Tuesday: So on Tuesday we evaluated Elder Butikofer’s District meeting (a responsibility as a zone leader) and it went pretty well for his first district meeting ever. He gave a training for the first time on his mission so that was cool to see how well he did for his first time. The main topic was working with members and finding. Of course as a young missionary in leadership there were a lot of tips and pointers we gave him so he could have a more revelatory district meeting. During the meeting one of the Sister missionaries was really sick and didn’t feel too well. After we gave her a priesthood blessing. We went and got some medicine for Sister Cox and took it over to a members home where they were staying at. We got a call from the Sister training leaders and had some bad news. Apparently her companion sister Peterson who has been out for a week and the member they were with were disrespecting the sister training leaders. They wanted sister Peterson to find a split and go out and work in her area while someone stays with Sister Cox, but Sister Peterson and the member told them no. Oh man was it a drama filled day... most of my day up until dinner was dealing with this problem. At night I went out with a ward mission leader Brother Evans and we stopped by and taught a man named Bob. He has some different ideas, but is willing to listen and meet with us.
Wednesday: We dropped off Elder Budges bike in the morning, it was broken and we had a member who fixed the broken parts for us. After that we started exchanges. I was with Elder Butikofer in their area, and Elder Owens was with Elder Passeraub in our area. So I was back on a bike for the day!!! It was actually pretty funny how it all started off, so Elder Owens and Passeraub went to a church building to do their studies. In the mean time I realize that we have both phones, the one for our area and the one for their area so we couldn’t get ahold of them. Well we figured they would come looking for us at the church building to realize that Elder Passeraub had the keys to their church building haha! So we got the phones and they got the keys! I eventually got on Facebook since we got it for our mission and I messaged Elder Owens and had them come back over to get the phone and so we could have the keys. At night we went on splits with a ward mission leader and ward missionary. It just so happens that I go with the ward missionary who is a return missionary. He only had a few names of people we could drop by and visit and we hit them all up and didn't have anybody else to go to and since it was my area I didn't know who to go visit so we ended up talking in the car for a good 40 minutes waiting for Elder Butikofer to get back from their visits. After that we tried to go teach two less active kids and sadly they both weren’t home. While back on a bike I didn’t crash but almost did haha! I was riding my bike and I pulled over to the side of the road since a car was coming and my front tire got stuck in those things where the water flows into by the curb and I almost went airborne haha!
Thursday: We finished exchanges in the morning and I had a good talk with Elder Butikofer about things he could do to be a better district leader and to gain the trust of his missionaries he has stewardship over. He was humble and willing to listen and apply the things we talked about. We figured out that while we were on exchanges Elder Owens and Passeraub were waiting for someone to go on visits with them and they were talking to a bishop and a potential investigator we have been trying to meet with walked in the church to have a meeting with the Bishop and our bishop told him that he should meet with us so we will be teaching him here soon. We had a Zone leadership council in the morning which includes all the district leaders and sister training leaders and the assistants decided to come as well. (They both were Elder Owens companions so they like coming to our meetings.) It was a real powerful and emotional meeting. We aren’t having a good month as missionaries in the West Jordan zone so we had to really help our district leaders and STLs see how hard we need to be working these upcoming weeks. We had a meeting with the Assistants after the ZLC and they went over some expectations they have for us this transfer and it was a great opportunity to learn. We had a house inspection after the meeting. We had a lesson with our investigator Alex and his friend Saia and we always have a lesson and then play basketball and as always we had some good games. After dinner I dropped Elder Owens off at a ward mission leaders home to go over the ward mission plan while I went out with a priest age young man. Well we didn’t see too much success but it was some good opportunities for the priest to learn and prepare for a mission. We came back and met up again with Elder Owens and we ended up watching Alex and Saia play in a church basketball game and they were down like 17 points at a given time and they came back from a 10 point deficient to bring it to a 1 point game with 10 seconds left but with the lack of experience they didn’t know what to do and ended up losing by 2. Alex hit 4 threes within the last two minutes to bring them back so we are proud because we beat them twice that day and warmed him up so we take full credit for the comeback haha!
Friday: Elder Owens and I were so exhausted after yesterday playing basketball with Alex and Saia and staying up late the whole week dealing with missionaries who have problems, we woke up and got down on our knees to say our morning prayers and before you know it, a second alarm goes off. We both fell asleep on our knees with our heads on our beds and the alarm that goes off for us to be done working out woke us up haha! It only gets crazier as the week goes on. We watched President Thomas S. Monson’s funeral (our prophet on the earth) in the morning on LDS.org. There were some good things shared about President Monson and we will miss him as our prophet of God here on the Earth, but know that our church has order and is lead by Christ we will have a new prophet on Tuesday. We had our lunch correlation meeting with the Remington’s and they found a new investigator! They are teaching a part member family and will open the way for us to teach them. We had a meeting with Elder Costa one of the district leaders and talked about some problems that were going on and then had to head to the mission home to have zone leader accountability. Zone leader accountability is where we talk about every missionary in the zone and talk about how they are doing. There are 24 missionaries in our zone and since there has been a lot of drama with some missionaries it was longer. We got some good insights from the assistants to the president and our mission president. President Lansing said he was going to handle one of the problem companionships in our Zone so that was music to our ears knowing we wouldn’t have to deal with as much drama haha! President Lansing is wanting us as zone leaders to be an example to those in our Zone so we need to work hard and be that example to those in our stewardship.
Saturday: We went in the morning and picked up a companionship of Spanish Elders who cover one of the wards in the stake, so we could have our Saturday breakfast with the stake president, President Watkins. After breakfast we went over to one of our district leaders buildings to give Elder Steed a blessing, his district is struggling and there is a lot going on and he was stressed out. We gave him a blessing and then as we finished the Sister missionaries in his district called and asked for a blessing. We drove him over to where he needed to be to give the Sisters a blessing. We met up with Elder Butikofer and talked about some things President Lansing has envisioned for us as leaders in the mission and some goals. We helped him with things that he could do to be a more effective leader. We go to our dinner appointment and will all the craziness going on we forgot to call and confirm dinner so we get there and knock on the door and Elder Ray answered the door?!?!?! He was a former missionary who served in the mission and he was in town visiting and he lived in the persons house for a part of his mission and he was actually the only person home and he gave us some money to go get some dinner. Seth Ray (that feels weird calling him that instead of Elder Ray) came in clutch that night and we got some Wendys haha! At night we taught a recent convert Juan a lesson on commandments.
Sunday: We went to an early morning meeting that we thought was a ward council but actually turned out to be a PEC (priesthood executive committee) Either way we left the meeting with a couple referrals. We went to the Plum Creek ward and the gave talks in the Fountaine Claire ward. I gave a talk on missionary work and Elder Owens gave a talk on the Book of Mormon. It was a pretty good meeting we had everyone laughing at times but also had serious times where people felt the spirit which is an ideal talk. I focused a lot on extending invitations to people because you love them. After our long day of church we went out on some visits with the Bishop of the Plum creek ward to go visit Alex and his mom. (His mom isn’t too fond of the church) We talked with Alex at the door and Bishop and the young men’s president will go by a different day and talk to his mom because Alex wants to be baptized but his mom is holding him back. After dinner we went and picked up a good buddy of mine Jacob Stauffer and he came out with us for the night and worked with us. We knew we had to work hard to achieve the standards of excellence (two people on date for baptism, two investigators at church, and two new investigators) One of our investigators couldn’t make it out to church so we needed to find an investigator who came to church and we heard about this part member family where they came to church today so we stoped by their house and started talking with the husband “meet” (thats how its pronounced haha?) who was not LDS and we started talking and he said he wanted to find his path or trip back to God so we talked about it for a little bit and then got a return appointment to teach him more next Sunday. So we had everything but one investigator who is on date for baptism and we knew that the Lord would prepare someone if we had the faith. We were running around (literally!!!) from 7:30pm-8:58pm trying to find someone who was ready to receive the fullness of the gospel and we talk to a man at 8:58 pm (need to end the day at 9pm) and his name was Montez and we talked to him, and he recently moved in from Indiana and he said he wanted to learn more and develop his relationship with God and Jesus Christ. We started talking about ways we can show we love them and follow Christs example and be baptized and he said, “Yeah I’ll be baptized.” It was so cool to see how through our faith and diligence we were able to have that miracle with Montez! We were able to be an effective instrument in the Lords hand and were able to hit the standards of excellence to be an example to our Zone and we know that it was all possible because we had faith. (We claim that it was all because of Jacob haha, but we needed it and the Lord blessed us)
It was truly a blessing to see how it may have been the longest week of my mission, staying up till midnight every night planning for meetings and dealing with problems in the zone, but since we endured well we were able to be blessed with miracles! I love this gospel and the ability I have to share it with others all the time!
Hope you all have had a wonderful week...this was one of the craziest weeks that I have had!
Love,
Elder Aaron Ashby
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