Week 85

Tuesday: We went to Elder Steeds district meeting in the morning and it was honestly my favorite district meeting I’ve ever been apart of! It was so inspiring and made me want to go out and teach everyone! There were trainings on developing Christlike attributes and being steadfast in Christ. Steadfastness means to “be loyal in the face of trouble or difficulty” and he related that to how we need to be steadfast in Christ because he is who we work for and as his representatives we are acting in His behalf. We are sharing the same message Christ would share if he were standing here. Elder Waddell and Lybe accidentally locked their keys and phone inside their church building so the only other people we knew of who had keys to it were the Sister missionaries Sister Riggs and Faddis. Unfortunately they were working at the Jordan river temple open house so we had to drive over to grab the keys, drive back to let them in, then drop the keys back off at the temple, then to head back to West Jordan haha! So many trips! We started exchanges with Elder Waddell and Lybe right before dinner. I went to my old stomping grounds in the Mountain View Stake with Elder Lybe. Elder Mayberry and Waddell staying in our area. The Elders were teaching my neighbors who I grew up with and was good friends with. Well it was a good exchange but we didn’t get in contact with my friend but we did some service for a neighbor who is willing to have missionaries come back over! Well I ended up seeing 3 different cousins, an uncle, an aunt, my grandparents, and to top it off my dad who is out here for a job interview hahaha! I was surprised how seeing family didn’t bother me or take me away from my purpose as a missionary. It was good because the missionary I was with wasn’t fully focusing on his purpose as a missionary and he saw a great example of not letting things get in the way. 

Wednesday: We had to end exchanges in the morning since we had interviews with our mission president. This go around it was a really good interview. As we counseled about things that we could do better in the West Jordan kingdom it was totally inspired. Everything he suggested we focus on was exactly what we thought we needed to do. I love how much revelation can influence the choices we make. At night I went out on some visits with the Novak’s. Brother Novak is our ward mission leader and his wife is a ward missionary. We got in contact with Deidra and her fiancé and will be going to the temple open house with them on Wednesday morning. 

Thursday: We had a ZLC in the morning all focused on the aspect of “Helping” as missionaries our purpose is: “To invite others to come unto Christ, by helping them receive the restored gospel.....” The two things we really do as a missionary is to invite and help. Here in the West Jordan Kingdom we are doing a really good job at inviting others to come unto Christ. However we aren’t helping them to revive the restored gospel. We had some good counseling and received revelation on what we need to do with our missionaries to help them to help their investigators. At night we went out on visits with a ward mission leader Brother Riddle. At night we had a stake missionary meeting which was all about how we can teach better. It was really just us young missionaries teaching the ward mission leaders how to use videos and other object lessons.

Friday: After our usual Friday routine with weekly planning and then a lunch Correlation with our senior missionary couple we started exchanges with Elder Steed and Elder Sherwood. We had to drop Elder Sherwood off at a last transfer missionary meeting since he goes home next transfer. After he was done we picked him back up and I was with Elder Steed in their area and Elder Mayberry was with Elder Sherwood in our area. Elder Steed and I taught a good lesson to one of their investigators and had some good conversations with people. Didn’t find any new people to teach but it was still a good exchange. 

Saturday: It just so happened to be that we weren’t having breakfast with our Stake President in the morning and in the Westland stake they were having theirs. So I got some free breakfast with their Stake President and the other missionaries in the stake. We ended exchanges with them and then got ready to go to the temple open house with the Freyley family. They are a family we found on Monday night. The dad is the only LDS member and the rest of the family is not. There is 10 kids from the range of 1-16. We had a good tour at the temple open house and it was cool to see the kids and how they loved the temple! At night we read the Book of Mormon with Muhammad since he is partially blind  and doesn’t speak English every well. He loved it and his granddaughters who were visiting loved it as well. 

Sunday: We got a call from one of the bishopric members on Saturday night asking if we could speak in their ward on Sunday morning. Typical missionaries speaking when they don’t have anyone to speak. It was an easy talk so it wasn’t too bad. They wanted us to introduce ourselves to the ward and then talk a little about some of the changes in the church with ministering to people as the savior would. It was cool speaking in the park point ward since by buddy Jacob Stauffer was there! (S/O to you Jake for working in primary on Sunday) We went to church with brother Freyley and one of his kids. We were a little sad that the whole family didn’t come to church with him but at least he came! He texted us at night and talked about how good he felt since it was almost 20 years since he came to church. In Elders quorum we had a member from the Stake Presidency talk about the priesthood and how we some times don’t know how to use it, or when to use it. It was such a good counsel and I felt the spirit so strongly. At night we ran into a part member family Erik and Angie. They were taught by missionaries in the past and Erik was close to being baptized but didn’t end up doing it. As we were talking with them they opened up and were willing to go to the temple open house with us on Tuesday. 

 

Have a wonderful week!

 

Love,

Elder Aaron Ashby

Week 84

Tuesday: We went to Elder Waddell’s district meeting in the morning. It was all focused on receiving personal revelation like we talked about last week in our leadership meeting. We were really impressed with Elder Waddell’s  meeting. He just came off 7 transfers as a zone leader. We expressed our new goal in closing remarks of having 40 baptism in the month of May and nobody said anything. We talked about how Lehi in the Book of Mormon was persecuted for being a “visionary man” we explained how  they may feel a little overwhelmed with that big goal but how Lehi and his seed prospered when they followed his counsel. After district meeting we started exchanges with Elder Lyse and Clawson. I saw a crazy cool miracle with Elder Clawson in our area. We felt prompted to knock on a door and we met a lady named Shanice. She just moved in from Michigan and she has had some problems and decided to move. We were able to talk a little bit about how we were sent by God to reach out to her and this is the path He wants her to take. She said she would pray about baptism. 

Wednesday: We ended exchanges with Elder Lyse and Clawson and Elder Mayberry and Lyse had a crazy good exchange! They found two people who accepted to be baptized! The Lord is truly hastening his work! We had exchanges with the assistants Elder Pineda and Elder Gehrett. I had the opportunity to go to the Sandy West Stake with Elder Gehrett (my former companion) We had a great time being back together for the night. We had a really good lesson with one of their investigators who is getting ready to be baptized. He had a problem with the Word of Wisdom. Which is a commandment that Jospeh Smith received through revelation. It is basically a health code for our bodies. There are things we should and shouldn’t put into our bodies. Coffee is one that we shouldn’t put into our bodies and he had a hard time understanding that it was bad for him. Elder Gehrett and I talked a lot about how it may seem silly but that it was a commandment from God and it is simple. Like the brazen serpent staff thing with Moses. Those who where bit by the snakes, all they had to do was to look at the staff and they would be healed. It is simple that when we sacrifice a little the lord does wonders with us. God maybe wants him to feel just a little of the sacrifice it took for him to give up his only begotten son to die for all of us. We were able to help resolve his concerns and he committed to pray about it!

Thursday: We ended exchanges in the morning and I was truly blessed to have the opportunity to learn again from Elder Gehrett. We had to drop a bike off at the mission office later that day. We taught one of our investigators Deidra and we helped her to see the need for a prophet in these last days. She will also pray about being baptized if she knows these things are true.

Friday: We went to Elder Pearce and Passeraub’s weekly planning session to see if there were things we could do to help them to better fulfill their missionary purpose. We gave them some ideas on things to implement in their work. We went on exchanges with them later that day and I was with Elder Pearce in their area and I had to opportunity to help Elder Pearce with the things he struggles with and boost him up so he can be the best he can. 

Saturday: We had breakfast with our Stake President as we usually do. He wanted to express thanks to all those who are supporting me on my mission and allowing me to serve here in the Bingham creek stake. We went to Sister Peterson and Merrill’s investigators baptism which was a really baptismal service and they were able to teach her mom who isn’t of our faith and she said she would pray about being baptized as well! Those sisters are so good! At the baptism I met a girl named Ashby so we had to get a picture! We talked to a man named Jake in the streets and he had a Catholic background but as we began to talk to him he was opened to what we had to share and said he wants to give it a shot. He will also be praying about baptism as he reads and prays about the Book of Mormon. We ended the night by reading the Book of Mormon with one of our investigators Muhammad who is from Liberia and is partially blind. He is open to the idea of Jesus Christ being more than just a messenger from God but is a little stubborn about his Muslim background. 

Sunday: We went to the Elm Creek ward council in the morning and then off to the Plum Creek sacrament meeting since Shanice didn’t make it out to church. After the plum creek ward we went to the Elm Creek sacrament meeting to see if Jennifer came and unfortunately she needed to go pick up her trailer otherwise it would have been towed. At night we talked to a mom and son in our apartment complex and they were talking about how they were trying to find a church to be baptize in...... what!?!?! They said they would be willing to meet with us and learn about baptism and be baptized if that’s what God wants them to do! We are looking forward to going to the temple open house with Donna and her son Syler on Thursday! We are continuing to see a lot of success in the West Jordan Kingdom and are breaking all time records every week and it is a testimony builder that the lord will use us if we allow him to! 

 

Have a great week!

 

Love,

Elder Aaron Ashby

Week 83

Tuesday: We had zone conference and it was one of my favorite ones! It was all focused on faith to find, faith to teach, and faith to baptize. Elder Gehrett and I talked a lot about that before he was called to be the assistant to the president. We realized that with faith we can do anything within the Lords will. I enjoyed all three trainings by President and Sister Lansing, and the assistants. It was my first time conducting zone conference. There was a lot of changes that came up in the program or things they wanted me to announce that weren’t on the agenda, luckily I didn’t mess up too bad haha! 

Wednesday: We started an exchange with Elder Fullwood and Budge. I went into the West Jordan Utah stake with Elder Fullwood and Elder Mayberry went with Elder Budge in our area.  They had a lesson at the temple open house with a less active member who brought a couple friends one wasn’t a member of our faith. It turns out that we really ended up teaching his friend the whole time walking through the temple open house. He had a lot of really good questions and we basically ended up teaching him the plan of salvation or in other words God’s plan for us. He was really interested in our beliefs and wants to learn more. At night we had some good conversations with people and were able to set up some lessons. 

Thursday: We started another exchange with Elder Sherman and Elder Shultz. I stayed in our area with Elder Shultz this time and Elder Mayberry went to their area with Elder Sherman. I really wanted to go with Elder Sherman since I trained him but as we prayed about it that’s what we felt needed to happen. It was a really good exchange and I learned so much from Elder Shultz. He is one of the funniest missionaries I know haha! We got the keys to Elder Clawson’s apartment and went and dropped off some birthday stuff for him. 

Friday: We had zone leader accountability in the afternoon. Zone leader accountability is where we talk about every missionary in the zone and how they are doing. It was a really good accountability because everyone in the zone is doing really good at the moment and only two companionships didn’t have someone in their area preparing for baptism. We got some good ideas on how we can help those missionaries to be more successful. At night we had dinner at the Demke’s again and Lauren brought one of her friends who is interested in learning more about the church and we talked a little bit about how we got the Book of Mormon and it was a good lesson but there was a lot of people there and it may have seemed like we were all teaching her. She expressed that she still wants to learn more. 

Saturday: We had a slower day however we had the adult session of stake conference with Elder McCewin who is a area 70. It was really cool to see that President and Sister Lansing were there to speak as well. The main topic was about ministering which is a recent change in the church. They spoke about how ministering is basically missionary work and how when we work together we will be ministering to the Lords children just as the savior Jesus Christ did. They had us stand up in front of the whole audience as well and we got to be recognized and now everyone for the most part should know who the missionaries are in their area! 

Sunday: We had the normal session of stake conference with Elder McCewin again but for the whole stake rather than just the adults. It was good but I felt like the adult session was better than this session. Juan Amezcua who is a recent convert that I taught with Elder Owens spoke about the Book of Mormon and the temple and it was really cool to see someone who recently joined the church to speak about those two things and what his goals are now since he was baptized. At night we really wanted to help a companionship of missionaries in the zone since they were the only ones who didn’t have someone on date to be baptized and we want the whole zone to baptize this transfer. They had a lot of work to do so we split up. Elder Mayberry went with Elder Pearce and I was with Elder Passeraub. We both found someone who is willing to pray about being baptized on a specific day if they receive their answer from God! It was a really cool way to end out the night. To add the cherry on the top, West Jordan kingdom set all time records for various things we report and frankly it was the best week of missionary work in the history of West Jordan. During the week we found 20 people who wanted to be baptized! It was honesty one of the most memorable weeks as a missionary since we were able to see all the success in the West Jordan Kingdom as they lived the simple expectations we set at the beginning of the transfer.

 

Hope you all have a wonderful week!

 

Love, 

Elder Aaron Ashby

 

Pictures:  West Jordan Zone activity

 

Week 82

Tuesday: We had transfers in the morning and surprisingly it wasn’t too hectic! I was with Elder Pearce and Passeraub since Elder Gehrett became the Assistant to the President and was with them starting on Sunday night. I ended up moving apartments within our stake boundaries and we now live with the Bates in the Willow Grove ward. While we were moving stuff into the new apartment Elder Mayberry showed up and we ended up loading all his stuff into the apartment as well. We have a bunch of things to get done in the first week of the transfer as zone leaders and we had to sit down with all our district leaders and go over some expectations with them regarding their responsibilities. We also had to worry about getting everyone their bikes and make sure they are functioning. At night we had to plan for our multi district meeting for Wednesday. Elder Mayberry wasn’t in the MLC (Mission leadership council) but we were able to talk about the things discussed in the meeting and pray and counsel about it and received the revelation we needed to plan the meeting. 

Wednesday: We had our multi district meeting in the morning. It was a little hectic at the beginning since we showed up to the building to find out that it was closed for cleaning! Luckily we had all the district leaders coming early to help us set up for the meeting. We just drove over and had the meeting in the bordering stake. Our meeting had two main focus points. The first was to help develop the junior companion. So the mission is structured that every missionary has a companion and within the companionship there is a senior and junior. The senior is mainly the one responsible for what happens in their area. The junior companion is mainly responsible for unity and assistant the senior companion with the work. Junior companion has this taboo about it and if you’re a junior companion you aren’t a good missionary. It is actually the most underrated role in the mission and our mission president wants us to focus on letting the junior companions have more of the spotlight. The other focus was on helping our investigators feel and identify the spirit. We know that the message we share sounds good in all and we may be convincing when we share our beliefs, but we aren’t salesmen trying to sell religion, we are simply inviting others to come unto Christ and they will know and act on the message we have to share only when they receive a witness from the Holy Ghost. It is by far the most important thing we can do to help our investigators in their investigation of the church. We didn’t really get to work in our area before dinner since we had a lot of bike things to do. After dinner I told Elder Mayberry how great one of our apartment complex’s are (Willowcove) and I told him how we can literally walk around and talk to people and they will be willing to listen to our message. Shortly after walking around  we ran into a man named Gabe he said he was going to General Conference (Where we hear addresses from our prophet and apostles on TV) with his mom who is investigating the church in Oregon and she was down for the weekend and got tickets to go to the conference center in Salt Lake City. He said he would go to Conference with and open mind and heart and will let us come by next week. 

Thursday: We went to go give a missionary companionship a priesthood blessing in the morning and comfort one of them in a trial they were going through. In our mission we are given so many tickets to General Conference and our Mission President prays about how needs to go to which session and Elder Mayberry had the lucky opportunity to be a group leader and take a group of 10-12 missionaries down to General Conference for the Sunday am session. So he had to make all the calls to them and to give them specific details about where to meet up. After that we went to pick up some Elders and take them to a bike shop so they could buy a new tube and tire for their bike while we bought a tube for another missionary. After we got them the things from the bike shop we got a call from the assistants to the President (which was my last companion) We sat down with Elder Pineda and Elder Gehrett and they set some expectations for us for the transfer and some things they wanted to see us do with the missionaries in the zone. We came to the conclusion that there is “strength in counsel” so we will be in more communication with them and counsel on things we can do to help the zone see the most success it can. At night we went out with a ward mission leader and had some good visits. The first visit was with family that just moved in from Europe and we talked a little bit about the Jordan River Temple open house. The one we talked to at the door was super excited to go to the temple as most people would be. After that we visited with the Demke family which so happened to be my next door neighbors when I grew up in Utah. Their daughter invited one of her friends to the youth night where only the youth toured the temple and she loved it and Lauren talked about repentance and baptism and how that’s how we can feel the weight lifted off her shoulders from our mistakes. We will hopefully be meeting with her friend soon so she can have that feeling. 

Friday: We had a zone expectation meeting with all the missionaries in the West Jordan Kingdom. We laid out some expectations we had for them and in reality what the Lord expects of them. The expectations were our missionary purpose which is, “Invite others to come unto Christ, by helping them receive the restored gospel, through faith in Jesus Christ and his atonement, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end.” We drew up a triangle diagram on the board and it has God and Jesus Christ, us and our investigators. We see that the only things we as missionaries do is Invite and Help. All our purpose really is to help others receive the gospel into their lives. There isn’t anything in our missionary purpose that focuses on our well being, but rather to reach out to others. We don’t come out on our missions for ourselves. We come out on our missions to focus on helping others receive their answer from God about this gospel. 

Saturday: General Conference is a time for our living prophet on the earth and his called apostles to speak to us in a whole about the revelations he received from God in all of our behalf. It is broken up into two hour sessions that happen two times on Saturday and Sunday. This conference we had an extra two hour block for just the men and addressing some of the things that will impact the priesthood holders. We watched the Saturday morning session at the Demke’s house and had breakfast with them. There was a talk given by Lynn G. Robbins of the quorum of the 70 He talked about how the savior said to Peter forgive 70 x 7 but that doesn’t mean that we only forgive someone 490 times. We don’t only have 490 times to repent and be forgiven by God and man I am glad that, that isn’t the case! Jesus Christ suffered for us and has paid the price for us and he always has his arms stretched outwards to us, calling us to come unto him. Afterwards we went out to eat at a place called Tiki and talked to a lot of cool Polynesian people who were in from all places in the US coming up for conference. After that we went back to the Demke’s to watch the afternoon session. At night we went to the priesthood session of General Conference at the stake center. It was a great meeting and there were some changes in the organization. It was little scary at the end of the meeting because there was a young man named Saia Lapale (who we usually take out on visits with us) who had seizure. He has epilepsy and he didn’t take his medicine at the time he needed to which caused the seizure. We were with him the whole time with his family and we eventually got him back home and gave him a priesthood blessing. 

Sunday: Elder Mayberry dropped me off at the Stauffer’s house (Childhood buddies family) while he went down with other missionaries to go to Conference. I watched the morning session with them and I really enjoyed it because there was a big emphasis on receiving personal revelation for our personal issues and things to help us in our lives. Elder Mayberry came back after Conference  and then we ended up going to the Demke’s house again since the Stauffer's had family coming over for Easter. We had a cool night talking to people in the Willowcove apartments we ran into some men named Gilbert and Jose and they have definitely been prepared by God. We didn’t invite  them to be baptized at the beginning since they were in a hurry to get the project they were working on done before the sun went down. Luckily the Lord gave us a second opportunity to reach out to Gilbert and he was willing to be baptized. It was a testimony builder that the lord is preparing people for His restored gospel. This Easter season I want to bear my testimony that Jesus Christ lives, he is a resurrected being. He lives and leads and guides this church and I know the Lord leads this church through a prophet and President Russell M. Nelson is God’s called  prophet here on the earth. This is the Lords Church and he invites all to come and listen to the message we have to share which is the same message he would share with you. 

 

Hope you all have a wonderful week!

 

Love,

Elder Aaron Ashby

 

Pictures:  Elder Garcia (AP), West Jordan Zone, Sunrise in WJ