Week 38

Tuesday: We had the usual district meeting in the morning. We have seen some struggles in our district with finding new people to teach, as well as focusing on our purpose. We talked a lot about faith and how by faith we can see miracles in our work. We talked a lot about the apostle Peter, he was Christ's chief apostle and was always being tested by the savior. But yet Peter had faith like no other. Faith sufficient to walk on water with Christ. But soon started to sink when he took his eye off the master and let fear overtake his faith. We can learn a lot from Peter and I have done so myself. One pivotal moment in his life is when the resurrected Lord appears to the apostles after they have seen their master be crucified, and went back to fishing. He is very bold with Peter and asks him, "Peter, do you love me?" His reply is, "yea lord, thou knowest I love thee."   "Feed my sheep." He goes on to repeat this three times and after denying his association with Christ three times, he isn't too excited about the number 3. This is the moment Peter strides into eternity. There is a piece from a talk by Jeffery R Holland called Feed My Sheep (MTC edition) that I love it describes us and how we need to be converted to the gospel forever, and it says, "I  have  asked  you  before  to leave  your nets. When  I said,  'Leave  your  nets,'  it  was  forever.  When  I asked  you  to  follow  me,  it  was  forever.  When  I asked  you  to  be  an  apostle,  it  was  forever.  When  I  asked  you  to  be  a Missionary,  it  was forever.  When  I  asked  you  to  see  this through  to  the  end,  it  was  because  it's  not  over  'til  it's over.  Now  forget  your  nets,  and  forget  the  fish,  and jettison  your  boat,  and  throw  those  oars away  for  the  second time,  and  feed  my  sheep.  We're  in  this  'til  the  end. Peter, you  can't  go  home.  You  can't  go  back  to  fish.  You  can't go back  to  Galilee.  You  can't  go  back  to  boats.  It's  over.  It is  a  new  life,  a  new  day,  a  new time." As a missionary we are feeding his sheep and saving his lambs and we do that by inviting others to come unto Christ. Now I invite all who read this to know the invitation is for you. We went out and got a present for our investigator Logan who is being baptized on the 27th. He loves any type of balloon or ball. We got him some balloons and light up balls.

Wednesday: We had an exchange with the Zone leaders. (Where I go with one Zone leader for 24 hours and my companion goes with the other Zone leader, the point for this is to learn and grow from someone other than our companion. Since I am a district leader I do it with them.) I was with Elder Gehrett, and I wanted to work on talking with everyone I see because it is hard to walk up to a stranger and talk with them.  We had a lot of good conversation with people, it ranged from getting out of the car and walking with someone to talk to them, to talking to people at red lights. It may seem pretty weird that we try to talk to everyone we see but we are sharing the gospel, the definition of the gospel is "good news" we are representatives of Jesus Christ and are sharing the message that he would share if he were here. We talked to a lady in her garage smoking. We could tell she was having a rough time and we figured out that her brother was in the hospital. She didn't want to hear our message but we asked if we could pray for her Brother with her and she allowed us to. After the prayer she was in tears and thanked us for doing that. We gave her our # and she said she would call us if she changed her mind. It's crazy how we can changed people's lives by simply opening our mouth and helping other people. At night we were playing volleyball with the YSA (young single adult) Ward but eventually it was time to head home. We are usually on bikes, so we were sharing a car for the night with my companion and the other Zone leader but they had the car at night. So we started walking home and someone pulled over and gave us a ride home. As we got in the car they called us and said they were all the way in West Jordan on their way back to Riverton. Well we told Elder Harvey (our Zone leader) that we were just going to get a ride home. Well the girl in the back said is he from Arizona? Well long story short, she went on a blind date with one of my Zone leaders a few years ago and she moved to Draper and was driving around with her friends. It was too funny.

Thursday: We filled out the baptismal program for one of our investigators named Logan who is getting baptized on May 27th. We had a lesson with him later that night and got him all prepared to be baptized on Saturday. We met with a less active family who fed us some good food, and then we talked a little bit about Church, Prayer, and Reading the scriptures. Three things we can do to strengthen our testimony in the savior and to have a better love for our Heavenly Father.

Friday: We had our Zone leaders come and interview Logan for his baptism. Logan is a 9 year old kid with high functioning autism.  Despite his circumstances he is a very smart kid. And he is ready to be baptized.

Saturday: We had to get to the church building early in the morning to set up all the tables and things for the baptism. It was a really smooth baptism and the program was good. It was a good atmosphere to feel the spirit and to see this young man make covenants, or promises with God and to receive a remission of his sins. We had a good time and had some food and played around with the kids after the baptism and let's just say they wore us out!

Sunday: We went to the Riverton North 4th Ward to see Logan get introduced to the ward. President Bishop (yes a weird last name for someone with a church calling) who is a member of our mission presidency came to our meeting to watch and observe how missionary work is going. Our MLS missionaries (senior missionary couples) gave great talks in sacrament meeting and talked a lot about missionary work and how it has been a good challenge for them acting like missionaries. Elder and Sister Reed both talked about how they have only been missionaries for a month but are so blessed for the opportunity. They both also kept talking about how I was teaching them all these missionary terms in our district meetings. It was a good meeting. Sadly Brandy our other investigator slept in and didn't make it to church this week, she is in the same ward.

HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND!

Love you all,
Elder Aaron Ashby

Logan's baptism

Week 37

Tuesday: We had our usual district meeting in the morning, I wanted to prepare a good meeting for the sisters because hey have been going through a rough time. We had a good positive uplifting meeting and I could see the difference in their attitudes before and after. It was Sister Burgos' birthday so she wanted a chocolate dome from kneeders so we got one of those and Brother Wyatt drove with us to pick up these fancy donuts from beyond glazed, Brother Wyatt is the man he does so much for us and other missionaries. At night there was a ward walk about in one of our wards we cover, we ended up playing some basketball with some kids and most of them were not LDS so it was a good opportunity to friend them.

Wednesday: Well my bike had a flat tire and wouldn't hold any air so we went to Taylor's Bike shop in our area and bought new tubes and tires for my bike. Let's just say it was so hard to get the tires on the metal spoke and it took us way too long haha. Brother Wyatt took us to sodalicious  on the way home. We ate dinner with an awesome family the Waters.

Thursday: We had a lesson with Logan Murray, he is a 9 year old kid who has high functioning autism and is going to be baptized on May 27th which is this next Saturday!

Friday: We didn't have much success finding new people to teach but there is always going to be ups and downs in the mission! Just gotta keep working! There was a member at a church building who had a lot of extra butter and asked if we wanted it and we needed some so they told us to take it. So we loaded up a bag full of butter and took it home.  We called it the Great Butter Heist of 2017 and this is a picture to represent how much we got haha!

Saturday: We had another lesson with Logan and man was he bouncy today. It was a real tuff time teaching him because his cousins were coming over after the lesson and would be going to the park so he couldn't really focus. We talked to one of our relief society presidents who has become friends with this lady who isn't LDS but comes to church every week. She wants to join the church but her husband who is a member doesn't really want to do anything with the church. She said she would meet with us if her husband was in board so we talked to our relief society president of ways she could help them and their family. Well the nighttime didn't go as planned. We talked a lot about the sister in our district because they aren't teaching any investigators at the moment and their whole schedule is filled with teaching less active people and we thought that their time could be better spent finding new investigators. So we talked about it with the sisters and they were not having it, they were giving off all these reasons how important it is to work with those who have fallen away from the church. Yes it is very important to, but as a missionary we are set apart and have the authority to teach the gospel and to help people get baptized. A ward should primarily handle less active work and new members to keep them active in the church. They are in a young single adult Ward so their members of the ward are all return missionaries who know how do help with that. We went over to the Pecks house to encourage Zack to come to church. We played some baseball and basketball with him and he said he would come to church.

Sunday: We had a meeting as missionaries in the Riverton North Stake with the stake presidency. Afterwards we went to Meadows Ward council to find ways to help the Pecks. While we were in that meeting their mom said if Zack doesn't want to get baptized on the same day as his twin sister Jaylee then he doesn't have to. So we went over to their house to walk to church with them and Zack said he didn't want to go so he will not be able to be baptized on June 3rd with his sister. But Jaylee is so solid for a 9 year old and is very smart and mature. We went to church with Jaylee then and had a good time. At night we went to a fireside where an old member of the 70 spoke, and afterwards we had Banana splits that were good!

Love you all,
Elder Ashby

 

Picture descriptions: Our district at our last district meeting all together (Zone leaders won't be in our meeting next week) cutting up some donuts, our lesson plan for Logan, result of the Great Butter Heist of 2017!

 

 

Week 36

Tuesday: We went to our Zone leaders baptism at 7am and we helped them out. We had a Zone meeting that day as well. Apparently the church has said that we will no longer do Zone meetings because in other missions it is too far to travel, but since our mission is small they will let us keep doing them, but they are calling it "All districts meeting" which sounds odd haha. The Zone leaders asked if I would conduct the meeting. We met this lady named Brandy that we tried to work with last week and we found her at home and she just got out of the hospital.  She wanted a blessing so we gave her one and set up an appointment for tomorrow. At night the assistants to the president called us and said they had to talk to us..... well they wanted me to do something for them for Zone conference tomorrow. I had time to practice stacking cups and had one minute, I would be going up against someone in a different zone who gets called on randomly at the meeting. Man did I practice! I put my suit on and everything to prepare myself for the training tomorrow. I had it down pretty good, the average time was 35 seconds.

Wednesday: We had Zone conference today and the whole time was mentally preparing to stack these cups and beat this other person who had no clue what to do. It was a really good meeting and I learned a lot from it. I messed up on the cup stacking thing and did it in 50 seconds but the other person didn't even finish. I cracked under pressure haha! We met with Brandy and taught her the restoration and had her pray to know if she should be baptized and she said yes! She is going to be baptized on June 3rd.

Thursday: I had a district leader training for most of the morning and it was very good. I learned a lot and how to help those in my district have motivation to work. I finally went to the mission home in south Jordan. 8 months in and I've never been inside until that meeting, I've always been the group that met at the mission office. We stopped by Brandy's house and read the Book of Mormon with her. At night we met with an active family and they gave us two good leads on people we could possibly teach! As I was talking to the sisters in my district I was complaining how I bought deodorant but it wasn't antiperspirant so I was still sweating so they dropped off a stick of deodorant and an Arizona with som sticky notes that made my day!

Friday: We went to temple square in Salt Lake City with Jaylee and Zack Peck. Their little sister Jazlyn and mom came. It was a real fun experience to explain things with the visual things at temple square.  We went to the video Gods plan for families and it was so good.  Afterwards we went to the church history museum to watch the first vision on a 180 degree tv screen. It is always so powerful to watch a reenactment of Joseph Smith seeing God the Father and  His son Jesus Christ. They took us out to eat dinner after our visit. When we got home we met with a part member family the Covington's. The wife (who isn't LDS) is practically a dry Mormon, does everything that her husband does, goes to church, reads the scriptures, you name it she does it. She didn't really give us a solid reason why she didn't want to take the missionary discussions. Her husband gave us a ride home and he said that he things she won't get baptized because her parents are Anti LDS. So we will see if we can do anything in the future.

Saturday: Well I have another flat tire so we were on foot again and most of our work is in the stake we don't live in so A LOT OF WALKING.  We went to the Riverton North 4th Ward carnival but the Zone leaders had to drop something off and we were discussing the work in our areas as well as how the sisters in our district are struggling. Well we ended up not being able to go to the carnival at all haha. We prepared on how we are going to teach primary tomorrow in the Medows Ward.

Sunday: HAPPY MOTHERS DAY!!!! We went to the Medows Ward sacrament meeting and Jaylee came but Zack didn't! He even pinky promised me h would come this week! We had to teach Jr and Sr primary. It was about baptism so we shared a video where kids talk about what baptism is.  Then we had two pictures. One of Jesus being baptized and then the other was someone else being baptized. They had to list of the similarities between them. I had to give sister Burgos a blessing. The sisters have been struggling in their work lately and the people they have been working with stopped meeting with them. Well I had the opportunity to Skype my family which only happens twice a year.  (Mother's Day, Christmas) so it was good to see how the family is doing. Had a good hour with them. A little bummed because my younger sister has an iPhone7 and I never had the latest phone haha!

Monday: (today) we went on a hike with some other Elders up Butterfield canyon.

Love you all,
Elder Ashby

Here are some pictures of this week

Week 35

Tuesday: We had district meeting as usual, it went well. At night we helped out the young women to prepare to be missionaries before they are called on a mission. Their leaders asked if we would come by and help out so we did. It was interesting to see how they thought missionary work was so hard when really it should be easy sharing the gospel with our friends. We met a lady who is not of our faith but her husband is. The interesting thing is, that she goes to church every week with her kids and the husband who is a member does not. She wants to meet with us and join the church but she wants to wait till her husband is on board with it and comes to church. We got a call from a random number saying that she volunteers at a mentor works program (half way house for people who have addictions) and she said that their was a new move in from North Carolina and she has an aunt that is LDS and thinks highly of her and wants to meet with us!

Wednesday: The sisters in our district wanted us to make them a cool poster so they could put it up in their church buildings so we made them one. We had a lesson set up with a less active family with a kid who is 8, turning 9 this month. The bishop interviewed him to see if he knew enough to be baptized and he couldn't answer the basic questions so he told us we should teach him the lessons, so we started doing that and he is now on date for May 27th to be baptized. He will be 9 then so that's why we are teaching him. We stopped by a church to use the bathroom and the bishop of the 4th Ward was there so we talked a little about the Murrays and Logan wanting to be baptized on May 27th. We got on the same page and then bishop told us he is meeting with two people on Sunday and one is a family with a kid who isn't baptized and the other is with a women who he doesn't know, he said if their is missionary work he will let us know! We met the lady named Brandy, who is in the mentor works program. We have a meeting scheduled on Friday!

Thursday: We did service for brother Van Komen, he is a Dutch guy who is so funny and will be helping him every week in the afternoon! We had our meeting with one of our senior missionary couples the Reeds.  They are health nuts and they made us try this green drink they made from various fruits and vegetables..... let's just say it looked a lot worse than what it tasted like. Not bad but not good. We had a visit with Zack and Jaylee Peck talked a little bit about the Book of Mormon and followed up on how their camping trip was, and their trip to California. At night we went out with one of my favorite ward mission leaders  Brother Barron, and had some good visits.

Friday: We had our  lunch with our other senior missionary couple.  Brandy canceled the lesson because her meds got mixed up and she wasn't feeling really good. We did service for a man named Anthony who took his name off the church records, we did some yard work for him and he gave us some good beef jerky! It always nice to help someone in need. At night I did a baptismal interview for the Elders in my district (part of the responsibilities of a district leader) we will be going to Rubens baptism on Tuesday at 7am haha! That's the only time he was free so we're doing it then!

Saturday: We were trying to think of some good ways to teach Logan because he has high functioning autism and has a short attention span so we wanted to teach the restoration using cups, we made a pyramid with the apostles and Jesus as the head of the church, and after he died and his apostles as well, we fell into what is known as a great apostasy. Hence the need for a restoration with Joseph Smith. And just as times of old we have apostles and a prophet to lead and guide us, but it is still the church of Jesus Christ. It was a good lesson with Logan but his little sister kept knocking down all the cups before we could get them all up and was very determined that she needed to put them up. So eventually we got it to stand up. Well we were on our way to dinner and some guy pulled out of his driveway and floored it past us and I was fixing something on my bag and I hit the brakes and sadly it was the front break that I hit and I did a little front flip over my bike haha! I thought I wouldn't crash because every missionary talks about their crashes on their bikes haha. Just got a little scrape on my hand is all.

Sunday: We went to the 4th Ward to see if the Murray family would come to church and they did! We were a little worried that they didn't come, but they were out in the foyer. After sacrament meeting we went to go see if Zack and Jaylee came to church. Jaylee came but Zack didn't. We sat through the Sunday school with them and Primary. We need to figure out a way to get Zack excited to come to church so we are going to be teaching primary next week!

Hope you all have had a great week!

Love Elder Ashby

Week 34

Monday April 24: Well we heard rumors that we won't have our car this next transfer so we decided to try and use up our left over 200 miles for the month. We went to the DI to find some cheep cloths. Elder Gilchrist needed a haircut so we went to SportsClips (free for missionaries) Right next to sports clips is a store called the TieShop a store where all they do is sell ties. For missionaries it is $6 for a tie and $8 for a flower tie. So I bought a good looking flower tie.  We got our transfer calls and it was not what we expected. I am staying in the area for my third transfer and my new companion will be Elder Schunk. Elder Gilchrist is being transferred to South Jordan Glenmore stake. He was very upset because every transfer so far on his mission has been a new companion and new area every 6 weeks. Elder Schunk is Elder Fitzgerald's trainer (a past companion) he's been out for 19 months and is from Kansas. At night the Assistants to the mission president called me and said that Elder Schunk has had a disobedient past and has been emergency transferred twice already(when they transfer you in the middle of your 6 week transfer for either disobedient issues or health issues) if you get emergency transferred 3 times for disobedience they just send you home. So they told me that I need to be the missionary that changes his mission. It is kind of a big pill to swallow but President trusts me I guess.

Tuesday April 25: Well Elder Schunk arrived here in the morning and then we drove Elder Gilchrist to his new area in South Jordan. Well sadly we had to give up our car. They split the Riverton YSA area up into 3 companionships instead of 2 like before. They needed a car somehow and the took ours. So we are now on bikes, except Elder Schunks bike is in Sandy on his old apartment so we need the Zone leaders to pick it up. We met with Charles again and had a good talk about the plan of salvation, or in other words, Gods plan for us. He believes that with parallel universes that we will all go to our own separate heaven. So the Mormons will go to their heaven, the Catholics will go to their heaven, etc.

Wednesday April 26: We had district meeting at our new Zone building.  One of the Zone leaders decided to randomly change the Zone building because he didn't like the old one, even though it's been the Zone building from the dawn of time. But oh well. It's the first time I've been on a bike my whole mission and kinda bummed but my quads should be looking good soon! Well we made it about a block before I had a flat tire so that's always good.... so we were on foot for the day!

Thursday April 27: We had a leadership meeting in the morning to discuss our goals for June and  to account for someone in our district who we are concerned about. We had our lunch with our new MLS couple the Reeds (senior missionaries) after that the Zone leaders took us to the mission office to get me a new bike, because the old one was trash.

Friday: April 28: We had our other MLS couple lunch/Correlation meeting. And then after we helped Elder Richards and Heller make posters and we did ours as well. Let's just say that we made some bomb posters! We got some good leads at dinner with some people in our ward mission leaders Ward. ITS ELDER SCHUNKS BIRTHDAY!!!

Saturday April 29: We got a call from our MLS couple the Reeds and they asked if we could do some service for some of his neighbors. So we ended up doing service for 4.5 hours! We put up all our posters so people will see them on Sunday at church. The Sisters in our district got us Arizonas for Elder Schunks birthday.

Sunday April 30: We had to give two talks. One at 9am in the Copperview 7th ward and then one at 11am at the Copperview 8th Ward.  The 7th wards talk was on the restoration. And the 8th wards was on General Conference/ missionary work. We had a youth speaker and then Elder Schunk and I for the second talk. Well the youth speaker took 5 minutes and Elder Schunk took 10 so they left me with like 30 minutes...... luckily I stretched it out for 25 minutes and we ended on time haha! Sadly the Pecks went camping so they couldn't come to church!

Have a great week!
Elder Ashby

District Meeting Pics...

Since we don't have a car...guess who gets to wear a bike helmet...this is my unhappy face.

Elder Gilchrist goodbye.

Our newest poster for the Wards in our area.

Week 33

Monday April 17: For the past 5 weeks on Monday (our day off)  as a mission we have been doing a march madness master teaching bracket from 8am-10am. We would do a 15 minute role play to a fake investigator and we were judged on various things. And just as march madness goes, the winner moves on. Well today we had the final 4 and championship matchup. It was held at the mission office with the whole mission in attendance. My first Zone leader, and a guy in my first district were the winners of it all. The main point of this teaching competition wasn't to see who the best teachers were, but to learn how to become better teachers. To teach people based off their concerns rather than a predetermined lesson plan.

Tuesday April 18: Today we had our last district meeting for the transfer, we brought dunford donuts like we had the first district meeting of the transfer to finish what we started. The Zone leaders evaluated how well my district meeting went (part of their responsibilities) they said that it was probably one of their best district meetings they have been to. At night we were supposed to do service in the Copperview 1st Ward with the youth but it was raining ridiculously hard so we did some service inside. Elder Gilchrist and I made quilts for their youth summer activities.

Wednesday April 19: Well they announced at the march madness competition that since we have been sacrificing our time on our day off to do the march madness thing, that we have 4 hours extra to do whatever we want during this week. So we decided to use our extra 4 hours today. So my companion wanted to play Settlers of Catan with another set of Elders so we met up with them and they brought expansion editions to the base game (Seafarers, and Knights and Cities) it was pretty fun for the most part. Knights and Cities was way too complicated for me.

Thursday April 20: We met a family who isn't LDS and heard that they wanted to sit down and meet with missionaries. We just had to wait till after April 18 due to tax season with the husband being a CPA.  Apparently he has a different job so he is still extremely busy with work and probably won't be able to meet for a bit. At night we had a meeting with our Stake Presidency, all our Bishops, and all of our Ward mission leaders, as well as our Mission President. (Stake president is someone who is responsible for the whole stake which could be a a square mile here in Utah, in Wisconsin it is from Eau Claire to St Paul) (A bishop is a man who has been ordained and set apart as the presiding high priest for a ward, or congregation. He has overall responsibility for ministering the temporal and spiritual affairs of the congregation. But is non paid like other ministers it is all voluntary. For example my Dad is the Bishop of the Eau Claire Ward.) (A Ward mission leader is a man who's responsibilities are to help with the missionary efforts in his designated ward.) (A mission president is a man who is called to lead a whole mission and all the missionaries that preside in it.) For our meeting we discussed how we as missionaries can help these men in their callings and how we can all do the lords work together. They focused on people who have been given the priesthood(the authority to act in Gods name) and do not attend church and how we can help them come back to church.

Friday April 21: We printed off talks from this past General Conference (Where our modern day prophet and apostles speak to us) to use for our talks next Sunday. We will have two talks to give that day. We met a man named Charles Greene and he is a 70 year old man who has almost the same beliefs as us but refuses to be a member of our church. He said he wishes he joined our church when he was younger because he would of had a better life but feels that it is too late to join the church. It was a very interesting and deep conversation with him because it is never to late. God sent us to his house to help him out and to help him find peace and joy in his life.

Saturday April 22: I was sick for most of the day and attempted to go out at night to contact a referral we were given. Talking to a friend of the person we figured out that she isn't ready to meet with the missionaries and her parents won't let her get baptized. So she baptized until she is 18 and she turns 18 in October.

Sunday April 23: We went to the Medows Ward council (where as Ward leadership discuss some business that is going on in their ward) we talked about Zack and Jaylee Peck wanting to be baptized on June 3rd and how we could help them out. We also went to their sacrament meeting and Jaylee came to church finally! Sadly Zack fell and hurt his arm on Saturday and didn't want to come to church. We sat next to Jaylee in sacrament meeting, Sunday School, and primary.

Love you all,
Elder Ashby