Week 46

Tuesday: Well transfers happen so quickly. We had breakfast with our senior missionary couple the Reeds in the morning and then Elder Reed took us both to our new areas. We dropped off Elder Schunk in Sandy with his new companion Elder Acker. Then I was dropped off in Draper with my new companion Elder Collier. Well considering I left one of the nicest apartments in the mission and came to a really small apartment, I can now say I feel like a missionary haha! Sadly it doesn't have wifi so we have to go to a church build. One of our Zone leaders Elder Anderson had to go pick up medicine so Elder Gehrett was with us for a couple hours. We discussed some ways that we could help the missionaries we have stewardship over, one way is by having a "vision" for us and our area and we came up with ways to achieve our vision. It was really good to sit down and talk about our area and what we want this transfer to happen.

Wednesday: We had district meeting in the morning and it's always hard to know what to train on if you get put in a new area with new members in your district. Now I have a bigger district, we have the Zone leaders, Elder Anderson & Gehrett (Elder Gehrett was one of my Zone leaders in Riverton) a companionship of Elders, Elders Sandino & Dutton, and a set of sisters, Sisters Burgos & Anderson. (Sister Burgos was in my last district) The meeting was mainly focused on not being satisfied with the work and success we have. Everyone in the district has some pretty good work going for them at the moment and we don't want people to become complacent because they already have success. We want them to remember their saviors example and to continue to press forward in this great work. We had a Zone expectation meeting after the district meeting, they are really cracking down on some rules because missionaries are breaking them. At night we went by to visit a lady who is going through a rough time and shared a quick message with her to know that we can endure hard things.

Thursday: We had a Zone leadership meeting in the afternoon to reiterate what was said in the Zone expectation meeting. We talked a lot about how a district leader should work with a sister training leader with sisters who are in my district. As a district leader over Sisters, I am responsible for their missionary work, the STL's are responsible for the sisters physical, mental, and emotional well being. I talked to a sister in our district about their ankle injury and I guess that was a no no, so I will have to work on not "counseling them"

Friday: We had a meeting with the Grahams our senior missionary couple, their grandkids were in town so we didn't have lunch with them. I had to interview one of the sisters investigators to be baptized and man was she cool! She had gone through so much in her life and it was amazing to see how the atonement has worked in her life for the better! She was one of the most solid investigators I've seen!

Saturday: Our shower was broken so we had to use our senior missionary couples steam shower and man was that thing nice haha! Maybe it wasn't a bad thing our shower was being fixed. We ended up making some posters to put up in our church buildings and I think it may be one of the best I've made. At night we went to Teressa's baptism since Elder Collier was asked to be one of the witnesses. It was jam packed with missionaries brining their investigators to see what a baptism is, also missionaries who helped her along the way.

Sunday: Last night we were up late writing two talks for church. We started our morning off by going to give a talk in the Draper 17th Ward realizing we were not on the schedule to speak, but in fact it was three weeks from now. So that gave me a breather, so we only had one talk then! We go to the Hidden Valley 4th Ward and I gave a talk on recognizing and following the spirit. I related it to Nephi at the beginning of  the Book of Mormon when he and his brothers are commanded to retrieve the brass plates. How he was "lead by the spirit, not knowing beforehand the things which he should do." I also talked about our experience of leaving Utah and moving to Wisconsin and how it ended up being the best thing for our family. After we went to the Draper 2nd Ward to see if our investigator Lisa Carrol came to church, well sadly she didn't and apparently on the schedule I was speaking! So I gave the same talk I gave earlier. After we went over to a part memeber family home and Elder Collier shared his conversion story of joining the LDS church, and I shared how I gained testimony of it. Overall it was a pretty good day.

Hope you all have a great week!

Love,
Elder Aaron Ashby

 

Picture descriptions: saying goodbye to the Pecks, brother Wyatt, Brother Waters, Our landlords the Ashby's, breakfast with the Reeds, dropping Elder Schunk off, new posters, Teressas baptism, Elder Collier with a puppy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Week 45

Tuesday: Well we had our last district meeting for the transfer, it's crazy to think how fast 6 weeks can go, but also crazy how fast the mission has gone. It feels like I started yesterday and now I'm 10 months out almost half way done. It's crazy how fast life goes, it's as if it's gone in a blink of an eye. I feel that's why it is so important to live in the moment because if we fail to do so, we will waste our time. We had a testimony meeting rather than usual district meetings. We reflected on our missions thus far and to see how it has gone, all the good and bad. It all comes down to what we are willing to do today, to ensure a better tomorrow. Sister Kirkpatrick is going home next Tuesday and it was crazy to see how many lives an individual can impact. She is one of the best sister missionaries, if not the best missionary in our mission. I have learned so much from her and her testimony of our Savior Jesus Christ.

Wednesday: We had a leadership meeting in the morning to reflect on the new expectations our mission president has set for us to reach our full potential. They are becoming more strict because collectively as a mission we are becoming complacent. We are focusing on ourselves rather than those in need. As President Gordon B. Hinckley taught, "service is the best medicine for self pity, selfishness, despair, and loneliness." It is so true, yeah we all have problems and others have it worse than us. I am not neglecting your personal problems, but I think there is something we can learn from this. We truly find ourselves when we lose ourselves helping others. As Albert Einstein said, "a life not lived for others is not a life well lived."  I love doing service and I love teaching people about the gospel because I know the gospel of Jesus Christ can heal even the deepest wounds in our hearts. If you allow yourself to have Christ be your focal point in life he will carry you to find joy and peace in this life and the life to come. We had the opportunity to do service for Lue White again. My companion got a little frustrated about the fact that we did a service project, and had to completely restart twice because she changed her mind of what she wanted. Ultimately to end up with what we had originally. I explained to him that it's not about him, that this mission should be all about the people we serve.

Thursday: We had our usual correlation/ lunch meeting with the senior missionaries the Reed's. After we were done with that, they took us over to the family history center to do a little more searching for ancestors who need saving ordinances done. (Like baptism, and temple ordinances) Honestly it's so hard to find someone in my family tree that needs those ordinances done because I feel like everyone has already had their work done haha! But I found a name last week and Elder Reed has done most of the temple work and I get to finish his work the next time we go to the temple.

Friday: Well we had our usual weekly planning session in the morning.  As we were leaving our apartment there was a white car that drove by and was going real slow then sped up. I didn't think much of it and went on with my day. Well about half way through the day when I got on wifi at a church building I saw I had an email from my dad. Well turns out it was him and my mom in the white car spying on me!!! I knew they were in town to visit but they couldn't even wait 24 hours without trying to find me haha! They went to go visit Brother Wyatt (a good friend who takes us around to do our shopping on Mondays) and Brother Wyatt texted me and told me that my parents were at his house. Well it just so happens to be that we were working two streets over from his house!  At night we ate dinner with a member from one of our wards, it just so happened to be that it was with my dentist growing up! Crazy how much can happen when you serve in the mission you grew up in.

Saturday: We did service for an elderly lady in the morning who needed a lot of furniture moved. Well let's just say elderly ladies and architects are missionaries worst enemies. (Not in a bad way!) We had to move a long couch down some spiral staircases and down the weird steps where there is 4 steps a square then 4 more steps the other direction. I honestly have no clue how we got the couch down where she wanted it. It was a miracle in itself!

Sunday: Well sadly Brayden and Sefeara didn't come to church again, they slept in. We hope that we can find a way to help these kids get to church because their great aunt doesn't have any desire to take them. Hopefully service will soften sister White's heart and have the desire to come back to church and be a role model for these kids. Well no news on transfers so I will have to inform you separately! Should know Monday morning around 10am.

Picture descriptions: last district meeting of the transfer/ Sister Kirkpatrick's last district meeting, pictures my parents sent me when they were spying on me!

Hope you all have a great week!

Love,
Elder Ashby

Week 44

Tuesday: We had a 4th of July neighborhood breakfast in the Copperview 4th Ward in the morning. Met some cool people and had some good food.  We went to one of our MLS couples (senior missionary couples)  house to hang with them and play some games. We played games and then had some burgers and hotdogs. Afterwards we had a Zone meeting from 6-9 because they didn't want us out with the holiday. It was a good meeting and a wake up call for missionaries. We all have become a little complacent with it being summer and people going on vacation, as our mission president said "as people go on vacations so have our missionaries." Even though we are serving for 2 years (guys) or 18 months (girls) we lose focus on why we are doing what we are doing. We are hear teaching people about the restored gospel of Jesus Christ and are inviting others to come closer to their Heavenly Father and Savior Jesus Christ. A good way to come closer is by reading the Book of Mormon, I know that the Book of Mormon does not diminish the Bible, but goes hand in hand with the Bible to support one another. God continues to speak to his people and has provided a way to know that we have a prophet here on the earth today and we can find out by reading the Book of Mormon. If the Book of Mormon is true, we know that Jospeh Smith is a prophet of God called to translate the ancient record which is now the Book of Mormon.

Wednesday: Well I had a meeting for majority of the morning and afternoon since I am what is know as a district leader. So I am responsible for watching over a few companionships of missionaries and their work. So we have a training ever 6 weeks if we are a district leader. Nothing really new in that meeting, it was basically a reiteration of the Zone meeting discussing the problems we are having in the mission but without the sugar coating that came from the Zone leaders. President Lansing was very bold and direct that we need to be better. Elder Schunk was one of two missionaries in our mission that was selected by our mission president to go to a technology/missionary seminar. He is very knowledgeable about technology so they are wondering how we can better use technology as missionaries in the future. His meeting took a little longer and was up at Snowbird but Little Cottonwood canyon so I stayed with Elder Brock & Anderton (Elder Anderton was my companion in the missionary training center) At night we met with the young women's president and young women's camp director in the Copperview 7th ward. We received information that there were a few girls that went to girls camp that are not LDS  . Well turns out there was 11! We got some good information and will be trying to work with them here in the future.

Thursday: Today was a physically and mentally exhausting day. We did service for Sister White for most of the morning. (the great aunt of Brayden and Sefeara, kids we are working with) around 1 we had our usual correlation/ lunch meeting with our MLS couple the Reeds. After that we went back and did service for Sister White again until dinner.  We did service for pretty much most of the morning till 5pm and it was a little above 100 degrees. At night we had a good visit with someone in one of our ward and we went to go visit new move ins that we have been trying to contact for some time now. It was a good conversation with the Husband Jason, we gave him a Book of Mormon around 4 months ago and he said that his wife read a little. Hopefully they can get the opportunity to read more. We met the step dad of two of the young women who aren't LDS and went to girls camp. He said they were with their dad this weekend so we are planning on meeting with them either Monday or Tuesday. We met an active family the Wilkinson's, who is friends with another family the Jacksons in that ward that we are trying to work with and got some good information and will be working with them to see how we can help the Jacksons who is struggling.

Friday: We started a 24 hour exchange with our Zone leaders in the afternoon. (Where we swap companions for 24 hours to learn and see how we are doing) I was with Elder Poppell who came out the same time as me and is from Clearwater Florida. We started by going to the family history center in Riverton to get on the computers to do Facebook.  They cover the Riverton young single adult area so they work with people 18-30 who aren't married and they have the opportunity to use Facebook as a tool to find people to teach. I just so happened to have lived in Utah for 13 years so I knew a lot of people and tried to friend them to see if they are interested. Sister Kirkpatrick (a sister missionary in our district) wanted a priesthood blessing because they are going through a lot this past week and she is stressing about finishing her mission in a week. After the blessing she was grateful for the help and support. At dinner we ate in the Zone leaders area. The girl from the YSA Ward had her siblings and her grandparents who were in town. Well it just so happened to be that they were senior missionaries in my cousin Ethan Ashby's mission in Salem Oregon and knew him very well! Crazy to see how the Lords hand is in the details of our lives. It just so happened to be that they were in town and we planned our exchange and decided that we were to eat in their area and that we would have that type of connection. No coincidence there! After dinner we got dropped off at an Institute summer social at Salt Lake community college. We met some really cool people there but sadly most of them lived outside he mission boundaries. I did have a good conversation with a girl who is preparing to go on a mission and is recovering from an ACL injury. We easily had a 45 minute conversation while all the people around us sat and listened haha!

Saturday: For our morning exercise both companionships went to a church building and we played some basketball. It was really fun and good to play with someone who is good as basketball (Elder Poppell) The missionaries in the young single adult Stake have meetings with their high councilor over missionary work every week on Saturdays so I got stuck in a meeting since we were still on 24 hour exchanges. Elder Poppell and I grabbed some Taco Bell for lunch and then headed back to pick up Elder Schunk & Harvey to end our exchange. After the exchange we went back to Sister Whites house to do some service. It was a little aggravating because she changed her mind on how she wanted the service project done. We have been laying down cinderblocks and tiles to make a patio bench and she wanted us to put down a layer of weed block and sand before we put the other stuff down. So basically all the service we did on Thursday needed to be done again. It just bugged us because she changed her mind after we spent hours working on it.  All in all her heart is softening and we hope that it will open the door for us to teach Brayden and Sefeara in the future. The Sister's in our district were going to fast for one of their investigators who has been going through a rough time so as a district we decided to join in and met to start a 24 hour fast for their investigator to show them we support and care about their investigators.

Sunday: We went to a Ward council in the Copperview 7th ward to discuss that we have some people in their ward we will be working with, mainly the girls who attended girls camp. We got the leadership of the ward informed and will get them involved. Afterwards we attended their sacrament meeting hoping that a few girls that were at camp came to church. We asked Sister Braithwaite (young women's camp director) if her daughter who is good friends with some of the girls would invite two family's that have girls that attended camp to come to church. (Avery, Chloe, and Presley Terry. Kennedy and Avari Vines) Sadly Sister Braithwaite was working long hours the night we texted her so she forgot to relay the information to her daughter so they didn't show up but we are hoping for next week to be better.

Hope you all have a great week.

Love,
Elder Aaron Ashby

Riverton Zone

 



Elder Poppell and I

Week 43

Tuesday: We had our usual district meeting in the morning. In our district we have been having a lot of views on what it means to be a successful missionary with the new change to our key indicator focus.  Now on Sundays we report baptized &confirmed, investigator with a baptismal date, investigators attended sacrament meeting, new investigators. (Example 0, 2, 3, 2) and there is a big emphasis on what is known as the 2-2-2 So weekly to hit the Standards of excellence we need to have two investigators with a baptismal date, two at church, and two new investigators. It isn't easy and a lot of missionaries in our mission get discouraged when they fall short. I talked a lot about how numbers don't show our success but rather our effectiveness for the week. We talked a lot about how success is a relative term and really there is no definition that satisfies everyone, but I know if I give a perfect effort every day, the success of my efforts is in the Lords hands. At night we were out on Ward visits and we met again with Anthony and Alicia Lewis who are a good Christian family that is curious about how their beliefs match up with the LDS or "Mormon" beliefs. We talked a lot about the plan of salvation or in other words Gods plan for us. They believe pretty much everything we believe so it was a weird lesson because they agreed with everything we were teaching. They want to see the historical facts that the Book of Mormon is true, rather than reading and praying to know if it is true. I'm here to tell you that there are facts that the Book of Mormon is true, but your testimony of its divinity will not come through facts, but rather feasting upon the words of Christ and asking God the Eternal Father if it is true. You will gain your answer through the Holy Ghost who will confirm the divinity of the Book of Mormon through feelings of peace and a burning in your heart.

Wednesday: We did some service with the young men in the Copperview 3rd ward helping out Lue White (the great aunt of Sefeara & Brayden) Elder Schunk and I got there early so we were seeing what she wanted us to do so we head into their back yard and their dogs were out. One dog was growling and staring at Elder Schunk and out of no where it bites me on the ankle so I nudge it off and it bit my other ankle in the process. It didn't hurt but I just didn't think that I would get attacked by a dog in Utah, I mean you always hear stories about that happening in South America, but Utah haha? After the service project we had some good bonding time with Brayden and Sefeara. We got to know them pretty good and Elder Schunk and I did a thing called a "rocket launch" is what they would call it. So both of us would grab one of the arms and they would jump in the air as we lifted them up and they would go pretty high but would make sure they gently came down. It was a good night and we really gained the great aunts trust as well as the kids. Hopefully this softens the heart of the great aunt and allows us to teach them about the Gospel.

Thursday: We had our MLS correlation meeting with the Reeds (Senior missionary couple) our new finding idea for the week is to learn how to do genealogy and family history work, and to use that as a tool to help people. We made a game plan for Friday afternoon to go to the Riverton Family history building. We ate in someone's house that they customized and man was it cool! There was a lot of hidden crawling spaces for their grandkids and there was like 2 apparent S and one house but all were connected.

Friday: Elder and Sister Reed were hiking in the morning and had a dilemma with their car keys so we didn't  go learn how to do the family history work. Not much happened at night, a lot of missed appointments. The sad part about missionary work!

Saturday: Well the Reeds wanted to take us out to lunch before we did the family history so we ate out and In & Out Burger and man do I like In & Out Burger! Afterwards we went on over to the Riverton family history center to realize that it was closed for the holiday weekend haha! So we went to their house and did it on their computer and laptop. It was cool to do some research on my ancestors and how in one family line they were pioneers that settled in Utah. Also one of my ancestors was being a little too loud outside and Joseph Smith was talking to someone on his porch and asked my ancestor to be a little quieter. I thought it was funny that he added that in his autobiography haha. I found a name in my family tree to do temple ordinances for! In our church we believe that everyone has the opportunity to accept the necessary saving ordinances for salvation.  We do those ordinances for the dead, because we believe that after we die our spirits go to what is know as the spirit world. A time of rest before the resurrection and judgment day. For those who did all the necessary ordinances will be in a state of paradise. Those who did not have all the ordinances will be taught the gospel and will not be able to progress till someone does the ordinance for them. That is why we thrive to do family history work because how great would our joy be to help those who deceased to receive the fullness of the blessings of the gospel. After a few hours of searching we took a break and played a game with the Reeds called Ticket To Ride. It was a pretty fun board game that I had never played before.

Sunday: We went to the Copperview 3rd ward to go to church with Brayden and Sefeara but they didn't come sadly. So we found out they didn't come when we were in their Sunday's school class. We were talking to the kids and realized that their teacher didn't come today so we went ahead and taught the kids the lesson. The lesson was on receiving revelation, and who can receive revelation for who. (Example  Prophet>General Authorities> Stake Presidents> Bishops> Fathers of the

home> Yourself) Sadly the Lewis family didn't make it out to church ether so it was kind of a bummer today, but next week is a new opportunity!

Hope you all have had a great week and Happy 4th of July to everyone!

Love,
Elder Aaron Ashby