Wednesday, November 24, 2010

It was EPIC!

Hello!

Things up here have been chugging along as usual. We've had some pretty crazy snow storms up here this last week. Last night they shut down the whole valley because of a blizzard warning. The mission grounded all the cars, so we were on foot for the storm. It was EPIC! On the bright side, everyone was home. We've had a really early winter, and the temperature is dropping into the teens in the evenings. Thanksgiving is supposed to be in the single digits. Hopefully it warms up a bit before christmas or it'll be one long winter. We also had a zone conference at the mission office and we were instructed mostly on improving our teaching skills. Elder Usevitch and I have set some goals to improve our teaching appointments. We've found some of our wards have some pretty old families that seem to have lived there since the beginning of time. One ward has a family that spans 4 generations all in the same neighborhood. We've been trying to teach our investigators more simply and clearly, and some are progressing quick, but others are taking their time. One member family, the Hallowells, that we've been working with had been struggling to come to church, but they've been recently activated and we saw brother Hallowell get ordained to a priest on Sunday, which was really awesome. Some of the fruits of our labor arent in baptisms.

I've been digging down deeper into the scriptures lately. It opens up so much more if you go into the scripture study with the intent of finding something that you didnt have before. Instead of just reading, i've been trying to seek out the hidden treasures. They come, but not without work. D&C 88:118

Love,
Elder Wright

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

We've been exhausted EVERYWHERE we go

Hey all,
We've had a bunch of awesome things happen up here this week. We had transfers, both Elder Usevitch and I are staying here in Kearns. We had to organize a lot of the transfers this time, because the mission is making some changes in how transfers are done. It pretty much ended in us driving elders around all morning. We have some great new elders and one new sister in our zone. Two of the district leaders are brand new, so we will have some leadership training to do. Other than that we are looking forward to another great trasfer in Kearns
 
We've been exhausted EVERYWHERE we go. Sometimes Elder Usevitch and I are a little slap happy and we just laugh when things dont go as planned. It all works out in the end. We have a couple investigators on date, but some of them we are working with have slowed down a little bit and want some more time to take it all in. One couple we've been working with are golden. Ritchie and Julie Ramirez and their 4 year old son Mason. Julie is a member and has been coming to church pretty actively for about a year, and now we started teaching Ritchie, who is not a member. He said he would be baptized, but he cant get sundays off work yet, so we're helping him along until that happens.
 
We were raking our land lords yard for service yesterday and everytime we got it somewhat clean all the leaves from the tree/roof/yard-down-the-street blew back onto it. We just laughed and did the best we could. I'm glad we're raking leaves and not shoveling snow. We've also been doing a whole lot of exchanges with Zone members, helping them out with all their work and all. Other than all that, missionary life goes on as usual. We had our usual zone dodge ball activety this P-day again. We all end up too sore afterward but it's all worth it.
 
Gospel's true. Dont let other people decide for you. Choose yourself.
Love,
Elder Wright

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

By the way, it's freezing up here

 Hello!
 
This week has been pretty interesting. We've had lots of success, in finding new investigators, though some of them will take a little work to get them to baptism. As well, we've had some great experiences with some of our investigators. Some of them are prepared for baptism but just a few hold ups. Michelle Aguilera was going to be baptized this coming saturday, but she says she wants to do it with her daughter, Kiana, who is 11. Kiana interestingly enough says she wants to do some more searching before she makes the jump into baptism. I've never heard a more mature response from an 11 year old. We asked them to read and pray every day to know the Book of Mormon is true. We are praying that she will recieve an answer in the next few weeks.
 
We've been going on a lot of exchanges with elders in the zone this past week. I got to go with Elder Costa, who is from Brazil. From his own mouth, he is the most american brazilian anyone would ever meet. You has no accent and has perfect english. We had a lot of things in common and we got to teach a whole bunch of appointments that night. As well, we are going on another exchange tomorrow, and i get to speak spanish for a day. Our zone is half english, half spanish speaking missionaries.
 
By the way, it's freezing up here. It's currently snowing, and it's all going to be downhill from here. I just have to hold out for *count on fingers* 5 months... WOOOO!! I'm so excited. We do have a car though, which is a huge plus. Last winter we walked everywhere in that mess.
 
Our P-day sport is now dodgeball!  We all end up super sore by the end of it. it's the best.
 
Con Amor,
Elder Wright