Week 21

Tuesday: We had our last district meeting in the morning! Possibly my last in Sandy District 3. We tried to contact some people in the Crescent Ridge 4th Ward most the day and didn't find much success, but the people weren't totally negative about us. I went out with my favorite ward mission leader Brother Barfuss in the Sandy East stake in the Wildflower Ward. We tried to visit Bill Brown, a guy in a part member family who had surgery on his knee. Was probably too late, so we went by to visit his home teachers and visiting teachers to figure out how we can best help them. I finally finished writing in my journal, I haven't missed a day since I've been on my mission. It will be pretty cool to look back and to see what I did each day when I'm older.

Wednesday: Today was the day missionaries life's were changed! We went to the mission office for the worldwide missionary broadcast. It was a really good broadcast, Dallin H Oaks, David A Bednar, and Neal A Maxwell (members of the quorum of the 12 apostles) were present during the meeting. They wanted missionaries to be more efficient in the work. They changed the missionaries schedule. We now have more flexibility in our schedule. From the hours between 6:30-10 we need to exercise, (30min) get ready, eat, personal study (60 min) and plan for the day (30 min) then from 10-6 we  need to do companionship study (30) lunch (30) and then dinner (60) so we basically get to choose when we want to do all these things so it's easier for missionaries to go home because they don't have a given schedule they need to follow when they go back to school/ work etc. On preparation day, (Monday) we have been given two more hours to have free time. We can email and do stuff from 8am-6pm. Then we have to go back to work the rest the night.

Thursday: We went to go visit Bill Brown in the morning and see how the surgery went. He was doing pretty good for just having a knee replacement. After that we had a lesson with Bruce Erickson, well Bruce taught us. He is very knowledgeable about the Bible and tried to tell us everything as he usually does. We are not going to be trying to teach him anymore. Maybe in a few months and see if he will start keeping commitments. Our senior missionaries in the area took us out to for dinner at a Mexican restaurant called La Hacienda and it was pretty good. At night we stopped in at a churchball game to see a former investigator.

Friday: Not much happened in the morning, but in the afternoon Elder Rodriguez wanted to meet with us. We talked about how our day was doing, then he wanted us to read a few scriptures together. The moral of the scriptures was that there is a time and place for everything.  Elder Fitzgerald at the mission broadcast was very energetic and always talking to people while it was going on. The Zone leaders wanted to let him know it wasn't okay with his behavior at the broadcast. Which should be a wake up call for him. He can be a little childish at times. So he was pretty mad at them after that when we went to go work. We tried to contact someone and they didn't answer, but their neighbor was outside so we went and talked to him. He has a son out on a mission now and we ended up talking about a lot of things. We ended up talking about the authority we have as missionaries. And how much closer we are to God by being a full time servant. He told us anything is possible, we may not wake up to a burning bush everyday but the Lord can do anything. He told us to suck it up and quit making excuses like "oh it's a mission in Utah it's hard." We carry the most valuable thing in this world with our message. People will pass dollars looking for pennies he said. We have the truth about the restored gospel and we know that God loves us so he gave us more revelation in the Book of Mormon and he gave us a prophet again on the earth. People will be placed in front of us who are ready to hear our message and we just have to do our best and the Lord will do the rest. It was perfectly what we needed that day. We stopped by a house where the home owner has 6 people living there. We contacted 4 of them. We found a less active who was willing to be taught again to help him out in his life. And the other three are non members and seemed like they would possibly listen to the discussions.  One of them has a problem with Jospeh Smith being a prophet. The other two didn't have any walls up or anything like that. They are married and they said they would discuss it if they were ready for it.

Saturday: We had some good and some bad in finding. We contacted a few unbaptized kids. One of them answered the door and the mom was totally up to letting him take the lessons if he wanted. She looked to him and he looked us in the eyes and said "no" a 9 year old was straight up with us haha! We contacted another one and she said she wanted to be baptized but she had to ask her mom! We went to the YSA (young single adult) elders convert baptism. The place was packed for her! There wasn't even enough room for the people to see the physical baptism! At night we figured out we are getting transferred. Sad to be done with him.

Sunday: We didn't do much but go and visit families because we won't have time on Monday to visit people because we are going to temple square! These are the families. After the district picture. Barfuss family, Jason Devlin(our recent convert), stockings, jones, ludlows, Dixons, Perry's and then the exo suits that the Perrys made!

Love you all,
Elder Ashby

Week 20

Tuesday: After our district meeting in the morning we went to Del Taco because taco Tuesday. During the meeting Elder Rodriguez gave a training on "finding" and it was about when we received referrals from people or church headquarters. Sometimes even if the referral isn't interested the Lord places people around the referrals that were meant for you and he placed you there. So we went to go contact a church headquarter referral who we didn't try to contact because we heard the intended person moved out. But we went to their house and it was a less active man. He loves fishing and hunting, when we walked into his house I felt like I was back in Wisconsin. There were mounts of all kinds of fish and animals. We also figured out that 6 other people are living in his home who he is renting it to, so we will try to contact all of them.

Wednesday: We started our exchanges in the morning. Elder Rodriguez came to our area and Elder Fitzgerald went to the YSA(young single adults 18-30) area with Elder Peterson. I really wanted to work on companion unity, and being effective together. So we talked a lot while we were working on things we could do to be more unified together. At night we had a meeting with Brother Homer (ward mission leader) and Thal Dixon (Ward missionary) to discuss how we are going to go forward with the work in the Heytsbury Ward. We got a good list of names and will hit them up next week.

Thursday: We finished our exchanges after lunch. I wanted to work on companion unity, but with a focus on accountability. Elder Rodriguez really helped me here. He said always think and imagine if President Lansing was to tag along with you for the day, would he be pleased with your work. Or even better, if Jesus was here knocking on doors with you, would be be pleased with you doing His work. Later at night we were asked to come help out with the young women's stake basketball team in the Sandy East Stake. Sister Barfuss asked us to explain some rules and to have them do some drills. Man was that funny! Nobody knew how to play and watching them play was awesome.

Friday: Well Elder Fitzgerald was sick so I was home all day. So I read and learned a lot in the Book of Mormon. In Jacob 5 it was Jacob quoting Zenos (A prophet in biblical times, that was taken out of the Bible in the nicene creed) about the allegory of the wild and tame olive tree. It represented the gathering of Israel, as well as being deeply rooted in the gospel. The Book of Enos gave me a better understanding of sincere prayer. Answers to prayers are like a combination lock. 1 is unlocked by faith. 2 is unlocked by personal righteousness. 3 is unlocked by God's will and not our own. I learned that in the Book of Mormon 1 Nephi- Omni was the records from the small plates of the people of Lehi, and Mosiah- 4 Nephi was an abridgment by Mormon from the large plates of the people of Lehi.  (Small plates are for the spiritual things that occurred, and the large plates are for the historical things) The Book of Ether was abridged by Mormons son Moroni of the plates of the Jaredites. The 116 pages of the Book of Lehi (which were upon the large plates) were lost by Martin Harris during the time of the translation of the Book of Mormon. But God never fails and God always has a plan. In 1 Nephi 9:5 it states, "Wherefore the Lord hath commanded me to make these plates for a wise purpose in him, which purpose I know not." These plates refer to the small plates. And these are the same time period as the Book of Lehi. So God knew that Martin Harris would lose the Book of Lehi so he commanded Nephi to create two separate records. If he didn't do this we would not have the knowledge of how the people of Lehi left Jerusalem and traveled to the Americas. Mormon echos Nephi nearly 1000 years later while abridging the plates by saying, "And I do this for a wise purpose; for thus it whisperth me, according to the workings of the Spirit of the Lord which is in me. And now, I do not know all things which are to come; wherefore, he worketh in me to do according to his will." Amazing how God is all knowing. Today marks my two year anniversary of tearing my ACL!

Saturday: Elder Fitzgerald was sick again. We got about a foot of snow over night and into the morning. I just read in the Book of Mormon again, I started out in Mosiah. The first couple chapters were all about the atonement. The atonement is one of the hardest things to fully grasp based off how significant the event was. Without the atonement we are nothing. Jesus died for all man kind so we could be able to be resurrected and live with our Heavenly Father. I recalled liked Mosiah 3:19 where it tells us to put off the natural man, and become a saint through the atonement, and how we need to become like a child. Elder Fitzgerald was feeling up to going out after Dinner, so we went and taught the Marzbans English. It was a very sad moment because they are going back to Iran for 4 months. And are leaving on Tuesday. They started tearing up when we were leaving.

Sunday: We had a stake conference in the Sandy East stake. Liu Gang (a recent convert) gave a talk in Chinese. He had a translator in his ward. He talked about his conversion story. From moving from China to Utah and being atheist to believing in Christ. He was so funny, he was saying that Americans eat so much meat and that's why they are so tall and big. He said that as you can see brother Riep (his translator) is definitely taller and fatter than me. The whole place was dying it was so funny. We also had a member of the 70 come and give a talk. He talked about Heavenly Father and the things he asks of us. Which include gathering the scattered house of Israel, as well as sealing families for time and eternity in the temple. And how we need to be doing family history work/genealogy  and saving ordinances for our ancestors who have passed before us.

Love,

Elder Ashby

Pictures from this week. First part is the picture and mount of the fish.  Second part is the Iranian family we have been teaching English. Last is Elder Fitzgerald and me.

Week 19

Monday: Elder Fitzgerald and I went to the church and shot around for a good hour then headed to the zone activity. The Zone activity was a snowball fight indoors. The snowballs were crumpled up paper wrapped in ceran wrap. They had tables, chairs, cardboard boxes set up for defenses. It was practically dodge ball, you couldn't go across the line and if you get hit you are out. It was a really fun activity, but after like the 4-5 game by arm was dead. We ended up playing like 10 games. I stopped trying after awhile but it always seemed like I was one of the last people on my team so I had to try. I regret trying because my arm is killing me. We contacted a church headquarter referral and she said she wants to meet with us and be baptized! She just said she would be so busy that Saturday's will probably be our best day to teach her. We got her parents numbers to set up appointments.

Tuesday: We had a Zone meeting in the morning and I learned a lot about unity. Unity in a Zone, district, and companionship and how vital it is to have it in order to be successful. I got in trouble for sending the pictures of my companion sleeping to people in the Zone.  Because I used the area email for missionary work, as well I sent it to sisters (which is against the rules) but the emails just had numbers so I didn't know who was who's email. At night we went out with a ward mission leader and we visited a part member family. His name was Eric Kennedy and he could talk for days! He was so knowledgeable about genealogy and family history work. We will try to have him help us with our genealogy to fellowship him.

Wednesday: We went to the stake center during our lunch time and put music on my new Bluetooth flash drive. We taught Sandy Delatore (less active) we did a family home evening with her and her daughter. We read 1 Nephi 8 which is Lehi's dream (very ironic) and how it can apply to her in her life. It was really good and she said she hasn't read scriptures in forever. We also read a few verses in 1 Nephi 11-12 which gives the interpretations of Lehi's dream.

Thursday: We shoveled a few driveways. And went to a church basketball game for the youth to see if there was any non members there. Sadly there wasn't. The Jones family who we play basketball with often lost 31-32 and they missed a game winner. At night we picked up the unbaptized, and part member family lists for the Crescent Ridge Stake.

Friday: We had a pretty successful night. We stopped by the Sundquist home, who has an unbaptized kid. The mom was fairly receptive and told us to come by next week! We went to their neighbors who just moved in, and it was a part member family. They said they weren't interested, but said we could "practice" teaching on them. We stopped by another part member home and the non member answered the door and was on crutches and said he was having knee surgery next week and we offered a blessing and he said to stop by on Monday.

Saturday: today wasn't the most exciting day. We visited a lot of members and gained a ton of referrals. Met with handful of bishops and ward mission leaders.

Sunday: Personal study was really good in the morning! As a mission we are reading the Book of Mormon. We started on January 1st and I'm already on Jacob 5, or page 125/531. Reading the Book of Mormon with the institute manual opens my eyes up to a lot of the verses in it. We went to the Crescent Ridge 2nd Ward to see if Madison Konnick and Sandy Delatore came. (Investigator, less active) sadly neither of them came. We gave talks in the buttercup Ward on missionary work. I accidentally took 20-30 minutes when it was supposed to be 15 minutes.  Elder Fitzgerald didn't have much time but yet he gave a good powerful talk. We basically chastised the Ward and told them if they want to see us more often because we go where the work is, that we need referrals and investigators.

Hope you all have had a grate week.

Love,
Elder Ashby

Week 18

Tuesday: We had a very good district meeting in the morning. Sister Conn and Sister Casiñas both gave very good and powerful trainings. We started our exchanges(a new companion for 24 hours, usually with a district leader or zone leader to come and help you and your area out) with Elder Rodriguez and Elder Peterson. It's the first time that I will be doing exchanges in a different area! For the first time in my mission I will not be sleeping at the Richards home, with the king size bed..... anyways! I went to the YSA (young single adult 18-30) area. Elder Peterson and I taught a lesson to one of their investigators Jaida Webster. (Not the happiest person because she is in our area, and we have tried to contact the family before but never got an answer. She is 18 but is still going to high school, so she would be technically in the family ward and not the YSA Ward.) She is so prepared to learn about the gospel! She is going to be baptized on January 21st. She even told her parents who are less active and are a little anti that she is getting baptized. Throughout the night we were talking to a lot of people and we gained like 10-15 good YSA referrals, hopefully that will be a good turnout for them on their area.

Wednesday: In the morning we ended our exchanges. After the exchanges we had a lesson with Bruce Erickson. We really didn't get to teach him anything because he wanted to get to know Elder Fitzgerald. At night we decided to go contact a referral we received from a bishop. As we were talking to Zach Thorum's grandfather at the door, Zach and his wife pulled up. (They live with his grandpa) we ended up talking to him for a good hour am a half, we figured out he has had some pretty pushy and crappy missionaries before. He liked talking to us and connected to us pretty good. I knew a handful of kids he has coached over at Herriman high school for football and rugby. His wife is a member and we could tell she really wants him to be a member and to be active. Even possibly sealed in the temple.

Thursday: During our personal study time in the morning, Elder Fitzgerald fell asleep. He was out for awhile so I had a lot more time to do personal study which was really nice. I took a picture of him sleeping as I usually do. When he finally woke up he was telling me how his dream was almost like am out of body experience and he felt like he was in inception. So I made a funny story out of pictures of him sleeping. I did a reenactment of Lehi's dream. (In the Book of Mormon 1 Nephi Chapter 8) when he woke up I showed him and he thought it was the funniest thing! We received a church headquarter referral for a person named Madison. It says she is going to church with the smart family, and wants to be baptized. But there isn't any smart family in their ward? So we looked at our stake directory and there are only two families that the last name is Smart, and they don't have kids her age. So we will have to just stop by her house and hope her (less active/ part member) parents will allow us to teach her. We realized that we have a problem, Jaida Webster has a younger sister who isn't baptized as well, and now since the YSA Elders are teaching Jaida, we don't really want to be teaching the younger sister because that would be really weird to have two different sets of missionaries teach them. It kind of irritated me that they started teaching her and having her go to the YSA Ward, because now it limits her sister to have a person to go to church with and will be harder for her to have a desire to do so. So by them teaching her it prevented/ limited the ability to reactivate the family, and baptize the kids. I mean I know that Gods will was for the YSA Elders to contact her but I just don't understand why that's the way this situation happened. I guess I need to be like Nephi when Laman and Lemuel (people in the Book of Mormon) are laughing and mocking Nephi because he was commanded of God to build a ship, and he didn't know why he needed to, but that he just had to.

Friday: We received another church headquarter referral! It is for a girl named Louya Hunt, the information said that, her husband is a less active member, and that they attended a church service over the holiday break and she had a lot of questions about the church. We stopped by, but nobody was home. Later at night we stopped by Sister Lindhearts house, she finished crochet hats for Elder Fitzgerald and I. Let's just say they weren't what I was expecting but still pretty cool that she made them. I had a swoop (Utah mascot) hat, and Elder Fitzgerald had a Kilo Ren mask. I'll just say his was a lot better.

Saturday: We were planning on going to play basketball in the morning for our exercise time, but when the alarm went off Elder Fitzgerald and I came to the conclusion that it was too early and we needed to sleep more. Well we both forgot to set another alarm.... I woke up around 9. After we both got ready we had to do some studying. I had a really good experience reading the Book of Mormon. 2 Nephi 9 was a really good chapter and gave me a better understanding of the Atonement and what Jesus did for all of us. For Dinner we are at the Mitchell home. After dinner they told us a little bit about their neighbors who are from Iran and are big into families. We also learned that Mahi Marzban, (someone we are working with, we are teaching her parents from Iran English) knows the Serji family really well and she might be the key to opening the door for us and teaching how families can be together forever. We contacted Louya Hunt, we figured out that she is Chinese and her husband is American. She had a lot of questions about things and we were there to answer them. As she learned more about our faith, she started chastising her husband, saying stuff like, "why aren't you doing these things? It's what your religion believes." It was pretty funny to see that happen in that way. We had her download the gospel library app that has all the scriptures. She can even change the setting to have Chinese. She said she would read the Book of Mormon but her husband kind of didn't want us to teach her so we didn't schedule an appointment but they told us to come by in a few weeks.

Sunday: We started our day off by going to a stake PEC meeting. We were informed that President Bishop (an assistant to the mission president) was going to be in our stake for the day. After the Meeting, we went to a Ward council with him. We got three good people that we should go visit and he was quite impressed. After the Ward council we had another meeting in our other stake with the high councilor over missionary work, as well as a stake president assistant. After that we headed back over to the sacrament meeting in the Sandy East stake where president Bishop was. It was fast and testimony meeting so Elder Fitzgerald and I went up and bore our Testimonies. I talked about Gods will and plan for us, as well as enduring to the end. And talked a little bit about my ACL story. I got a little emotional because it has almost been two years since I tore my ACL (January 20th) and how that impacted me and my life for the better. Elder Fitzgerald gave a good testimony about how the Lord needs the people to help others and in a sense he called the whole congregation to do missionary work. I loved it and really felt the spirit as he was speaking. All in all it was a great sacrament meeting and good day with President Bishop. I learned a lot from him.

 

Love you all,

Elder Ashby

Week 17

Tuesday: We had a good district meeting in the morning. After that I had a package and a letter from two good family friends back in Wisconsin. The Luther's and the Miloszewicz. I got a new University of Utah hoodie as well as some other items. We ate lunch with the YSA Elders (young single adult) they had a few pizzas left over from one of their activities so we at at a church building. We were trying to find some new people to teach and we knocked on this door and a man came outside and talked to us for like 20 minutes. He moved here from Arizona a few months ago with his family(All non members I'm assuming) He knows all the LDS people in his circle, and seemed fairly receptive. We however failed, he kind of ended the conversation before we could ask him if he was interested in learning more, or had a Book of Mormon, or even get his number. So we will have to go back and visit him soon.

Wednesday: We had to clean our car out in the morning because we didn't get around to it on Monday. Brent Bateman (my second cousin) took my companion and I out to lunch. We ate at Freddy's. After that we went to the stake center to see what was on a flash drive my brother sent me for Christmas. There was a lot of good missionary approved music. We put most of it on my companions flash drive because it's a Bluetooth one and can be played with his new Bose speaker. We printed out some good English to Farsi phrases to teach the Marzbans.  We ate dinner at their house then taught them English. We were there for four hours! My companion was so interested in learning Farsi he never wanted to leave.

Thursday: not much happened today, at night we went to go visit a member who had just lost his wife six weeks ago and tried to comfort him. He was telling us how his wife was the best example for him because even though she wasn't doing the best health wise, she would still care about other people and try to help them out. So I read the talk the Character of Christ by David A Bednar (a member of the quorum of the 12 apostles) and it really helped him out and showed how his wife had the character of Christ in her. He really appreciated the help and support that night.

Friday: another day without much going on. We ate dinner with a family, and our ward mission leader leader for that ward was there and was going to eat with us. And this ward mission leader never goes on splits with us and never really even talks to us. He opened up to us and was talking about how he needs to be a better  Ward mission leader and how he will start giving us referrals to go visit. At night we were putting up our new flyers in the church buildings and we found two basketballs in the gym and after a long day, we just had to shoot some hoops for a few minutes.

Saturday New Years Eve already?! Since we couldn't proselyte on a holiday we went and got some new basketball shoes at Scheels. Then went to go play basketball with the Jones family in the 6th Ward.  Their four oldest sons are all pretty good at basketball and always make it a fun challenge. After that we stopped by an investigators home and gave them a late Christmas present and he invited us in and started talking to us. He said he wants to learn more about our church and that even though he lived in Utah most of his life he doesn't know anything about the church. Which is a miracle here in Utah. We gave him a Book of Mormon and he said that he would definitely read it with an open mind and heart and pray to know if it's true. He said we could come by and teach him some lessons. We will be teaching him and his family on the 6th. We ended up staying at the Perrys home (Crescent Ridge 5th ward/ neighbor) we played a lot of games with their family, including my new favorite game Settlers of Catan! Don't know why but that game is very fun for me. They launched off some big fireworks for us before we had to leave. Didn't really feel like New Year's Eve since I was sleeping by 10 but oh well it was a good day!

Sunday: Another crazy Sunday here in Sandy, we were bouncing from church to church. We talked to a bishop in the Albion Ward and we got like 4 good referrals from him so that's always a bonus. In priesthood meeting we wrote down three things we will be more grateful for this year, and I had three in mind. 1. Be thankful for all the sacrifices it took my family and myself to get to the point where I am now. 2. Be grateful for the opportunity to serve the Lord full time. 3. Be grateful for the opportunity to have people listen to us and hear about our message about the restored gospel. We ended up talking with a family that the mom does crochet. She said she would make us any hat we want, so my companion is going to have a Kilo Ren mask/hat made, and I'm having a swoop(Utahs mascot) hat. Really looking forward to seeing how they turn out.

It's a new year and a new opportunity to become a better person. Try to stay true to your new year resolutions! I believe in all of you.  Also I encourage everyone to invite someone to learn more about the LDS church. And if you aren't a member I encourage you to to take the missionary discussions. Wherever you are I will make sure that you can have that opportunity. I also encourage all to read the Book of Mormon again or maybe for the first time. To read and ponder the words. And to pray and ask God if these things are true, if the Book of Mormon is the Word of God, if Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon, and if Jospeh Smith restored the gospel of Jesus Christ again to the earth and was given the priesthood keys to act in Gods name. I promise that your life will be blessed by doing this, I may not know in what way, but I promise you in the name of Jesus Christ if you will do theses things you will be more happy, you will understand your purpose in life, and you will know in your heart that these things are true. I leave you with my testimony, I know that the Book of Mormon is true. I have read it and prayed about it, and gained my own understanding that it is true and I invite all to do the same. I love you all and will be praying for you and your new homework assignment. And I will be following up to see if you have attempted to do these things.

Love,

Elder Ashby