May 7

We had another great lesson with F. and he finally confirmed for this weekend! We had a lesson at his apt, and outside was a big party with a DJ, food, a bounce house, piñata, the whole 9 yards. It looked super fun, but while we were teaching we could hear it but realized we'd rather be there teaching than at the party. That was pretty cool. Especially because we had to walk right through the party to get there and it looked super fun, ahah. So he will be getting baptized Saturday at 8:00pm.  After this long process of decision making it’s been so worth it!

We also had a good lesson with T. with a couple from the ward there who are ready to fellowship her, but she never called us back on Sunday about church so I guess she was working. The upside is I think this might have been her last weekend working, so she should be able to start coming to church next Sunday! We also taught our new investigator E., but she slept in through the time we were having a member pick her up because she is heavily medicated (still recovering from a stroke). Can’t blame her for that. We will keep working with her and hopefully get her to church next week!  And we've started teaching a guy named R. too. E. pretty much referred herself...she asked another investigator for our number, and R. is a ref from members in an English ward. Both going pretty well. Working on a couple more refs this week. 

May 2 (sorry for the gap -- we'll catch up)

Elder Kakau is back in my ward and had a baptism on Saturday. In the time when he was changing into dry clothing after the baptism itself and before we finished the meeting, Elder Corvalan and I taught the restoration with several non-members there. The spirit came super strong when we testified of the authority to baptize. It went really well. The air conditioning even cut out exactly when my comp started quoting the first vision. It was pretty incredible.

F. is doing doing well. He came to the baptism this weekend and got his interview with bishop and then was at church. We hear the interview went well and he LOVED the YSA (young single adult) Sunday School class we sent him to in church this week. We have one of the YSAs in the ward coming to a lesson with us for him tomorrow night! Bishop basically told him he has to make his decision between the gospel and playing the drums. I think he really liked it.

Transfers are coming up.  People are getting anxious.  President Black announced in the temple this morning that this transfer is goin to be it. Whichever mission you’re in, you'll stay in. So one week and a couple days till everyone finds out what mission they’ll be in when the mission boundary changes come July 1. We’re getting 27 new missionaries in the mission this transfer and 23 the next – a lot!. 

One day this week I was on splits with one of the district leaders (where one of them goes with me and the other goes with my companion), and we were tracting when a 17ish yr old black high school kid opened the door. The DL gave his little intro and asked if that’d be something he'd be interested in and I quote the reply......."Heeeeeaaall yeah it is!" ‘

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!

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.

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.

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!

March 26

V’s baptism was great. The young women did a great job at showing up and playing a part in the program. V’s parents and brother came for both the baptism and the confirmation, so we will see in our lesson this week if that had any effect on them. Everything went super smooth.

Can’t say the same for the baptism one companionship in the ward had the next day though, hahahaa. Everything was going great when we got to the part where the actual baptisms happen and everything just stopped. We didn’t know what was going on until one of the witnesses peeks in, then turns around and says, "there’s no water." The Elders had asked those doing baptisms earlier to leave the water in the font, but they didn’t, and the missionaries/ward mission leader/ bishop never checked it!!! They were there like an hour early too! Ohhh my goodness. I couldn’t believe it. So we all four run back there and see this elder just staring at the empty font blankly and just say well, everyone is here ready to go, let’s get to work! So we hit the water and then find trash cans, serving trays, and bowls and start hauling water from every faucet in the building to the font to dump water in. We got it full enough for them to be baptized sitting down after about 40 minutes. It was nuts! Hopefully I can send some pictures, hahaha. In the end everything worked out. Only one of the 3 had to be done twice, and they were all confirmed on Sunday. Pretty fun.

Ok, last crazy part of the week. We were the temporary APs for part of the week, hahaa. The APs had to go to Reno for the week, but Visa waiters (missionaries called to serve in another country, but who can't get there because of delays in getting visas, so they are temporarily reassigned) were coming in from the MTC this week. President Black called on Monday and asked us if we would take the Silverado for the week and help him out on Thursday. Of course we said, uhhh, ya we'll take the Silverado, no problem, haha. So on Thursday we went to president's house at 8:00 and then left from there to head over to the Las Vegas International Airport!!! hahaha, that’s not something you want to do when you and your companion are about down to a total of 3 transfers left combined, but it was still pretty awesome. We got to go in and meet them at the bottom of the escalator and help them get their baggage and everything. It was super fun! Then we piled half of them and all the luggage in the Silverado and sent the rest with president and headed back to their house for breakfast and orientation. We helped do orientation and everything and then brought them over to the office to finish off their training. It was a crazy, crazy day. We got some pics of us with the new missionaries’ luggage in the airport and put them into the slideshow that’s the screensaver for all the office computers, hahaha. The office missionaries loved it. It was super funny. We had a great time.

After all of that, president came with us to a couple of lessons for the afternoon and helped us be a little bold with a guy we are teaching who needs to get divorced from a woman he hasn’t been with in about 15 years so he can actually marry his "wife" of about 12 years. I think it helped. They should be going to Cali for the divorce this coming weekend. We'll see what happens!