Stayin in Shasta!

Well I will start off by saying that I am very happy with transfers this week! I was hoping that Elder Clifford would take off, and that I would have six more weeks up in Mt. Shasta, and well that is exactly what is happening. Clifford is taking off, and going to serve as a District Leader down in the Lincoln 1st ward, and I am going to stay up in Banishment with Elder Gillen. I don't know much about him except that Elder Squires my current Distric Leader described him as a jerk! haha Well Squires is a little up tight about things, so I think that we will get along very good. Plus, if we don't I will just sit on him because he is pretty small!! Other than that I really don't have much in the way of news. Time still is just slipping through my fingers, and I am still trying to be a better missionary than I am. I don't think that I will ever get to where I want to be, but that is okay. I want myself to be the perfect missionary but I just don't think that it is possible.

I did have a very frustrating week this week. Elder Clark and I had an awesome exchange. Probably the best that I have ever been on, and we taught 9 lessons, and had a blast. And Elder Clifford came back up and just sucked the drive out of me! We only had 4 lessons for the rest of the week after Clifford came back up. :( I was very frustrated with him, and just ready to be done with our companionship. Now don't get me wrong, I really enjoy serving with him, but we just aren't that good at working together. We get along great though. We both agreed that we were ready for some change though.

Our investigators are still doing well, and for the most part progressing. I don't have anything else to say really. I love the Gardener's they are awesome this week we taught the 10 C's and we put some hand signs to them so they could remember them better. Alyssa is awesome but I don't know what to do with her. We can't ever teach her for reals when her dad is their she just kind of shuts down, and won't respond or do or say anything to us. He kind of just pushes her aside. So she is definately not progressing. Oh I have a talk in two Sundays that I am pretty excited about, and I think that you guys should write it for me. Last time you did it worked out pretty well so, take that into consideration please. haha

Well I love your gutz,

Elder Ellsworth

Time flies when you are having fun!

Oh. boy how time flies on my mission!  It is good though, it freaks me out pretty good.  This week was a very good one, and we got some good work done, and worked our butts off, well until the last few days of the week.  Saturday and Sunday were a little rough for me.  Elder Clifford is a good guy, but he destroys my motivation!  I am really pumped up with our area, and really excited about missionary work, and he just isn't.  I try really hard to get motivated and excited and then he just puts a damper on my excitement.  Especially when it comes to tracting.  He will teach lessons, and he doesn't like to but he will go out and harrass less active people, but he hates tracting.  Our week was a good one, we had 17 lessons this week, but we would have had at least 20 if not for a couple of cancellations, and not working very much on Sat, and Sunday.  So I was pretty frustrated with him, and so last night we sat down and had a little heart to heart, and I told him that he is killing my motivation.  It might have offended him, but it needed to be said.  He is willing to work harder, with me.  I told him that he doesn't have to have a good attitude, and be pumped up to go and tract, just to not discourage me from going to tract.  So he is willing to comply. So we are going to work really hard this last week that we have together.  And we both agree that hopefully it is our last together!  We love each other but are ready for a change of pace.  Personally I hope that he gets transferred, and I stay.  He said he would be cool with that too! 

 

What else is new?  Well the Gardener's are doing good.  We taught just Jason last week, and talked about the Word of Wisdom, we weren't supposed to but Elder Clifford started teaching it so I just went along with it.  The lesson was not very good, and Jason understands, but not completely.  Jason wants to get baptized but he has to wait till his work schedule changes in October or November sometime.  Which is a bummer because I will be gone by then, but who knows I might come back.  We asked Juanita to pray and ask God everyday this week if she should get baptized, but she probably didn't do it, isn't listening, or just forgot, or feels unworthy to pray or something.  But who knows!  Will is doing good, last week was his first time that he passed the Sacrament!  I think for me that is one of the biggest rewards of Missionary work!  Not only that, but we gave him a copy of Preach my Gospel, and he wants to serve on his own Mission some day!  That is super rewarding as well. 

 

Well that is about all.  This last week we had Zone Conference, and it was so much fun!  I love getting together and having meetings with a ton of Missionaries!  President Weston is awesome too!  He makes me want to be the best I possibly can.  I am going to work harder, and be better.  Well I have now run out of things to say... Other than expressing  my love for all of you!  Thanks for the package, and for all of the support you give me.  I listened to the new CD on the drive from Mt. Shasta, and I love it so thanks a million!

I love your gutz!

 

Love Elder Ellsworth

 

Quote of the Week:

" Do not teach in a way that people can understand, teach in such a way that they cannot misunderstand."

 

Unknown.

Time flies....

It is pretty crazy it feels like time just flies by!  It shows no signs of slowing down!!!  Well another good week this one was.  We taught 15 lessons again, as well as we picked up 1 new investigator.  Which meets our goals for the week for our zone.  We want to achieve 500 lessons this month as a zone and that is going to take 15 lessons a week from everyone.  But we aren't going to stop with that.  We set our goal high this next week going for 19 lessons and 2 New investigators!  We are starting to work a lot harder too.  We have made it a goal to waste less time which is the whole reason we have gone up thus far in numbers!  Well that is enough about numbers!  Well I started off this week on exchanges down in Redding.  Which despite everyones complaining I didn't mind the heat too bad.  I was really hot and sweaty most of the time but other than that I was usually in the car.  We had a couple of bummer days during which we had like 4 lessons cancel!  We only actually taught one because our dinner cancelled too!  I had a really good time with Elder Collier my Zone Leader, and he has inspired me to work harder!  I am also really excited because I am going to get into my low carb diet a lot more these next few weeks.  So that should be very exciting, I am going to lose some weight, and eat healthier. 

Because of my exchange this week I missed our lesson with Jason and Vonda.  They both agreed to start thinking more about baptism, they suggested the end of August, but then they realized they have to attend church.  So they started saying that he could not come to church until like November when his work schedule changes!!  So I don't really know what to do now.  Just keep loving and teaching them and now we need to wait.  In other news Will is not coming to Church!!!  He has missed the past two weeks, so I don't really know what to do about that.  We will ask him about it this week, but it is pretty frustrating when you are expecting a bunch of people to church and nobody shows up!  That is basically how Sunday was. 

In other news the Griffeth's from Cottonwood, well they are moving to Dunsmuir, which is subsequently on my area, so I get to teach them again!!  But the reason they are is Justin and Amber are separating.  I guess Justin was not being a nice guy, well actually he was abusing her.  I am really actually worried about them.  What those kids really need is a nice place to live, in a nice place like Orem Utah.  They need love and support, and I am worried that they are not going to find that up in Dunsmuir.  She is a single Mom with 4 kids under the age of 14.  So if you have any suggestions please let me know. 

Good news now for today is we are hoping to pick up 3 or 4 new Investigators tonight down in Dunsmuir.  There is a family that has Less Active parents, that lives there, and they invited us over for dinner tonight.  We are going to do some sort of Family Home Evening activity with them and hopefully pick the kids up as Investigators.  We allready picked up a girl named Samantha who is like 23 who is their cousin so we are excited to teach them.  Also crazy vietnam vet  came again last week while we were there and got mad at us again.  It is pretty epic. haha

I guess my struggle right now is trying to find joy in the mundane.  Trying to learn to love and have the Faith to go out and Tract.  Trying to get over my hold ups.  I have not been an apostate missionary but I would be okay with being called lazy in the past.  But now is my time to overcome that.  I just need to keep finding that motivation to get out there and go to work! 



By the way, I loved the letters from cousin camp. They were a lot of fun to read. Thanks!
Well I am peacing out!  Love your gutz!

Elder with the big head.

Quote of the Week

"A person cannot give a crust to the Lord without receiving a loaf in return."

Melvin J. Ballard.

Lovin Mt. Shasta

Well we had a pretty good week this past week, and I feel pretty good about it.  This past week we set a new record for Mount Shasta at least since I have been here.  We taught 15 lessons last week, so we are very excited about that.  Also we are looking forward to a great week ahead of us.  

 

We picked up a new Investigator named Thema this week.  She is a lady from Dunsmuir that was invited to one of our lessons with Juanita our Eternal Investigator.  She is very religious, and has been back and forth throughout her life.  She is actually very Golden.  She has stopped attending her local church recently because the minister was preaching stuff that she didn't like.  Pretty much all of her views are lined up with ours so we are very excited to be teaching her.  She asked us about babies being born sinners, she didn't think so, neither do we.  She doesn't like the Holy Trinity, she wondered how they could all be one when it refers to them each individually, well we believe the same.  All of her lifelong questions we were there, and we had the answers for her!  It was pretty awesome!  Juanita will be out of town this week, so we won't be meeting with either of them, but next week we will be having an awesome lesson. 

 

Another cool expirience was that family I told you about last week that approached us at church and invited us to come over.  So they live in Dunsmuir as well, so on Friday we drove down to go and introduce ourselves.  They live in this, for lack of a better word, Ghetto trailer park.  We walked over to their trailer, and the husband waved us to come over.  He said his wife was down in Sacramento, and asked us if we could come back another day.  So we rescheduled and were walking away when this family, who were also outside the trailer waved us to come and to talk to them as well.  So we went and shared a little bit about the Book of Mormon with them.  It was a very interesting lesson... to say the least, constant interruptions from an  Irish man who was fixing his truck screaming and swearing about something, the people we were talking too drinking and smoking, and this odd neighbor came over, and was yelling at us because we were mormon, and in essence swore profusely about his oppinion of our church!  Now is sounds pretty bad, but it was actually very entertaining!  We had a very good laugh about the whole thing later, and we are hoping to pick them up as Investigators this week.  So I will let you know more when I know some more! 

 

Well our meeting with Jason went well this week, Vonda is in Oregon for the week, and so we just went over to answer a couple of his questions about prayer, and read some of the Book of Mormon with him, we ended up having an awesome discussion.  We shared a conference talk about prayer by Russell M. Nelson, which was awesome.  And he sayed he is praying more, even they have prayed as a family of couple of times.  Their Daughter Kiya loves to pray, and things are going good.  He let us in a little bit more I would say, he told us more about his beliefs, and why they feel the way they do, and a lot of those expiriences that have led them to believe in Reincarnation are so close to the Gospel.  I can see how it relates to his beliefs, but it fits right in with ours!!  For example when Kiya was like 3 months old, they had such a strong connection with them, they could understand what she wanted, and they just felt that she was too smart to be 3 months old!  Well she lived with them in the Pre-earth life!!  Kiya also told Vonda that she missed them up in Heaven!!!  Jason also with tears in his eyes thanked us so much for being there for him.  He thanked us for inviting God into his life.  He said that God was always there but before he just wasn't recognizing it.  It was awesome! 

 

Well that is about all I wanted to say for today, I want to tell you all that I love your Gutz!!!

 

Elder Ellsworth

 

Quote of the Week!

 

There is not one great and grand thing we can do to arm ourselves Spiritually.  True Spiritual power lies in numerous smaller acts woven together in a fabric of Spiritual fortification.

 

Elder Ballard