Monday, July 10, 2017

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

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