June 23, 2014

Well nothing too adventurous has happened this week with Elder Wyllie but we were able to set a baptismal date with a 9 year old girl named Ceilidh (Kaylee) Clark and her family has been planning for a while now to have her baptized in July so we went over to her house to set up a date. The baptism will be on July 12th so we will be having a baptism soon. We had to wait so long to be able to set that date because we were waiting for the parents to find out when family was planning on coming into town. Her Grandpa will be the baptizing her so we had to wait and see when he was coming down. As for Casey and Christine unfortunately neither of them came to church this week so that was a bummer but we will hope for next week. So other than that we have had a pretty slow week and were unable to teach too many lessons this week. This week should be better though and hopefully we will be able to find more people home. Elder Wyllie have been having a blast working together so we are looking forward to being together another transfer. Well like usual I don't have too much to talk about this week but I love y'all very much and am super thankful for all of your support!!

P.S. - The family history center will be closed next week for 4th of July so I am not sure if I will be able to send an email next week. 

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Love,

Elder Curtis

June 16, 2014

So this week has been really good Elder Wyllie and I are continuing to work really well together. So this Wednesday is transfers but we found out that Elder Wyllie and I will be staying together for another 6 weeks! We have some great potential investigators and we should have a baptism in July. Unfortunately Casey Forkenbrock was out of town all week and wont be home for a couple days but we found a new investigator yesterday and her name is Christine Price and she is super awesome and only believes in the bible right now but is open to finding out more about the book of mormon. So things are going great in the area we are finding more and more people to teach now we just need to start getting them to church :) Well I love y'all very much and am grateful for all the support!!

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Love,

Elder Curtis

June 9, 2014

I will start off by apologizing for not being able to send a mass email last week. We were off doing p-day shopping and horsing around for most of the day and then we forgot that we still needed to send off some emails. Instead of mailing off a mass email to mom and dad I decided to send a personal letter to each of them and about my current struggles. Um....so on that note on to this week we have been having a good couple weeks. We have been teaching a ton but we do not have a lot of people currently in our teaching pool. We have a couple in there but we are always praying more investigators. We have found a lot of people out and about and we will stop and talk with them and share a message but most of them have told us that they respect what we are doing but are currently not interesting in having the missionary discussions. Currently are only progressing investigator is Casey Forkenbrock and she is the one that we did the service for when we pulled out her stumps out of her front yard. She is a private investigator and doesn't know her schedule from day to day so our lessons have been just random stop by and hoping that she will be home. Unfortunately the only thing really stopping her from being baptized is coming to church. She will always tell us that she will definitely come to church as long as nothing gets in the way but most of the time between work and family coming into town something has stopped her from coming every week for the past month. We have talked to her about putting Heavenly Father first in her life and have promised her blessings many many times and she is slowly starting to realize that her priorities are out of order. So she is starting to realize the importance of things we ask her to do and soon she will come to church and feel the Spirit stronger and start to gain a testimony of what we have been teaching her. Well I better go now but that is a little update on the current missionary work going on in my area. I love y'all very much and hope that y'all have a great week!!

P.S. - I hope y'all are all reading Preach My Gospel and I will share an awesome quote that I have found as I am currently reading PMG from cover to cover instead of by topic.

“The most important of the Lord’s work you will ever do will be within the walls of your own homes.”

May 27th, 2014

Well I said I would email on Wednesday but we had a couple appointments fall through so we decided to email today instead. So Elder Wyllie and I are doing great together. We were able to teach a lot of people last week. Not all of them said we could come back but we are trying to work harder at talking to everyone and at least sharing a short message or scripture with them instead of trying to just set up appointments without a message that usually fall through. We have been able to see a lot of success come of it. We have been able to set 2 baptismal dates together and we are currently working on setting many more. The current baptismal dates that we have are for a guy in the Westhill Ward by the name of Joe Goyen. The other is in the Templeview Ward by the name of Casey Forkenbrock. They both have a current baptismal date for June 21st, 2014. We are praying that they will continue to progress and that we will be able to continue to meet with them and that their desire to learn more and that their testimony will continue to be strengthened. This week we will be having Zone Conference on Thursday, May 27th, and these are always really fun and have some great trainings. The only downside to Zone Conference is that it is from 8:30am-4pm so we get to sit in a chapel almost all day so it can be very tiring sometimes. Memorial Day was just another regular p-day for us. Which means we do our normal morning schedule routine and then from 10am-6pm we have free time to do emails, shopping, and zone activities (usually sports). The tree stumps were finally removed and taken to the dump after a lot of digging, axing, chain sawing, and truck pulling. That was quite the adventure but it was a lot of fun. So we have been biking a lot now that the weather is nicer and Wyllie found a bike that was left at the transfer site (the church building that we meet at during transfers). So far we have done around 40 miles together but unfortunately Wyllie will be losing his bike because the bike that Wyllie found belongs to another missionary. So he will be losing the bike on Thursday and then we will be back to walking. Um.....I believe that is all that has happened in the past week. It was a pretty eventful week and we are hoping for an even more eventful week full of teaching and sharing a message with everyone. I love y'all very much and hope y'all have another great week!!

May 19th, 2014

¿Hola como esta? Well this week has been super fun. Elder Wyllie and I have been doing quite a bit of service in the mornings and after noon for a lady by the name of Casey Forkenbrock and she is one of our investigators in the Temple View Ward and she has a lot potential. We are helping her to take out a couple of tree stumps and there is a picture below with us (Elder Wyllie, Curtis, Sherlock, and Araya) around the smaller of the 2 stumps. We were able to get that one out in around 3 hrs but we are currently still working on the much bigger stump. We have been able to teach Casey once and went over the restoration and she was really receptive and open. On saturday I was able to go out with Amanda and Mary and that was a lot of fun to be able to go out to lunch with them! We went to Olive Garden and have a great meal and be able to catch up on what all is going on in the outside world. Oh and unfortunately I found out last night that I still have high blood pressure and so I will have to call the mission doctor soon to find out what I need to do or who I need to go see. Elder Wyllie and I have some pretty high goals that we have set for the coming week that we both feel like if we buckle down and work hard that we will be able to achieve these goals that we have set. This area has a lot of people and a lot of potential for missionary work. Our hardest part is just catching people home for our scheduled appointments but we are going start a new tactic and start teaching wherever and whoever is home. Well I better go now but I hope y'all are all reading Preach My Gospel and follow that advice that we received at General Conference. I love y'all very much and hope y'all have a great week!!

P.S. - Here are a couple pictures. One is a picture of a service project that we are doing for one of our investigators. The other is a picture with my new companion Elder Wyllie.

May 5, 2014

Well Sorry I don't have a lot of time mainly because Elder Tovar is leaving today and we have to be ready to drop him off at 1ish and we still have some errands to run. Not a lot happened this week. We mostly spent time going and setting up appointments for this coming week and saying goodbye since he is going home. My new companion will not be Elder Badoni but it will be an Elder that came out with Elder Hernandez. I don't know anything about him yet but I will know moreon Wednesday we he comes up. Well I better go so Elder Tovar can finish getting ready to go home. I love y'all very much and look forward to Skyping and phone calls on Mother's Day!!

P.S. - Here are a couple of pictures from the shirt burning.

 

Pictures

James and Elder Badoni

Jake, Justin,Geoff, and James (I hope those are in the right order says Amanda)

James and Elder Tovar