Week 77

Tuesday: We had Zone Conference in the morning that was really good. A big emphasis was asking inspired questions when teaching so you can truly figure out any concerns they have and will allow the spirit to teach themselves. The assistants talked about we have a reason why we are called to this mission and the Lord needs us to touch certain peoples lives. It was a great meeting and I learned a lot. It was sad to see certain missionaries give their departing testimonies and kinda of scary how quick it comes. At night we went and taught a man named Bob who has schizophrenia and paranoia so it was really hard to get him to calm down but he is doing pretty good for his circumstance. 

Wednesday: We had a Zone leadership council in the morning and focused on having faith in Christ and not in the miracles we see in the mission. In Zone Conference they talked about two different types of faith. Faith by experience, where we have faith in something based off a life experience. The other type of faith is the faith to do something, like Peter in the Bible he had faith to walk on the water. His faith compelled him to do something and because of his faith in Christ he was able to do it. We can have that same faith that Peter had, however if we do not see the results we need to ask ourselves if our faith was in Christ or the miracle we hoped for. We want our missionaries  to have faith in Christ and have the faith sufficient to do miracles.  We got ready for an exchange with Elder Luke and Elder Lybe by going to Taco Bell to receive the most revelation to help them. (It worked) I was with Elder Lybe who had been out for 7 weeks. We were having a hard time trying to achieve our goal of finding a new investigator. At 8:55 we prayed and asked for guidance. I felt a prompting to visit someone and they weren’t home but we started talking to people at at 8:58 we ran into a man named Nicholas and he was willing to meet with us and learn more. It was a good faith promoting experience for a young missionary. 

 

Thursday: We had MLC (missionary leadership council) in the morning. It was a great meeting since there was 2 members from the missionary department and they told us what is good about our mission and what we don’t do well. They didn’t sugar coat anything so it was good to see what we need to work on as a mission. They did however said that our mission is one of the test missions and that it is doing the best in the US and that it has the most potential. It was really interesting to see the things they wanted to change in our mission and after they left we had an open discussion and basically President Lansing threw it all out and said hey if it’s not broken don’t fix it. So after a 7 hour meeting we only came to small conclusions about what we are going to do haha. After MLC we taught Jason Blake who is a recent convert. 

Friday: We prepared again for exchanges with our normal routine at Taco Bell. We had an exchange with Elder Maple and Clawson. We really focused on being bold and talking with everyone we see. The Elders are both really shy and kind of terrified to do missionary work. I was able to talk with a lot of people with Elder Maple in their area. We ended up talking to a drunk lady and gave her our number and turns out that she has a 9 year old Unbaptized kid. 

Saturday: We had breakfast with our Stake President in the morning and he wants to really figure out who lives in all the apartments in our area (which are a lot.) We came up with a game plan on how to do it. We went to a baptism of an 83 year old man named Jim who was taught by Elder Pearce and Passeraub. It was a great baptismal service. Before the service started we talked to a man in the parking lot named Danson and he was like yeah I need to go to church and come to find out he isn’t LDS and we were able to talk to him and he wanted to be baptized on March 17th! It was actually in Elder Pearce’s and Passeraub’s area so go them! We taught the James family the word of wisdom and committed all of them to live it. The dad needs to give up coffee in  order to baptize his three girls. 

Sunday: not too much happened I was fighting sickness the whole week and it hit hard in the morning. I ended up sleeping till 2:30pm other than like 15 minutes to eat breakfast. Our home owner has a dry sauna and I sat in it and it was pretty good for me.

 

Hope you all have a great week. 

 

Love,

Elder Aaron Ashby

 

Here are a few pictures from this last couple of weeks.  We have named our Zone the West Jordan Kingdom...pictures are from all of our Zone companionships

 

 

Week 76

Tuesday: Well transfers rolled around and I had to drop off Elder Owens in Sandy and bring all my things to a new apartment. When Elder Gehrett and I got to our new apartment it was pretty dirty and had a lot of random trash so we spent some time to clean it out and then moved our things into the basement. After we got all of that situated we had to go pick up some missionaries bikes from their previous area. It’s always fun to pick up sisters bikes because they always have a different frame and it makes things interesting when we put it on our bike rack. At night we went out on visits with some ward mission leaders. I went out with Brother Chapman and visited some active members in his ward to talk about the temple open house. 

Wednesday: We had a district meeting in the morning, we decided to go to Elder Costa’s district meeting since he is our district leader. It was a really good meeting and we received some revelation on how we can help our Zone and those we are teaching. Afterwards we met with all the district leaders to go over some of their responsibilities. After that we had to go over to the mission office and have a mini MLC (mission leadership council) meeting with the assistants to go over how we are all going to achieve our goals for the transfer and what we can do to help our missionaries stay focused as we will be having a lot of distractions this transfer with various events. (Temple open house, Temple day, missionary March madness etc) At night we were walking around in our apartment complex and we ran into a man who’s name is Phil and he just barely talked to Spanish missionaries but we decided to talk to him and as we did we figured out he wanted more happiness in his life and after a little conversation he accepted to be baptized to find that long lasting happiness. He will work towards March 10th. 

Thursday:  We had an expectation meeting in the morning with the zone to go over some expectations we have for the next 6 weeks (a transfer.) Our vision for the transfer is based off a scripture in the Book of Mormon Mosiah 3:19 where it talks about putting off the natural man and becoming a saint through the atonement of Christ. We want our missionaries to change and to work on their weaknesses and we laid out some expectations we want our missionaries to do this transfer. 1. Have faith in Christ and have the faith that he will use them as is instruments in his hand. 2. Repent daily, we know there is always room for improvement and if our missionaries evaluate their day every night and repent of the things they maybe didn’t do so well and change and fix it the next day we will see missionaries accessing the atonement of Christ. 3 Baptize, we know the lord is preparing people to receive this gospel and are waiting for the invitation. 4. Follow the Holy Ghost to be in the right place at the right time to find the miracles in store for them. 5 endure to the end, so in other words we want our missionaries always working hard and never giving up when things get hard. So our expectations were to live the doctrine of Christ and we will see the change and miracles as we apply these things. We were talking to one of our district leaders and he gave us the idea since we call our Zone the West Jordan Kingdom instead of the West Jordan zone we should go to Burger King and get the crowns, so we did! We are going to take a picture with each companionship in the zone and write them a personal letter towards the end of the transfer. We ate dinner with the Stauffer’s and Jacob told us that Braxton was going to be in town tomorrow and it worked out good since we didn’t have a dinner scheduled for Friday. (Two childhood buddies) 

Friday: We had zone leader accountability at the mission home in the afternoon. It’s a meeting with the assistants and president and Sister Lansing where we discuss all the missionaries in the zone and how they are doing. For dinner we went to Wingers with Braxton and Jacob and man “sticky fingers” are pretty good haha if you have ever been there. At night we taught the James family. We taught Mariah, Alyxus, and JC the gospel of Jesus Christ as we had in our Expectations meeting. Faith, repentance, baptism, Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end. They decided to move their baptismal date up a week so they could have their baptism on St Patrick’s Day! So we are excited for the 17th of March. 

Saturday: We went to our apartment complex in the morning with the intentions of finding a new investigator. We knew that the Lord was preparing people for us to teach the restored gospel to. After talking to a lot of uninterested people, we were able to talk to someone me and Elder Costa talked to on a an exchange. His name is Mario and Mario has never read the Book of Mormon but has had some good influences and was interested in learning more. We set up a time to come by and teach him a little about the Book of Mormon for Sunday morning. It was cool to see how if we have good intentions the Lord will provide. We went to go by the Laple’s to see if they knew anything about the Moctezumas which is a family we are teaching and they told us that they would be having family in town. Well a conversation ended up into them feeding us lunch and after 2 waffles, a dozen eggs each, and 6 pieces of toast I think I was about ready to collapse and die haha! Brother Lapale told us a crazy story as a kid he was spear fishing and a shark was coming after him and he pulled a net up at the last second and the shark got its teeth stuck in the net and Brother Lapale swam under and stabbed the shark and killed it and then went on shore to see the ambulance and police and the whole ward (it was a church party on the beach at Hawaii) assuming he was dead and he walked on shore with a 7 foot tiger shark hahaha!!! We had a lesson with the James family again and talked about the plan of salvation and they are all good for March 17th. We had a crazy night as we went to go teach an investigator. Her sister was there and was totally receptive to our message and said she was meeting with the missionaries in the past and was going to be baptized and then moved. She is willing to be baptized for real now. She will work on being baptized March 10th. As we were walking out of the apartment her relatives were out in the parking lot and asked us to go ring the door and tell them that they were there. Well turns out they wanted to say a prayer with us and they were pretty drunk and were saying some funny stuff. I am glad that we have the word of wisdom to keep our bodies healthy and don’t have to worry about having those situations. 

Sunday: We had a ward council in the plum creek ward in the morning and a member from the missionary department was there to see how we work with the ward council and gave us some good feedback. We went and taught Mario about the restoration of the gospel and he was Totally prepared and ready for the gospel in his life and when he comes to know that the Book of Mormon is true he will be baptized on March 17. After the lessons we had the Fountaine Claire ward council to talk about the James family and how we can help make the baptism great. We went and picked up Yolanda who was the Sister to our other investigator who is working for baptism on the 10th. We spoke in her ward and we talked about the gospel of Jesus Christ and the temple so it was good for her. At night we worked with Saia Lapale and tried to help different elders in their area. 

Monday: Elder Costa got into a car accident today so we had to help him out and take him to the hospital. 

 

Hope you all have a great week!  Pray for our investigators.

 

Love,

Elder Aaron Ashby

Week 75

Monday night: We got a call from our relief society president and she said she had a couple of names to talk about. She told us about the James family who came to church and wants to meet with us. They have a daughter who wants to be baptized. Well turns out there is 5 Unbaptized kids who we will be working with, only three of them would be considered converts since two are 8 but the dad quit his second job so he can focus on being worthy to baptized his daughters! We are excited to meet with the James family and work with them! 

Tuesday: We had a multi district meeting in the morning. It was all focused on accountability, teaching in unity, and Facebook. We are still seeing missionaries use Facebook for non missionary related things. We see our missionaries don’t like to be accountable for their actions so we focused on being accountable to the Lord because he is the one we need to be the most accountable to at the end of the night in prayer. It was a pretty good meeting, we saw a lot of participation which is always good. The assistants came to the meeting so they evaluated the meeting afterwards. It was a good evaluation and gave us some good ideas and things to focus on for next transfer. We are excited for next transfer. At night I went out with a ward mission leader, Brother Chapman. I found out we both went to the same elementary school haha! Instead of the Westvale wolves it was the Westvale Vikings for him, so that was pretty funny to see the changes that happened from his time to mine. After that we had some good visits with Brother Gerard and we went by some members homes to talk about the Jordan River Temple open house, and how it will be a once and a life time opportunity to invite friends to enter into a temple before it is dedicated. So when a LDS temple is built or shut down for renovation they have a time period for everyone who wants to, to come and tour a LDS Temple. After a month or so they dedicated it and only those who are willing to make further Covenants with God are allowed to go in afterwards. If you want to learn more about a temple open house go to LDS.org or go to templeopenhouse.lds.org 

 

Wednesday: We had a ZLC (Zone leadership council) in the morning and we focused primarily on how we as leaders can help our missionaries to see the big picture for missionary work. There is a new Mormon message that talks about how we all believe we know truth based off our personal experiences but in fact sometimes there is more than what we know. There is a story of 6 blind men feeling an elephant and they all describe what they feel and are certain that they know what it is, when someone comes along who can see the whole elephant they are amazed. As leaders we see a bigger picture of missionary work, but we still do not see it all. The lord does however and if we turn to him we can see the bigger picture. https://www.lds.org/media-library/video/mormon-messages-2018?cid=HP_WE_31-1-2018_dPFD_fMLIB_xLIDyL1-C_&lang=eng (if you want to watch the video) We went on a mini exchange with Elder Henneman and Zarate. I went with Elder Zarate in their area and we had a good time biking and talking to all the people outside since it was like 60 degrees. It sad that Elder Henneman is going home on Valentine’s Day but hopefully he can find a date his first day back! 

Thursday: We had a meeting with the assistants in the morning, Elder Garcia talked to Elder Owens and Elder Pineda talked to me. The reason behind it was that Elder Owens has had enough driving violations that he can’t drive next transfer. We have a little box called Tiwi in our cars that monitor our speed and if we are driving aggressively and he had to many violations haha! We had to go talk to some missionaries to correct them in the afternoon. That’s the one thing that I wish I didn’t have to do is to correct missionaries on things they know they shouldn’t be doing, because it’s not that they weren’t aware of what they did wrong but that they knew what they were supposed to do but chose not to do it. At night we went out with some ward mission leaders and did some visits to members in the ward to talk about the temple open house. We taught the Lolohea’s and talked about the priesthood with them. We still are trying to have bishop Thompson go by and visit them to see if they want to come to the English ward since they attend the Samoan ward but it was recently divided into two ward and they are hesitant going to their assigned ward. 

Friday: We went and visited the missionaries we corrected the other day since they were a little down and sad after our interaction. We talked to them and let them see that we corrected them because we know they are living below their potential and 5at they can do better. I did a baptismal interview for Elder Costa and Almedia’s investigator they were teaching. It was a 10 year old kid named Asher and he was a pretty sharp kid who knew everything he needed to know for baptism. We talked to the James family just briefly at the doorstep to introduce ourselves and to make sure they we were still good to have a lesson on Sunday after church. They were happy to see us and ready to meet with us! 

Saturday: We had breakfast with President Watkins who is our Stake President in the morning with the Elders who cover the Spanish ward. After the breakfast we went to Dulce’s baptism who Elder Budge and Gilchrist taught. It was a pretty good baptismal service and Dulces parents aren’t members of the LDS church so they could see how happy she was with her decision to be baptized. (She’s married and in her 30s) After that baptism we went to Asher’s baptism who Elder Costa and Almedia taught. It was kind of funny so the normal church building they would go to had an event going on so they had to do it at the Mountain View Stake center which is the stake center I grew up in. It was cool to see someone being baptized in the same baptismal font that I did as a kid! I still remember my baptism because I was baptized on the same day as my cousin and good friend. At night we taught Juan one of his new member lessons and talked about the priesthood and the offices. 

Sunday: We went to the park pointe ward and it just so happened to be a farewell talk by Rachel Williams who was a friend from back in elementary! She will be serving in LA doing an ASL speaking mission which is pretty cool. I saw some familiar faces at church that day as well. We had a meeting with one of the bishops to talk about some things we are trying to get going in their ward. We went to the plum creek sacrament meeting because Elder Owens wanted to go there Incase if he got transferred. We went to the Fountaine Claire ward and sat with the James family. We went to gospel principles class with the parents and then finished off with some good old Primary with the daughters! (Primary beats Elders quorum any day) At night we taught the James family the message of the restoration and they all were a little shy but we opened it up to see if they want to be baptized and they all want to be baptized and we are shooting for March 24th when they do Stake baptisms since two of them are 8. We are excited to see the James family work towards baptism, but ultimately getting sealed as a family. One of the daughters is the reason all these things got going in motion. They drove past a temple and one asked what a temple was and after the mom explained it she replied with, “then why aren’t we sealed as a family?” Dang! So they are all working toward becoming active and for the kids to be baptized so one day they can be sealed as a family! I love the gospel and how it is centered on eternal families and know that God loves us so much and has given us this opportunity to have families. 

So transfers are on Tuesday, I will be staying in the area with the same calling (zone leader) but I will have a new companion Elder Gehrett. Elder Gehrett was one of my former Zone leaders back when I was in Riverton and I am excited to work with him. Elder Owens was transferred to Sandy to be a zone leader over there. 

 

Hope you all have a great week!  Happy Valentines Day to everyone!

 

Love,

Elder Aaron Ashby 

Week 74

Tuesday: We had district meeting with our district this week and evaluated Elder Costa’s district meeting. It was kind of funny to evaluate my trainers meeting haha. He focused a lot on finding and how we need the faith to find new people to teach. After we evaluated we started an exchange with Elder Partridge and Westover. I was with Elder Westover in our area and Elder Owens went to their area. It was a pretty good exchange and we got some things set up for our area and I showed Elder Westover how to work effectively with members. At night we went out with some ward mission leaders and had some good visits. 

Wednesday: We had interviews with our mission president, President Lansing. It was interesting this go around because Elder Owens and I met with him all together and talked about every companionship in the zone and then had our singular meetings. Interviews went really well though. I got some good advice on how to be a good ZL2 and how even though I’m in leadership I need to be following Elder Owens lead. After interviews we met up with the Sister Training leaders to talk about the sisters in the zone and what their main concern is. In the afternoon we met up with the Spanish Elders and went over who was Spanish speaking and who was English speaking in the trailer parks in our areas. This will help both companionships to be as time efficient as possible. At night we had a lessons with Gentry, who is one of our investigators. We taught the restoration and it went pretty well. His girlfriend is still living with him so he can’t work towards baptism just yet, but they are planning on getting married so that should open the door. 

Thursday: We had MLC (Mission leader council) which is all the Zone leaders and Sister training leaders in the mission and the assistants. We received great trainings from our mission president. He focused on accountability and it blew my mind how the Lord is a numbers person. He organized the earth in 7 days, Jospeh Smith was told to return to hill Cumorah every year on that exact date, etc. Sister Lansing gave a training on exactly what our zones concern is. Passing the torch. Or in other words the senior companions aren’t training and helping develop their junior companions. We see that senior companions are doing most of the work and brining their companion along but not really involving them. Sister Lansing talked about Alma and Amulek, two great missionaries in the Book of Mormon. Alma was doing okay by himself as a missionary, but when Amulek joined him he was more successful. Hence why we read in the scriptures that “by the mouth of two witnesses.” We talked a lot about March madness which is something our mission did last year. It is a teaching competition and we role play to pretend investigators and they judge us off some criteria. The purpose of this isn’t to see who is the best teaching missionary companionship, but to become master teachers. There was a big concern with our mission president and missionaries use of Facebook. Facebook is a tool for us to get in contact with people we are teaching in our areas and not for communication with friends and family back home. We came up with some rules to help us still remember our missionary purpose, and that is to, Invite others to come unto Christ, by helping them receive the restored gospel. Through faith and Jesus Christ and his atonement, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost and enduring to the end. At night we had a lesson with the Moctezuma family. Only Vanessa and the mom were there. We taught the plan of salvation or in other words, Gods plan for us. With the scriptures we can learn this plan. 

Friday: Let’s just say that today was a crazy day! We planned for our Zone leadership council that would be happening later in the day. Elder Costa had a lesson at 3 so we moved it earlier in the day, to realize that he had a last transfer missionary meeting. So we ended up canceling the meeting for the day. Well we forgot to tell the Sister Training Leaders so they called and asked where we were. We met up with them to talk and plan for Multi district meeting this upcoming Tuesday though. After dinner we started and exchange with Elder Budge and Gilchrist. I went to their area with Elder Gilchrist who was a former companion of mine. We had a slow night, not too many people were home but we had one last person at night and man was it an interesting one. So it was a part member family and the husband let us in and had a few questions. Little did I know he was an anti Mormon person who tried to bash on our faith. It blew my mind that someone would have the audacity to start telling us that what we are doing is the work of the devil and that we teach false doctrine, and the list goes on and on. He literally talked for about a good 45 minutes and didn’t allow us to talk and I wanted to be respectful since I was in his house, but eventually I said hey Brother Smith, you’re wasting your time and your wasting the Lords time. I know what I believe because I have asked god in prayer and have received my answer. Nothing you say can or will chance the feelings of joy that I felt as a read and prayed about the Book of Mormon. And got up and left. It was an interesting way to end the night but I felt good that he couldn’t shake my testimony of this gospel because I know it’s true. 

Saturday: We ended exchanges in the morning and got ready to go to a baptism that was happening in our Zone. We went for support and to see how Elder Partridge and Westover handled the baptismal service. We had to leave early since Elder Owens was going to the Oquirrh Mountain temple in South Jordan with one of his recent converts who was baptized a year ago and was receiving his endowment. Elder Owens was also his escort for the endowment session. For the time being I was with Elder Butikofer and Passeraub. We were supposed to have two lessons in our area but neither one of them happened sadly. After those we went to their area to teach a returning member to the church a lesson about temples. It was a good lesson but felt weird teaching in a trio again. They got a  new python and were trying to feed it when we were there but for some reason it wasn’t hungry so we didn’t get to see it eat the mouse. After that lesson we went to go have a quick lesson with Alex who is one of our investigators. We had to be real firm with him this time. If he doesn’t come to church we need to spend our time else where. After that we went and picked up Elder Owens. At night we taught Juan who is a recent convert about temples as well. He is excited to go to Jordan River temple open house and then next December get his endowments out. 

Sunday: We went to the plum creek ward council in the morning since a member from the missionary department was supposed to be there but he didn’t show up for some odd reason. After that we went to the Plum creek sacrament meeting. Sadly The Moctezumas and Alex didn’t show up. After that we were going to split and one go to the Garden Cove ward and the other to the Elm creek ward. Well our Gentry couldn’t make it to the Garden Cove Ward, and Marie Beech couldn’t make it to the elm creek ward. It tough on Sundays when all your investigators can’t make it to church. At night not a whole lot went on since the Super Bowl was on, but we did talk with the Lapale family. I think they were about the only family to not watch it 

Today: We promised our Zone if we had 4 people projected to be baptized in February by February 4th we would buy the whole zone 4 for 4 meals from Wendy’s and we accomplished our goals so we went out and bought the Zone some Wendy’s for Zone activity! 

 

Hope you all have a great week!

 

Love,

Elder Aaron Ashby

 

Pictures: Hike up Butterfield Canyon and the 4 for 4 reward.  Also WJ Zone.