19 March 2012

Highlight of my week: I got to go back to my last area inTule Springs and see Rick get baptized. that was awesome! it was cool to see him finally make that big step in his life and it was cool to see some many of my favorite people from my last area.

Elder Larsen got a really bad toothache this past week and that slowed us down a lot. he wanted to rest a lot cause it hurt so bad. i dont blame him. an old root canal that he had got infected :/ fortunately we know lots of dentists and he was able to get that fixed this morning.

Sylbi didnt get baptized this past week :/ her life is crazy! the people that she was living with basically kicked her out because they dont like Mormons. so she has to move and the only place she could find an affordable place was in another ward. so she is moving this week and then once she gets settled in wants to get baptized there. i hope everything slows down for her soon!

from what i here it is actually warmer in ohio than it is here. kinda weird, but i'm sure it wont be that way for very long. its hot enough right now. im hoping i get assigned to the reno mission. but that probably means i'll stay in vegas.

im ready for transfers. they arent for a couple weeks but im ready for a change. my companion is starting to get on my nerves and im beginning to get bored so its probablly time for a change.

had a really good lesson this week with joe and ailee this past week! we talked about prayer and did our best to get them excited about progressing. they didnt come to church though :/

words of wisdom:
when life is slow,
and you know not where to go,
pray oft,
silent, loud, or soft,
and God will hear,
He'll be more than happy to steer.

-Donovan

i was going to just say this but i flt creative so i wrote a poem :)

i hope you all have a wonderful week :)


love,
elder donovan

2 January 2012

we had a pretty uneventful week here. nothing terribly exciting. i went on splits with the zone leaders on wednesday and with my friend elder butler on Friday. its always nice to go on splits!

Saturday was awesome! kinda. Chat got baptized which was awesome! it was such a good service! elder matekel gave a talk (cause i secretly volunteered him to do so :P he doesn't know it was my fault lol) and chat was so so excited to be baptized! it was really cool to see how much it meant to her! it made me want to have some more baptisms! and then after the baptism, chat and her family cook a feast of Philipeno food and it was delicious. that was pretty much our whole Saturday. as missionaries we had to be home by 6pm, so we just came home and played monopoly the 2 of us. elder matekel beat me, so i went to bed angry at about 10:30 lol. no fireworks or dance parties for us.

this coming week i am hoping to get a transfer call to someplace far away. I love the people in the areas that i am in, but i think it would be really good to start off this new year in a new place with a new companion.

here's a poem that i read that i really like:

Windows Of Heaven

When the sky was blue,
my heart was brittle,
dry to blistered souls
seeking drink.

So God hung black clouds low,
let loose His floods,
and poured forth more
than i could hold.

I sputtered and choked.
He wrapped a hand around my heart
and wrung out sustenance
for others.

The sky is gray,
but my heart is soft.
In drier days,
it would have
Crumbled.

I hope everyone is well! and i hope that you take a chance and set some goals for the new year :) new chances are pretty sweet, and in a lot of ways, a new year can be a new chance! think about all the thing we can achieve over the next year :)

remember what the Cheshire Cat said: "It doesn't matter what path you take, if you dont know where you're going." im working on figuring out where im going, so that i can actually get there!

love you all,
elder donovan :)

26 December 2011

Hey yall :)

 Hope everyone's christmas was awesome! mine was  :) although i missed you guys!

Be good. make a goal to keep your christmas cheer ALL year :)

<3 donovan :)

ps. mail should again be sent to only the ALLEN LANE address.

you guys are the best!

19 December 2011

So i dont have much time today, i spent most of my emailing time talking to the bank. somehow sports illustrated got my card number and tried to force me to buy a subscription. so we'll see how that goes....

this week was really good! matekel and i taught more lessons than we have ever taught in a week and we went to like 4 church christmas parties/concerts with our investigators.

chat decided she wanted to get baptized on new years eve instead of christmas eve.

we've got a couple christmas eve dinners we are going to and a couple christmas dinners as well.

i might not email next week, idk if the computer lab will be open....

here's my favorite quote of the week....
"what we have once enjoyed we can never lose. all that we love becomes a part of us."
-helen keller

lets be honest: its pretty cool she could say ANYTHING

check out this video: The Coat: A Story of Charity

i hope you all have a wonderful christmas! remember that we are all children of God. everyone is! we are all born into different circumstances and we all have our own faults. we all have PLENTY of them! dont judge ppl. LOVE them.

love you all!

elder donovan :)

12 December 2011

uuuuuummmmmm, im trying to think of things that happened this past week.....

Chat is awesome! we've had 2 lessons with her so far. we'll have 2 more this week and then she wants to be baptized on christmas eve! so thats pretty cool!

I'm seriously struggling to think of what we did this week...
I asked elder matekel what we did, he said, "stuff". he is always so helpful!

We had stake conference this sunday, that was pretty cool. everyone that spoke, spoke about joy.

I recently started a study of the gospels. thats been pretty cool! im just going through them chronologically, so lots of flipping pages and looking at footnotes and stuff, but its been cool comparing the different accounts of Christs life.
(i started doing this study because I made it to Alma in the BoM and didnt want to keep going cause Alma is so dang long lol)

everyone should check out these videos http://lds.org/bible-videos?lang=eng  They are Awesome!

I'm not really looking forward to christmas without all of you. It wont be full of it's usual excitement. but im sure we'll have a good time here! we've got a couple little christmas parties coming up this week that should help us get the Christmas cheer :) and everyone is a little nicer to us now that its almost Christmas, so thats always good as well.

idk what else to write y'all :/

I love you :) and all of you are always in my prayers!

Here's a scripture to keep in mind:
"I will also ease the burdens which are put upon your shoulders, that even you cannot feel them upon your backs, ...and this will I do that ye may stand as witnesses for me hereafter, and that ye may know of a surety that I, the Lord God, do visit my people in their afflictions."
-Mosiah 24:14

Sorry this email was lame. i'll try to do better next week. i'll send some pictures to make up for it.

Love,
Elder Donovan Chambers :)

oh, okay, heres a story! we didnt have a car for a couple days, and i didnt have a bike helmet one morning, so we had to walk. not a big deal, except that we needed to go somewhere that was 8 miles away. so here's what we did: we went on a "faith walk" (i coined the term :) ). we said a prayer and said "we're gonna start walkin. if we could please get a ride that'd be awesome! if not, we're gonna be walkin for a long time. hopefully we'll meet someone along the way." and we set off! we walked for about 40 mins and then someone picked us up :) the end.

5 December 2011

Hey everybody! i miss you all! we had a pretty good week here :) its getting kinda cold, dipped below freezing a couple times.

the highlight of my week came when we were eating dinner with a member. it came time to leave and i was saying bye to everyone, and the little girl (probably 2 years old, her name is Paisley) ran up and gave my legs a big hug! and then a big kiss lol. it was pretty funny and really cute and made me miss Lily!

another highlight of the week: we recieved a refferal for a Philipeno lady named Chat. when we went over to meet her we found out that she was already taught by missionaries when she lived in the Phillipeans! she has already been to our ward in vegas 3 times and we have never met her, (we're only in that ward for sacrament meeting and then we leave right away, but still, you would think that someone would have told us she was there.) and she wants us to come over day so that we can finish the lessons, so that she can get baptized ASAP! so hopefully, if all goes as planned, by the next time i email we'll have finished all the lessons with her :) so that was pretty awesome! we have our first lesson schedualed with her tomorrow.

another highlight of the week: friday night we went to a chior concert at the stake center. there were about 8 chiors that performed. most were made up of mormons, but one of them was a baptist chior and it was awesome! it was cool to see some of the high-strung members loosen up a little bit and start standin up and clapping/dancing with the baptists. and the baptist minister had an awesome suit! it was black with purple trim. and his wife had GIANT hair lol. much cooler than the way our bishops dress!

well thats all ive got, I miss you!

-elder Chambers :)

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 :)

24 October 2011

lifes goin here in vegas. this week we have THREE chili cook-offs we get to attend so im psyched for that :) and then next week if all goes as planned we'll have two baptisms! so im equally psyched for that :P

elder matekel is from washington. wants to be an orthopedic surgeon. studied and THE Brigham Young University. Has 3 siblings, i think. him and i dont laugh nearly as much as Marks and i did, but thats alright, we'll also probably cause less trouble than Marks and i did lol.

We practiced for the Turkey Bowl today. Our team looks pretty good actually! (its flag, dont worry :P) we still have a few more weeks to practice, but we might be able to get ourselves a trophy here at the end of this transfer :)

I cant think of any funny stories for you. sorry, like i said, it was a less funny week.

Quote of the week:
"You can live life in two ways: as if everything is a miracle or as if nothing is"
                                                               -Albert Einstein
I'm doing my best to live like the first option.

Miss you all, but love you all more :)
Elder Chambers :)

18 October 2011

hey everybody,
Elder Matekel needed a chance to email home so that means i get to try again :)

We've had a busy few days with getting Elder marks moved out and elder Matekel moved in. Today we dropped marks off at the mission office, went shopping, cleaned the apartment, and did a few other errands. It's been a long couple of days without a lot of actual missionary work going on so i'm ready to get back to that! I got a call from Gary this morning, he said that the dr told him that his foot was good to go and that hed be able to get baptized! so that'll be great! they are sad that elder marks wont be able to see it though.

Elder Marks and i got along really well, so at the moment im not having very much fun with Matekel, but im sure it'll get better :) hes from washington. has an older sister and 2 younger brothers. he ran track and cross country and swam in high school. he went to BYU before he came out and hes been out 18 months. He was a zone leader in reno. thats about all i know about him.

The other day elder marks and i went contacting at a bunch of garage sales and some =one gave me a really nice suit and someone else gave me a pretty beat up bike. next monday my project will be to see if i can get the bike working.

Highs of about 85 degrees for the next week or so. im getting kinda sick of that.

we might have to go to a training meeting on saturday for trainers. ive already been to it with marks but Matekel has never been so i might have to go to it again. we're gonna try to get out of it, cause our wards have a service project they want us to go to. but we'll see. i bet the AP's make us go.

I carved a pumpkin with Angel Moroni on it yesterday. its legit.

Funny story of the week: last night i put some IBC rootbeer in the freezer and then forgot about it. they exploded during the night lol. so there was shattered glass and there still is frozen root beer all over the fridge lol.

Spiritual Thought of the week:

Alma 37:37 (the Book of Mormon, for all you non mormon folk)="Counsel with the Lord in all thy doings, and he will direct thee for good; yea, when thou liest down at night lie down unto the Lord, that he may watch over you in your sleep; and when thou risest in the morning let thy heart be full of thanks unto God; and if ye do these things, ye shall be lifted up at the last day."

This is something ive been working on : "when thou risest in the morning let thy heart be full of thanks unto God". I have found that it really helps to get me in the right mindset for the day if i just roll right out of bed and onto my knees and really focus on the things i am thankful for as I pray. Especially when im way tired and dont want to wake up in the morning, if I do this, and focus on all the things God has done for me, theres no way im not gonna get up and go to work!

Love you all :)
Miss some of you :P

Just kidding :D

Elder Donovan :)

17 October 2011

Here on the mission, the elder that trains you is called your father, however, my father left me for adoption because he is getting transfered to Reno. my step father will be Elder Matekal (ma-tea-kul). i thought he was from another country with a name like that, but he's not, hes just white.  I havent met him yet, so i'll tell you more about him next week.  Im pretty bummed marks is leaving, him and i got along really well, but im sure i'll get along just fine with matekal. hes been on his mission for awhile now, so he'll have lots to teach me.

 

the luau was kinda a fail. we had 400-450 ppl show up, which was good! but we didnt have enough food. and everyone left before the church tour. we had like 30 ppl go through the church tour. it was all due to poor planning, and elder marks and i saw it coming, but there was nothing we could do to help it. we just tried to make it the best possible.

 

ray-t is not baptized yet, but she will be soon. and hopefully gary and bro wood and jessica as well!

 

We just talked with a lady about the church for like hour, so now my time is done, but i'll talk to yall later. love ya!

10 October 2011 w/Photos

Weather lask week: 65, a little rainy/cloudy, much better than a few weeks ago!

Weather this week: back up to 80's

the week started off pretty lame. lots of canceled lessons. I went on splits with Elder Chamberlain one day. hes from westerville ohio, so we had fun :) we tracted out a whole neighborhood (abt 5 hours). got a few return appointments, handed out a few BoM's. we'll see if anything comes from that.

this saturday we are hoping to have a baptism for Ray-T but it might not happen cause we arent 100% sure if she has parental permission yet. so hopefully that'll go down on saturday. the luau/church tour is on friday, i'll fill yall in about how both those go next week.

Idk what i told yall about gary last week but he was having some issues and wasnt sure if he wanted us to continue to teach him. that was sunday. we went by on friday and he was in a much better mood! he wants us to restart the lessons with him and they are feeding us dinner tonight :)

today we went on a hike in the mountains (see attached pictures)(mama, feel free to put them on good ole facebook, thanks, i love you!)

it was awesome! there was snow and ice, and it was 45ish degrees and THERE WERE TREES! great :) i miss trees

funny story of the week: me and elder marks had a competition in one of our sacrament meetings to see who could cry first. you had to get a tear to actually rool down your cheek. i won :)

everyone talks to us a lot about politics. we dont know anything about whats going on so we just do a lot of nodding. and we always agree with whatever the person is telling us lol. we heard some guy was talking about mormons on tv and wasn't very nice. thats not cool.

While i was tracting with elder chamberlain, we had a lady tell us that we read a book of lies, that we are living in sin, and that if we died today we would go straight to hell. elder chamberlain is a spanish missionary. he says latinos are much nicer than white ppl lol

This is the last week of my first transfer! we find out what is happening on saturday. im sure i'll stay. so will elder marks, maybe. our area might get split, we'll see.

love you all!

elder donovan :)

3 October 2011

Ive been in vegas for a month now. not much happened this week. at least i cant remember anything right now. chris and jessica ended up canceling our lessons and gary is now having doubts about being baptized, and Brother wood still hasnt had anything change at work, so he still cant come to church.  it's a little frustrating but we're still workin just hoping something good will happen for us.  one of my friends from the MTC went home last week. we're not sure why but we're sad for him. People arent kidding when they say missions are a lot of work. but its a cool opportunity to focus all my energy on following Christ and serving people. I really enjoyed all of conference. We watched saturday morning with members, sat afternoon with a part member family, sun morning with matt and his member friends and then sun afternoon with some members (both me and elder marks accidentally fell asleep during this one lol).  it was all good and i actually took notes! haha, that was a new experience for me.

 

Today we went to a local park that had like 3 ponds and trees and grass, and a shady spot to lay down. it was way nice! made me miss ohio. no one has grass out here and there are barely any trees. mostly just grass and dirt. hopefully someday i'll get sent up north someday so i can enjoy some trees and grass again. today its about 90 degrees here but its gonna cool down this next week hopefully.

 

our luau might fail its scheduled for the 14th. we were just told that we might not be able to use the grass that night. all our food sign up sheets never got passed out (we gave them to our ward mission leaders, then they got lost somewhere), and the church tour still isnt planned because the guy from the stake that is helping us is focusing all on the party, even though the church tour is the most important part. anyway, all you ppl out there, make sure you are fulfilling your church callings and helping the missionaries instead of just being pains in the bum. <that was a public service announcement :)

 

seriously tho, be nice to people. look for opportunities to help them. get to know your neighbors. dont be grumpy. it'll make your life better

 

hopefully i have more exciting stories for you next week, love you all.

 

elder donovan :)

MTC Photos

26 September 2011

Im just gonna give a run down of the ppl we've been meeting with:

 

Gary (60's): had surgery on his foot but wants to get baptized as soon as he is medically able. We like to stop by and visit him and his wife. on saturday we cut down a tree for them (that was way fun!) and then they fed us breakfast. they are feeding us dinner tonight :)

 

Brother Wood (60): has been investigating the church for 10 years. after a great lesson with him on Tuesday he now is to the point where he wants to be baptized! he just needs to come to church 3 times and then we'll be able to set him up with a baptismal date! problem is he works every sunday, so we've been fasting and praying for him to get a chance to go to church! God willing, something will happen soon, he'll get off work, come to church, and be baptized soon after! him and Gary are good friends.

 

Ray-T (18): Ive never taught her, she is hoping to get baptized on October 15. Her mom doesnt want her to get baptized as is pretty anti-mormon. we'll see how that goes.

 

Jessica (28): She is getting married on Oct 22 and will hopefully be baptized on Oct 29. she came to church for the first time yesterday and said she really enjoyed it :)

 

Matt (20's): we had dinner cancel on us last week, so that person found a replacement to feed us (very nice of them). when we got to dinner the y had their non-member friend there! We ate dinner, chatted about biology (hes a biologist), and then we taught him a lesson after! hes a born again christian, and so they are usually pretty hard core and somewhat anti. but he listened to us and agreed to read the book of mormon and pray about it. we called him about 5 days after we taught him and he was already half way done with the BoM! so he's gonna finish (which is sweet!) and then hopefully we'll get to teach him again. His friends that fed us dinner are pretty excited!

 

Chris (late 30's): elementary school teacher, looked into the church before. he is really interested in raising his future children in the church! we're really excited about teaching him! He agreed to work towards baptism.

 

Chris's wife (30's): Chris wants her to join the church with him. We've only met her once. we dont think shes very interested. we're kinda worried that shes gonna mess things up for Chris

 

Yuki (60's): we've only talked to her on the phone for the past couple weeks, shes been pretty busy. Shes gonna be out of town this week, hopefully when she comes back she'll still want to talk to us! She doesnt understand a lot of the Doctrines and will be a work in progress for awhile i think

 

Carey (80's): This is the sick lady we were teaching. She passed away this week. It's nice to know she is not in pain any more.

 

 

Transfers are coming up in about 3 weeks and all these baptisms will hit probably in 4 or 5 weeks, so Elder M is really hoping he gets to stay here next transfer. Hes already been here for about 7 months so he's pretty worried hes gonna be moving.

 

we're planning an big Luau and church tour for october 14th. it might fail though because our ward leaders are slackers and keep failing on their commitments.

 

I dont think i broke any laws this week.

 

We say this kid riding his bike with his friend riding on his pegs. they were about 10 years old. Marks and I were joking about how that wasnt safe and then they crashed into the grass. We laughed a lot. they were ok.

 

In testimonies meeting (i call it testimonies meetings now, because there are usually more than one testimony in it) yesterday a 16 year old girl got up and bore her "testimony" about how she was thankful she went to the church activity because she got to watch Jimmy eat 12 hot dogs and she ate a whole package of mozzarella cheese. that was pretty funny, we had to try and control our laughter b/c, as missionaries, we're supposed to behave ourselves lol.

 

Anyone who wrote me a letter, i'll write you one back asap :)

 

The temperature here has been close to 100 all week. one day we hit 104. I'm missin fall weather and changing leaves and football! I heard both BYU and OSU won on saturday, but they both got stomped the week before. Im glad I have better/ more exciting things to worry about than my lame football teams.

 

Thanks for all the love and prayers (im assuming yall love and pray for me :P)

 

Love

Elder Donovan :)