28 November 2011

So I know you all are waiting with baited breath to hear if i hurt myself playing football. the answer is yes, but not too bad :P We played a game wednesday night and i ended up straining my hamstring pretty bad but i kept playing on it (and kept scoring touchdowns and getting interceptions with it :P) and then all wednesday night and thursday morning I had warm packs on it and was stretching so that i could play in the missionary turkey bowl! (because that is what we have been working for all transfer :P) by the time game time rolled around i was feeling pretty good! I was full of ibuprofen and IcyHot and and had my leg wrapped with like 4 Ace bandages :) We started playing. I got an interception the first play, my team scored a touchdown, and then i literally got 3 of the next 4 tackles (flags, we werent playing tackle, dont worry). aka i was on fire :P but then on a 4th and goal play i was blitzing the QB and totally, full on pulled my hamstring, so i had to lay on the sidelines for the rest of the games lol. so basically i stretched and iced and warmpacked my leg for like 8 hours so that i could play 6 plays lol. and in case your wondering, having a pulled hamstring makes it really hard to sit through 8 hours of church! but i'm hobbling around just fine. no serious injuries to anyone so its all good :)

We got our transfer calls. Elder Matekel and i are staying in the area and elder Christensen is going to a neighboring stake. I was kinda hoping i would get to leave but staying here with people i kinda know will make christmas better i guess. The holidays, so far, have been kinda lame without all y'all. I miss you guys.  Plus, the holidays make it really hard to get anything done missionary wise. everyone is out of town or way busy and no one has anytime to talk to us.

Funny story for the week: i was helping to make lunch at the English's house one day and my job was to cut the cucumber. so naturally i picked up the cucumber and started to pretend like it was a sword. long story short: i snuck up behind one of the kids and pretended like i was gonna hit her, she spun around and karate chopped the cucumber, the cucumber split in half and the half that i wasn't holding flew off, smacked a cabinet, and almost smacked Sister English in the head lol. we all laughed a lot and then i cleaned up my mess and peeled the two halves of the cucumber like i was supposed to lol.

Those are all the exciting stories i have from this past week, unfortunately all the people we are teaching didnt have very much time for us so we only saw a few of them. hopefully this week will be better teaching wise!

I love and miss you all, hope everyone one is doing well! I pray for you guys all the time!

-Elder Chambers :)

22 November 2011

So this past week was really good! the weather is way nice, partly cloudy, highs in the low 60's. and it was my turn to plan all week long! and so what did we do? we went out and had our best week of the transfer! (not bragging, but its true :P) we knocked probably 400-500 doors, talked to over 100 ppl about the church and found 5-6 solid people to start teaching! so alls good :)

Today is our p-day, so we're cookin up some fish someone caught and gave us for lunch and then playing some football :) AND THEN, we get to go teach this really cool lady named Natalia. We met her on saturday. She actually stopped us (that doesnt happen too often) and then asked us if we had anything she could study! we we're like "um yes! yes we do :)" and we ended up standing in her drive way for about 45 mins talking to her about the church! it was awesome! and now we get to teach her again tonight!pretty exciting stuff (at least we're pretty excited).

and then thursday we get he day off, which will be really nice! we are going to play football from about 7am-1pm and then we will crash at someones house, eat their food, and recover from all the exercise and gluttony :) cant wait :D

and then next monday is transfers! so we'll see what happens. probably elder matekel and i will stay here but i was wrong last time so i guess we'll see!

yall have a wonderful thanksgiving! watch some football for me!

Love,
Elder Donovan Chambers :)

PSA - 22 November 2011

**Public Service Announcement**

if you want a letter to get to me, please actually write "Elder Donovan CHAMBERS" on it. All mail goes through the mission office and the ladies that work there do not know who "my favorite missionary" or "that good looking elder" is. Just write my full name. Its for the best. otherwise my letter will get sent back to you and thats not what we want!

Also, per the request of the mission office, please do not write so much on the outsides of my envelopes. if you feel it necessary to include love songs lyrics and note about how good i look with your letters, please put those IN the envelope. again, not my rule but THE MANS (prez Black) rule.

thank you, have a wonderful day :)

Mission Tour

Back row, very middle.

14 November 2011

So on wednesday, elder matekel and i got a new companion, his name is elder christensen. he will probably only be here until transfers (just after thanksgiving) but its been fun having him. theres a lot more laughing now :)

we're still working on getting more lessons. last week we only had 5 (ideally we should get about 20). this week i get to take charge with planning, so hopefully that results with more lessons.

not much progress happened with our investigators this week. had a good lesson with jessica, shes still planning on getting baptized IF she gets that confirmation from the Holy Ghost that getting baptized is the right thing to do. We know she can get that answer. I think she probably already has, we just need to help her recognize it. but she came to church and shes still progressing :)

Bro Wood, as long as he gets his certification, will be able to get a new shift at work starting January 1st, and then he'll be able to come to church and get baptized :)

Yuki finally comes home Saturday!

All that is very exciting! and i am also excited for turkey bowl! more practice this afternoon :) i bought a doo-rag for the occasion :) thanks giving should be fun, it'll be like a day off which will be nice! although, its gonna be weird having thanks giving without any of you guys.

Funny story of the week: kinda bad, but we laughed after the fact: on sunday we had two potential investigators in our gospel principles class. lets just say they were both very loud and opinionated. and they ended up arguing and yelling at each other. the lesson was called "Our Savior, Jesus Christ". hmmmmm, lol. the teacher didnt know what to do, she just said "um, how about we just go back to reading scriptures and you two can finish your conversation after class" haha. it was pretty irreverent, but there was nothing we could do about it so we (the missionaries) just excused ourselves from the class and left the other members to fend for themselves.

Im working on only letting the good stuff linger in my brain and tuning out all the negative thoughts/ other ppls faults/ things i cant control. its a work in progress but its making life better :)

Hope all is well, love you :)

Elder Donovan

8 November 2011

Sup my ppl!? so this week has been better than last! for one, gary got baptized! it was awesome! his wife was crying her eyes out. also awesome :)

Elder Butler and I went on splits and it was one of the best days ive had so far. it was cold and pouring rain. and we didnt have a car. but we had fun! ive been out one transfer longer than elder butler. but we were in his area for the day. we were both excited to go on splits and both excited to go out and work and we stayed possitive all day and it was a lot of fun! we came home soaked to the bone, fingers numb, and laughing :)\

Chris dropped us this week :( idk what happened, elder matekel talked to him on the phone. but i was pretty bummed. chris was one of the few people that i have been here since the beginning for. and was my first investigator to drop us :/ thats probably something i'll get used to, but its pretty lame :(

Rai T is also having issues and im afraid shes gonna stop listening to our lessons soon too :/

We do have a couple new investigators tho! thats pretty exciting :) one im really excited about is this cool black lady named Zaren. Marks and i tracted into her probs about 6 weeks ago, but we were just barely finally able to get ahold of her again this past week! she tells it like it is and is really honest with us. We taught her about the Book of Mormon and shes gonna study and pray about it and then have a list of questions for us when we come back on sunday!

The fire alarm went off during Sacrament meeting on sunday, that was pretty exciting. what happened was the heater in some of the classrooms was freaking out and got really hot and actually set off one of the sprinklers. the fire trucks came and everyone evacuated, it was pretty exciting! and then everyone went home early. except for us, cause we had more meetings to go to.

Yesterday Elder Yamashita and his wife came to teach us. it was pretty good. we ended up sitting in the chapel for like 6 hours. i almost fell asleep. but i took some good notes so i can go back and look at what they taught us. One thing they focused on was that we need to focus on positive things, on whats going right. sis yamashita challenged us to make a list of 100 good things about our companions. i only have 22 so far, but im still workin on it.

its finally cooling down here :) i bought a sweater at DI for $3 :) and someone gave me a suit the other day :) i think were gonna go play boccee ball after lunch :) LOVE you all! Miss you all too. Be good. Stay safe. Say your prayers. Write me letters :P

love,
elder donovan :)

2 November 2011

Welp, lets see... its been an extra long week for us because monday we didnt get pday. p day is today because we got to go to the temple this morning :) it was awesome! gave me an extra dousing of drive and love and peace that i had been needing :) so that was this morning. more flag football later this afternoon :) a lesson with the woods tonight :) garys baptism tomorrow night :) and then splits with elder butler (he just came out, 25 yrs old, pretty cool, in my district, becoming on of my better friends out here) on friday :) so things are looking up out here :) last week was a little rough, just trying to get used to/ along with my companion. there were a couple time last week i think i actually gave myself headaches from dealing with him. BUT, i think its getting a little better, and i think i myself am getting better, so its all good!

weather finally cooled down :) we've got highs in the low 60's the rest of the week :) im still waiting for the cactus and dirt to change to beautiful shades of red and orange though :/ jk

had a good lesson with chris! my first GOOD lesson in a couple weeks :) its so much fun to teach people that dont know very much but are excited to learn!

Rai T is having some issues with some things and we havnt been able to meet with her in a couple weeks. right now her baptism is on hold, so, i guess pray for her :/

next week i'll be emailing on tuesday, so keep that in mind :) monday is our "church tour". some church leader is going to come and talk to us all day long. it sounds really boring to me, but everyone is excited for it, so we'll see. i think pretty much its always fun anytime we get to get together with a big group of missionaries.

heres your funny story: i wore an ugly brown suit jacket and a flat bottom tan 80's style tie to the ward halloween parties and only like 3 people laughed at me. I think everyone thought that i seriously thought that was in style. (not that i wouldnt normally wear that at home lol, but missionaries are supposed to be conservative, this was not lol). anyway, i thought it was kinda funny how most of the people were afraid to say anything about my outfit cause they thought i would be offended. even though i wore it specifically so that ppl would laugh at me.
(i realize this funny story is not as good as some of my other ones, but it's the best ive got :) )

Love you all!
Send me some letters :)
Find a quiet peaceful place and have some alone time for me! i miss alone time!

Elder Donovan :)