Zone Visits

Everything here is going great. We had a baptism on Saturday that went well. It was for a 13-year-old girl that has been going to church for a couple of years. It was good. Our trip out to Rock Springs and Green River went well too. It was kind of a long drive, and not the best drive. Wyoming isn't the best looking part of the U.S. Rock Springs isn't too big of a city. Most of the cities in Wyoming have less than 15,000 people. The work is going great in our area. We are working with a family in Randolph. The dad is less active and he has two daughters that haven't been baptized yet. That's the one that I talked to y'all about last week. With the girl that asked the bishop about baptism. The baptism that we were supposed to have next weekend got pushed back. The parents pushed it back to February 26th because the grandma couldn't make time in her schedule for a baptism. So we're going to keep working with him. Another person we are working with is a Peruvian sheepherder name Anibal. He came to church on Sunday. He's very humble and loves to read. So he's excited about reading the Book of Mormon. Things for the zone are looking great. Not as good as we were hoping, but we're still going to beat the record for baptisms in the zone for a month. So that will be exciting. The work is continuing to go forth. On Sunday we gave talks. They were for about 20 minutes. I talked about making Christ a foundation in our lives. And in another sacrament meeting I translated it all for Anibal into spanish using the transmitter. It was a lot of fun. Well that's about it going on right now.

Happy Tuesday!

Good morning!


Well yesterday we couldn't really e-mail because everywhere was shut down for MLK day. So we get to e-mail today.

As for things here, they are still going well. We had a baptism on Saturday which went great. And this Saturday we'll be having another baptism. So we're staying pretty busy. We don't have a baptism for the week after this Saturday though. Not until the 26th of February. So we're going to be working hard to get some more baptisms before then. We should be able to. We're working with a few potentials in Randolph, Utah and a few more here in Coalville. So we'll see what happens there. The work in the area is kind of slowing down a little bit. We're struggling to find new investigators and more people to work with. It's a low populated stake with a lot of members. There's some of the members that are less active or inactive, and not too many non members. We're working with one right now who's going through a divorce and is looking for a church that'll be good for her kids. She has 3 kids, and is working 3 jobs, and going through a custody battle. So she has a lot of stress right now. But she seems somewhat receptive to the gospel. So we're going to be working more with her. Then last night we were in Randolph and teaching this family. The dad is less active and he has two daughters that aren't members. The younger daughter has talked to the bishop to see what she has to do to get baptized. So hopefully we can help her with that a little bit. On Thursday we're going to be going up to Rock Springs and Green River to work a little bit with the missionaries there. It'll be a good trip. I can't believe how fast the past transfer has gone by! Transfers are in a week. It's hard to think that I'll only have 3 more left after this one. This Sunday we spoke in one of the wards here. I planned a talk about prayer and it's importance. But later felt that's not what I needed to talk on and changed it to the Atonement. I think it went alright. With all these talks I've been giving on my mission, they're becoming a lot easier. But I still get nervous every time.

Study the Scriptures

I've been learning a lot doctrinal wise as I've truly studied the scriptures and not just read them. It's been great because it's helped me realize I still have a long way to go, and a lot of things I still need to do.

Things here are going great though. As a zone we have 36 people on date, 31 of those are on date to be baptized in January. So we should be able to pass the record the zone has for baptisms in a month, which is 23. If all goes well we'll have 38 baptisms. That's what we're hoping for. The baptism wasn't able to go through last week, but this week we are having one for sure. It's of an 11-year-old girl. She's been so solid. We were talking with a member and they told us somebody they visit teach has kids and thinks it's time for them to get baptized. So we went over and they'd been going to church for a few weeks and since then we've been working with her. Then this Sunday we went out to Randolph, which is another area we cover that's about a hour and 15 minutes away. We visited a Peruvian that works on one of the farms. And we taught him last week, so we were following up with him. And he told us that he wants to go to church now and that he wants the missionaries to talk to his wife and children in Peru. They live a few blocks away from a church there. He went out and bought a copy of the Book of Mormon in Peru and read half of it and believes it's from God. So now we're working with him to get him baptized. We also visited another family that we got a referral from. It was for a less active family with two unbaptized kids. So we went by and talked with some of the kids, but the dad wasn't there so we said we'd return in a hour. So we went and taught the Peruvian, and came back. The dad was bringing in groceries. So we went in and talked with them all. And as we were talking to them the dad said "I guess you're here to talk to Chloe" and we didn't really know or not. So they tell us she's been talking to the bishop to find out more about the church so she can get baptized. It's been amazing to see the people the Lord has prepared for us. The zone conference went well yesterday. We gave a training on how to develop social skills and communicate better with the investigators, and how to address their problems. It went well. It was good. Learned a few things. It was the zone conference that Sister Winn told the missionary he couldn't earn an award postpartum.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Everything here is going great. It's a little cold but it's all good. The new area is going great. Here's a little more information about the area. We cover a few small towns. We cover Wanship, Hoyetsville, Coalville, and Henafer along with a few other smaller ones. The people here are amazing. The members are great and help us out in the work. We haven't had to go tracting yet we just work off of referals. We're having a baptism on Saturday at 6 at night. It's for a guy named Jim Willoughby. He's so solid. He and his wife are already excited about entering into the temple in a year. It's pretty sweet. Then we have 4 more people on date for January. The Tedikas who are a young couple with 2 kids. He grew up in the church but never got baptized and the girlfriend grew up in a baptist church I believe. But they're going to get baptized on the 15th and get married on that date or before. They're still deciding on that. Then there is a girl named Katelyn that we're working with. She's 13 and her mom was inactive but is coming back to the church and she's supposed to get baptized on the 1st of next year. We're also working with some Peruvians. They're not on date yet, but I think they'll get baptized in January. It's great. We get to teach in english and spanish. They don't have a spanish branch out here so we have to translate the sacrament meetings into spanish. So good things are happening and we're just trying to keep the work going forward. It's a good time. Monday I did 24's with the missionaries in Green River. So I went all the way out there for a day. It's like a 2 hour drive from where we live. It's a lot different working here than in the valley. Everything is a lot more spread out. It takes a lot more time to get from place to place. I'm kind of tired of being in the car so much. Tomorrow we're going down to Salt Lake to pick up some Christmas packages that the office has been holding so that people don't open them up before Christmas. So we're driving down tomorrow and then delivering them on Friday. It's going to take around 5 hours to deliver them all and get back to our area. It's going to be fun.

Well as far as Christmas goes, the stake president invited us over to his house for breakfast around 10:00 in the morning. I don't know how long we'll be there for. And then, we have the baptism at 6 at night. And we'll have to fill the font up from around 2 until 6. Well that's about all I got for y'all right now. Have a great rest of the week!

Transferred to...Coalville, Utah

Well just to update y'all a little bit of what's been going on this past week... On Sunday at church Yadira came to the english ward again. I translated the whole sacrament meeting for her. It was a good ole time. Then our other investigators were progressing really fast and they should have a few baptisms coming up. As for me, Like I told y'all last week, we had transfers. And I got transferred out of the area. My new area is................. Coalville, Utah. I'm now serving in the Wyoming zone. It should be interesting. A lot different than serving in the Salt Lake Valley. We cover 1 stake, but we cover english and spanish. So it should be fun. My new companion is Elder Salisbury, he's from Cincinnati. It sounds like we have a lot of work going on in this area. Hopefully we can get double digit baptisms this transfer. And from what I've heard the members are amazing. They are all about missionary work and they love us. The stake I'm in used to be shared with another stake, but now we're there all the time. They used to only see missionaries once or twice a year, but now that they see us more they're more excited about the work. So it should be a good transfer! Right now the mission is doing pretty good. We're sitting at a little over 2200 baptisms and our goal is 2500 so we'll see how we do on that. It's definitely possible. Oh and on Monday I went to get some surgery done on some ingrown toenails. It went pretty well, and the doctor didn't charge me anything for it so that was good. Well I don't really have too much more time because we've been dealing with transfers all day and haven't got back until around 5. Well I can't really tell you about any of the investigators, because I haven't met them. But I'll have more about the work for you next week.

Testimonies of Christ

Well Everything here is going well. It's only been a few days since I've e-mailed home so there's not too much to update y'all on. Our investigators are progressing pretty well. One that we have, Yadira, went to church on Sunday with 2 of her 6 kids. Her husband is in jail, and she has a 4th grade education. And she doesn't work. So it's a pretty bad situation. But she went to church to an english ward and my companion and I translated for her during the whole sacrament meeting. So it was a pretty fun experience. While it was going on I got up and bore my testimony in spanish. Which I thought might make some people mad because it's an english ward and some english members do NOT like to hear spanish. But afterwards there were 2 or 3 people that got up and said that they had a grandson or someone else serving in spanish and it let them get a glimpse into their lives. Then the man sitting in the pew behind us got up and bore his testimony. He said that he had been listening to us translate the whole sacrament meeting and that he wished he could speak spanish to say something to her. It was a good meeting. The Spirit was strong and for the first time in a long time the testimonies were about Christ/gospel related topics and not about stories from the week and how they don't have a job.


Oh today while I was leaving the temple I saw President Fronk and Stephanie. I talked to them for a few minutes. So that was pretty good. Well I got to get going.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

Well we found out that we wouldn't be e-mailing tomorrow because of Thanksgiving. The computers would all be shut down. So we're doing it today. Well We were at church on Sunday and they announced the baptism of Jali. And as they were announcing her getting baptized, from the congregation they announced that her little brother would be getting baptized as well! So now we have 2 baptisms this weekend. It should be pretty amazing. I'll be sure to get some pictures.

We've been doing a lot of tracting lately trying to find some investigators. We ran into some really nice Nepali families that like to stare at us, but they are awesome. Yesterday we had "a life threatening blizzard" and the "worst storm of the century." So what we did is we went out and tracted during the blizzard because we were supposed to be out working. It wasn't too bad. There was a lot of snow. But I didn't think it was too bad.

And last big thing that happened this week is that I was experiencing an ingrown toe nail for the past month or so. I was trying to let it grow out. But it wouldn't. So I called Sister Winn and she told me to go to the mission doctor to see if I would need to get surgery on it. SO I go and he tells me that I would just let it grow and then he looks at it and says "that goes pretty deep in there." He took out some scissors and started cutting away at my toenail until he got to the base and then he tore the ingrown part out. So I went through the surgery without any anesthetics. It was fun.

Oh and my card was compromised. My mission one. And somebody tried to charge $900 to it. So the church cancelled my card. I'm getting a new one in a few days though. It should be good! Well hope y'all have a great Thanksgiving!