. The spirit was very, very strong, but we haven’t been able to see them since, so we don’t know what’s going on. We'll find out tomorrow night when we have another lesson with them. They didn't make it to conference, but we did have one other investigator go. He enjoyed it, so we'll talk to him about it when he’s back in town on Wednesday. (he went in Fernley.)

As to General Conference, my definite favorite was President Uchtdorf’s talk about slowing down. (http://lds.org/conference/talk/display/0,5232,23-1-1298-7,00.html ) He is the best. He’s got jokes too. What a guy. Definitely something you learn on the mission that is super important is to just focus on the simple stuff because nothing else really matters that much.

Between sessions of conference on Saturday we went over to the Hansen’s for lunch, which was good. They are such a great family and help us out all of the time with things that we need which is way sweet. Brother Hansen is a trapper for Nevada and Sister Hansen is working on getting her sub certificate now that all the kids are in school. On Sunday we just went back to the Apt and ate. Everybody here has Dish, so there were a grand total of 3 people there at the highest point. Kind of funny.

Transfers are this week, but we are both staying here in Yerington for another 6 weeks. They did give us more area to cover though. So things will be interesting. We now cover Silver Springs which means that we cover 2 wards and a branch now. Our area is huge; it goes 30 mins Southeast, 30 mins South West, and 30 mins North. Kind of ridiculous, but we will have to do.

I love getting mail. Its the best. I get super excited when I have some. You can write a short note too. I got a lot of letters about the wedding. That was nice. Sis told me she got homesick for DC when she went back to Vegas. I felt the same way when me and dad went back to Missouri after his case when I was in 8th grade. Weird because I barely remember living there.

September 27 (finally!)

This week Lilly (the little 10 year old girl from Schurz) was baptized and confirmed yesterday with her entire family there. Packed the Relief Society room. It was really cool. She has such a strong testimony and is a good example to those in her family that aren't members or very active...though most are. We didn't get any investigators to show up unfortunately, but we invited absolutely everyone we could. A few said they would, but things came up. A lot of our investigators are out of town on the weekends and for long periods of time during the week, which makes things hard, but I can’t really blame them. There’s just not much to do here. Then, those that aren't have to work.

Our number one investigator now is Brandi. She is definitely progressing, but she will have to get her work schedule changed a little before she can come to church. She told us that she has actually been to a baptism before, which is way cool. We have another lesson with her tomorrow, so I'll know more about how that’s going then. Also this week we were much better at making contact with our investigators and less actives. We have been doing really well on miles too, so we were able to take a trip out to Wellington this week

and talk to some members and potentials out there. It was kind of a trek and we got lost. Its about 30 mins out there, so it takes a lot of miles, so it was good we had a lot. It was really taunting because we were about another 30 mins from California which I really want to check off my state list, but it’s out of our area. We got to see some longhorns while we were out there. Not much else happened this week, but this next week looks like it will be pretty busy, which is always good.

The onion fields are crazy. There are just onions on top of onions and they have tons of workers just out picking them and putting them in those bags. I also have a video of driving past that field. The video is 30 seconds and the field isn’t done yet. We're driving about 55. There are just so many onions. The crazy thing is that that is one of the smaller fields. They are harvesting another one now that I hope I can get a pic of because it is massive. The onions are the reason that we cant get workers to come to church though. They require so much manual labor its ridiculous. Absolutely crazy.

We have one investigator who is a worker and his name is Miguel. He is a really, really great guy. Super chill. Hes about 25 and in Mexico he has a wife and 2 little girls. I think they are like 3 and maybe 1. He is going to visit for a while as soon as harvest is over, but then come back and work some more. There just isn’t work in Mexico right now. Things are super messed up. Other than Miguel there are a few new workers starting to go to the English class, but we haven't had a ton of contact with them yet. We're working on that. Hopefully we can get to teach some of them.

I have a recipe book that I have been using it for ideas. The other day I made a hogie. It had roast beef, salami, onions, green peppers, and mozzarella, on a hogie roll with olive oil and avocado toasted under the broiler. It was sooooo good. I’ve done some other stuff like that too. This morning I actually made myself an omelet with mozzarella, onions, and green peppers. That was way good too.

September 20

This week not a whole ton happened overall. There is one lady that we are teaching who we think could possibly do really well. Her name is Brandi and we taught her again this week. She started out really down when we first met her, but is doing much better now. She’s a great lady and I think that she wants to be better. It’s kind of fun teaching her. Oh, there is one member here who has never really been active since he was a teenager and even then it was only because he had to, He is now about 70 or somewhere around there. His wife died a couple years ago and since then has started to remember his childhood in the church a little bit. Now he is reading the Book of Mormon and each Sunday that he’s in town we go to his house and answer all of his questions about that he has written down about passages he has read throughout the week. They are super interesting questions and it’s actually really fun to do. He’s a really cool guy too. Super relaxed and easy to talk to. This week he told us that it’s definitely not made up, so he’s making a lot of progress. That's been a pretty good time.

So, I finally got a wedding invitation from Tim and Ashley today, which personally I think was intended to arrive here after the wedding to make sure that I couldn't go. Oh well. It looks good though and I like the picture for sure. Mostly because Tim is not clean shaven.

Let's see....other things that have happened this week. We helped a lady get a table and chairs from the thrift store and into her house. She’s actually from South Central Missouri. I don’t remember what town. Just that its east of Branson. Her husband just got home from the hospital and we talked to him for a bit about the church. He’s an Episcopalian pastor, but very open to all religions. That was pretty interesting too. Let’s see, we also had another lesson with the Soto family. I think they’re really doing well, but it’s hard to tell sometimes. It was good though. We went over Ether 12 and talked about how you need to have a trial of your faith before you can get something. So in other words you gotta give a little bit before you are given. I think we'll do some service for them soon. They need some firewood for the winter, so we'll probably help them cut some up or something.

Oh ya! I forgot. this week we had one of the worst nights ever. At 2 am our carbon monoxide alarm went off with a screech that was absolutely unbearable. It was so loud! We got kind of worried, so we opened up windows and turned fans on and stuff to make sure we were good before we realized it was the battery. The thing was just messing up. It took is so long to realize it was the battery because it was plugged in. Which doesn't make any sense at all. But the battery light was on, so whatever. Anyway, we went back to sleep by 2:30. Then our window couldn't hold itself up after about 3:10, so it crashed down super loud and woke us up yet again. So, all in all we lost a couple hours sleep that night and just felt terrible the next day and really the day after that too. It was just not a good week for sleep until like last night.

I did get the package. It was like Christmas before Halloween. Such a great package. Elder Bush took one bite of the cookies and said, “Thats a cookie.” The cookies went fast. They were super good. I like the sweaters a lot. They are exactly what I needed.

Here are a couple of pics from Yerington: onions:

and apartment:

And my MTC district:

September 13

Highlights of my week:

We contacted a Salt Lake referral out in Wellington on Saturday. It was a 70-year-old man and his 91-year-old mother who had spent the last month living with their Mormon relatives in Utah and Idaho – I guess his cousin and her nephew. He is the one who sculpted the statues of Jesse Knight at the MTC and at one of the high schools in Salt Lake. Crazy the random people you meet. They seem pretty promising, especially the Mom. She is very sincere, and they both want to start coming to church. It might be a while though because they are out of town a ton. Hopefully they make it sometime this month or early next month but their schedule is crazy. They would be very good too.

But anyway, Fidel (another one of our investigators) invited us to his daughter’s quinceañera (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quincinera) on Saturday, so we got some way good food there. Oh, and they also gave us a little pepper which I knew was going to be hot, but which we were obligated to take a bite out of. Just a small one, but everyone was looking at us so I figured it’d be kind of bad. I had no Idea. It was sooooooooooooo hot. My mouth was so on fire I couldn’t even understand how on fire it was. That was ridiculous! Thank goodness that they had some horchata (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horchata) there to calm the mouth until we got home and were able to subdue the pain with milk and bread, though it still burned a little after that.

Since he served in El Salvador, Tim asked what we do during the day here in America. Things are definitely slower during the day. Albino is almost always home, so we see him up a couple times a week. We also go to the hospital here in town a couple times a week to visit a member and her roommate who is kind of an investigator and whose grandson is a less active member. Sister Soto works at the hospital so we try to catch her too so we can set up times to visit their family. Other than that there are a lot of member visits and less active visits. There are a lot of old people here, so that helps, The ward is very cool. They are back and forth on feeding us, but this month is way good. Not quite like in Reno who I hear have people cross out each others’ names on the dinner calendar for a spot, but we do well still.

We also had zone meeting last Tuesday (meeting not conference because President Black doesn’t come, just us and the zone leaders). There are about 25 of us in the zone overall. It was pretty fun to meet all of the other missionaries around. Way better than our 4-person district meetings. We talked about Zion a little bit and made good solid Lord of the Rings references to teach it. It was fun. We talked about how in Zion the people are of one heart and of one mind (http://scriptures.lds.org/en/moses/7/18#18) and they are the pure in heart (http://scriptures.lds.org/en/dc/97/21#21). It was very good. They referenced a part in the Two Towers where Legalas is talking to Aragorn (yes I can easily name everybody in Lord of the Rings off the top of my head in case you were wondering) and says that they are all going to die and that the battle for Healms Deep is pointless. Everybody stops and stares and we used that to talk about when one person is negative it really brings down the whole group. Definitely fun.

Labor Day 2010

Today everybody is just out and about. It’s really nice outside. This week the weather was very moody (temperature wise, it doesn’t rain in Nevada). It was very cool and very hot, but today is perfect. About 75. It’s beautiful...weather, not landscape, haha.

It’s extremely rural and slightly green. We like it overall. It is also like the #1 onion growing area in the world (or something like that, I could see that being an exaggeration, but there are a lot of onions). That’s what Perry Farms grows. There’s also a lot of cabbage grown here and some corn, but not much. There are a decent amount of ranches around and a dairy farm, and those are all the major employers. A member of our church actually owns the dairy farm. The area is really weird, because there is water but only in very specific places so there will be nice houses with very green front and back yards, but if you look out their windows across the street you just see desert. It’s pretty goofy.

We moved to an apartment this week – actually in town, which is nice. It’s taken a while to get everything set up right, but now it’s all perfect. We have a small couch, two desks, lamps, bunk beds, and all of our kitchen needs, so life’s pretty good. It’s an interesting place, but we cleaned a ton and kept rearranging until now we are very satisfied.

We have about 4 individuals and 1 family that we are teaching. They have lots of questions, except for the one that we would baptize if he could ever come to church without getting fired and deported. Hopefully we can get over some ruts this week. We also should be starting to teach a new investigator this week whose daughter just got diagnosed with Leukemia like a couple days before we showed up at her door. She said she needed us.

We do not actually teach the English class anymore. We turned it over to one of the members, but we still teach a Spanish class and we still usually go by the English class to try and get appointments with those who are there. It’s still kind of our best option, but people keep taking down our signs for it, which is disappointing, but we just put up new ones.

Things are going well with my companion. We have BYU in common, so usually we swap BYU stories and stuff. It’s fun overall, and he has a really good mission attitude. We usually spend about two transfers [12 weeks] with a companion. He will probably leave after two and I’ll probably be here for one more after that and then get transferred out after Christmas but before New Years. It’s all subject to change though. I wouldn’t be too surprised if we both got transferred and this got made an English area again after our 2 transfers here.

Once a week we get together with other missionaries. It’s good times. We have zone conference in Fallon tomorrow. Junior comps never are the designated drivers here, and I still don’t even have my official driving privilege yet. I hear that it’ll probly be a few weeks still.