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/
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
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