25 March 2013

sorry i couldnt get y'all an update last week! i was busy trying to set things up for school. big old hassle. made me want to stay out here lol.

heres whats been going on in pahrump:

the mission office called us last week and told us we needed to find another place for missionaries to live in pahrump, as there will be 6 of us instead of 4 starting in two weeks. so far the new ones will be sleeping in their car lol. im pretty sure i'll be headed back over to vegas in two weeks anyway.

nicole has had a couple really great lessons recently. we have been bringing an older couple with us and they have connected with nicole really well. they can kind of  tell her the way things are a little more bluntly than we can get away with, which must be what she needed because she decided to get baptized on mothers day! we are excited for that.

i dont know if i told y'all about andy, but he came to church a few weeks ago and said that "God had led him here". then he didn't come for a few weeks and we thought he might have moved on but he came back this week and asked what he needed to do to be baptized. we of course were happy to tell him :) we dont know him very well yet but he seems pretty genuine.

this coming saturday Brother Wood and Brother Lamphere (baptized in my first area) will be going through the temple for the first time. i'm lucky enough that i get to go through with them! it'll be really good to see them!

those are the big things recently. summer is coming on, i feel it. heard y'all back home had snow! i dont think i miss late march snow lol. be safe! make a snow man for me!

love,
elder donovan :)

11 March 2013

It's getting harder to write these update emails. everything we do just seems normal and so i dont know what y'all want to hear about.

the zone leaders came down this week and spent a day with us. that was a good time. we taught a couple people, knocked some doors. elder bloomfield twisted his ankle playing basketball and spent the day walking with a cane. that was fairly humorous.

it rained for a couple days. thats always exciting. one of the mornings it was raining we went and spread gravel in someones yard. we worked for a couple hours but had to stop because it got so muddy we couldnt push the wheelbarrows into the back yard anymore. they kept getting stuck. good times!

on saturday, our ward mission leader texted us a name and an address to go see. we did. and the guy was crazy. not sure what happened to him to make him crazy, or if he was ever normal, but hes not all there now. and his place was a mess, bugs crawling everywhere. needless to say, it was not our most productive contact ever. later when we found out that our ward mission leader has arrested this guy like ten times and basically just wanted us to check up on him. it seems like most of the people we talk to have been arrested. thats pahrump for you :)

that was basically our week. life is still good out here :) hope all is well at home!

love,
elder donovan :)

4 March 2013

it seemed like everyone and their brother wanted us to do work for them this week. we helped someone lay astro-turf in their back yard (real grass doesnt grow here), he put up a fence while being attacked by bees (3 of us got stung before we quit), we dug up an old water pipe (that was fun because there was a fountain of cold water when we found it), we cleared out a storage unit (that was a good time. i picked up a big dresser that us above my head and the top drawer slid out and EXPLODED on the floor. the lad thought she was going to be able to glue it back together. i dont think so lol. whoops ), and we helped randy move again (ive helped him move 4 times now). Good times! i enjoy doing work for people, but itd be more fun if we had lots of people to teach. it seems like the work has stagnated the past couple of weeks. we had a couple baptisms and then the rest of the people were are teaching have either been sick, out of town, or just avoiding us. but thats how it rolls sometimes.

we met a nice young family this week. they havent been to church in a long time but have a little daughter and one on the way and want to start coming back so that they can raise their kids in the church. we are going to start teaching them, we're looking forward to that.

i think it hit 80 degrees this past week. that means it'll hit 100 in about a month. pretty awesome

that was pretty much our week. nicole is still not smoking,l but dragging her feet about making any other changes in her life.

a lady said something interesting in church on sunday. she said "if you save your family, you save yourself". ive been thinking about that, wondering what i can do to "save my family" now. not sure yet. i guess ive just got to make myself the best i can be right now, and later that will help my family.

i hope everything is going great at home! be safe. and happy :)

love y'all,
elder donovan