So anyways, I hope everyone is doing awesome! I miss yall like crazy! It's starting to go by a little faster though. Keep me updated on everything! I love you so much! Keep being awesome!
Tuesday, September 15, 2015
What's new in Chico
This week was pretty good! It was kind of slow. We only have one progressing investigator now. Everyone else is now uninterested or not keeping commitments. Kinda sucks. And our ward mission leader is mad because we aren't teaching enough. We are trying and it's not really our fault, the people here are just hard hearted! So there is this Thursday night market in Chico and farmers bring stuff to sell and there is good food and music and stuff. It's pretty cool. We talked to tons of people there. But pretty much everyone is YSA age, so we have to give the, to the YSA elders. Kinda sucks. We met this old guy who said he has been to heaven haha. He is homeless. He gave us some pictures of heaven lol. So when we were walking around, I saw some Jehovah's witnesses that had a booth set up, and it had some stuff that said like what does the bible say, and that all Elder Ross saw, so he started talking to them. Then he saw the JW sign and was like "oh crap" haha. It actually wasn't bad though, we had a good conversation about religion and stuff. They weren't too bad. One guy that was there I could tell didn't like us haha. So last Monday, the Pasowistys, an awesome member family from Canada invited us to go to this sports place, kinda like a rec center. They had won a drawing and got the whole place to themselves for a few hours! It was so cool. We played basketball and wiffle ball and pool and stuff. So we've been meeting with this lady who is not all there, her name is Vivian. We have committed her to go to church for the past like 5 weeks now, and every time she cancels last minute. We even get her rides and stuff. And just yesterday, we called her to see if she would be coming, and she said no because she had just met a lady who invited her to her church so she is going to that one. So other than all that, not too much interesting is going on.
So anyways, I hope everyone is doing awesome! I miss yall like crazy! It's starting to go by a little faster though. Keep me updated on everything! I love you so much! Keep being awesome!
This is Kayla
Summer Ramsden is my main homie
So anyways, I hope everyone is doing awesome! I miss yall like crazy! It's starting to go by a little faster though. Keep me updated on everything! I love you so much! Keep being awesome!
Thursday, September 10, 2015
First Baptism!
I had a pretty good week this week. We baptized Thelma which was good. I can't remember if I told you, but one thing that held her back was she didn't think tithing was important. We had a lesson with her about it and she was still being stubborn, but at the end, elder Ross shared a story that he wasn't planning on sharing because it was kind of personal I guess. But I want to tell you about it because it's too cool not to share haha. So his mom was struggling financially when he was in 7th grade, and I think she had recently got a divorce. She still paid tithing though. And one day, she was driving Ross to school, and her car ran out of gas! She pulled over into a church parking lot and prayed. She was crying and having a hard time, they didn't know what to do. When she turned the car back on, the gas meter was full!!! How cool is that? Elder Ross was pretty emotional during the lesson, but the spirit was super strong. Thelma was balling too. She finally understood that tithing was important. So that was awesome. So when she was baptized, we got there and realized we needed keys to the font which we didn't have! So we rushed to find someone who did. Finally we got some keys and we blasted the font haha. everything worked out. We found out while we were there, that her brother was getting baptized that Saturday! She didn't even tell us! Haha. So we went to his up in paradise too. (Paradise is a town near us) So yesterday, we went to this girls house that we had stopped by several times at. She was a referral and we kept going by but she was never home! We finally left a Book of Mormon with a note on it. We were out of pass along cards. She texted us to come over on Sunday. So we did, and she has read a lot of the Book of Mormon! Her family is all LDS and she really wants to be baptized. She wants to be baptized in Hawaii though. That's where she's from. So I don't think we will be able to be there haha. But still really cool!
Here are some pictures that Jayden sent of the lady that was baptized last Thursday. The first one was labeled "Aw Yeah"and the second one was labeled "Soul Saved"! I'm glad he still has his great sense of humor!!
Tuesday, September 1, 2015
Two weeks of emails
I have been a slacker lately! So here are this weeks and last weeks emails from my boy! Last week I had to wait until 10:30 at night for his email! That stinker! He was out having fun, hiking, going to dinner. I guess that's way better than emailing your mom! Haha! Here is what he finally had to say--
"Sorry I didn't email earlier! We went on a hike up to an abandoned mine cave. It was pretty cool. Elder Avery caught this cool black and orange salamander! We ended up taking a wrong turn and hiked a couple of miles but it wasn't too bad. So this week was pretty good! Except I'm upset, while I was writing the first few paragraphs of this letter, a guy from our ward called me and asked me to give a talk this Sunday. So yay. Haha. Anyways, this week we went to this guy named David's house for dinner. He used to be a pro boxer and he killed someone in self defense and went to jail, so he's different. He made this stuff called spread in jail, and decided to feed it to us. It is top Raman, mixed with chile, sour cream, mustard, mayo, Doritos, and all sorts of seasonings. It was not good haha. He's nice though, he's not all there. So we have been meeting with this lady named Vivian, she is also not all there, but super nice. We finally got her to go to church! We kept trying to get her to go, but she always has lame excuses like she doesn't have money or something. Like we get her a ride and do everything for her! But we finally got her to go. I was pretty bold and blunt about things with her. It was starting to get frustrating, but it worked. We just had faith and kept praying for her! It sucks though because we have to give her off to some other missionaries because she isn't in our ward. But just glad we found her to teach! So we were going to find new investigators, and just knocking on doors, and for some weird reason, no one was answering their doors. I felt like something just wasn't right, so I said we should say a prayer, and we did. The next door we went to, the lady was home and wants us to come teach her next week!!! So that's way exciting! There is this cool old guy in our ward, he just got baptized last year. He fought in WWII. I guess he convinced Ronald Reagan to run for president haha. So that's cool. His name is ken Holden. There's this other guy in our ward, his name is Lauren Sorensen, he is 98 years old and pretty much runs around the church. He has more energy than a little kid. He's crazy, but a super cool guy. We have also been meeting with this family that was recently baptized. They haven't been to church for 13 weeks! And we visited them and we got them to go! Their 14 year old son has anxiety, and he stole his moms car and he wrecked it. His 26 year old brother beat him up after that. We happened to stop by that very day. There was just chaos in their house, and everyone was yelling and just upset, and we stopped by and the mom almost said it wasn't a good day for us to visit, but then our ward mission leader stopped by out of the blue! And he came in and we gave a good lesson and got them to go to church. You could just feel the spirit and i know we were supposed to go over to help calm their family down after all that chaos, because our ward mission leader came too! It was really cool! Anyways, pretty great week!
Well the days go by slow and the weeks go by flipping fast! But it still feels like I haven't seen you guys in 2 years already! I miss you all so much! I just want you guys to keep growing your testimonies and stay close to God! Being away from the comfort of home, I have seen the influence of satan on the world, and how easy it is slip away from the gospel. I'm not saying you guys ever would, but I just want you guys to keep being awesome and try to study the scriptures personally and as a family! :) "10 Behold I say unto you, do ye suppose that ye cannot worship God save it be in your synagogues only? And moreover, I would ask, do ye suppose that ye must not worship God only once in a week? (Alma 32)" I just thought I would share this scripture, I think it's pretty cool! It just means we need to worship God throughout the week! Church isn't the only time we should worship!" I love it when he gets all preachy!! Ha! No, it really is good to hear how his testimony is growing and how the church is becoming so much more important to him!
And here is this weeks email--
"Hey mom! I'm pretty good how are you? Yes we still are planning the baptism for this week, but we might have to push it back because the lady did some serious sin stuff a while back and we have to get her an interview with either the mission president or the 1st counselor of the mission. Kinda sucks, and the lady wanted to do it September 3rd because it was her moms birthday and her mom is a member so she thought that would be a good present! Haha. And Ya our ward is pretty cool, me and elder Ross hang out with the Becks, who are a couple that just got married not too long ago, and he is an RM, and the Pasowistys, who are from Canada and they are both so cool. They have us for dinner a lot and they let me watch the first half of the Broncos game on Saturday. Haha. And my first transfer ends today. There are a few buddies of mine leaving the area which sucks. So training is 12 weeks, so in 6 weeks, elder Ross will most likely be leaving. I will probably be in Chico for at least another 12 weeks, unless for some weird reason hey shotgun us out, which means takes Ross and me out at the same time, but that's rare because then the new missionaries don't know anyone or where to go. And uptime goes by fast but slow, like it's crazy to think that I've been in California for 6 weeks now, but I feel like I haven't seen you guys in forever and I look at how much longer I have and it's way more!
I don't do laundry. I just stink. Just kidding. It's not too bad. And grocery shopping isn't too bad either, but definitely easy when you did it haha. The apartment isn't too bad, except the elder before me left TONS of boxes from all the packages that he got, and there is just like a mountain of them to clean up. It actually really pisses me off he left them, because to leave an area it says to make sure you don't leave a mess for other elders to clean up. But other than that it's not too bad. We moved our beds into the kitchen/living room area because there is a swamp cooler there, and it was so hot in the bedroom we just couldn't sleep. It's so unfair, our zone leaders and a couple other companionships live in these apartments not too far from us, that are super nice. They have AC and they are big and have windows. We live in a dark hot basement. I had to give a talk yesterday! It was pretty good. It was on obedience, and I shared a hunting story with it and everyone came up to me after saying they thought I was so cool and they all said they couldn't believe I was 18 because of my talk lol. And after the talk, a really old lady in a robotic wheel chair came up to me and asked if I knew a Helen Stoddard that lived in Utah! Apparently they were best friends growing up! How crazy is that!? So I forgot to tell you, the sister missionaries near us are having their car retired, so we have to give the, ours. So I'm getting a bike today. Yay. Biking in 100 degrees. I guess we are going to share a car with some other elders, but the elder there is a 350 pound Polynesian kid. We went on a hike with him and he struggled really bad. So I doubt he's going to let us have the car very often. I'm mad that they are taking the car from us though, because we cover the biggest area of the zone! We cover most of Chico and a nearby city called Durham! And the elders we are sharing a car with, cover TWO wards! I don't understand why they couldn't take a car from someone only covering a small area?! Whatever I guess It will help get me in shape. I already lost six pounds since last week! A week ago I weighed myself and realized that I'm getting even more fat haha. The members here us like crazy. There's always a salad, some fattening food, and a desert! It's so bad. I weighed 236 last week, but I'm down to 229. I'm going to try to get to 200 before New Years.
So this week was pretty good. We visited Tony this week, the one I was inspired to visit a while back. We brought a member with us too. I guess he has already read a 100 pages of the Book of Mormon! He said it's cool because it goes hand in hand with the bible! He loves reading it! We had a super good lesson on the gospel, and at the end he invited himself to church. He said I want to come to your guys' church some time! He wasn't able to make it this week, but we will get him to go. So we had this guy named Frank on our potential investigator list. The address was a homeless shelter. We went, and opened the door, and no one was there. It was dark and everything was cleaned up! So we were just really confused haha. Then we went outside and we were walking to the car, and elder Ross had an impression to leave a Book of Mormon inside, so we went back, but the door was locked! It was weird! I wonder if the door just wasn't shut all the way when we went in. Anyways, so we didn't find Frank. And at church yesterday, a guy named Frank showed up! We talked to him and he had been staying at that shelter! It was him! Without any invitation, he came to church! We got his number and we are going to teach him sometime! He is a really nice guy and open to anything. He is trying to turn his life around for his 5 year old son.
I don't really have any other cool stories or miracles to share this week, but I could just tell you about some of the people! So we teach this new convert named Beth. We call her deaf Beth because she is SUPER deaf haha. When her phone rings, her lamps blink because she can't hear. And while on the phone, she types, and someone talks for her, and the person types whatever the other person says so she can just read it haha. She is crazy. I don't know if I have told you about Norm, but he is a convert of 30 years. He is inactive unfortunately, so we visit him pretty often. He has a gimpy arm and gimpy leg. But he has this massive left arm and always wants to arm wrestle people haha. And if you shake his hand, he will crush it, so we always fist bump haha. He is obsessed with Elvis Presley and he ends up talking about him forever when we go over haha. He's a funny guy. So we are teaching this lady who isn't all there, and it's so annoying. We have been teaching her for 5 weeks, and we have invited her to church for the past 3 weeks, and she says she will go, but she always calls us a few minutes before and cancels because of some ridiculous excuse! It makes me so mad. I was pretty straight forward and blunt with her last lesson. And she always asks us for food and a job. I'm about ready to drop her as an investigator.
So I had I good week! So how was your week? How is being healthy? I hope everyone is doing well! I hope Mase emails me sometime! You guys are awesome! Love you so much!
And here are the latest pics--
Eyebrows
Me and our investigator Sarah
Honey Run covered bridge where we had our district meeting
District meeting in the wilderness
The covered bridge
Ally and me
MTC district
MTC district wall sits
MTC district weirdness
Sister Cornwall leaves today. She lives in Idaho. She is awesome.
Sister Cornwall and Sister Dudley with Elder Ross and me
Sister Cornwall and me
Me and my grandpa and his sons. Haha!
And finally, I just had to share this picture that I took. It is Jayden's countdown chart. One whole letter is completely filled in!! So exciting!!
We're getting there! Slowly but surely! So grateful for this missionary of mine!!
"Sorry I didn't email earlier! We went on a hike up to an abandoned mine cave. It was pretty cool. Elder Avery caught this cool black and orange salamander! We ended up taking a wrong turn and hiked a couple of miles but it wasn't too bad. So this week was pretty good! Except I'm upset, while I was writing the first few paragraphs of this letter, a guy from our ward called me and asked me to give a talk this Sunday. So yay. Haha. Anyways, this week we went to this guy named David's house for dinner. He used to be a pro boxer and he killed someone in self defense and went to jail, so he's different. He made this stuff called spread in jail, and decided to feed it to us. It is top Raman, mixed with chile, sour cream, mustard, mayo, Doritos, and all sorts of seasonings. It was not good haha. He's nice though, he's not all there. So we have been meeting with this lady named Vivian, she is also not all there, but super nice. We finally got her to go to church! We kept trying to get her to go, but she always has lame excuses like she doesn't have money or something. Like we get her a ride and do everything for her! But we finally got her to go. I was pretty bold and blunt about things with her. It was starting to get frustrating, but it worked. We just had faith and kept praying for her! It sucks though because we have to give her off to some other missionaries because she isn't in our ward. But just glad we found her to teach! So we were going to find new investigators, and just knocking on doors, and for some weird reason, no one was answering their doors. I felt like something just wasn't right, so I said we should say a prayer, and we did. The next door we went to, the lady was home and wants us to come teach her next week!!! So that's way exciting! There is this cool old guy in our ward, he just got baptized last year. He fought in WWII. I guess he convinced Ronald Reagan to run for president haha. So that's cool. His name is ken Holden. There's this other guy in our ward, his name is Lauren Sorensen, he is 98 years old and pretty much runs around the church. He has more energy than a little kid. He's crazy, but a super cool guy. We have also been meeting with this family that was recently baptized. They haven't been to church for 13 weeks! And we visited them and we got them to go! Their 14 year old son has anxiety, and he stole his moms car and he wrecked it. His 26 year old brother beat him up after that. We happened to stop by that very day. There was just chaos in their house, and everyone was yelling and just upset, and we stopped by and the mom almost said it wasn't a good day for us to visit, but then our ward mission leader stopped by out of the blue! And he came in and we gave a good lesson and got them to go to church. You could just feel the spirit and i know we were supposed to go over to help calm their family down after all that chaos, because our ward mission leader came too! It was really cool! Anyways, pretty great week!
Well the days go by slow and the weeks go by flipping fast! But it still feels like I haven't seen you guys in 2 years already! I miss you all so much! I just want you guys to keep growing your testimonies and stay close to God! Being away from the comfort of home, I have seen the influence of satan on the world, and how easy it is slip away from the gospel. I'm not saying you guys ever would, but I just want you guys to keep being awesome and try to study the scriptures personally and as a family! :) "10 Behold I say unto you, do ye suppose that ye cannot worship God save it be in your synagogues only? And moreover, I would ask, do ye suppose that ye must not worship God only once in a week? (Alma 32)" I just thought I would share this scripture, I think it's pretty cool! It just means we need to worship God throughout the week! Church isn't the only time we should worship!" I love it when he gets all preachy!! Ha! No, it really is good to hear how his testimony is growing and how the church is becoming so much more important to him!
And here is this weeks email--
"Hey mom! I'm pretty good how are you? Yes we still are planning the baptism for this week, but we might have to push it back because the lady did some serious sin stuff a while back and we have to get her an interview with either the mission president or the 1st counselor of the mission. Kinda sucks, and the lady wanted to do it September 3rd because it was her moms birthday and her mom is a member so she thought that would be a good present! Haha. And Ya our ward is pretty cool, me and elder Ross hang out with the Becks, who are a couple that just got married not too long ago, and he is an RM, and the Pasowistys, who are from Canada and they are both so cool. They have us for dinner a lot and they let me watch the first half of the Broncos game on Saturday. Haha. And my first transfer ends today. There are a few buddies of mine leaving the area which sucks. So training is 12 weeks, so in 6 weeks, elder Ross will most likely be leaving. I will probably be in Chico for at least another 12 weeks, unless for some weird reason hey shotgun us out, which means takes Ross and me out at the same time, but that's rare because then the new missionaries don't know anyone or where to go. And uptime goes by fast but slow, like it's crazy to think that I've been in California for 6 weeks now, but I feel like I haven't seen you guys in forever and I look at how much longer I have and it's way more!
I don't do laundry. I just stink. Just kidding. It's not too bad. And grocery shopping isn't too bad either, but definitely easy when you did it haha. The apartment isn't too bad, except the elder before me left TONS of boxes from all the packages that he got, and there is just like a mountain of them to clean up. It actually really pisses me off he left them, because to leave an area it says to make sure you don't leave a mess for other elders to clean up. But other than that it's not too bad. We moved our beds into the kitchen/living room area because there is a swamp cooler there, and it was so hot in the bedroom we just couldn't sleep. It's so unfair, our zone leaders and a couple other companionships live in these apartments not too far from us, that are super nice. They have AC and they are big and have windows. We live in a dark hot basement. I had to give a talk yesterday! It was pretty good. It was on obedience, and I shared a hunting story with it and everyone came up to me after saying they thought I was so cool and they all said they couldn't believe I was 18 because of my talk lol. And after the talk, a really old lady in a robotic wheel chair came up to me and asked if I knew a Helen Stoddard that lived in Utah! Apparently they were best friends growing up! How crazy is that!? So I forgot to tell you, the sister missionaries near us are having their car retired, so we have to give the, ours. So I'm getting a bike today. Yay. Biking in 100 degrees. I guess we are going to share a car with some other elders, but the elder there is a 350 pound Polynesian kid. We went on a hike with him and he struggled really bad. So I doubt he's going to let us have the car very often. I'm mad that they are taking the car from us though, because we cover the biggest area of the zone! We cover most of Chico and a nearby city called Durham! And the elders we are sharing a car with, cover TWO wards! I don't understand why they couldn't take a car from someone only covering a small area?! Whatever I guess It will help get me in shape. I already lost six pounds since last week! A week ago I weighed myself and realized that I'm getting even more fat haha. The members here us like crazy. There's always a salad, some fattening food, and a desert! It's so bad. I weighed 236 last week, but I'm down to 229. I'm going to try to get to 200 before New Years.
So this week was pretty good. We visited Tony this week, the one I was inspired to visit a while back. We brought a member with us too. I guess he has already read a 100 pages of the Book of Mormon! He said it's cool because it goes hand in hand with the bible! He loves reading it! We had a super good lesson on the gospel, and at the end he invited himself to church. He said I want to come to your guys' church some time! He wasn't able to make it this week, but we will get him to go. So we had this guy named Frank on our potential investigator list. The address was a homeless shelter. We went, and opened the door, and no one was there. It was dark and everything was cleaned up! So we were just really confused haha. Then we went outside and we were walking to the car, and elder Ross had an impression to leave a Book of Mormon inside, so we went back, but the door was locked! It was weird! I wonder if the door just wasn't shut all the way when we went in. Anyways, so we didn't find Frank. And at church yesterday, a guy named Frank showed up! We talked to him and he had been staying at that shelter! It was him! Without any invitation, he came to church! We got his number and we are going to teach him sometime! He is a really nice guy and open to anything. He is trying to turn his life around for his 5 year old son.
I don't really have any other cool stories or miracles to share this week, but I could just tell you about some of the people! So we teach this new convert named Beth. We call her deaf Beth because she is SUPER deaf haha. When her phone rings, her lamps blink because she can't hear. And while on the phone, she types, and someone talks for her, and the person types whatever the other person says so she can just read it haha. She is crazy. I don't know if I have told you about Norm, but he is a convert of 30 years. He is inactive unfortunately, so we visit him pretty often. He has a gimpy arm and gimpy leg. But he has this massive left arm and always wants to arm wrestle people haha. And if you shake his hand, he will crush it, so we always fist bump haha. He is obsessed with Elvis Presley and he ends up talking about him forever when we go over haha. He's a funny guy. So we are teaching this lady who isn't all there, and it's so annoying. We have been teaching her for 5 weeks, and we have invited her to church for the past 3 weeks, and she says she will go, but she always calls us a few minutes before and cancels because of some ridiculous excuse! It makes me so mad. I was pretty straight forward and blunt with her last lesson. And she always asks us for food and a job. I'm about ready to drop her as an investigator.
So I had I good week! So how was your week? How is being healthy? I hope everyone is doing well! I hope Mase emails me sometime! You guys are awesome! Love you so much!
And here are the latest pics--
And finally, I just had to share this picture that I took. It is Jayden's countdown chart. One whole letter is completely filled in!! So exciting!!
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