Email Letter - August 29, 2011

When there's nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire.

Now you may be wondering about the subject heading for this email. I'll explain: This week we found a neat place called wing stop. Wing stop has pretty good wings as you might imagine, they are indeed delicious, but one of the times that we went there were members there and they decided that it would be a great idea to buy all of the missionaries some "atomic" wings. Now, we all joked saying that these wings could not be that hot. Guess who was wrong. At first they weren't bad at all, but after a minute or two, you're wanting to throw up because of the heat of the wing. That was a catastrophe waiting to happen there wasn't it? Other than atomic wings, wing stop has another pretty cool thing that blew our minds. The coke "freestyle" one tap, one hundred options. Check that out sometime. It's pretty great.

Good news: The last couple of weeks we've been attending a lot of baptisms, none of them being ours. Jealous, we set a date with Mike! He's pretty excited and so are we! The date is coming up quick and there is still a lot to teach him but we're now meeting or talking with him every day and getting it taken care of.

More good news!: This week we also picked up two new investigators! We found Lupe tracting while I was on exchanges with Elder Tervort. Crazy story there, we weren't planning on tracting at all that day because we were so busy, but we had two appointments fall through. We went back to the apartment and started to decide what street we were going to tract. Before we were going to start tracting I thought it would be good to visit some past 'gators and see if they would let us back in and after we knocked their doors we could tract some streets next to their houses. Tervort had a different idea and thought it would be good to hit a different street than the two I had decided, when he said the street we should tract, Jewell, I thought it was right so that's what we did. It was then that something that never happens happened. The first door we knocked we were let in for a bit and then invited back to bring our message. That is the story of Lupe. The story of Yvette is less fun, but that is just fine. She asked a member of our ward out to have the official title of "couple" and he told her that he doesn't really date girls that aren't members of the church. When he said that, she told him that she wanted to learn. Flirt to convert works!

Bad news will be omitted due to the excess of good news in this email. Just know that my mouth still burns from the atomic wings two days ago.

Email Letter - August 22, 2011

Alright, another long week and still not much to say. A lot of the same which happens around here. This week we had some really good lessons which all went very well. After our lesson with Mike, our black investigator that I haven't said much about, he asked us how we pick what we teach because it was just what he needed to hear. It was a great opportunity to talk about the spirit again and I think he gets it better now. It was really cool to have that experience with him. A few days after the lesson he told his wife, who is the daughter of our Ward Mission Leader who in turn told him, that he wants to be baptized. How GRRRRRRRRRREAT is that? We're going over either tomorrow or Thursday, or both, and going to give him the challenge again and find out why exactly he wants to be baptized, important to make sure they don't do it for the wrong reasons and immediately go less-active.

The good news: Mike isn't the only person that is wanting to get baptized, Chaneille, a 'gator that had her baptism date fall through and had disappeared off of the face of the earth, has returned to the planet. She has decided she still wants to get baptized and is working out finding a date when her sickly grandparents can come and see. I wish she wouldn't put it off because that's when things go wrong, but we can't force her to do anything.

The bad news: We are planning a funeral service for my friend Elder Lyman. He dies next week and we will miss him. So we're going to throw a party! It'll be good for him to get home, especially since he's checked out already.

Email Letter - August 15, 2011

Hey everyone, there isn't much to report this week it was very slow. There was a lot of finding being done, except there wasn't. We tried with little success. Sadly that's how it goes sometimes.

We did go to Brother Parry's ranch this morning which was pretty great! I'll include some pictures that I took.

The good news: Elder Garner and I picked up a new investigator this week as we visited some more formers. John Munoz is his name and he has a lot of questions and is very much interested. While on exchanges, I went with Elder Bodily, one of the ZLs and did about 4 hours of service for him in redoing his backyard. Most of my time was moving and rearranging stones that weighed anywhere from 25 to close to 100 pounds! it was great redoing a stone sidewalk. needless to say, his back yard is much better looking, and my back hurts. But it was quite good, we did that on saturday and we go back to teach him this coming saturday. it'll be good.

The bad news: Elder Garner got licked by a cow! EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!

That's all, another short one this week. enjoy!
-Sean

Email Letter - August 8, 2011

Howdy Y'all! Things are still going well. We won the competition for the top numbers, as I knew we would. It was hard work though, 20 lessons in a week. Aside from that though we haven't done much. Just doing work. I did get kenzie's package, it had been waiting for us since the 28th. The mail man never put a note on our box like he was supposed to, the note the lady from the office we didn't get until two days after she had put it on. In any case, it's here. This week's letter will be shorter because you get pictures!

The good: Dan, our convert, we have been teaching his son, DJ, the lessons. He is very receptive and progressing quickly. We've gotten him to pray a few times now, once asking if this was the true church and if he could have a sign. we're thinking of making a big sign and putting in in front of his house. That'll be good.

The bad: even though we had 20 lessons total, we still had 5 fall through and one ask that we don't come back. We're not sure what happened there but we're going to try and dig to find out.

Other than that, things are going well!

-Sean

Pics from the field - August 8, 2011

I have updated new pictures. You can see them by clicking through on the slideshow in the right navigation area, or by clicking here.

New Pics from the MTC

I have updated new pictures. You can see them by clicking through on the slideshow in the right navigation area, or by clicking here.

Email Letter - August 1, 2011

Hey everyone! things are still going well! Elder Garner and I are having a competition starting this week with all of the other companionships about who can have the best numbers and most lessons. The sisters in our district cover two areas and have a distinct advantage but that won't stop us. We will win. But in any case things pretty much are the greatest here. This week we've had much less flat tires and much more contacting. we went out tracting and got the door slammed in our face a couple of times but that was expected.

The good news: The highlight of this week is we picked up three new investigators that are very excited to learn. Two of which are a couple that have met with missionaries before, a few years ago. They were quite surprised when we showed up at their door. Elder Garner and I have decided that we are going to visit all of the area's former investigators to help boost our numbers. We also have plans to commit at least one of our progressing investigators to baptism this week as well, so hopefully there will be another dunking soon. If things go as well as we hope they will, we will have two baptisms this month and a few others committed. We're awesome! Oh, and humble too.

The  bad news: Right before I got here Elder Garner and his last comp had a girl, Chaneille, that was going to get baptized but didn't because her grandpa went into the hospital. I met her the first day I was here, and haven't heard from her since. We've tried and tried to talk to her but she never answers texts, or calls, or anything. We're super worried about her.

That's all for this week! I forgot my camera hook up again so no pictures this week either. I promise some will come next week!