29 October 2012

elder weaver and i are both staying here for another transfer! that means i will be in these wards for 3 more months at least. yay!

i have mixed feelings about i. i'd be super glad to stay here if we just had at least one person to teach! it'll come.

today we had our first turkey bowl practice :) 24 days till game day. dont wory, i wont hurt mysef too bad.

this is elder weavers last transfer, so we'll be working hard right up until the end for him :)

he had a halloween party with the samoan ward. it was awesome. they had a dj and it was basically a giant dance party. giant because of how many people were there and how BIG the people were lol. we didnt stay very long, just for dinner.

this week we have a mission halloween party/talent show that should be a lot of fun.

not much else happening. everything is going pretty well.

love you all,

elder donovan :)

22 October 2012

this past week has been an interesting one! we went on exchanges with the AP's on wednesday. it made me thankful for elder weaver and his fun attitude. the elder i was with on wednesday was pretty dry and it made for a quite boring day.

friday was exchanges again. this time with other elders in the zone. it was good. nothing ground breaking. just knocking on doors most of the day with no seen success.

saturday we found out that our only Samoan investigators are now meeting with the white ward elders. we we're pretty mad. we're trying to figure out how we can steal them back for the samoan ward :)

yesterday the stake had a missionary fireside for all of the high schoolers who want to go on missions soon. with the age change things are going CRAZY.
this is what the guy doing the fireside told us:

36 hours after the age change announcement Salt Lake surveyed utah bishops and the average number of missionary interviews they had done was 10! in 36 hours! one had done 28!

he also said that, on average, salt lake processes 700 missionary applications in a week. 2 weeks ago they processed about 5000! they expect that number might double in the coming weeks.

right now there are about 55,000 missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints around the world. its been estimated that with this age change and the resulting spike in missionaries that number could bee over 100,000 this time next year!  thats absolutely crazy and im excited for it!!!! all the missionaries are. and the youth as well.

AND today we went on a hike and i was super excited for that as well! we went 3 miles up a mountain. it was super cold and windy! as much as i dislike the desert, high mountain desert is pretty cool and no doubt is one of the most intense environments. it was cool to see all the things that live up there. REALLY interesting plants. lots of bristle cone pines (oldest living things on earth, super cool) we even saw a bit of snow! we are all really tired now though, because none of us were even close to in shape enough to do that. but it was a lot of fun :)

transfers this week! not sure if im moving or not. not sure if im staying zone leader or not. we'll see. my vote was i want to go back to riding bikes! cross your fingers for me.

love,
elder donovan

15 October 2012

the weather is now beautiful. i dont know how long it will last but its been great for the last week. two days were super rainy and a little chilly so i wore a sweater :) nothing is better than a sweater day! it actually felt like Fall!!!!!! right now its about 82, but compared to 106 thats awesome!

we finally found some Samoans to teach! we went and visited them on saturday. they are a younger couple with 3 kids and they basically have realized that they want to raise their kids in a church. we told them about ours and they were excited! but they told us they wanted to go to the white ward, not the samoan ward! we were/are very upset. we havent told the elders over the white ward yet. we're hoping if we go back and teach one more time we can convince them to come out to the samoan ward.

we have a couple other leads, but nothing too outstanding.

elder weaver and i are getting along well. im hoping i get transferred in a couple weeks though. i miss teaching people!!! and if i dont get transferred in a couple weeks then that means i'll have to stay here for 3 more months and i really dont want that. we'll see what happens. maybe there is a reason im supposed to stay here 3 more months.

i found this quote this week, and enjoyed it all week because it went along with our weather :)

"some people feel the rain, others just get wet"
-bob marley

i've been thinking if i have been just "getting wet" or if i've been "feeling" what God is giving me. my situation, missionary work wise, stinks. we have no one to teach. but ive realized i have at least 2 weeks here, in my current situation to to get better. i might have 3 months here to get better (i hope not lol) but i've recommitted myself to being optimistic about the "rain" of my current situation and to learning whatever it is im supposed to be learning.

idk if that helps any of you, but it's helped me.

love,
-elder donovan :)

8 October 2012

General Conference was great! I learned a lot of really good stuff! I especially liked Elder Bednar"s and Elder Perkin's talks, both on conversion and Elder Andersen's talk on faith.

President Henry B Eyring's talk was about trials in our life, and how sometimes it seems like God is not present. answering the question: Why does God let us suffer? He, said "the Lord's delays are always calculated to bless" i really like that. Gives me peace

this week we hand ZLC (zone leader council). i really dont like those meetings. people ask questions that waste everyones' time and we end up discussing things that dont need discussed. the new rule is, we are not allowed to call the spanish speaking elders "span-ams". we discussed this new rull for about 20 mins. dumb.

but we also had interviews with president black this week, that was really good! i got to talk to him for awhile about how i was doing, how i felt about my mission and being halfway done, how my current area was going, things like that, it was really good! he told me to do my best to enjoy my current assignment because i have different ones on their way. i hope that means i'm getting transferred in a few weeks lol.

its cooling down here :) kinda lol

i wish i had more to report this week, just not a lot happening.

heres a joke:

what farm animal says boo?
a cow with a cold

lol

love,
elder donovan

1 October 2012

lots of stuff this past week!

2 of my friends went home unexpectedly this week, that's always tough, but its good to see them taking care of things that need to be taken care of.

we met a few really cool people tracting this week, i just hope they let us in the next time we come over!!!!

i had a chance to spend an afternoon with people from my first area. that was really really awesome! i was there over a year ago, so it was nice to sit down with a few of them and see how they have been doing. everyone is doing well! brother lamphere was diagnosed with alzheimers a few months ago, it was pretty sad to see him deteriorating, but i kinda knew he had it ever since i met him. his wife is taking good care of him though.

i can't wait for general conference this weekend! its probably just what i need to be able to hear from the prophet and apostles. i've been feeling kind of run down recently, so i look forward to hearing and studying what they have to say.

i hope everyone is doing well! please keep praying for my grandpa!

love,
elder donovan

24 September 2012

ive got almost no time to type this email and i just jammed my finger playing bball, so it might be kinda short. SORRY!

everyone is settled into their new places, and i think the work is going to start rolling. everybody seems excited about their new situations/companions/areas, so that is very good!

we still have no one to teach, that makes it really hard to stay motivated, but i think the wards are starting to figure out that we have no one, so hopefully they'll start helping us.

pray for my Grandpa Hatch please. he needs it!

i think thats all, cause my finger hurts, and im running out of time. write me a letter if you want to hear more :P

love,
elder donovan

17 September 2012

we spent the beginning half of  the week causing trouble and the end of it repenting and now im really tired. here's what went down:

transfer week. we were in the office and the AP who is going home accidentally let slip who the new AP was. so basically i knew who the new AP was before he knew it was him. you can fill in the blanks, but our day at the office ended with everyone knowing that we knew the new AP and everyone laughing and yelling at us. you know how sometimes you are getting in trouble, but the person who is getting you in trouble thinks whatever you did was funny? thats what happened lol

so fast forward a couple of days. all the nice ladies in the office are convinced we are trouble makers (probably b/c we are), but we finaly build up the courage to show our faces in the office. when we show up everyone is in a fit trying to figure out how they are going to move 18 missionaries and their stuff and furnature into 9 new apartments before monday (this is friday) we of course volunteer our services (this was the easiest way to get back in their graces)(being on these people's good sides is important because these are the people who handle our mail, all our car stuff, all our apartment bills, basically all the good things we have go through these people in the office)

so we start moving furniture into these new apartments. little did we know it was going to be two full days of moving furniture. it was ridiculous. by the end of saturday i was tempted to sleep in the car because i was too tired to walk back up to my apartment. and i got sunburned. and on sunday i was sick, still kinda am, i think basically because my immune system went into survival mode and forgot to fight all the little germs. but all the moving is done and we are the office ladies favorite elders :)

i got tired just typing all of that. whew

both elder weaver and i are staying. lots of movement in the zone though. we went from 12 missionaries to 16, we're excited about that. we are hoping more missionaries brings more success and more fun. and they are cool elders coming in so we're happy. let the turkey bowl practice commence!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i miss home. being sick does that.

hope everyone is well!

love,

elder donovan